The Harvest is Plentiful, The Workers Are Few with K.P. Yohannan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
Hi, and thanks for joining me on hank unplucked. This
year was a startling reminder of the ethereal reality of
our earthly experience. Just last Christmas, I sent many of
you a Christmas card, a card that featured a joyful

(00:43):
photo from a trip I took to India with my
dear friend KP. Johannan. During the trip, we witnessed firsthand
are ongoing global efforts in the ten forty window from
West Africa to East Asia, and we excitedly discussed our

(01:07):
plans to continue carrying out the great commission as commanded
by our Lord and say for Jesus Christ. Well this
Christmas season, KP is now absent from the body and

(01:27):
he's present with the Lord. But you, you and I
are still here. We're here as yet to make a
difference for time and for eternity. Moreover, this year is
a reminder of the reality that we only have one life,

(01:50):
that life soon will be passed in that only what's
done for Christ will ultimately last. As I now approach
three quarters of a century in age, I am acutely
aware of the reality that I am in the fourth
quarter of my life, a life that is motivated by

(02:16):
an admonition given by Saint Paul, an admonition that we
are to run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
That we are to fix our eyes on Jesus, who
is the author and the perfector of our faith, a

(02:38):
Christ who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross,
scorned its shame, and sat down at the right hand
of the Throne of God. And as we ponder those
words on behalf of the entire team at the Christian

(03:00):
Research Institute, I would like to thank you, thank you
from the bottom of my heart for being a co
labor in Christ in the battle for life and truth.
If you haven't already subscribed to the mailing list, if
you're not receiving email updates, we'll simply go to the

(03:23):
web at equip equip equip dot org and sign up
right away in order to ensure that you can connect
with small but very meaningful moments such as receiving this
Christmas message, and of course it's important to remain connected

(03:48):
with the Christian Research Institute and all of our various
outreaches like the Hank Unplugged podcast that you're listening to
at the present moment. I am excited to present an
encore edition of the Hank Unplugged podcast. It features a
conversation with a dear friend I just spoke about Kpohonen.

(04:14):
It happens to be the one hundredth episode of Hank Unplugged,
and it's titled Never Give Up with KP Johannan. Let
me also say that KP was a generational disciple of
Our Lord. In other words, one of these people that

(04:35):
comes around once in a generation. His life had transcendent value,
and so I pray that the conversation you're about to
hear will inspire you to join the abundant harvest to
be found in Christ Jesus, our Lord, and that you

(04:59):
might dive help of passion for proclaiming his very name
to billions around the world who have as yet to
hear his holy name. Merry Christmas and welcome to a
very special edition of the Hank Unplugged podcast. This is well,

(05:24):
it's the one hundredth episode of Hank Unplugged, and today
we're going to feature a very close and personal friend
and he really fits the billing for our mission statement
because he is truly one of the most interesting, informative

(05:46):
and inspirational people on the planet. He has a tremendous
vision and I want you to catch that vision today.
But before I introduce my guest, I'd like to take
just a moment to look back at some of the
guests and topics and well listeners that have led us
to this moment. Remember, Hank Unplugged was the brainchild of

(06:10):
my son David, and it debuted back in the summer
of twenty seventeen. At that time, I had just been
diagnosed with stage four mental cell lymphoma, and yet being
in the hospital going through chemotherapy, we still were able

(06:33):
to do all of these podcasts. Almost one hundred today
is going to be number one hundred, and we've had
nearly a half a million downloads across dozens of platforms iTunes, YouTube, Spotify,
and everywhere else popular podcasts are consumed. And so many

(06:58):
five star ratings have come in, I just can't count them.
David gave me too just a moment Ago one says
fresh perspectives from a familiar voice. Hank Henigraph has hosted
the Bible answer Man broadcast for over thirty years, but
this is a very different format which provides a more

(07:21):
intimate and deeper exploration of issues and ideas with very
significant guests. Another says, a great podcast. I really like
this podcast. I personally benefit from it, and I appreciate
Hank's honesty. I really like that he brings a diverse
group of believers together and he helps people grow in

(07:43):
christ to quote a great Man, in essential unity and
non essentials liberty, and in all things charity. By the way,
that's not original with me, but we certainly have popularized
that motto. Hank Unplugged has of course featured guests throughout
the Christian traditions, from Nathan Jacobs and Bradley nassav and

(08:05):
Frederica Matthews Green to Lee Strobel and Gary Hoppermoss and
Jack Graham, Frank beckwith Jay Richards and Marcillino Dimbrosio. What
a name And this was a book, by the way,
that I was turned on by my guest today. We'll
talk a little more about that as the podcast continues.

(08:26):
But of course this podcast has covered a wide range
of topics, from my battle with stage four mental cell lymphoma,
to Eastern Orthodoxy to intelligent design, Biblical sexuality, Black Hebrew, Israelites, Islam,
the early Church Fathers, and most recently the novel Coronavirus

(08:48):
COVID nineteen. But all of this is just prologue to
episode one hundred again, Wow one hundred and the words
of my father who died when he was seventy four,
which is something that I have in common with my
guest today. His father also died at age seventy four.
My dad used to say, that's not nothing. So we

(09:11):
do something extraordinary, say that's not nothing. So without further ado,
I would like to introduce you to my dear brother,
my friend, my co labor in Christ, brother KP. Johannan.
He is a Metropolitan. He is the founder of Gospel
for Asia. There's a whole lot more than I'm going

(09:32):
to say in a moment that welcome KP.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Thank you Han. What a privilege. It's amazing just to
hear the narrative of your journey, and many of the
names you mentioned, I know them, and I'm so grateful
that Christ's name is known far and wide and the
influence is very significant. And for me, I tell people

(09:58):
everywhere in the world, one of the greatest privilege in
my personal life is the day I got to see
you and know you and follow you, and I appreciate
it so very much.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Well, I love you too, you know, you're one of
those people. And I've told many people about this. Of course,
my son David experienced it because he was in the
room when it happened. When we first met. The minute
I saw you, I can say I truly loved you,
and that has only grown over the years.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, the same thing, you know, Christianity is sad to say,
has what Arably Toss or you know, said it about
many things about church, the missing jewel in the modern
Christianity for a long time. It is the understanding of mystery.

(10:49):
And I never forget the first time I saw you,
I mean for me for years. If somebody said, did
you ever meet Hank hinak Graph you talk to him?
My answer would be, what on earth you're talking about?
I never even imagined that could happen. So when I
saw you, it was like a hidden mystery that all

(11:16):
of a sudden the light turned on that God, in
his amazing eternal plan, now open the door and here
I see you face to face. I mean, it's not
an illusion, it's a real thing. And my heart was
pounding so harsh and hard thinking that, my goodness, I

(11:38):
didn't know this was going to happen, But here I
am meeting you, and I think when we are an
eternity that is a future we look back and see
how different times in our life, whether deep pain and
sickness or encounter meeting people, I think we see all

(12:00):
things as they are. And this is one of those
movement moment that I think, my meeting you and the
joy of knowing you, and it continued to increase in
its value, appreciation and understanding the ways of the Lord.
So I just want to affirm that and thank you
again for your love and friendship and our journey together

(12:24):
for this brief few years left in the light of eternity.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yes, both of us are on our fourth quarter. I mean,
even if we live to be one hundred, we're still
in our fourth quarter. So we're we're looking to make
our lives count while there is yet time. And you
have done so much in ministry, and obviously you're a
humble man, and I don't want to exalt you unduly,

(12:50):
but I do want people to know how God has
used you. First of all, is the founder of Gospel
for Asia. This is an organization that has helped to
bring the love of Christ to literally, without any hyperbole,
millions of people in a needy world. You're also, and

(13:12):
I think this is very significant, something we'll talk about
in the podcast. But you're the Metropolitan of Believers Eastern Church,
and this church has more than twelve thousand congregations. Think
about that for a moment. Twelve thousand congregations in sixteen nations,

(13:34):
nations around the world that I think encompass some three
hundred languages. And George Verwer, who is of course the
famed founder of Operation Mobilization International dubbed UKP the Indian
Apostle Paul of this generation, and I think he's absolutely right.

(13:55):
You're the author of the best seller Revolution in World Missions.
It's a book that, more than any other, has changed
the way world missions is impacting the precious planet for
which Jesus Christ sacrificed his life. There are some this
is a staggering number, some four million copies in print,

(14:18):
probably many many more in languages all throughout the world.
And that book, again has been dynamic in changing the
very way in which world missions is being conducted. And
this has made a big impact in and of itself.
So let me stop there. There's much more that I

(14:39):
could say, But first of all, talk about Gospel for Asia,
an incredible ministry that has had such an impact around
the world.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Hank, thank you, Thank you for being very kind and
gracious in the way you set things about me and
the ministry and the work and the church. You know,
when I first came to America in nineteen seventy four
to go to the seminary in Dallas, people used to
ask me, tell us about the place you come from,
and what is it like. I used to tell them, well,

(15:15):
why didn't you go and look at the old black
and white Tarzan movie. You can find you might have
a glimpse understanding of the community or the tiny rural
village I was born and raised. And strange enough, those
who study theology and seminaries, they will learn the word

(15:38):
Niranam and I r an am because that is one
other place where Saint Thomas Apostle Thomas Christ disciple came
in eighty fifty two preaching the Gospel, obeying the great
commission of the Law to go into all the world,
and he planted seven churches, and one of those churches,

(16:01):
Hank happened to be about three kilometers from where I
was born and raised, and you know, being raised in
a Christian home, believing in the Orthodox faith and the
holy traditions and following the Lord. My mother, without any doubt,
was truly a living saint. And now we make saints

(16:23):
after they are dead. But my mother about five feet wandering,
just all something like that, tiny woman. You know. She
had six sons and I'm the youngest, and she was
so devout that she would spend four or five hours
daily in prayer alone, and she looked into her eyes.

