You've heard of Benny Hinn, but have you heard of Kosti Hinn? Kosti Hinn is the nephew of Benny Hinn, and we're gonna be talking to him today. Welcome to the Youth Apologetics Training Podcast. All right, welcome back, friends. Today, like I said in the intro, we're going to be hearing from the nephew of the famous quote unquote, very charismatic, word of faith, Benny Hinn. We're going to be speaking with Kosti Hinn, the nephew. Kosti Hinn, as you're going to hear today, today we're going to hear a lot of his testimony, which is not usual to this podcast, but his testimony touring with Benny Hinn You're not gonna want to miss this. This is fascinating stuff. And Costi has, as you're going to hear as this testimony progresses, he's come out of many of these, no, sorry, all, all of these Word of Faith teachings, okay? And he has a lot to say. This guy was on the inside and high up in the ranks. This is gonna be a good one. Now really quick, following this interview, I have a really cool announcement. There is going to be an apologetics conference coming up on May 20th, that's really soon, in Roundup, Montana at Emmanuel Baptist Church. that yours truly, along with several other good speakers, are going to be attending. I will be one of the speakers amongst several others. After this podcast, I'm going to tell you a lot more about it. I'm going to tell you who is going to be speaking at this conference. little bit more about what's going on. Okay, so please avail yourself to that. I would love to see you guys there. That is May 20th of this year. That's coming up quick at Emanuel Baptist Church, Roundup, Montana. And so yeah, after the podcast, wait to hear some of that. And without getting too much into Costi's testimony, really, I think we should just welcome him into the podcast and you can hear it firsthand. So Kosti Hinn, welcome to the Youth Apologetics Training Podcast. Hey, thanks for having me, Michael. Good to be here. It is an honor. So friends, Kosti Hinn, does that last name sound familiar? Hinn. Well, Kosti is the nephew of the very famous evangelist, Benny Hinn, who travels around and does these healing crusades. I know a lot of you are familiar with Benny Hinn and his ministry. So Kosti has had quite an experience growing up in the Word of Faith movement and also touring around with Benny Hinn. He's got a very fascinating testimony. And so today we're going to hear from Kosti. So yeah, Kosti, tell me about like, what was it like growing up with an uncle who is Benny Hinn. You know, it sounds like you've done a lot of traveling with him. Tell us about your experiences. Yeah, it was pretty normal to me. I thought we were just a regular ministry family that had maybe some special giftedness and special anointing and power. But yeah, overall, just pretty normal. Lots of family vacations on the road with Uncle Benny and with our own family. My dad was a pastor and traveled for years as well, doing something similar, maybe not as high profile as Uncle Benny, but we grew up pretty much with the word of faith theology. That was our method. We spoke things into existence. We had dreams and goals, you know, delight yourself, the Lord and He'll give you the desires of your heart was pretty much a way that, you know, we'll seek God and we'll have faith in God and then He'll give us whatever we want was the way that we approached it. We have faith and He does it and there's no, you know, governing on that of His will or providence or sovereignty or even God saying no. It's always just not yet if He doesn't do it. God's always in a good mood. That's kind of the approach we had And we just got to make sure that we're speaking it and staying positive and living by faith was how we coined that. I grew up reading the Bible a ton. I knew the gospel in a sense that the cross, the Lord raising from the dead and redemption, all those things were very, very clear to me. But it's all the extras that made my gospel a little bit different. And to paint it really clear, I would say that We thought we had the power of the anointing, true revelation from God. We literally had the same Bible as anyone else, but the Baptists, the Methodists, any conservative denomination, they were dead churches. We were the live church. But anything like the vineyard churches or that did too much of the crazy stuff, and I know there's an irony there, because what my uncle's done, the white jacket and all that stuff, but to us the excessive, like Kenneth Hagen, the real extreme Word of Faith stuff where they laugh and it almost, I don't know what people's opinions are on this, but it almost sounded demonic, it looked demonic, the sounds that people would make, the weird, like the Toronto Blessing stuff and Kenneth Hagen, that was too weird for us, if that makes sense, but we respected the big time leaders of it because they were on the same playing field as Uncle Benny and others. So Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagan, anybody doing the word of faith stuff was still popular and famous to us, but they were really, really weird. So we were all about word of faith, but more just that we could get rich from it. And then prosperity gospel filled the bank as well. And then the faith healing was just what we did. I mean, cause Uncle Benny got known for it and he obviously took a ton of that from Catherine Coleman. Yeah. A lot of people know that. And we just kept on going. So my dad was a pastor in Canada. We grew up more local church driven than maybe my cousins did who were Uncle Benny's kids that traveled the world a lot. But it wasn't long before our later, mid to later teenage years that my dad began to travel heavily with Uncle Benny. And a lot more money came in and we enjoyed the world and we traveled a ton. And so by the time I was 18 and 19, I was a pretty decent baseball player. I wanted to go to college and play baseball. And, uh, what's the best way to get to where you want to be? Well, you got to put God first and have faith and then he'll do whatever you want. So I wanted to get drafted. I wanted to play baseball. And so I went and served my uncle Benny that was putting God first. And by serving my uncle Benny and putting God first, I ended up in first class on airplanes and really nice hotels. Of course, I was really serving Jesus, I thought, in my mind, and I was putting God first. And that's when I got deeply exposed to my uncle's ministry, and he never harmed me. He was never unkind. He was the most loving man, very generous, always favored me, treated me like a prince, if you will, if we thought we were the royal family. He treated me like a son. And I love him to this day. I love him. I love him dearly. I know people hate him. I love him and I pray for him and I long for him to walk away from the way he's taught. I know it'd be a long road of repentance for him, uh, to probably explain and do a lot of interviews and tell people that he's, he's repented. But, uh, it only takes a moment. I pray for that moment all the time for him to fall to his knees and say, Lord, I'm