Posted on 09/20/2010 1:38:01 PM PDT by grassboots.org
This is dedicated to my first Assembly of God youth pastor, Greg Black, who shared the true gospel with me almost 40 years ago.
Facebook's Evid3nc3 (E3[1]) is a bright and ambitious young man raised in an Assembly of God church whose aggressive and unrelenting efforts to reach his peers would be the envy of most any youth pastor. Except for one thing: he proselytizes not for his youth group or the Lord, but his most cherished belief: his atheism. The videos in his series have been watched over a hundred-thousand times, possibly by kids in your youth group. Updated and Corrected: Someone using his ID has labored at posting links to his videos on scores of various sites unrelated to atheism and he has developed a huge following among skeptics.
In the video below he talks about getting saved[2] during a Royal Rangers meeting, his service for the Lord, his experience of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (with the evidence of speaking in tongues), and his walk with God.
Introduction to YouTube Video: Why I am no longer a Christian.In a debate with a reformed Christian, E3 listed four signs to try and prove his conversion to Christ was "meaningful and touching":A short but comprehensive look into my life as a Christian (which spanned 15 years) to prove to Christians that I was a genuine born-again, Holy Spirit baptised, and deeply committed Christian who had a strong relationship with Jesus Christ.
-speaking in tonguesIndeed, the expression of his personal testimony might lead typical youth leaders to believe the kid was indeed a real Christian no different from the young people in their own youth groups. But those...-speaking to Jesus
-feeling God’s presence
-feeling God’s guidance
(Excerpt) Read more at caffeinatedtheology.com ...
“I can safely say that this is not what AG teaches”
What in the world are you talking about?
The AG teaches that anyone who speaks in tongues has shown evidence that they were baptized by the Holy Spirit and that “Holy Spirit baptism occurs only after someone has truly accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.” You can verify this at time 4:25 in this video by the AG general council:
http://ag.org/top/beliefs/our_core_doctrines/baptism_HS/
What I was specifically addressing was the sloppy ‘feelings’ gospel the blog post seemed to be associating with AG.
I think we should distinguish between what a denomination officialy teaches and the actual experience of those in a particular local setting. I know that the A/G teaches the gospel: grace, faith, repentance, death and resurrection of Christ, etc.
That does not mean the emphasis will be correct in many youth group settings, especially where experience is central, worldly attempts to attract and hold unbelievers holds sway, etc.
This is no doubt true in many A/G churches and many other churches in virtually every other American church denomination
Hmm. Well it appears that the blog has misrepresented the youtuber, then. I watched some of the videos and his Christianity definitely wasn’t based solely on feelings. A huge portion of his video testimony reveals that his faith was thoroughly Bible-based and directly in line with the core doctrines and teachings of AG.
I disagree. If you see the list of deficiencies listed, with the brief exception of the “died for my sins” off-hand remark there is no mention of any of the “core doctrines” of salvation: repentance and faith, death and resurrection of Christ, sin, etc. Yes, he does mention some of the other experiences of pentecostals (holy Spirit baptism, speaking in tongues, etc.) but not those pertaining to salvation, not in the first video.
My main concern is that this confused young man’s views do not get confused with the doctrinal teachings of AG, which on the surface it appears to have been headed.
Actually, if you look on the Caffeinated Theology blog, you can see that he has responded to the accusation that he didn’t believe in salvation.
He says he believed in salvation, repentance, and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He just didn’t know that he needed to explicitly mention it in the series because he thought it would be obvious that anyone who said they were a Christian believes in that.
I mean, think about it: if someone told you they were an AG Christian who had spoken in tongues, would it be valid to simply assume they didn’t believe in salvation too? That seems pretty nonsensical. All Evangelical Christians believe in salvation and AG is a branch of Evangelical Christianity.
I think the most reasonable explanation is that he made the comment about salvation as an “off-hand remark” because he assumed it would be obvious that anyone claiming to be a born-again Christian believed in salvation (by definition).
Also, it looks like he has updated his video to include remarks about salvation at the beginning, too, probably in response to caffeinated theology’s blog post.
The blog page is now no longer showing up.
This would not be an issue if I were going to go around judging individuals based upon some testimony I overheard. This was E3's well-thought out tool he intended, as he said, to prove, not that he was a Pentecostal, but prove he was a Christian.
It would be like saying, I am going to prove I am a Christian by proving I say the Rosary or that I had seen angels. Fine experiences, perhaps, but no evidence of conversion.
I have procured an email interview with him clarifying these issues, which I will be posting in the next couple of days.