(16:43):
As a small boy, I thought, what is wrong with
my mother? Because she had a different, strange world stamped
into her eyes. And when I finished my high school,
I told my parents, if they would allow, I like
to go with the youth group to North India, which

(17:04):
is two thousand miles away from my village, to learn
about christ discipleship and then share the Gospel with people
that never heard it. And before I could finish my sentence,
my mother, who was sitting on the bench by our
dining table, gummed up and said, go, you must go.
And my first impression, hang was my God, I was

(17:28):
an accident or she never liked me. But there was
no other conversation sure enough their blessing, I went off
to North India and two years of my life in Rajasthan,
known as the Desert or the Kings or the Gospel.
I came home skin and bones and trying to visit

(17:53):
my parents, and my mother was in the kitchen cooking,
you know, like the old way, the firewood and you
know the stuff, and she said, I want to tell
you a story. Why didn't you sit down? So I
sat down and she said, you remember the day you
came and told me about you want to go and
serve Christ. I said, mother, I remember that. I know
also what you said. She said, well, there's something you

(18:14):
don't know, and then she said, all my life I
prayed that one of my sons will commit his life
to serve the Holy Church and serve the Lord, and
one by one your brothers when you're farming business and
all kinds of things. Because I come from a farming
family and you were born and raised timid, shy, be drawn,

(18:39):
I kind of give up my hope that you will
make anything out of your life. And that's when I
started praying every Friday, fasting only drinking water for three
and a half years, saying Lord before I die, please
call one of my sons to serve you and the
Holy Church. And the day you came and said what

(19:01):
you said, I knew instantly God answered my prayer. But
I never told you that because I never knew that.
And of course, you know, I'm convinced that my serving
God or going out to be his heart to do
my mother's prayer. But then I learned later from my

(19:22):
church that when I was taken to baptized and christmated,
my mother told our priest, of my six sons, this
one we have decided to give to serve the Lord
and the Holy Church. Please Father pray for him that
it will be fulfilled. And so it's amazing those records

(19:46):
are kept. But then, Hank, one of the amazing things
in nineteen ninety, I was on the way to South
Korea to speak at a mission conference from the United
States in August, and that's when I heard my mother
was taken ill and taken the hospital. She was hardly
ever sick in her life, and I canceled my trip
and went down to South to visit my mother. And

(20:12):
she was eighty four at that time, and the day
before she died, she told the medical doctors that tomorrow
I'm going to be with my Lord, and she would
be witnessing all the time, but knowing Christ and all that. Anyway,
next morning, six fifteen, she departed to be with the Lord.

(20:33):
And after her funeral we will open her diary look
at the instructions she left with her sons. And one
of the things she wrote down was this, when I'm
dead and gone, the only thing I will leave behind
it is my wedding ring, my ear rings, and the
gold chain my husband gave me when I was nineteen

(20:57):
when he married me. Please tell these items and give
the money to preach the gospel where people never heard
Jesus' name. I want to meet them also in heaven.
The amazing thing we sons, we all thought she had
a huge amount of money saved up in the bank,
to find out there was nothing. She was giving me

(21:18):
all her resources continually every month to preach the gospel
in many, many places without ever telling anyone. And when
I came to serve the Lord with oportionmorization and spent
eight years of my life in India, Bangladesh and Indonesia
and all these places. But finally ninety seventy four, when

(21:39):
I came to America to study in seminari. After a
few years of my training here, of course, you know,
I mean five andred years of training is a long time.
I felt so empty, so lost, saying to myself, what
am I doing in America. This is a country where
every telephone post is a church. Two billion people in

(22:00):
South Asia that never heard the name Christ. And that's
when I resigned from my church, being a local coology,
and decided to start the mission gospel for Asia. And
now we are forty years in the history and our
job was to train people in their own countries, cultures

(22:25):
and send them out to preach the gospel among people
that never heard the gospel. And that was a beginning.
I mean, just like Jesus did in Gospel of Matthew,
chapter twenty eight, and then what happened in Acts chapter
two and Acts thirteen, and so you know, I am
totally amazed as I look back, I've been like hang honestly,

(22:45):
like a dry leaf carried in the wind, didn't know
what the future, what to do, where to go, but
good and bad and pain, in agony and persecution, whatever
the Lord carried us. And here we are amazed by
what God is doing in the Holy Church and what

(23:05):
the Lord is planning in the days to come.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
I want to jump ahead just a little bit based
on what you said with respect to Gospel for Asia,
your vision, your passion. You have said, and I've heard
these words come out of your mouth, that there's a
deception that has taken place within mission organizations, and that
deception is that they fail to see that they are,

(23:32):
in fact a means to the end of establishing local churches.
And so you have seen your mission not as a
mission just to reach out, as significant as it is,
but to build the church because you are committed to
First Timothy three point fifteen what Paul said, that the

(23:53):
church is the ground and the pillar of truth. And
now you've established over twelve thousand churches, and that's being conservative.
You're understating the numbers on purpose, because if you overstate,
people can say you overstated by one. It may be
many more than that. But twelve thousand churches plus, and

(24:16):
these are in sixteen different nations and encompass so many
varied languages. Talk a little bit KP about your total,
irrevocable commitment to the church as the center of the universe,
that out of which everything else.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Springs well, Hank this journey of my understanding of the
Holy Church and the mystery that was hidden in God,
the Holy turntyer real to Saint Paul, I want to
be very blatantly honest to that idea. Not understand it

(25:01):
for a long time, and I you know, it was
about seventeen years ago I actually began to begin to
understand the amazement and the mystery of the Holy Church.
My education and background in the United States, everything was
heavily Protestant and church history went back to Martin Luther.

(25:23):
Nothing more than that and information to me, I mean honestly,
and I would say this with what our humility I
can muster up. That is, if we can find a
lawyer to defend God and theology, I would be one
of the rare ones. I think it was all in

(25:43):
my head and finally when I realized this God I
talk about is somebody I obey every word and like Pharisees.
But it's like looking at a beautiful rose, flowers crebly
intoxicating the center of it. But C. S. Lewis said,

(26:06):
we cannot enter into the reality of the incredible scent,
the smell. So it was for me when I read
Second Peter Chapter one four that we are called to
be party case of his divine nature. And that threw

(26:27):
me off completely, and I said, where is this God?
I talk about him. I pray even better prayers than
Peter Marshall, and I can explain everything, but I can't
touch him. I can't very see. And that was the beginning. Hank.
I began to with the recommendation of someone to read

(26:48):
Sadu Sunara Singh and watch my Knee and the early
church fathers I called the Warthox fathers and the apostles
and what they said. And they didn't write books to
get money. They just you know, spoke. The amazing reality
is the experience, so the mystical encounter with the living God.

(27:11):
And this is when I realized, you know, I had
written over one hundred books by now, and Revolution World
Missions became the most impacting book in the world. Everything
was going so well. But then I went back and
began to read the Great Commission and what Jesus said.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Go.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Therefore, I had I'd done the job. Go and preach
the Gospel and those who believe, baptize them, and then
teach them everything I have told you. By the way,
I'll come back finally. And that's what he said, and
that actually shocked me to know. And that is evangelism
without a specific laser being focused to establish the authentic Church,

(27:59):
where the Eucharist is the epicenter of worship and the
Living Christ presents we are missing something. And so I
realized what a massive deception Lucifer and billions of demons
have inflicted upon the modern Church. And I don't want
to be a critique or attacking anyone, but Jesus spilled

(28:23):
his blood on the cross hang for the church. And
Bill Heimer in his classic book Destined for Throne, he said,
this the reason for the entire creation, the billions of
galaxies and the earth and everything. The purpose of God
was to find a bride for his son, and that

(28:45):
is the Holy Church. And if that is the purpose,
when Saint Paul said, I suffer all these things for
the sake of the elect and if people don't know
what I'm talking about, they should read Concordians. This was
like a man bleeding for thirty years and his trailed

(29:07):
you can see the blood drops. And he did all
that for the sake of the elect, for the sake
of those who become the members of the Holy Church.
That's what he lived for, and that's what Jesus died for.
And this conviction not really changed my heart so completely,

(29:29):
Hank I began to spend day and night. I mean,
by the mercy of God, I learned speed reading, which
is a good thing. So I don't know how many
thousands of books and materials I would read to understand
the early Church and the traditions and why they did
what they did and all that. So I have come
to this conclusion, which people should forgive me if I'm