sorry. I repent. But, uh, on that note, you know, I'm not on a smear campaign. to tear down my uncle or to infer myself by being the anti-hin. I'm just a sheep that got saved, and I'm a saint that was a wretched sinner, and I was caught up in the movement and had to find truth, and I was drawn to that by the Lord and God's sovereignty. So in all that, I pretty much started questioning things heavily. I already thought the tongues thing was weird. I spoke in tongues. I was taught to speak in tongues. you know, just open your mouth, just move your lips, just say whatever comes to the tip of your tongue. I was taught tongues at the altar, and that led me to question, you know, why don't we interpret our tongues, or why does everybody speak in tongues? At the same time, isn't it always just supposed to be one, two, three here, and it's in order? And I had read that in the Bible, I alluded to it, and at the same time, I was told, don't put God in a box. So I bought that. And why can't you go to another country that speaks another language and not knowing the language start speaking in tongues and them understanding you in their language? Which is what you see in acts when they preach to different people that are from different areas and they're hearing it in their own language. I just wonder why you never saw that, never saw that. you're dead on. I mean, that's total truth. We went other places. We needed interpreters. Why? We can babble in random gibberish at home in America and work a crowd into a frenzy by praying in the Holy Ghost, but when we go to India or when we go to Indonesia or anywhere else for that matter where they don't speak English primarily, why can't we just do it in tongues? Just give the gospel completely in a known tongue. And there's a great book I later found by Donald Burdick called Tongues to Speak or Not to Speak. I mean, this thing's ancient, like early, early publishing, probably like, I think the 50s, 60s. There was a reprint in the 80s, but an old book, short book. That answered a ton of my questions later on, but initially it was going, hmm, some of this just doesn't feel right, and that's subjective still. But it was the beginning of my pull, if you will, the draw of God in my life, saying, hey, come on, Kosti, you're one of mine. And the Lord was pulling me. He was drawing. I wasn't hearing voices. I didn't hear him say, Kosti, come out from among them. It was nothing weird and subjective. It was simply a call that drew me. I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't know where to go and what to do. So I just kept circling the wagon and the Lord was working through all of it. So by and large, get out of that whole thing, traveling with uncle Benny, I did what I needed to do. And then I went to college to play baseball and I started in California, ended up at Dallas Baptist university in Texas for my junior and senior year. And my coach there, his name is Dan Hefner. He is a wonderful, wonderful Christian man. He's a disciple maker and one of the best, one of the best coaches in all of college baseball. And, uh, he did a discipleship program called the Oaks. And then also used to do pregame speeches that were filled with scripture. And so one day there was some scouts in the stands and, you know, I was, I was never really good. By the time I got to DBU, I realized that there were some guys that were the real deal and they were going to go to the big leagues. And I was going to be a role player on the team. And do my best to be a good teammate and take advantage of opportunities when I got to play. But, uh, I was really settling into my role and saying, all right, I don't know that I'm going to be some famous big leaguer. Uh, you know, what's God's plan for me though? I still want to play. I want to do things. I want to do this. And one day my coach, we're all standing there and he says, he quotes Proverbs 21 one and says, the King's heart is like channels in the water, channels of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he wishes. And he goes, guys, God is sovereign. He controls kings, he controls countries, and he controls scouts. So my eyes are kinda going big, I'm like, what's he talking about? And he says, he does what he wants, how he wants, when he wants, and so you might as well just have fun today, play the game, and let God decide what the future's gonna hold. And in my mind, right? And in my mind, little charismatic kid in the back of the team huddle, I'm going, okay. whatever to that, I mean, okay, so God's sovereign, whatever he means, how do I get on the good side of that then? How do I make that work for me? You gotta confess it. You gotta confess it. There's going to be a scout coming to look at you. That's right. So that was the moment that the seed was planted. I never forgot it. I still haven't forgotten it. And that's how I know. I look back, I go, that was a major seed planted in the soil of my heart. And so that began the process. I was discipled heavily at DBU. I had to memorize a ton of scripture as part of our discipleship program. And I leave DBU, I meet my wife just a few months after graduation, and enjoyed my college experience. Now I meet this beautiful gal. And that was the big moment. I'll kind of give you a pause here if you want to talk a little further and have and ask some more questions. But that moment when I meet my future wife, she's just my girlfriend at the time. She's a new convert. She goes, of all places, to Azusa Pacific University, and she is just a simple, loving, wonderful gal, not a very complicated woman, going to school to be a nurse, picks APU because they have a great nursing program, learns about God in some of her classes, and says, I've got to know more. I want to serve God. I believe in God. I want to know what this is all about. And so she is a new convert in that season, and I start dating her. And I was just head over heels, like most young men are. And then I bring her home after hiding her. Basically, I was dating her, but never told my family. I never brought her home to meet my family because I was scared to death that they would eat this girl alive. Because the first question I always get asked is whenever I met a gal. Does she speak in tongues? Oh, I met this gal. That's right. Is she spirit-filled? Well, yeah, yeah, she's spirit-filled. She's a Christian. Everyone's filled with the spirit who's a Christian. No Kosti. Does she speak in tongues as evidence of being filled? And I'm going, Oh no. And so I keep her a secret. Finally, I bring her home and I'm like, okay, I got to do this. So let's just bring her home, get it over with. And sure enough, I mean, my parents are like, yeah, we, after she leaves, we don't really feel that she's your wife. We don't, God didn't speak to us. He'll always speak to us first. And then you, and cause we're your authority where you're covering all the typical honor system of that, that garbage theology. And I'm not talking about obeying your parents or honoring your parents. I'm talking about they decide, because God told them, and