You know, I've never even met Andrew in person.

The one thing I've picked up on is everybody picks on the man, and so here's everybody else.

No, no, see, I think, I think he's an innocent victim of just ruthless people who harshly judge him.

He just seems to me so innocent.

I don't know.

I need to meet him to find out.

But, yeah, that's just my impression.

He'll have to tell me whether whether I'm right or not.

That's hilarious.

Wow.

I don't trust.

I don't trust Chris's opinion.

It.

I mean, this is Apologetics Live.

To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rapaport.

Well, we are live Apologetics live here to answer your most challenging questions that you may have about God and the Bible.

We, we here can answer any question whatsoever you have about God in the Bible.

If you doubt that, well, it's very simple to give a challenge.

Just go to apologeticslive.com go there, scroll down to the duck icon, and you will be able to join us.

Ask me your most difficult question that you have.

Just remember one slight thing.

I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

This is a Ministry of Striving for Eternity.

We are here to not only do apologetics, teach apologetics.

And the voice you heard there in the intro, I've been waiting for a long time to have him on just so I could play that clip for him, but.

But I will.

Welcome in Israel.

Wayne.

How are you, sir?

Hey, brother.

It is great to be on your show.

We've played that clip many times ever since you said it.

So now you get to me.

That was from the deep archives.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I, I've.

When I realized, I was like, oh, wait, I got that clip.

I have, I got.

I have to play that one.

Awesome.

So it has been, it's, it's been actually many years since you've been on.

You were here many years ago.

I was not there that time.

And so therefore, that's some of the background of that clip.

But for folks who may not remember way back when, who, who don't remember all the archives and, and tonight's topic, I shouldn't mention this, but so tonight, what, what we did, you put a post on Facebook about Mark Driscoll, and Mark Driscoll is one who is starting to get a little bit more attention because he is now getting involved with Turning Point usa, which has a lot of attention ever since Charlie Kirk's death.

You put a kind of A timeline of Mark Driscoll.

And that's what we'd like to talk tonight.

But before we do, maybe it'd be good for folks to know who you are.

So if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself to folks.

Sure.

Well, I am an author and conference speaker.

I have spent most of my life working in the Christian publishing industry, a lot of it kind of behind the desk on the publishing side.

But then I also have been a conference speaker and writer as well.

Been full time with that since about 2013.

So last 12 years or so I've been full time, but I've been doing conference speaking writing for over 30 years and have a Christian worldview and apologetics website called ChristianWorldView.net that I've been the site editor and founder of that website for, you know, many years, 20, 25 years, something like that.

Have a ministry called Family Renewal and have written on a number of topics.

I'm kind of known in the homeschool space, so I've written and spoken in a lot of those kinds of events as well as parenting.

My wife and I have 11 children.

So when you have that many children, people hope you're an expert on parenting.

So we get to talk about parenting a lot, but also have written a few theological books.

I have a couple of books called Questions God Asks, which is based on 19 questions in the Old Testament that God asked people.

And then the sequel, Questions Jesus asks, which is 20 questions in the New Testament that Jesus asked people.

And my two latest projects were a high school Bible doctrine and theology curriculum which was published by Master Books.

It was like a 36 week, 180 lesson course for high school, kind of an introduction to systematic theology.

And then most recently wrote a contemporary language catechism, which is really based on all the historic catechisms, but just with more updated English and with more Bible verses than what many catechisms put together that was called Foundational Truth.

So it's kind of a quick overview of my work and my ministry.

I will say that this recent post that I did on Facebook about Mark Driscoll was kind of out of character for what I do.

I'm not like one of these discernment ministries.

I'm not one of these folks makes a living kind of going after Christian leaders or exposing, you know, heretics or whatever.

That's not my niche.

That's not what I do.

I just felt really compelled as someone who has watched Mark's career really since the early 2000s, so 20, 25 years, something like that, has read some of his books and, and just kind of followed.

Watched his career for a long time.

I think a lot of people are being introduced to him now.

There are lots of viral videos that are going out on social media, and a lot of people just aren't familiar with him, don't know his backstory.

And a lot of the content that he puts out there on social media looks good, and so people are sharing it and they're being encouraged by it.

But I have concerns about this person's character, and I should say up front, I don't know Mark Driscoll in person.

We've never met, and I don't have any personal vendetta against him or I don't wish him ill or anything like that.

But I do think it's important for people to have some facts, have some information, and know a bit more about this person who's kind of getting a new lease on life in terms of a popular career, particularly being platformed by Turning Point USA very recently.

Yeah.

And that's what I was impressed with, with your article.

So I should say, for the record, I don't know much of Mark Driscoll.

I followed him.

I wasn't part of the young, restless and reformed.

I was too old and.

Too old to be restless.

Yeah.

So, you know, I, I really.

This is going to sound bad.

We'll probably, we will get into it.

But I only knew Mark Driscoll as the cursing pastor.

Okay.

That's.

That was the thing.

Like, he, he, he found his niche, but he was really well known for being the guy that was using foul language at a pulpit.

And I, I just, it turned me off because I, I was like, if, if I want to be known for anything, the last thing I want to be known for is using foul language at the pulpit.

Now, there's been others who have done that, but they didn't try to make it.

That's what they do.

And it seemed that that's what Mark did.

So I just, I've always just kind of stayed away.

You know, there's, There's a podcast, the Fallen Rise of Mars Hill.

You can go listen to that.

It's several episodes.

You know, you're, you, you always have to take these things, though, Israel, with a grain of salt.

Right.

Because the people that are producing it.

Are.

Sometimes, especially if they've, if they were hurt by the ministry, they have an ax to grind.

And so, so you take that.

I, I saw your, your article and, and I think that personal.

This is on your, your page, right?

Yes, my author page.

Do you have a personal Facebook page?

And then I have a.

An author page.

So the author page is facebook.com and then forward slash, Israel Wayne, author.

So facebook.com forward slash, Israel Wayne, author.

By now it's probably five or six posts deep.

Somebody can still find it if they want to go there and scroll down and see the actual post.

But yeah, I posted it on my author page.

Yeah.

And I'm just gonna bring this up on screen for folks, although we won't be able to read it here.

But I just want to.

I want to just show it's.

It's quite a lengthy article.

Okay.

And I'm just showing this so you could see the, the length of it if you are looking for it.

There's a picture of.

Of there of Mark Driscoll, young Mark Driscoll that you had.

You're very kind to him, not giving some, some, you know, picture where he looks older.

But yeah, I didn't take his mug shot.

Yeah, he doesn't have one.

Yeah.

But.

But I think that the thing that, that I saw, I saw your, your article come up or your post, and I read through it and went, you know, I thought that the way you handled it was factual, not with an ax to grind, but it was just, hey, there's some concern.

Here's why.

Here's.

Here's the history.

And I read it and was like, you know, this might make a good discussion because I have been asked by several people ever since Turning Point USA decided to have him, you know, join them, you know, either on stage or with, with one of their events.

His name started coming up.

Okay.

I know of one incident with him that left me with a bad taste in my mouth that I know of personally.

I'll get to that, I'm sure, later on.

But could you.

I mean, basically, I mean, almost may walk through your article or not, but just give us, give us the history.

What.

Why were you concerned with it?

And, and then with, you know, him just Turning Point USA kind of having him on with them.

And then let's walk through this timeline that you provided and where the concerns start to.

To occur.

Absolutely.

So the story really begins in 1990, when Mark Driscoll was 19 years old and he professed faith in Christ.

And then you move from 19 to the age of 25.

And at the age of 25, Mark Driscoll says that he, along other guys, started a church in Seattle, Washington that later became Mars Hill, which was a.

A large mega church.

And I think it's important to differentiate just for confusion sake.

Some people associate.

There was another church in Grand Rapids, Michigan area that was pastored by Rob Bell, who is a heretic.

And that church was also called Mars Hill, but was not connected.

These are two unrelated churches.

So just for clarity's sake, and you know, we just want people to be confused that those were two separate churches, not part of the same network, not connected in any way.

Yeah.

And for clarity, for clarity, because you call.

You called Rob Bell a heretic.

Right.

We want to clarify why.

Why making such a thing.

Rob Bell denies hell.

Okay.

That's kind of his start into really getting well known.

He did these really, you know, flashy videos.

This is going back.

Oh, got to be like 15 years ago.

Yeah.

Early 2000s, and flashy videos that really attracted the young people.

Denying hell and then later just denying the faith altogether.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

Pretty much became a spiritual advisor, I think, for Oprah Winfrey when he moved out to California.

But, yeah, promoting universalism.

And he just was always very squishy with his theology.

He talked about in one of his earlier books before people were really, you know, willing to just call him an all out heretic.

But one of his books was called Velvet Elvis.

And in that book he talked about theology.

And he said that theology is like a brick where you take each doctrinal point and you sort of stack them on top of each other and you make a wall of theology.

And he said the problem with walls, brick walls, is that if they fall on you, like, you can get hurt.

And so he said, thinking of theology like a lot of doctrinal bricks that you stack together and make a wall.

He said we need to think of doctrines as being springs on a trampoline that can flex with time and with culture.

And so for those of us who are concerned with doctrinal accuracy, that obviously sounds very relative, which it was.

And so even in the early Rob Bell works, you know, you could see things that were concerning.

But there was this whole emergent church movement that was happening in the early 2000s.

And so Mark Driscoll kind of gets connected with that, and he becomes one of the faces in that discussion.

And the emergent church movement was a movement of people saying, we live in a postmodern culture, and so we need to worship in a post modern context, and we need to learn how to present the gospel through postmodern lenses and basically postmodernized Christianity.

And that's obviously deeply troubling.

But.

But with this original church that Mark starts out in Seattle, he later wrote that the very first week that he was ever a member of a church, he was the senior pastor of that church.

He had never been a member of any kind of Christian church until he starts one.

I didn't know the senior pastor of the church.

I did not know that and that really.

So I've.

There's a thing I've said for many years.

My first pastor, when I told him I had thought maybe I might be called to ministry, he had, he had advice for me.

I didn't understand how wise it was at the time.

He said, learn to sit in the pew first.

And I didn't understand that till I got to seminary and realized so many of the guys in seminary, they go to high school, they go to college with the plan of going to seminary.

They.

They get a.

Maybe a Bible college or get a Bible degree, undergraduate, they go into seminary and go right into ministry.

But they've always been on.

On that trajectory of leadership.

Even my pastor, when he got saved, he got saved later in life, he was mid to late 20s or 30s, and he got saved and then went.

Right.

Actually, it must have been in his 20s.

But he, he was just seen right away as being a leader and he didn't have a college to degree.

So he went and they, you know, he got saved and shortly after, he's off into Bible college, seminary, and then into the pastorate.

And so I've always said that that's one of the problems that I see is that people never.

Many pastors never learn to sit in the pew.

And I mean, a good example of it was when I was.

I was going to.

I went to a conference.

It was a Wednesday, it was a.

No, Tuesday.

And we, we were.

Went to a conference, four of us, four pastors to a pastor's conference.

It was on Tuesday up upstate New Jersey.

And now we're driving back.

And it was the first time they experienced Jersey traffic.

And one of the pastors was like, man, this is.

This ride home has taken so long.

I just want to go home and go to sleep.

And the other guy goes, you know, if this is what all of my members experience every day, no wonder that it's so hard to get them out on Wednesday night for prayer meeting.

And I, like, sat there going like, they've never.

It never dawned on them.

Right, right, for sure.

You know, and so it says a lot if he was.

If he walks in and is instantly a member, I mean, a pastor, you know, before being a member.