(29:52):
off track from their thinking. A mission, whatever it is,
social work, feeding the poor, hospital, developing a poor community,
or nations whatever. If we are called to fulfill the
Greay Commission. If deep within us we don't have a
commitment to see a local church established, we are failed

(30:17):
in the Greay Commission or the Lord Jesus Christ. I
do not mean we should not feed the poor Hungary.
I know Hindus. I mean recently a Hindu man gave
seven million Indian rupees to one of our priests to
feed the Corona virus affected poor people and Muslims. So
doing good things peace poor people and America possibly is

(30:40):
the greatest nation in the history of mankind. I think
people that are so kind and gracious and giving and
loving suffering people and tsunami history shows that very well.
Ninety percent of all the finances ever given by any
country ninety percent for America. So you don't hire to

(31:02):
be a Christian or part of the Holy Church. To
be kind hearted and giving is the nature of God,
and Americans are known for that, and I thank God
for that. But doing what the Lord Jesus Christ said
in the light of eternity, you go and preach the gospel.
But that is not the end of it. No, the

(31:25):
social work and everything we do, we must do much
more than we are doing. But that should be a
means to express the love of Christ. As Mother Teresa
many many times said to people when they asked, Mother,
why on earth do you do this? You're cleaning the
wounds or the lepers with your own bare hand, And

(31:45):
she responded, I'm doing it for Jesus. This person the
leprosy is Jesus. Because the love of Christ.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
I do it.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
And so I'm not saying we sh not help the
poor need. We should much more. But here's the thing.
Life on earth is as Hank you said, we both
are of the same age. And I said to myself,
twenty five years, one hundred years from now, what does
it matter? And I think, honestly, Hank, the greatest tragedy

(32:20):
of humanity is people who claim to be Christians don't
think life here on earth is not prominent. This Corona virus,
I hope, made everyone realize, where you are a billionaire
or a beggar, life is very short. Death is part
of life. But we are called by the living God,

(32:44):
created by Him, to be reconciled to Him and to
be with Him forever and ever, where is no time.
And being part of Holy Church is where we understand
the mystery of deification or becoming and learning to have
the nature of God, which in life we experience, and

(33:07):
also after we depart from this life.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
And that is music to my ears. In fact, it
is the thesis of my book. Truth Matters, Life matters more.
It's a whole lot more than being a lawyer, as
you put it just a few minutes ago, a lawyer.
For Christ. You have the opportunity to be a participant
in the divine nature.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
You know, most people don't understand, you know, Western culture. Unfortunately,
our theology at large is you know the truth and
that will make you spiritual, or you don't do bad
things that make you obey God, or you do the
right things that means you know God. But you know
that is not true. Cornelius in the Book of Acts,

(33:53):
be fine. He was doing good things and God acknowledged that.
And so you know, we evaluate God and lessons with
good and bad. And you know the strange thing, you know,
Saint Peter was the greatest of all apostles that God
picked to build his church on. And here Jesus said, Peter,

(34:14):
Satan wanted to destroy you, but I prayed that your
faith will not fail. Jesus could have said, I prayed
that you will not be tempted, and you will not
be going through pain and agony and guilt and wanted
to kill yourself like Judas did. But I prayed you

(34:37):
will not lose your faith in the loving, gracious God,
who is not so worried about your failures or your success.
And the beauty of knowing God and partaking of His nature.
Is this hang, Honestly, where is God? Please show me God,

(34:58):
help me understand him. And Jesus would say, well, if
you see me, you see in God. But what are
you like? And Jesus is one who says to the
woman who was caught in adultery, my daughter, I don't
ask you one questions. Go in peace, and you're sin

(35:21):
suff forgiven. The sick man, who are thirty eight years
awfully sick because of his wrong living, Jesus would heal
him and would not condemn him. But he said, son,
just don't do that anymore. Go in peace. You see,
God is love, not just that he loves everyone. He
is love. And so the pure Orthodox faith or the Fathers,

(35:47):
they never went around condemning people and criticizing people and
using the media to abuse one another, and social media
and all these things. But they simply said, the wicked
man and today could be a saint ten years from now.
And love is the greatest of all doctrines. And when

(36:08):
we understand that, I think the manifestation of knowing God
is humility and nothingness. And you know, honestly, one of
the greatest discovery of my life by God's mercy is
learning about the Jesus prayer. Jesus Christ, Son of God,
have mercy on me a sinner, And I have this

(36:29):
Orthodox in a prayer rope that I pray hundreds and
hundreds of times a day, which helped me understand how
great and awesome this Holy God is and who am
I nothing and nobody and His mercy is all I have.
And when we understand this and communicate this love to

(36:50):
the world, whether they Hindus or Muslims or whatever, finally
they understand. You know, God cares and he loves. And
that's the reason why I think every community our missionaries
are going. You know, I just heard about the church
and the foothills of Himalaya where our missionaries had to

(37:10):
walk seven days to get there from the final bus station.
And there's a church with some nearly one hundred families
that you know, came to know the Lord and now
baptized and chrismated, and they partake the Holy Eucharist, and
without the priests. They are telling these believers, they themselves

(37:32):
walked up six hours to the higher mountain region and
began to share the change life they experience, and they
started a new church in their community. This is spontaneous.
This is Acts one eight. You can't help but tell
others what has happened to you. So when you say,

(37:52):
twelve thousand congregations, you know, Hang, honestly, that's true. We have,
you know, thousands and thousands of more, and we don't
talk about it. But there are countries. Hang, we work,
we don't declare, we don't talk about it. We write
about it because of security reasons. But people are coming
to know the Lord. But it is very important. Evangelism

(38:13):
should not become the full stop. Evangelism is five percent
of the work. Ninety five percent is establishing them in
the Holy Church and teaching them. This is what I'm
very concerned about. You know, when you say American and
Europe we oppose Christian nations, I weep. I mean I honestly,

(38:35):
I am not joking about it, and my heart hurt.
I've been here forty years and think about the sharlowness
and lack of understanding of God and all that goes
with it. It has to do with you know, like
a bulb which is perfect, but there's no electricity in it.
It don't shine, and doctrines and right teachings don't make

(38:58):
people godly. And this is possibly one of my greatest
concern for the Body of Christ in the West.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
When I talk to you and I hear your vision
and your passion and the reach of Gospel for Asia.
There's sort of a flip side that I'm thinking about
as well, and that is Gospel for Asia is a threat.
And what I mean by that is that there are
colonized nations that were ruled by the British who see

(39:28):
converts to Christianity as the means by which Western nations
are going to control their countries. And so when they
see a mission organization establishing churches making a difference like
you are, for example, in the Indian culture or in

(39:49):
me and Mark, they see your organization, the organization that
God by his spirit allowed you to found. They see
that organiation as a threat, and they don't lay down
for that threat. They want to eradicate that threat. And
so a whole movement was started against you because of

(40:11):
what you're doing in terms of reaching people in an
age in which Internet lies travel halfway around the world
before truth has had the chance to put its boots on.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, you've been vilified and you have
really paid a price. And I saw that in a
book that I've made available to our constituency. In fact,

(40:33):
we're promoting it all this month at the Christian Research
Institute a book titled Never give Up. It's the story,
and I love the subtitle, It's the story of a
broken man impacting a generation. When I first read this book,
and I did an endorsement for the back cover, when
I first read this book, I was so moved, so touched.

(40:56):
I have gone through some of the same things that
you've gone through, maybe on a lesser scale, but gone
through those same things. And so when I read this book,
I thought my endorsement on the back cover ought to be.
God brings certain books and people into our lives precisely
when we need them, and then I say Never give

(41:18):
Up as one of those books, and KP. Johannan is
one of those people. His passion to change a generation
is as inspirational as it is instructive. But in this book, KP.
You bear your soul. You talk about what it is
like to be a target of the devil and his demons.

(41:43):
You went through a process that literally broke you, and
you talk very transparently about that and never give Up.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
Well, Hank here is I'm so glad to hear the
way you explain this. This is so plain and simple
you know, for a long long time in my service
of the Lord. It's fifty years of serving God. Now,
you know, I thought suffering and persecution was so much
physical accusation, abuse or people beating you up, because when

(42:19):
I was barely twenty years old, I was beaten up,
severely stoned for preaching the gospel, just as we read
in the Book of Acts. But you know, sad to say,
the thousands of clergy, priests and pastors in America and
Europe that are giving up their ministries, resigning, quitting everything,

(42:42):
and this is very public. I just talked to one
yesterday who was a full time pastor of an Evangelical
Protestant church for over ten years. He resigned, not because
immorality or he did something wrong. He said, I couldn't
handle the abuse of people in the congregation no matter

(43:03):
what I said, the accused and abuse and all that.
And people don't understand this is the price we must
pay for the delivery charge of this gospel to the
lost world and to the people of God. And read
Acts chapter twenty. People forget this. Saint Paul, the one

(43:25):
I think next to Christ, the greatest human being walked
on earth, with all the Revelations, he talks about his
suffering Second Corinthians. So for me, I did not understand
fully what it says in Peter that Jesus suffered for us,
leaving this example that we may follow in his footsteps.

