Ep 1154 ｜ Ex-New Ager Reveals Cults’ Secret Invasion of the Church ｜ Guest： Melissa Dougherty
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per Minute
176.66653
Summary
Melissa Doherty is an apologist, and she just wrote a book called Happy Lies about how New Age and New Thought have infiltrated the church, and what we need to look out for as Christians. Her testimony from being raised in the world of Christian Science and the New Age ideology that surrounds that ideology is just fascinating and encouraging.
Transcript
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From the new age and gender confusion to freedom in Christ, Melissa Doherty is an apologist
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and she just wrote a book called Happy Lies about how the new age and the new thought
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have infiltrated the church, what we need to look out for as Christians.
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Her testimony from being raised in the world of Christian science and the new thought that
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surrounds that ideology is just fascinating and super encouraging.
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You guys are going to love this episode of Relatable.
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Melissa, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
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If you could tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do.
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Some people might know me mostly from my YouTube channel.
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I'm also on all kinds of different social medias, but I talk mostly about new age, new thought.
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I do some pretty mediocre satire, if I say so myself.
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Um, but yeah, it's, uh, it's, I just kind of call myself a mixed bag when it comes to touching
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Which is why you wrote this book, Happy Lies, how a movement you probably never heard of shaped
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our self-obsessed world about new age, new thought, this kind of movement.
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Before we get into the core of your book, I want to take us back into your life.
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How did you start knowing about it, caring about it, talking about it?
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So my story is, you know, two, threefold, I suppose, but I grew up in what I thought
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was a Christian household, but really it was more intertwined with new thought, but I didn't
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New thought, which I'll get to, but basically, uh, well, let me define it now.
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And once I saw really what this was, that it's not the same as new age, that it's not
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under this canopy and where it is everywhere, not just in society, but in the church, I had
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And it was very personal to me because I grew up with these beliefs.
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Um, in a sentence, I would say that it's the positive thinking movement in America with
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Jesus as its mascot in two words, I would say it's metaphysical Christianity.
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And I challenge that it's much more deceptive than the new age because it's made to look
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Christian, Christian terminology, uh, same terms, quote scripture.
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And that's really why I thought it was, it was Christian.
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Um, yes, because my seminary professors, they get like a twitch in their eye when I say that.
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Um, there is a proper, uh, use for it in the Christian world, uh, classical theism, uh, where
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metaphysical is just the non-physical attributes of God.
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You know, you're looking at omnipresence, his all power, you know, the, the things about
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Why does he reveal himself in the way that he does?
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Because that's the metaphysics in theology and Christianity.
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And it's interesting you mentioned it because almost every chapter in this book needed a,
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Because it's like, okay, well you hear this like affirmations, affirming something
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doesn't always mean, you know, that, oh, I need affirmation in this.
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Some people might hear that and think, oh, that's bad, but really it's just really defining
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the term, but in new thought, they would describe themselves as in the movement anyway, as metaphysical
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What that means is beyond the physical and to hash that out a little bit more, think of
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everything around you, everything you, me sitting here, our bodies, words on a page, our cup
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So what you do here in the physical realm affects the spiritual realm.
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So if you're trying to fix something in the physical realm, you fix it in the spiritual
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realm and how you do that is with your thoughts, words, and, and feelings, especially feelings.
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Feelings are very important, but it means that there's always something more beyond the
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physical that you're seeing and reading and experiencing.
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That's why looking for signs can be so important.
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Is this like, okay, if you're sick, there must be something going on corresponding in
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your spirit or in the spirit world that is making you sick?
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And it's very interesting that you use the word correspondence because there's a very
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interesting figure in the new thought world called Emanuel Swedenborg.
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He's one of the fathers that I talk about in one of the beginning chapters, and he's a
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fascinating figure, but he has something that he called the law of correspondence, which
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is basically what I just said, that the material world is built on your mind.
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It responds to your mind in that if you want to move things in the material world, you move
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them first in the spiritual world, done through your thoughts, words, and feelings.
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And so sickness, health, wealth, things like that.
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I mean, we're talking about a movement that paraded the health and wealth prosperity that
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we see, and we see a lot of that in the Word of Faith movement, of course, too.
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Okay, so I know we're kind of zigzagging, which is fine, because we're starting with
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your story, and then you use this term, New Thought, to say that you were raised in this,
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but we had to define New Thought, which took us where we went.
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But let us go back, since now we kind of have an idea of what New Thought is.
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I'm guessing some of this is name it and claim it, prosperity gospel, which people will be
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familiar with. Tell me how you were raised in this world. What did that look like?
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Well, I grew up with a lot of old, dusty books from my great-grandparents that were fascinating
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to me, because they were old and seemed ancient and had all this wisdom in it. And so they grew up,
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or well, they adopted it, rather. And then my mom grew up in it, and then I grew up in it. But it was
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always a mixture. We went to a Presbyterian church. I think that my mom, I think they grew up in a
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Lutheran church. And so the ideas were there, but it wasn't like they went to a separate church that
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taught these things. And so, yeah, I grew up with these beliefs that your mind really could control
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your reality, that if you believed hard enough, you could actually create whatever it was around you.
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And this is something that Jesus taught that's very important, is that everything was always like,
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hey, Jesus is the way-shower. He was showing us our true human spiritual potential. What he can do,
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what he did, you can do as well, and more. He's an archetype.
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Yeah, yeah. And then Christ consciousness is a big new thought word. Everybody thinks that's
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new age. It's not. It's new thought. And Jesus would have been the example of obtaining the Christ
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consciousness. Remember how I said before, everything's metaphysical?
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That has a metaphysical definition. We would hear that and think, oh, it means Messiah. It means,
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in its proper context, that's exactly what it means, but not in new thought. In new thought,
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it's a metaphysical definition. It's a higher meaning.
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That you can attain to. So is this Christian science?
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Good question. Yeah, actually. Christian science would be a cult of new thought.
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Okay. And was that, were your parents and grandparents Christian scientists?
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Yes and no. They were kind of both. We had all kinds of books on the shelves from Unity, which is
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one of the largest new thought denominations, religious science, and then Christian science.
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And I remember, I still have it. It's in a bag. It's all broken apart, but it's Mary Baker Eddy's
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book, but translated into English from German. And so I still have that book and see it. But yeah,
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the history is very interesting, but Christian science, the beliefs are very new thought. But
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Mary Baker Eddy was, she made a lot of people upset. She was not, she was very cultish. And the
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movements, her teacher, Phineas Quimby, wanted to move away from that. And so, because she went down
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a more dogmatic path, they wanted to get away from that. They wanted Jesus without the dogma.