then you're kind of this little kid. And I was 24 at the time, so we're not talking about a 14-year-old saying, God told me I'm going to marry my girlfriend in ninth grade. Parents and you're in your 20s and they're going yeah, but we're spiritual authority. Basically. It's the apostolic stuff. Yeah Yeah, so it sounds like what John Bevere's covering theology I know he had a book called I think it's just called covering but the idea that everybody has to have a covering and even your covering has a covering and that covering has another covering and it really does fit hand-in-glove with this new apostolic Reformation idea of eventually you're submitting to a prophet somewhere in there or an apostle. But, but yeah, your pastor is your covering. And if they tell you to do something, it's the equivalent of the word of God and you must submit or there's some kind of a curse hanging over your head. Something bad's going to happen. And that's a good, yeah, that's a good point. Cause at the end of the day, I think it's Hebrews 13, 17, right? Where writer of Hebrews says, submit to those who, are over you in the Lord, for they keep watch over your souls, they have to give an account, and so there is spiritual authority, but they take it to the nth degree. You know, my pastor, I'm one of the pastors on the team, but we have a plurality of men who oversee the church, and we're all one voice together, but there's men who have certain roles, and so, you know, naturally there'll be a teamwork aspect to our leadership, and yet my senior pastor, if you will, our teaching pastor, he's charged with the task of running the day-to-day staff operations. And so I still am. We're all under some sort of spiritual authority. No one just can go rogue. And even if you're, let's say, one of the elders of a church, you're directly stewarding the bride of Christ. And so you are under Christ's authority. Where does the ultimate authority come from? God's word. And so if you're able to have any type of authority in the church over people, if you will, I put that in quotations, then it only comes from speaking the word of God. And what's the problem in those movements? Well, they can make up the word of God, however they please, because God told them. And that's what my parents were doing. It wasn't, hey, Kost, I'm your pastor, and she's not a believer because she clearly has no fruit of salvation in her life. And she's claimed to not even know Christ, but she believes in God. She's not saved. You're unequally yoked. You know, 2 Corinthians 6, I think 14, you don't want to step in. That's not wisdom. You know, I've met with people at our church before and counseled them and told young women, you know, the guy has admitted he's an atheist. I'm recommending and I'm imploring you and pleading with you and telling you not to marry him. And that's an element. So am I, am I, you know, exercising authority over that young woman saying, don't marry an atheist? No, I'm well, in a way I am, I'm pleading to the authority of the Bible on the topic, but I'm not saying I'm her covering and she needs to submit. Cause God told me that it's not him. It's this other guy. We can't get into the subjective, uh, you know, all of a sudden we're getting special revelation and that's what was happening. That's what was happening for me. So what I did is I compared the scriptures, but lo and behold, my little, quiet, sweet bride is the one who points out the end of 1 Corinthians 12. Do you remember when Paul is clarifying the gifts of the Spirit, and then in the end, he's being almost, you know, sarcastic, or in a way, they're rhetorical questions that are obviously no. In verses 29 and 30, he says, all are not apostles, are they? you know, all are not prophets, are they? Workers of miracles, etc. And then in verse 30 says, all do not have gifts of healing, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they? Boom! My wife, my girlfriend, she's my girlfriend at the time, she goes, Costi, do you think maybe I'm saved and I don't have to speak in tongues? Because doesn't the Bible say that not all do that? So what if I'm just one of the people that doesn't have that gift and your parents do and you do. And she was so sweet, you know, affirming, you know, but you guys do. Maybe I just don't, but I still believe in Christ and I want to serve him with all my heart and I want to marry you and serve the Lord and grow old with you. And you know, obviously I'm sitting there going, Oh boy, I got to study this more. And so I study it and the whole, it was like dominoes after that. I started pushing back against my family in a deeper way. Say, I'm going to marry this gal. She is from the Lord. She is a gift from God. She is going to be my crown jewel. She's an honorable bride, and I want to marry her because she bows to the word of God. If you say to my wife, the Bible says that woman will bow her will to it. And other than that, she's a strong, solid, She ran an HR department. I mean, my wife is no pushover. She's a godly woman who has a backbone. But you say the Bible says, and she bows her will to it. And I knew I wanted to marry that. Because that's the kicker is if you're in conflict, or if you're in your life, or you're a young person looking to get married, you're going to fight. That's just the long and short of it. You're going to have tension. Will two people submit to Christ and his word? And so That began the journey, and from there, I don't know any other way to say it except, well, I would literally, I'm not trying to be rude or vulgar by saying this, all hell literally broke loose, because all of hell just kind of like, it just started. It was a spiritual battle. It literally was, you know, there were some wild things. We were coming against, my family came against us so hard. that it was darkness versus light. It was hell versus heaven. I think our souls were right there, you know, on the line and God didn't let us go. He pulled us right out of the movement and he, you know, I got a phone call offered to be the youth pastor at a church here where I am now in California where my wife had a, had a really close friend and I had a friend as well. It was a church plant. And we were in the midst of chaos during that season. I had proposed to her and it seemed like there was just constant battle, constant tension. I couldn't sleep at night. My parents and us, there was a lot of, uh, of, of persecution happening. I don't want to be disrespectful to my parents. I love them dearly. I'll spare some of the details, but It really would have been classified as spiritual warfare. We were attacked in so many ways, and mistreated in so many ways, and all that to say, we forgive and forget, it's all water under the bridge. My parents were still at our wedding, everything ended up okay, but that is what caused us to leave. It's what caused us to say, we're done. Just like when I saw the end of 1 Corinthians 12, I said, okay, I'm done. I'm marrying this girl. She doesn't have to speak in tongues the way you told her. She doesn't have to