By Eric Stogner ( February 2024)
I like to write when the inspiration is fresh, and after watching the Superbowl, I was suddenly inspired or triggered or both. Were you one of the over 100 million people who watched the Superbowl this year? If so, then perhaps you can guess what sparked this article. It wasn’t the game that inspired me, but a set of ‘somewhat Christian’ ads with the tag line “He Gets us” that directed viewers to the website “hegetsus.com”. I don’t mind all the celebrities pitching for various brands, some are actually entertaining; but this monstrosity was the very definition of Christian apostasy. This sort of thing is what the bleating words of a talking goat might sound like ‘Blah, Baa, Baa’, especially one of the many goats that the Lord described in the parable of the sheep and the goats where He judges the peoples of the world. There will really are only two categories of people – those who are on God’s team (sheep) and those who aren’t (goats). Ensuring that we have made it onto the right team should be the most important endeavor of our lives.
As a side bar comment, I would point out that the Lord chose which animals to use as examples in the parable of the sheep and the goats and He used the sheep represent His flock, but the goats represent those who belong to Satan. Isn’t it interesting that Satan and the Baphomet are often represented by a horned goat?
But, I digress. This ad which ran during the Superbowl and that is slated to run “during other major cultural moments over the next year, including the Paris Olympics, the NFL draft, and the Republican and Democratic conventions” clearly has backing by people with deep pockets. A 30 second spot during the Superbowl can cost around $7 million each – and this ad ran at least twice. The advertisement attempts to build upon an actual event recorded in the bible – the one day in the entire life of Jesus when, the night before his arrest and subsequent crucifixion, He is gathered in the upper room with His closest followers (the disciples) and He uses this opportunity to give them one of His last teaching lessons. He washes their feet. This has real meaning and significance, but to those who created this ad campaign and who want to reimagine Christianity to suit their desires and attempt to make God bend to their will, they took this story and bastardized it to mean something completely different than what the Lord was demonstrating. This twisting of words is just like the way the serpent took the words of God and twisted them enough to confuse and deceive Adam and Eve.
The serpent said to Eve, “Did God really say, ‘you must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die”. See the way evil works through a lie? First, it raises a question when the matter should be clear – ‘did God really say that?’ Then, evil deliberately misplaces or rearranges words and their meaning – was it, you weren’t supposed to eat that fruit or was it, you weren’t supposed to touch it? And finally, evil outright inverts what God said – ‘You will not surely die’. And it all made for a crafty and effective lie, couched in deceptive words and half-truths. This is how the creators and funders of that “He Gets Me” ad campaign operate – they lie and take what was true and clear and then cast doubt, raise questions, twist words, or selectively quote from God’s word and/or completely inverts His words.
So, let’s get into this. I’ve attended church pretty much all my life, and even early on, I remember that there were two parables in scripture that always got my attention and stood out from among the many others. A parable is story as told by Jesus in the gospels that is used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson. A parable is not meant to teach in specific detail as much as it is an allegory that reveals important universal truths. And Jesus knew that parables would be a very effective way to teach truth that would hold up well over time and yet also speak a truth that can both hide in plain sight (remains hidden to some) while at the same time convey a complicated concept in simple terms that anyone should be able to understand. Parables are for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, but they can be easily dismissed by those who seek not the things of the Lord. So, they are ignored as simple stories or myths by some and treasured like gold nuggets by others.
Parable of the True and False Disciples:
One of those parables that really stuck with me was the parable of the True and False Disciples, better known at the “Lord, Lord” passage. This is in Matthew 7: 21-23.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and, in your name, perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”
Wow! What jumped out at me was the fact that the individuals being judged seemed to be genuinely shocked and caught off guard when the Lord himself called them out. Certainly, the Lord can’t be the one who is in the wrong, so obviously the individual (or the ‘many’) who said ‘Lord, Lord’ were not only in the wrong, but were completely self-deceived. I shudder at the thought of being self-deceived like that, and yet this passage not only warns about it, but says that many will fall into this trap. And these people legitimately thought they were doing good because they were doing things in the Lord’s name – seemingly big things like prophesying, and casting out demons, and performing miracles. And notice that the Lord doesn’t argue that point or contradict that part of their response to Him. He seems to agree that they had indeed performed these acts. But He still said that He never knew them. I can see how that would be really shocking to hear such a thing from the Lord. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that. What this means is that there are professing Christians who are going about doing some pretty major acts of service or even miracles, and yet the Lord says they will not enter the kingdom of heaven because He ‘never knew’ them.