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It was really your heart's desire. And that's the other thing is that what you felt from within is
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what was true. And if you're reading something in scripture and it doesn't resonate with you,
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well, then it has to be translated through the lens of love. And so that's why you get like people
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like Oprah Winfrey who can say she's a Christian, but she-
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Or even Jen Hatmaker. I heard her saying, you know, when she came out, I think it was 2014, 2015,
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saying, I'm pro-LGBTQ. I've heard her say multiple times since then, if your theology is hurting
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people, if your theology is superseding your relationships, I saw someone say the other day,
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which this is such a form of horrible emotional manipulation. If your theology makes someone want
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to kill themselves, then it's not good theology. And it kind of sounds like a similar idea that you
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have to put on the lens of, will this make someone mad or does this fit the worldly definition of
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loving? If so, if it does fit that worldly definition, I'll take it. If not, then I'll
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throw it away. Kind of like cafeteria Christianity.
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Yeah. Cafeteria Christianity. It makes you the sovereign. And because ultimately what New Thought
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teaches, again, and it's so tricky because it's in a Christian context, is that you are divine.
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You are the creator of the universe. You are a co-creator with God. And so I'm hearing all this
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stuff growing up in a Christian context, not really thinking much of it, if I'm honest. I didn't really
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think much of spiritual things until I was 16. And that's really when I became a Christian. No doubt
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in my mind, I gave my life to the Lord. And how'd that happen? I actually was at a very, very low,
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dark place. And I was suicidal. And I just happened to be at a party one night with a
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friend that, I mean, he was drinking, but he had just gotten saved. Brand new baby Christian. And
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he's there telling us that we're doing something terrible, like we need to repent. And it was very
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interesting. But yeah, he's there telling the gospel and I believed it. And I went home that night
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completely different. I woke up the next morning and I remember sitting up alley and I'm like,
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man, this is different. I mean, the light shone brighter. Smells, smell different. Colors look
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different. I felt new. I felt born again. And I'd never even heard that term before. And so I felt
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like a new creation. But the biggest thing was a hunger to know more. I wanted to know the Bible.
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Yeah. And that actually was where the problem started because I discovered that there's maybe
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an anti-intellectual vein within Christianity that's like, they don't want to think about
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those things. They don't want to ask or answer hard questions. And I'm talking Christianity 101
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questions. Tell me about hell. I have issues with that. What's going on? How can a good God,
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hell? All the things that we've always asked. Yeah. Things that we've asked for thousands of years in
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Christianity. Good question. Yes. How did we get the Bible? What's up with the violence in the Old
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Testament? Tell me about this God that I believe. And it was really there at that point that I
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discovered, okay, a lot of Christians don't like this. And were you asking your parents? Because you,
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I guess at the time, maybe thought that they were a Christian. Were you asking a pastor?
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Well, my parents split up. So my mom, they split up when I was little. And my mom, I was asking
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everybody. I was so hungry. And of course my mom, I mean, we grew up with these types of beliefs. And
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so I'm hearing one thing. And then we had the books on the shelf that I grew up with. Those were pretty
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pivotal because they talked about Jesus. They were talking about these tough questions with a very
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open mind. And so, and then I remember asking pastors and other Christians. And I remember being
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told once that I was actually stumbling them in their faith. And it just kind of turned me off.
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Because of your questions. Oh no. Yeah. And it kind of turned me off a little bit. And so I started
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exploring elsewhere. And what ended up happening, it was a long thing that took a long time, but I
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ended up blending a lot of the new thought beliefs that I grew up with, with my Christianity, just not
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realizing that's what I did. And I thought it was new age, which would be appropriate perhaps to define
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at this point. Because new age is its own bucket. I would say that new age is more Hindu, Hinduism,
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Buddhism, Eastern mysticism. And then new thought is more Gnostic in origin. So you have these competing
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spiritualities that ultimately say, yeah, you are divine, but how they get there is different.
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And I had my friend, I have a friend, his name is Carl Teichrib, brilliant man. He helped me,
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he helped peer review a few of my chapters. And he put it this way. He said that the new age is really
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external, like tarot card, psychic readings, transcendental meditation, Reiki, reincarnation,
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karma, you know, star seeds, light work, you're taking all these things that you're outwardly doing
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something. He said that new thought is more internal in that regard. So, and I have a whole chapter about
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that. I go into more detail about the difference between new age and new thought and why new thought
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is in its own bucket. But I thought I was in the new age, but it was, it was really funny because
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when I did end up getting out of it, which was after I had my first child, and of all people,
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it was two Jehovah's Witnesses that challenged me and I'm researching them. And as I'm researching
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them, I'm realizing, oh, what I believe is wrong. Because if the Bible is true, then what they believe is
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wrong. But if the Bible is true, what I believe is wrong. So it was, it was kind of a rug that got
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pulled out from underneath me. But after I got out of it, I'm like, yeah, I'm an ex new ager. And
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people would come up and they'd ask, oh, sacred geometry. Is that, is that new age? I'm like,
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I didn't know math could be sacred. What's happening here? I didn't know that. Reiki, never even heard of
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it before. I had no idea yoga would have been considered new age. And I realized as time went on,
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maybe I was in something a little bit different, heard the word new thoughts, thought it was the
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same thing. And it wasn't. It turns out that new thought is made to look Christian. And that's
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really why I wrote about it, is that I think that there's, there's an infiltration, a hiddenness
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that it's been hiding behind the leg of new age. Yeah. Yeah.
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Okay. I want to dig into some of the details of your story because testimonies are some of my
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favorite interviews. Oh yeah, absolutely. And there are some of our most popular people just
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never tire of hearing people's testimonies. It's just rejuvenating and strengthening for my own faith
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and for other people to kind of hear similarities in other people's stories, I think is also really
00:18:44.260
helpful. You mentioned when you were 16 that you were in a really dark place that led you to the
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point, you know, you were at a party drinking, but it sounds like you were kind of ripe for a
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message of hope, which is what you heard that night. What got you there? Oh, that's so interesting
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you ask that. It was God's love. There was something about the forgiveness and love of God that I had
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never heard. I'd gone to church. I'd heard about Jesus. I'd heard all about the power. I've heard
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about the power that humanity can have, supposedly, but I'd never really heard it quite like that,
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where there's nothing you've done, nothing you've done that he will not forgive. And there was
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something in that moment when those words were said that I felt the Holy Spirit, like I'd never,
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I'd never felt that before. And I can think of it now. Even how I was sitting, I was holding a
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bottle of Strawberry Boone's wine, I mean, because I'm lame. And there's this warmth, like this feeling,
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I guess, but it was more of a feeling. It was just this completion. I believed. I believed.
