The WOFOYO Podcast
The WOFOYO Podcast
Outside the Camp Part 1
We explore the biblical and personal stories of experiencing God's power outside traditional religious structures, challenging sectarianism and encouraging direct relationship with God.
• Moses embracing Eldad and Medad prophesying outside the camp (Numbers 11:24-30)
• Jesus rebuking his disciples for trying to stop someone casting out demons (Mark 9:38-42)
• Personal testimonies of salvation and baptism in the Holy Spirit occurring outside church settings
• The difference between head knowledge and heart transformation in spiritual growth
• Embracing spiritual gifts despite denominational controversies
• The importance of being led by the Holy Spirit rather than religious formulas
• Recognizing that God works both within and beyond established religious frameworks
Part 1 of 2.
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Join us next episode as we continue discussing how we see this phenomenon happening more and more in today's spiritual landscape.
Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of the Wofo Yo podcast. We're going to read a couple stories here and let's start off with Numbers 11. 1124. Basically, people have been murmuring and complaining. I know that's hard to believe. In the book of Exodus or Numbers or any of the Old Testament involving Moses, people are always murmuring and complaining. So they've been complaining about hey, you're doing all this stuff, you're just taking too much upon you and all that. So we'll start this at verse 24.
Speaker 1:Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord and he gathered 70 men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tabernacle. And the Lord came down in a cloud and spoke to him and took the spirit that was on him and placed the same upon the 70 elders Verse 26. And the name of the other, medad Yo dad, was not involved and the spirit rested upon them. Now they were among those listed but who had not gone out to the tabernacle yet. They prophesied in the camp and a young man ran and told Moses and said El dad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. So Joshua, son of Nun, moses' assistant, one of his choice men, answers him Moses, my lord, forbid them. Then Moses said to him are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them. And Moses returned to the camp, he and the elders of Israel.
Speaker 1:So you see these outliers and this really, with the issue of the 70 elders that's where you get the Sanhedrin and you also see Jesus sending out 70, later on going from 12 to 70. You see that number pattern repeated and the Spirit of the Lord rests upon the elders and they prophesy. But you have two guys and they don't go up but nevertheless they're prophesying and everybody you know some people don't like that Most go. I think that's a good thing. I wish everybody prophesied wouldn't need me for as much. If everybody prophesied, you wouldn't, you wouldn't be challenging what I'm doing because you would know it was from the Lord. If you all could prophesy Right.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, if you would hear God's voice yourself, then you wouldn't have to believe or trust the fact that I'm hearing from God as well. So, yeah, there's a lot of truth in that.
Speaker 1:Matter of fact, when we came up over 20 years ago, when we came up with the name for Wofo Yo, it was a joke. I said, hey, you know, everybody has all these. It was at work. And I said, everybody has all these ministry names, this and Total House of Purity and Deliverance, and all this. And usually it was the opposite of whatever the name was, because if it was a Liberty Church they was in bondage, and if it was a holiness church, you know, send a bunch of jokers up in there. You know, freedom Chapel, all in bondage, pick your chains up at the door. Spirit and control, yeah. And so the joke was this. I said, hey, man, everybody's got a, everybody got a ministry. We ought to start as one called Wofo Yo, and I'm just talking smack is what I'm doing, and it was all midnight so it was all punchy anyway.
Speaker 1:Punch drunk from sleep deprivation, just lack of sleep. Oh yeah, and just coming out, hey man, so we can start us a thing called Wofo. Yo, I said, get in the word for yourself, and if everybody did it right, in two years they wouldn't need us no more. Yep, yep, sure enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, say something about us, because we've been doing this for five now. People still don't need us here really yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's continue and go into Mark 9. And they had just got through having the conversation about who's the greatest Jesus talking about. You know, who becomes like a little child. He said whoever receives one of these little children in my name receives me. Whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me. And we start this at verse 38. Now John answered him saying teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in your name and we, very nice, yeah, and he goes right into this about offenses too. Verse 42. Sleep with the fishes. Oh, luca Brasi man.
