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Jim Valekis: From Worldwide Church Of God To Preaching The True Christ · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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  defending biblical Christianity.
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  No topic off limits.
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  And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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  Hey, friends.
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  Thank you so much for tuning in, for sharing the podcast for viewing and for your prayers,
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  of course.
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  We'll talk about a book today with a new guest, and the book is called The Christian In
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  The Cult.
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  And the subtitle is in How I Discovered Humanity in Christ, author Jim Velakis is with
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  us today.
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  And he says progressive Christianity is part of end time apostasy.
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  And he talks about church scandals, pastors falling into sexual sin or greed.
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  And while these are not new occurrences, these failures hurt the church and create disillusionment.
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  But what happens when a church or a denomination is in doctrinal error.
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  So Jim was with the worldwide church of God for decades.
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  We're going to have him share his story and talk about the book.
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  So Jim Velakis, welcome to World View Matters.
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  Good to see you, brother.
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  It's great to be here.
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  Thank you for having me.
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  You're most welcome, provocative book.
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  And we also like to find out about different, just different cults, different religious beliefs,
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  how people come to those beliefs.
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  And then really how people continue to stay in that.
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  And you were a pastor for several decades, right?
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  For at least 28 years and a member of the movement for almost 40.
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  Wow.
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  Actually more than 40.
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  I would say 45 since I really started as a very young teenager.
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  Well let's go back to that point.
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  And we're going to talk about the worldwide church of God.
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  We're going to talk about Herbert W. Armstrong.
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  And how did you get into this church?
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  Many would consider a cult or at least doctrinally off of the mainstream in Christianity.
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  So you're 15 years old and that's the question we'll start with.
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  You're raised in the Greek Orthodox church, but you end up in the worldwide church of God.
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  Connect the dots for us.
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  How did that happen?
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  Okay.
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  I had been raised up in a beautiful, trinitarian, technicolor Greek Orthodox church.
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  If that makes sense to anybody, it's a beautiful sight, sound, immersive experience.
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  And it was like God's one true church for me and my family.
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  It still is for my family down home.
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  But I lived in kind of like in a world within a world.
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  My mother was a Greek immigrant lady who came to this world, not because she wanted to,
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  but because she had to because of Hitler's World War II and the Greek Communists afterward.
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  And we were raised in a very sheltered environment in a blue collar community in Birmingham, Alabama,
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  where we lived in a very deeply Greek Orthodox world amidst a culture that we didn't quite
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  understand and didn't quite understand us.
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  At a very early age, I had a very difficult experience where I was totally rejected by
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  the kids at school and rather a cruel way.
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  And it happened at an incident on a playground after I'd fallen off of a sliding board
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  and the kids ganged around me and said, don't you wish you were dead?
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  Don't you hate yourself, et cetera, et cetera?
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  But I remember walking away from that experience, thinking they hated God's son.
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  So God's son would be my friend.
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  So at a very early age, I entered into what I would call a saving relationship with Jesus,
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  Jesus Christ, who saved me emotionally.
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  And also through the years as I learned to pray to him, blessed me.
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  I got to a point, though, and this was at a very young age at the age of maybe 12 or 13,
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  whatever you are in the eighth grade, where life magazine had posted an article, is God dead?
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  That terrified me.
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  This God that had done so much for me was he really maybe not there.
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  I went at like a beautiful little Greek church board to the Greek priest and asked him the question,
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  but the church that I was in at that time was not as big on preaching the Bible,
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  as it was on getting us involved in the liturgy.
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  We learned a lot by familial osmosis in the church, but we didn't learn the things
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  that could answer the questions that I was beginning to have in my mind.
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  And lo and behold, I heard a voice on the radio, Herbert W. Armstrong, and he offered two booklets,
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  does God exist, and the proof of the Bible.
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  I wrote for them that got my nose into the Bible, and there was a pretty good logic to them to it at the time.
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  And that they gave me God back.
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  Once you get into the Bible and you start reading it like it's real and let God speak to you, you feel God.
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  They gave me God back.