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I believed what he said, and it changed my life. I'm like, this God, tell me more. And I did start
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going to church, and I did learn some things. It was just my insatiable hunger, I suppose, to want
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to know more. And then if I wasn't satisfied in it, I wanted to pick at every corner and dig through
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everything to figure out exactly how to understand hell or the problem of evil from every angle,
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because it helped me understand, maybe through my doubts. I didn't realize that at the time,
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I was kind of an apologist. I liked digging into that stuff.
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Yeah. And you said it was God's love. At that point, did you feel unloved? You said that your
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parents had split and you were in this dark spot. What was that dark spot? What was going on in your
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Well, I was, I can honestly say, I don't think I was a very good person. I was very, very insecure.
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I told a lot of lies. I told, you know, I mean, here I am this teenager that just, I don't
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know what I'm doing. I have no direction. And I ended up hurting somebody pretty badly.
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And I felt really bad about that. But it was more than just feeling bad. I was not a good
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person. I didn't love myself. I didn't like who I was. I didn't see anything good in the
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fact that I could give anything to this world. And I don't think that there was anything anybody
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could have said, any person that could have come in my life to say anything that I needed
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to hear other than the gospel. It was the gospel that really just brought me out of that place.
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But yeah, the suicidal thoughts like that, it was the darkest I've ever felt at all. And
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that's the thing is that when I woke up that next day, it was gone. Yeah, it was gone. Like
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I felt like this new person, brand new. And just, I remember thinking like, as I sat up,
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like whoever that person was last night is dead. Yeah. And it was just really interesting. I
00:21:59.400
experienced that. Yes. And what's interesting also about the feelings that you had before believing
00:22:05.000
in Christ was that that is the exact opposite message that the new age, especially, but I
00:22:11.000
suppose also the new thought tells people that you are inherently good and powerful, or at the very
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least, it sounds like new thought would say you have the potential to be powerful. If you aspire to
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this Christ consciousness, new age would say you've got this, like God is deep down inside. All you have
00:22:27.740
to do is find her, love yourself until you get to that point, then you'll be satisfied. But you felt the
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opposite of that. You had kind of grown up around some of those messages and you felt, no, I'm not
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good. I can't save myself. And so it actually, I'm a horrible person. Yeah. It makes me think that
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it's not just a wrong message when these new age messengers or self-love, self-help people tell
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everyone you're beautiful and perfect the way you are. That is actually an impediment to the gospel
00:22:56.860
because you needed to get to the place where you are like, I am not perfect. I am not a savior. I am not
00:23:03.240
God and I need help. And that is really what made you vulnerable in the best way to the message of
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Christ. It's funny you mentioned that too, because I have a whole chapter on the self-help movement
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and I quote your book in it because there's this, exactly, you have this idea that you have this
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inner divine spark and the only sin is your ignorance to it. It's like you're good. You are inherently
00:23:28.820
good. And you got this and you just have to see it within yourself. And that is so,
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it's a crutch. Yeah. It's the opposite. And then, and then you have a further problem there.
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And I say that this is like the problem with like the gospel of Oprah Winfrey, for example,
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is that if you don't think that you need salvation, if you don't think that you're a bad person
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or need a savior because you're the savior, that is a block to accepting, hearing, understanding the
00:24:01.680
gospel. And so it begins with that. Another lesson I'm hearing from your testimony is that you were
00:24:07.800
truly saved. You were justified at that point, but the sanctification process didn't look exactly like
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maybe the outside world would expect it to look or want it to look. You still believed some ideas of
00:24:24.160
the new age and new thought. And from the outside looking in, someone might believe that girl's not
00:24:30.980
a Christian. She doesn't have the right theology. It's just a reminder for us to be gracious and
00:24:36.500
patient with people who are new Christians. It might not mean that they're not really Christians.
00:24:41.020
They might be prodigal. They might be. And here's the thing. This is kind of my way of understanding
00:24:47.080
where somebody stands. How do you respond to truth? Because when I discovered it, I leaned into it.
00:24:54.100
I was like, oh, I'm sinning. This is repent. I need to repent. I need to fix this. Because once I
00:25:00.600
understood, and that's the thing is I was really hungry for it. But once I understood, I shifted.
00:25:06.620
Whereas other people, they justify it. They justify their sin. They want to stay in where they're at.
00:25:13.100
And there is no coming out of that in that regard. And so I think that that's one way to
00:25:18.180
kind of look at it. But I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah, like giving the grace and thinking that,
00:25:24.320
okay, that person might be going through something. But I think that's one reason I think I've become
00:25:29.060
very careful of kind of calling out somebody's salvation unless it's very obvious.
00:25:33.400
Yeah. But I think that there's a difference with how they accept truth being told. And I think that
00:25:41.060
there's ways to kind of be mindful of maybe how we're speaking. But I think that that really has
00:25:46.800
been a weird litmus test for me. Like, how are you going to take this? Because here's objectively what
00:25:55.200
And you just don't like that. Okay. All right. That's where we stand. Okay.
00:25:58.800
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a little bit tough. And I don't know if I'm willing to make this like a
00:26:03.100
hard and fast rule that if you're a new Christian, you shouldn't have like a social media platform
00:26:07.580
about theology. I don't want to say that for sure, because I don't know if that's always the case. But
00:26:12.020
I do think it's tougher. Like, I'm glad that I didn't have a microphone when I was first,
00:26:17.800
you know, learning because you're just, I mean, we're always going to be wrong about certain things
00:26:23.240
until, you know, we reach glory and then we'll understand fully. But I don't know. It's a very
00:26:30.060
difficult time after you become a Christian to then start preaching online.
00:26:36.060
Yeah. It's scriptural. I find that there's wisdom when you wait. There's wisdom in waiting in that
00:26:43.200
regard. And for obvious reasons, obvious reasons. And I think that I look back now and I wonder, man,
00:26:50.540
if I had a platform and I was saying that stuff, I'd have to not just backpedal, but I would have
00:26:55.120
hurt other people's theology. I would have harmed their walk. And there's no way 10 years, that point
00:27:01.260
and then 10 years later, my theology is definitely stronger. But I think there's responsibility that
00:27:07.160
goes with that for sure. Yeah, I agree with you.
