Original subtitles

[Nabeel] I was raised

as a very devout Muslim

in the United States.

And the fact of the matter was,

every time I connected

with a Christian,

I realized that they didn't know

why they believed

what they believed.

The Christians

who were around me

wouldn't share

the gospel with me,

and I never realized why.

I concluded

either they didn't believe

the gospel was true,

or if they did believe it,

they didn't care

if I went to hell.

[Paul] It is a pain to know

that there are people

who do not know Jesus.

It is a greater pain to know

that oftentimes

Jesus and Christianity

is being distorted.

Who told you you can't

accomplish your dreams?

[Costi] I think

around the world,

they know the phrase,

"The American Dream."

[Joel Osteen] Your destiny

is callin' out.

It's time to

start livin' large.

[Sean] We are exporting

the very worst

of what Christianity

has to offer.

I declare you debt-free today,

saith God.

[Paul] So that many people

harden their heart

against a Jesus, a Christ,

a Christianity,

that is not

the true version of it.

It's as easy to get healed

as it is to get forgiven.

[Emilio] I live in Texas.

We are considered the buckle

on the Bible Belt.

Around here, everybody thinks

they're Christian

simply because they live

in a conservative region

of the nation.

[Michael] You can grow up

in the church,

hear a gospel about freedom,

and still work your tail off

trying to maintain the image

that you're a good person.

[Jared] I had my Jesus

on Sunday mornings

and Wednesday nights

at youth group,

and the rest of the week,

I was chasing after

worldly things

that made me happy.

I saw nothing to like about God.

[Dr. Horton] You have

an increasing number of people

that were raised in churches

that didn't take

the gospel seriously,

or took it for granted.

[Jared] Wow, like Jesus

died for my sins?

That's so convenient for me.

I don't have to go to hell,

but I'm gonna go do

my own thing. [laughs]

[Dr. Horton] And surprise,

surprise, they don't know

what they believe

or why they believe it.

[Matt] We're assuming that

people understand the gospel.

I think it was

Christian Smith who said

that what we're seeing nowadays

in the American church

is the rise of what he calls

"moralistic therapeutic deism."

How to make people moral.

You know, I look like

this perfect golden child,

but I was so dead.

[Dr. Kim] A place to go to feel

better about themselves.

I'm asking you to feel good

about who you are.

[Dr. Kim] And so as a result,

we're seeing a church in America

that's becoming

ultimately Christless.

So if we're following the gospel

thinking it's all about us,

we've missed

Jesus' words entirely.

[Emilio] The fact that

we were raised Christian

doesn't make us a Christian.

We have to have

a supernatural rebirth.

I went from somebody

who hated Jesus

to a guy that loved Jesus

and spent all his time

at church. Why?

When you come in contact

with Him, you change.

Like, there is nothing

that I could have done

to make this happen.

Like, He literally gave me

a new heart.

And when the heart changes,

everything changes.

[Jonathan] If this is true,

this story is so captivating.

All I knew is that I had

severely overlooked something.

[Emilio]

I opened that word,

and nothing was ever the same.

[dramatic music]

[Dr. Chapell]

There was a time in my life

that I thought

the goal of preaching

was to get people to do

what they don't want to do,

which--which by the way,

is a terrible profession,

you know, that my goal

was to somehow arm-twist

or browbeat people into doing

what they don't want to do.

I don't believe that anymore.

I don't believe that's

what the Bible teaches.

[Phill] One of the biggest

turning points for me

happened while I was

a youth pastor at a church.

And it's kind of sad thing

to look back,

like, I'm a pastor,

I'm teaching the Bible.

But I didn't know

what it meant to teach

the gospel and the Bible

because I wasn't really

telling people

the good news about Jesus.

I was telling them

to be a passionate, zealous,

committed, radical Christian.

I was very passionate.

In a lot of ways, my church

put emphasis on things

that scripture didn't

put emphasis on.

I don't think Jesus

was the center

or the gospel was the center,

it was more so what we do,

what we can do.

And so as a new believer,

I never really knew that

the gospel was a big deal.

[Phill]

And I was realizing

how Christless preaching was,

and I can remember a sermon

from the Sermon on the Mount,

and it was "Ten Tips

on How to Be Sexually Pure."

And I remember that day,

like that being a turning point

in my journey to say,

"I never want to be a pastor

or preacher like that."

Like, what are you doing

to earn God's favor?

Have you tithed enough?

Have you given enough?

Have you prayed long enough?

Have you laid hands on anybody

in the last week?

Have you spoke in tongues?

If not,

then you're not a believer.

[Matt] In fact,

I think the thing

most common among unbelievers

when they think

about Christianity,

is they think

about Christian moralism.

What we believe about sex,

what we believe about money,

what we believe about them.

The most common misperception

about what Christianity is,

is it's some sort of

moral betterment program.

And it is about being good.

And that's what

all religions are about anyway:

be a good person.

There's few things as damning

and devastating

to the human spirit than--

than that message.

We want to, first of all,

say there's nothing wrong

with preaching morality.

We certainly don't wanna preach

the opposite, immorality.

But moralistic preaching,

or sometimes

identified as moralism,

is preaching the commands

of scripture

or the morals of scripture

and nothing else.

Just pretty much

saying to people,

"You be a good person

and God will love you for that."

And while we do not intend it,

that is not just

a sub-Christian message,

it's actually

an anti-Christian message.

[Phill] I was hearing

from the Sermon on the Mount,

from Jesus,

"Here's how not to be

sexually immoral."

But then I'm thinking

about the passage

in the Sermon on the Mount,

and the whole point

is to try and tell us,

"You're not sexually moral."

Your righteousness should exceed

that of the Pharisees,

and you think that it's about

keeping these lists of rules

and the Ten Commandments,

Well, "I say to you,"

and He takes it to the heart,

and He says,

if you have lust in your heart,

then you're falling way short.

And he concludes that section

in Matthew 5,

by saying, "Be perfect as your

heavenly Father is perfect."

But that's not the sermon

that was preached.

It was, "You can be pure,

you can be sexually moral,

and here's your ten tips."

You're giving them a goal that

they'll never be able to attain.

Period.

The messages that just say,

"Be good"...

damn people...

to their pride or to despair.

There are really only two

possible human responses.

One response

to a "be good" message is,

"Been there, done that,

checked off that box."

The person will believe

they can attain it,

be the Pharisee, um,

and work, and work,

and work, and work.

Or be the Mormon,

and work, and work.

Or the Muslim,

or the Jehovah's Witness.

All of 'em.

[laughs]

You'll try to earn salvation

by trying to be a good person.

Why do I have to,

you know, repent?

Why do I have to ask

for forgiveness

if you're not making mistakes?

I work hard,

I'm an honorable person.

[Dr. Chapell]

Jesus is walking down

the road one day,

and a young man comes up to Him

and says, "Good Teacher,

what must I do

to inherit eternal life?"

Now, it sounds like

a very safe question--

it's actually a landmine.

"What must I do

to inherit eternal life?"

Already, it's about performance.

"What must I do

to inherit eternal life?"

And Jesus responds

with great wisdom.

He says,

"Why do you call Me good?

Only God is good."

And then he says,

"You know the commandments."

But Joy, then what-but what

is the standard of goodness?

Be good to your neighbor.

-Don't cheat on your husband.

-Okay. But it's--

-Don't steal.

-But in the--

Don't lie, don't steal.

Gives them the list

of the commands.

But in the Bible, God's standard

-is the Ten Commandments.

-I'm good on that, too.

[Dr. Chapell] And the young man

immediately says,

"All these I have kept

since I was a boy."

Jesus just said,

"Only God is good."

And two seconds later,

what does the young man say?

-"Me too!"

-[congregation laughs]

In which case,

he gives himself the status

and the stature of God.

It's just pure pride.

And by the way, breaks

the very first commandment,

"You shall have no other gods."

You've never told

a lie before? Ever?

What? Is that one

of the commandments?

-It's number nine.

-Never mind.

[Jackie] Jesus is like, "Okay,

sell everything you have."

Dude walked away.

So you're not good.

[laughs]

You can't be good.

And Jesus already lays out

the foundation

that only God is good,

because He defines

what goodness truly is.

I try and lead a life

where I don't have to ask

God for forgiveness.

[Ray] If you have a proud heart,

and most people

are very proud of heart,

and the way to find that out

is just say, "Do you think

you're a good person?"

All in all, I'm a good person.

I don't--

I don't really lie,

cheat or steal, so...

[Ray] You don't lie?

You know what?

Never mind. I'll take that back.

I don't tell huge lies.

I tell white lies.

I believe I'm a good person.

I'm very--

-You do?

-Yeah.

How many lies have you told

in your whole life?

Um, I can't count them.

[chuckles]

[Ray] You ever stolen something?

Stolen something before?

Yes, I have.

[Ray]

I think the misunderstanding

is that God's law was given

as a standard for us to live by.

Well, try and live by it.

[Dan] Well, the law's a mirror.

It's just simply meant

to reflect what God thinks,

who God is,

how He wants you to live.

And then you get to look

in the mirror

and you get to go,

"How do I fit that standard?"

[Ray] You know, "Love God

with your heart, mind,

soul and strength,

and love your neighbor

as much as you love yourself,"

because that's the essence

of the law.

We can't do it.

Have you ever used

God's name in vain?

Accidentally. I'm trying--

I'm trying to get rid of that.

-So you've done it?

-Yes.

It's called blasphemy.

It's very serious.

[Dan] I've never known

anybody in my whole life

that has looked in a mirror

and said, "I have

something in my teeth,"

and then taken the mirror

off the wall

and tried to pick

their teeth with it.

Now Jesus said, "If you look

at a woman and lust for her,

you commit adultery with

her in your heart."

Have you ever done that?

Yes.

I'm not gonna lie, I did.

[Dan] And you don't take the law

and then try

to fix yourself with it.

You take the law and say,

"I'm in need of help

because something is wrong."

If we don't understand

who God is,

then the gospel does not make

much sense.

You see, the great issue here

is that God is holy,

and God is just.

And that man is unholy,

and man is not just.

Man is unrighteous,

man is a sinner.

So, Eduardo,

I'm not judging you,

but you've just told me

you're a lying thief,

a blasphemer,

and an adulterer at heart.

And that's only four

of the Ten Commandments.

[Marshall] We can look

at others and go,

"Well, I'm not as bad as them,

and I didn't do

all of that, but...

So I'm not that bad."

Well, that's a lie.

You're bad compared to Christ,

who is altogether lovely,

who is holy.

We pale in comparison.

So a person needs to really take

a good look at Jesus,

and then you know who you are.

[Michael Durham]

My problem of sin

goes far beyond my actions.

It goes to who I am as a person.

I have a nature of sin.

That is my essence.

The human heart

is predisposed right now

to love everything else

besides God,

to love self more than God,

to love wrong more than right.

The heart is totally opposed

to God.

Conceived in iniquity,

born in sin.

99.9% of people

are not bad people.

They may make poor choices,

but deep down,

they've got a good heart.

You and I are naturally

rebels to God.

[J.D.] So how do you fix

the broken part

of the human heart

that loves the wrong things?

The Bible says that we are dead

in trespasses and sin.

Ephesians 2 verse 1

immediately comes to mind.

To be dead in sin means

that we are physically alive,

but that we are morally unable

to respond to God.

What can a dead man do?

And the gospel

not only addresses

my behavior, my actions,

it addresses who I am

by promising to change me

at the core basic level

of personhood.

[Dr. Lawson] Therefore, God

must perform a resurrection.

So if God judges you

by the Ten Commandments

on Judgement Day, are you

gonna be innocent or guilty?

By the guidelines,

I'm going to be guilty.

-[Ray] Heaven or hell?

-I'm assuming hell.

In that case,

everyone would be a bad person.

[Ray] Yeah, that's what

the Bible says. It says,

"There's none good,"

because good in God's book

means morally perfect.

[Dr. Chapell] So if all we say

to people is: "Be good,"

the other human response is:

"Wait, what does it mean

to be good?

Does it mean to be as holy

as God is holy?

Never lie? Never be selfish?

Never in any way do things

that are contrary to God's law?"

Oh, my. I'm--

I'm in despair now.

What you're doing is,

you're revealing

in the hearts of your people

their shortcomings and failures.

So to just leave it

in their hands and their effort

puts a weight on them

they can't bear up under.

I felt like I was walking

on eggshells all the time

because it felt as if

at any moment I can go to hell

because I'm not doing enough.

And that's where you see

a lot of people

who grew up in churches

where the gospel

might not have been

really fleshed out,

where they become atheists

because it's like, I can't do

enough to please Him anyway.

So, why--why trust Him?

Why believe in Him?

I'm still the same person.

I'm still wicked.

I'm still sinful.

Well, what if

I have failed sexually?

If I'm a man

sitting in a church service

at that moment,

I have no hope as I walk out.

I'm just told, "Here's ten ways

that you should try harder."

[Dr. Kim] We're damning people

to those twin possibilities

of pride on the one hand,

or despair on the other.

And this is why

the gospel is so important.

Because the gospel comes in,

in the middle of both of those,

and says, "Yeah, you're right,

you aren't good enough,

on the one hand,

but Jesus was good for you."

[Paul]

How can sinful man

be reconciled

to a just God

whose justice demands

that they be punished?

Do you know what God did

for guilty sinners

so we wouldn't have

to go to hell? Any idea?

[Paul] The answer is found

in the person of Jesus Christ,

the historical person.

God intervening

into human history.

And this Jesus of Nazareth

lived the perfect life

that you and I

could never live--

have never lived.

And then He goes to a cross.

We owed a debt to God

because of our sin.

And that debt was suffering

eternal punishment.

But on the cross, God Himself,

He took our place.

Bore our sin

and suffered the wrath of God

that we deserve.

He extinguished it.

He put it away.

And on the third day

He rose again from the dead,

then He ascended up into heaven,

and this Jesus,

the son of God, sat down

at the right hand of God.

And now the Bible teaches

that Jesus is the way,

the truth and the life,

that no man comes to the Father

except through Him.

That there is one God

and one mediator

between God and man,

the man Christ Jesus.

And if you'll repent

and trust alone in Jesus

as your savior,

God will remit your sins,

dismiss your case,

and grant you everlasting life

as a gift,

not because you're good,

but because He is rich in mercy.

In many ways,

the defining doctrine

of true biblical Christianity

is justification by faith alone

in Christ alone.