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  And from that point, I became hookline and sinker, a part of what they were all about.
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  And I was, I was on school, you're talking about an eighth ninth grader.
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  And they asked the same wrong questions of the Bible that I was asking.
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  Herbert Armstrong had been an adman in the 1930s that had a religious experience of sort
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  and became to be a strong believer that God wanted this all to worship on the seventh day Sabbath,
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  eventually worship with all the biblical holy days,
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  to us chew all the regular holidays on the Christian calendar,
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  and to keep a whole boatload of things that were in the Old Testament.
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  And so that's how I got involved.
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  And they gave me, they gave me God back and I was, I was in for several years after that.
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  So let's talk about that then.
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  It sounds like from the worldwide church of God and its practices were really works.
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  Righteousness works related, keeping this, keeping the Sabbath and keeping some of the,
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  the Jewish festivals.
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  Am I understanding that right, Jim?
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  Yeah, it was, it was very works oriented.
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  And, and I think that may be the reason I had a leg up is I came into the system already
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  knowing about Jesus and having had a religious relationship with Jesus.
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  So for me, even though it was works oriented, it gave me, once again,
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  as a Greek Orthodox boy, a liturgy that I could practice,
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  and I practiced that liturgy in a personal, Christianized kind of way.
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  I would look at the Passover, I would see Jesus, but yet there were limitations to it as well
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  because it did put a greater focus on the law than it did on Christ.
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  And in fact, it plunged us into an old covenant world where we lived apart from the rest of the world.
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  In fact, we didn't get involved in evangelism.
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  To us evangelism was bringing people to learning how to obey the Sabbath and God's true holy days
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  and the laws and the Old Testament.
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  So we had a totally skewed look at what salvation was all about.
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  And a totally skewed look at the opportunities that we had to spread the gospel in the world.
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  Okay, I want to point out friends.
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  The book is on Amazon before we continue with Jim, the Christian in the cult
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  and how I discovered humanity in Christ, author Jim Velacus is with us today.
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  And Jim, you say you very clearly you were a Christian in a cult,
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  but were there times when you questioned your own beliefs and maybe the doctrines of what you were yourself preaching?
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  You know, in my mind, at that point, I did not because again, I think God used this organization
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  to take me to the next step he wanted me to go, but what happened was the organization
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  always did have this as a as a prime belief that you studied the Bible over and over again.
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  And if something you learned yesterday could be enhanced by what we would call new truth
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  that you discovered in it, you went with it.
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  And over the years, the organization, the founder died in 1986.
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  Another gentleman took over Joseph de Koch at that time.
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  And he was no theologian, but he was an honest to God's sincere man.
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  And we got confronted as a group with a question about the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
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  We didn't believe in the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
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  We thought it wasn't it, rather than a he and someone challenged us on that.
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  He sent that question to three internal scholars to study it and loan behold.
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  They came up with the understanding that we had been wrong about that.
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  And God gave us an understanding of the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
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  And like it says in the book of John that when he comes, he will speak of me.
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  So it wasn't until about two years after that, then all of a sudden we saw, oh dear me,
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  it's all about the new covenant in Jesus and not about the old covenant.
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  And so they went through this major doctrinal reformation.
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  And I was almost dragged into it kicking and screaming because like,
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  how could what I had done so long be so wrong?
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  But the beauty of it was it was an organization that believed in the scripture
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  and it let the scripture correct them.
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  And it taught us to do that as well.
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  And I studied it and I had to be honest about it.
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  It wasn't about what day you kept.
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  It was about what Lord you served.
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  Amen.
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  And so that changed everything.
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  Wow.
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  Let's talk for a minute about how a lot of people when they're confronted with doctrinal error,
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  pride or whatever else gets in the way and prevents them
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  from coming to the truth or maybe repenting or going right back to the biblical standard
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  rather than giving up their tradition, their works, whatever they were teaching for decades.
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  That's very fascinating that you guys opened your eyes and you made that switch.
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  I think that's, it sounds kind of rare when it comes to it, it didn't happen.