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gifts. Go to rangeleather.com slash Allie. Okay, let's get into the core of your book. What is the
00:28:30.420
movement that people have never heard of but they need to know about? Might not have. New thought.
00:28:34.940
Yes. Okay, let's flesh that out even more. The differences between new thought and new age. You
00:28:41.400
give three big differences between these two things. Can you talk about that? You might have
00:28:47.080
to refresh me if I gave three. Yes. New thought claims to be Christian. New age is more associated
00:28:52.140
with numerology, astrology, etc. New age might be more pantheistic in their worldview. Yes. Yeah. So
00:28:58.560
new thought would say that they are more panentheistic, which I just think is a fancy way
00:29:05.520
of cheating because, I mean, you have theism and pantheism and there's probably a seminary
00:29:10.880
professor that's much smarter than me that could hash that out a little bit more. But they would say
00:29:15.760
that God is in everything, not that everything is God. And how I understand that they would hash that
00:29:23.660
out is kind of how I explained before, that if God is in everything, we're all one. And it builds on
00:29:31.580
this belief called non-duality, which is the opposite of what scripture teaches, that we're
00:29:35.860
separate from God. This is really important, actually, because the Christian worldview says that
00:29:41.240
God is not us. He is holy. He is separate from us. He is Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac,
00:29:49.480
and Jacob. He is not a human being and he is separate from us. We need to be made right with
00:29:56.300
him. That's where Jesus comes in. Non-duality, panentheism says, no, we're already all one with
00:30:04.220
God. We are not separate from him. And your sin is your ignorance to that. And when you realize that
00:30:13.240
you are one with God, that's really when the spiritual awakening can happen. And it's really
00:30:19.920
interesting because you can talk with people that have had maybe what they would consider a
00:30:25.900
spiritual awakening and they see the world in this non-dual sense. And what I've noticed is that
00:30:33.260
it's almost like they have to shut off their mind a little bit. And this is one of the issues I had with
00:30:37.840
New Thought is that it kind of, the first name for New Thought was mind sciences. And I thought it was
00:30:45.360
just a way more intelligent version of Christianity, just smarter, more open-minded. But the irony is,
00:30:51.180
is that it really does teach you to kind of shut off your critical thinking. Critical thinking is
00:30:55.600
negative thinking. So you kind of dance between these names and all, but really what that, what it
00:31:01.380
does is that it, it makes it so that your, whatever happens to you, whatever is brought into your
00:31:08.440
world, whatever you're thinking about, you're in essence creating whatever you feel about something
00:31:13.600
you are bringing into your reality. So, but yeah, I think that, um, you named a few things that would
00:31:19.340
put those two things in their own little buckets, but New Thought and New Age, they are not the same
00:31:24.200
thing. And I think that's, that's really, uh, one of the things that I think people kind of struggle
00:31:30.780
with is defining that. But I, uh, yeah. Which one do you think has seeped more pervasively into
00:31:39.120
the modern church? Which New Thought teaching? New Thought or New Age? I would say New Age, I would say
00:31:46.380
that is more obvious. If you have a church like Bethel, for example, they are very open saying,
00:31:51.780
oh, look, look at that, those tarot cards. Maybe there's some truth here in astrology or numerology
00:31:57.120
or whatever. There's been a Bethel pastor specifically to say that? Oh, Physics of Heaven
00:32:02.820
is actually one of their most damning books that they've written. Have you read that book? Is that
00:32:05.880
by Bill Johnson? It's by, uh, oh, who's it by? Two women. Um, okay. Yeah. I mean, it's endorsed by
00:32:11.880
Chris Vallotton and Bill Johnson, but their names are escaping me. I haven't actually thought of it for a
00:32:16.500
while. They took the book off the shelf though. Yeah. Oh, really? Okay. They took the book off the
00:32:20.720
shelf, but Physics of Heaven was very disturbing because you see, I saw it and I'm like, wow,
00:32:29.740
this is a lot of what I used to believe. You know, you have quantum mysticism and metaphysics
00:32:34.740
and all these things that they're trying to- Ellen Davis and Judy Franklin. Very good. And I don't know
00:32:38.460
anything about them or if the book mentions tarot cards, but I know it does. I've read about the book
00:32:44.800
and I know it does mention a lot of like almost paranormal superstitious things that are not
00:32:50.620
founded in scripture. Yes. And that is kind of this idea of correspondence that what is happening
00:32:55.880
in heaven corresponds with something here and we can make manifest- Yes. Kind of- Yeah. All those
00:33:03.860
things. The kingdom of heaven different than how Jesus, you know, tells us to advance the kingdom here
00:33:09.700
on earth as it is in heaven. It's much more, I don't know. It sounds a lot more like witchcraft to
00:33:14.680
me. Yeah. It's, it's, it can get very witchcrafty and that's the idea is they look at that and they
00:33:19.100
think, hmm, we can redeem that. There's power there. New thought I think is a little bit more,
00:33:24.640
I mean, they would probably be, I use them as an example because they're probably the ones that
00:33:28.380
would be more open to rolling out the red carpet to pretty much any weird thing because they don't want
00:33:33.580
to miss out on a blessing from God or a power from God or something like that. New thought I would
00:33:38.820
think is more hidden in that regard. So, I mean, we're talking affirmations, manifestation,
00:33:46.060
visualization, health and wealth prosperity teachings. I even have a whole chapter on the
00:33:51.920
very questionable roots of the seeker friendly model with Robert Shuler, who was a new thought
00:33:59.120
pastor who mentored many pastors that are still around today. I mean, we have, you know, these,
00:34:04.560
these issues with this movement, Norman Vincent Peale, he's a new thought pastor.
00:34:09.440
And the power of positive thinking. And we, we have these things where what makes new thought
00:34:14.980
very difficult is that you can say, okay, I need to think positive about myself. And then somebody
00:34:21.480
might think, oh, well, that's new thought. Well, hold on. We need to kind of hash that out a little
00:34:26.860
bit. What do you mean by that? Yeah. What do you mean by being positive to yourself or loving yourself?