Yeah, totally.

And so this is a guy who really wasn't discipled in a significant way, and he's thrown into a leadership role.

And, you know, this is back when the Seeker Friendly movement, this is 1996, Bill Hybels and the Seeker Friendly movement out of Willow Creek in Chicago had really kind of taught churches how to follow a formula to blow up and to become mega churches very quickly.

And so there was just a lot of emphasis on charisma and on just being an attractive personality as opposed to doctrinal substance and.

And really getting your ecclesiology right, you know.

So, Mark, the first trouble that he kind of gets in, we don't find out about until much later, but around 2000, 2001, he goes on social media, early social media, online, particularly these, like, discussion boards that they used to have before there was Facebook and all of that.

And he was this pseudonymous William Wallace II and just trolled the Internet under this pseudonym, making a lot of disparaging comments, women making a lot of crude comments related to the LGBTQ community.

Those comments got exposed years later.

Somehow people were able to identify that that was his account.

And then, you know, it came out.

And I think, in one sense, very few people would have been that concerned about it from the standpoint of, you know, hey, a lot of guys in their late twenties are out trolling the Internet.

But he was a pastor at this time.

You know, he's the senior pastor of a.

Of a church, a growing church, and he's using his time in that way.

It's not pastoral.

And so that is kind of a retro scandal that came out later.

But then the biggest exposure to him that.

Here's how I remember, I had already heard of him.

I was already kind of familiar with him.

But in the early 2000s, I was reading these books that were coming out in the emergent church movement.

One of the biggest ones that came out at that time was a book called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.

This is 2003.

And Donald Miller was kind of exploring his story about going.

Being a Christian and going to one of the most liberal college campuses and how he was trying to figure out faith.

And Donald Miller, you know, did not come across as being a very grounded person theologically at all.

But he talked about how he went to Morris Hill and.

And Mark Driscoll was his pastor.

And he's the one who really kind of coined the phrase the cussing pastor.

And he told anecdotes and stories of Mark Driscoll's very colorful language, particularly, I mean, not just off stage, but even in his sermons, that he could be rather Profane in his preaching, in his sermons.

And it was 2009 that the new York Times magazine described him as qu.

Coolest style and the fullest.

I'm sorry, sort of the coolest style and the foulest mouth of any preacher you've ever seen.

And so this is how the world began to know this guy.

And of course it's edgy and it's kind of hip and it's sort of Seattle, right?

You had the whole grunge rock scene coming out of there in the 1990s, all the Nirvanas and Green Days and all these kind of bands that were known for being kind of west, Northwest Pacific.

And so they're attracting a lot of this young unchurched crowd.

And I believe it was really through John Piper that Mark started to kind of break away from the emergent crowd because he was sort of, you know, just in that crowd because he's that age and he's hip and he's progressive and he's edgy and all that.

But John Piper noticed him, kind of took him under a little bit and tried to disciple him again after he's been a pastor for a long time.

And that's when he sort of shifted from that into what was called the young, restless and reformed camp, which he's now completely repudiated.

He has said that Calvinism is false teaching.

And he's really gone more into, he would call it a continuationist perspective, but he's now anti Calvinistic.

He's also very, I would.

I would say pushing, you know, trying to enter into the charismatic world.

It seems to me, very possibly, you know, it's again, it's a loose umbrella like who's in and who's out of this.

But I would say in many ways there.

There's a lot of similarities between some of the things that he's saying in the new Apostolic Reformation.

And we'll get to some of the associations that he had later that.

That are kind of connected and tied into that world.

But.

But yeah, just kind of had this.

This controversial vibe as a pastor.

And then he got brought in with the Gospel Coalition.

He ended up platforming TD Jakes.

I think it was he and James McDonald from Harvest Bible Chapel who.

They have kind of gotten in trouble a times.

But they, they brought TD Jakes on the Gospel Coalition.

The Elephant Room was what it was called.

It was like a.

Of online TV show to try to convince evangelical.

The evangelical world that TD Jakes was solid on the doctrine of the Trinity.

Because T.D.

jakes traditionally had been aligned with modalism as like a oneness Pentecostal.

And for whatever reason, it seemed like James McDonald and, and Mark Driscoll wanted to kind of more mainstream TD Jakes.

And so they had him on, asked him some questions and sort of said, well, it sounds to me like he's trinitarian.

And, you know, that was an odd moment, honestly, and just, you know, you had to wonder about their motives a little bit.

But 2011, he ends up.

And, And Andrew, feel free to jump in at any point if there's anything you want to comment on.

On related to any of this.

I will.

When we get to what is around 2013, I'm going to jump in.

Strange fire.

Yep.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, we'll.

We'll definitely talk about that.

So 2011, he uploads this video to YouTube called I see Things.

And he talks about how God gives him visions.

And he says there are people who just have the ability to see things.

And he said, when I see things, it's almost like a screen comes up and I see things, things that I can't know naturally.

And he says he's had times where he has seen as he's counseling someone like them being sexually molested as a child.

And he's told them, hey, I just had a vision of you being sexually molested as a child by this person.

Do you remember this event?

They'll say, no, I was too young.

I don't remember it.

And he'll say, go to this person and ask them about it.

And, you know, they'll, They'll.

They'll confirm that what I'm saying is true.

And according to Mark's story, these people walk up and say, hey, when I was this age, you know, one, two years old, whatever, did you do this to me?

Did you touch me like this?

And they say, yes, I did that.

Which, you know, when you think about the reality of a situation like that, just the flippancy with which somebody's gonna nonchalantly own up to something that someone was too young to remember, you know, realizing that this was.

Will probably ruin their reputation in society.

And, you know, I guess with statutes of limitations passed, maybe there's not still the legal threat, but just the fact that they'll be disgraced for being a child molester, the fact that according to Mark's narrative, they're like, yeah, yeah, I did that.

That just doesn't ring right.

He also gives very graphic and explicit descriptions of visions that he's had of people having illicit sex in a hotel room.

And he describes what the room look like and what they're doing and so forth.

And it's just disturbing, right?

But he claims that these are visions that God has given to him.

And from a theological standpoint, we don't have any scriptural substantiation for our basis for those kinds of claims.

But it's just, if you know something about the holiness and the nature of God, why would God be giving Mark Driscoll pornographic visions to watch?

And having all of that go through his mind and having that be a gift from God somehow, a spiritual gift from Lord, that just doesn't ring, right?

That does not.

That's not biblically sound.

And so the question then is if he.

If he.

He's either lying, right, about having these visions just to make himself sound super spiritual, to make it sound like, hey, I've got this inside track with God.

God shows me things about people, you know, to maybe build his credibility or create a aura of fear or something like that, that people respect him or.

Or whatever.

So he's either lying about it or if he is seeing these visions, it sounds more demonic to me.

This is not something the spirit of Christ would be sending and so hugely problematic.

2011 to 2013.

Let's.

Let's stay on that for a moment.

Because it.

What does get me.

What is.

And maybe it's because of years of studying the cults and, you know, men like Joseph Smith, that it just.

And you see this even in.

In scripture, where the false teachers, they always seem to gravitate toward sexual things.

And, you know, as you're explaining it and as I've heard from him, with some of these supposed things where it just.

You're right.

It's odd because I.

It doesn't sound right as the way you worded it.

Someone's gonna just admit, yeah, I did that to you, right?

It.

But the fact that, that he.

This is the other thing that doesn't sound right to me is someone who just comes out and says this to a person.

It's.

Now, I get that he thinks it's from God, but here's the thing.

And you know, you.

You know, this Israel, right?

There's plenty of people who.

There's all these Heavenly tourism books is what a friend of mine, Jim Osman, calls them, right?

This idea that, oh, you know, I went to heaven and, you know, people that God speaks to them all the time, right?

I mean, it's, you know, Jesse Duplantis, who.

I always amazes me the creativity.

But he supposedly takes a cable car up to see God and yeah, Jesus was depressed and he clears his schedule so he could be with Jesus and comfort Jesus.

I mean, just the blasphemy of that.

But when you see these people that do this over and over and over, I think there is this point of saying, hey, you can't.

You can't criticize me because God speaks to me.

Does he speak to you?

No.

Oh, well, he speaks to me.

So I think that one side of it, it gives this.

There's a spiritual authority that they get with this to prevent people from criticizing them.

It also is a thing of.

Also could be.

I'm saying could be because I don't know his heart.

Right.

But it is the case with.

With people in general that there's could be a spiritual pride of.

Well, I know something you don't know.

We see this in.

In many people, so it could be either one.

But it.

It does kind of bother me that these guys that gravitate toward the.

The sexual sins that they focus on, I can't.

I'm.

I'm not saying I know.

Know what's in his heart, but it just.

It makes me wonder if this is the.

The what's coming out of his mouth is from what's within his heart.

You know, I, I would just be willing to guess that if we really dug into his life, there's probably more there that we.

That just hasn't been made public.

I mean, this was.

We.

We found this out with Ravi Zacharias after he passed.

Passed, Right.

That.

Right.

There was a whole lot.

And folks want.

You go back on.

On this show years ago, after Ravi passed, when we talked about it and, and I explained, see, many people think, oh, it's so.

It's such a shame that Ravi had.

Had done this at the later part of his life.

No, Ravi did this in the beginning of his life.

He started his ministry on a lie that he had had a PhD from a university and taught at that university.

The university themselves came out and said it wasn't true.

But when you start off with a lie and you get people that affirm you and, you know, Israel, you may not know the story, but I told this on the show in the past was I happened to be at an airport and was sitting next to a guy, start trying to evangelize him.

And, and it was kind of interesting because I go to give him a Gospel tract, and his response was, I'm on the board of Ravi Zacharias Ministries.

As if, like, that means I'm automatically saved or something.

So since he said that, I'M like, well, okay, I'm going to change gears then.

And I outright asked him about the fact that Ravi lied about his degree, lied about teaching, had financial, you know, had embezzled from the ministry.

And.

And this guy who claimed he was on the board of Ravi Zacharias Ministries turned to me and says.

I said, you know, have you confronted him?

And he's like, well, you have to understand that he's having such an impact on the world.

We wouldn't want to tarnish that.

And it's like, now that we see after what happened after he died, guess what?

He's.

He's more tarnished now now, like, maybe if you would have corrected him when he was alive, right.

The ministry wouldn't have been destroyed after because it was a real shame and a, you know, tarnishing of.

Of Christians and.

And a lot of people that were involved in that ministry whose reputations got tarnished just because they were part of it.

Right, and so I think that you're hitting on something there, you know.

Right.

Just the fact that.

Fact that this is.

This is kind of probably the outpouring of his heart.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right there.

And I can think of a lot of explanations that might explain these visions that he's telling people that he had.

I can't think of any good explanations.

Like, all of them are kind of equally disturbing, you know, wherever we go with that.

And what were some of the explanations he gave.

I'm sorry, what are the explanations he gave that he gave for.

For.

They said that the explanations weren't.

Weren't that great.

I can think of some.

Oh, just.

Okay.

I can think of some myself, but none of the explanations that I can think of are good explanations.

They're all problematic.

Okay.

You know, they're all.

They're all troubling, whichever one we land on.

Is it that he's just prideful?

Is it that he's completely deceiving and lying?

Is it that he actually has had visions and they're somehow demonically inspired?

Like, there's different ways, I think, that we can interpret what's happening, you know, as he have having some kind of a mental breakdown?

You know, whatever it is, I don't think any of them trace back to this being from the Spirit of God.

