Matthew Stuckey here and I want to make a quick video giving you three common
myths of the United Methodists. Three common myths of the United Methodists.
And myth number one is that the United Methodists have been
historically the most evangelical of the Protestants. And so commonly people talk
about how the Methodists were really reaching people and they were just more
evangelical and just more zealous and they talked about them being the
shouting Methodists and traveling around and gathering and preaching and
holding all these you know events of evangelism. But you know this is actually
not true at all. Okay. The reality is that Methodists were really reaching a lot of
people not because they were zealous for soul winning or for preaching the gospel
but because of the fact that they were the most liberal. The reality is that they
were the ones that were bringing charismatic gifts before the Pentecostal
religion really became a big thing a hundred years ago. And the Methodists
you know throughout history were allowing spiritual gifts inside their
church. They're the ones that were allowing things like speaking in tongues
and other things like that. Nobody else would accept anything like that. But the
United Methodists they're actually the ones they're actually accepting that. And
it was also just more of a free-for-all of the United Methodist churches.
Doctrine just didn't really matter. It's kind of strange because the term
Methodist comes from the word method. And supposedly they have all these
methods of how they act and everything like that. It's real structured and
organized. But in reality they were the most free-for-all of any of the
Protestant denominations. There's no question when you look at church history
or look at the various different denominations they just kind of allowed
any doctrine any sort of thing anybody wanted to do. And one of the other big
things is you'll see with the United Methodists that they're the first ones
that were ordaining women. You know whenever you watch anything online about
the history of the United Methodists or you have speakers of United Methodists
they'll talk about how you know in this year we started ordaining women. And
everyone's like, Amen! Like it's such a great thing. I watched a video of this
United Methodist minister and he was talking about what's the difference
between the Catholics and the United Methodists. And the first thing he says
is, well there's a lot of differences. You know we ordain women and the Catholics
don't. And then that's the only thing he mentioned. It's like that's about the
only thing the Catholics are right on. And so the Methodists have always been
the most liberal, ordaining women, allowing charismatic gifts and things
like that. Being accepting of the LGBT and ordaining people that are lesbians
or open homosexuals as ministers. They've just always been the most liberal and so
they've reached a lot of people because of the fact they're not actually asking
people to conform to what the Bible says. They're just conforming to what
people want. And so you know what? People say, hey this is a church that accepts me
as I am. And people really like that. They're also, believe it or not, when it
comes to being evangelical, so-called, one reason why they really reach people is
because they're the ones of the Protestants that allowed Christian
contemporary music a long time ago. Now you would think with Charles Wesley who
wrote some of the great hymns of the faith that we sing, you would think with
great songs like And Can It Be, you would think that they were the ones that
were the traditional sort of music. But in reality, Charles Wesley and his
brother John Wesley, they actually are the ones that were allowing Christian
contemporary music, the CCM sort of music of that day, when other Protestants and
Catholics and Orthodox would never accept that stuff because they considered
liberal and worldly and just the things that the world would sing. And they're
the ones that brought in that music. Why? Well because it actually reached people.
And that's all that they really cared about. And so a lot of this stems from
the fact that John Wesley and Charles Wesley's mom was actually a very liberal
obnoxious woman, right? If you look up anything on John Wesley's mom, she was
just a bossy obnoxious woman. And you know what you read is that at church,
John Wesley's mom when he was a kid, and Charles Wesley's mom when he was a kid,
you know, she would take people from the congregation and preach sermons to them
in another room while they're trying to hold church service. And the pastor of
the church would have to come to John Wesley's father and tell him, hey, get
control of your wife. Get control of your wife. Tell her to quit preaching. And when
the father would come to his wife, the father of John Wesley came to the mom of
John Wesley, and she says, okay, well I'm an obedient woman, so if that's what you
say, then I'll do it. But you're responsible for people going to hell if
I'm not preaching these sermons to them. And so she was this bossy obnoxious
liberal woman. It's not really shocking. This is the denomination that ended up
ordaining women and allowing women in the ministry. And so another big part
that shows that they just accept everything is that John Wesley and
Charles Wesley. John Wesley was a failure as a minister, which I'll talk about here
in a little bit, and then he links up with a guy by the name of George
Whitefield. Now the United Methodists are famous for not being the Calvinists of
the Protestants. The other Protestant denominations traditionally, by and large,
really embraced Calvinism, but not John Wesley. But George Whitefield was his
good friend, and George Whitefield was a hardcore Calvinist. There's no debate
about that. And John Wesley said, we can just agree to disagree on that topic
because it's all about just reaching people. It doesn't matter what we teach.