babble or fall over or do all the things we say. Look what the Bible says. And so each thing, you know, um, the, the weapon of offense, if you will, in the armor of God in Ephesians six there, 11 to 18, what's the one weapon that we can wield as a offensive or even defensive weapon. Everything else covers our vitals and protects our mind, but the sword of the Spirit, that's what we use. And what did Jesus combat the enemy with when he was tempted in the wilderness? He quoted Scripture. And so we gotta always remember, I always try to remember this, and my wife and I went through this, is we take everything back to the Word of God when it seems like, you know, hell is plundering heaven, and when it seems like, you know, Genghis Khan, and there's just this spiritual battle, and you're not really sure what it all is, you don't have to look for demons around every corner and kind of lose your mind trying to rebuke the devil in this ethereal way. You just stand on the Word of God. You go to the Word of God, you lock in on it, you stand on it and live it, and, you know, all of a sudden your mind is renewed by the power of the Word. And so that's what we started doing. And all of a sudden, if you will, hell started to lose and heaven started to win. And there was so much clarity. I think that was right around the time I would say that my true conversion happened. And the encumbrances and the weights of my old ways and my old nature, literally my sin nature that was under the power of the Prince of the air was gone. And I was new in Christ. And so I came here, and my pastor, Pastor Tony Wood, he asked me to preach one Sunday. Never, ever once corrected my theology in a way that was rude or aggressive. Never said, hey, your uncle's a heretic. He just put truth in front of me. And then we had our conversations once in a while. He'd say, you know, what do you think of all that? I said, I don't know. I think that, you know, I don't know. And I was, I was really, really new. And so he knew that it was a good opportunity to disciple and mold my theology in a way that was just through the lens of scripture. And so he asked me to preach a sermon on John five. He didn't plan it this way. He still promised me that to this day. It just so happened that in our series through John, the date he was gone, was the date that I had to preach John 5. That's where we were, the healing at Bethesda. And in order to help me with my study, he threw a commentary at my desk, literally. Sometimes he would just come in and go, hey, this book will help you. And he would kind of toss it from two feet away and it would hit my desk. And he leans over and he kind of flings over about a foot away this John MacArthur commentary on the book of John. And I'm studying and going over everything, and all of a sudden, I'm noticing some things in the text. I always go text first and then commentary. I knew that even before I was, like, let's say a Calvinist or an expositor. I just was trying to preach the Word, and I was taught early, always study first, then go to a commentary. So I'm studying John 5, and I notice lots of people were at the pool. Jesus only healed one, so I kind of made a note in my mind, you know, we say that it's always God's will to heal everybody. That's pretty much Word of Faith 101. God will heal. It's always His will. God's always in a good mood. And then the second thing I noticed was the man didn't even know who Jesus was. He didn't even perceive who Jesus was, and that's why at first he couldn't tell the Pharisees who healed him, right? Or who told him, you can pick up your pallet and go walk. I mean, what in the world? How could he have had enough faith if he didn't know who Jesus was? So questions are popping up. In that moment, now looking back, you and I can quantify it. Right there is illumination. That's the Holy Spirit in a moment, taking the word and making it make sense. And so I'm being illuminated to scripture. I've already been regenerated. I know that I'm a true convert at that, right around that time, I would say. I don't have the big date, like on March 7th, 1987, I walked the aisle and prayed a prayer, and I was never the same again. I don't have that moment. I guess some people do, and that's fine, but for me, it was a process in that season from my human standpoint. Of course, there's the time when the Holy Spirit knows that he snapped his fingers, if you will, his anthropomorphic fingers, and made me come alive. All of a sudden, I start weeping as I read MacArthur going off in the typical MacArthur-esque way. And he says, this is the cruelest lie of faith healers today. I'm reading in there, the commentary, that if you just have enough faith, God will heal you. Jesus was there, the man didn't even know who he was, and he healed him by his sovereign choice. And I was like, what just happened? I just lost it. You know, no matter what, you know, I know some people think MacArthur's too dogmatic or he's this and that. Look, no matter what you think of the guy, at the end of the day, faithful men have put their pen to paper as a commentary writer and helped the body of Christ better understand the background of a text and the thrust of a text. And that was my moment right there. I'm going, you know, thank you, Lord, for this guy who You know, I guess my uncle didn't like him ever. And it said some things about him. I didn't know who he was. But here's this guy who explains, this is a lie. And so that wrecked my world. I preached it four days later. I don't really remember how well I preached it. I just know I was really passionate and fired up. And I was really mad, too, because I thought, I've been lied to all these years. I was really upset. And, uh, in a, in a funny way, I was just, you know, I was crying a lot during that. I'm not really a big crier, but during that week, I think I cried more than I ever have. And I just, I felt remorse. I felt repentance. I felt robbed. And so that would have been my, my conversion experience, if you will. That was four years ago now. And right in there would have been, um, where the Lord started to to take me from just an infant, regenerate Christian to maybe that process of sanctification kicking into overdrive and beginning to learn and retain and study more about doctrine and realize that doctrine is my best friend because it keeps me rooted in Christ. And that's a very, very kind of real point that I try to live my wife as well. Yeah, that's that's kind of a testimony in a nutshell. There's been lots since then but Mostly just family drama because I'm a Calvinist Yep, that'll that'll definitely place you in some very fun debates for sure and an evangelist Calvinist if I might say a very evangelistic Calvinist, I don't believe that just because the doctrine of election is a reality that we're supposed to sit around and say, well, God's sovereign, he'll do it all. I think Spurgeon made the joke at one point, I'm paraphrasing, but that he'll sooner stop evangelizing when he can see the E on everybody's back for elected, and then he'll