It's not the nature of who the Holy Spirit is and the kind of thing that the Holy Spirit would be exposing someone's mind to.

So, so with that, let me.

Let me.

Problem for the audience.

And this is what we do on the show when someone makes a point that's, that needs to be pointed out so people see what you just did.

I, I like to point that out.

And, and so folks, listen to what Israel just said.

There is.

He's looking at someone who's claiming to speak for God, comparing what they're saying, looking at, at the, the character of the claims, looking at the what's being said.

If it's not in line, align with Scripture, if it's not aligned in the way that Israel just said it with the character of God, then you have to start to question that.

In fact, if it's in line in Scripture, you absolutely have to question that.

And so when you have.

Well, I'm not known for not getting in trouble, but for anyone who likes the books, I'm trying to remember the author who wrote.

But Jesus.

Jesus Calling is the book.

I forget her name offhand.

Sarah Young.

Sarah Young.

Thank you.

And I remember I was on, I was on a plane once, and I'm sitting with, next to this young lady and she's got a whole bunch of stickers on her laptop.

Truth matters, Theology matters.

And I'm like, oh, this might be like, is going to be a good conversation.

So I start talking to her and she claims to be a Christian.

And then she pulls out Jesus Christ Calling, as if this is like, to show what a good Christian she is.

She goes, I read this every day.

And I said, do you know it's demonic?

And she went, what?

And I opened to the, her inner copy to the intro where the, the author, Sarah Young, explains that she just, you know, the spirit just overtakes her.

And, and that's who wrote the book.

I said, so first off, this is either scripture because God wrote it, or it's, it's demonic because a demon wrote it.

It's either that or she's lying.

Right?

Right.

But when you look at what's said in there, it denies what scripture clearly says, therefore it can't be from God.

And so, folks, I want you to pick up what, what Israel did there is.

It's not just, it's.

He's not just sitting here and saying, well, he's just being demonic because I don't like what he's saying.

He's comparing what's being said to scripture and the character of God and then making the comparison.

So it's an important point.

I just wanted to highlight that.

So continue.

Sorry.

Yeah, so of course, the way that we know the nature and character of God and who he is and what he's like is by knowing how he's revealed himself in the 66 Books of Holy Scripture.

So the more that you know the word of God, the more you know the God of the word and the more you know his name, nature and character.

You know, whether these types of behaviors that people are claiming are from God are consonant with his nature.

And in this case, it just doesn't pass the test.

So there are several categories with Mark Driscoll that I find troubling.

One is of course, the character issue.

We already kind of spoke to that a little bit of him trolling online, you know, as a 20 something, you know, just, just, just not being pastoral.

We could kind of give him a pass there.

But what happens is you start to see several different slices.

So there's the character aspect of him just not being a godly person in the way that he responds to things, the way that he handles and conducts himself.

There's financial scandal and then there is false teaching.

And so we have kind of all of these things happening with Mark Driscoll's career.

And so the financial thing comes in next, where Mark Driscoll's church, Mars Hill, started this global missions fund in 2009 that was run for, you know, most of a decade.

But there was a lawsuit that happened in 2016 where the lawsuit claimed that that of the $2.3 million that were donated between 2011 and 2013, within about a two year span, only about 120,000 of the 2.3 million made it overseas.

So it's a global missions fund and you know, 120,000 of 2.3 million actually makes it to the work.

And the rest got folded into the general missions fund, or sorry, the general, General church fund in Seattle.

And so there's financial scandals that end up happening with Mars Hill, several of them that Mark is very directly connected to.

And that of course is, is, is problematic as well.

So the next one that, that is kind of tied in with this is where does that money go that gets rolled into the general missions or the general church fund?

We know where some of it works went in 2011.

Mark had written a book that was called Real Marriage.

And he wanted to get this book on the New York Times bestseller list.

Now a lot of people I've worked in Christian publishing my whole life, my whole adult career.

And so I know how this works.

But a lot of people don't know that the New York Times bestseller list usually doesn't happen organically.

There's sort of a game that you play and the way that the Game gets played is it used to be that there were certain brick and mortar bookstores that would carry your books, and they would rate the New York Times bestseller list, would rate sales from these particular bookstores.

So marketing firms figured out how to game the system.

So on a launch day, they would go in on launch day and say, we want to buy, you know, several thousand copies of this book on day one in all these stores across the United States, in these key stores that New York Times looks at.

And then when they get this spike of sales on the launch date, it games the system and the book shoots up to New York Times.

Well, you have to have a lot of money to be able to buy thousands of copies of your own book.

And so Mark Driscoll hired a media company to do this for him, to purchase copies of his real marriage book to shoot it to the New York Times bestseller list, which is fair enough.

I mean, it's just.

It's a stupid thing.

It's gaming the system, right?

It's not technically immoral or unethical.

It's.

It's shady, I think.

But you're, you know, you're not breaking a law.

It is not a sin to do it.

But here's what happened.

He took $200,000 of church funds, reportedly, I'm going to say, reportedly, allegedly.

A lot stories that came out in the media, right?

So reportedly, allegedly, mark Driscoll takes $200,000 of church money, church funds to buy copies of his book, which reportedly, allegedly, he's getting the royalties for, not the church.

The church isn't getting paid for the sales of his books.

He's personally profiting and.

And benefiting from the sales of these books.

But it was not widely known that he had taken church funds to do this.

And so later, when it was researched, one research group said that they thought Mark probably made about a half million dollars from the sales of those books, as well as just the additional publicity that even the scandal created that it boosted even more sales.

The publisher did later remove New York Times bestseller.

They had come out with copies with that on it.

They had to remove that because it was exposed that he had.

Had not only gamed the system, but he'd not done it with his own money.

And so, you know, these are the kinds of things that it just.

People began to raise an eyebrow, like, what.

What is this guy's thing?

You know, what's his deal?

And so.

And that book, Real Marriage talks.

It's about marriage, so he talks a lot about sex, but there's a Lot of things in there that are difficult.

How can I put this?

The way that he talks about the marriage relationships.

At points and at times it's great.

At points and times it's fine.

But he talks about men who commit adultery, for example, and in a video series that he did, talking about the Real marriage book, he talked about how a lot of Christian women let themselves go physically and that oftentimes these men have affairs.

And he says, like, I'm not blaming the woman for the fact that the man had an affair of.

But, you know, she's not necessarily helping him.

So it's like he says, I'm not blaming the woman.

But then he low key blames the woman for having an affair.

Was.

Was he the one?

I forget if he was the first one that started doing the Song of Solomon's Sermon series that, that were really described as pornographic.

I forget.

I don't think he was the one.

There was.

There was a guy who.

I remember seeing a video.

I forget who was that.

That had his.

It might have been Bill Hybels or.

But.

But had their.

Had the bed on the.

The roof of the church with a camera on it.

And he and his wife were gonna spend like a month sleeping on the roof and having it, you know, all videoed.

So you can like as.

As part of his Song of Solomon series.

Oh, wow.

I don't remember that detail.

I'm not sure who that was, but.

I can't remember who it was.

But like, it was the whole series.

The book, the series.

It's cringy at points.

And, you know, he basically says that, like, it gives advice at one point that if a.

A woman doesn't feel comfortable, and I apologize if we have children listening, maybe have them go somewhere else.

But.

But that there are situations where a woman doesn't feel comfortable giving her husband oral sex.

He says if that's the case with you, then you need to repent to your husband and, and, you know, just do that.

But yeah, he's very graphic in a lot of his descriptions.

His descriptions of women where he'll say like a smoking hot wife or things like that.

A lot of women felt that he was objectifying women with some of his statements.

And again, he holds to a traditional view of marriage.

One man, one woman.

He's not open to LGBTQ stuff.

He is not pretty.

Promote fornication before marriage.

So, you know, he's within orthodoxy in terms of biblical definition of marriage and those things, but very racy, very provocative language that he uses to crass and Crude, I would say.

But it seems like, again, the, the, the, the sexual thing coming up again.

Right, right.

Just.

It seems to be something on his mind a lot.

Lot.

It is.

I mean, I, I don't.

I, I'm just thinking of my friends, people I hang out with, different guys that I meet at conferences.

I don't hear that kind of talk, like, almost ever.

Right, right.

But yet it seems to come up a lot with, with him.

A lot of locker room talk, right?

Yeah, that'd be a good way to describe it.

Yeah.

And so it is, it's not.

Again, it's not pastoral and it's, it's the kind of thing that you expect a junior high kid to be talking about with his buddy in the locker room.

Not the type of thing that you're going to be expecting to hear from the platform of your church.

And again, I know sometimes the American Evangelical church has been too prudish in not talking about sex.

And so I don't want to advocate for, you know, us taking an extreme and saying, well, this is not something we should talk about.

Of course we should talk about it.

It's in the scripture.

But I think there can be a version, very reverential way that you can discuss it that doesn't sound locker roomish.

And again, this is my opinion.

And so other people will, you know, maybe have a different viewpoint.

But, but yeah, the obsession with sex definitely seems to be there.

And then 2013, there's a plagiarism scandal.

So he had written a book called A Call to Resurgence.

And I'm trying to think of the sequence of this because this was.

There were multiple scandals that happened after the book was published.

Another publisher sued his publisher or at least confronted them and said, hey, you plagiarized one of our commentaries word for word.

Like, you lifted a huge section.

Mark Driscoll lifted a huge section from our book, our commentary, and used it in his book as though he wrote it.

So the publisher then confronts Mark Driscoll and says, hey, you plagiarized.

You stole this commentary.

Excuse is, no, I didn't do that because I basically drew my book from blogs that were written on our church website by our church staff.

So our church volunteers and our church staff wrote these columns, blogs for our church website.

And I basically compiled them and then put it out as a book with my name on it.

You can't blame me for plagiarism because I didn't write any of this.

So essentially, it's like, it's like this.

It's just But I'm trying to like not laugh at this, but it's.

Right, it's like, so I either plagiarized.

No, I couldn't have plagiarized because I didn't write any of it.

Right.

So, so it's.

He's, he's like saying he's not denying that plagiarism occurred.

He's just saying someone else did it because my fault because, because I took credit for other people's work for the entire book, which is plagiarism.

Right.

I mean, so he's getting the money for all this because it has Mark Driscoll's name on it, and yet he's probably unpaid staff people and volunteer church volunteers who did the heavy lifting or writing.

And of course, these people aren't professionals.

These are just average church people.

They don't know copyright law.

We don't know what they're allowed to do and whatnot.

They don't know that they're not supposed to just lift a commentator cherry and stick it on your church blog.

You don't know this.

But even if they do, Mark just is like, hey, I need a book.

Grab a bunch of stuff from the website, throw it in there, claim I wrote it, and out it goes.

It was like this multi layered plagiarism scandal.

Well, it's not exactly hugely problematic.

The thing that, the thing that's cracking me up is he's trying to say he, he could not have done plagiarism.

Right.

Because he plagiarized the entire book.

Entire book, not part of it.

I mean, that's, that's the thing that I'm like, he think it through.

I'm trying not to laugh at this, at this argument, but it's like I couldn't have plagiarized that one section because I plagiarized the whole book.

You know, it's like.

Exactly.

So then they got it.

They.

So then they got to get the book out, right?

So they have to promote this call to resurgence.

So they decide to do this publicity stuff hunt by showing up in 2013, same year at the Strange Fire conference that John MacArthur put on in California.

So he and James McDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel in Illinois both get in a car together with boxes of a Calder resurgence in the trunk, and they drive to the Strange Fire conference with the thought that we're going to hand out copies of the book on the church campus and basically kind of create a buzz was because they knew it would be controversial, they knew it wouldn't be well received.