Think about that. I have many times. It means that there will be not some, but many, people who look and act like Christians, but, according to the Lord, are false Christians or non-Christians. Mere labels don’t mean much. So just as we cannot judge a book by its cover, we also cannot judge a person by what they outwardly look like or verbally claim – even professing Christians. People can lie or be self-deceived about that basic fact. Let that sink in. Remember also, that the number one sign Jesus said to watch for and watch out for in these last days is deception.
This level of self-deception seems shocking to me and almost sounds contradictory to other passages in scripture. But, researching it further, we can confirm that it doesn’t contradict scripture. Elsewhere it says ‘faith without works is dead’, but it doesn’t say works confirms real faith. So, indeed people can do good works, even miraculous works in the name of Jesus, and yet in truth, not have anything to do with Christ. Perhaps this is another example of the passage in Matthew 15:8 that says, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me”. They must give Christianity a lot of lip-service or be Christians in Name Only. In fact, that has to be what this means, because it explains why the Lord judged those goats who said ‘Lord, Lord’ so harshly. He explained “plainly” that “I never knew you”.
The phrase “I never knew you” can have two sorts of meanings here. On the surface, it simply means that I never have met you or been properly introduced to you. And at a deeper level this means something even more important. In the bible, when it says that a man ‘knew’ a woman, it means he knew her intimately, usually meaning he had sexual relations with her. So, when the Lord says, He didn’t know these people who claimed “Lord, Lord”, clearly, He is saying that He and they were strangers to each other and had no intimate relationship. And relationship is at the heart of the Christian faith, an authentic relationship with the Jesus.
The real question is always: Do we really know Him and seek Him with our whole heart? ; and in turn, does He know us like that – intimately? The bible says in Jeremiah, 29:13 “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart”. It really is that simple – it shouldn’t be a huge mystery. Yes, he knows everything about us, (I suppose that means he ‘gets us’ or understands our predicament). And when we come to Him in repentance and humility, we may begin to comprehend Him to a small extent. But apparently there will be this big group of people that think and proclaim that they are in Christ, but they aren’t. They are fully deceived. It stands to reason that anyone who follows and emulates these confused people would also likely become confused and lost as well. They would be blind people being led by blind guides – they both will fall into the ditch. And this is precisely what is happening with these people caught up in the “He Gets Us” deception.
So, as you go about in this life, this should give us cause to first, examine ourselves and take a good hard look in the mirror. Could we be among the many who are false Christians – going about claiming to be in Christ and even devoting ourselves to work that feels like it is of the Lord, but actually isn’t? That would be distressing to discover we are in that group, but it would be a good thing to figure that out now and no longer be operating under delusion because discovering and admitting that one is lost and deceived is the first step to repenting and finding your way back to truth and safety.
Then, the second thing we must do is to start noticing the people around us or in the world that claim to be Christians. Are they really? And don’t get hung up here because you are afraid of being criticized for judging others. That is a common attack that others may try to set against you. Remember that you are not judging, and you are not being a ‘hater’. Judging is what God alone will do and hating is what those types who are of the world do to those who are of Christ. This is also made clear in the bible. It says in John 15: 18-19 that:
‘If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you’.
What you would be doing as you look around and assess what you observe is discerning what is good and bad, true and false, what is in agreement with scripture and measuring what others say against scripture. You can and you must do this in order to navigate through this life. You must examine and discern what anyone tells you about God and his ways, including whether I am sharing truth with you. People are either in alignment with the Lord or they aren’t. There is no middle ground.
And one last thing about the “Lord, Lord” types. Notice again in the parable the level of self-delusion and deception that they operate under. They fooled others and even themselves. They must certainly have been self-righteous and sought to give all the outward signs of being a Christian. In a real sense their virtue signaling was so effective that they deceived even themselves. They were high on their own smoke – they went about claiming to be Christian and doing Christian acts of work, and yet – it was all a sham and a falsehood. I pity the fools who are this self-deceived. And frankly, I almost respect an honest evil person who doesn’t hide that they are at war with God and have deliberately chosen to align with and carry out evil. At least those people are living with some degree of authenticity. The most dangerous and inauthentic people on earth are the false Christians. Because they go around appearing to be something they are not. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing, or at least goats hanging around with and claiming to be among the same flock as the sheep who are part of God’s legitimate flock. They deceive themselves and deceive many others with them.