Justification is God

declaring us righteous

even though we are guilty

of sin.

We see in Ephesians 2:8-9.

"For it is by grace you have

been saved through faith.

It's not of yourselves,

it's the gift of God,

not of works,

so that no man may boast."

And so this is

the great dividing line

between biblical Christianity

during the Reformation

and the Roman Catholic religion.

The official position

of the Roman Catholic Church

on justification

is that they believe

that you are justified

by faith plus works.

In fact,

at the Council of Trent,

which people refer to

as the Counter-Reformation,

they actually issued

an anathema.

If anybody believed

that they are justified

by faith alone,

they are condemned

under the anathema

of the Council of Trent.

[Nate] And so

the Roman Catholic Church

actively was opposing

and cursing those

who were holding

a biblical gospel.

If is often called

the "plus religion,"

because Catholicism teaches

that you are saved

by faith plus works,

by grace plus merit,

by Christ plus other mediators,

according to scripture,

plus tradition,

and for the glory of God

as well as the glory of Mary

and other saints.

When you look at the Roman

Catholic plan of salvation,

it is a salvation of works

and sacraments.

In the Roman Catholic plan

of salvation

baptism cleanses an infant

from original sin.

[Mike] And that is the

sacrament of regeneration

as well as justification.

[Nate] That it starts them off

on this plan, on this track.

Along the way, however,

they can commit

these small sins, venial sins,

which plunges them back down.

And heaven forbid

they commit a mortal sin,

which knocks them completely

off the plan of salvation.

And he must now

receive sacraments.

He must confess

his sins to a priest,

which is the sacrament

of penance.

And then he must be rejustified

by doing good works,

by doing penance.

And once he is rejustified,

then he must maintain

his salvation

through sacraments.

And if, in the end,

if they have enough people

praying for them,

and if they do enough time

in purgatory,

they might

possibly get to heaven.

[Mike]

How they get to heaven

is based on what they do

rather than

what Christ has done.

[Nate] But the Bible teaches,

"There is therefore now

no condemnation

for those who are in Christ."

That when you put your faith

in Jesus Christ

the work has been done.

He saves you totally,

completely, perfectly.

And even though, yes, we sin

and can repent,

the sacrifice of Christ

has paid for those sins.

And so there is assurance

that He has saved you,

he has plucked you

out of the world,

you're in the palm of His hand

and nobody can pluck you

out of His hand.

[Mike] And so,

that's why the Reformers

cried the Five Solas,

that we are saved

by grace alone,

through faith alone,

in Christ alone,

according to scripture alone,

all for the glory of God alone.

That message has

always found opposition.

And the Jerusalem Council,

and we read about

in the Book of Acts,

actually addressed

this very same issue.

The rabbis and the Judaizers

were saying to the Christians

that God will accept you

by His grace through faith

and your keeping

of the ceremonial laws.

Being circumcised,

washing your hands,

keeping the food laws.

And the entire church agreed,

as summarized by the apostle

Peter's statement,

that that is not the good news,

that's not the gospel.

Jesus didn't come

to make salvation possible

for those who do their part.

He came to accomplish it

and to give it freely

to all of His people.

The question is, "Well,

how do we know if faith is real

if there is no works?"

Doesn't the Bible say,

'Faith without works is dead'?"

"And so, don't we have

to do works to be saved?

Isn't that the argument

is that we have to be doing?"

But there's two

understandings of that,

and one's biblical, one's not.

So the Roman Catholic

view of salvation,

and really any works-based

system of salvation,

takes works

and puts it at the root,

and says that works

plus your faith in Jesus

is what produces salvation.

But the Bible teaches

that it's not the root,

it's actually the fruit.

That your faith alone in Jesus,

that is what saves.

And then a life

that has been saved,

a sanctified, regenerated heart,

produces fruit--

the fruit of good works.

And so, you know

a person's been saved

because of their fruit,

but the fruit is not the reason

they're saved.

They're saved by God,

by grace, through faith

in Christ.

You see, the Christian

is the only person,

the true Christian, who can say

that they're going to heaven

without being self-righteous.

Why?

In other religions,

how do you get to heaven?

You get to heaven by being good,

by earning it.

In Christianity,

you're not reconciled to God

through your own virtue

or merit,

but you're reconciled to God

through the virtue

and merit of His Son.

[Ray] Does that make sense?

It makes absolute sense.

[Ray] So, Augusto,

if you were to die today,

-how old are you?

-Nineteen.

If you were to die at 19

and God gave you justice,

you'd end up in hell,

there are two things

you have to do to be saved,

you've got to repent

and trust in Christ.

When are you gonna do that?

Almost immediately?

[Ray] You're serious?

Yeah, I'm serious.

[Dr. Horton] Euangelion,

the Greek word "gospel,"

is taken from the good news

that a runner would bring

as a messenger,

coming to announce

in the capital

that victory had been achieved

on the battlefield.

And everyone would cheer,

it would transform the lives

of everybody in

the city to know

that they hadn't lost the war,

they had won the war.

But of course, they weren't

the ones out there in...

in--in the trenches.

In the same way Jesus says,

"I have accomplished salvation."

Not, "Come help me

save the world."

But "I have accomplished this."

The law, basically, is "do."

The gospel, basically, is done.

The gospel isn't

"What would Jesus do?

Now go and do that."

The gospel is,

"What has Jesus done?

Now believe that."

This distinction between

the law and the gospel

really is the most important

thing to remember.

And it's one of the things

that we're forgetting.

[Dr. Chapell] That pattern

of God always making sure

that we know that relationship

comes before obedience,

that we do not have

a relationship with Him

because we obey;

we obey because He has made

a relationship with us.

That is made clear over

and over again in the Bible.

God says before

He ever tells His people

what the commands are,

"I'm the God who brought you

out of the land of Egypt,

out of the house of bondage.

Now obey me."

Now, it's critical we understand

He didn't say,

"You obey me,

and I'll let you out of Egypt."

No, He said,

"I have redeemed you.

Now here's the safe path

for you to walk on."

It's the order not just

of the Old Testament passages.

I mean, all the epistles

of the New Testament

basically follow

that same order.

In general, the first half

of the epistles

of Paul, of John, of Peter,

kind of say, "Here's what

God has done in Christ.

Here's how He has saved you."

The last half of the epistles,

"Now here's what you

should do in response."

The moral commands

that we should obey

are like the railroad tracks

for the train.

That as the train is going,

this is the way that the train

is supposed to go.

But the gospel

is the engine and the fuel

that makes the train

actually move.

And so it does

a Christian no good,

and it does

a non-Christian no good

to just continue telling them,

"Hey, here's the tracks,

now go."

But if they have no fuel,

if they have no engine,

they're just gonna be

a train stuck.

And there's a lot of Christians,

I think, today that are just

trains sitting on tracks

being told, "Go forward,"

but they're not being given

an engine or any fuel

to move them forward.

[Dr. Kim] There are some pastors

out there that assume,

I think, incorrectly,

but understandably,

that everyone in their church

understands the gospel.

[Paul] I remember years ago,

I was asked to address

a group, a large group,

but they told me that

they were mainly Christians.

And they said, "Well, what

are you gonna preach on?"

And I said, "Well, I thought

about preaching on the gospel."

And they said,

"But we just told you

that these--

most of these people,

we know them as very devout

and sincere Christians."

And I said, "Well, first of all,

I appreciate that,

but I can never assume

that everyone there

is truly Christian

or has come to a biblical

understanding of the gospel.

That's number one.

Number two,

the gospel is not just

for lost people.

The gospel is for Christians."

[Seth] God, being three in one,

eternally existing,

Father, Son, Holy Spirit,

in His great love, He...

He made creation

to share His love with.

Not that He needed to,

but He wanted to.

And in that, He created us.

And in creating us,

we fell into sin.

And sin is something

that separates us from God.

It's something

that is not of God.

It's something

that's against God.

[Jared] On Saturday nights,

during the summer,

we host worship nights

at our house

usually starting at about 6:30.

You know, we'll play basketball,

we'll throw the football,

frisbee around,

and we'll just talk

and hang out outside.

And then we'll gather

in the living room,

and there will be

a time of worship.

[all singing]

♪ Jesus paid it all ♪

♪ All to Him I owe ♪

[Chris] In our community,

we've made it a practice that

every week we try

to have meetings

where the gospel is at least

presented one time.

[Seth] And Jesus

being fully man, fully God,

walked on this Earth

and lived a life

without sin, without blemish,

and lived the life

that we were called to live,

and lived the life

that we should have lived.

And in our place, He died

the death that we deserve.

Three days later, He rose again

after that death on the cross.

And one of the things

we do stress is that

even believers need it,

even people that hear it

a hundred times a month

still need that.

And we do have hope,

because any kind of judgment

from that sin has been

dealt with by God...

[Sean]

The gospel is not something

that you graduate from.

It's not something that

you ever move on from.

The gospel is central.

We're constantly prone

to forget the gospel.

We're prone to forget

who He is, who we're not,

what He did for us.

[Dr. Horton]

Preaching the gospel

all the time, every week,

means that from Genesis

to Revelation,

you realize the whole Bible

is one unfolding story

of God's love and

saving grace and mercy

towards sinners in Jesus Christ.

Jesus said in Matthew 5

that the whole Bible

is about Him.

[Dr. Kim] And Luke records

for us that Jesus taught them

all the things

concerning Himself

from the law, the prophets,

and the writings,

which were the threefold way

of describing

the whole Hebrew Bible

of the Old Testament.

Now either He was

a megalomaniac,

or He is who He said He was,

and the whole Bible

is about Jesus.

Well, I don't know about you,

but if I'm a follower of Jesus,

I wanna follow

Jesus' understanding

of the Old Testament.

Therefore,

if we explain any text

in isolation from Him,

we fail to say the very thing

that He said it's about.

He said it's about Him.

If you're preaching about Daniel

and it's "Dare to be a Daniel,"

it's not about Jesus.

If you're preaching

the book of Revelation,

and it's about Israel

and Russia,

then it's not about Jesus.

Though Jesus isn't the content

of the whole Bible,

He's the center of it all.

In other words,

not every story, every little

thing is about Jesus,

or can be an analogy for Him.

And yet, it all points

towards Him and His work.

He's the pinnacle.

[Mark]

So the message of the Bible

is that God will save

His people.

So any point you drop

into Habakkuk or Second Timothy,

you know, any point you drop

into Isaiah or Deuteronomy,

it's gonna be connected somehow

to this main trunk road

of the good news of what God

is doing in our world.

[Phill] Whether you start

in Genesis 3,

and you talk about God

making a promise

that he would crush the serpent

through the seed of the woman,

well, what's the rest

of the book of Genesis?

It's the story of that seed,

through the woman.

And that's why so many people

get bogged down by genealogies.

And they're like, "What

are these genealogies about?"

That's why

the New Testament opens

with a genealogy

and showing you

that the seed has come

in the person of Jesus.

And so if you can't

see the cross

in the story of Joseph

telling you,

"What you meant for evil,

God meant for good,"

I mean, that's the cross

right there in a metaphor,

well then, you're really missing

the whole unity of the Bible.

And I think that's probably,

if you wanted to put it,

what we're denying,

what's one of our problems,

is that we're missing

that the Bible

was written by one author,

and that therefore, the author

has a unified story

that He's telling.

Even though there's

different human authors,

they're all inspired

by the Holy Spirit.

God is not a supporting actor

in my life movie.

The Bible's not about you.

I have been cast as a player

in His unfolding story

of redemption.

And we've got that

reversed today.

Here's what--

You'll keep infusing yourself

into the stories of the Bible

like you're the hero.

And so a way

of reading the Bible

that always makes man the hero

and not the acts

of God the hero,

I think if you mess that up,

then you're reading the Bible

entirely wrong.

Because the Bible wants

to consistently get your eyes

off of you and onto

a God who is able.

So it's not you that are able,

it's God that's able.

And so, I think David

and Goliath,

you're right, is just

a perfect story for it.

That anytime you hear

the David and Goliath story,

you're hearing about

how you're David.

In order for David to become

David, he needed Saul.

Stop despising Saul.

You need Saul.

You need people

to hate on you,

you need people to tear you up.

Thank God for Saul,

because if you got a Saul,

-that makes you...

-[woman] David!

...David.

I wanna be straight. I love you

enough to be straight.

You're not David!

[Matt] So I'm David,

and the Goliath is my debt,

or it's my difficult marriage,

or it's my boss at work.

We're gonna keep our distance

from our enemy

and sling our stones

until every Goliath

falls down in our life!

I'm gonna grab

the stone of faith,

and I'm gonna sling it at my

giant of this boss at work,

and I'm gonna slay him,

I'm gonna hold up his head.

You're gonna defeat that giant.

Yes, that obstacle is big,

but you have greatness in you.

And that would be

a very narcissistic way

to read the Bible.

But in a Christ-centered

hermeneutic,

we're gonna approach

the Bible and go,

"Okay, what's going on

in this very true story?"

It appears here that

there's something

that is terrifying

and that on the surface

it looks like

it cannot be killed.

And yet, it's overcome

by this man,

who by faith, killed

what couldn't be killed.

And now we're on

to a thread, right?

Like, who-- What's more

undefeatable than sin and death?

What David was doing

was enacting the justice of God

on the enemies of God

for the victory and salvation

of God's people,

who did absolutely nothing

but be afraid and terrified

to approach the enemies of God.

You know who conquers

our giants?

Christ conquers our giants.

It's not me that

conquers my giants.

Like the great giant

of my life, sin and death,

cannot be conquered by me

picking up a stone of faith

and throwing it,

but by the finished work

of Christ, who...

conquered death

with a single shot.

[Dr. Kim] David was one

of the men in the Bible

that--that God said, "He was

a man after my own heart."

What a tremendous way

of describing King David.

Yet here is also a man

who committed murder

so that he can sleep

with that man's wife.

He's a murderer.

He's an adulterer.

[J.D.] Abraham, the father

of our faith,

we always, you know, say,

Abraham's a guy that lied,

threw his wife under the bus

not once, but twice.

I mean, this is not a husband

that you wanna emulate.

Do you see that the Bible

takes care

to tar virtually every

biblical figure but one?

[congregation laughs]

It's almost important to

remember that the Old Testament

is an Eastern book

more than it is a Western book.