stop. But it was Spurgeon that often said things like, if they must go to hell, they must go to hell with us clinging to their ankles. Basically, you can go to hell, but you're going to go to hell over my dead body. And I'm going to evangelize you, and I'm going to grab onto you. And so you're evangelizing, like someone would say, is very Arminian. But you trust the sovereignty of God. It's literally the paradox of His sovereignty and our responsibility. So I always like to clarify that. I'm an evangelistic Calvinist. We don't sit around and just Just go, well, God will do it. Look at us right now. We're doing an interview, hoping that this will help somebody. And instead of sitting at home saying, well, let's get on with our day, Michael. If God wants to save some 18 year old listening to this, who's had questions like I have, well, he'll just do it. No, he'll use people. And he always has. That's right. And that's part of the sovereign will as well. Amen. And so when we do what He has commanded us to do and go out there and try to fulfill the Great Commission, we are still falling right within the will of the Lord. And it's an amazing thing. It really is. We're trusting in the Lord and His sovereign will, and yet we're also doing what He told us to do. Amen. Amen. You know, it's funny and sad, actually. I shouldn't say the word funny. Your testimony about meeting your wife and how much, when she was still in the future wife stage, how much commotion, how much drama got stirred up because people were suddenly having prophecies and words from the Lord that you're not to marry her and these types of things. I had very similar situations with my wife. It's also funny, my wife works within an HR department as well. Oh, that's funny. That's great. My wife, when I met her, she was practicing Wicca, okay? Oh, wow. My future wife. And I actually have a past in the new age as well. And so I was drawn to her to witness to her. It had nothing to do with, well, okay, that's kind of a long story. I did, I did have a dream that I was married to her and I thought that it was from the Lord and it very well could have been. But I was witnessing to her. She came to faith and realized she was a sinner that needed a savior and trusted in Christ. And all of this time at my hyper charismatic church, she started showing up after she had trusted in Christ and immediately immediately all the prophets came forward, if you know what I mean, and everybody's got a word for me. And it was all things along the lines of, she's not spirit filled, the Lord has shown me that she is not to be your wife, you are not to date her. And then as extreme as the pastor pulling me aside and saying, I can see the spirit of Jezebel on her. She has a spirit of Jezebel, and she's pulling you away from the Lord, and she's gonna pull you away from the things of the spirit. Man, that hurt. That really hurt. All that pressure. Meanwhile, there's just times in your life when you just know God is moving you in a certain direction, and I knew After she had trust in Christ, I knew that I was to propose to her. I knew that she was my future wife. I just knew it. And for all these people to come forward and start prophesying this, that, and the other, and then pretty soon the whole leadership team, and I was one of the elders at this church, and everybody is saying, you are being influenced by the spirit of Jezebel. She's got a demon. She's being used of Satan. All this kind of stuff. as things progressed, we ended up leaving. But boy, it is painful, is it not? But yet God did use her to help me think through some of these issues. And I would bounce things off of her and she'd, you know, that doesn't sound right. And we'd sit down and read the Bible and try to figure out whether what we were seeing in our wild church, is that biblical or not? And yes, they did preach the gospel in this church. So, you know, I'm not calling them a bunch of heretics or anything like that. I heard the gospel loud and clear there. In fact, they even had a Ray Comfort Living Waters type course that we went through, which was really kind of nice because there was a lot of people in there that I think realized what Christ really was about, and it wasn't for an experience and for, you know, rolling around on the floor and barking like a dog and giving birth to something in the Spirit and these types of things. You know, it wasn't all about the fire and the feelings, but it was actually that Christ died on a cross to take the punishment we deserve, took it upon himself, and paid for our sins. And so that was cool. But anyway, I just wanted to kind of give my piece. Now, didn't you have a, uh, kind of humorous situation go down with you and your wife at a Lifeway bookstore? Yes. Thanks for bringing that up. Um, so we had a, a little marital spat there in the Bible aisle at Lifeway, uh, here in Tustin, there's one just in town. And, uh, so we, We're there, we love books, and actually never owned really many books. I've always liked to read, so I would read a lot of books in my parents' house growing up, but never owned books for myself or had a lot of, I guess, theological resources. And so, start falling in love with books, because of course my pastor, Tony, he gives me all these books and blesses my life and says, you should read these, these will help. Basically, under that was probably, hey, you've been in heresy most of your life, This will help you out. So he's a great brother and a friend. I love him dearly for that. So he gives me all these books from his grandfather who went to DTS and his dad who went to DTS. And, uh, well in that I used to go to Lifeway and we would, you know, look at books and, but I still, even though MacArthur had written the commentary, it still hadn't totally clicked for me, if that makes sense. The truth did, but I didn't know who people are. You know, I don't know. Big deal. MacArthur, that guy who, I think he wrote the commentary that I read. I didn't even make a big deal about the author, which is a good thing. That's how I know I wasn't converted, you know, to John MacArthur. I was converted to Jesus Christ. And so, but I start going, all right, but there's, there's an author who I think wrote this. Well, I do a little more research and I'm still not going to ditch all the charismatic beliefs that, you know, I think cessationists don't believe God heals and now he can't do miracles at all. So I'm still, even though I'm converted, I'm still very careful with all that stuff at the time. And so my wife says, you know, I really want this Bible. It's by that John MacArthur guy. It's a MacArthur study Bible. It's pink, it's all cute. And I said, uh, no, I don't think so, sweetheart. We're not going to have that in our house. And she's like, but he's a really good Bible teacher and all the footnotes are really helpful. And you know, for me, I can just look right down there and it explains the passage and then I can make my little notes and highlight things, and I can really begin to retain." And I said, no, I don't think so. That's