The second parable that got my attention, even as a youth, is one that seems to ‘go together’ with the “Lord, Lord” parable. They both are found close together in the book of Matthew, but what I find most similar is that both involve people who managed to go through life, thinking that they were in a right relationship with God, perhaps even as a spiritual superstar, and yet in both parables, the Lord calls them out and kicks them out of his flock.
Parable of the Sheep and the Goats:
I imagine you are familiar with the famous parable of the Sheep and Goats in Matthew 25:31-46. This parable gets cited a lot by people on both ends of the “political spectrum’. I was going to say the Christian spectrum, but as these two parables demonstrate, one end of the spectrum is not really within the Christian camp at all.
Briefly, this parable is about the Lord comparing and judging / separating a combined group of animals into two groups – one group called sheep that He is pleased with and another group He calls goats who He is not pleased with. And we are told why God is pleased or not pleased. The sheep seem to demonstrate genuine love of others by completing relatively small acts of kindness and charity. They bring water to the thirsty and visit others in prison and such. While the goats represent people who don’t bother to do these things. Both have opportunity to do genuine good for others, but the goats seem uninterested in the welfare of others. Clearly, the Lord is pleased when we love one another and do acts of love from a genuine heart. The parable of the good Samaritan gives another good picture of who really pleased God by loved their neighbor – the one who showed interest and compassion on a stranger and took concrete steps to care for the wellbeing of another afflicted person. In this story, the unloving religious types avoided such a person and failed to do a similar act of charity. The Lord demonstrates that from His prospective, when one does perform such acts of charity, it is as if we are performing them for Him. And likewise, if one fails to perform such acts, it is like failing to do them for Him as well. Clearly, God takes this kind of thing personally and He is watching and pleased when we help one another.
But there is a layer underneath these outward behaviors. This is the layer of the heart or the motive behind the good deeds. Elsewhere in scripture it tells believers to not let one hand know what the other is doing when it is doing good. And to not call attention to the good deeds you may do (meaning to not virtue signal – doing your good deeds so that others may see it). Because the bible says you will get no further reward from God in heaven for such things. You will already have received whatever sort of worldly recognition you will receive if you call attention to yourself, and that is not of God. When you do good deeds, you are to do them in secret so that your father in heaven who sees what is done in secret will reward you in public – later, in the kingdom of heaven.
The message is clear. Works done for the wrong reason, to either gain favor in the sight of men or to try to earn your way into God’s good graces so you can avoid repenting and truly coming to Christ means nothing to God and is an offense. But doing good deeds for others as a natural response to your love of God and His love of you does matter a lot to God. In fact, scripture says God loves a cheerful giver. This is a very important distinction. God is not impressed by Social Justice Warriors who claim to honor him with all their many words and works if they are only about such works and are more focused (as the Pharisees where) on advertising and virtue signaling all their good deeds and devout expressions of faith but failing to grasp and follow the deeper aspects of being a child of God.
This means repentance and a changed heart, that leads to living a changed life – not remaining as you are. Scripture also says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. There is no use washing the feet of people you happen to like and share an affinity for their particular community while you refuse to repent and accept Christ as your actual savior. It is not that He needs to ‘Get us’, it is that we need to ‘Get him’ and He needs to ‘Change us’. In fact, if we refuse His invitation and are not dressed and washed in the proper clean and white garments, when the Lord comes to ‘get’ those He truly knows, like the way a bridegroom comes to collect his bridal party, He will leave those who are not properly prepared behind. Perhaps that Superbowl ad campaign should have the tag line: “He Leaves Us” – because that will be the cold hard reality for these self-deceived false, I mean non-Christians. Indeed, God is love and ‘love wins’, but when someone refuses to love the truth of the Lord, their earthly form of love is not a love that wins with God. That is merely self-deception that loses.