It's not just dealing linear,

going A, B, C, D,

rather, who Christ is,

what He must do,

is being defined

by what He is not

in the Old Testament.

And, you know, you take a

figure like Samson in the Bible.

You know,

there was a man who had

great strength

and great cleverness.

And if you know the story,

when Samson had long hair,

he was strong.

When he had short hair,

he was weak.

Now, what's the message there?

Well, it's obvious

we should have long hair,

so then we'll be strong.

No, that's not the message.

The message was

no matter how strong

or clever you are,

you are not your own savior.

You are not your own redeemer.

That's a dead end

if you're gonna depend

on your own strength

and your own wisdom.

Think about the way

an Eastern thinker

sometimes represents truth

is not saying this thought

leads to that thought,

leads to that thought.

But rather speaking

around a truth,

so that you get the truth.

[Dr. Chapell] The people of God

are given the law,

but they break the law.

Sacrifices are provided,

but the priests

who begin to offer them

become themselves malevolent

and not helping.

Then the judges say,

"Well, just do what's right

in your own eyes."

That doesn't work.

All right, pick a king,

your tallest, strongest,

handsomest guy.

Well that king becomes selfish.

Well, we'll give prophets

to the kings,

and the kings will learn

what to do from the prophets.

Sounds great, except the people

kill the prophets.

And you begin to understand

that through the course

of millennia, God is saying,

"We need a better law keeper.

We need a better judge.

Better sacrifice,

better prophet, better priest,

better king."

Not this, not this, not this,

not this, not this....

but this.

[Paul] The gospel,

the more we know

about what God has done for us

in the person of Jesus Christ,

the great cost of our atonement,

what the atonement

has purchased for us,

the more we understand that

as Christians,

the more we're gonna grow

in sanctification,

the more we're gonna grow

in worship, devotion,

delight in the person of God.

What is the only reason

that sin has any power

in your life?

The answer is...

because you love it.

If the sin did not attract you,

it would have no power.

The reason that we sin

is because we love it.

And as hard as that is to hear,

it's actually

a wonderful understanding.

Because it means that power

over that sin

is a greater love.

[J.D.] The goal of a lecture

is that you leave

with information.

The goal

of a motivational speech

is that you leave

with action steps.

The goal of a gospel sermon,

the goal of teaching the Bible,

is that you leave worshipping.

[Dr. Horton]

If people and churches

are out of control morally,

it's probably that they don't

understand the gospel.

[Dr. Chapell] What the Bible

is actually teaching

is that the goal of preaching

is to have people

profoundly, deeply,

love the Savior,

so that there is a consequence

in our hearts and lives.

Jesus said that in John 14:15.

He said, "If you love Me,

you will keep My commands."

And what makes us

want to do that is

a heart that loves the Savior

because we've perceived

how great is His love for us.

Because when people

are filled up

with love for Christ,

the love for the world

is pushed out of their hearts,

and the power of Christ

is now in their lives.

[Phill] So as long as we sin,

unless we have a doctrine

of sinless perfection,

and that you no longer

sin anymore,

which I think that's been known

for quite some time as a heresy,

then as long as you're

a sinner, you need the gospel.

If you sinned yesterday,

then you need the gospel today.

Because the gospel

produces faith,

and faith produces love,

and love produces

the fruit of good works.

I think the gospel should be

preached in every sermon.

If I've got somebody here

that I've been trying

to get here for three years,

they're my next-door neighbor,

and the guy preaching today

is just telling me

the joys of motherhood,

you know, I'm--

I'm in favor of motherhood,

but if that's all this visitor

that I bring hears,

that's just a shame.

If your sermon

could be preached

in a Jewish synagogue,

then it's not

a Christian sermon.

Foremost, in my life,

whenever I have

a chance to preach,

it's, first of all,

going to be the gospel,

and then build upon

that central message.

Because if someone doesn't have

a right view of the gospel,

they don't have a right view

about anything.

[Matt] So, a type

of reading the Bible

where I'm always the hero,

I'm never the Pharisee.

I'm never the scared Israelites.

I'm never the ones who

are gonna worship a golden calf

just a few weeks after

I was led through the Red Sea,

is a misreading of scripture

that makes man the champion

and not God.

And it's unhealthy,

and it's broken, and it leads

to man trying to manipulate

and control God

like He was a genie in a lamp.

[Seth] We need to check

ourselves and check our heart.

Oftentimes, we find ourselves

sitting in pews

or even coming to church

in order to get something

from Jesus

but not get Jesus Himself.

[Katherine] So I was raised

in a non-Christian home.

And I always sort of felt

a pull towards religion.

I was always interested in it.

When we moved to the South,

there was certainly

a lot of Christian homes,

a lot of friends of mine

who went to church.

And so, I definitely knew

about the gospel.

I was interested in it,

but I didn't really

understand it.

And as I got older,

I really started to question God

and how He could

send people to hell.

[Katherine] That was sort of

the big hang-up

that I had with religion.

I really humanized God.

And I would say to people,

you know, "If I couldn't send

even my biggest enemy,

you know, to burn in hell

for all eternity,

how could a God

who loves people so much

do something like that?"

I would have called myself

maybe spiritual.

You know, I thought that all

of the religions were right.

I kind of felt

that there was a way

for all of them to kind of

overlap and work together.

And...

as I met Russell,

he was atheist,

and I think

that really helped to

maybe take me even further

away from Christianity.

So before I got sick,

I was somebody who probably

spent most of their time

worrying about how healthy

my diet was.

Russell and I had just

been married for a year.

We were happy.

I was focused on working out.

Exercise was a big part

of our relationship.

I actually was able

to do CrossFit

all during my pregnancy.

I was running when

I went into labor.

I felt like I had done

everything right.

I had a career

in pharmaceutical sales

that was important to me.

And then when I got sick,

you know, everything changed.

Today is your day

for a miracle.

[Kenneth Copeland, on video]

Is it God's will to heal?

If so, is it His will

to heal me?

The answer is yes

and yes.

When I'm praying for somebody,

the first thing

that has to happen

is I have to be

absolutely convinced

that it's God's will

to heal people every time.

[Justin]

The Word of Faith Movement

is the term that's given

to a movement

that's more commonly known as

the "health and wealth gospel,"

the "prosperity gospel,"

"name it and claim it gospel."

This teaching that

it is always God's will

for a Christian to be wealthy,

it is always God's will

for a Christian

to be physically healed,

we should never be sick...

Believe me when I tell you

I never get sick.

I was as sick as a sick dog.

With a--with a cold.

Yeah, yeah. I get sick, too.

[Justin]

Or if we do get sick,

we can be healed as long

as we have enough faith.

We can attract

positive things to ourselves

through positive thinking.

And Norman Vincent Peale,

the great Norman Vincent Peale

was my pastor.

The Power of Positive Thinking.

And the Word of Faith Movement

is led by people

such as Benny Hinn,

world's most famous

faith healer.

Kenneth Copeland,

Creflo Dollar,

Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen,

Joseph Prince, T.D. Jakes,

Andrew Wommack.

These are just some

of the more prominent leaders

of the movement.

But what has happened is that

the United States of America

has created this false theology

and has now exported it

to the rest of the world

to the point that

now the face of Christianity

in most of the world today

is Word of Faith.

[David W. Jones] The idea,

simply put, is that if you,

if you love Jesus,

if you're a follower of Christ,

you can generally expect

health, wealth, and happiness.

[soft music]

[Katherine]

When I went into labor,

everything started to go wrong.

My delivery went really fast.

I found out later

that that was because I had

a connective tissue disease,

and that's one

of the signs of it.

I was diagnosed

with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome,

which is a really rare

genetic disorder

that affects

the connective tissue

and the collagen

throughout your body.

So it affects everyone

in different ways,

but it can affect

pretty much every body system.

After the delivery,

I was left with

a fractured pelvis

and a lot of internal injuries

that caused me a lot of pain,

and my doctor told me that

right away I would need surgery

to repair my pelvis.

And I basically had two choices.

We could have one more child,

or we could go ahead

and--and have that surgery.

We had always wanted

to have four kids.

That was sort of the number

that we wanted.

But we had to change that,

and we decided that

we would have two.

We still weren't

going to church.

We still didn't believe in God.

I still just kind of

struggled my way through

with our daughter

until I could get pregnant

with our son.

When he was born early,

in all honesty,

I was just grateful

that the pregnancy was over,

the pain was over,

that I could move forward

in scheduling that surgery

that was gonna give me

my life back.

I went into that thinking,

"This surgery will cure me.

When this is over,

I will go get right back

to my old life.

Everything will be the same.

I deserve to be healed.

I deserve to have no pain.

I deserve my old life back.

I didn't do anything wrong."

You know, God wants you healthy.

I believe in healing,

in divine healing, of course,

and I go to the world,

and travel,

and preach the gospel and I--

[Costi] I grew up in

the Word of Faith Movement,

in the prosperity gospel.

I worked for my uncle,

Benny Hinn,

who is a famous faith healer

and pretty well-known.

When I worked with my family,

I was a catcher.

And so my job

was to look sharp in a suit,

and be on stage when people

were being prayed for.

But what was going through

my mind at the time

at every crusade

was that this was real,

that people were really

being touched,

that my uncle was anointed.

I would lift my hands

and I would speak in tongues,

and I would pray in the Spirit.

Praying that God

would touch them,

that He would fill them,

that He would heal them,

et cetera.

And to Jesus be the praise.

[Costi]

Today, I hold

no positions

that are in agreement

with my family,

the Word of Faith theology,

or the prosperity gospel.

And the reason for that is,

I've come to an understanding

of the true gospel.

[train rattling over tracks]

[Sean] I didn't grow up

in a believing household.

Great-grandmother,

grandmother, uncle, mom,

all drug addicts.

Father, drug addict,

drug dealer.

When I was about 12,

I started using drugs,

and getting involved with

gangs and violence

and drug dealing and...

And then when I was 18,

the Lord saved me.

And basically meant

I was preaching the gospel

in the same projects

where I used to sell dope.

And I met a guy and he said,

"Do you understand that Bible

you're carrying around?"

And I told him that I didn't,

and that nobody had

taken the time

to help me understand it.

And he pulled me aside

and said that he would.

And I had no idea

that what he was teaching me

was the prosperity gospel.

[Constance] I actually grew up

with no background in church.

When I fell into

the Word of Faith

prosperity churches,

I thought that

that was the truth,

and so I fully depended

on my pastor

for feeding that to me.

I guess I just had

this knowledge

that God existed,

but I didn't have

an understanding

of who God was.

I had no clue

what the gospel was.

I had never really heard it.

As far as I knew,

He died and rose again

so that I could have

a prosperous life.

You know, Jesus died that

we might live an abundant life.

[Constance]

And so that's what it was.

"Thanks!

Thanks for my ticket!"

You know, so...

[Costi] I was the benefactor

of the theology that we taught,

which primarily makes Jesus

your magic genie in a sense.

And if you rub Him right,

if you do all the right things,

He will bless you. You will

have everything you want.

I view the Holy Spirit like

the genie from Aladdin.

I had a totally false

understanding of God.

And so when God didn't do

what I felt that

He was supposed to do,

I was very upset with Him.

[laughs]

Very upset.

[Costi] By the time I was

finishing high school,

all I really wanted to do

was play baseball.

Naturally, being

a Word of Faith kid, for me,

if you really want God

to bless you,

you've got to

do something for Him.

And so I sowed a seed before

ever going to college,

after graduating high school.

And my seed that was sown

was working for Uncle Benny.

I was gonna serve the holy man.

I was gonna be

on his ministry team.

I was gonna put God first.

'Cause I've got dreams.

I've got money I wanna make.

I got houses I wanna buy.

I got baseball

that I wanna play.

And what you do is,

you create a God

who only wants to give you

all the desires of your heart.

God Almighty

is about to give you

the desires of your heart.

The true gospel says

those desires

that we're born with,

that those aren't

good desires at all.

That our hearts are corrupt.

Our hearts are desperately

deceitful and wicked.

[Costi] Fast-forward to about

my second-to-last

year of college,

and I've got a coach

who is a disciple-making coach.

He's a wonderful man.

His main goal

was to develop us as men,

and as Christian men.

And so one day before a game,

he stands there and says,

"Gentlemen, God is sovereign.

Don't worry about the scouts

in the stands.

Don't worry about all that,

you know, the future holds.

God is sovereign."

Then he quotes a famous proverb

that says,

"The king's heart is like water

in the channels

of the hand of the Lord.

He turns them

wherever He wishes."

He says, "God controls kings.

God controls your future.

God controls the scouts.

He's sovereign.

Don't worry about it."

And as a Word of Faith

prosperity kid,

in the back of my mind,

I'm thinking,

"Hmm, how do I get on

the good side of sovereignty?

I need the sovereignty thing

to go to work for me."

But that was a massive seed

that was planted in my life

because it was the opposite

of everything

I had ever been taught.

Because you've been taught

things like, "God's in control."

The Bible doesn't teach that.

But it was completely biblical.

God was sovereign,

and nothing I say or do

was gonna change that.

The prosperity gospel is really

the worst manifestation

of what some might call

the "seeker-sensitive movement,"

or the "attractional

church movement."

And you have to be careful

about this

because the church

should be attractive.

But we have to ask,

"Why is it attractive?

And to whom is it attractive?"

The church should be attractive

because God's people

have a hunger and a thirst

and a desire for His word

being taught and preached.

And that is a profoundly

attractive experience

and a profoundly

attractive thing

for someone who is converted,

who God has changed their heart,

and they desire those things.

But the attractional church,

in the negative sense,

are those churches

that seek to make worship

and make participation

in the church attractive

to the unconverted heart,

to the non-believer.

So, therefore, the sermon

becomes less about

opening up God's word

and letting it breathe,

and more about entertaining

that audience.

[Mark] So they can present

messages which downplay

uncomfortable

parts of the truth.

It can simply be a

"God is love" message,

where you're careful not

to define God very biblically,

or love very biblically.

Make it sound like

there's a force

that approves of whatever you,

in your innermost being, want.

Well, that's nothing like God.

That's actually

a lot more like Satan.

There's an assumption

that unbelievers

are seeking after God.

When in reality,

they're seeking after a God

of their own choosing.

Second Timothy, chapter four,

is really, really clear

that there would be

a group of people

who, wanting to have

their ears tickled,

would accumulate for themself

teachers in accordance

with their own desires.