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  It didn't happen to everybody.
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  And it's like I've said before, like what if the Amish discovered they didn't have to wear
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  all of those crazy clothes?
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  What would happen to their society?
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  You'd have three things happen.
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  You'd have some people that would say absolutely not.
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  We've been doing this for centuries.
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  We cannot be wrong.
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  And they've gotten into it and invested in kind of like a liturgical way of being
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  that has worked for them.
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  And they won't even open theirself to the questions that are being offered.
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  You'd have some kids that were grown up in the system and said, dear me, we're finally free at last.
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  But then you'd have others like a group of us in the World War Church of God that said,
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  okay, it's not about the Sabbath.
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  What is it all about?
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  Because for all that the organization had been a cult, the people I worshiped within that organization
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  were some of the most profound Bible believing Christians I'd ever met.
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  And when they came to that crossroads of truth, they took it.
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  And that is something I've yet to find in what I call mainstream Christianity that made me
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  that made me struggle with this concept.
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  I was a Christian in a cult, but yet God was with us people in so many ways.
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  And what we had is something I think a lot of churches today need without the wrong doctrine
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  and without the hierarchical cultist control that happens in organizations like that.
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  So before we take a pause, I just want to ask you, are there any other doctrines?
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  You mentioned the Holy Spirit, the personhood, the trinity.
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  Are there any other doctrines other than works or keeping laws,
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  Sabbaths that they believed or they practiced in the World Wide?
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  Was the World Wide Church of God?
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  Before the changes, we kept the Jewish food laws and we kept them very religiously.
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  We kept the biblical holidays.
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  We also kept the biblical tithing system, which believes in not one, but three tiths.
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  There's a first tithe in ancient Israel.
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  There was a second tithe for the festivals.
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  There was a third tithe paid every year, excuse me, every three years for the widow,
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  the fatherless and the Levite, and there would be some years where you were paying not only
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  your taxes, but you were paying another 30% saved for your tithing system.
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  And there were people that faithfully kept that.
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  And that's some of the craziness that I saw, though, because like God would bless those sincere
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  people. There would be people that would come out of that third tithe here and said,
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  for whatever reason, we've got more money this year than we would have in other years.
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  And it was because even though they weren't a cult, they were Christians.
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  The Christ was with them.
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  And it was that beautiful faith of those people that I think have gotten short,
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  shrifted a little bit in this transition because they're some of the most amazing people I've
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  ever experienced faith with.
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  Wow. Well, it sounds like it sounds legalistic.
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  It sounds very works based.
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  And but yet at the same time, there are some biblical principles you reap what you sow.
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  And I'd love your neighbor.
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  And there's so many principles that they were upholding.
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  But fascinating conversation with Jim Velakis, friends,
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  the book, The Christian and the Cult, we'll be right back with more on World View Matters.
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  World View Matters at FPEUSA.org.
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  And we're with Jim Velakis. He's an author and the book, The Christian and the Cult.
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  Fascinating conversation about the World Wide Church of God,
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  which I didn't know a lot about, but I understood
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  and more about what Jim explained.
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  One question I want to ask you, Jim, was there a point in your ministry
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  when you were pastoring that you entered or there was a point actually that you entered a dark,
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  night full of self-incrimination? Tell us a little bit more about that. How did that come about?
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  I transitioned with the organization and it became a what I would call an evangelical, a very
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  evangelical pastor. And I was so in fire for Jesus, I was even going to farmers markets and
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  knocking on doors and inviting people. And I guess something of that passion, something of Christ
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  showed enough that and we grew a church. It was nothing ever mega by any standards.