Speaker 1:So I love what the New King, which I just read out of you know some versions of the Bible, will have, like a summation of a group of verses and stuff. They'll break it down about what the main topic of the story is, and in the New King it says this Jesus forbids sectarianism. I love that. Yeah, you see a common theme here and I believe this is really pertinent in this day and age. I'm going to say this as somebody who y'all might've heard it when we did the audio book stuff back when my dad was sick and um bones. You and I are basically two of the guys prophesying without the camp. Yeah, in a matter, in a matter speaking, because I can trace it back when I, when I got born again, you know I loved the lord. I was raised catholic so like an altar call wasn't really a thing. A steady encouragement to follow christ was the thing. So here I was, somebody who loved the Lord, so I really didn't see the need to answer an altar call per se and I know some of y'all are, and that's what it's supposed to. It's supposed to stir up that religious spirit. But I saw an evangelistic crusade and they put some things different and so I prayed and the prayer to Lord I repent of my sins. Jesus, I ask you to come in my heart, live within me, maybe born again. And there was a change Right now. I didn't love the Lord anymore. I'm going to tell you the truth. I didn't still love the Lord. But it was the beginning of a different phase of the relationship. So fast forward. You know I did get baptized in church. That happened in my bedroom over in Villa Ridge, villa Ridge, illinois. You can get born again in Villa Ridge, illinois, in your bedroom and, lo and behold, went and still love the guy, still love people over there over at Carol Baptist Church went and got baptized. Because that's what you do. It's kind of like Cornelius, I had the experience Might as well get baptized and then fast forward probably about six years, yeah, about six years.
Speaker 1:Around 1996 I was at a meeting of christian businessmen and there was this guy who his brother was a friend of my dad and a friend, a friend of mine. We kind of lost contact over the years. This was the same guy who was friends with the dude who owned the property where Rick Joyner owned the final quest. Same guy that taught me about hey, you need to read this book, it's really good. And uh, anyway, up there and his brother gives an altar call Well, hey, had a Sunday morning service for these businessmen and women, and uh, he gets up there. So now, if you, uh, if you prayed, that next thing you need is a baptism in the Holy spirit. And he said best way to do it, just ask the Lord to baptize you in the Holy Spirit. He said if you want to say it, like me, you can say it. Pray the prayer, holy cow, the word opened up and I've mentioned this before.
Speaker 1:Shortly thereafter I end up getting deployed. So I'll say shortly after six months, seven months, maybe a little bit longer, but here I am. That word is starting to pop. It is like I heard Dr Jordan Peterson refer to the Bible as the world's first hyperlinked book. For me it was a little bit more old-fashioned than computer hyperlinks. With me it was like them red strings of yarn that you see in the conspiracy theory, like X-Files or something. This is connected to that and that's connected to that.
Speaker 1:But that's what the Holy Spirit was doing with me and was attending a church, great church, still my favorite church, and over there in Colorado we get sent over to Egypt. And so I read this little thing. We were out in the middle of nowhere but the chaplain had a tent and in that tent there was Kenneth Hagagan, white tongues little brochure, and the church I was going to had a lot of people speaking in tongues. The Baptist church I went to spoken against and I'm like man, I know there's good, sincere believers on both sides and I wasn't convinced yet. But I read this, I go. You know what, lord, when I prayed for the baptism of the Holy Spirit that happened.
Speaker 1:I could tell there was a difference. And you know, I know I'm messing with Pentecostal doctrine, all now because I didn't speak in tongues when I got baptized in the Holy Spirit. However, I go tell you what, lord, I know there's good people that speak for speak, you know, in practices. I know there's good people that are against it. I said, tell you what, if this is a view, if it's for me, I want it, and if it ain't, I don't. Oh, okay, yeah, okay, wow, yeah, like instantly Right. Actually, the first thing come out of my mouth was Zaba Right. And so, guess what? That's not a church. Now, thank God for the churches that put out that content, you know, and the chaplain that made available. I'm not poo-pooing that, but a lot of my experiences, man, a lot of my mile markers, my landmarks in my relationship with Jesus Christ, a vast majority of happened outside the church, outside the camp. So if you ask why, you know, see the bones, and yours was very, very similar.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:I'll give you a chance to to to talk about that here in a segment. But but it's just all these things that happen, just happen to be without the walls of the church.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I said my, my circumstance was very similar and I know we've we've talked about this and other podcasts too but I was at work. I was at work one night and just not really caring about anything, nothing really spectacular going on or anything. But I had went to church a little bit as a kid because my grandparents took me and stuff like that and I knew I thought I knew Jesus. I know Jesus was the son of God. You know I knew all those Bible stories as a kid and everything. And I was the kind of person if you told me Jesus wasn't the son of God, I'd probably hit you in your nose, I'd probably sock you right in the face. I was one of those. But you know, I had all this head knowledge and everything, but I didn't have it down in my heart and that's where. That's where the Holy Spirit comes in. And, man, we was at work one night and this fellow at work I was working with one of colleagues. He just kind of starts telling the story. He was like man, I'm going to go to church this weekend. I remember this being a Tuesday night. We worked midnight shifts because it was going into Wednesday morning. He goes, man, I think I'm going to go to church this weekend and I'm going to make a public confession of my faith. I'm just going to redo that or do that again. I was like, all right, cool, I don't know where that's coming from, but man, how do you business? And he says you know, I feel like if you're a true believer, you should be able to stand up and tell people that you're a believer. It's like, yeah, yeah, I'm amen in that stuff. Yeah, man, yeah, yeah, he goes. You know, you know how it is when you're 12, 13, 14 years old and you're standing there in the church on Sunday morning with your grandparents and you know you didn't heard the preacher preach and kind of felt like he might have been talking to you and I'm just sitting there kind of, okay, yeah, I'm hearing that, and all of a sudden they play that altar call. You know the altar call music that softly, tenderly, jesus is calling, and that got my attention as soon as he said that. Now I know it was the Holy Spirit. But as soon as he said that the Holy Spirit got my attention, I started going. Oh yeah, that's what they did in my church. Okay, you got me, I got you, he goes. Man, they play that softly, tenderly.