the guy who says God doesn't heal. That's the guy who says God doesn't do miracles. That's the guy, I think he doesn't like Uncle Benny or Uncle Benny, but no, I'm not going that far. His commentary was helpful, but his study Bible, are you crazy? No, we're not doing that. And so she just heads her ground. I remember my wife has her hand on her little hip, and she's looking at me like, hmm. I want this Bible." And she had her coupon, her little 40% off coupon, she had her 40% off coupon, and she just wouldn't budge. And so we're trying to keep our voices down, I'm this young youth in our little city, and I'm like, we are not getting that Bible. I'm not letting that be on my coffee table, so my children one day will be jaded by this guy's Bible who doesn't believe in miracles. God still heals, and I'm all feisty still. you know, young guy, I'm going to show my wife that I know, and I'm going to lead this home. Just all the typical stuff, right? And, you know, I'm still learning to die to self at this time. Still am now today. We all are in marriage, but my wife just sits there. She won't budge. So finally I said, fine, we're going to get the MacArthur Bible, but I'm going to highlight and circle all of his notes underneath first Corinthians 12 and anywhere else that I find where he says things like, Oh, the gifts are for today or God doesn't heal or we just have to suffer and God will do nothing for us that will help us in our stuff. I'm not I'm not playing that game and our kids are going to know don't read that one. And so she's like, OK, that she wins. Right. And so we get home. Well, fast forward. It was within that first few weeks, and who do you think was reading this pink Bible every morning at the coffee table? Well, me. I couldn't get enough of it. And again, it was just one of those moments where the scriptures came to life, and I started reading, and there was great explanations there in the study Bible. And so that was just a funny moment, though, again, where the Lord was doing a mighty work in my heart and pushing me towards truth. And again, it's really not about a man. It's about Christ and his word. But he used a lot of that to to get us out of that divergent theology and challenge everything that I'd ever believed. So, yeah, that was a funny moment. We never forget that. I love that. Yep. Right on. So going back to like the healing crusades that you had a chance to be a part of with Benny Hinn, would you say that there was a lot of building people up to a certain mental state? You know, what was it like? I know that when I would go to a lot of these types of things, I never got a chance to go to a Benny Hinn crusade. And of course, my pastor at the time would have Persuaded me not to anyway, like we were talking about earlier before we started recording He would have told me well now the Benny you don't want to go to a Benny crusade, you know, Benny He's he's just kind of out there. Yeah, but I you would go in and the typical wind-up would look like this. There would be a miniature little sermonette that would be all hype, kind of get you worked up, and then boom, you'd rush right into worship. And then worship would usually be composed of one of two things. Either it would be music that really got you worked up and hyped up, or it would be really calming and soothing that would almost put you in a an alternative state of mind, if you will. I guess being that I come from a somewhat occult New Age background where I played with witchcraft quite a bit, it felt a lot like transcendental meditation to me. It was the same type of idea of getting you in an alternative state of mind. And then all of a sudden the worship would end. the pastor would come in and somewhere in there, you would go from a real calm state to a wham, just explosive, whoa, kind of moment where, yeah, people might fall over, other people would start twitching, people would start bursting out into tongues. Is that kind of what you would experience? Like, what was that like? It was a buildup, I would say, for sure. Sitting there, music, motion. For us, I would say more calming. you know, with the favorite song was, you know, hallelujah. And so you'd sing, hallelujah. And my uncle would say, shh, just a whisper. You know, the Holy Spirit is here. Jesus is here. And really build up the crowd to get into this psychosomatic kind of a, almost a euphoric, very like, yeah, like a trans. It's sitting there and, you're waiting for something, you don't know what it is, but this seemingly holy man is telling you what it's gonna be, it's very cultish. And we know that that is not what scripture teaches. That's not the way that any of the apostles, Christ himself, there was never a buildup, there was never a quote service, there was never a special music number, there was never a special song that was associated with the anointing, if you will, I'll put that in quotation marks, That's not what the Bible teaches. The truth of God's Word is that God healed the way he did, however he pleased, whenever he pleased. When Jesus said healed, it was healed. It was instant. Of course, the apostles, these men, wielded the sign gifts. So when they healed, it was instant healing. There was no buildup. It was silver and gold, have I known? That which I have, give I thee in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk." And they would rise and walk. And Jesus, pick up your pallet, walk. You know, your sins are forgiven. Instant forgiveness of sins, instant healing. That's not what these services are. They're a slow buildup to a trans-like state so that when, you know, my uncle or whoever does these now like this, I know there's a lot of guys doing it just like him now, You know, Gifts tells everybody, if you want the power of God, lift up your hands. Who doesn't want the power of God? Who doesn't want to experience God's whatever that is when you're in that moment? If you want the presence of God in your life, lift up your hands. What well-meaning, sincere, or deceived person is not going to put their hand? I want God's presence, for sure. Not ever realizing you always have his presence. He's omnipresent, number one. Number two, or maybe even number one, you're filled with the Holy Spirit as a believer, so he's always present. God himself has taken residence in your life, and there's evidence of that, and you know you're saved. But you put your hand up, or if you want a greater level of anointing in your life, or if you want God to touch you, if you are broken and you want him to heal you, if you're empty and you want him to fill you, just lift up your hand. He's about to do that, and right there, you've taken the step from the trans-like, euphoric, you know, ho-hum, almost like cultist chanting, very new agey, to a level of expectation and promise. Now, whatever you do, it will take effect. And so they lift their hands up, and there's always a few zealous people that are more than happy to throw themselves back and turn the whole thing into a fiasco. And everybody else just does that. They look and go, that's