The real Jesus comes

and He says,

"I don't want to give you

the desires of your heart.

I want to reorient

the desires of your heart."

[Justin]

The prosperity gospel appeals

to two of the most basic

and universal of all

human desires:

to be wealthy

and never to be sick.

Nobody wants to die,

nobody wants to be sick

and nobody wants to be poor.

[Russell]

All the things that Jesus says

we have to be willing

to set aside to follow Him.

They take all of those things,

and they make that

the attraction of the gospel.

[Piper]

I don't know what you feel

about the prosperity gospel,

the health, wealth,

and prosperity gospel,

but I'll tell you what I feel

about it: hatred.

[Sean] I'm all alone,

no friends,

no fellowship, no church.

And I click on this video,

and there's this old man

with gray hair,

and he is preaching like

I have never heard anybody

preach before,

handling the word of God

in the way that I've never seen.

And I love it.

And I just want more of it.

And so I continue to watch

video after video after video.

And finally, I come

to a sermon jam...

[Piper] And it's being

exported from this country

to Africa and Asia...

selling a bill of goods

to the poorest of the poor--

"Believe this message:

Your pigs won't die,

your wife won't have

miscarriages,

and you'll have rings

on your fingers

and coats on your back."

That's coming out of America!

And he begins to talk

about this "crap called gospel."

[Piper] People that ought

to be given our money

and our time and our lives,

instead, we're selling them

a bunch of crap

called "gospel."

[on video] And here's

the reason it is so horrible.

When was the last time

that any American,

African, Asian,

ever said Jesus

is all-satisfying

because you drove a BMW?

-Never!

-[Sean] ]And I just thought,

"This guy doesn't know anything.

I thought this guy was the man.

This guy doesn't know anything.

He's an idiot."

[Piper] They'll say,

"Jesus give you that?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I'll take Jesus!"

That's idolatry.

That's not the gospel.

The Jesus who's gonna

help me pay my taxes

at the end of the year?

The Jesus who's gonna correct

my wife's genetic disorder?

I'll take that Jesus.

That Jesus sounds great.

But what that is is idolatry.

[Russell] It's an elevation

of the gift above the Giver.

The prosperity gospel

is exactly like marrying

someone for their money.

Are you coming to God for God?

Or are you coming to God

so that you can ultimately get

what your heart's truly after,

and that's something else?

My wife married me

when I was dirt poor

and we were living in a

cockroach-infested apartment.

I know she loves me

for me, man.

It only had to go

uphill from there.

The Bible is not against wealth.

It's not against happiness.

It's really how do we view

those things.

It is true that God

does want us to be happy.

But that happiness

is not the way

the 21st century American

culture would define happiness.

If you're talking to someone

who's already achieved success,

they've had the cars,

the beautiful wife,

the children.

They have everything

that the world says

you should have to be happy.

And yet, there's

something missing.

[Mike] I was very successful

in the business world.

I began as a rocket scientist

down in Cape Kennedy, Florida.

Later on, I was recruited

to a computer firm in Dallas.

Everything I touched

turned to gold.

[Sanj]

Everything that I had desired

and that I acquired,

it had an ending to it.

Even when I bought my first

real expensive sports car,

it wore off.

I was thinking of the next car.

And really there was

an emptiness inside of me

in spite of everything

that I had accumulated.

And so when I met Jesus Christ,

I found something

that wouldn't end.

The ultimate gift of the gospel

is not all of these

other things, it's God Himself.

God is both the giver

and the gift.

I think this is what happens

in our pulpits

Sunday after Sunday.

Christ is hidden

from the American gospel,

and essentially,

I think that is the problem.

Because the gospel is not

a plan, it's a person.

The call of the gospel

is a call to follow Christ.

And Christ made that call.

He said, "Follow me."

Paul makes the call

in the same way, saying,

"We preach Christ

and Him crucified."

The center of the message

of both Jesus and Paul

was Christ Himself,

Christ, His work,

and the response that says,

"I will submit.

I will follow after Christ."

[Michael] It is a living,

vibrant relationship

with a person that literally

transforms your life.

One of the misconceptions

that we have is thinking

that salvation is the gospel,

when really, salvation

is the result of the gospel.

And so the good news

of the gospel is

not only do you escape

eternal judgment,

that's a fringe benefit,

you get to be restored to God.

You get to know God as a person.

You get to fall in love with Him

and experience His love for you.

And that is what

satisfies the heart.

[Seth] And then the most

beautiful message

and truth of the gospel

is that through Jesus,

we get God.

Through Jesus,

we get to be satisfied in Him.

[Sean]

But I was a true sheep.

I had really been converted.

And I loved God,

and I loved His word.

And I was just confused.

And the only thing I knew was,

whatever this guy is doing with

the Bible, I want more of that.

So I decided to just kind of

avoid his other stuff

about the prosperity gospel.

But eventually,

I couldn't avoid it.

Once I became more grounded

in the scriptures

and began to see the

truth and beauty

of the biblical gospel,

the prosperity gospel

had to bow the knee.

[Constance] I fell into

a discipleship course

at my old church.

The curriculum was

by a third-party organization.

And that's where

I first heard the gospel,

and from that program,

I begin to realize

that my church

wasn't teaching the gospel.

[laughs]

Wasn't preaching

the gospel at all.

It was also a prosperity/

Word of Faith church.

And so, soon after that,

I left that church.

[Justin] People always ask me

how I first became interested

in this subject matter,

this movement.

And it goes back to

when I was a teenager.

I was born with cerebral palsy.

And as a teenager,

when I was 16 years old,

a neighbor of mine came up to me

and he said, "Justin,

God has spoken to me,

and He's told me that

He's going to heal you

as long as you have

enough faith."

And at age 16,

this is something that really

resonated with me,

because I wanted to be able

to do the things

that my friends were doing.

I wanted to be able to run,

and to play football,

and all these things that

I thought were so important

at that age.

And he told me about

a faith healer named Nora Lam,

who was coming

to my then-hometown

of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

And long story short,

went to this meeting,

and obviously, I was not healed.

Mrs. Lam saw us coming,

and all of a sudden,

she decided it was time

for her to go.

And so she tried

to make her exit.

And my father saw

what was happening,

and so he briskly walked up

to her and stopped her.

And so this was

in front of everyone,

and Mrs. Lam pretty much

had to turn around.

She came back,

and she dipped her finger

in that oil,

she touched me on the head.

And I actually fell backwards.

Now, looking back on that,

I know now that

there was nothing spiritual

about that at all.

It's just that we had seen

everyone else do it.

-It's all right, it's all right.

-[girl crying]

It's all right.

Baby, it's all right.

And so subconsciously,

when you're predisposed to this

and you've seen

everyone else do it,

you do the same thing.

It's just a matter of

psychosomatic phenomenon.

It's mind over body.

[congregation applauding]

But then she turned

to my father, and she said,

"What is your

financial situation?"

And my dad said,

"Well, what does that

have to do with anything?"

And she said, "The more

money you give

to the Lord's work,

the more likely it is

He will answer your prayers."

When I let go of something

in my hand...

I'm talking about your money.

...God always lets go

of something in His hand.

Click on that donation button,

and when you do to sow $1,144...

[Costi]

The reason why people teach

that it's always

God's will to heal,

and if He doesn't,

the problem is them,

is because that's a good way

to manipulate people.

Prosperity theology means money.

Money...

cometh to me!

-Jesus is the banker.

-Amen.

[Copeland] Jesus said,

"Lay up for yourself treasure

-in heaven."

-[Todd] Yeah.

We took our little magic

religious pencil

and put right in there,

and you can't touch it

till you get here.

You have treasure in heaven?

He didn't say

you couldn't get it out.

Second Peter 2,

Peter says it flat out.

"In their greed,"

"they" meaning false teachers,

"will exploit you."

Let's receive our evening

offering this evening,

and give you a chance

to raise your income.

He said, "We don't give

to get something back."

Oh, yes, we do.

[laughter]

[Sean] The God we worship

had no place to rest His head.

[news anchor]

You think Jesus Christ

would have rolled around

in a Rolls-Royce?

I think He would've.

He rode around on a donkey

that no man ever rode.

But the preachers that

are preaching in our pulpits

are asking for $100 million

for an airplane.

I really believe

that if Jesus was physically

on Earth today,

He wouldn't be riding a donkey.

If I wanna believe God

for a $65 million plane,

-you cannot stop me...

-[crowd cheering]

Most, if not all,

of my favorite pastors

were false teachers.

I cannot stomach a sermon

by Joel Osteen

or T.D. Jakes now.

I have a visceral reaction.

"Well, Joel, what about

their false doctrine?

What about your false doctrine?"

Nobody is correct 100%.

[Constance] And it's funny

because I used to

just love them.

I would listen to Joel Osteen

on the way to work.

You know, put my earphones in,

and it just brightened my day.

[Trevin] One of the

the quickest ways

to spot a counterfeit gospel

is to ask the question,

"Who is this gospel about?"

Is this gospel,

is this good news

primarily about you

and your personal happiness?

I am happy.

I am prosperous.

[Constance]

You'll hear a lot of phrases

like "breakthrough."

"Sow a seed to reap a harvest."

"Your destiny

is on the horizon."

"God called you to be greater."

"It's your season."

"Walk in your purpose."

Of course, "Your best life now."

Or is this a message about God?

Yet Christ redeemed us

from the curse of the law,

having become a curse for us.

I am blessed...

He became a curse.

[David W. Jones] Joel Osteen,

in his book, It's Your Time,

he says this, he says, when

you're in difficult times,

it's good to remind God

what you've done.

"God, I've kept my family

in church.

God, I've gone the extra mile

to help others. I've given.

I've served.

I've been faithful."

"In your own time of need,

you should call in

all these seeds you've sown."

So it's a softer, kinder,

gentler version

of salvation by works.

[David W. Jones] It kind of

turns the table

on true Christian

service, right?

Because we would say

true Christian service

is supposed to be in reaction

to what God has done for us,

in service to Him,

out of a desire to glorify Him.

Whereas it seems that

Joel is saying

that we ought to serve God

in order to get

more credit from God,

in order then

to have the ability

to force God to serve us.

Or to call in the favors,

as he says.

God has you right now

on the edge of a blessing,

but there's a catch!

It's still the law,

not the gospel.

The blessing

will follow obedience.

[Dr. Horton] That's still law.

"Do this, and you shall live."

-And you have to obey,

and as you obey...

- [cash register rings]

God will do it,

and trigger that prosperity.

[Dr. Horton] Or "Do this,

and you shall live better."

It's not, "Do this

and you shall live,"

as in not going to hell.

It's, "Do this,

and you'll have a happier life."

People criticize me

'cause I want people

to leave church feeling better

than they were before.

[Constance]

Joel Osteen is more about,

"Yeah, we don't need to talk

about sin,

and, you know, hell,

or the wrath of God,

or anything like that.

You know, let's talk about

how we live

this Christian life."

What I would teach would just be

more "How to live a great life."

[Dr. Horton]

And therefore the gospel

isn't about a rescue

operation from heaven.

Rather, it's just

kind of trivialized

as empowering us

to have a better life,

to become a better you.

Whereas the good news is,

God saves me

because I can't attain

my best life now.

God saves me because

no matter how hard I work

at becoming a better me,

I can't pull it off.

[Justin] The real gospel

is something more like this,

"Come to Jesus

because you're a sinner."

You don't normally

talk about sin.

That's the first time

I've actually heard you

spell it out.

[Justin]

"And because of your sin,

the wrath of God

abides on you."

Now your fanbase

is not just Christian, right?

I understand you have Muslims,

even atheists.

How do you explain that?

[Sean] If a pastor

can preach

in such a way that a Muslim

can sit in that audience

and hear the sermon

and not be offended,

then he is not

preaching the gospel

of Christ and Christ crucified.

Our goal is to

just help anybody

from every--

any faith

to improve their life.

[Dr. Horton]

What I need is not a makeover.

What I need is not more paint

on a dead corpse.

What I need is a resurrection.

I need to be made alive

by the Holy Spirit,

to embrace a gospel

that is not about me,

but is for me.

[Russell]

So after my son was born,

my wife had a lot

of very serious complications

from her genetic disorder.

And she went to Birmingham

to have a surgery

that we hoped was gonna fix

all of her problems.

[Katherine]

As we approached the surgery,

Russell started

going to church.

He became interested

in organized religion,

which was upsetting to me.

It was something that I really

didn't wanna be a part of.

[Russell]

Some of my earliest memories

of thinking about religion

were arguing with other kids

in my elementary school

who were Christians

and trying to poke holes

in their faith and mocking them.

I stayed an atheist,

or I would sometimes say

an agnostic, until my 20s.

I kind of had the whole

American Dream situation.

You know, everything that I...

could have wanted in life,

I had.

And yet I was crushed

with an overwhelming

sense of sin.

We were both living

ultimately for ourselves.

And I didn't want

to suffer at all.

I didn't want to feel even,

you know, on the pain scale,

you know, goes zero to ten.

I didn't wanna feel a three.

You know, I felt that

I deserve to feel a zero,

like I did before.

[Russell] In the surgery,

which went well,

she apparently had a bleed

that they didn't catch

and so in recovery,

they sent her home.

And she went home

with an internal bleed that was

pooling blood in her abdomen.

We went back to the

hospital a few days later.

And they didn't even

really want to see her because

they didn't think

anything was wrong.

We went in to see

a nurse practitioner.

The doctor wasn't gonna see me.

But I walked in,

and somehow managed

to have okay blood pressure.

My heart rate was okay.

And I started to

walk out the door,

and then the nurse

practitioner said

she just felt suddenly

like a presence

stop her and say,

"Look at this girl again."

And she later said

she felt like it was God,

she was a Christian,

and she believed that--

that God wanted her

to reexamine me.

[Russell] And at this time, I

had actually left the hospital,

thinking the

appointment was over,

and went out to get a sandwich.

And a few minutes later,

everybody came running.

And, all of a sudden,

it was code blue,

and they were talking about me.

And I was shocked.

And I needed five

blood transfusions

just to get me

to a stable point.

And that still left me

severely anemic.

[Russell] Had she gone home

from that appointment,

she would have fallen

asleep in the car

as we drove back home

from Birmingham,

and she would've been dead

when I pulled in the driveway.

[Katherine] At that point,

my son was seven months old

and my daughter was two.