(43:46):
And as you very well said, you know, many many
years ago, I think about twenty five thirty years ago,
when George Warwer came from England to visit our US
headquarters in carl Texas. When the meeting was over, he
called me aside and said something very personal. He said, KP,

(44:07):
I just want you to know you are set up
as number one target of Lucifer and demons to destroy
you because you were involved involved evangelism and reaching the
lost world. And he said, I'm praying for you. And
I heard that. I understood the persecution different things like
but Hank, when we began to plant churches and established

(44:31):
the authentic churches, that is where I saw the organized
persecution as something I never understood before. You know, people
with multiplied millions and billions would give their money to
plan a strategy to kill, destroy, shut down mission organizations,

(44:54):
especially those who planned churches in some of these Asian countries.
India was no exception, and that began ten years ago.
And the sad thing is they use their money and
resources to instigate some well meaning Americans to attack us
with allegations and things I never imagined. And you know,

(45:18):
I cast out demons and prayed for the sick hundreds
of times, and it all was so simple. But all
of a sudden, I was faced with such mental pressure
emotional stress that I just couldn't handle it. And I
talk about in the book that I thought the best

(45:38):
way to get out of everything was to kill myself. Honestly,
I could not find anything I have done wrong to
deserve this kind of massive attack. The social media, the
blogger and all these things. And the problem was our
legal systems. People told us we can't respond to anything,

(45:59):
just quiet and don't open your mouth. And so three
four years we went through with close mouth but suffering intensely.
But I must say this, I was learning practically what
I've been reading and walking in for fifteen sixteen years
of sharing in the suffering of Christ, as Saint Paul

(46:23):
talked about in Philippines three, and I so desperately wanted
to write a book about it, but then I didn't
know how emotional strength, and I prayed and prayed, and
then the Lord gave me an answer. After months, had
read Second Corinthians and I would read it. I thought,

(46:45):
he said, really one time, you know, he said, read
it again again. I do not know how many times
I read it, until finally the light turned on. Saint
Paul didn't write Second Corinthians to himself to fight how
right he was, but talking about his deep pain and

(47:06):
suffering in serving his master. And that's when I understood,
now I can write this book. And I wrote this
the journey I made four years, which I think since
the book being released, hundreds of people right back or
call and say, you know, they've been going through something
like this, so similar, and they didn't know how to

(47:28):
handle it. And so this is where I think our
Western church, I don't say this negatively. Our training is
you pray. God is great, He will bless you, heal you,
give you millions, and the prosperity gospel preachers and all
those things. And you know, I heard a preacher long

(47:50):
ago saying Abraham was a multi billionaire, and you are
the children of Abraham. You should be claiming billions. But
these fellows have no clue Abraham lived in tents. He
could have built a mansion ten mansions for him so
but he never did it. In Hebrews, it says he
lived in tents, saying to himself, I'm a pilgrim and

(48:12):
stranger on this earth. And he looked for a city
that has foundations. And the builder and maker is God.
And Jesus died on the cross, not leaving mansions and
houses and properties and lands. He just had one pair
of cloth he was wearing. And this gospel of prosperity

(48:34):
and knowing all their doctrines correctly believing and having a
wonderful life on earth is not the Gospel or the
living God that we read in the Holy Scriptures, nor
communicated to us by the fathers of faith. And I'm
saying these things not with anger or any kind of hate,

(48:55):
but I'm desperately emotionally hurting for Christian leaders and pastors
who make their living by puddling doctrines and having moral life,
not understanding this is not what God intended for us
to be like here on earth.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
What you believe, not only about what the apostle Paul
said and Second Corinthians, but what we read in the
Book of Acts. You believe that that is relevant, in fact,
not only relevant. It is the blueprint by which we
ought to do missions, and even more than that, it

(49:37):
is the blueprint by which we are to live our lives.
And so if you really want to understand what our
legacy ought to be, not only in terms of our
personal lives as we stand before the Lord, but the
legacy we leave in terms of reaching the world, you say,
read acts, and read it again, and read it again,

(50:00):
and read it again, in much the same fashion that
when you were going through your own anguish you kept
reading Second Corinthians.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Well, you know, Hank, I don't know if people ever
asked the question why Jesus had to live on herth
thirty three and a half years before he would go
to the cross. I mean, here was Almighty God from
his inception, when he was one year old, two year old,
ten year old, twelve year old, and he was perfect,
Almighty God, sinless. He could have gone to the cross

(50:32):
when he was fifteen or twenty. Why wait till thirty
three and a half years. The answer, I can tell
you this. In Hebrews he says he learned obedience through suffering.
Jesus had the almighty God his will, the saydum. He
had a human will, and he submitted his God will

(50:52):
to the perfect man will and listened only to the Father,
and do nothing of his own. So he said a
million times, I do nothing of my own, I say
nothing of my own. I only do what my father
tells me. And that was the Father's will that he,
as a man in flesh, learn what it means to

(51:15):
say not to himself continually, and finally he choose to
lay down his life on the cross. And I said
to people everywhere, if you know this Jesus. He obeyed
his father, and Jesus said, I send you as my
father sent me. So what is the evidence of our

(51:38):
being linked with the Father, the Holy Trinity? It is
the passion for a world that do not know the
Father's love and dying without him. And people don't realize.
Every single day, every time your heart beat, one or
more people are dying having never heard the name Jesus.

(52:00):
Nearly three billion people live in our generation that never
heard Jesus name, especially in the ten forty windows region
like Indian subcontinent and part of Africa and all that.
And here's my thinking, how can you go by a
house when the house is on flame and fifteen people
in the house, they're all going to burn to death,

(52:21):
and you walk by, you know, whistling and singing a
nice comfortable song. Now you'll be screaming on the top
of your long saying, please wake up. These people are dying. Come,
please help. And that is what Saint Paul was doing.
So when I say people read the Book of Acts,
you find people who came to know Christ and became

(52:43):
part of the Holy Church. Within days. They were beetra persecuted,
driven off from their homes, and the Bible says they
went everywhere they went, not weeping and mourning about what
they lost, but preaching the gospel. A church, as you
said to me one time, with thought, compassion, and mission

(53:04):
for the Lord. Great commission is a contradiction. This reason
why many of our churches do not understand. While they
understand the truth, they don't understand life is missing and
life only comes when we have the legs to walk on.
And the legs are the Book of Acts, praying, giving, going, sending.

(53:28):
Like my mother did six sons. She prayed, fasting and
crying out to God. One of my sons, O, God,
please call him to serve you and serve the Holy Church.
And I think the church at large, especially in our
world of conservative Orthodox beliefs, they are missing the most

(53:48):
important teaching of Christ, that is, go to those that
do not know. You know, ninety nine sheep was in
the fold. One was lost, and the shepherd left the
ninety nine the fauld and went out searching for the
one until he found it. But hang, now one is

(54:09):
in the fold ninety nine out there? Have you never
heard the first Christmas story? Why our churches, why our priests,
Why our leaders don't have a broken heart? When one
hundred thousand people die in Bangladesh overnight in the tidal wave,
millions are walking around without help. There people God made

(54:34):
in his image. How come our past is our priest
and our leaders go to bed that night so nothing happened.
Why the following Sunday there is no weeping and tears
and prayer for these people. And I'm telling you we
sometimes we don't understand. Jesus is not sitting up in heaven.

(54:56):
He's among us, weeping for us to be his body,
to go to give and suffer that others may come
to know him. And that is the real Church. And
evidence of pure Church.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
When you're talking, one of the things that occurred to me,
KP is that you have learned, You have been a
learner in the classroom of life, and you talk about
that and never give up as well. In other words,
later on in your ministry, you started to see that
the Church is the epicenter of the universe, that everything

(55:35):
has to revolve around the Church. That when people come
to faith in Christ, they don't come as lone ranger Christians.
They have to be baptized, they have to be charsmated,
they have to partake of the graces that are available
within the context of the Church. And as a result
of that, you changed your entire ministry focus. You're already

(55:59):
very successful as a ministry outreach, but you were willing
to change, and when you changed, you paid a price.
I did the same thing when I wrote my book
Truth Matters, Life Matters More because I was on a
journey that cost me hundreds of radio outlets. But you,

(56:22):
as I, are willing to follow truth wherever it leads
and then leave the results up to the Lord. So
I want you to talk about that a little bit,
because you made an epic change in your ministry to
make the church the center of your missions.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
Well, hang Jesse, imagine a multi billionaire who kind of
became more famous than president of a country or whatever,
and finally he goes to the doctor, and the most
brilliant doctor do all the test and then come to
him privately and whispering this year, I just don't know

(57:03):
what to tell you. But he just got two weeks
to live. This is too late. All of a sudden,
the multi billionaire, he is willing to give away his
billions if he could find answer, to live, to find
cure and somehow God in his mercy. And I say

(57:28):
that very seriously, when I have written two hundred books
and possibly our mission became the largest mission Evangelical Protestant
mission in the world, with fifteen twenty thousand full time
workers and all this stuff going on, and honestly, and
I still drove nineteen sixty two bags wagen bug and