what I'm supposed to do. That's why my wife fell. when she first ever got prayed for by my uncle when we were just dating. And part of that process, I forgot to add, was my wife, you know, to get her saved and spirit filled, my parents took her to one of my uncle's services. And, you know, she just fell cause she was supposed to fall. So if you could imagine this like 21 year old gal in her like cute little outfit and her high heels, you know, young people dress today and they look all trendy. And she just tips back on her little heels and the usher catches her. And they lay her down, and she just was like, this feels weird. She's looking back now and sees as it felt. There was a weirdness to it, Kosti. And I'm like, really? She's like, yeah. She's like, I don't know what stuff is that's weird and demonic or what it feels like to be under the control of darkness, besides in my sin before I knew the Lord. But if there was ever a moment where I felt creepy, she said, that moment I felt. It gave me the creaks. And, uh, I don't want to go any further on and comment on that. I don't know, but I'm guessing if the enemy's deceiving people through a movement that true believers are going to feel, it's going to be creepy and weird. And, uh, she definitely thought that about that moment, but that's what, that's what happens. And so then when my uncle builds it all up or anyone for that matter and says fire and they yell fire or touch and they build it up to such a point and then you yell touch or yell fire, you've just, stepped into now kind of that full action moment where people fall and they're hysterical. You've built it up for two hours. You don't expect anything less. And to be honest, I never felt anything in those moments. I was standing at the altar many times and would hold hands with random people I didn't know. And I just wanted it to, I just wanted more of God. That's really why I was there. I would run to the platform and I just wanted more of God. I was sincere. And he would yell, fire on you. And I just wanted to be in ministry. I wanted to be a big preacher. I wanted to preach the gospel. I wanted to save people and heal people and all the stuff that I was told that I would do because it was prophesied. And at the end of the day, that's all that ever was. And so people like my uncle have made a living doing what Catherine Coleman did and others build up an atmosphere. And Bethel's doing it now. Bethel Church, Bill Johnson, Jesus Culture. Build up an atmosphere with a sensual rhythm. Some of the songs, to be honest, are actually not bad in their lyrics. It's not like heresy. The devil doesn't show up with a pitchfork and go, hey, here I am. The singer, Jen Johnson, doesn't get up there and say, Hey guys, I'm going to lead you tonight into a radical lyrics, but it's going to sound so good. You're just going to love it. Okay. And my husband, he's such a stud and I'm a beautiful woman and we're just going to be up here looking good, but we're really deceiving you. And you know, that's just kind of how it's all going to work. Okay. So let's just enter into worship. They don't do that. These people look good. They sound good. It makes you feel good. And then there's subtle, Heresies and there's a subtle drawing and if anything I would even go further You can have great music that is so lyrically sound To capture an audience and and I wouldn't even say lyrically sound it sounds good And you can fake the lyrics and just sit around and say, you know, we love you and we want more of you God Okay, cool. Sing that 80 times and you've got your basic Hill song or Bethel song and then but That's the hook, especially with Millennials. I don't know how old you are, Michael. I'm 32. So I'm part of that 80 million population of Millennials. We love good music and we want to feel the music. We love that passionate music. We want emotion. We don't necessarily all want to wear suits. And that's just who we are as a generation. And so that means if you give us good music, we'll listen to the heretic preach. And that's what happens. is Bill Johnson comes out and gets the theology going, but the draw is the music. And so it sounds good, it looks good, and it leads to deadly preaching. There is a lesson there. There is. Yeah, I'm not a millennial. I'm just a hair shy of 40. But I can relate to everything you're saying. I love good music, you know, and I'm embarrassed to say it, but I really love Hillsong. I love their music, but I'm so disappointed with what they've been doing lately. And well, they've always been a little bit out there, but they've just in the last year have gone completely off out into left field. And I mean, it's a theological train wreck at this point, but I hear you. I really, really wish that there were some good Christian musicians out there that could be this zealous, this passionate, and make that caliber of music, but marry it with real doctrine like put it in a setting that actually is not gonna bring shame on the gospel and not lead people astray. And then if you could couple good, theologically straightened out, good music with good teachers, boy, you'd really have something. And I've always lamented the fact that I love the zeal of the Word of Faith movement. I love that zeal. I love how excited they get about the things of the Lord. And I get that way nowadays. Sometimes I'll get all worked up and I even joke around, I'm like, oh man, if I go any further with this, I'm gonna start running the aisles with a tambourine. But I wish there was a way to marry that zeal with solid theological foundations. So let's push aside the wild how do I say it the the manifestations quote-unquote of the spirit which I Think we would both be on the same page that I don't think any of it is of the spear. Yeah Oh, it's of a spirit, but not the Holy Spirit But if you could if you could just take that Incredible zeal that fire. Oh, I don't even want to use the word fire That's not fiery passion There you go, that fiery passion and put it towards solid Bible teaching. Oh man, I think we would have a church that would be similar to the early church, the kind of people who risk their lives and possibly even give their lives for the gospel. Yeah, we should never have to substitute our passion for truth. I mean, that's just, you can't, you can have both. You can have both. And let's get really honest here for a second. A lot of our heroes right now are older, faithful, wise men who wear suits and preach sound doctrine. And you know what? I love them. They're our heroes in the faith. We don't even need to name names. They're just guys that if you look at the books on our shelf, it is those guys. If you look at our stories and what we, the commentaries we use, or the sermons we go to, or even the conferences we look at or watch online. They are older, wiser, God-fearing, faithful men, and that's good. And a lot of these guys like their hymns, and they like them the way they do, and that's a cultural thing. If you look at their time, that's the way they like their music, but they never