Doesn't matter what we say. And so basically they would be these circuit
riding preachers and they'd go from town to town and just kind of basically
basically be like the Billy Graham types of their days where they just preach a
generic message and everything like that. Anyway, they became very popular because
of it because they just, you know, embraced whatever people wanted rather
than actually being traditional and standing up for the truth. So it's not
that they were evangelical and doing a big work for God and really zealous. It's
just the fact that they were really liberal and allowed whatever people
wanted as part of the church. Number one big myth is that they were evangelical,
more so than any Protestants or anybody else. And people will say, well, you know,
the Baptists are the ones that are zealous today, but it used to be those
old shouting Methodists in the past. That's just a fraud. It's not true. It's
false. They're not the ones that were persecuted like the Baptists and killed
for baptizing converts. You know, the Methodists, it's phony. It's a fraud. They
were not the most evangelical. Number two, a big myth is this, that John Wesley had
good character, that John Wesley had good character. Oftentimes we think of
John Wesley because everybody knows that Martin Luther and John Calvin were just
scoundrels, just bad people. You know, people know of the case of John Calvin
and murder and then Martin Luther saying the Anabaptists deserved to die and
things like that. People just kind of assume that John Wesley was just kind of
a more nice guy and he wasn't so bad. In fact, a lot of Baptist churches will
praise John Wesley and talk about how great of a guy he was. He was actually a
pretty bad person though and his character was just proven through
history to be terrible, okay. He first became a minister before he became this
famous person and basically, you know, he fell in love with this woman but this
woman loved another guy. And so basically this woman marries another guy and he
gets mad about it like a little ten-year-old and then he won't let her
take communion and things like that. So he ends up getting kicked out as being a
minister. He just like runs and just leaves the United States because of this
big scandal and it's just this big embarrassment because he fell in love
with this woman who didn't like him and you know what, then all of a sudden he
wouldn't let her take communion, right. And then another thing is this, John
Wesley did not know he was going to heaven, right. He ran into the Moravians
and he had no idea if he was going to heaven. He's like, how are they confident
they're going to heaven? And he was told by one of those ministers because he
asked him, he's like, should I just stop being a preacher myself since I don't
know if I'm going to heaven? And the guy said, don't stop being a preacher. He's
like, preach faith until you have faith. Preach faith until you have faith. So
even though you don't have faith, John Wesley, you don't know you're going to
heaven, just keep preaching and eventually you're gonna get it too. I
mean this is ridiculous because the Bible says salvation is passed from
faith to faith, right. And so somebody that has faith, preaches the faith to
somebody else and then they develop that faith. They get saved, okay. And then they
can also pass that faith on to others once they have that faith. You have to be
saved to win somebody to the Lord. So that's ridiculous advice but here's John
Wesley, a guy who doesn't know he's going to heaven and yet he's taking paychecks
from people when he has no idea if he's going to heaven, right. I mean when you
don't even know you're going yourself, why are you standing up and being a
minister? Just get an honest job and get out of the ministry if you don't know
what you're talking about. Here's the thing, John Wesley was actually never a
pastor. People just kind of assumed he was a pastor. He was this guy with good
character and he was a pastor. Actually he didn't get married until he's 41
years old. 41 years old. Now it's funny because the United Methodists, when they
talk about John Wesley, they'll talk about him like he was a big ladies man.