(57:52):
live just meeting my basic needs and nothing more I
wanted for my life. But it was during this crisis
of my faith, the darkest night, where I said, someday
I'm going to meet this God, but I don't know him.
And this is where my journey began seventeen years ago

(58:13):
understanding the Holy Church. And I used to be hypercritical
of Catholics and so many people who say you cannot
be saved, you cannot understand God without the Holy Church.
And I just couldn't figure this out, although I had
the author's background. But then I realized phasients for that
I can become like Jesus, the deification, the partaking of

(58:37):
his nature, the theosis in the local church. That is
the reason why the teachers and instructors are given and
all this became so new to me. And that's where
I began to think about our mission work and what
I'm doing. And I knew very well for me to
declare what happened to me. And of course, you know,

(59:00):
we had now you know, a couple of you know,
million people that have come to know the Lord, and
things were changing so fast, and I was asked to
be the one secret bishop of the church and everything,
and I just didn't want to do it. And I
went through the crisis. But then that's what actually plunged

(59:21):
me to understand or think about the church, what is
the seriousness of it? And I just went through huge crisis,
Hank knowing that I was on nearly one thousand radio
stations throughout the United States and Europe and everywhere, and
all kinds of stuff going on. And I was going
to be crucified. But I said to myself, like I

(59:44):
told the illustration of the billionaire, I said, I just
got a few more years left. What do I want?
Opinion and reputation of people? And one things the Lord
would ask me, do you want to die? Are you
willing to diet your reputation and give up all for

(01:00:05):
my sake and for my church? And I would say, yes, Lord,
I am. But I didn't understand what they're all meant.
All the sudden, hundreds of radio stations dropped us from
my radio program wrote reality, and thousands of people dropped
supporting us as evil. People began to write horrible stories

(01:00:26):
about us, which is never true. And so many Christian
leaders that I became their mentor and guide, they vanished
could say a word to me. But in all this
I found the beauty of partaking of the Eucharist and
having Jesus real. And I understood that there's no sense

(01:00:49):
in me planting thousands of congregations at churches and have
all these bishops and everything unless we understand the authentic church,
because people gathering and clapping hands and doing all kind
of things is like tech talk or whatever, is not church.
And that is where I understood the mystery of the

(01:01:10):
Holy Church and the worship. And I found it was
not information but experience. And this reason why. By the way,
I do lots of radio interviews and stuff everywhere, and
I don't think I have done any interviews since your
book came out where I would not mention to people

(01:01:33):
there's no reference to what I'm talking about. Maybe, but
I'll tell them. By the way, something that changed my
life is the reading of hundreds and hundreds of books
from the early Church fathers and all that. But there's
one book that I think is better than any other book.
Truth matters, Life matters more. And I plead with people

(01:01:53):
to get a copy whatever means, and read it. If
they can't, let me know, because I really hank Honestly,
when I first read this book, I didn't fully get it.
But second ti I'm ready. Now I'm telling every human
being I can talk to day and night, please read
this book for your sake, because life here on earth

(01:02:15):
is not going to be forever. You need to know
something more than truth. So I'm terribly excited and appreciate
your willingness to put this book in writing and people
to read it. And I pray that you know in
heaven there's no wife and husband and children, grandchildren, nothing.

(01:02:36):
The only thing matters is that Jesus and the Holy Trinity,
and people need to be sober minded about that because
the coronavirus should teach all of us we have no
guarantee about tomorrow. It's better to know him and sacrifice
everything in the world to be his. And that's what
this book is all about that he wrote. And of

(01:02:57):
course you know in my book Never Give Up, I
talk about my journey, which actually explained very well in
terms of truth and life in your book.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
You know one of the things. And by the way,
thank you so much for those kind words about truth matters,
life matters more. And I know that you wrote a
letter and sent it out to pastors all over the
world to get this book. But it's humbling that you
would do that. And I feel the same way about
your writings and certainly about your ministry. But I want
to go back to something you were talking about earlier. KP.

(01:03:30):
You were talking about in your book you write about
it as well. You're talking about going back to the
early Church, and I thought there was a powerful analogy
in your book Never give up about how important it
is to go back to the place where the stream
is not polluted. And you use this illustration of being

(01:03:54):
a kid and jumping into the river with your friends
and you could see the bottom. But now you go
back to that same river, it's polluted. But maybe you
should tell the illustration. I mean, it's beautiful when you
go back to the beginning, to the genesis of that river.
It's clear in crystal. And that's the same thing you

(01:04:16):
use as an analogy for going back to when the
Church was young.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
You know, I'm so glad you brought it up, because really,
you know, it's an emotional thing with me, because this
was one other thing in my journey to understand the
holiness and the mystery of the Holy Church. The Lord
used in one of my week of silence and prayer
helped me to go back kind of regressing as a

(01:04:44):
tiny boy growing up by this river. And we have,
you know, hundreds of cock and trees. They are tall,
and many of these cockun trees grow leaning toward the river.
And the river is still there. And I remember as
a three four year old little kid, we used to
climb on these leaning over the river cock and trees

(01:05:08):
and just get about, you know, ten meters twenty meters
into you know, half away to the tree, and then
we jump into the river. But here's a funny thing.
From the tree, we could see the bottom of the river.
I mean, you're talking about thirty forty feet or twenty
feet so clear sand, crystal clear water. And we used

(01:05:33):
to swim. And that's my life was, you know, growing
up in that village. But thirty forty years should go by.
I still go to my village once in a while
to visit there. That river hank You will not want
wash your hands in it, You don't want to swim
in it. It is so dark, so polluted. Because those

(01:05:58):
days when I was growing up, there no houses on
both sides of the river as it is now now
there are thousands, and people dump all the dirt and
stuff into the river and it's totally polluted. But one
time I talked about it someone and they said, you
know what, this river starts not here, It starts on
the foothills. And they explain about the mountain ranges where

(01:06:23):
the river starts, and they explain to me that if
you go there still the water is pure as crystal glass,
and trees grows very beautiful there, and plants in the
river and all those things. And the Lord reminded me
of that during my search, and said, son, what's happening.

(01:06:45):
Over the period of thousands of years, people have thrown
in their man made doctrines and interpretations and subjective reasoning,
and particularly I would say, as a student of church history,
it began in fifteen sixteenth century, the reason based theology

(01:07:06):
that caused so much damage to the church that the
fear of God completely missing, and a preacher who wears
jeans the wholes in it runs back and forth with
the flashing lights and all the neons and all those things.
And you know, people think obedience to God is the
mark of spirituality. I say, no, that is the beginning.

(01:07:30):
But fear of God is understanding who God is. And
that's what happened in the life of Abraham. So today
the church at large, I'm not talking about church in
America or Europe. I mean in Europe, in ours. Then
in England few months ago, every week hank one church
is sold to Hindu so Muslims or bars, and they're

(01:07:53):
closing down those churches. And you know what is a
holy church. The audience is not the preacher. For fifteen
hundred years there was no pulpit for the man to
be brilliant, and the music group and the band and
all that. It is not entertainment. God is the audience.
And the altar was the center where people gathered around

(01:08:17):
to partake of the invisible Christ who now represented or
in the Eucharist. These things are now false teaching for
the modern church. And I think if anyone care about eternity,
and I have the statement I make all the time,
please live in the light of eternity, fear God because

(01:08:42):
no one is going to support you, and you don't
care about the millions you make now or the aeroplanes
know it is too serious and Jesus is coming back
for his bride. And I do not know where this
theology came from, but I have sadness about it that
you just say, have had a prayer and leave more

(01:09:05):
life and you are now going to heaven. And this
is quite serious. And this reason why the churches need
to understand what church is, so that we can represent
God in the right way to the humanity that we
are speaking to.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
You started a church movement and it really is centered
in the whole concept of mission. You I'll quote this
from your book. I just looked it up. On page one.
You say, we went out to do the great commission
as was done by the Apostles, and hundreds of local
churches were born as a result of it. And then

(01:09:46):
you say, a true Biblical mission never remains a mission.
It will always transform itself into a church, and those
churches will then send out more and morearies. So here
you start the church because you see that the people

(01:10:06):
have to go into the church, they have to partake
of the Eucharist. When they partict of the Eucharist, they
receive a grace that empowers them. They then go out
into the world and they become reproducing disciple makers, and
multiplication happens. In fact, you just wrote a new book,
and that new book is about our Orthodox moment. That

(01:10:27):
what happened in the Book of Acts, and that same
thing happening now in India and meh and Mar and
in Bangladesh and in other countries in this ten forty window.
That same thing can happen all over the world, and
we can reach those who have not heard, but not
just reach them, incorporate them into the body of Christ

(01:10:50):
so that they can partake of the reincarnation of Eden,
the place in which we can have access to the
Tree of Life fleet with its eucharistic bounty. So you're
concerned that those people not just experience eternity, but experience
the abundant life now, the abundant life that allows them

(01:11:13):
to go out and become reproducing disciple makers.