And if I remember correctly, the book was sort of a refutation of the Strange Fire.

Yes.

Thesis.

That was.

So this is where.

That was my understanding, Andrew.

Yeah, that's my understanding is that he was, it was refuting some of what was going on.

Strange Fire.

He shows up there.

Now you're saying he, he thought to just give them freely There.

There's a little bit of dispute there.

I mean, I definitely think he was probably trying to create a buzz, but he.

Based on what I know for fact and what I have saw him post, because this is one of the few things I actually did know about him.

So he shows up on campus.

He's.

He's got these books.

He's just giving them out to people.

Security gets alerted, security comes, comes over to them.

He.

He ends up offering to give them the books.

Correct.

And that is what I, I know the, the head of security, Tom there, I've talked to him.

I, you know, there's video that I have seen with Tom there right where, where they are.

You know, he says, no, no, you can just have them.

It's our gift to you.

Kind of, you know, just.

And then goes out online saying that they were confiscated.

And that's what makes me wonder if the whole thing was a way to try to a.

Promote him and at the same time discredit Strange Fire Conference.

Because it was, it was an outright.

Like he knew.

There's no way to deny that he knew he was lying when he posted online that they were confiscated.

Correct.

There's, there's really no way around it.

There is.

And I, I'll say this is.

I believe if you go back many years, I forget how long ago this is.

Justin Peters has a video with that video that I referenced that I, I saw myself before Justin had, had played that.

So, so there's no way around the fact that he lied about it.

Absolutely.

It was flagrant.

It was blatant.

It was deception.

And on the video, he says to the security team, I just want to give you.

Because he's handing out the books.

They said, look, you can't do that here.

You can't hand out this book on the church property.

That's not what we're doing here.

And he's like, okay, look, I just want to give you these.

This is just a gift.

Let me give you these books as a gift to the, to the church, to, you know, maybe it'll be a blessing to you and the church.

And then he goes on social media and says, my books were confiscated by the security team.

John MacArthur's security team.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Completely dishonest.

It was.

And, and the fact is that he, and he came with boxes of them.

Right.

I mean, they loaded up their car.

Yep.

And it, it became a thing.

I remember that being the thing that was being discussed, you know, at the time online and whatnot was, hey, Mark Driscoll went there, was thrown off of campus.

They, they took all his books.

I mean, if at the time there were claims that security went into his car and took the books out of his car to confiscate them and it's like none of that happened.

Right.

You know.

Well, and we should, we should note too, James McDonald was later removed from leadership of his church in Illinois, the Harvest Bible Chapel, for abusive tendencies.

There was, if I remember, even allegations of him trying to hire a hitman to kill his son in law.

Yeah.

Pretty serious allegations by James McDonald.

Maybe just a little bit disqualifying.

Not, not a lot.

Yeah, you'd think.

Right.

And so this is, but this is Mark Driscoll's buddy.

And this is another thing.

You know, I'm, I'm against the idea of second degree separation where you know, we've cast somebody aside because they, you know, once spoke at a conference with somebody who later became a false teacher or you know, they knew them once or even friends with them.

I mean, I think all of us have people that we know or associate with at some level that we don't agree with.

So there's friends, if you follow the, the path of like the people, people he's deeply connected with and like buddies with that, that trails.

Yeah, it's a bit of a train wreck.

Well, there is some similarities there and we'll, maybe we'll get to this is, is Mark Driscoll's anger issues.

But you know, you bring up this separation, this association issue.

Okay.

Some, some here may remember years ago there was a guy that used to go after Justin Peters.

Justin is someone I know personally and he, he would try, he would do these things where he would try to show Justin is, is a heretic.

It's a guy who I actually met in New York when I was doing Open Air.

And his argument, this is his argument that John MacArthur is a heretic.

Because John MacArthur spoke at a conference with John Piper, who spoke at a conference with Rick Warren.

Rick Warren is a heretic.

Therefore John MacArthur is a heretic.

Heretic, right.

And he was going after Justin.

And I remember, I, I, because I said to him, I go, well, you're a heretic.

He's like I'm not a heretic.

I said, well, sure you are, because I had dinner with you and I had lunch with John MacArthur, and you say, John MacArthur's a heretic, so you're a heretic.

He's like, it doesn't work that way.

I'm like, how convenient it is that it doesn't work that way for you.

You.

Right, right.

That was clever.

Yeah, for sure.

So I, I think there's two things, right?

I think we have to be careful.

We don't throw someone under the bus for, you know, having been at a professional event or, or even a conference.

And there are times where people start out, okay, and then years down the road, they become a false teacher.

Right.

So that's a good point to be careful.

We don't, you know, castigate people just on the fact that they were in the same room at the same time.

Well, even.

But, but when you follow Mark's friends, his friends tend to be very deeply problematic.

But see, so.

So here's, here's a, A different thing.

Israel and I, I don't, I don't know how you're going to respond to.

So I'll be curious.

There is the.

I think a problem is that we have, we in Christianity have so much wanted to say, okay, we gotta, you know, if we're on, on us get a conference with someone on stage with someone, we're platforming them somehow, we're gonna.

Giving credibility to them.

And so much so that we avoid all, all appearances of that to, to the point that I think we've created the, this tribalism within Christianity where, well, I can't do something with so and so.

Or I can, because they're bad.

They're, you know, I, you, you mentioned the elephant room.

That was the big thing in the elephant room.

Like, if you're at, if you're speaking at Elephant Rooms Room and you're with TJ Jakes, then you're a heretic.

And I said, but some of those guys are saying, this is what's wrong with what modalism teaches.

So, like, that's.

I would put that in a different category than someone that comes in.

And because T.D.

jakes is there, they're like, hey, modalism's good.

It's not so bad.

There is a difference there.

You have to.

But between someone that's going to speak the truth, even with someone there, and even if.

I mean, look, I've spoken at events and been on podcasts with people that I had no idea who they were.

Sure all the time.

Yeah, yeah.

I've spoken at, I've spoken at over 600 events and most of those had other speakers.

And there's no way that I could sign off on the doctrinal purity of all of those hundreds and hundreds of speakers that I've shared a stage of with.

I just couldn't.

So, so that's, that's unfair.

But, you know, again, we'll see this a little bit.

But some of his, his other friends, Robert Morris, you know, who just went to prison, you know, some of these other guys that James McDonald, who he's just seemed to be very tight buddies with, had a pretty close relationship, I think with Joshua Harris, who has now left the Christian faith.

It just, I don't know, it's, it's interesting to see how he doesn't seem to be tight with and close with sound godly people.

Another one that he was really tight with.

I mean, do you think that could be that as they gather and talk that maybe they're giving each other ideas or, I mean, I want, instead of, I mean, look, if, if with the guys that at least I hang out with, with.

If I was to, to come up with some of the things you're describing, Mark having done, I would have some friends pulling me aside privately for.

Oh yeah.

A long hard talk.

Oh yeah, big time.

Me as well.

For sure.

Yeah.

I would, I would be getting phone calls.

My phone would be lighting up.

Yeah.

You know, with brothers who would say, israel, what are you doing?

So I wonder how much of it is like you're saying.

They're, they're, they're all kind of.

Using.

Christianity to, to make money, to build a name for themselves, to build platforms.

So that, well, as I joke that I, that I, I said this first or I, I put this up publicly first it was, you know, and then I said, matt Slick will steal it.

But because Matt and I were talking, we're on a, Matt was teaching and we were both speaking at an apolog, asked him why all these people, these word of faith people hang out together and, and Matt says, demons of a feather flock together.

So I quickly wrote that on because I had WI fi on the, on the boat and I said, you know, so I, I said that said watch Matt Sickle claim credit for it.

I know Matt a little bit.

Yeah.

So glad we're throwing him under the bus today.

Tonight.

That's a good thing to do.

Oh, Matt, Matt.

I, I, I've called up his radio show.

I was on his radio show and I, I made that comment and he's like, you know, I said that first.

I said, yeah, but I put it online first.

So how you gota.

I mean, what proof do you have that you actually said it before?

Prove it.

No, that's fun.

But no, the accountability issue.

And that's kind of what I was going to get to next.

The accountability issue is one where his church, you know, he had, I think, tried to put yes men in places of eldership within his church.

This is where, if people listen to the rise and fall of Mars Hill podcast series that was produced by Christianity Today, and let me address that first.

Christianity Today has been what I would call a left leaning, progressive leaning publication.

I don't consider them to be theologically faithful.

I don't consider Russell Moore to be a trustworthy leader.

My opinion.

So was Russell Moore leading, heading that up at that time?

I don't, I, I don't remember when he, I thought he got there after.

I, I thought he's more responsible that.

He came after that.

Yeah, possible.

I thought he was more in the 2022 new time frame.

That's.

You might be right about that.

I mean, I just, I know something.

I think they were leaning before until.

Podcast series that they produced because it was produced by ct.

So their view was this is, you know, the genetic fallacy.

Right.

We can't trust where this came from because it's ct.

But most of the interviews were with people who were on staff or were members of the church who were there and had firsthand experience and they were telling their story about abuses that they personally experienced, things they saw, things that happened.

And so while Connecticut does have a bias, I don't think we should deny that there's a lot of material there that is just firsthand testimony of people who were at the church that, that knew.

And you know, the scripture tells us that we shouldn't accept an accusation against a church elder except in the mouth of two or three witnesses.

And, and the, the assumption there is that when there are more than two or three witnesses, this is something that you should take seriously.

The inverse is now true.

And so he was actually put out from his church.

And there were, there was a statement that was issued by 21 former pastors at Mars Hill saying that Mark Hill, Mark Driscoll, was unfit to leave lead.

21 pastors who were at that church with Mark.

Yeah.

Said he was unfit to lead.

That's not two or three witnesses thing.

With what you're saying.

Because we, like we said at the beginning.

Right.

Yes.

The, the people who were part of that podcast had an ax to grind as well.

Right, Granted, Christianity Today, yeah.

We can, we can mention their Bible bias.

The people that did it have a bias.

But folks, listen to what Israel said.

It was.

There's an important thing I didn't, I don't want you to miss he said first hand testimony.

What you had, you didn't have just one or two or three or four people giving the same descriptions of what they went through.

Okay, now could you have people that.

And this does happen often, right?

You have people who will go and start spreading things around about a person and then people start saying, oh, yeah, yeah, I, I experienced this, so there could be that.

But one of the things that I found interesting with it is it was just this pattern throughout all of his ministry that there were people in, even today pay people who, who worked with him.

But there was, there was someone, I think he was on that, that podcast that said they actually had to separate Mark because he was, he would get so angry that it was, it was basically two guys that would be with Mark, Mark Driscoll and they would, they kept him in an office that was just those three people to keep him from other people.

And that's something that has been verified that, you know, that these guys would be with him, that they would, they was known.

And so there you go.

Okay, here's the thing where you're seeing that people knew his character and they had to make steps and, and set boundaries to try to protect him.

Which is weird because they really should have just said, Mark, you need to step down if they, you know, but it, it shows that the character issue is known.

Right.

And therefore we don't want to just throw out everything of that podcast and go, well, it's all just bias.

There, there could be.

And one of the elders who was on staff with Mark at that church told a story of a baptism where one of the young staffers had not brought enough towels and robes for the baptism.

And Mark just went off and he became very angry, began yelling at the young man and reportedly put his hands around the neck of this young man and was screaming in his face saying, I'm about to rip your head off.