00:34:31.560
What does that mean? And so is there some sort of innate power with your thinking? If you're
00:34:38.020
thinking positive, are you thinking that there's a frequency or vibration that goes with that, that
00:34:42.440
somehow is creating the world around you? And so I think that that's kind of where we can see that
00:34:51.060
in the church. But I have a whole chapter, for example, on like the word of faith movement,
00:34:54.260
where when I got out of these teachings, I just got done doing law of attraction, speaking things
00:35:02.500
into existence, co-creating with God. And then I see it in the church. And at first I was confused
00:35:07.840
because I didn't know, I didn't know what the word of faith movement was. I didn't know what
00:35:11.560
prosperity gospel was. And I experienced it first and then I saw it and took me years to kind of put
00:35:18.100
those two things together. The question is not if new thought teachings are in the word of faith
00:35:24.180
movement. They are. Yeah. And tell me what the word of faith movement is. The word of faith movement
00:35:29.500
is, it's a name that they gave themselves. Think of, it's synonymous with the prosperity gospel.
00:35:34.440
It's the idea that God always wills you to be healthy and wealthy and you can speak and create
00:35:44.020
as God created as well. This is very simplistic way to describe it, but some teachers that are very
00:35:50.460
prominent in the word of faith movement, Kenneth Hagen, he's, he's the father of the word of faith
00:35:54.200
movement. Uh, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, uh, you have Creflo Dollar. I could go on and on. Uh,
00:36:01.380
these Joel Osteen, you have Joyce Meyer. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot, all of them are teaching the same
00:36:09.960
philosophy, theological philosophy. Uh, I would say the Kenneth Copeland is probably the most outspoken,
00:36:16.600
but Joel Osteen is probably the most new thought word of faith pastor that I could, that I could
00:36:21.680
name. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, new thought reverends ministers look at him and think, wow, he's teaching
00:36:29.140
a new thought message. Yeah. Good for him. He weighs a Bible around. We don't like that, but
00:36:32.680
yeah. Yeah. They kind of seem like that. Well, he uses, it seems like Bible verses to
00:36:37.100
bolster his, you know, self-help speech, basically the points that he's making about self-empowerment.
00:36:45.200
Yeah. The I am affirmations. Yeah. It's just, they have no answer for what's going on with the
00:36:50.900
Christians in Syria right now. Yeah. Or what's going on in the Christians, you know, in different
00:36:57.020
parts of Africa that are beheaded for their faith. Exactly. And the ironic thing is that
00:37:02.660
a lot of, uh, prosperity preaching is actually imported into places like Africa. Yes. Unfortunately,
00:37:10.860
because some of these people have, you know, worldwide ministries that's funded by billions of
00:37:17.760
dollars and we're going to these poor countries and preaching this heretical message, which not
00:37:24.080
only cannot save their soul, but will not save their body. So they're left with feeling when they're
00:37:30.340
still, you know, getting persecuted by the radical Islamist, there's, they're left feeling that it's
00:37:36.580
their fault, that they didn't declare it enough, that they didn't have enough faith. Yeah. That that's
00:37:41.700
why they're not rich. That's not why they're not saved when really they're supposed to be serving
00:37:47.460
the Jesus who says in this world, you will have trouble and all who desire to live a godly life
00:37:52.560
in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Um, and so there's such a danger to this. There's such a
00:37:58.120
danger to this message. It's not just, oh yeah, we kind of disagree. No, this is anti-gospel and
00:38:03.360
an impediment to saving faith. Yes. And then they take the critical thinking I was saying before,
00:38:09.780
you can't do that. You can't think critically because, oh, that's Satan, right? Like that's
00:38:14.320
Satan trying to bring doubts into my mind. And so you end up not thinking critically about the
00:38:19.960
teacher or what you're being taught, even though you're commanded to. And so, yeah, it creates this
00:38:24.720
whole mess. It's, it's very messy, but you know, if I were to describe word of faith, I would say
00:38:32.340
it's a soup of Pentecostalism, the faith cure movement of the 1800s and new thought. And so there's
00:38:39.760
faith cure movement of the 1800s. Can you flesh that out? I wish I could actually. I mean,
00:38:43.860
the faith cure movement was, um, I actually just did an interview with Rob Bowman about it,
00:38:48.580
about the whole word of faith movement. And he would probably know a lot more about this,
00:38:53.120
but the word, the faith cure movement was what EW Kenyon adopted and got into, which is that God
00:39:00.540
always wills you to heal, always wants you to be healed through faith. Physically on this side of
00:39:05.580
heaven. Yes. And so a lot of those teachings that you see transported over into the word of faith
00:39:10.380
movement come from the faith cure movement. And so, uh, I think, I think one faith cure teaching is
00:39:16.540
that Jesus had to go to hell. I believe that's one of them that he had to go to hell and, uh, you
00:39:22.480
know, preach the gospel, uh, that he, he, there's like a teaching. I know that, excuse me, like Joyce
00:39:28.740
Meyer, a few other people teach these, these teachings. He had to go to hell for three days, uh,
00:39:33.640
certain aspects of that movement have been introduced into the word of faith movement.
00:39:39.200
And what I attempt to do is like, okay, well, what's new thought? Yeah. What, what are those
00:39:43.060
lines that I can draw? Yeah. Um, okay. Tell me a little bit more about how these things manifest
00:39:51.560
themselves, not just in the like big Joel Osteen churches, but kind of in all seeker sensitive
00:39:57.760
churches and preaching, there's a part of this. And I kind of understand this temptation
00:40:04.740
to tell someone who you want to be a Christian or who was in a really low place. Like you
00:40:10.480
were to be like, Oh no, you're good. You're not a bad person. You're actually a good person
00:40:15.700
and it's okay. Like you're going to be fine. God's going to help you. Like I see the temptation
00:40:22.360
behind that. I see that like, even as a parent to my children, like that's the, that's what
00:40:28.480
we want to tell them. So tell us how this shows up in different kinds of evangelical churches.
00:40:34.200
Sure. Yeah. And it's not just seeker sensitive. I think that there's many seeker churches that
00:40:38.080
are biblical, but I think that there's dangers of course, um, when it comes to these kinds
00:40:43.120
of teachings, the positive minded teachings, the teachings that make you want to be attractive
00:40:51.300
to the believer or to the unbeliever. Um, I mean, and unoffensive, unoffensive. Yeah.
00:40:58.540
And I think that there's a danger there, of course, because the first thing you want to
00:41:03.360
mess with is offending people. You always want to mess with the message of the cross. And
00:41:07.660
I'm like, don't do that. You're taking away the stumbling block, the very thing that's supposed
00:41:13.040
to offend somebody. You're taking it away. And so you get a lot of false converts who feel
00:41:18.200
really good every Sunday. They, they, they hear about how to manage their stress and they hear
00:41:22.960
about how to maybe handle their marriage. Yeah. But whatever you win people with, you win them too.