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  Our claim to fame was that one year we packed the room with Christmas observers and
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  the standing room only and we're preaching the gospel handover fist. But I came against
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  again and again. I would bring people to Christ and I would bring people to Christ in a passionate
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  way, but I could not take them to that depth that I wanted to take them to of like living by the
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  Bible like we did when we were quote unquote in the cult and wanting to grow in grace and knowledge
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  that deeply. You were always competing with the bigger and better church down the street and
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  there was a big performance and almost a consumeristic attitude that was going on in the in the
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  mainstream world in which I was as I came into something disagreements to with some of the ways
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  in the different directions that that the entire organization was going. But long story short
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  that ministry died. And it was at that point that it was a whole startover of everything that I'd
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  ever been and ever stood for because like as much as I had been in a cult like I write about
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  in the book I didn't come to a cult with all my heart I came to God. So God what is this all about
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  and what are you wanting me to learn from it but more importantly what are you wanting me to do
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  to spread the kingdom life of Jesus Christ. And that was a that was a very dark period. That was a
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  deep deep deep place where God pushed in the clutch and I was going to have to change gears
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  and my whole approach to ministry was going to have to start all over. So when you were pastoring
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  and you're making this transition and you became very evangelical how did that change in your
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  sermons on Sunday how did that change and how you were teaching and preaching to the congregation.
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  It was about Jesus Jesus and more Jesus the reality is Christ collusions to says and so
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  I reached Jesus like a group of people that had just discovered it and we were not people that had
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  you know lived for two thousand years with Christian history and had gotten jaded and bored by
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  the same old truths. We were discovering amazing new things and I was preaching it hand over
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  fist and and part of that and so my sermons my daily bread became Jesus and I kept preaching
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  Jesus over and over and over again because frankly I couldn't preach enough of him but that
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  became a problem because just like the Israelites in the wilderness got bored with the daily bread
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  of manna I believe that they got bored with just hearing about Jesus and I perhaps wasn't as
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  schooled as I could have been in relating it to some of the day-to-day aspects of this world or
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  the the the realities that we live in an American consumer culture where you're you go to church but
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  you're pursuing the American dream a lot and so I had some growth curve to go on that one but man
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  I preach Jesus hand over I still do I still do I can't get past that because it is all about him
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  and all about living us be what we are in him amen I mean there's not hold not a lot in the Bible
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  about living the American dream so but there is a lot about Jesus the Son of God the way the truth
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  and the life and no one comes to the Father except through him very exclusive and at the same time
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  he says you know whoever will whosoever will God so love the world that he gave but you've got to
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  make a decision you've got to believe right I don't preach into the choir here getting an evangelist
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  all stirred up right Jim how do you you're about to get me going you know like well here's the deal
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  a scripture that became very important to me is the one in act 17 where Paul was preaching to the
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  non-believers yep and he said in him we live and move and have our being in that ontological sense if
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  I can use that big deal word we're all included in Christ and God has gone to heaven now as a human
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  being he's received the Holy Spirit from his father the third person of the Trinity and he has
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  sent what I call free god wifi down to the world upon all flesh and and and you can receive
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  this spirit or you can resist this spirit those are the only two words maybe there's a third word
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  there's grieving the spirit in the scripture you do have to receive you do have to accept the fact
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  that you are created that you're meant to be what God meant you to be and that your true freedom
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  is not the freedom to reject God but to accept God and who you are and God and once you start
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  receiving the Holy Spirit you can start becoming who you were meant to be in light Christ as in
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  first second Peter chapter one participate in the divine nature and oh that sets you free
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  that sets you free all kinds of things amen I've got to just take a minute and go back to act
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  17 because that is a powerful section scripture and I just want to share a few verses to encourage
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  our viewers verse 26 Paul was preaching he said God made from one man every nation of mankind
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  live on all the face of the earth having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of
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  their habitation and then it goes on to say in verse 30 therefore having overlooked the times
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  of ignorance God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent why because
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  he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man capital M
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  Jesus through a man whom he has appointed having furnished proof to all men how by raising him from
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  the dead I mean Paul was on a roll and he went through and all started with him going to the city