Speaker 2 (01:11:16):
Well, you know, Hank, think about it. If local churches
were not the goal, the ultimate objective of the Lord
Jesus Christ when he send out his disciples, or for
Jesus being sent to earth, then there will not be
book or Romans, nor any of the New Testament books,

(01:11:40):
nor the Book of Revelation. Because when Jesus said, go
and preach the Gospel in Acts chapter two, we see
they did it. Church was born. Then you see in
Antioch the church having their worship and the Holy Spirit
speak saying that send out these two men as menaries

(01:12:01):
to preach the gospel. And Saint Paul and his co
worker goes and preaching the gospel. This is exactly what
we see happen. As a matter of fact, you know,
one year we had several thousands of young people who
wanted to be now seminaries, but we didn't have the
space to take them. Where do they come from? They

(01:12:21):
come from the churches that we planted, and parents praying
that one of their children will go and serve God,
which is one of our teaching in all our churches.
Every believer, every Christian, ought to be going and sending.
And the sending part you can send one of your
children or anyone in the community who want to go

(01:12:44):
and serve God. And if that be the case, you
can imagine here in an authentic church, they'll be going
McDonald or whatever place they go, and they always be
talking about the most important thing in life, the Living Lord,
Jesus Christ. Invite them to come to church and experience
the life of God. So in the book I write

(01:13:07):
about it esprobally the new book, that is, it is
extremely important. We understand that the Great Commission is for
specific purpose to see people come to Christ and they
are introduced to understand the life of God and the
Eucharist and teaching and all that, and from that church

(01:13:30):
they then begin to reach out the others in the
community and in the near culture and cross culturally. And
like our churches in miam Or, they sent half a
dozen work missionaries from there to neighboring countries and one
country where I cannot mention the name, but in that

(01:13:51):
country they have won several thousand people to the Lord.
And these men from miam Or when there, with the
instruction from our our archbishop, you are being sent with
a one way ticket. You are not coming back to
the country again. You go there, live there, die there
for the people. To those people the Church is sending you.

(01:14:12):
And this is not imaginations, the real reality I'm talking about,
and this is what church should be doing all over
the world because this is how us you know, you
talked about We talked about it. If all the churches
would do this, we can see the whole world come
to Christ in our lifetime.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
Absolutely. I wrote about that and the forward to your book,
which is I don't know if it's out yet or
when it's coming out, but the book Our Orthodox Moment,
which is something I want to talk to you about
in a future podcast because that's a very significant book
as well.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
Yeah, as a matter of fact, right now it is
in the final proof reading process that she could go
to press within a couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
I think, going back to Never give Up, there's an
epigraph by aw Towzer that says, in many any churches,
Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so
weak that if it were poisoned, it wouldn't hurt anyone,
and if it were medicine, it would not cure anyone.

(01:15:16):
And I want you to talk about that by way
of an illustration in your book Never Give Up, in
which you talk about purchasing a hospital in South Asia
and then you discover that fifty percent of the medicines
were not authentic. And this, for you, is an analogy
for the church. The church that gives weakly doses of

(01:15:40):
positive thinking or ted talks as you put it earlier,
but isn't allowing people to experience the graces that can
transform them in the present.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
Yeah, you know, this is a strange statement for me
to make, But for me, I think having no fear
of God and being so self centered is immorality. And
you know, and the churches at large, people define immorality

(01:16:13):
in a different ways, but it's it's it's a very
serious thing, and of course that illustration is a real thing.
One of our dices decided to purchase hospital somebody was
selling it so they can reach the community and help
the poor, needy and helpless. And of course, you know,
after they bought the hospital, they had you know, some

(01:16:36):
specialists to come in and inspect the entire hospital and
the department where they give out the medicines and everything,
and they found out that fifty percent of the medicines
were fake, they were not real. And the people who
owned it earlier, they were making tons of money because
of that. And of course, you know, they destroyed all

(01:16:57):
that fake medicines and changed everything. And here's the thing.
This is only an example. I'm telling you now. When
I was a clergy here in Dallas, during and after
my seminary for four and a half years, every Wednesday,
Hang I had set apart three hours for people of

(01:17:19):
my congregation to come for counseling. I had two hundreds
of families in the congregation, was a small church, and
they would come to me with you appointment and with
all kinds of problems and everything else. And of course
I'd tell them whatever I knew and all that. But
our churches are filled with Christian counselors, yet think about it,

(01:17:40):
half of the congregations are divorced, broken homes. What happened
to us? The early church confession was a sacrament in
psychology tells us and everybody knows this, that you can
figure out everything about your life and mistakes and blunders

(01:18:00):
and sins and everything, but there's one thing there's no
cure for that is guilt. Only God can erase the guilt.
How does that happen through God's forgiveness? And how did
that happen in the church for thousand years it was

(01:18:21):
the sheep. The people in the church could come to
the priest, the clergy and with absolute confidence, even if
he got killed, he will never reveal those things he hear.
And just like Nathan would talk to David after they
confess and talk to the Lord and the priest here
and on the behalf of the Lord, he is able

(01:18:43):
to say, your sins are forgiven, your guilty is mood,
live in peace, and live for the Lord. Things like that.
You know, we changed everything in the church such a
way that God is no more in the picture. C. S.
Lewis said it. God now is in the doc we

(01:19:05):
are the ones decide what is the answer to human
problems and crisis and all that, and we are falling apart.
There's no answer. I mean, why on earth you want
to say America is post Christination yet to be bossed
about it. And we fight about doctrines, yet we do
not have the life of God. And the blame is

(01:19:26):
that this is the church, the pulpit, and this reason why.
You know, I'm always concerned about the body of Christ
all over the world. And what I write when I say,
has everything to do with the same thing you are doing.
And I'm saying, you know, somebody said, what is holiness?

(01:19:47):
It is honesty to God, say God, I just wanted
to know. This is what I am. I don't know.
You help me. And I think if our people become
honest about the heart condition, I think God had great
mercy on us and lead us to truth. And you know,

(01:20:10):
Judas denied Christ, so did Apostle Peter. Even God could
not save Judas. Peter's faith was weak, and he was honest,
and he said, Lord, I don't know what to tell you.
You know me, but Judas his faith wasn't deceptive. They
are not honest, but pretending, and that is the damning

(01:20:35):
thing for Christianity, and the call of God is to
come to understand Him and the way we understand it
for my life at least, maybe it's different for somebody else.
It was, like I said, reading the church fathers and
the sayings of all the desert fathers, desead mothers, and

(01:20:55):
the days and weeks of being quite and silent before him,
just to know God and understand him. These are not
complicated matters, These are simple things. But we just are
so independent from God that we had to fight for
doctrines and not for God but for our own image
and salary and position and reputation.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
Yeah, that is well said. And you bring this up
in the context of strange fire, of course, written about
in Leviticus chapter ten, where the fire goes out from
the Lord and devours them. The story is about those
who bring not authentic fire, but strange fire. And when

(01:21:41):
you think a strange fire in this context and the
context in which you're using it in the book, you're
looking very clearly and closely at the fruit of the heretic,
who is not bringing the authentic fire of the Lord,
but a strange fire. And in the Old Testament. There
was a penalty for that that was a very severe penalty,

(01:22:03):
and I think if that penalty was still in vogue today,
we would see people dying in pulpits all around the world.
But I want to move away from that for just
a few moments here, because I think it's important to
talk about your passion for the poor and the downtrodden.
If it weren't for the coronavirus, you and I would

(01:22:24):
be in India right now and some of the countries
of the ten forty window, including me and marn Bangladesh
and so forth. But we're going to be doing that
again in the near future. If I were in India
with you, I would see some of the things that
you are doing as the means to reach people. You
give them a loaf of bread, you give them a

(01:22:47):
warm blanket, and then you earned the right to tell
them about your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so
you have established the Order of Sisters of Compassion, a
bridge of hope centers. The rich of Hope Centers, for example,
care for tens of thousands of children who otherwise would
grow up to become beggars. The Order of Sisters of

(01:23:09):
Compassion This is an order that provides aid among the slums,
among those that are in leprosy colonies. All of these
are significant works. There are almost three hundred thousand women
receiving free healthcare training, sixty two thousand learning to read

(01:23:31):
and write through the Gospel for Asia literacy classes, over
a thousand medical camps. I think a thousand with all
those other numbers doesn't sound too big, but these are
conducted in needy communities to help care for tens of
thousands of people. You're drilling thousands of wells. You call

(01:23:53):
them Jesus wells. The warm blankets that I talked about before,
the seventy thousand children help through the Bridge of Hope program,
all of these programs, they are going on in the present,
and through these programs you were reaching people. If I
recall you say in your book, there was a time

(01:24:13):
in which you didn't think that social work was mission work,
but you've repented of that because you realize that social
work can be used as the bridge into mission work.
You can probably explain this a lot better than I can.

Speaker 2 (01:24:29):
Well, you know, hang this is true. There were in
the beginning of GFA. By the way Gospel Phaatia world
as we are known now is actually a part of
the order of the Believer's Eastern Church, just as in
the Book of Acts. You know, you do mission work,
then the church becomes the leader. So that's where we are.