And then the elder said, and that's edited to remove a lot of profanities.

It wasn't, wasn't, if I remember correctly, wasn't that story, and I could be wrong, but in that account, didn't he.

Wasn't he upset because it made him look bad that he had.

He did this, this, if I remember correctly, he did a Sermon service where a lot of people wanted to claim to get saved and want to be baptized.

So I ran because of that.

They ran out of towels.

And he was upset because it made him look bad that people couldn't get baptized that night.

Like, like the focus was on him.

Assume that that would be his motive.

I can't speak to what his heart is.

Again, we don't know his heart, but the presumption was, hey, you should have handled this right?

And, you know, we all know in churches you have young volunteers who, you know, don't know.

And again, more baptisms, apparently, than what they anticipated.

And I guess that's a whole another thing that I struggle with with like, Stephen Furtick.

And some of the things that he's done with was, you know, just, hey, the more baptisms, the better.

And we're just gonna have mass baptisms.

Like, are we sure these people are even saved?

It seems like sometimes that can be just for show, right?

Well, we had 300 people get baptized.

Well, do they know the Lord?

You know, I think another issue that's.

The argument that they would make make is when you see in scripture, someone got baptized right away.

And I think there is a difference between baptism in America and baptism in the first century Israel or in an Arabic country today.

And the reason I say that is because when you got baptized first century Israel, your family was going to cut you off.

And when you.

When you didn't really travel beyond a mile from your home, if.

If everyone in the town cuts you off, you either got to start over somewhere else or, you know, you're struggling.

Right?

So getting baptized was.

Was a serious thing, and, and no one was going to do that unless they really were Christian.

And the reason I say in a Muslim country today, it's very similar to somebody that is in a Muslim country today.

When you convert from Islam to any other religion, anyone is legally allowed to kill you.

Under Sharia, therefore, to publicly be baptized is not something anyone would do lightly.

And so, yes, if I'm in.

In a Muslim country and someone gets saved, I wouldn't have no problem baptizing them right away because in a public display of a profession of faith, their life is on the line and they know that.

So that's different than in America, where it's no big deal, right?

For sure.

And I think this is why baptism is different here and why baptism, people tend to think like, well, baptism is necessary for salvation because look how tightly it's tied to salvation.

Salvation.

Well, it was tied to salvation because it was Such an outward sign, you know, I could just give my testimony.

Me being baptized was a major thing.

In fact, my, my parents, when they found out I was a Christian, it was, there was, there was a lot of harsh words from my parents, mostly my mother, but it wasn't until she asked the question, she said, have you been baptized?

And when I say said yes, that's when she turned violent.

I mean it, you know, she, she just, she lost complete control of, of her emotions.

And I expected that.

I mean, it's, I, I, you know, to this day, I mean, I know they went casket shopping when they found out, and I'm surprised that they didn't go through with it.

But the, the reality is that in a culture where baptism signifies being cut off, then that is the greatest sign, outward sign, you can see.

And, and so I'm not against baptizing right away, but like you're saying with Driscoll and these other guys, I think they're doing it to show the numbers.

They're not, they're not seeing people actually get saved.

They're in America.

Getting a baptized is like a party.

Be a big photo op.

You know, it's just sort of this, you know, let's, we have 3,000 baptisms or whatever it is, and there can be a lot of false conversions, you know, where people believe that something has happened to them because they had this water baptism experience.

But, but in fact, many of them were not regenerated and, and didn't even know the gospel in some cases.

Right.

So, you know, don't want to get too far off on that.

But, but such a serious moment where we're trying to show somewhat, somewhat what resurrected life looks like, you know, coming into this newness of life in Christ, is that the moment you want your pastor choking somebody out, screaming and cussing at them and saying, I'm about to rip your head off.

That's not the Holy Spirit.

Right.

It's not the fruit of the Spirit.

And, and there's biblical.

I don't think there's any time in my life I want my pastor doing that.

I don't, I don't want my pastor choking someone out and cursing them out ever.

But, but you know, this is one of those, those things where there's qualifications for leaders.

In First Timothy 3 and Titus 1, there's a whole list.

And so being self controlled and all this is part of the requirements of being a biblical elder.

And Mark did not meet those qualifications.

He did not meet the qualifications for elders in 1996 when he became the lead pastor at Morris Hill.

He was never biblically qualified to be an elder and because he was not biblically qualified to be an elder and and had frequent examples of, of alleged abuse where he would mistreat people in his congregation, find ways to alienate them, isolate them, shun them, you know, remove them from church leadership, slander them, etc.

Etc.

This is, these are the reports of people in his church said Coll collaborated reports.

He was put out of the church in 2014.

21 pastors saying he's unfit to lead.

He had also co founded a thing called Acts 29 Network and put out of that because they said that he had quote, ungodly and disqualifying behavior.

And then very shortly after this time when he's removed from these two organizations.

Robert Morris of Gateway Church in Dallas, the guy who just went to prison for a previous sexual assault on a young girl who was 12 years old.

This is, you know, when Robert was a younger man, but he had hid it for many years.

He lied about it to his church, made it seem like he had had a consensual relationship with an adult woman in his past.

The church did not know, reportedly allegedly did not know the allegations, the, the details that he had actually sexually abused a 12 year old girl.

But Robert Morris wanted to to platform and bring him back.

And so August of, of 2014 he was asked to come and, and speak at Trinity Church.

He continued to be a mentor to Mark and provide wise counsel.

He was brought on the board of Mark's church.

When Mark left, he took less than two years off and then he moved to Arizona and started a church down there.

And so Brian Houston, who was removed from church leadership for having two sexual immoral sexual relations with two different women, allegedly reportedly and, and then Robert Morris, you know, also having sexual crimes against a minor.

These two men were the two men who kind of said we need to platform mine.

Mark, you know, he's been kicked out of his church.

He's been kicked out of leadership.

He needs to be in leadership again.

And so Mark leaves the church.

He says that the Lord spoke to him and his wife independently the same night and told them that they needed to leave Mars Hill.

There was a process of, of I would say accountability that the church wanted Mark to walk through.

He bailed on that, he bailed on the accountability.

Claimed the Lord told him, claimed that the Lord had shown him him through a dream or a vision, can't remember which, that there was a trap and that they had trapped him.

And so he show, he says that the Lord revealed that they were about to accuse him of adultery.

He claims that that was something that the Lord revealed, that, that that was the next thing that they were going to do to try to discredit him.

And so he and his wife said, we're out of here.

And they moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, started a new, new church again with Robert Morris on the board of the church.

And he's just back, back in the saddle, leading a church once again, less than two years after he's been asked to step down for being disqualified and abusive practices.

And the man just has to be behind a microphone, he has to be in front of the camera, he has to be on stage, he has to be pastoring a church, he has to be leading, has to be speaking at the men's conferences.

What's driving this?

Right.

It's just as concerning to me.

His church leaders are saying, you're not qualified to do this.

And yet he's saying, well, yes, I am.

Well, but it could be accusing them of wanting to lie about him, accusing them of wanting to set a trap for him.

And there was a document that was written by 40 elders at the Mars Hill Church that said that he was unqualified to lead.

39.

39 elders said, this man is unqualified to lead.

Man.

That's more than the two or three witnesses, right?

Yeah, but I think.

Yeah, so.

And I'm always try.

I always try to be fair.

You know, there is an element where you're saying he got, he got saved at 19, he goes church 25, he becomes the pastor.

I don't know, and I don't know if you do, but I mean, what did.

Was he ever trained to do anything else?

And the reason I say that is I, you know, look, when we heard about the situation with Josh Bice, okay, even though Josh had slandered me and done things against me, I, I still pray for him because I. Josh wasn't trained, as far as I know, to do anything other than ministry.

And now that's gone.

Right.

What's he going to do?

He's.

He's got a family, he's got a provider for.

And, you know, now this one thing that he trained himself for is cut off for him.

What.

What does he do?

Right.

He's got a. I mean, that's not an easy thing to do.

Right.

And so I want to try to.

I mean, look, I'm not going to make.

Go soft on, on qualifications, leadership.

Right.

He.

He's not qualified for leadership, but I want.

Want to sit there and say, well, could people have gone soft with it to say, look, he's.

He can't do anything else, you know.

Now I think like you're.

You're hinting to, I think, implying maybe, but you can correct me.

It does seem like he gravitates toward trying to do things to get attention to himself over and over.

And there are.

Say that again.

He seems to.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, there are some people who.

Things happen.

They get into.

They get attention a lot.

They, you know, just.

But there's those that try to manufacture it.

And I get the sense just with like what we've already talked about, things he's done that are purposeful, deceitful, that it seems like he is trying to make.

Manufacture the attention.

He's looking for the attention, and that becomes more concerning.

I think.

I think that's what you're kind of hinting that you may hold to that same thing.

Yes.

I mean, again, we don't know his heart.

Right.

But when you look at the actions, there just seem to be so many times where he's doing something that brings him attention.

Sometimes those things might be good things even.

There was an incident that happened just a couple years ago where he was at.

At this large Assemblies of God church in.

In Springfield, Missouri.

And they had a.

A former male stripper at this men's conference.

Yes.

Who was.

I remember weird old dance, swallowing a sword.

And Mark got up and said that this guy was operating under the spirit of Jezebel.

And it created this buzz.

Right.

And granted, the whole thing was weird.

That's the most bizarre thing I think I've ever heard of having at a men's conference.

But at any rate, you know, Mark wring rightly rebuked them for doing it.

But again, it was like this big national publicity media buzz.

And then the next day, I think it was he and the pastor out there hugging it out on stage.

And like.

Yeah, we worked it through and it.

Definitely that you're right.

I think.

I think I mentioned that when that happened on the show here, it.

It definitely seemed.

Seemed staged.

Like he.

He pretended like, you know, God just came over him and he had to deal with this, but he didn't have the issue with other things that, you know, were similar.

And so it just.

Yeah, it.

It Back when that happened again, it looked like he was just trying to get attention.

Yeah, there's sort of a recurring theme there.

And so the.

He goes to Scottsdale, Arizona, 2021.

A former staff member named Chad Freese accused Driscoll of running his church like a cult.

And he claimed that Driscoll ordered 24, 7 surveillance on a family that Mark had kicked out of the church after their teenage son had kissed Driscoll's teenage daughter.

And so again, it's this kind of real heavy handed sort of leadership thing.

And this is when the 39 staff members from Mars Hill wrote this document saying that from what they could see, some of the things that Mark was doing at his Arizona church were similar to what he had done at Morris Hill.

And they called his actions, quote, a pattern of sinful actions towards staff members and congregants, end quote.

And so again, he tends to go where there's not accountability.

And then what launched him again most recently into the limelight was right after Charlie Kirk's murder, he read a.

A text that he had received from Charlie Kirk.

It seemed like very soon before the shooting had happened.

And the gist of the text, I don't have it in front of me, but it was basically a very humble Charlie Kirk saying, I've been put in this position of leadership.

I have a lot to learn.

And so, like, pray for me kind of thing.

And so Mark, that's the text that Mark received from Charlie Kirk shortly before Charlie's death.

So Mark says, you know, we were friends and, and I think Charlie Kirk did speak at Mark's Arizona church a couple of years ago during the campaign, presidential campaign.

And so they had met and there probably was some correspondence, but Mark said, you know, I wrote back and offered to mentor Charlie Kirk and basically to be helpful in any way that I could and so forth.

There's no indication that Charlie reciprocated or responded to that.

But that text from Charlie Kirk seemed to have kind of validated Mark as like, okay, he's an insider with Charlie Kirk.