And neither one of them

would've remembered me.

But instead, I know that...

God saved my life.

[Russell] You know, every minute

of this life is a gift.

And that's really

what it showed both of us.

As I sat there,

and I watched the blood,

and they said, "Don't watch.

You might--you might pass out,

you might get dizzy," but...

I watched the blood going in.

Because I was so joyful

and I had so much peace.

And I believe that's when

our lives started to change.

And in the weeks

and months afterwards,

I needed God to get

me through every minute,

every second, every hour

of every day.

[Justin] We hear the gospel

presented this way so often,

"God loves you and has

a wonderful plan for your life."

Is that true?

Well, yes. God does love us,

and He does have wonderful plans

for our lives.

God had a wonderful plan

for Stephen's life.

The wonderful plan that God had

for Stephen's life

was to be stoned.

The wonderful plan that God had

for the apostle Peter's life

was to be crucified

upside down.

[Dr. Horton]

People think, basically,

that religion is there

to boost your ego,

make you happy,

make you more successful,

make life go well.

My brother committed suicide.

My mother,

a year and a half later,

had her home,

which was our childhood home,

destroyed in a tornado.

[Katherine] All of these

things that were happening,

instead of making us upset,

they were bringing us

together as a couple,

and also as two people

growing in their faith.

You know, I started to go

to church with Russell.

We started to read

the Bible together.

These things that I would

have seen as, you know,

an angry God, or the world

lashing out at me and my family,

instead I saw just ways that--

that God was doing good.

And I was eternally thankful

for things that I would

have hated before.

[Justin] The wonderful plan

that God had

for the apostle Paul's life

was to be shipwrecked, stoned,

imprisoned, beaten,

and ultimately beheaded.

I'm strong, I'm healthy.

I'm blessed, I'm favored.

I am a victor, not a victim.

I'm gonna live a long,

productive, faith-filled life.

In terms of biblical

Christianity,

Christianity is about dying.

"Jesus told His disciples,

'If anyone would come after Me,

let him deny himself,

and take up his cross

and follow Me.'"

What Jesus is saying there

is that it's going to be hard.

That it's going to be heavy.

[chuckles]

And that you may lose your life

for what you believe.

[Matt]

Christianity has been built

and has carried

through the generations

on the blood of men--

not on the wealth!

[Sean] Anybody who says

that Jesus came and died

to make us happy,

healthy, and wealthy

is preaching a false gospel.

Jesus saved me.

I was on the path to hell,

He snatched me out

of the flames

and He saved me from my sin.

So how can I just continue

to live my life

as if this isn't true?

So I abandoned my version

of the American Dream,

and I said,

"I will do what I can

to take the gospel

to the nations."

Me and my wife

sold everything that we owned,

and we took our savings,

and we jumped on an airplane

with our six-month-old baby

to take the gospel

to the unreached peoples

of the Amazon basin in Peru.

We spent four years there,

three of those in the jungle,

learned the language,

tried to adapt to the culture,

tried to take the gospel

to some of the tribal

peoples in that area,

and tried to

build up the church

that already existed

in some of these villages.

And so what I saw was that

on a scale from

completely heretical

to just generally

unhealthy churches,

are going down

to the jungles of Peru

where they are trying

to duplicate

their unhealthy churches

in other parts of the world.

So, what that may look like

is a church

that goes into a village

and throws $250,000

worth of goods

and medical treatment

at their people,

but offer nothing

in the way of eternal hope.

It's good deeds, not good news.

These people that you

are sending out of your church

or that you are supporting...

what do they teach?

Are you sending down people

who are sowing seeds

of false gospel

in nations that have no gospel?

And that's what I was doing.

That's what I was a part of.

-You fly in a private plane.

-Yes, I do.

You're staying right now

in one of the fanciest hotels

-in New York City.

-Yes, I am.

-You wear very nice clothing.

-Nice clothes.

I had undershirts

that were Versace.

And I wore a Breitling watch

that was worth $10,000.

And whatever I wanted,

it was mine.

So do you not have

any misgivings about that?

No!

And the shame that I have felt

over the last few years

coming out of it

has been immense.

My cars have been everything

from BMWs to a Benz.

But my favorite car

was a black Hummer.

It was an H2.

I was literally 21 years old.

It had TVs in it,

the chrome package,

big 22-inch rims.

My car payment was

a thousand dollars a month

just because we could afford it.

I'm gonna ask many

of you tonight

to sow a thousand dollars

in faith-expecting property.

[Costi] Our home

was 10,000 square feet,

the one up north.

Our second home

in Southern California

was a $2 million home

that overlooked the ocean.

This is our,

I guess, you could say, like,

back porch

sort of thing.

All right, so I have

my trusty bucket.

And I have the well here.

And this is what

we're gonna be using

to get our drinking,

and bathing, and cleaning water.

You know, there's this idea,

supposedly,

that we preachers

are supposed to

walk about with sandals

and ride bicycles.

That's nonsense.

[Costi]

I flew on a G4, a G5.

We ate the finest foods,

the best restaurants.

We stayed in hotels upwards

of $20,000 a night.

One was in the Middle East,

in Dubai,

called the Burj Al Arab.

And it's the hotel

that's shaped like a sail.

We were picked up in three white

Bentleys and driven there.

Every room is a suite.

We stayed in the Royal Suite.

There was gold everywhere.

And I'll never forget

the experience.

[Amber] And this is our shower.

You just kinda dump it

over your head and bathe,

and dump it over your head.

And that's it.

I think another difficulty

is just living in the jungle.

I mean, it's always hot.

There's always bugs.

I found myself negotiating

with the bugs.

"Bugs, listen.

I'll let you bite me

twice as much tomorrow,

if you just don't bite me

at all today."

Spiders everywhere you turn.

I'm not used to that kind

of stuff. I'm from the city.

[Costi] Another hotel

that sticks out in my mind

is called the Grand Resort

Lagonissi. It's in Greece.

And ironically, it's set

on the Aegean Sea.

I had my own suite.

I had my own pool.

And there I stood every day

looking out over the Aegean Sea.

If you know your Bible at all,

Paul sailed the Aegean Sea

on many missionary journeys.

And so here I am, Word of Faith,

prosperity kid,

looking out where Paul

was shipwrecked,

where he went through

literally chaos

and hell on Earth

just to get the gospel

out to people.

And now I'm staying

in five-star hotels,

preaching the same Jesus,

I thought, as Paul.

I didn't know that I was

being deceived.

Of course, when you're being

deceived, you don't know it.

And I-I think that was probably

the time in my life where I was

the most depressed.

My encouragement

is never say negative things

about yourself.

I was taught

that there was power

in the things that I said

to bring things into existence.

I am young. I am beautiful.

I am attractive.

Remember,

what follows the "I am"

is going to come

looking for you.

[David W. Jones]

God's the great "I am."

We're the great "I'm nots."

But we think

we're the great "I am."

We think it's about us.

[Copeland, on recording]

[congregation] Amen!

[David] At the heart

of the prosperity gospel,

the Word of Faith movement,

is this doctrine called

the "Little gods" doctrine.

[Copeland, no recording]

You are God's little G.

He is big G,

and you are little G.

You're a little G god.

Little god theology plays off

the Genesis 1, 2, and 3.

If you look at Creation

and the Fall,

the description of Man

as being in the image of God,

in right fellowship

and communion

with God in the garden...

Now, that's interesting,

because if everything

produces after its own kind,

we now see God producing man.

One of the foundational

assumptions

or doctrinal premises,

if you will,

of the Word of Faith movement

is this idea of trichotomy,

that human beings

are fundamentally

threefold in nature.

That they have a soul

and a body,

but that essentially,

human beings are spirits.

You are a spirit,

you have a soul,

and you live in-- you--

live in a physical body.

[Robert] And as spirits,

they are in the same class

or category of being as God.

[Copeland, on recording]

[Robert] And like God,

as a spirit,

we can call into existence

what we say.

We serve a God

who calls things

that do not exist

as if they already existed.

[Justin] We just make

positive confessions,

and then those

positive confessions

will then turn

into physical reality.

So that's how powerful

your words are.

Your words have created power.

[Robert] Just as God

made the world

by speaking words of faith,

according to these teachers,

we can, essentially,

bring into reality

or bring into expression what we

are hoping for, what we want,

because we're the same kind

of being as God.

[Sean] I was absolutely

beyond broke,

and pulled out the ATM receipt

when they told me

that I didn't have enough money

to make a withdrawal.

And I rebuked that receipt

in the name of Jesus

and I proclaimed

my victory over Satan

and his lies

about me being broke.

[Marilyn Hickey, on tape]

Looking back now,

it's funny and you kinda have

to laugh so you don't cry

because of how pathetic it was.

Now let's read it,

and let's make bold confession.

[congregation reads along]

"As we receive today's offering,

we are believing the Lord for:

jobs and better jobs,

raises and bonuses..."

[Justin] Of course,

this is very unbiblical

because only God can speak

things into existence.

[Sean] So the core idea,

the central aim,

is to rid your heart of any sin

and of any doubt.

And once you do that,

you can have complete mastery

over the universe.

You are God.

[Simeon] For a time period

from 2001 to 2006,

I lived in the Bahamas,

laid down roots

pretty deep there.

Now, while I was there,

I had some interactions

with this ministry

under Myles Munroe.

My family had been exposed

to his teaching on television.

People ain't worried

about no blood on no cross.

They're worrying about how

they're gonna make it

-through the day.

-[congregation] Yes.

I'm just gonna read for you

page 13 of his book,

Applying the Kingdom.

He says,

"Every human is searching

for the simple formula

to a successful, fulfilled life.

They want to find the one key

that unlocks the door

to the good life

and answers the questions

of their heart.

Perhaps this is why The Secret

became a sudden

best-selling book

even though its reign

was short-lived."

[Scott]

One of the greatest

and most dangerous heresies

that the early church faced

was that of Gnosticism.

They were selling Gnosis,

or secret knowledge.

I've been talking about this

for years on my show.

I just never called it

"The Secret."

The Secret is the law

of attraction.

[Simeon] "This book promised

the final key to life

and success."

[Scott] This was the power

of Gnosticism

in the second century.

Secret knowledge,

or "second blessings."

If you see it in here,

you're gonna hold it here.

If you think bigger,

you'll live bigger.

[Scott] You know,

dividing the Christian church

into haves and have-nots, right?

Some are anointed

and some are not.

"I was amazed to find

when I read this book

that it was simply a restatement

of all the principles

already written in the Bible..."

What we declare creates reality.

Happiness, health, and wealth.

[Simeon]

"...and the same material

I and many others

have been sharing for years."

You're thinking poor.

Start thinking rich.

"In essence, The Secret

was never a secret."

For every action,

there's an equal

and opposite reaction.

That is my religion.

[Scott] If your teaching

is being approved by Oprah,

that might raise

some warning flags.

I don't see her advancing,

promoting,

traditional, historic,

Christian orthodox teaching.

But she is a very successful

representative of the,

really, what's become

the American religion

of prosperity.

What kind of God wants you

to be poor and miserable?

A car for you, and for you,

and for you,

if only you'll name it

and claim it.

[Costi] Later on, after college,

I met a gal who's now my wife.

She's beautiful

on the inside and the outside.

She comes from a very different

background than me.

She was not necessarily

Word of Faith/

prosperity material.

And my family,

when I told them

that I met a nice gal,

said, "Great.

We'd love to meet her.

Is she spirit-filled?"

And I said,

"Oh, no. Don't do that.

Please don't do that.

Yes, she's spirit-filled."

Because as our beliefs

and teachings went,

a person is not filled

with the Holy Spirit,

they're not baptized

with the Holy Spirit,

and they're probably

not even saved

unless they speak in tongues

as evidence of their conversion.

There was a lot of pain

during those days for my wife,

there was a lot of pain for me,

because we were trying

to force a belief

and a doctrinal system

onto her and into her

that wasn't biblical.

Then one day after my wife

was just distraught,

in tears,

we turned to

1 Corinthians 12:30,

and it about jumped

off the page

As Paul says, "All don't speak

in tongues, do they?"

And there it was.

It's not an essential,

and we all don't have

to speak in tongues

as evidence of salvation.

We all have

the Holy Spirit at conversion.

There's no second-class citizens

in Christ.

You don't have the ones

that are in first class

and the ones that are

in economy class.

We all have the Holy Spirit.

Further study caused the dominos

of other false beliefs

to continue to fall.

[David] Well, I was raised

in a Christian home.

I didn't really make God

a big priority in my life

until I was about 17,

that's when I really started

having a relationship with God.

Then about a year

or two after that,

I got really involved

in the Charismatic movement.

I got introduced to a lot

of faith healers

through people at my church.

And one specifically

was Todd White.

[Justin] Todd White

is now a member

of Gateway Church,

pastored by Robert Morris,

in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

But what Todd White

is really known for

is going on the street

and walking up to people

at random,

and seemingly healing them.

[David] And he's very good

with people, and very--

seems very loving.

Yeah. And I idolized these men,

and I wanted to be like them.

Basically, I wanted

to make my lifestyle

all about glorifying myself

by making me look like

some super-Christian

that goes around

and heals people all the time.

And I wanted to be a big

hotshot faith healer guy,

that I was so anointed,

when I walked into the church,

everyone would say,

"Oh, look at David.

Wow, he's so anointed."

But now I realize

it's not about me.

It's all about God.

Give God all the glory.

[Costi] Today, we're at a point

where a lot of the major

Word of Faith

and faith healing players

are getting old.

People like my uncle,

Benny Hinn,

people like Kenneth Copeland

and others,

they're getting older.

And so what we're seeing

is a handing off

of the torch,

the passing of the baton,

as men like Todd White

and others come up in the ranks.

And I'm gonna say this to you.

You need to be putting

your money in here.

But the straw that broke

the camel's back with me

was when I saw a video

of Todd White

aligning himself

with Kenneth Copeland

doing a fundraiser.

And I have the privilege

of introducing one

of the amazing fathers

in the body of Christ.

Actually, he's really special

to me and...

[David] Kenneth Copeland

is worth upwards

of $700 million.

He has a fleet of airplanes,

his own airstrip,

lives in a compound

in Fort Worth, Texas,

and is the poster child

for Word of Faith theology.

He's a mentor in my life,

he's a spiritual father.

