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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.