Speaker 2:Jesus is calling and the preacher would say if you feel the Lord, if you feel the Holy Spirit tugging on your heart and you need to come up here and confess your sins, come to. The altar is open. It's like yeah, yeah, okay, that's kind of what he said, but it felt like your feet was just stuck in concrete and you couldn't move. It's like, oh, yeah, that's kind of what was going on, and so, if that's how it feels, just raise your hand, let me see. If you need to confess your sin, just raise your hand. I was like, oh, yeah, preacher did say that. He said, man, my hand just shot right up. I was thinking, man, mine did too.
Speaker 2:And it felt like this guy was reading my mail. I went man, okay. But then I wondered why didn't I go up there? I went, oh, man, okay, yeah, why didn't I go up there? He goes. Was it because I was scared? Was it because I was embarrassed? People are going to see me cry, you know anything, something like that, and I'm sitting there on my own by going oh, my going. Yeah, I was scared, I was embarrassed, I didn't want people to see me cry, you know, and the whole time this guy is talking to me, holy spirit's working this in my own head and I'm having this conversation with myself, and he was well. The bible says that if, if you're ashamed of me before me and I'll be ashamed of you before my father. And as soon as he said that man, the all the conviction that I could ever think of came crashing down upon me, and I knew, right there in that moment, that I was not saved for the first time in my life, and that was probably 2001,.
Speaker 1:2001, somewhere around there.
Speaker 2:And for the first time in my life, I knew that I was not saved, even though I knew about Jesus. I knew I was not saved. For the first time in my life I knew that I was not saved, even though I knew about Jesus. I knew I was not saved. For the first time in my life I knew I was going to hell if I died. And man, I was scared to death. And we had like an hour or two left on shift and man, I was pacing back and forth the rest of the shift, oh my goodness. And of course he finished up his story. So I'm just going to go to church this weekend and make my public confession of faith, just to make sure that I'm not ashamed of Jesus before men. Okay, so shift got over at seven o'clock I got in my car and I was scared to death. I was scared to death that I was going to have a car wreck on the way home and die. I was scared, wreck on the way home and die. I was scared, got home and told my wife what had happened, because she knew that something was wrong. She could tell I was scared, something wasn't right. Told her what happened, told her what I needed to do. And all I knew was that that same little country church that I went to as a kid was still open and operating and I knew that they had a Bible study on Wednesday nights at six o'clock Been doing that for decades. And this was Wednesday morning and I told her, I said I'm going to, I'm going to sleep a little bit and then I'm going to Bible study tonight. She says, I know they still do it and I'm going to go and I'm going to go talk to brother Ralph. And I went down to go, and I'm going to go talk to Brother Ralph and I went down to that Bible study and first thing when he looked at me when I walked in the door, was boy, what are you doing here? And I told him I said I'm going to hell. And I got to change that. And I told him what happened, told him about the conviction that came over me, told him what happened and we prayed through which really wasn't much to pray because the conviction had already happened. And I told him I said, ralph, I've got to do this. You all can't do this for me, I've got to do this. And I just basically kind of what you did. I asked the Lord, I confessed my sin, that I was a sinner, and asked the Lord to come into my heart and free me from all this. And, man, this nice, warm goodness feeling just came all over me. I knew from that night that I was saved. From that day forward I have known without a doubt that I'm saved. And from that night forward the Bible opened up to me. Like you said, love for the Lord was still there. Actually, it changed a little bit. It was a different love. It's just a different type of love.
