No Longer the Final Stand

When Brannon Howse approached me to have a radio show, I was kind of hesitant at first. This is not something that I ever wanted to do. It never entered my mind. It was never anything I was striving for. But when he offered me a weekly half hour radio show where I can discuss some of these issues I’ve been exploring on Twitter, I thought, hey, you know what? This could be a good opportunity to force me to study these issues and make sure that I actually understand what it is that I believe. And then I can share some of these things that I’m learning with you, the audience.

Now some of you may know me as Jeff The GK on Twitter. I know that James White and Phil Johnson for sure know who I am, as they have publicly ridiculed me many, many times. So if you want to see some of that, you can go onto Twitter yourself and see some of the loving terms that these men of God have bestowed upon me. But you can also take a look at what I’ve said, and you can see, you know what? Who’s right and who’s wrong? Do I agree with Jeff, do I not agree with Jeff?

Here’s the thing: If you’re on Twitter, follow me. If you’re listening to my show, if you see something that I post on Twitter, and you have a question or a concern or a very strong disagreement, I beg of you: tell me. Tweet me! Share it with me! I try to respond to everybody who tweets at me. I try to take the time to discuss the issues. And here’s why: I don’t want to just drop a bomb and say, “Hey, this is what I believe, take it or leave it!” Because if I say something, I should be able to back it up. I should be able to withstand criticism of my beliefs. And, so, if you’re on Twitter, and you have an issue with something I say, confront me, tell me, share it with me and I will be more than happy to discuss it with you.

Now, my focus isn’t going to be on calling out the Charismatics, necessarily or on things that are happening outside of the church. Or on confronting the Word of Faith, Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, and all those crazy whackos out there that are just a bunch of scam artists that are being investigated by the FBI. No, those are easy targets! Anybody with a brain and God’s Word know that they’re wrong, and that they are leading people to eternal damnation in hell. That’s the easy target!

Now, I’m not saying that the ministries that focus on them are bad. They’re not! They need to be exposed. They need to be proven false. The people that are under those people’s teaching are going to hell, more than likely, and need to be evangelized to because they have a false sense of salvation. So I commend the people that are confronting those false teachers.

However, there are less ministries and radio shows that focus on the heresies and the theological error within the mainstream conservative, evangelical, Bible teaching Christianity. And we’ve seen a lot of that more recently, especially dealing with this whole Interfaith Dialogue thing.

I am very, very concerned because certain ministries that I used to think were the final stand against theological error are beginning to compromise. As I’m talking to more and more people in the know behind the scenes who are friends with a lot of these guys, it’s even more concerning, because there’s this entire eco-system within the Conservative Calvinistic Reformed Church. There’s the speaking circuit, where you can earn thousands and thousands of dollars for giving one or two sermons in a weekend. There’s millions of dollars at stake when it comes to selling books. I mean, there’s Bible teaching ministries… Bible teaching ministries that are bringing in $20 million a year, and if you look them up online they’ve got $10-$15 million dollars just sitting in the bank. Millions of dollars!

And what’s beginning to happen is truth is beginning to be combined with error, and these churches and ministries are beginning to compromise because now it’s their friends that are in error. It’s no longer crazy obvious! It’s no longer, “Well, he’s a good guy, and he’s a bad guy.” It’s now, “Well, he’s a good guy. But, man, that was heretical! That was unbiblical!” And then you have these Bible believing, Bible teaching ministries that are giving them a pass because of who they are and who they know, not based on what they are saying. Do you see how wrong this could be?

These are some serious times and serious issues that we need to deal with.

This has been transcribed from Episode 1 of The GateKeepers Radio show, which originally aired on the WorldView Weekend Radio Network.