00:41:29.160
Exactly. Exactly. And so the most nuanced chapter, the hardest chapter to write was the chapter on the
00:41:38.300
seeker model because of this nuance, because it's, it's a, it's a cheap shot. You can't just cheap
00:41:44.220
shot one way and say, Oh, all secret churches are bad. And then you can't cheap shot the other way
00:41:48.580
and say that there's nothing wrong. You have to have this conversation. And so I start with Shuler,
00:41:53.820
the, one of the creators or the creator, the, the main face of the seeker model. Why was it created?
00:42:00.720
What were the intentions there and what new thought beliefs from Shuler informed that model?
00:42:07.280
And I just, I can't unsee it. You know, once I see it, it's just, okay, well you're creating a space for
00:42:14.320
the non-believer. And then you have this possibility thinking that he, that he taught the, the, this
00:42:21.260
positive thinking kind of aspect, which some of them do, but really what it, what it caters to
00:42:27.080
can be an in-house conversation that we need to have, you know? And so, but yeah, that now you asked
00:42:34.660
how like other dangers though, can get into these churches. And one of the problems I'm seeing is
00:42:39.520
that there is a lack of being able to understand bad theology. There's a lack of discernments in the
00:42:52.160
church. And one of the questions that I asked is, okay, how does that get there? But also I see a
00:42:57.000
shift where people are, we're fed up. We're fed up. We're like, okay, can we start thinking critically
00:43:02.820
about our faith? And one of the problems that I see, okay, personally with specifically new thought
00:43:09.280
teachings, let's take affirmations. Affirmations, a lot of people are going to hear that right now
00:43:14.200
and think, oh, okay, yeah, I do affirmations. What a lot of people don't realize is what affirmations
00:43:19.120
are is new thought prayers. They were created by the new thought movements to speak affirmative prayer
00:43:26.880
in the now in order for you to basically manifest what it is. You don't ask. In other words, you,
00:43:32.940
you, you, you say it as if you had it. And then your feelings are very, very important.
00:43:38.960
Feelings are everything. Um, in new thought it's, that's where your power is. If you feel like you have
00:43:45.580
a relationship, if you feel like you're rich, if you feel that you can have that job, according to
00:43:53.700
these laws of the universe, you must get it. And so I'll be having conversations with, with Christians
00:43:59.880
about these beliefs and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, I believe that. And so I, I have to pull out
00:44:07.140
of them a little bit more, you know, like, where did you get that from? Who have you read? You know,
00:44:11.640
because if you're reading the Bible, it's, you don't just get that black and white message. You don't
00:44:16.560
get this message of, oh, if you speak it, believe it. If you, you have these kinds of, you know,
00:44:22.440
that faith is a power or that, that you can speak affirmative prayer instead of asking and,
00:44:30.240
and trusting, like there's no model there. And so I'm just wondering where does that come from?
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How does this influence progressive theology? How do we see this? And I mean, it's a paradoxical
00:46:12.180
term, but the progressive church. Yes. Yeah. That's another chapter. That's chapter eight in
00:46:18.060
the book because Elisa Childers, a mutual friend of ours, me and her have a joke that a progressive
00:46:26.360
Christian and a new ager, really a new thoughter would go into a coffee shop and realize that
00:46:31.080
they're best friends because they basically believe the same thing. And I would joke with
00:46:34.660
her. I'm like, but why? Where does that come from? Why is there, you have universal Christ,
00:46:39.760
Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr is a hodgepodge, but he talks, he says very new thought things sometimes
00:46:45.900
and other times he doesn't. And then you have other progressives talking about the Christ
00:46:51.100
consciousness, the divine mind, these really new thought words. And so I attempt to explain
00:46:59.140
that parallel, how that happens, why does that happen? And again, a lot of it does have to do
00:47:07.240
with the overall fact that new thought as a movement is interwoven throughout America,
00:47:12.680
but it's also something that is adopted within many churches by many Christians. And it gives
00:47:18.720
you this alternative Jesus. It gives you this alternative gospel that sounds a lot like the
00:47:24.060
progressive gospel. These are two different movements to be sure. But the fact that I can
00:47:29.660
find so many new thought beliefs among progressives is very interesting to me. Let me give you one of
00:47:36.960
your true authentic self. That's a huge progressive word right now. That's a very big new thought word
00:47:44.620
too. Your true authentic self, your true self is your divine self within. And you have two parts of
00:47:50.220
yourself, your false self and your true self. Your false self, and this would be a new thought idea as
00:47:55.800
well, also progressive, is built, is what society tells you what it is, right? And so your false self
00:48:01.920
is something that needs to be deconstructed so you could uncover your true self. This is why
00:48:08.740
there's this constant drone of uncertainty. And well, at least I believe that's why. I think that
00:48:15.560
that's one reason why is that you can never be absolutely sure of what you believe because then
00:48:21.520
you're rebuilding your false self. Is that from society or is that from my true self? And so I don't
00:48:26.480
know. I'm just going to... Yeah. And then truth. Truth is redefined completely. I have a whole chapter
00:48:31.640
on that. That's really interesting too because I did a lot of interviews for this book. A lot of
00:48:37.140
them made it into the book. Face to face, boots on the ground, made calls, interviews. And I always
00:48:42.940
wanted to start with truth questions. And there was this one reverend, and it's in the progressive
00:48:48.980
chapter. And my friend Greg Kokel, he and Frank Turk, both of them, if you're asking a truth
00:48:55.940
question, push it as far as you can. See what you can get away with just to see where they're at.
00:49:00.860
How far will they move the goalposts? And this one reverend, I was asking him, well, okay, I believe
00:49:07.060
my true self says that tobacco is a vegetable. And he's like, that's dumb, right? Like, that's just,
00:49:13.340
why would you believe that? I'm like, okay, well, I believe that though. That's my truth.
00:49:17.080
And through a series of questions, by the end of the conversation, he was believing, yeah,
00:49:21.600
okay, it's your truth. Tobacco can be a vegetable. I'm like, how far are you going to move these
00:49:26.220
goalposts? And so yeah, these little dances with all these things, with progressive Christianity
00:49:30.840
and new thought, I say that has way more in common with new thought than new age,
00:49:38.720
progressive Christianity does. I'm not saying that there's none, but I think as far as that belief
00:49:43.960
goes, as far as those, the actual ins and outs is more new thought.