Speaker 2:Started getting into the Bible. I started in the New Testament, started reading from the book of John. As I would read, the Holy Spirit would tell me where to find corresponding verses in the Old Testament, and I've never read the Bible through in my life. I would start in Genesis, get through the first couple of chapters and Peter out. But here I was spending hours after work at 7 o'clock in the morning and then hours before going to work reading the Bible.
Speaker 2:And God would show me in the Old Testament where all this stuff you know, intersected kind of like you saw about those, those red threads and and these hyperlinks. Um, and that's where that's, that's where salvation started for me. Um, all I wanted to do was read the Bible and listen to the Holy Spirit. It wasn't but a couple of weeks later I started hearing from the Lord and one of the first things he shared with me on my way to Bible study that night was I will teach you everything that you need to know. I'll teach you everything anew, I said, but you have to unlearn some things. You have to unlearn what you've learned. And I got a chuckle out of that because it sounded like Yoda. It sounded very Yoda-like, cryptic, yeah, but I knew what he was talking about.
Speaker 2:Unlearn what you must. I knew that he meant. You heard a lot of things, a lot of people have told you things, but there's a lot of things that you haven't gotten from the Holy Spirit and that has to be the author, that has to be the authority, and that's where things kind of started. A couple of years later I learned about baptism of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, all those spiritual giftings. I'm like you. I just got to a point where you know Lord. I know there's contention, I know some folks don't believe in it, some churches don't believe in it, some folks do, some churches do. But if it's from you, I want it and don't hold back.
Speaker 2:I went to church service up there in Marion where Christopher Bruce was preaching that night. He was ministering and called anyone up who wanted to receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I went up there. I don't remember speaking in tongues that night, but I remember the next night is when I had a dream and I heard God's voice. It was a night or two after that I had another dream or a vision where I was standing in front of the white throne of Christ. That's a whole different story there. So all these different spiritual things started happening to me after I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:I don't speak in tongues a lot. I don't pray in tongues a lot. That's just not the gifting that I've received. But when it comes to prophecy and seeing things that maybe other people don't see, I do that at God's discretion, with the gift of the Holy Spirit. So you know, a man with experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.
Speaker 2:So when I hear people say, well, gifts have ceased. That was all in the first century, when the Bible was being written. We don't have those gifts anymore. I can 100% disagree with that, because God is real, jesus is real, the Holy Spirit is real and all of that is just as alive and in place today as it was back then. All it requires is a little bit of faith, enough faith to ask God in earnest if it's yours, if it's of you, I want it. And it's just that simple. There's no formula for it, there's no Roman's road for it, there's no ABCs of salvation for it, there's no, nothing for it other than Lord. If that's you, I want it. Don't hold back. But what I had to do was all of that had to get from my head down into my heart and that's where it starts and that helped me back for a long time.
Speaker 1:Well, it reminds me of that movie you're talking about. We've mentioned that a couple episodes now. But those things they're kind of like a framework and there's a lot of times it's been effective and praise god for it shouldn't be made into a doctrine. But it reminds me of such a great movie called river runs through it oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's a time when Brad Pitt's character, their dad, was a preacher and he taught these boys fly fishing according to a certain method. And the youngest boy is the true artist when it comes to fly fishing, he's led by the spirit. He develops his own method, called shadow casting, and, rather than poop on it, the old preacher man looks at it and he goes this is art. Right, he goes, this is. This is divinely inspired here and one of the reasons I wanted to bring all this up.
Speaker 1:I know we've spent a little bit of time talking about our experiences, but as people that have probably caught our share of flack and some of it we bought upon ourselves, especially our attitudes back in the day. A lot of that pride will do that. But even without that, we had a lot of people try and challenge us. We had a lot of people try and bring us under their umbrella when the Lord ain't so said and oh, you need to be under this thing. And so we've experienced the dynamic of being those that you weren't in the congregation when this happened. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening. We're going to continue the discussion next episode and talk about how we're seeing this happening more and more. You can always check us out at woefoyoorg or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, spotify, or check us out on YouTube. Remember, folks, if you're going to grow, you've out at woefoyoorg, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, spotify or Audible, or check us out on YouTube. Remember, folks, if you're going to grow, you've got to woefoyo. Get in the word for yourself.