(01:24:51):
But this was my hardcore you know, all orthodox, sorry
partisan days, when I thought the whole world is going
to hell. The only answer is prayer, the Sinney's prayer
and receive Christ night. I was totally opposed to any
social work, and I wrote against it and became a
champion of that. But I remember one time I was

(01:25:13):
in Mumbai, a city with seventeen million people. I was
waiting to catch my lustanza flight to Frankfurt, and I
picked up this newspaper and right on the front of
the newspaper was a huge black and white photograph of
a little boy, semi naked, laying on the street corner

(01:25:34):
and beside him lays a large female dog and the
little boy is nursing on the dog, drinking the milk
from the dog. And the caption under the picture went
like this, this dog is his mother. And the three
column article explained about one hundred thousand children that live

(01:25:57):
on the streets of Calcatta and Mumbai or more, not
knowing where their parents are, who their parents are, they
live and die there and things like that. And it
stopped me instantly and said, what if that happened to
be me laying there on the street, what do I want?

(01:26:19):
And several incidents took place like that where you know,
God is so amazing Hank, so gracious and mercyful, loving.
He never condemned me and beat me up. He gently
spoke to my heart continually saying that you know you
need to understand all people are my creation, All people

(01:26:45):
are mine. I love them, and you are supposed to
be leaving Jesus now to them, giving them food and clothes,
and care for them and express my love for them.
And I was to death because by now I was
known very very much for radical edge of just preaching

(01:27:08):
the gospel and attack all the groups we are doing
social work and all that. And I was afraid my
own staff in the United States and Europe will ten
against me. But in the end I said I need
to go public and repent, and so I repented and said,
God forgive me for my blindness. And we began to
help the poor and needy. And the things you said

(01:27:29):
is literally true, and much more. We have these sisters
a compassion that or five hundred sisters trained just like
Mother Teresa's sisters. They're the ones who actually trained our people.
We have five hundred plus sisters like that working in
forty two leper colonies, you know, caring for them and
loving them and working on the forty two million widows,

(01:27:53):
women who are completely lost and hopeless. And these seventy
thousand children hang, that's nothing when you think about sixty
two million children that are living on the streets in
these nations. And our dream is to help at least
five hundred thousand children. And this year, two thousand plus

(01:28:13):
children graduated from their high school from our homes and
they found a new life, and not only for this life,
but the life to come. And what we do is
only a drop in the bucket, but much more. The
need is so awesome and so great that if only
we can do more. But I cannot imagine someone who

(01:28:36):
says I want to serve God and do great commission
and have no compassion for the poor and the needy.
Right now, you know, just a few weeks ago I
came back to States in March, Hank somebody sent me
a photograph and I just looked at it and alone
in my room and just cried and cried. The photograph

(01:28:56):
happened to be four Your old little boy just got
enough close to, you know, cover his nakedness. And in
his lap sits maybe a six seven month old little
baby boy, totally naked. They're hugging each other, both are weeping.
And the story of that photograph is Mumbai or Bombay

(01:29:21):
twenty four hours. You have literally millions of people twenty
four hours. But after the Corona virus, these streets became
completely empty. No cars, no train, no aeroplanes, and nobody
on the road. And I imagined the hundreds of thousands

(01:29:42):
of children on the streets begging to make a living.
And these two kids happen to be two of those children.
They're sitting and weeping on the street corner. And I
said to myself, how many more are going to weep
and die like this until the church care about it

(01:30:02):
and do something about it. And a thank God, we
have thousands and thousands of our congregations are now involved
twenty four hours, cooking meals and helping these people. India's
problem in Nepal and Bangladesh hank is not coronavirus. It
is starvation. People are starving to death. And two weeks

(01:30:27):
ago I heard about from a social worker on the
media a mother throwing five of our children into the
river and trying to kill herself because starvation. And at
this time the church need to be alerted and do
everything they can. And it is during this time the

(01:30:47):
horrible typhoon that hit Bangladesh and Assam and those places
where hurting a lot of people, and the world is
in terrible suffering, and I think we, those who are able,
we need to embrace suffering, which also means fasting and
praying for a day or two for the suffering people

(01:31:09):
of the world, and give what we can to help
feed the poor and needy and all that. Because there's
one church we have in one place where the coronavirus
hit so bad they are feeding five hundred people a day.
The entire church cook five hundred meals a day and provide.

(01:31:30):
Thank God for the government officials and the police, everybody
helping us to do these things, because without the help
we cannot do it. But the crisis in these nations
are only starting. And that's where I'm concerned about that
we will go out and do more right now in
the name of Jesus, because this is where God's love

(01:31:51):
is seen and felt and experienced by people that are
in trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:31:57):
I think You've elaborated on this in many different venues,
but I think it'd be good in this podcast as well.
The quote by Saint John Chrysostom who said, and this
is so poignant and profound. He said, the rich exists
for the sake of the poor. The poor exist for

(01:32:17):
the salvation of the rich. Can you expand upon that?

Speaker 2 (01:32:22):
Yeah? You know, I used to say this to people.
You never asked to be born in America or Canada,
or in a Syrian Christian home in south of India
like my case, or in anybody. You never said God,
oh could you be you allow me to be born

(01:32:42):
in America? And I will do this? And no, we
are where we are born and raised by the grace
and mercy of God. And the Bible says to those
who much is given, much shall be required. And you know,
I'm of the opinion that all humanity stamped on our

(01:33:02):
hearts the image of God. We are made in His image,
and it is our responsibility of our soulish decision to
do what our emotions and heart says, the compassion and
the kindness toward other people. And when a church decides

(01:33:24):
that their main job is to build a bigger building
and put the best carpet, and you take care of
their needs and forget, half of the world go to
bed with empty stomach and naked bodies. Half of the
world have never seen one page of the Holy Scripture,
and they never heard about Jesus. I think we should

(01:33:44):
take care of our churches nicely and have a nice carpet,
and live clean and drive clean nice car. I know,
against all, but once we forget, we are here in
this world for a short time for the sake of Christ.
And always, he says, the poor heard the gospel, heard

(01:34:05):
Jesus gladly. And our greatest opportunity in our lifetime here
on earth is to look, not wait, look for opportunities
where we can invest our prayers are fasting, our resources,
our children and all that. You know, how many families
got their children studying to be medical doctors. How many

(01:34:28):
are medical doctors. Why can't they think about taking two
three weeks off and go to some other country and say,
are the poor and help? How many families are taking
vacation and go into Holy Land and all kinds of
places and seven star resorts. Why don't they take their
money and take their two or three kids and go
to Mexico City or to Dhaka, Bangladesh, or Nepal or

(01:34:52):
India and let these children walk through the slums and
see the thousands of children dying and laying in the dark,
murky sewage and dringing the water, and experience reality, the
lost world that they don't think that living in America
or England or Canada is all about life. I think

(01:35:15):
parents from our congregations should take their children to people
who are living on the streets under the bridges in
New York and Chicago and wherever. And I think we
need to come down to the level of basic humanity
that survive with the rich or pool for a short time,

(01:35:35):
but use our resources. Why do somebody had to spend
two hundred thousand dollars to buy a car when they
could get one for fifty thousand dollars because car is
not where you live. That is to transport your body
from one place to another place, and thousands of things
we can do this. I mean, remember Saint Paul said
in Philippines chatter one when people were weeping about him

(01:35:59):
being in prison, he said, hey, don't worry about it.
He said, all these things happened to me for the
furtherance of the Gospel. That means his looking glass, everything
about his life. He evaluated with one thing, how can
this help others to hear about the Lord Jesus Christ

(01:36:22):
and understand him, whether they are in America or in
China or India or anywhere in the world. And this
should be christ like in our life. Here the result
of our divine liturgy and Euchrist and all these things.
That is very important in knowing the life of God.

Speaker 1 (01:36:44):
I want you to, in the time we have left,
talk a little bit about your book, Revolution, World Missions.
I alluded to it earlier, but this is a book
that has been translated into so many different languages, over
four million copies in print. But what's important to me
at this point is for people to understand what this

(01:37:06):
revolution is all about. What do you mean revolution in
World Mission? And how can we become part of that revolution.