I can end on a positive note as I always like to do. I was delighted as I did my final edits on this article to hear about and watch a fantastic response video created by a pastor named Jamie Bambrick from the United Kingdom It is titled “He Saves Us” and is made to mirror the “He Gets Us” ad but this one is has a much different and entirely appropriate and biblically message for anyone who wants to ‘explore genuine Christianity. It features a similar set of images with the same music, only under each photo he has test that reads things like “Former KKK Leader, Former New Age Guru, Former Lesbian activist, Former Porn Star, Former Transexual, etc.” with the final tag line being “He Saves Us”. It is outstanding – what tis the massive difference. This video message one invites healing and transformation. It involves recognizing that our former state was not good for us and was at enmity with God. It shows pictures of hope from transformed lives, rather than wallowing among lives of sin and desperation that the “He Gets Us” campaign contains. Seriously, look up this video and watch it and listen to him being interviewed as to why he made this response video. Jamie is brave and put his name and face and talent to create this video out there to stand for truth, while the people behind the millions upon millions of dollars spent to misrepresent Christianity are hiding their faces and identities.
I am trying to shorten my articles. What you are seeing is half the article that I initially wrote. I had written a lot more detail about the real agenda behind this woke ad, and the LGBT supporters who are funding this ad campaign. It is pretty easy to figure out these things if you go to the website to try to learn more about the ‘He Gets Us’ campaign. Check it out. You will find a lot more of the same propaganda, but when you try to see who funds this group and who are they, it only reveals that these ads are now managed by a new group called “Come near” and no longer by the prior group called ‘the Servant Foundation”. The main website doesn’t give statements of faith, or reveal their detailed agenda or funding sources, they simply use ‘corporate speak’ to say bland word salad and things that don’t sound objectionable like, ‘we are committed to sharing the life and love of Jesus in thought-provoking ways.”
Yeah, right. But the rest of the site is filled with more twisted language where a lie is nestled behind a thin veneer of truth in order to deceive whoever they can. In an article in Fortune magazine the new leaders of this campaign do reveal that “probably the most common questions received are about their stance on the LBBTQ+ community”. Their response was to say: “let us be clear in our opinion, Jesus loves gay people and Jesus loves trans people … no matter who you are, YOU are invited to explore the story of Jesus and consider what it means for your life”.
Let’s remember that this 20 second as is clearly designed to get people to visit the website and when you explore it, you get the rest of their messaging loud and clear. It focuses on one basic theme – drawing lines of judgement between traditional Christians and these new more progressive ‘Christians’ who have a better take on the faith. They have an opening animation that makes their agenda a lot more clear. They ask, “How did the story of Jesus, that is supposed to be the world’s greatest love story get twisted into a tool to judge, harm and divide”. Clearly, they are claiming someone else has twisted the meaning of scripture and those people must be the haters that need to be demonized and cancelled. Those people would be conservative Christians. I may write a follow-on article debunking this “He Gets Me” campaign to explore this ploy – a trick those who teach deception always use to promote their own ideas by attacking the truth of the gospel and those who hold to it.
But I want to wrap up this article by also addressing one last important aspect about the parable of the sheep and the goats that needs to be made and that was well summarized in a post on the website ‘Got Questions’ at: https://www.gotquestions.org/parable-sheep-goats.html
In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, we are looking at man redeemed and saved, and man condemned and lost. A casual reading seems to suggest that salvation is the result of good works. The “sheep” acted charitably, giving food, drink, and clothing to the needy. The “goats” showed no charity. This seems to result in salvation for the sheep and damnation for the goats.
However, Scripture does not contradict itself, and the Bible clearly and repeatedly teaches that salvation is by faith through the grace of God and not by our good works (see John 1:12; Acts 15:11; Romans 3:22-24; Romans 4:4-8; Romans 7:24-25; Romans 8:12; Galatians 3:6-9; and Ephesians 2:8-10). In fact, Jesus Himself makes it clear in the parable that the salvation of the “sheep” is not based on their works—their inheritance was theirs “since the creation of the world” (Matthew 25:34), long before they could ever do any good works!
The good works mentioned in the parable are not the cause of salvation but the effect of salvation. As Christians we become like Christ (see Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18; and Colossians 2:6-7). Galatians 5:22 tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Good works in a Christian’s life are the direct overflow of these traits, and are only acceptable to God because of the relationship that exists between servant and Master, the saved and their Savior, the sheep and their Shepherd (see Ephesians 2:10).
The core message of the Parable of the Sheep and Goats is that God’s people will love others. Good works will result from our relationship to the Shepherd. Followers of Christ will treat others with kindness, serving them as if they were serving Christ Himself. The unregenerate live in the opposite manner. While “goats” can indeed perform acts of kindness and charity, their hearts are not right with God, and their actions are not for the right purpose.
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