So he was invited then on, on the Charlie Kirk show.

I think it was September, I don't know, 29th, I want to say, when they had him on the Charlie Kirk show.

But, but people say, well, what has Mark done recently that's problematic?

And one of the things I've noticed that he's been doing recently is a lot of these visions.

He's, he's kind of drawing that back out.

And so I, if I'm not mistaken, I think it was, don't hold me to this, but I think it was September 16th on social media, media that he posted and said that he had a vision that he hoped was a vision from God, which hoped.

Yeah, he hoped, hoped, you know, out there.

If it's a vision from God, you know, you don't hope.

Yeah, yeah, so he hopes.

But he said he saw Charlie Kirk.

I think I actually wrote this down.

Oh, Ascend into the sky like a magnet and saw a bunch of pieces of metal gathering and being collected up under that magnet.

End quote.

So that's the actual quote of the prophetic vision.

He said, I. I hope that this is a prophetic vision that I saw.

And so he then allegorized that and tried to say that, that what he saw of change, Charlie Kirk being taken up into the sky and all this, you know, like a magnet and all this metal being attracted to him, that basically this is going to be some kind of a spiritual thing, that Charlie's attracting people in his death, you know, to, you know, something good, I guess.

But, but so this is some sort of inside track, right, that, that he's gotten from God.

Then when he's on the.

The podcast, the Charlie Kirk podcast, and he's talking to the hosts of the part podcast, he tells them, excuse me, he says he believes that God spoke to him and told him that he should say thank you to the hosts on behalf of Jesus Christ for allowing Charlie Kirk's memorial service to be live streamed for free.

Free.

So, so he's saying, I believe God is telling me that Jesus wants to tell you thank you for live streaming Charlie Kirk's memorial service because, you know, the gospel went out and, and all of that.

Well, I would certainly thank them for live streaming the memorial service.

Yeah, right.

I had no problem doing that.

I think that would be a wonderful thing to do.

I just, I'm like, so Jesus is sitting up in heaven and he's like, okay, God, I need you to tell Mark Driscoll to pass this note on, because I don't have email, you know, and I don't use social media.

I can't text them.

So the only way I can get to these producers of the Charlie Kirk show is through Mark Driscoll, who happens to be sitting right there with them.

So, like, you know, God, would you please send this message through me to them?

Yeah, I'm not feeling that one.

You know, I mean, it's kind of like this super spiritual way to kiss up to the producers of the show who then did defend Mark.

In fact, one of them allegedly posted on social media.

I can't find it.

I think it might have been taken down, but there's screenshots of it that you can still find if you look where apparently people had sent them A video Justin Peters had produced, produced exposing some problematic issues with Mark Driscoll.

And the guy posted something like, you know, you're.

If you think that sending me Justin Peters videos is going to change my mind.

Well, it's not something along that line.

And so TP USA seems to have doubled down on wanting to work with Mark Driscoll and platform him.

And I think that's where the.

Learning to see that continue.

Right.

That's where the concern is.

Because we want to see TP USA do well, but we also don't want to see them having been given, you know, information that they might just not like it.

This is how Mark has continued, it seems, continued his whole career.

Right.

People expose the problem.

Problem.

And because.

So it could be a couple things.

There is a, there is a reality, and I'm not accusing either TP USA of this or Mark Driscoll or anyone else involved with Mark Driscoll.

I'm just saying this is a reality.

There are people who, they want to be part of someone who has a, A big name because it gives them credibility.

Okay?

And there's.

There, there are those people out there and they will give a pass to anything that that person does because they don't care what that person's doing.

They're caring about what they're getting from it.

They're getting some platform, they're getting mentions, whatever it might be.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

I'm not saying they're doing that, but you have to honestly evaluate and say as much as you might like TP USA or, or anyone else, are they doing like, if they were told, hey, look, look at this stuff from Justin Peters.

And they're blowing it off because they're like, well, we just don't want to buy into, like, we.

If they want that recognition.

Right.

I mean, look, I, I already kind of mentioned.

Right.

So.

So Josh Bice was going after, you know, on his fake accounts, going after me and, and removed me from the cessationist film, remove blogs that I had done on G3.

But he did it because he wanted favor for someone else.

Right.

There was a different person, a bigger ministry that he wanted to be close to.

So it was good for him to get on their good side by going after me.

That happens.

And so the fact is that if TP USA is doing that, then that would give concern and it should give us concern with TP usa if they're doing that.

Right?

I'm not saying they are because I don't know.

I don't know anyone there.

I Haven't spoken to them.

But folks, listen, what Israel has done throughout this, right.

He's just, here's presenting the details.

But and I wanted to say this earlier when you were saying something Israel, you mentioned a very specific word that I want people to think about.

You mentioned the word pattern.

This is what scripture tells us, right?

To look at the fruit.

Given enough time, we end up seeing things.

What do we look for?

We look for patterns of behavior.

And when you see the, a pattern of time and time again trying to be put in a position where there's no accountability, where there's anger issues, where you see this time and time and time again, you have to say there's, there's something there.

Right?

And so you, you, when we look at this, I mean, mean, this is the concern that I think you have.

And when I read your, your, your post here, I kind of had concern because I didn't know that TPUSA was doing as much with him.

And, and I really didn't know that they were warned and, and seemed to be siding with him.

I mean, if I had a choice of maybe I'm biased, I am.

But if you give me the choice between siding with Justin Peters.

Peters or you know, Mark Driscoll, it's Justin Peters every day.

Right.

But they probably, but you know, there is this thing where you look at a Mark Driscoll and his name is better known than Justin Peters.

Right?

There's.

I just looked up while we were talking.

Mark Driscoll on Facebook alone has 2.3 million followers.

Okay.

And Justin doesn't have near that on Twitter.

Twitter.

But, but here's a lot of followers here.

Here's another thing for us to consider.

And this is, folks, this is something you're going to see with many people, okay?

You'll, you'll see this time and time again when someone is friends with another person, they have a tendency to want to believe their friend.

Yeah.

I was talking to someone recently about he, he's been following candidates, Owen and I. I think she kind of went off the rails a while ago.

And I, and it was interesting because he and I were having somewhat heated discussion.

And so later we're, we're talking and I said, look, what I think happened with Candace Owen is Candace Owen.

I think I could be wrong.

I think that she became very friendly with Kanye west and Kanye west started going off the rails and she was defending a friend and this guy was talking to is like, you know, that makes sense actually, because this is what people end up doing when they When a friend of theirs starts doing something, they want to believe the best in their friend.

Right?

Right.

And therefore, or if someone is, if they're friends with a Mark Driscoll but not a Justin Peters, I can see them wanting to defend their friend.

But we all have to be aware of one thing.

We could be friends with someone, but we cannot overlook their sin, especially if they're in ministry.

We cannot overlook their disqualification.

Right.

There's ways of handling that.

Scripture gives us the way to handle that.

You already mentioned Israel.

Some ways of two or three witnesses.

Right.

It also scripture would say, Matthew 18, that you go to the person alone before going to a bunch of others to convince them how right you are.

Okay.

So I just, I just want to give a caution when you see some of these people because, because there are people when you that when there's talk of someone who has had a fall, who their knee jerk reaction is to defend that celebrity person, celebrity pastor, because they learned a lot from that person.

And what that slippery slope that occurs is they, people go from defending someone that, that they've learned a lot from or they know personally into following that person into error.

And that is, it's a slippery slope that people don't recognize.

And so I guess I'm saying this to be cautious though.

We're not, we just don't throw people out.

Oh well, you're, you're associated with that person.

That's it.

I'm done with you.

There could be reasons that people doing it and they may not be aware that they're falling into that.

Right.

So let's be careful with that.

Okay.

Just as a caution.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think we should clarify too that I don't think Andrew or I either one of us are trying to throw rocks at tpusa.

My guess is they probably don't know the full extent of Mark's background.

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt with that.

The fact that I, I've looked and can't find that post, like I've seen screenshots of it, doesn't seem to be up online now, may mean that the person spoke before they had the right information.

I'm hopeful that TPUSA will take this into consideration and find people of better character to work with.

I'd like to respond to just a couple of, of other things real quickly here because I've had pushback from people related to my post.

One was saying, you know, well, what has Mark done recently that's problematic or what has he ever Taught that's problematic.

And, and I think what we're going to see with this visions thing is we're going to see him getting more extreme with that.

The Charlie Kirk vision that he talked about Charlie being taking up in the sky and like a magnet and these pieces of metal being attracted to him.

Just a couple of days ago on X, he posted this video that was, I thought, fairly bizarre bar where he was saying that there are these people that we would look at visually and say these are transgender people.

And his argument was that demons come to Earth and take on a physical manifestation.

And he was saying that when angels come to Earth, you know, we may see them as men or something like that, but.

But when demons do it, they will take a form that is often transgender.

And the reason that they take on this transgender form is that they want to have sex with humans.

And so this is just like two days ago on X, on Mark Driscoll's social media page that he posted himself, like he thought this was a video that he should push out there.

So I'm just, I'm just curious.

So since transgenderism wasn't really popular until like the last decade or so, does that mean demons haven't been coming to Earth for thousands of years until now?

Well, I'm sure he's trying to tie it into some sort of nephilim theory, but when you think about what transgender actually is, you were one biological sex and now you are transitioning over to another alleged biological sex, right?

Well, angels and demons don't have biological sex.

So the very term transgender gender would be a misnomer when applied to a demon.

But this idea, so this is how I see it, is it's like this really crass way of basically calling transgendered individuals demons.

And the thing is, let's say that you even theologically agree with Mark and you say, oh, yeah, this is like a modern day nephilim situation.

And we have these demons who are coming, you know, presenting themselves as transgender.

We're looking at these people thinking they're actually human, but actually they're demons who have just taken on a human looking form so they can have sex with other humans?

Let's say you even buy into that theologically.

The question that comes to my mind is why does Mark Driscoll feel just days after, you know, a few weeks after this interview on TP usa, that this is his best foot forward?

You know, like, you have the nation's attention right now, more media attention than you've had in decades, possibly in your life.

And the thing that you want to talk about is not Jesus Christ and him crucified, but the fact that people we think are transgender people are actually demons walking around looking to do it with humans.

I'm kind of speechless, honestly.

That's a really good point because one of the things with, with the memorial that I found encouraging was the fact I expected to be a political talk.

Right.

I really did.

And there were really only two that were really political, and that was Trump and, And Steve.

Oh, I just drew blank on his last name.

But, you know, there were only, like, two that were really political.

The rest were remote even from Catholics.

They were.

They were presenting a more biblical message.

They.

They.

Almost as if they were denying their Catholicism.

Yeah, it was crazy, wasn't it?

I mean, Donald Trump Jr. And J.D.

vance.

Yes.

Pretty strong messages.

They sounded very evangelical, like whoever wrote their speeches.

Yeah, right.

But, you know, and I said that because, I mean, look, I don't think they wrote him, but they had called.

Frank Turek or something like, hey, Frank, do us a favor.

Someone.

Someone is correct.

Steve Miller was the.

The.

So thank you for that, Kathy.

And so the.

The thing is, is that what, what you end up seeing is that there was.

It told me a lot about who Charlie Cork was, that the way that, the way that a speechwriter works for those who don't know, I mean, I don't know how many people have a speech writer, but I've, I've, you know, worked with people that have.

And, you know, in the government.

And so basically what you have is you will.

You sit down with a speechwriter, and the person will explain what they want to say.

And it's the speechwriter's job to do a lot of the research on the certain things to, to get to.