Speaker 2 (01:37:16):
It's very simple, thank you know. In Acts, chapter seventeen
says about the early Christians, my God, here comes these
people who turn the world upside down. In one translation,
the world revolutionaries have come here also, and in my
book The World Revolution, I use to show that eighty
percent eight zero eighty percent of the countries of the

(01:37:40):
world are completely closed or restricted for outsiders to come
as missionaries to preach and plant churches. And time has
changed since the Second World War. What we should do
is to find the Body of Christ in these nations
and help them because they're poor and they're hurting, and

(01:38:00):
we should assist them to train their own workers and
help them to go and reach the gospel. And after
they planned local churches, they become self supporting. And so
the biggest revolution we need to see is the cost
Hank is not how we are going to reach the

(01:38:23):
unreached in our world. The costume must be how are
they going to hear the Gospel? And if that be
the way we look at it, we will come alongside
with the brothers and sisters in all these nations like
in China, and help them because they don't have the

(01:38:44):
resources to print the million Bibles they need and all
kinds of things, or dig clean water wells for the
poor needy people and all that. And the book revolution
World Missions. By the way, it is free for anyone
to get. It's a two hundred and twenty page book
written for in simple language, and it's almost five million

(01:39:06):
copies now in print in organ languages. Somebody can go
to GFA dot org, Gospel Payasia dot org and ask
for a free copy without any obligation. We will send
it to them. And also by going to our website
they can get plenty of information about how they can
become part of changing our world. Jesus came to change

(01:39:27):
the world. He was a revolutionary and we need to be.
And also, Hank, we have what do you call the
school or disciplership. Young people who finish their high school
they can come and spend one year at our you know,
seven hundred acre campus here to live here and learn
on the job what it means to know God and pray,

(01:39:49):
and then later they go to the university college of
whatever else and all over the world. And so this
is one of the main contributions that I believe the
Lord wants us to do to so the church here
in North America. And we don't make money on this thing.
We just tell them, you know, all it days is
just have enough money to buy your food. You can,

(01:40:12):
we give you a house to stay in places, and
you be part of a community where you really understand
the meaning of church and knowing God and living for
Him during our life here on earth, and.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
You get some kind of a vision as well, and
that vision captivates your life. For example, you've often spoken
about the deletes. A lot of people wouldn't know what
that is. But here you have a people group that
may number as much as three hundred million people, two
hundred and fifty to three hundred million people, and they're

(01:40:49):
considered outcasts. They're not even part of the cast system.
They're outside the cast system. They can't drink from the
water of those who are part of the cast system
in places like India, and these people are being proselytized
by Buddhists and by Muslims, and the Church is woefully
ignorant to their plight. These are people created in the

(01:41:12):
image and likeness of God that form a very open
mission field, people that can be reached, that can be
invigorated by the very notion that they are not outcasts
in the eyes of Jesus Christ, that they are the
salt of the earth, that they can be transformed, that

(01:41:35):
they can go from one glory to another. And second Corinthians,
that says with unveiled face. So this is part of
the mission. And when you start to see this part
of the mission, when you start to learn about it,
your whole life turns upside down. And when you see
those needs and when you see those opportunities, I think

(01:41:56):
your own light and momentary problems begin to fade.

Speaker 2 (01:42:00):
Yeah, you know, Hank. Just imagine you know a dad
and mum they got a five year old daughter or
son who is so beautiful, but they are crippled. This
kid cannot stand up and walk, just crawl like a
little animal. But all of a sudden, instantly they see

(01:42:25):
that young daughter or son completely healed. They are restored
to perfect health. There's no language can describe the excitement,
the beauty, and the surprise of that. You know, Hank,
When I was studying school as a four year old,
five year old little kid in the first grade, second grade,

(01:42:49):
we carried what you call writing slate and the stone
that you write on it. And in the classroom there
is a blackboard they call it, and you write the
chalk and you wipe it and every time you write,
you are to wipe again, and then the more you
write on it, the more dim that blackboard becomes. Dullits

(01:43:12):
or the untouchables hang are clean slate, clean paper. They
are innocent. When I was in Nepal, I never forget
meeting the head of one of the Dalik group, some
sixty million people scattered throughout the subcontinent. And he is

(01:43:33):
the chief leader of this group. And he said to me,
almost in tears. Incidentally, this guy was educated in the
United States and Harrod somewhere, but he wears clothes identify
with these people, untouchables. And he said, ninety percent of

(01:43:53):
our children never go to school. We are slaves of
the uppercast we always will be. Will you come, please
teach our children, educate our people, and you teach us
about your Jesus, a new way ofly whatever. But we

(01:44:14):
want to get out of this slavery, Hank. That is
the story not of one group of people, but thousands, thousands,
and Jesus came to set the captives free. But Romansten says,
how will they believe in him if they have not

(01:44:36):
heard his name? How they how they will hear his
name unless somebody tell them? And how will they tell
about Jesus unless somebody go. And the last question, how
will somebody go unless we send them somebody who's living
in New Jersey or Dallas or London, or you know,

(01:44:58):
in Toronto or or anywhere in the world, or in
South India. They can actually be in one place. Never
move out of the room and be a sender through
prayer and giving for people to go everywhere preaching the gospel.
You know, my mother Hank never left my community eighty

(01:45:20):
four years of life. But from that little village she
was helping hundreds of young people to go to Bible school,
serve God in different places where she'd never been to.
But today I must tell you she is not dead.
She is with Jesus and she can see me. Now

(01:45:42):
you are not talking about it. She's a cloud of
great witnesses and she's saying, my son, you don't understand
what this is all about. Keep doing, keep running the race,
and tell everyone about your Lord, and help the poor
and needy. And this LEAs beautiful life, and this is

(01:46:02):
beautiful Orthodoxy.

Speaker 1 (01:46:06):
Well, the book Never Give Up by KP. Johannan is
available all this month and in fact anytime you want it.
It is available to those that support our ministry and
vicariously the ministry of Gospel for Asia. You can get
your copy for your support on the web at equipped

(01:46:26):
dot org. We'll also be happy to send you Revolution
in World mission, or you can get these resources through
Gospel for Asia. As KP just talked about, we have
been working behind the scenes on a number of projects together.
And my love and admiration for KP and for his

(01:46:47):
ministry knows no bounds. It continues to grow. The more
I see, the more I interact with this ministry and
this incredible ministry leader, the more I love him, and
the more I love his work, and the more I
want to be involved and what the Lord has raised
him up to do. In your book, KP, you say

(01:47:09):
you want to leave the reader with a request, and
then you give that request, and I thought it'd be
a perfect way to end this podcast. That request is
please learn to live your life, every minute of it,
in light of eternity. And this is something that you
teach to your priests, that you teach to your bishops,

(01:47:33):
that you teach to those who are part of Eastern
Believers Church, those that are involved in ministry with you,
to live every minute of your life in light of eternity,
and in fact, in light of that, you also have
been so gracious to be praying for me for my life,

(01:47:55):
for my health. I've been going through radiation treatments, as
you know, just gone through eleven of them. I have
four more to go through, not for a life threatening cancer,
a secondary cancer that came as a result of my transplant.
But I want to thank you for that reminder, that

(01:48:15):
request please learn to live your life, every minute of
it in light of eternity, and also want to thank
you for your person my behalf.

Speaker 2 (01:48:23):
You know, Hank, you didn't ask me to say this
to anyone, But since I've met you and been praying
for you, one of the important things happened to me
in my relationship with youties the words of Saint Paul.
He said, you know what, honestly, I don't care about
being here on earth. This is really dumb and stupid,

(01:48:43):
so many problems. I'd rather be with the Lord. But
for your sake, I will stay around some more time.
The weird thing happened to be in my relationship with
you in prayer is that the Lord impressed upon Maa
to pray for you daily, and he specifically said pray
that Hank will have health and long life to serve

(01:49:06):
the Holy Church and the lost world. And that's what
I do every single day, and I would ask our
audience please join in prayer if he can, every single
day for Hank Hanograph. You know, people are made saints
after they are dead, but uctially there are a few
saints that are walking around, but we need to recognize.

(01:49:27):
And I think God's hand is on your life and
you proved that by paying the price our saint Paul did.
And I think we need to have thousands of people
praying for you and for your health and long life
because so much to be done in our world, and
you have one of those key people I really believe
God picked to turn the light on for a world

(01:49:49):
that is so much in need and darkness.

Speaker 1 (01:49:53):
OK. P thank you so much for those words, And
of course I feel the exact same thing with respect
to you. I do pray for you on a daily basis.
I pray for gospel for Asia, and honestly, I feel
like our ministries have been yoked just like our lives
have been yoked. And I can't wait to spend some

(01:50:14):
time with believers Eastern Church in India and me and
mar and see your seminaries and the hospital and all
the things that you are doing. And whatever the way
the Lord can lead me to help further your work.
It's not our work, it's not my work or your work,
it's the Lord's work. But whatever way the Lord can

(01:50:35):
use me in that process, I'm all in and I
want to thank you so much for spending your time
on this podcast. Your passion, the clarity with which you
are communicating a message and sharing a vision is intoxicating
and we're all very grateful for it.

Speaker 2 (01:50:53):
Thank you, Hank, Blessing Sonya, I love you very much,
appreciate you so.

Speaker 1 (01:50:56):
Much, Mutual and for everyone tuning in, thank you so
much for making Hank Unplugged possible. This is the hundredth
addition of Hank Unplugged and it couldn't come with a
more inspirational, informative individual than KP. Johannan the Ministry for
Gospel for Asia Believers Eastern Church. The work that they

(01:51:20):
are doing is simply incredible and to be a small
part of that is a great blessing for the Christian
Research Institute. We'll continue working together. Our lives have been intertwined,
and we'll be sharing many more broadcasts and podcasts and
sharing with you the work and how you can be

(01:51:41):
involved in that work, prayerfully and financially. So thanks so
much for tuning in to this edition of Hank Unplugged.
Look forward to seeing you next time with more of
the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:52:00):
It explains

Speaker 1 (01:52:04):
Such

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