[Paul Johnson]

I'd say the hallmark

of Kenneth Copeland's teaching

is the way he deifies man.

You have exactly

the same spiritual DNA

as Jesus!

Glory to God! Hallelujah!

You are a twin

to the Master Himself!

[laughs]

So, say I'm sick,

why wouldn't I be healed?

Because I have

the same spiritual DNA.

You've got the very DNA,

the divine nature of Abba,

coursing through your veins--

why wouldn't God

heal your blood disease?

So I should live

over a hundred years or forever.

Your spiritual DNA

was programmed

to keep your body strong

for 120 years.

And this really comes close

to something like

what the Mormons do.

And I think

it's with good reason

that some scholars

have described Mormonism

as the quintessential

American religion.

It's about being good.

It's about being American.

And it's about becoming God.

That religion is as old

as the Garden.

[Copeland, on recording]

The very first temptation,

which led to the very first sin,

was this desire

to be just like God.

[Copeland, on recording]

One of the most

objectionable elements

of Kenneth Copeland's doctrine

was this idea

that any human being

could have done

what Jesus Christ did,

at least in principle,

because Jesus

was constitutionally

no different than you and me.

[Copeland, on recording]

[Johnson] That's the heart

of Copeland's teaching.

And it's as evil and Satanic

as any theology

that is out there

going by the name "Christian."

I've just, for years and years

since I've been saved,

have just looked

at the rock-solid

-ministry of Kenneth Copeland.

-[Johnson] I'll agree with that

if what he means is,

it's a rock-solid example

of rank heresy.

It's not Christianity.

[Justin]

So this demotion of God

and deification of man

is at the heart

of the Word Faith/

prosperity gospel movement.

The prosperity gospel is this

ideology that's iron-clad.

It's iron-clad

in all these assumptions

that formed like this

iron curtain around it.

And you've got

to break through that

before people who adhere to it

will give you any kind

of hearing.

One of them is just fear.

My brother, my sister,

be careful.

If you raise your voice

against the man of God,

even if that man

of God is wicked,

sickness will come on you.

[Costi] You speak against them,

you would be cursed--

that's the way we were taught.

And so we grew up

with a lot of fear.

Never to question the theology,

the teaching

or even the lifestyle.

They assume that

these preachers

are untouchable.

If you touch servants of God,

you will be judged severely.

[Simeon]

That they're...

the Lord's anointed,

and the Bible says,

Touch not the Lord's anointed."

And by "touch,"

they understand that to mean,

you don't challenge

their views...

Don't mention people's names

on your radio program

and your TV program.

The Bible is explicit.

False teachers must be

called out by name.

I mean,

Paul called out Peter,

you know, the top dog.

He called him out

when he was acting in such a way

that was out of line

with the gospel.

Touch not the anointed.

They just take this idea

of David not wanting

to touch the Lord's anointed,

Saul.

"Touch" there means "kill."

It means harm physically.

Sometimes I wish God

would give me

a Holy Ghost machine gun--

I'd blow your head off.

[Constance]

I don't wanna kill them.

I don't want to attack them.

I'm not wishing any bodily harm

to them,

or anything like that.

I'm just telling you

how easy is it

to go through scripture

and say what scripture says?

[Simeon]

The Bereans, in Acts 17,

they are commended

for wanting to make sure

the things that Paul is teaching

are in the Bible.

One, it shows that we love them.

We love them enough

to pray for them,

even though they are, in

a very real way, our enemies.

We call them out in hopes

that they would

hear this true gospel

and that they would hear

this rebuke,

and that it would break

their hearts,

and that they would repent

of their sins,

and trust in the Lord Jesus.

In order to really understand

a movement,

it helps to have at least

a general working knowledge

of the origins.

[Costi] The heritage

of Word of Faith theology

reaches all the way back

to a man named E.W. Kenyon

in the 1800s.

[Robert] Kenyon was,

to put it simply,

a charismatic Baptist.

He was taught by A.J. Gordon

and other evangelical believers

in the faith healing doctrine.

He is the one that

really pioneered the ideas

that were picked up

by Kenneth Hagin,

and later, Kenneth Copeland,

in what we call

the Word of Faith movement.

Your modern prosperity preachers

such as Joel Osteen,

Joseph Prince, Joyce Meyer,

Benny Hinn,

they were heavily influenced

by Kenneth Copeland.

Kenneth Copeland mastered

his Word of Faith theology

and his craft

as a big business preacher

by listening to the tapes

of Kenneth Hagin.

[Justin] Kenneth Hagin,

we could call the father

of the modern

Word of Faith movement,

the modern prosperity gospel.

Kenneth Hagin claimed that much

of what he taught people

he received directly

through divine revelation

knowledge.

And so for example,

Kenneth Hagin

made this statement,

and I quote:

[Robert reads quotation]

[Robert] End quote.

Now, this statement

that Hagin makes here

he actually plagiarized

from E.W. Kenyon.

It's something that Kenyon

had written in one of his books,

and it is quoted

without attribution

by Kenneth Hagin, verbatim,

in one of his articles.

This idea that

every human being who believes

is an incarnation is simply

not a biblical idea.

The misunderstanding here is,

the incarnation is not simply

a matter of the spirit of God

dwelling in a man,

or in a human being.

See, Jesus was man

until God touched Him

and put the spirit

of the living God

on the inside of Him.

[Robert] The incarnation

is God Himself

uniting Himself

with human nature

to become one of us.

It is the union

of the two natures,

the nature of God

and the nature of man,

in one person.

[Costi]

One of the most well-known

mainstream Word of Faith

preachers today

is Bill Johnson

from Bethel Church.

I am getting to love

Bill Johnson big time.

[Costi] They launched the band

Jesus Culture.

And they're really popular,

and they sing some really

cool-sounding songs,

but people might not know

on page 29 of his book,

When Heaven Invades Earth,

Bill Johnson writes,

in no uncertain terms,

"He," meaning Jesus,

"performed His miracles,

His signs and wonders,

as a man in right relationship

with God."

And then it says,

"...not as God."

If He performed His miracles

because He was God,

"then they would be

unattainable for us."

Therefore, since He did them

as a man,

I am responsible

to pursue that lifestyle.

[Justin]

One of the many aberrations

from historical Christianity

is their exaggerated view

of what's known as kenosis--

Jesus emptying Himself.

Jesus was not born

into this world

to be God.

[Rosebrough] Kenotic theology,

taught by Bill Johnson,

Todd White,

basically is this idea

that Christ, in the incarnation,

that He emptied Himself

of His deity.

He was fully God and fully man,

but He had to lay aside

all divinity,

all of it, every bit of it...

[Costi] This is not

what the Bible teaches

when it says

that Christ emptied Himself,

and came and took on

the form of man.

The ground zero passage on this

is Philippians chapter two.

And, "Have this mind

among yourselves,

which is yours in Christ Jesus,

who, though He was

in the form of..."

or you can say

the nature of God,

"...He did not count equality

with God a thing to be grasped,

but He emptied Himself..."

And verse seven actually

makes it clear what--

what it means for Him

to have emptied Himself.

He emptied Himself

by taking on the form

of a servant,

being born in the likeness

of men.

And "being found in human form,

He humbled Himself."

And was "obedient

to the point of death,

even death on a cross."

The language of scripture

might be confusing,

because it says

He emptied Himself.

But we're not to think

that He changed His nature,

because He can't change.

"Jesus Christ is the same

yesterday and today

and forever."

He didn't divest Himself

of anything.

He emptied Himself

by becoming human.

You could say He emptied

Himself by addition.

It was just veiled underneath

truly human flesh.

In fact, at the Mount

of Transfiguration,

He pulled back the veil

of His flesh

and revealed His deity.

It was still there.

It was still intact. He was God.

But He had to lay

fully God aside.

It's not true that He laid

His deity aside.

But He laid His divinity aside,

humbled Himself.

[Johnson]

However, it doesn't mean

that His divine attributes

were in full use all the time.

He Himself said,

you know,

that He didn't know the time

of His own return.

But He didn't set

His omniscience

aside completely either.

When it served

the Father's purpose

for Him to know something

through His omniscience, He did.

So at the very end of John 2,

for example, it says,

He didn't need anybody

to tell Him what was in man.

He knew what was in man.

Usually, you'll hear people

who hold this doctrine say,

"Therefore, you and I,

if we have enough faith,

can do the same things

Jesus did,

because He did all His miracles

by the power of the Spirit,

not by His own

inherent divinity."

[Todd White] "Jesus knew

what they were thinking,"

which means that me,

as a Christian,

can know what people

are thinking.

That's pretty crazy.

You better be ready for it,

'cause people think

some weird stuff.

This is a serious confusion

for a number of reasons.

Number one,

if you imagine

that the Spirit of God

is--is some foreign spirit

to Christ,

then you've got

a totally wrong idea

of the Trinity.

The spirit of God is often

called the Spirit of Christ.

[Nabeel] Here is the definition

of the Trinity.

If you write anything down

tonight, write this down.

God is one in being...

and three in person.

Now, that is not

a contradiction.

You see egregious statements

about God

being three persons within

each being of the Trinity,

and there being nine gods.

Each one of them

is a triune being by Himself.

If I can shock you,

and maybe I should,

there's nine of 'em.

Humans happen to be

one being and one person.

God is different.

God is one being.

Yahweh is what we call God.

But He's three persons--

Father, Son, and Spirit.

No, Jesus didn't do

what He did as God.

He did what He did as a man

in perfect relationship

with the Father.

[Robert] Yes, Jesus was

fully imbued

with the presence

of the Holy Spirit in Him.

Yes, the Father was in Him

during the works.

But this is the way

it's always been eternally,

because as Father, Son,

and Holy Spirit,

the three persons

who are one God,

they always do

their works together.

Colossians chapter two

explicitly makes this clear

in verse nine

when it says of Jesus,

"...in Him the whole fullness

of the deity

dwells bodily."

So why is getting the deity

of Christ a big deal?

Because if we get the deity

of Christ wrong,

we get the gospel wrong.

He didn't say that He was

healing people as God...

[Rosebrough] If He had no power

to heal physically,

then He really wouldn't

have had the power

to save us spiritually, either.

He is the one mediator

between God and man.

And in order for Him

to serve in that role,

He has to be fully man

and fully God.

Only a human can pay the price

for human sin.

But only God can endure

the wrath of God.

And if our faith is in a Jesus

who wasn't truly God

all the way through the cross,

then how could He have been

the sinless

and acceptable sacrifice

who bore our sins on the cross?

He can't be.

That's why it's heretical.

[Robert] If He's not God

for one nanosecond,

He isn't the God of the Bible.

Because the God of the Bible

is immutably God.

He cannot stop being God

for one second.

[Rosebrough] And of course,

what they're trying to do

is to take Jesus

and diminish His deity

so that we can exalt humanity

to the point where

we're supposed to do

greater works

than Christ did miraculously.

That's the whole point.

[Bill] Anyone who thinks

they can represent the Father

without miracles,

do not understand the Father.

To think that I could

adequately display

the love of God without power

is absolute nonsense.

It is an absolute insult

to the gospel.

[Costi] A lot of faith

healers today

say that if you don't have

signs and wonders

accompanying your teaching

of the gospel,

then you don't have true power.

If the preaching of the gospel

lacks signs and wonders,

it's an empty shell.

[Russell] But scripture says

something entirely different.

[Katherine] People who

are healed by Jesus Himself,

who actually had the miracle

of healing come from Jesus,

still did not repent

and believe.

The miracle of the ten lepers,

which is in Luke 17,

only one of them returned

to praise Jesus

and to praise God.

I've seen examples

of people who claim

to be Christians,

going out in public

and encountering people

who don't know Jesus,

and rather than sharing

the gospel with them,

they avoid that entirely

and they shoot straight

to signs and wonders.

[Justin] And apparently, there

is an epidemic in this country

of people with having one leg

just a little bit shorter

than the other.

[Costi] In every sense,

I would say Todd White

is as much a magician

as he claims to be a man of God.

[David] I would go around

and look for people

that were like limping

with obvious sicknesses.

Is there any problems at all,

physically?

Ah, my back isn't the best.

And I'd go up to them

and ask to pray for them.

They tell your one leg's

shorter than the other one

and it throws your back out.

[Steve] So this is the

Holy Ghost film from 2014.

This is a really great trick.

And you're gonna see

in a moment here

that it is a trick.

[Todd] So what I'll do,

regardless of what you believe,

I'm gonna pray for you.

And Jesus is gonna grow

your leg out

and heal your back.

Charlatans

and snake oil salesmen

have been doing this trick

for decades.

It's sleight of hand.

[Todd] So Father, I thank You

in Jesus' name.

Left leg, I command you grow

right now.

Jesus' name.

-[man #1] Look at it. See it?

-[man #2] Mm-hm.

[man #1] Look at that!

[man #1] Do you guys see that

right there?

-[man #2] Yes.

-[woman] Yeah.

[man #1] It's longer now

than the other one.

And then, if I was done,

if they received it well,

which most did, I'd be like,

"Oh, God loves you so much.

Have a good day."

I'm not, like, out here

to say you need to--

no, dude, God loves you, bro,

and that's it, man.

Semper fi, man.

Now we're gonna see

Todd White's clip,

sped up quite a bit

and looped back and forth.

Now this is where

we can see

what's really going on here.

The leg on our right is

supposed to be the short leg,

and this is the leg which

should be miraculously growing,

but it's not.

Look at the leg on our left.

That's where all the action is,

that's what's actually

being manipulated.

You can see that Todd

is actually pivoting

or shifting the foot

of the so-called "long leg"

so that the heels match.

Now, he's doing this

very slowly over time,

but it's painfully obvious

when you speed up the clip.

[Justin] And what he is doing

is the most hateful thing

you could possibly do

for someone.

Men like Todd White

preach a gospel

that is centered on love.

The problem is,

it's not biblical love.

Biblical love confronts sin.

[over portable P.A.]

We are all born sinners!

We are all born

in need of a savior!

God is alive!

[Emilio] If we really understand

God's love,

then we understand

that God's love

is a holy love.

That because God is so loving,

He must simultaneously

reject and hate evil.

[David] Well, when I saw anyone

preaching the real gospel,

which is salvation

through the cross,

well, I thought

that was kinda unloving

'cause they'd talk about sin.

[over P.A.] Every one of us

has broken His laws.

[Emilio] My experience has been,

even those

that call themselves Christians,

they will oppose you.