To craft the speech, but it's always based upon what that person wants to say.

So what that says to me is that each of these guys that got up there, J.D.

vance, you know, Marco Rubio.

Marco Rubio.

Even Tucker Carlson.

Yeah, Tucker Carlson.

I mean, but, well, Tucker, I wouldn't say is Catholic, but I mean, like, J.D.

vance is Catholic.

I don't know if Marco is Catholic, but I thought you were just talking about people who were giving political people.

I believe Donald Trump Jr. Catholic.

Yeah.

You look at the way that they spoke, and it was very clear that they wanted the center of their talk to be the gospel.

Okay.

And so the speechwriter, whoever.

Okay, let me me go do that.

Right.

That's the reality, is that, you know, they made clear what they wanted to Communicate.

And it says it.

I, I had walked away saying it speaks very highly to, of Charlie Kirk that each one of these guys that don't know a biblical gospel message themselves personally knew the message that Charlie Kirk conveyed and wanted to convey that.

Right.

And to see someone like Mark Driscoll, who claims to be a Christian pastor, have the opportunity to share the gospel and, and want to focus on transgenderism and demons.

Right.

Is very concerning.

Yes.

And I, I would hope that, I mean I'd hope that TP USA would say yet we, we don't want you distracting.

I mean here's the thing is that Charlie Kirk seemed to, to use politics to share the gospel.

Mark Driscoll is using the gospel to share politics.

Just seems that way.

Yeah.

And I think we're gonna see more of him playing that vision card.

This, you know, God told me God spoke to me.

And it seems like with these more strange esoteric doctrinal rabbit so forth.

What do those things tend to do with speakers who historically, traditionally have made a name for themselves doing that, you know, the, you know, the I went to heaven and you know, reinventing the narrative.

The Jesse Duplantis is right.

Yeah.

It's very much self exalting and it's.

I've got an inside track and I've got insights that nobody else has and nobody else has ever told you this.

And I, I'm the first person to do so.

And you know, I, I have an angle here that you don't see.

And it just seems to be positioning a person and in a viewpoint that like I'm your go to because I just have these insights that not everybody else is privy to.

You're not as spiritual as money to me.

Yeah.

You're not as spiritual as me.

You don't have.

Right.

You know, God doesn't speak to you.

Right.

It's so, so I mean to, to wrap things up.

I mean I think, I think that you laid out a very good just historical timeline.

And I will.

For those who listen into the podcast, I plan to, to give a link to Israel Wayne's page for two reasons.

One, I'm going to link directly to this article or this post that he did.

When you're done with the post, what I would like you to do is go, go and look at the rest of the stuff he's doing because this is not where he usually focuses.

Okay.

And, and so maybe we'll have to get.

Have you come back in.

Maybe I'll have you on my rap report and we could talk about you know, homeschooling and things like that, you know, and how, how to, how to go out to dinner when you, when you have 11 kids, you don't, you don't.

How do you get it?

Still be saved at the end?

Yeah, look, look, pray for Israel.

Just simply pray for him, because he's probably never been invited over anyone's house.

I mean, when you have 11 kids, no one invites you over.

Okay?

You got to invite everyone else over.

Like, hey, we want to get together with you.

Can you come over to our house?

Yeah.

Well, now I wonder, now that I've been on the Andrew Rapaport show, will I not be invited because of that?

You know, could be.

Could be, you know, but we still haven't.

I didn't want to say still haven't.

Met in person, though.

We haven't met in person, so.

No, we haven't.

Still don't know that.

Yeah, we gotta do that.

We gotta do that.

But, you know, one thing I do want to say is, is I had a lot of people push back to me and they say, hey, did you reach out to Mark personally?

Did you contact him directly?

Because Matthew 18 requires you to do that, requires that you go to him directly, talk to him privately.

You know, seems like you just went public with this.

You just put this out on social media.

Hold on.

Did these people, People do this privately?

Publicly?

On my page, I will say one guy wrote me, two people wrote me privately.

So they were consistent within their thesis, but some of the others were blasted me pretty good publicly on Facebook for not going private.

That's the thing I'm just trying to point out, right?

The.

The people want to blast you for not doing what they don't do themselves.

Like, do you know Mark Driscoll personally?

Yeah, I do not.

Okay, so how would you do that?

I mean, my response usually is, give me his number.

Oh, you don't know it either.

Okay, right, right.

Well, two things I, I think I want to be real clear, because some people just don't understand the proper context of Matthew 18.

But it says if a brother sins against you, you go to them and you confront them with their, their fault.

And then if they don't listen to you, take two or three others, others, if they still don't listen, bring it to the church.

Right.

This Matthew 18 process of people who are personally sinned against by Mark Driscoll, that Matthew 18 process happened over and over and over at the Mars Hill Church, probably has happened at the Arizona church.

If you listen to again, that podcast series the rise and fall of Mark Hill, of Mars Hill.

You will hear that process being told over and over of people trying to go to him personally, not being received, taking two or three, not being received.

Eventually they took it to the church, kicked him out.

What does he do?

Skips accountability, just goes through another church where he's in charge again, avoiding accountability, avoiding being under any kind of authority.

And so that Matthew 18 process has been carried out, and now there's 39 church elders saying, this man is unfit to lead.

Matthew 18 has been full, fully carried out.

Mark Driscoll has not personally sinned against me as an individual.

I don't need to go privately to Brother Mark and us, work out our differences.

That's not the level of this.

This is past the take it to the church stage.

It's been taken to the church.

It's been made public.

But public teaching, public, false teaching, public heresy needs to be addressed publicly.

That's how the New Testament did it, how the apostles did it.

They named names, names publicly.

And I actually wrote an article@christianworldview.net that's my apologetic site, christianworldview.net if you go there, find the search feature and just look up why public heresy needs to be addressed publicly.

I have a whole article that explains the biblical theology of why a situation that is public with someone posting on public social media, doing YouTube videos and so forth, why that needs to be addressed publicly, not privately.

So I think that's important because a lot of Christians are confused on that.

They have a.

A bad understanding of what Matthew 18 says and how Matthew 18 should be applied.

So now this is going to shock some folks.

But Matthew 18 was not set out to be.

This is how to do church discipline.

In its context, it is an example of how to deal with a prideful person.

Right.

And so.

So it is dealing with a person who's so prideful that you can go through all these steps and put them out of the church.

And, and it wasn't the church we think of now, because they didn't.

It didn't exist back then.

Right.

It is pre Pentecost, they called it.

Yeah, yeah.

And so it's the gathering.

And so we have to be careful to interpret it within its context.

The.

Read all of Matthew 18, it's dealing with pride and humility.

It's dealing with someone that is so prideful that when they sin against you, you go.

But even within there, there's instructions.

And the, the focus is on trying to keep it as private as possible.

However, when someone is doing Something publicly, Paul tells you what to do with.

You know, in the case when First Corinthians 5, we have someone fooling around with his father's wife and he doesn't say go to him, he just says deal with it head on.

Right.

So there is a difference there.

If you know someone personally, I think you should deal with it personally.

Right.

If you know the person personally and you are going behind, you know, behind his back back, talking to others, going online, then I think that's an issue.

Okay.

If you're doing it, especially if you, you know, your own heart, if you're doing it because you know that it's going to get you attention, that's a real problem.

If it, if it's going to get you a better reputation, it's going to get people liking you, I think that's a problem.

And so when we look at public figures, though, we don't have an ability in the most part to reach out to him.

I have no way to reach out to Mark Driscoll.

He doesn't know who I am.

He, you know, he's, if I, even if I had his email address, he's gonna, he's gonna react the same way I do to the, the hundreds of email address emails I get a day where they're like, hey, I want to be on your podcast.

I would make a great guest.

Delete.

You know, it's, it's actually, wait, I, I did have one.

I, I wanted to bring it up.

What was the one that I, I got an email just today and, and now I can't find it.

I, I was, I had it up for the show so I could read it because I did think it was funny.

It was someone who, who had said that, that, you know, dealing with the, the ministry, sent it to the ministry email and, you know, oh, it was, it was funny.

It's just every once in a while, Israel, I get these emails and I, I just think they're funny.

So I want to, you know, I like to chuckle.

Yeah, absolutely.

Here we go.

Here I found it.

Okay.

Okay.

It's.

It's titled Attention Immediate.

Immediate release of your phone funds.

I am a private consultant and have been contracted by a financial institution in Asia to present you as sole beneficiary.

Name withheld.

To the individual who died some time ago.

He died.

You know, first off, he, he says died in a state and left, but they misspelled in a state.

So he probably was like, speech, saying it in speech, but in a state and left behind an estate worth millions I wish to notify you that you should.

That you should be of interest and you be listed as a beneficiary of the total amount.

Note that the late client died without a will, and therefore I can present you the beneficiary of the inheritance.

For further information, kindly get back to me on my email.

We get things like this.

Yeah.

Huh.

What a windfall.

Yeah.

Now we get things like this.

And if you're like me, well, after you chuckle, you delete it immediately.

Now.

Sure, okay.

I left that one because I, I actually had it because I just came in before the show and I was like, oh, that'd be a fun one to do.

But the reality is, is that if.

If you're going to be.

If you're going to try to reach out, you have no way of communicating with them.

Even if you do through.

Through a website or something like that, You're.

You're probably not getting to the person you want to get to, and they're not good to, you know, they're not going to know you to respond.

And even.

And I know this for a fact, that if he is willing to falsely accuse 39 elders at his.

At his church that he worked with and, and say that they were setting a trap for him and that they were about to accuse him of adultery, if he's willing to.

And they.

And they claim that's false.

False, what else won't he.

If he's willing to accuse 39 elders at his former church of.

Of having, you know, evil motives, he's not going to respond favorably to an entreaty from a random stranger.

Correct.

I already know how Mark Driscoll responds to people who try to correct him.

That's well documented, it's well established.

So.

So, you know, I just want to throw that out there for people that, that you need to understand your Bible a little bit better, that Matthew 18 is how you as an individual handle a conflict with another individual that you know in person.

It's not how you deal with public heresy or with public scandal like this.

Those are things that have to be dealt with publicly.

And my concern is the people who are just finding Mark Driscoll for the first time, and he has this kind of macho version of Christianity he puts out there that's real manly and masculine and all that.

And I'm not necessarily against that per se, but he's attracting a lot of young men because of that.

And I just find it troubling.

I find it disturbing that people don't know some of the things we've shared about here.

And so my goal, my intention is not to, to try to see him harmed in any way.

I don't wish any ill on him or his family or anything like that.

I just want people to know the big picture of this is the kind of person you're dealing with and character matters.

And we can't just brush aside and say the qualifications laid out in scripture for a church leader don't matter.

The scripture says that there is a, a stronger accountability.

Right.

That's supposed to be there for leaders.

That's James 3:1.

It says that those who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

Correct.

And so, you know, the standard is there and it's high for a reason.

And we can't just ignore that and say, well, he said some good things, or, you know, he had a good point about this political issue, or he voted for Donald Trump or he was a gu.

Against the mask mandates or the things that people like about him that they were attracted to.

To.

We can't just sweep all this stuff under the rug and say character doesn't matter because we agree with him ideologically on a point.

I agree with him probably on a lot of things ideologically, but I don't believe he's qualified to be a church leader.

And I believe we need to be discerning.

And I don't believe this is the kind of person that is best for us to be platforming and saying, this is our guy.

You know, I think a lot of people right now with Charlie Kirk's death are trying to find, like, who's the next heir.

Apparently we can put out there and say, hey, this is our new Charlie Kirk.