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  and finding all these idols and all these altars and then the one that said to an unknown God
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  that was his opening now I can tell them about that unknown God right absolutely and the beautiful
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  thing about it is too once you get Jesus you get the Bible and the Bible becomes then real to you
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  but you got to learn how to read the Bible rightly you can all right cheesy pastoral trick here you
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  can read him through the lens of legalism or you can read him through the proper lenses of Jesus
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  Christ and then when you read the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ then you are free to go back
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  to the Old Testament see what is to be looked for in life today what was meant to be just as a
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  pointer to Jesus and in the way that you should live and and yet I didn't get to preach that as
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  much as I would like to in this American they can vote with their feet go to the big church
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  down the street where it's got more coffee and more computers and more gadgets and more gizmos
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  and I wanted to preach Christ with that passion because he came to share the Trinitarian life
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  of God he wants to fill us with the Holy Spirit and it's this very life of God that's going to
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  set this whole creation from the bondage to decay I mean that's a big deal yeah and that's
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  even bigger than our political system that's bigger than how to get a good date that's bigger than
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  how to you know be a good employee and get a raise at work I mean we're talking about saving the
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  universe through the life we develop now in Jesus Christ and that gospel bless its heart doesn't
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  get preached as much because there's so many competing other quote-unquote gospels out there
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  including the American dream that keeps people from focusing on it amen amen brother hey we just
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  got three minutes left and you know Paul said preach the word in season and out of season um my
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  final question um so why do you believe people from our churches are not radically winning over
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  influencing our culture but then winning over our culture to Christ today I don't think that we
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  are producing Christians that are what I would call Holy Spirit hotspots we're producing Christians
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  that we will bring back to church and that will help us fund whatever it is that we're doing at a
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  church but we're not challenging them enough to become these people that have such a passionate
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  relationship to where they've repented where they've turned to Christ to where the antenna of their
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  heart is always in front of the antenna of Jesus and that they're praying and that they're studying
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  and that they're feeding on him and that they're so full of the Holy Spirit that they can change
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  the complexion of a company by simply walking into it and people gravitating to what they want
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  if we can do that this thing can become the movement it was in the Roman era where they didn't have
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  bibles they didn't have buildings they didn't have bucks they didn't have box office draw pastors
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  they had Jesus and the Holy Spirit and we've got to change something we've we've got to redefine
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  what we say is success in the American religious system and it's got to be about producing
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  Christians that are so filled with the Holy Spirit I mean you will change people almost without
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  words they'll fill the love glowing out of you thanks Jim we've talked a lot about that on this
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  podcast before this American Christianity does not often reflect biblical Christianity in the
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  early church because I think part of it is the church growth movement that has been oh my goodness
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  in Achilles heel to a true biblical Christianity not to say that all mega churches are bad there are
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  some very good pastors very good ones out there but a lot of them they're just trying to attract a
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  crowd and how do you attract a crowd you start talking like the world trying to do worldly methods
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  of entertainment music and everything else I know I'm preaching to the choir but Jim Velakis
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  hey thanks for your time today you got a minute left just encourage our viewers just to stay true
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  to the word of God and study to show themselves approved the one thing that I'd want to share and
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  I'm going to try to say that as as fast as I can as I see the clock ticking here is I was a Christian
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  in a call but without realizing it you may be one too you may be more of a cultural Christian
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  then you are a Christian that is living moving and breathing out of your relationship with Christ
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  and if you want to see changes made talk to your pastor examine what you're doing that is more
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  cultural than Christological see what you can do to start being a church that just powerfully
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  brings non-believers and seekers to a Christ that they feel in your presence and go on a journey
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  to create individuals that you shoot out of the world into the world every Sunday that are like
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  stars in a dark universe and start bringing people all across the board to Jesus Christ oh
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  amen brother thank you what a great way to end great words of encouragement Jim Velakis and the
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  book friends the Christian in the cult on Amazon God bless you sir thanks for your time today
• 27:51
  thank you very much for having a nice to meet you all right same here friends great conversation
• 27:55
  that was a good challenge at the end boy we all have to look at that and see we need to get go out
• 28:00
  into the world as Jesus said go out and Monday through Saturday not just go to church on Sunday
• 28:05
  and take it all in but we got to move on God bless you and as always keep speaking the truth about
• 28:10
  things that matter