00:49:48.060
And so much of what you said, we can see manifested specifically in a variety of ways in progressivism,
00:49:54.780
but gender is the first one that comes to mind. And it's this kind of, you know, Nancy Piercy
00:49:59.300
writes about this so beautifully and love thy body. And I talk about it some, and you're not enough
00:50:05.300
when you serve the God of self, or I called it the like cult of self affirmation, where you're serving
00:50:10.560
the God of self, the two highest values are autonomy and authenticity, which can both be good things
00:50:16.580
when they are in submission to Christ. But when they're not, when they are your highest values,
00:50:22.820
then autonomy justifies doing whatever you want in the name of controlling yourself. So abortion would
00:50:28.640
be one example. Authenticity justifies doing whatever you want in the name of being yourself.
00:50:35.380
So if your true self, as you said, and your true inner self is who you really are and informs
00:50:41.360
physical reality rather than the other way around, then of course you can declare that you are a girl,
00:50:47.440
even if you were born male, because you have that power. And it's also connected because you have the
00:50:54.700
power of speech to declare a new reality that everyone else must then submit to. And I'm so curious
00:51:02.320
about this part of your story. I haven't heard you share about it before, but you also had some gender
00:51:07.900
confusion, gender deception when you were growing up. Can you talk about that?
00:51:12.140
Yeah, that was very difficult to write that chapter because it's very vulnerable. And to be honest,
00:51:20.520
I'm still working that out myself on many levels, but the spiritual beliefs that I grew up with,
00:51:29.820
what I believed about my inner self really fed into that. This is really who I am.
00:51:37.560
And I'm a nineties kid. You know what I mean? Like there was no social media. There was nobody
00:51:41.580
feeding me this. There was nothing happening. It was just, I had a very strong dislike for being a
00:51:49.480
girl. I didn't like, I thought boys were smarter. They were funnier. They, everybody listened when
00:51:54.860
they spoke. Uh, they had better positions, uh, better. They were leaders. They were powerful,
00:52:02.380
you know, all these things. More athletic. Yeah. Yeah. And it was actually Abigail Schreier's book.
00:52:06.840
I cried. I cried when I read that book at the end because of her first book. Yeah. Her first book,
00:52:11.620
reversible damage. I quote her in that book. I actually, at the end of the chapter, because
00:52:15.460
it made me cry. It's like, you're not a deformed version of a male, you know? Yeah. And I,
00:52:21.100
I loved that. Not that she said that, but it was the, I wrote it in the book and I quoted her on that,
00:52:26.180
but in a certain aspect or a certain section of her book. But yeah, the, the, the worry there,
00:52:32.840
the concern that I had though, is that I grew out of it, but I still struggled a little bit with
00:52:39.380
seeing men equal to me. Okay. Cause a new thought and new age, men are not equal. You as a female are
00:52:49.820
superior to them. And that was very attractive. Yeah. Because then it's like, Oh, I'm better than
00:52:57.440
you. There's no equality here. I'm, I'm a female and I have all these qualities that you don't. And
00:53:03.600
so it came into this competition, but when it comes to the, the element of the spirituality that
00:53:11.740
I had to deal with that, especially as a young kid, I'm, I'm this tweenager teenager kind of
00:53:16.860
dealing with who am I and what am I? Why does my body and why does my heart say two different things?
00:53:22.960
I had no context for, however, what I did have context for were like, I had a lot of Ralph Waldo
00:53:29.160
Emerson. He's one of the fathers of new thought and your true authentic self. He had this.
00:53:34.980
I did not know that. Yes. And we read a lot of him in high school. I mean, obviously he's a,
00:53:39.780
I didn't know either. An amazing writer. He's an incredible writer.
00:53:42.540
But I didn't know that he had any association with new thought. Interesting.
00:53:47.140
He, um, he is one of the fathers of new thought and he wrote a very famous essay called self-reliance.
00:53:54.260
Hmm. And in that essay, it's basically everything we're talking about who you are on the inside.
00:54:00.240
You do you boo. Like it's you, that's who you are. And he's also a transcendentalist, right? So he's
00:54:05.340
one of the main figures in the transcendental movement. I was reading Carl Truman's book and
00:54:10.340
in reading his book, I'm like, man, this sounds a lot like what I grew up with. Why does this sound
00:54:14.340
like new thought? What is going on here? He's talking about romanticism and the origins of the
00:54:19.260
sexual revolution. Yeah. Rise and fall of the modern self. Yes. Is that what it's called? That's
00:54:24.000
the thicker version. I read the lay person version, which is a strange new world. Okay. Carl Truman.
00:54:29.600
Carl Truman. This is recent, by the way, you're not talking about while you were a teenager.
00:54:32.920
You're talking about in the last few years as you've, as you've learned. Yeah. Yes. And I'm reading
00:54:37.200
his book and I was struggling because I'm like, why does this sound like new thought? Expressive
00:54:43.260
individualism, all these things. And it was in doing the research on Emerson that I realized you
00:54:49.840
have these corresponding movements of romanticism and transcendentalism, where if I could describe
00:54:56.280
romanticism in a word, it would be emotions. If I were to describe transcendentalism in a word,
00:55:00.880
it would be self. And both are authoritative in who you are. And I think I understood at that point,
00:55:07.960
I'm like, oh, okay. I kind of see where this kind of comes from. And I actually did a little bit more
00:55:12.700
of a deep dive podcast on the transcendental gender stuff and the connection there with
00:55:19.400
cultish on a podcast with them. Because you're right. It's not a topic that I've talked about very
00:55:24.180
much, but I'm very fascinated with this whole, it's not just gender. This is the other thing.
00:55:30.220
It's not just gender. In new thought spaces or these spaces where you have this freedom of identity
00:55:37.740
and that whoever you are on the inside is not just, oh, I feel this way. Whoever you are on the inside
00:55:44.300
is divine. So it makes talking to them a very different experience. You're not just talking to
00:55:50.820
a person who might be gender confused, which there are those. To this person, they think that whatever
00:55:56.900
is telling them and forming them of their identity is God. So you're going against God. If I'm going
00:56:03.440
against them, I'm going against God. And so I've had to kind of take a position where I have to
00:56:09.560
understand that I'm talking to somebody that actually believes that this is a divine thing
00:56:15.080
that's happening within them. Can I ask something? It's going to be controversial. And I don't know if
00:56:19.460
you've talked about this because a lot of the theology, obviously we see it in all different kinds
00:56:24.240
of churches, all different kinds of places. This seems to be especially prevalent in majority black
00:56:30.000
churches. There's a lot of prosperity preaching, but a lot of, as you're talking, I'm like, I've heard
00:56:35.580
that a lot. You are divine. You are a queen. You are, you know, some goddess, something special. And
00:56:42.360
I don't know. I don't know if you've ever talked about the roots of that or why that is.