I would say if you compare Charlie Kirk and Mark Driscoll, the character between the two men, in my opinion, is dramatically different.

I would agree.

And I think that, look, you know, when you think about the guys at TP usa, they have a large organization to run.

They weren't planning to run.

It got much bigger than they planned very quickly.

They're.

They're dealing with all that for sure.

They, they may not have the time or the resources to vet people to, to know this stuff.

That's right.

So I, I just want to pray for them.

Yeah.

Pray for them.

I.

But I would caution, I mean, like I said about this tribalism, we have to be careful.

Don't.

Don't be so quick to just jettison every.

Everyone y.

And that would be the, the one thing that I would say.

So, you know, I really, I think this was very enlightening Israel, I think that, you know, I, I've wanted to have you on for a while, but this was definitely not the topic I thought it would be.

But, but your article, I mean, it just, it was quick.

We actually, you went to obviously more detail here in the two hours than you did in a, in a post that would take maybe 10 minutes to, to read.

But I think it, I hope that this was helpful for you, the audience, to realize not just with Driscoll, but to be discerning in period, to think in a discerning way with whoever it might be.

But also don't just toss people out right away.

I mean, I think the reason, as I'm listening to Israel, I'm hearing, hearing a pattern over a long period of time and that is where the issue becomes.

Right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And, and he should repent of the things he's not repented for.

And you know, James tells us, if we confess our sins, James 1:9, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins, cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So we're not saying he can't be forgiven.

We're not saying he needs to be put out of the church.

We're not saying he, he's not a believer.

What we're saying is he needs to be under authority in a church, not in authority in a church, that he can be a member of the body of Christ.

He should not be leading a church because he's not biblically qualified.

The standards for that are high.

And so this is not a case of, oh, he did some things in the, in the past and we're going to hold it against him forever and he can never be forgiven of that.

The only person that I've heard him repent to is Joel Osteen.

He repented to Joel Osteen for previously calling him a false teacher.

And he, he came out when he moved to Arizona and said I was wrong for that.

So that's like the one apology I've heard him make.

Other than that he's doubled down.

He said, I'm, I'm looking forward to standing before God because I know that's going to be a great day for me.

And he gave the indication he's going to be vindicated, vindicated against all of these accusations by his former church leaders and elders.

And so, you know, not, not saying that, you know, you've messed up, you can never be forgiven.

That's not the point.

We're saying he's not qualified for church leadership.

You know, when I stand Before Christ.

I don't think that the thing I'm going to be looking forward to is me being vindicated on those who slandered me.

I think, I think when I stand before Christ, first off, I'm going to be more amazed than I, than I think I am now that I'm there.

And I'm just going to want to worship Christ.

I am not going to be worried about.

In fact, I'll, I'll, I'll go far, so far as to say I think those people who have slandered me in ministry, you know, mentioned Josh Bice, Joshua, I will be sitting there worshiping Jesus together and not care one wit about the things that happened on earth that we, we may or may not have said bad about each other.

Okay.

Yeah.

The fact that he's looking to get to heaven to be vindicated is concerning.

I mean if there wasn't other things concerning.

But right.

I mean this is the, the thing that I see is the pattern I get to, to be with Christ.

I am not gonna worry about what people think of me.

I won't care because I'm with Christ.

So I, I think if people are looking to get to heaven and they're still looking for themselves, then that tells you what they're thinking of all the time.

Time.

But so Wayne, if folks want to get a hold of you, if they want to follow you more, they want to get your books, see what you're doing, where might they go?

What.

Tell, tell us how we can find you.

Yeah, so a website I didn't mention is my name israel wayne.com so that's my speaking website.

And if you're interested in having me speak at your church or conference, Israel Wayne.com is there.

You can learn more about me.

My ministry page is family renewal.com org so Israel wayne.com family renewal.org and then my apologetics website is Christian Worldview Net.

Christian WorldView net.

Those three things and then I'm on all the social media platforms.

Just look up Israel Wayne and I would love to connect with you there.

Please tell me that you inter connect those that you can get links to each of the other ones.

Not terribly easy, but oh no, yeah, we got to work on that.

Right.

But you're, you're obviously very creative like Justin peters@justin peters.org Israel wayne.com Very very creative.

I, I, I, I busted on Justin for, for, for years for his, his lack of creativity with the name of his ministry.

So when he, when he started his podcast, he comes up with the word Diday and I went, okay, so you just went from something that has, you know, he's like, well, you said, I, you know, I, I, I didn't want to call it Justin Peters Podcast.

I went, so you use a Greek word no one can spell.

Thank you.

Clever too.

Clever, yes.

So I said, at least call it dedicate with Justin Peters so people can search on Justin Peters.

It'll come up with the Justin Peters part.

Oh, hey, it, it was a pleasure having you on.

I really enjoyed.

I, I, I will have to reach out to you.

Maybe we could talk homeschooling.

On my Rap Report podcast, I will say that I, I, I, There may or may not be a reference to Mark Driscoll on the Rap Report podcast coming out this week.

And it wasn't actually my podcast I was on.

I was at the Fight Left Feast conference.

Soon as I got there, the guy who, friend of mine, Cody, who picked me up, well, I, I don't know that he really wanted me on his podcast.

Or was it that he just needed to test his equipment to make sure it worked?

I was the guinea pig.

It might have been.

Well, you'll have to see, but it, it was a fun discussion.

And yet people like Mark may have been mentioned briefly, so, but, but I do, I do want to thank you for coming on.

I hope people will check you, check out the ministry that you have there, maybe invite you to come speak at their events, their church, their homeschooling conferences.

So.

Well, you've been a blessing.

I appreciate what you do.

I've been a fan from a distance for a long time and so appreciate the opportunity that we have to sit down and talk.

And I'm grateful for you opening an opportunity for this because I do believe you're doing a great service, the body of Christ, teaching them how to think biblically.

We just definitely need more biblical discernment.

Well, thank you for that.

That's, that's too kind.

All right.

And folks, that for this week, that wraps us up, but next week.

I don't have a specific topic yet for next week.

I know that some folks have been kind of bummed because I know I had been doing a bunch of travel, which meant I haven't been consistent.

But after this weekend, that is done.

I'll be at the Jesus and Politics conference.

John Harris.

Harris, a friend of mine will be there.

John.

Yeah, John's a good guy.

John.

For me, I will.

It turns out that basically what it was was Tim Bashon, who runs the conference.

I met him at John's Men's retreat.

And when we talked about, I. I was mentioning, hey, maybe I'll.

I'll come down there for the.

For next year.

And he's like.

He thought I was talking this year, and so he's like.

He goes, hey, if you'll come up, you know, we'll.

We'll find a way to get you to speak.

And I was like.

I wasn't thinking, like, I mean, three weeks from now.

I wasn't really planning on it, but I don't have anything scheduled, so.

Yeah.

So I was like, all right, well, I. I will come down.

So I'm coming down this year.

It's always good to see John.

Tim is becoming a fast friend.

Really like that brother.

He.

He's into the.

He.

You know, I don't know if you folks know who he's.

I don't really know the heavy.

The music industry, but he's.

He was in the heavy metal and, you know that and all the rock music.

It's something I don't really do, but.

I didn't know I didn't have enough hair for heavy metal.

Yeah.

But, yeah, he's.

It was funny talking to him because he's mentioning.

He mentions all these names, and I'm like, I have no idea.

Like, I'm like, tim, you have to understand, son.

I am completely pop culture illiterate.

I. I don't.

Like, you're.

You're mentioning artists.

Like, I should know who they are, and I have no clue.

You know, I feel bad for him because I'm like, you know, he's like mentioning these people.

Like, I don't know who that is.

He's like, I was.

I was just.

Because he.

He does, like, you know, now what he does is editing of songs, I guess, like, of music.

And so, you know, he had someone in.

In the studio, and he's mentioning it to me, and he's like.

Because he's apologizing because he didn't call me back, and he was like, he had someone in.

And I'm like, I have no idea who that is.

He's like, you don't.

That's, you know, so.

And so.

I'm like, I don't know.

I'm sorry.

Like, I know.

You know, it's.

It's not very impressive that.

That I. I'm completely illiterate with this.

Yeah.

And some of that's age, too, right?

You're like, I know.

Bill Gaither.

No, no, I don't.

I've.

I've heard the name, but I actually don't know anything about his music.

I've heard some things about his, his theology that wasn't, that was kind of concerning.

But yeah, I don't know, I, I.

I never followed him.

So, yeah, I'm just ignorant.

You know, that's fun.

So, but if you enjoy the conference, that sounds like that'll be a great opportunity.

Yeah, you should come out.

I mean it'd be, it's.

Hey you, you got a day to book a flight.

Come on.

Oh my goodness.

I'm leaving tomorrow.

You know, I'm actually writing a high school philosophy curriculum for Christian high school students.

Really?

So I got my nose to the grindstone doing that right now because that's going to be kind of a first of its kind, like a full philosophy textbook for high school from a Christian.

Yeah, I, I have, I have, I have a stack of books that I've been wanting to try to get to for years because I want to write a book on logic.

Oh, I love it.

And I, I think it's just needed to explain how logic works and not just, oh, here's this fallacy.

Here's like not how to impress your friends with knowing, you know what the fallacy of excluded middle is.

Right.

You know, who cares?

Understand, understand what makes a good logical argument, what makes it valid or invalid.

And you know, so yeah, I do have, I will say if folks, if that does interest folks, if you go to the Striving Fraternity YouTube page.

I did a, a eight week class for another group.

It was called Passing the Torch.

They were trying to train up younger apologists.

And the topic I was asked to, to do is to deal with, you know, basically debate.

How do I debate?

And so I've always said there's two areas.

I do hermeneutics and logic.

And so I spent four weeks on hermeneutics and four weeks on, on logic.

And I probably could have done 32 weeks on both.

Wow.

You know, it was hard to do.

Just, just I had eight weeks.

That was it.

It was like, oh, that's, that's hard.

Well, yes, but what a great resource.

I'm going to look that up myself.

I definitely can see a lot of, a lot of the homeschool families that I work with will probably enjoy that.

Yeah, well, you know, I, so I've been amazed.

You know, we have our striving fraternity academy where I teach how to interpret the Bible, Christian theology, introduction, discipleship, world religions.

Those are four classes we have out there.

And I never thought that they were never designed for homeschooling.

Ever.

And I'm always amazed at how many people come up to me and their parents use those classes for their homeschooling.

I remember being at an event where I got to meet an entire family.

There's this young girl.

Okay, she wasn't so young.

She was in her 20s, but to me, she was still young.

And she came up to me and she's like, Mr. Rapaport, ah, it's so nice to meet you.

I. I took all your classes in homeschooling.

I'm like, I didn't have classes for homeschooling.

And then she introduces me to her sister, her brother, eventually her parents.

Their whole family used that as a curriculum.

And that's amazing.

It's been a thing where I've started to ask people, like, why?

Right.

And.

And the parents continue to tell me there's two things, and I don't know if they're good.

Israel, maybe this isn't a good thing, but they say that my quirky humor keeps the kids attention.

But the fact that I break things down, I don't just use big words, but I make it easy to understand.

Kids at all ages can understand it, and so they really value that.

And it was like, it wasn't meant for people that young.

But I kind of think that's good.

But, yeah, it's.

That's excellent.

Resources that are out there, and the way we make money, we provide those free of charge.

Wait, I did something wrong there?

Yeah.

All right.

Until next week.

Remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we'll see you next time.

Have a good night.