Like all these ladies liked him. He had lots of opportunities. I personally, it
doesn't really matter whether or not he was a ladies man so I don't know why
they're trying to brag about that but here's the thing, it's the exact
opposite. He was a loser. Nobody wanted John Wesley and he finally got married
when he was 41 years old to a woman who was a widow and he stayed married for
seven years before getting a divorce. Seven years before he had a separation
from his wife and the reason why is because of the fact he was always gone
preaching. He was never around his wife but the other thing is this, he was
always going after these young women and he was flirting with young women and
holding conversations like via letters and stuff and it's like he was
attempting to commit adultery and he always failed. As far as I know he was
never able to because just no woman wanted him and then he got a divorce
seven years later, never had any children. So he wasn't even a pastor. I mean this
this is a man that just has a really low character. He was a failure in the
ministry until he linked up with George Whitefield and just said I'll just link
up to someone popular and just do whatever people want and say whatever
they want in order to get a crowd. He was a failure in terms of trying to find a
wife and when he found a wife he was a scoundrel and his wife left him and you
know he just failed in attempts to commit adultery. He wasn't a good person.
He had terrible character and he was just kind of a failure in life. It's
mind-boggling that his name is now famous when he was such a failure in
life. Point number one was that that the myth is that the United Methodists were
the most evangelical of any denomination. They weren't. It's always been the
Baptists and the forerunners to our modern-day Baptists that believe the
like-minded faith that we have. Point number two, a myth is that John Wesley
had good character. He did not have good character. He was actually a scoundrel, a
bad person, a loser, a derelict. And point number three is this, people have this
myth that the United Methodists are more doctrinally sound than the other
Protestants. That they're just a lot different than the other Protestants and
the other Protestants are like Catholics but United Methodists are okay though
they're not so bad. That's actually not true at all. In fact in many ways the
United Methodists are just more off on the deep end than any other denomination.
Now I already talked about how they're the ones that are really ordaining women
above everybody else, embracing the LGBT and things such as that. But not only
that, I mean John Wesley had a lot of really really strange strange beliefs.
One thing is this that John Wesley was a vegetarian, right? Now look I know in our
modern day you know you got this liberal society and there's like a lot of
weirdos and people that have are just going against the grain and stuff and
just having these weird ideas and stuff. Look it's bizarre to be a vegetarian,
right? It's certainly not a biblical thing. So to call yourself a minister of
the Word of God and then tell people they should be vegetarians, that's
strange. It's certainly not something that you're gonna find in the Bible. So
he's a vegetarian. The other thing is this, he also like the famous Protestants
he believed that Mary was perpetually a virgin, meaning Mary and Joseph never
came together after the birth of Jesus Christ. I guess he didn't understand the
part in the Bible when it talks about the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.
And so Jesus had many brothers and sisters so unless you know Mary just
immaculately conceived, right? I mean unless you just had this virgin birth
you know with all of those, I mean it's ridiculous. The Bible is very clear Jesus
had brothers and sisters but John Wesley didn't understand the Bible, didn't
believe the Bible, just believed that you know old-fashioned Catholic religion,
these traditions never change those things. John Wesley was a big believer in
ghosts. So he's combining this Protestant religion, old-fashioned Catholicism with
this spiritism sort of thing where he believed that there's ghosts and you can
communicate with these devils and stuff like that or communicate with these
ghosts. Just really weird beliefs. And you know at church they would have, he would
he would have the men sit on one side of the auditorium and the women on the
other. Just bizarre stuff. It's like you know can't husbands and wives sit
together. So this is this is the history of the United Methodists, right? I mean
it's it's it's not what people think at all. The reason why the Methodists really
just kind of rose as a denomination above the other Protestants, the reason
why they rose faster than the Episcopalians and the Lutherans and the
Presbyterians is the Methodists were just more liberal. Now look I believe all
these denominations are false. Obviously I'm an independent fundamental Baptist
but the United Methodists they were just by far the most liberal and you can
see that in today's world. They embraced ordaining women. They embraced the LGBT
and look John Wesley was not a good guy. He was a scoundrel. He was a weirdo and
the United Methodists you know it's a fraud. They were not these great
evangelicals in the past. They weren't reaching people with the gospel. They
have always had the wrong gospel and John Wesley was a rotten person. Thank you
and God bless.