They reject

a gospel presentation

that includes

calling people to repent.

[over P.A.]

Repent and believe

in the gospel!

[Todd] I'm not, like,

out here to say you need to--

[Steve] "I'm not out here to say

you need to..."

I think he's choosing

not to use the word "repent,"

which is what Christians

historically

have always talked about.

That is the reason why

many people will refuse

to become a Christian.

They don't wanna repent.

They don't wanna give up

their sin.

They like sinning.

[Russell] This method

of evangelism by blessing,

it's changing the gospel from

"You are dead in your sins,

and this is what you need

by God's grace:

Repentance and faith."

It's changing that message to,

"God loves you, He accepts you.

Here's some free stuff."

He will cure you

of your ailments.

He'll fix your back pain.

He prayed for me,

my back got healed.

Prayed for my girlfriend,

her head got healed.

My ankle got healed.

He helped to get clothes

for my family.

And now God told him

to get a guitar.

God's buying me

this guitar, man.

Because you're doing

the gospel, man.

Can I shake your hand?

'Cause this is what Jesus

would do.

We don't live the gospel,

we don't "do" the gospel,

we receive it by faith.

[Dr. Lawson]

"Faith comes by hearing,

and hearing

by the word of Christ."

We have to speak to them

the gospel.

We have to preach the gospel.

It's not enough that

you just live a godly life

before others--

if that's all it is,

they'll go to hell

thinking you're a good person.

[David] I thought that

if you go and heal someone,

or give someone money,

or just tell 'em,

"Oh, Jesus loves you

so much, man"...

[Todd]

Jesus loves you so much.

...that the goodness of God

would lead them to repentance.

God's goodness

does lead us to repentance.

But sometimes, God's goodness

doesn't look like

what we think it looks like.

Sometimes, God's goodness

is telling us

how bad we really are.

I love you enough

to tell you the truth!

[Steve]

So when you come along and say,

"You're great, you're special,

you're amazing."

[Todd] God loves you,

and you're amazing.

[Steve] "God is, you know,

crazy about you."

[Todd] God's so impressed

and so amazed by you.

You're amazing.

This is the opposite

of what people need to hear.

When they're at war with God,

they don't need to be told

how great they are.

They need to be told

that they are at war with God.

To withhold the bad news,

is to share half the gospel.

To share half the gospel

is to not share the full gospel.

We deserve hell for eternity

because of our lawbreaking.

And it's only through

Christ's death on the cross,

burial and resurrection,

that He paid that penalty

for our sins.

[Emilio] The problem is not

that the preacher

has the wrong method.

Jesus said,

"You can raise someone

from the dead,

and still,

people will not believe."

And that is why

we faithfully preach the gospel.

Because we know that,

as much as someone

will violently reject it,

it is the means that God uses

to bring His people

to repentance and faith.

[Anthony] We never

wanna withhold

any portion of the gospel

from people,

thinking that somehow

we can trick them

or fool them

into the kingdom of God.

[Costi] Some of the questions

I had growing up,

when I was in healing crusades

with my uncle or my father was,

"If we have these gifts

of healing,

and we can do this for people,

why don't we go to hospitals?"

[David] It was very overwhelming

having to feel

that I had to pray

for every single person

that was sick.

And I overthink things,

so I would think things like,

"Everyone with glasses

needs healing."

And then I'd looked around

and, like,

more than half the population

is wearing glasses.

So I'd be like,

"God, you really expect me

to heal

all these people? Like..."

"Why can't we go to my school?

Why can't we go

to my friend's house

and heal my friend of cancer,

in high school?

Why can't we do

what we say we do?

Why do we need music?"

[Benny Hinn]

I wanna hear the instruments.

-I wanna hear the strings.

-David] And one time I saw

Bill Johnson ask someone,

"Who got healing in their eyes?"

[[Bill Johnson]

How many of you, the sight,

something was healed

with your eye?

Put your hand up right now.

[David] Okay, you can command

dead people to rise up,

and people

to get out of wheelchairs,

then why are you still

wearing glasses?

That doesn't makes sense.

[Justin] I've been to 17

different Benny Hinn crusades

as part of my research.

And on one of these,

I was being interviewed

for a documentary

that was being done

on Benny Hinn.

And you see me trying to get up

on the platform.

Well, there was a lady

who was on the Benny Hinn staff,

she was talking with me,

I'm standing there

on my crutches,

and you see this man come up

and whisper in her ear.

And the man you see

is Henry Hinn,

Benny Hinn's brother.

Henry is Costi's father.

Henry Hinn whispers in her ear.

And then this lady tells me

immediately,

she says, "Sir, just step aside

and pray for your healing."

What was going on there

is that

they are screening people.

And they are keeping

the truly sick,

the obviously sick,

the obviously handicapped people

away from the platform.

[Costi] It's hard to sleep

at night

when there's dying babies

whose moms brought them

to the crusade services

'cause your uncle

could heal them,

and they gave

their best offering,

but they went home sick.

[Justin] In the back,

on the floor,

are dozens, and dozens,

and dozens of sick people.

I've seen parents

with dying children,

literally, dying children

in their arms,

some of them hooked up

to breathing machines.

The only people

who are allowed up

on Benny Hinn's platform

are people who have a malady

that cannot be readily seen.

It's always diseases

or conditions

that can be overcome with

temporary rush of adrenaline

or emotion,

psychosomatic healings.

You never see anyone

who looks like me

allowed up on the platform

because I can't hide

my condition.

And no matter

how excited I may get,

if you take my crutches

away from me,

I'm going down.

[Costi] It's hard to sleep

at night

when you see

wheelchair-bound women

holding their children

and your family promises them

health and hope,

and you can't give it to them.

But you take their offering,

then you go live large off it--

that's hard.

It's not difficult

to stand up for truth,

it's hard to live a lie.

[Benny Hinn]

And we are not ashamed

of prosperity,

nor will we apologize

for prosperity.

Because it is the promise

of our Heavenly Father,

who owns the cattle

on a thousand hills!

[congregation applauds]

[Costi] One of the most

painful parts

of standing up for truth

is the losses that can come

relationally.

[Nabeel] For Muslims,

the gospel is often,

literally, a call to die.

The cost of accepting the gospel

could be your family,

but it's worth it.

One thing

I've never sought to do

is bring down my family.

This is not my smear campaign

against my uncle.

[Costi] My family is the most

loving family,

the most kind people,

they're affectionate.

My dad always told me

he was proud of me.

My mom always told me

she loved me.

My sisters are amazing women.

I love my family.

But the reality is,

I love Jesus more.

The gospel divides unbelievers

from believers.

The Lord Jesus wants unity.

[Mike] Doctrine is what divides.

In fact, it was

the Lord Jesus Christ,

who came to divide,

He came with a sword

to divide mother

against daughter,

father against son.

So often today, we hear about

the desire, the quest for unity.

I believe

that the Catholic church

and the Christian church...

we're gonna come together.

[audience cheering]

[Mike] And so, what

the Catholic Church has done

is they've gone after

soft targets

in the Protestant

evangelical world.

[Rick Warren] We have far more

in common

than what divides us.

If you love Jesus,

we're on the same team.

[Mike] And so,

we have people suppressing

doctrinal truth

for the sake of unity.

We may not agree, you know,

100% on doctrine and theology,

but you know what, the church,

the Catholic church, our church,

it's open for everybody,

so I like his tone.

[speaking Spanish]

[Osteen]

Not pushing people away,

but I believe God's big.

And His mercy is very wide.

The gospel is the only thing

that has the power to save.

If we get the gospel wrong,

we get Christianity wrong.

Catholics, Evangelicals,

we are all brothers and sisters

in Christ.

[man speaking Italian]

[man interpreting]

Because you're breaking

the spirit of division!

[Nate] And so, as soon

as you say

that a person can be saved

by their works or by adding

anything else to it,

you've now diminished

the biblical gospel.

And so, by diminishing it,

you have now nullified it.

There is no gospel.

There's no good news...

if you have to go

and earn your way to heaven.

Somebody get me

that Catholic priest over here.

And so, without having a core

agreement of what the gospel is,

we can't unify around that.

We can't do ministry

if there's a different

understanding

of the most core tenet

of our faith.

To just bring the unity

of the Catholic

and the Christian together.

There is no unity

if there's no gospel.

[Costi] And so, standing

for truth comes at a cost.

And sometimes, that's gonna mean

broken relationships.

Because I can't stand

for deceit,

and I can't just turn

a blind eye

to what is hurting many people.

Bad theology hurts people.

If you're sick, tell someone,

"I'm healthy..."

[Justin] If you know someone

in the Word of Faith movement,

you might notice,

that if they get sick

they deny that they're sick.

Just keep saying that:

"I'll never have the flu.

I'll never have the flu."

[Robert] I had a relative

who many years ago

delayed going to the doctor

for a condition that he had

that was quite obvious

because it was

right on his head

and everybody could see it.

And he was hoping

that he would be healed

and wouldn't need

to go to the doctor.

Jesus Himself

gave us the flu shot.

[Robert]Eventually, he gave in

and went to the doctor

but it was too late,

and he died as a result.

[Gloria Copeland] We've already

had our shot.

He bore our sicknesses

and carried our diseases.

[Sean] There's one time,

I had mercury poisoning.

And I thought, "Listen,

if you have faith in Jesus,

you can't go to the doctor.

If you go to the doctor,

you're putting your faith

in the doctor,

not in Jesus.

And so, I had mercury poisoning,

and I refused

to go to the doctor.

And I was laying on the bathtub

in my own soup,

on the verge of dying,

when my mom came

and pulled me out

and made me go

to the emergency room.

[Constance]

So I was disillusioned

by the Word of Faith doctrine

when I fell into financial ruin

after quitting my job

because my pastor prophesied

that someone

in the church that day

needed to quit their job,

and he was there to tell us

that God told him to tell us

that it was time for us to quit.

And so I took that

to be confirmation for me,

and I quit my job the next day.

[laughing]

[Sean] I remember

talking with my wife in tears,

asking her,

"What am I doing wrong?

Why can't I seem to get

this doubt out of my heart?

Why can't I conjure up

this faith within myself

to be able to rebuke Satan,

and rebuke the sickness,

and rebuke the poverty?"

[Constance] And I fell

into financial ruin

shortly thereafter,

probably within two months,

and was highly upset with God.

[Sean] When you name it

and you claim it

and it still doesn't happen...

what am I doing wrong, God?

Speaking things into existence

wasn't working.

The "favor"

I was supposed to have

under that doctrine.

-[crowd clapping]

-If I follow Jesus,

favor follows me!

This wasn't working.

I was losing everything,

like, by the day.

The preacher's not to be blamed.

And obviously, God and the Bible

aren't to be blamed,

so who's left to be blamed?

You are. You're the one.

You don't have enough faith.

You got too much sin.

You're a failure.

That hurts people.

[Constance] I'm super grateful

that by the grace of God,

I came out of that.

Because I can see how

blind I was,

and how I was going down

the wrong path.

And so I feel compelled

to warn

as many people as possible.

Thank you so much

for your love and your support

over the past week.

I announced eight days ago

that I have received

this diagnosis.

Nabeel Qureshi and I

were very close friends.

We knew each other

for several years.

We'd see each other

at conferences,

and we were part of a larger

group of Christian apologists

that would get together

and talk about

the defense of the faith,

and talk about theology,

and we developed

a very good friendship.

Just a few weeks or so

after the last time that I was

with Nabeel personally,

we found out

that he had been diagnosed

with stage four cancer.

The diagnosis was stage four

stomach cancer.

[Robert]

It was considered inoperable.

It was also considered

certainly fatal.

The statistics say that

four percent of people

with this diagnosis survive.

I realized very quickly that

if I were going to live,

I would need,

more or less, a miracle.

[Costi] One of the things

that the Word of Faith movement

is against is suffering.

And God's will

is anything but suffering.

[Bill Johnson ] I refuse

to create a theology

that allows for sickness.

[Costi] It's always God's will

to heal everybody.

So the question I want to answer

right now then is,

"Is it God's will

for everyone to be healed?"

[Robert] This provides, beyond

my dear love for Nabeel

and hope for him personally,

an interesting case study in:

does this actually work?

And if it doesn't,

why doesn't it work?

[Trevin] First of all,

we have to affirm

the truth that God can

and does heal people

in response to prayers.

At the same time,

it is impossible for Christians

to be formed

into the image of Christ

without undergoing

some kind of suffering.

[Katherine]

I began to get sicker.

So I went in for some bloodwork,

and my doctor called

and said he thought

it might be cancer.

But they suggested that

it could be a form of T-cell

lymphoma or leukemia.

I know when I was diagnosed

with terminal brain cancer

in 2009,

there were these two camps

that were the loudest.

And to be honest with you,

neither was really comforting.

The first camp was kind of that,

if you just have faith

and believe

that God will heal you,

He will heal you.

And, man, if you--

if you don't,

you know, you need to put people

around you that have faith

and can encourage

that faith in you. And then...

And I just thought,

"Man, how exhausting

to put all of that on me."

And then, there was this other

kind of nonchalant,

"Well, just pray

in God's will for your life."

And--and then I'm going, "Whoa.

But doesn't the word of God

tell you in James

to pray that I might be healed,

as I pray

that I might be healed?"

I had a brain tumor.

It was in my frontal sinus.

And it was pushing in

to my frontal lobe.

I was having vision problems

and things like that.

And so, we moved quickly

to a specialist

to have that taken out.

And they ended up having to use

both of my nostrils

and resection part of my skull.

But they were able

to get it out that way.

It's not wrong

to desire miracles.

It's not wrong to desire

miraculous deliverance

from sickness.

And I believe

those things still happen today.

The problem comes

when you believe

that those things are normative

and that every Christian

should expect that to happen.

And if it doesn't happen,

it's a lack of faith

on the part of the believer.

That's unbiblical.

Jesus did have compassion

for people.

He was moved with love

and empathy to heal people.

But that healing,

in Jesus's own words,

was intended to glorify God.

And when you get to the end

of John in chapter 20,

He very explicitly states

the purpose of His gospel.

Which is that,

"So you may believe."

In the book of Mark,

it's, uh, a good place to start.

In Mark 1, He's at the home

of Simon and Andrew,

and Simon's mother-in-law

has a fever.

And so, He, of course,

heals her.

And that evening,

the whole city

was gathered at the door.