The updated pages is here, I am nost sure why it came down:
He has updated his video with more dubbed commentary at the beginning. I do not know if that part is also now on his original video on Youtube, I assume that it is. If so, this moves the dialogue on considerably.
“It would be like saying, I am going to prove I am a Christian by proving I say the Rosary or that I had seen angels. Fine experiences, perhaps, but no evidence of conversion.”
Hmm. This seems a little different though. Saying the Rosary and seeing angels are not related to salvation.
But, as shown in that video I linked to above from the AG website, AG believes that someone can only speak in tongues if they have truly accepted Jesus as their savior. So I can see how he could think that obviously if he said he spoke in tongues, people would know he was saved. In fact, since he came from AG, I can see how he would think that is even better evidence than just “saying” he was saved.
According to AG, it’s kind of like how you can’t get a PhD without having a Bachelor’s degree: being saved is a definite requirement.
“Hmm. This seems a little different though. Saying the Rosary and seeing angels are not related to salvation.”
You misunderstand the A/G position (I used to be an A/G minister). Speaking in tongues is not evidence of salvation. It is evidence of being baptized in the Holy Spirit.
What is missing is the subjectivism of the whether a person has truly spoken in tongues or not. I suppose some in the A/G, but certainly not all, would suggest that it could be not be faked or the person could not make it up.
For many, speaking in tongues would be evidence then, only if it is real tongues. I could go in front of an A/G board and pretend to speak in tongues, it would not mean I was filled by the Spirit.
So many are missing the point of the post and the odd position of this atheist. He is suggesting that his experience was real, and yet that God does not exist. If tongues is a gift of God, how can he still claim it is real? That borders on insanity. If God does not exist, he was “faking” his tongues experience, as was every other person in the the youth group. Why wouldn’t he admit that? Because it goes against his goal of suggesting he was a “real Christian”.
Bottom Line: If there is no God, there are no “authentic” or “real” Christians. Because real Christians are made by a real God, only.
His fatal argument is this:
He wants you to think his experience of salvation was every bit as real as any other Christian, which is to say, a fake and a fraud.
He won’t say it that way. But logic dictates no other position.
Right, I agree. He is trying to say that all Christian experience is not actually real, not just his. However, that doesn’t mean he faked it. He believed it was real at the time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbXJC6KsYWs
I think what he is trying to say is that all true Christians, including himself, believe it is real and have a real emotional experience that makes them certain God exist and that the Holy Spirit is real. But what he is arguing is that it is an illusion the he woke up from. In other words, he disagrees that it takes a real God to make real Christians. He’s saying all the experiences can genuinely happen (without intentional faking) without a real God existing.
“He’s saying all the experiences can genuinely happen (without intentional faking) without a real God existing.”
That is where I would hope you and I agree and understand he has it wrong.
Let’s not allow his totally subjective definitions to rule the day. Suppose he wakes from a dream in which he dreams he visited the White House and president Lincoln. He realizes it was all a dream. But he keeps trying to convince everybody that it was a “genuine” experience. His purpose is to show others that their dreams weren’t real.
This is fundamentally a deceptive approach and the one I intend to expose. It is not my job to evaluate people’s subjective “experiences”. I instead will argue that God exists, that we are all born sinners, that Christ is the only Savior, and that salvation is found through faith in Him alone.
Okay. I just want to re-emphasize that, from watching his videos, I’m not sensing any intentional deception on his part. He seems to genuinely believe what he is saying and genuinely believe that he had the same experience that other Christians have.
Perhaps he genuinely expresses what he experienced and sadly his experience may be no different from what many professing Christians have experienced. That was the point of the essay. Experience is not the touchstone of what is true. It is the word of God that is true.
“It is the word of God that is true.”
Okay. Fair enough. Just so we are clear what we are dealing with, though, he actually has addressed the validity of the Bible in the series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70SYwkoH_yc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q37NhrCPNo
I just want to make sure you are aware of the arguments he is making about the issue before you go head-to-head with him on it. He might dismiss assertions that “the Bible is true” if he feels you don’t understand his counter-arguments to that statement.
Okay. But there are three things you need to be aware of.
First, I am not intending to enter into a debate with E3 over the existence of God. I am going to allow an opportunity for him to clarify his positions so that I am not attacking a straw man.
Second, since I am not so much dealing with him personally, but his videos, I am challenging the content of each video in turn. I will get to his videos on the Bible in turn.
Third, the primary purpose is to challenge professing Christians to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith, since their own testimonies often are no different than E3s, devoid of much gospel content, as I have demonstrated over and over is the case with E3.
The gospel is not “I believe”, it is “God says”.
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