00:56:46.740
It's interesting you bring that up. That is a controversial question, especially today's
00:56:50.680
political climate. But I guarantee there's a lot of people watching that are like, Ali's not wrong.
00:56:55.620
You know, there's something there. And I was reading Kate Bowler's book. Do you know who that
00:57:00.180
is? Yeah. And there's a whole section on this that she talks about with the black church and the
00:57:07.300
prosperity gospel and all these other theologies that kind of entered into the black church. I mean,
00:57:14.380
Carlton Pearson is one of them. Carlton Pearson was a Pentecostal Word of Faith preacher, Reverend Ike.
00:57:21.020
And both of them were very off when it came to a lot of their their teachings. That's like an origin
00:57:27.140
there in that regard. I haven't looked too much into it, but you're not wrong. Yeah, I have friends.
00:57:33.760
I have a friend. In fact, we've talked many times. She's black and she talks about this a lot on her.
00:57:40.440
She's in ministry as well on her channel. And that's one thing I asked her. I was like, so
00:57:46.100
what's up with this? You know, like how does this, how do you, how do they square this circle? How do
00:57:52.280
they make it so that, you know, maybe in some of their churches that aren't black have a different
00:57:57.340
view on these things, but for the black church is very different. Tell me about that. Yeah. You know,
00:58:02.820
so I wouldn't say that you're wrong in that. A lot of the prosperity preachers that I see,
00:58:08.260
like we played a clip the other day and it was like kind of a funny clip, but it was this older,
00:58:12.540
she was this older white lady. I had never heard of her or seen her before, but she was
00:58:17.440
her, she's using a food analogy. She was like, when you need oil in order to fry all of these
00:58:24.460
things, but when you, yeah. Okay. If what oil do you use to fry bacon? Yeah. You don't need it.
00:58:31.380
And it was like, you are your own anointing oil to give yourself power. So it was this older white
00:58:37.180
lady, but almost the entire congregation was black. I don't know if people know who like real talk
00:58:42.260
Kim is. She's got like over a million Instagram followers. She talks like that very prosperity
00:58:47.940
preacher, same thing. And she's just this like, you know, 47 white lady, almost her entire
00:58:55.080
congregation. It seems like it's black. And so I don't know. I just think that that is
00:58:59.160
interesting. And I wonder what's the correlation there. Yes. I wonder why specifically in majority
00:59:05.680
black churches that seems to be very prevalent. I don't know. I don't know either. That'd be an
00:59:09.820
interesting thing to look into though. Yes. Next video for you. Okay. Tell us anything else you want
00:59:15.480
to say about this book? What do you hope people walk away with? What's the main thing you hope
00:59:20.320
people learn? Well, first of all, I never wanted to write a book. Oh yeah? No. You have so much
00:59:31.460
material though to work with for a book. I'm so glad you did. I, um, put everything I had in this
00:59:38.160
book. I, you put your life on hold for so long and it's, this is the biggest project I've ever
00:59:46.420
worked on. So it's just a little bit about, you know, it's like having a child. It feels like you
00:59:51.060
give birth. It is. It's like you give, you give birth on paper and especially it depends on what
00:59:56.360
you're writing about, but this was not an easy book to write. Yeah. It's a lot of research.
01:00:01.040
It was. And with all that, that to be said, the reason I say that is because I didn't do it for
01:00:09.200
myself. I want people to read this and know that what it is, what is this? Why has nobody talked about
01:00:16.400
this? What's the history of this? Where is it? What are some conversations that we need to have?
01:00:21.820
And then I kind of leave a call to action at the end. Um, an example, a real conversation I had with
01:00:29.080
a woman who was reading Emmett Fox, who's a very well-known new thought author. And she's like,
01:00:33.640
oh, I'm loving this. This is great. I've never heard scripture like this before. And I'm like,
01:00:37.000
oh honey, we need to talk, you know? And her response was, oh, tell me more. Like she leaned into it.
01:00:44.400
And that's kind of what I want to leave people with is that if you're, if you're reading this,
01:00:49.460
I was very careful in, in making it so that it was conversational and informative, but I'm hoping
01:00:56.180
that it leaves people with a sense of, okay, I know what this is. I know how to deal with it.
01:01:01.620
And now I need to maybe make shifts in my own theology. And so I hope they lean into it.
01:01:07.260
Yeah. Awesome. Happy Lies, how a movement you probably never heard of shaped our self-obsessed
01:01:12.700
world. So good. So much information in here. You can get it on Amazon or anywhere books are sold,
01:01:19.040
right? And everyone needs to subscribe to Melissa's channel. It's not only informative,
01:01:24.140
makes you think, but it's also very entertaining because these are serious topics, big topics,
01:01:29.360
and you could be like, you know, very serious and grave the entire time, but you do it in a way
01:01:35.460
that is very watchable, very enjoyable. Thank you.
01:01:37.720
So your channel is just Melissa Doherty, right?
01:01:40.740
Okay. So everyone go find her. If you don't subscribe, a lot of you probably already do
01:01:45.120
go ahead and do that. Melissa, thank you so much for taking the time to come on.
01:01:54.180
Before we head out today, I just want to remind you, if you have not gotten your tickets for
01:01:59.340
Share the Arrows 2025, now is the time to do it. We are continuing to sell,
01:02:05.080
even though all of those early bird tickets and the early bird discount are over that ended after
01:02:11.880
about 24 hours, even less than that. We are still selling these tickets like hotcakes. And I'm just so
01:02:18.420
thankful to the Lord for allowing me to be connected to such an engaged audience that wants to come
01:02:25.920
together with like-minded women to worship together, to hear clear teaching together, to be edified and to
01:02:32.920
be challenged. So I want you to go ahead and make your plans right now, because once it's sold out,
01:02:39.360
it's sold out. You want to get a good hotel room. You want to make sure that you could get good flights,
01:02:45.020
nail down the logistics so you don't have to worry about it and you can get the best prices on all of
01:02:50.340
those things. Go to sharethearrows.com. When you do, you'll see where to get your tickets. Bring your
01:02:56.620
small group, bring everyone that you possibly can. If you want an opportunity to meet me,
01:03:01.180
to meet the other speakers, there are VIP options that you can purchase too. We've got a lot of fun
01:03:06.660
in store for our VIPs the night before the event. Go to sharethearrows.com.