And you know what,

He healed a lot of people.

And then He got up early

the next morning

and went to a desolate place

to just, like, have a quiet time

with the Father

after all of that.

And then He comes back,

and it's like,

everyone's gearing up again

and lining up again.

"Hey, where's that guy

who healed everybody?"

"Everyone is looking for You."

He said to them,

"Let us go somewhere else

in the towns nearby,

so that I may preach there also,

for that is what I came for."

And so He leaves,

and He doesn't heal

all of those people.

And that doesn't mean that

He's evil, or wrong,

or mean, or terrible.

It's... it's that He came

to bring the word and to help

people know to repent

and believe, because that

is the most important thing.

[Costi] It wasn't long before

I was pastoring

in a church in California,

and the pastor had me preach.

It was my first time preaching.

And he tells me

I'm preaching out of John 5.

It's my turn, that's the way

the rotation worked.

John chapter 5, the healing

at the pool of Bethesda.

And there was something

that stuck out in that passage

that I read in a commentary.

And it said, "The cruelest lie

of faith healers today,

that if you

just have enough faith,

Jesus will heal you."

And I thought,

"What just happened?"

In that passage, in John 5,

Jesus healed a man

who didn't even know who He was,

let alone have enough faith.

Jesus healed him instantly,

which I never saw growing up.

And He healed the man

out of a crowd of sick people.

And so,

that was the exact opposite

of what I grew up with.

[Costi] The faith-healing

circles, first of all,

faith is everything.

Faith is so important

to miracles.

[Costi] And now,

this Bible passage

is showing that Jesus

healed the guy

who didn't even know who He was.

You don't need

to have enough faith.

God is sovereign in healing.

And there was that word again

that I remembered

back from college.

[Trevin] It is not

great faith that we need,

but small faith and a great God.

[Costi] This was

my conversion experience.

I wanted nothing to do

with what I used to teach,

used to believe,

used to even think.

I only wanted to know

what the Bible says.

And so, I completely turned

from my sin.

I repented for all

of my false Christianity,

for all the things

I'd ever done wrong

to other people,

for the way that I had abused

my Christianity,

and, to be honest,

brought reproach

on the name of Christ.

You can't turn Jesus

or His healing ministry

into a formula,

but that's exactly

what false faith healers

are doing today.

Not everything that comes at us

is God's will.

[Paul Johnson]

The sovereignty of God

is one of the bedrock teachings

of Protestant theology.

There are those who have

wavered from the position.

There's a difference

from being in charge

and being in control.

When people say

that God's not in control,

what they always appeal to

is their own experience

and their own feelings

about what they would do

if they were God.

Would you do this

to your own kids?

[Russell] I wouldn't let

my kids be sick.

I wouldn't let my kids suffer.

Trust me, I would not strike

any one of them with pain

to teach them some lesson.

[Russell] Scripture says

that we make the mistake

of thinking God was like us.

And the problem

is that scripture says

God is sovereign.

[Johnson] Perhaps the best way

to understand

God's sovereignty over evil

is to look at the cross.

In Acts 2:23,

we're told that

Christ was crucified

by the determinate counsel

and foreknowledge of God.

He planned it. He decreed it.

But that same verse

goes on to say

that Christ was crucified

by the hands of wicked men.

Were they responsible?

Were they guilty?

Yes, absolutely.

Did God decree it?

Was it part of His plan? Yes.

But He's not responsible

for the evil.

He gets the credit for

the goodness and glory

that came out of that evil act.

And that's how God

works sovereignly

even in the midst of evil.

He overrules it

for His own glory.

God ordains and wills

all things for our good.

[Johnson] In the

Westminster Confession of Faith,

for example, it affirms that God

has sovereignly decreed

whatsoever comes to pass.

[Russell] And that includes

ordaining suffering,

and calamity,

and disease, and death.

Any definition

of God's sovereignty

that allows for evil to exist

as a part

of His will and purpose

is an immoral definition

of sovereignty.

[Russell]

And you have to have

a fairly strong tolerance

for mystery

to find comfort in that.

[Paul Johnson]

In Isaiah 46 He says,

"I am God,

there is no one like Me,

declaring the end

from the beginning,"

which means he declared what

the end of all things would be

before the beginning of time.

And He says,

"And I will do all my pleasure,"

meaning, nothing that God

has ever planned or proposed

or willed

will ever be thwarted.

And He does not discipline us

as His children

by causing sickness to touch us;

that's not in the Bible.

[Dr. Lawson] But I think

of Job, for example.

Job was marked out to suffer

by the sovereign will of God.

Not because there was anything

wrong in his life,

but because there was everything

right about his life.

That's why he suffered.

[Katherine] With Ehlers-Danlos,

a lot of people have

a lot of severe, severe pain

and joint dislocation,

so I started

having problems there.

[Dr. Lawson] God was the one

who said to Satan,

"Have you considered

my servant Job?

There's none like Him."

[Katherine] I was withdrawing

from the pain medications

'cause I'd forget to take 'em,

because I was on too much.

Eventually ended up

on suicide watch.

And during that time

is when I really told God,

"Okay, look, I don't care

what You have to do,

You can humble me,

You can take my life

and turn it into whatever

You need it to be,

but I need You in control."

"God's in control."

The Bible doesn't teach that.

One of the hallmarks

of prosperity doctrine

is the notion

that Satan is sovereign.

We think that Satan needs God's

permission to attack us.

He doesn't need permission,

he's a jerk.

Did God need to give him

that authority,

or does Satan already have it?

It was the sovereign initiative

of God

that introduced Job

into this time

of extraordinary suffering

in which ten children

were killed in a day.

[Katherine] You know,

Job's wife says,

"Curse God and die."

But Job has an answer that

is very encouraging.

"Shall we receive good from God,

and shall we not accept evil?"

[Dr. Lawson]

And Job humbly responds

by saying, "The Lord gives,

the Lord takes away.

Blessed be the name

of the Lord."

Today, someone would say to Job,

"Job, you just

didn't have enough faith."

No, it was his faith that

put him into this suffering.

God's not sending the trial

your way to try you.

The Devil's a jerk.

[Johnson] Jesus told Peter,

"Satan has asked

to sift you like wheat."

But Jesus said,

"I prayed for you

that your faith will not fail."

You know, if you were Peter,

you'd be saying,

"Lord, you told him no, right?"

But that's not the case.

The Lord told him yes.

Peter was sifted like wheat,

Christ's prayer was answered,

his faith didn't fail.

[Katherine] I found out

that I also had POTS,

which is Postural Orthostatic

Tachycardia Syndrome.

Basically meaning,

every time I stood up,

my heart would race,

and I would sometimes pass out.

But it's what's been causing me

to have low oxygen,

I faint a lot,

I have low blood pressure

because of it,

I no longer sweat.

Philippians 1:29

in the New Testament says,

"It's been appointed unto us

not only to suffer

and to be persecuted,

but to believe."

Those are inseparably

bound together.

[Katherine] And then by August,

I developed

a really bad tremor.

And it turned out I had

severe spinal cord impingement

in my neck.

Four of my discs were pressing

on my spinal cord.

So I had to have

something called an

anterior cervical disc fusion.

And then, in April, I stopped

being able to swallow,

and I was given a tube

that went up through my nose

and into my stomach to feed me.

I had that for about a month.

But I wasn't able

to gain any weight,

because it turns out that not

only is my esophagus affected,

but my stomach is also

not working very well.

So we had to bypass my stomach.

And now, I'm fed directly

into my intestines,

so it bypasses my esophagus

and my stomach completely.

God has purposes

in our suffering:

to humble us,

to conform us

into the image of Christ,

to wean us off of the world,

to purify us,

to help us identify

with other people

who are suffering.

God does not use disease

to chasten us.

[Matt] What weak theologies

of suffering

and not talking about suffering

has done,

is it's really exposed

that most times

we're not really after

intimacy with God

but something else.

Send prosperity now,

in Jesus' name...

And we're hoping God will

give us that something else.

[Katherine]

You know, even though

I don't know all the answers,

even though I don't know

if I'll be able to eat again,

the difference is that I'm not

looking for answers.

I don't need to know the answer

to that question.

I'm not angry with God anymore.

Because I don't think

that He owes me anything.

I feel like He's given me

a wonderful life,

and I'm not even owed that.

And through all of the suffering

that I've had,

He's given me such comfort,

such peace, such joy,

that my life

is a thousand times better

than it was before.

If I could pick to go back

to that life before,

there's no way--

I don't even wanna go near

that other life.

I don't want anything

to do with it.

Because the life

I was living before

was so empty

compared to the life

that I have now.

Now, when I wake up every day,

I need God.

I need Him

to get through the day.

And through all that,

my life has gotten better

and not worse.

Even though to somebody

maybe on the outside

it looks worse, but it's not.

I have so much more

happiness now

than I ever did before.

[Paul Johnson] People often

ponder the question,

"Why does God let bad things

happen to good people?"

The truth is,

that's only happened once,

and that was Christ,

who voluntarily

gave His life on the cross.

So that the greatest evil

that ever occurred

was used by God

to bring about the greatest good

I can think of,

and that is the redemption

of sinners for His glory.

One of my favorite attributes

of God is--is God's patience.

And it means

God doesn't give you

what you immediately deserve.

What you deserve right now

at this very moment

is to be killed

and to be in hell

for all of eternity,

suffering His wrath

because of the way you rebel

against the God who made you.

So any good thing

that ever happens to us

is a kindness, a grace from God

that is meant to lead us

to repentance.

[Johnson] In fact, that's

the real difficult question:

"Why do good things

happen to bad people?"

[Robert] Now here was somebody,

in the case of Nabeel Qureshi,

thousands, maybe tens

of thousands of people

prayed for him.

He had a young wife and a child.

Faith healers pronounced that

they were confident that God

was going to heal him.

He had everything to live for.

He trusted in God intensely,

and yet, he was not healed.

Uh, not the best news.

The doctors have pretty much

given up on treating me.

Um, they think my body is in

its final stages of life.

[Robert]

I certainly think

that at the end,

he was taking

a very good attitude

toward the whole matter,

and was confident

in God's love for him

regardless of what occurred.

Lord, we know You are able.

Please heal.

Please come through.

But if it shouldn't

be Your will,

Your sovereign will

at the end of the day,

then I trust You,

and I love You anyway.

[Robert] God's purpose

in redemption, ultimately,

is that we become perfect

in body and soul,

that we're going to be sinless

and immortal

and glorious creatures

who are not going to be

suffering anymore

from pain, illness,

and certainly not death.

But that's not now.

Right now, we live

in an awkward in-between time

in which we've been redeemed

from our sins

through faith in Jesus Christ,

and we have the assurance

of that full salvation,

that full redemption of our body

in the resurrection to come.

[Justin] If I have to live

the rest of my life

with cerebral palsy,

that's fine.

I've got all of eternity

to live without it.

Now please pray

that my daughter would be okay,

my wife would be okay.

Please pray for my family,

my mother, my father, my sister.

[Robert] Nabeel is not with us

anymore.

But I believe that if he were,

he would want us to learn

from what had happened.

He would want us to reflect.

He would want us to go back

to the New Testament.

He'd want us to read it

more carefully.

He'd want us

to understand better

what the Bible teaches

about faith and healing.

[Matt] I want to pray,

with faith,

that God would heal me

and heal others,

and expect Him to do so,

all the while,

while holding open hands,

knowing that the will

of the Lord will be done.

You know, I kinda base that

on the fiery furnace,

you know, Nebuchadnezzar going,

"We're going to throw you

in the flames."

And you remember the response?

The response was,

"Our God can save us,

He will save us,

and even if He doesn't..."

I mean, I'm telling you,

that passage for me,

18 months of chemo,

high-dose radiation,

to think He can, He will,

and even if He doesn't,

He's still God.

I think it's okay for us

to still want to be healed

and to still ask to be healed.

I just think that we have

to be careful

not to let it be our priority.

Above everything, what we need

is spiritual healing.

We need atonement for our sin,

healing in the soul.

In our pursuit of all

that this world has to offer,

our hands are so full

that we have no room now

for the gospel.

Maybe the bottom line is this:

is Christianity Jesus plus?

[Dr. Kim] And so perhaps

this is an opportunity for us to

get rid...

get rid of everything

that's covering up the gospel.

And to capture again

the gospel in all of its purity

and beauty.

[Dr. Lawson] There could not be

a more solemn charge than this

to preachers

of the word of God:

Preach the word.

[Mark] If there's some part

of the Bible

that you don't understand

how it connects to the gospel,

that's a part of the Bible

you're not ready to preach yet.

[Piper] Oh, how I pray

that America would be purged

of the health, wealth

and prosperity gospel.

And that the Christian Church

would be marked by

suffering for Christ.

We're to suffer well,

to serve faithfully,

and to sacrifice for the gospel.

[David]

But if Christianity

is just Jesus,

then we need to learn

to be content

in every circumstance.

[Katherine] I'm not

any better physically,

but I am so much happier.

Because I have Jesus,

and He's right here.

Because the gospel

is not Jesus plus anything;

the gospel is just plain Jesus.

I risked leading

so many other souls

down the same path.

And so, because of that,

I want to tell as many people

as I can... [sniffles]

not only how false it is,

but what the truth is.

[Rev. John MacArthur]

Every sin ever committed

by every person

who has ever lived

will be punished.

That is required

by divine holiness

and divine righteousness

and divine justice.

It will either be punished

everlastingly

in the life of the sinner,

or that punishment

will be borne by Christ.

His death is sufficient

to pay for all your sins.

Trust in Jesus Christ.

Abandon all hope

in your good works.

Abandon all hope

in your religiosity...

and trust in the person

and work of Christ alone.

[Nabeel] I think now,

as I consider

all the Christians I know

and their hesitations

to share the gospel,

I think it has to do

with a lot of factors.

A lot of it's just fear

of how others might receive us,

how others might reject us.

But I still think

that's horridly un-Christian,

because the Bible tells us

that we've not been given

a spirit of fear,

but a spirit of power and love.

I mean, what are we afraid of.

If someone rejects us,

they're not really rejecting us,

they're rejecting the gospel.

It's a result of not

seeing death all around us.

If we saw death more frequently,

we would be much more quick

to tell people,

"Hey, this death is real.

And there's something

we need to wrestle with

before we get there,

before it's too late."

[closing theme music]