compromise truth. It can be the same way for Millennials, in that We have our sound and we love, you know, passionate worship. We don't all have to stand or sit on our hands. If some people want to lift their hands, there's nothing unbiblical about that. There's nothing. All of a sudden, you're not a crazy Armenian, charismatic, crazy person because you raised your hand. You're just a person that is saying, I surrender. I love you, Lord, whatever you're expressing yourself and worship in a way that is orderly. There's nothing wrong with that. And what we've got to remember is we can't go so far to each side of the paradigm. You know, on one end, you got Bethel and the insanity and the lyrics and the theology. And then on the other side, you have this stoic church of the frozen few. That's just standing there with their hands folded and they singing, you know, how deep the father's love and the hymns are great. But it's okay to be excited about the Father's love. It's okay to be excited about Christ's atonement and the hope of heaven. If you want to shout amen, shout amen! Let it be. If you want to shout, I love you, Jesus, say, I love you, Jesus. I mean, we got to remember that there is a generational aspect to worship that can still be governed by good theology. Very important. Very important. So I mean, if you, if you were to come to our church, we've had guest speakers before that are, uh, they show up. We don't really wear a lot of suits. There's nothing wrong with wearing suits either. And so we'll have a guest speaker. We just had one last year. Guy came in. Awesome. Awesome guy. And, uh, he wore his suit. He came in, he sat in the front row. He's our, our wonderful honored guest speaker. Who's going to preach the word. And, uh, And our band got up there and I'll be honest with you. We are a young, we're a five-year-old church plant and we, we've got a band and our band, they rock out, Michael. They sound really good. All right. So that is it for today. Now guys, it did end abruptly. I had a glitch. with my Skype interviewing software. I use a third-party software called Pamela, and I've never had problems with it until this interview. Go figure, okay? I've read online people complaining that every once in a while, Pamela just all of a sudden, randomly, shuts down and stops recording during an interview. And you won't even know, because you look at the Pamela software, And the counter just keeps going like it's recording. It shows that it's recording, but nothing is actually being saved to your computer. Ugh. Well, this interview was pretty much coming to a close. But yeah, that is incredibly frustrating that that happened. I apologize for that. At this point I'm not terribly sure what to do about it but rest assured I will be getting into this and trying to figure out why that happened and how to stop it. So anyway, you didn't miss too much. That was pretty much the end of the interview. We were wrapping it up. But next week there is going to be a part two to this interview where we get into many more of the doctrines that you find within the Word of Faith movement and you're going to hear Kosti Hinn's take on a lot of this stuff. So that's going to be fascinating. I've already recorded the interview. It was great. What a gracious guy. I love talking to Kosti. Just a neat guy. But yeah, don't miss that. That's going to be next week's podcast. So about this apologetics conference coming up on May 20th. It's going to be called the Defending Doctrine Apologetics Conference. Again, it's going to be May 20th at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Roundup, Montana. Now, I'm going to be speaking at this conference where I'm going to be speaking about dangerous doctrines that are creeping into the Christian church. We're also going to be hearing from Jason Oakes. He's been on this podcast several times. He is also the pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church, and he's the one I've been working with to make this happen. Jason has done a lot of work to make this conference happen, and Jason, thank you for that. Jason is going to be speaking about sharing Jesus with the cults. We're going to hear from Abigail McCoy. And she's going to be talking about why apologetics is important as well as a defense of the resurrection. We're going to hear from Tom Iverson and this is going to be interesting. Tom Iverson, he's a mathematician. He's going to be talking about infinity, and the title of his talk is, You Asked Me to Prove It. That's going to be interesting. Not exactly sure where he's going with that, but I can't wait to hear that, actually. We're also going to be hearing from Mike Mitchell, The Impossibility of Naturalism. Mike Mitchell is actually an ex Latter-day Saint, an ex-Mormon. So that'll be interesting. We're gonna hear from Clinton Wilcox with pro-life apologetics. Yes, we need more of that. We need to be saving the lives of these babies. So that'll be good. John Duckworth, he'll be speaking on defending the offensive, addressing the claim of Christ only. Dave Ludwig, the problem of evil, always a good topic for an apologetics conference. That's one of those that the atheists love to bring up. And honestly, that's one of those really tough questions, the problem of evil. So that'll be good. Caleb Lepore, defending creation in a secular culture, the essential keys to understanding the origins controversy. We're gonna hear from Lonnie Schrag, A. Biogenesis, Science vs. Creation. So we've got several speakers here that are gonna be getting into the creation evolution debate. We got Brian Chilton. I've appeared on his podcast several times. Really nice guy. He's the podcaster of the Bellatory Christie podcast. He's gonna be speaking about the reliability of the New Testament. We got Marsha Montenegro, she's appeared on this show many times. She's gonna be talking about mindfulness in the Buddhist New Age context. Fun, definitely fun. And also Ross Llewellyn, I hope I pronounced his last name correctly. Ross, if you're hearing this, I apologize if I botched that. But yes, he's gonna be speaking about your testimony as an apologetic. Mm, that sounds good. So anyway, that is going to be the conference. Again, May 20th, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Roundup, Montana. That's gonna be this May 20th, coming up really quick. So the Apologetics Conference, it's absolutely free. Just show up, okay? And so if anybody's in the area, I would love to meet you guys. Seriously, I would love to shake some hands and get to know you guys. And so please, if you're anywhere around there, please show up. It would be a blast. So anyway, with that, again next week we're going to be hearing from Kosti Hinn again. After that, we're going to go back to the topic of creation and evolution, and we're going to be hearing from David Harrison on theistic evolution. which is kind of a thorn in the side of a lot of Christians right now. So we'll be hearing about that here in the weeks to come. So anyway, with that, I love you guys. I'll see you next week.