Take Care Fellow Travelers
This is a snail mail letter that I send out to about 80 ministers.
June
10, 2025
I hope that all is well with you and with these letters I try not to clutter up your life too much with junk mail. I frequently am in conversation with pastors and ministers throughout the apostolic movement both in and out of various organizations. Wherever you may be serving, you need to know that I have never seen the pressure that the ministry is under at this current time so don’t fall into the lie that something is wrong with you, this is the spirit of the age. There is much resistance to almost any kind of spiritual leadership these days and some are dealing with outright rebellion in their local assemblies. At times it is mind-numbing and soul-withering what we have to soldier on through. But if you are wondering, I do have your name in my prayer journal and I pray for you on a regular basis. To some degree I was texting some of you on our prayer revival nights in a group text but have backed off from that since there were times that I felt that it was perhaps self-serving to do so. We need the strength of the Spirit and the power of the Word to surround us because we cannot accomplish the purpose of God without it.
My thoughts with this letter have been with me for several months now. A number of prominent ministers in the evangelical world; what I refer to sometimes as “big tent Christianity,” have fallen in various ways but primarily due to sexual immorality. Their names have been widely reported on religious news websites and just to clarify these sites are not the kinds that traffic in some of the gossip that surrounds the religious worlds. Some of the names are Robert Morris, Tony Evans, Ravi Zacharias, Tullian Tchividjian, Mike Bickle, Brian Houston, and Michael Tait (Newsboys singer). Even Michael Brown of whom I have enjoyed some of his books has had some accusations lodged against him that he has admitted to some of them. Perhaps the biggest shocker for me was Steven Lawson who was the preaching pastor of a Reformed Baptist church in the DFW area. You may not be familiar with any of these names because of our doctrinal position being at odds with them. However, it bodes well for you and I to be hyper-vigilant concerning moral purity and commitment to our marriages.
You might think that we are immune to such warnings and do not need them. However, I would be concerned if I were so dismissive of this kind of warning and exhortation toward not just moral purity but mental and soul purity as well. For me, Steven Lawson was the biggest shock. If you are not familiar with him, he was a very precise expository preacher, was very gifted, a prolific writer, and well-spoken with his preaching. He was 73 years old and got involved with a woman in her late 20’s and has now completely disqualified himself from his formerly wide influence in those circles. The drastic age difference is very surprising, but we have to keep in mind the devil is playing the long game, and it doesn’t matter to him when he traps a man; whether they are in their 20’s or in their 80’s just so he wins.
I
distinctly remember my calling to the ministry in my very early 20’s. At that time the scandals in the evangelical
world were the fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Marvin Gorman, and Jimmy
Swaggart all of which had Pentecostal leanings.
I remember going to Because of the Times in 1988 when the Swaggart debacle
was breaking. I recall the news trucks
out in front of the Assemblies of God district offices in Alexandria during that
cold rainy morning when my Dad, Brother Patterson, and I were heading to the
morning service. I guess it may have
been the morbid curiosity that got me interested in all of it, but it was front-line
news in the late ‘80’s. At the time, I
was working nights in an SICU in Dothan and the tv’s were on CNN and Headline
News all night long and it was constantly being kept in front of the
nation. Jerry Falwell got involved in it
as well as sort of an overseer of the fallen religious tv networks. Before it was over, the nation had been
exposed to the massive amounts of money, prestige, power and immorality that
well-hidden spiritual traps collapsed onto the people who fell. I suppose that in the very sheltered world
that I had grown up in, I could not believe that such activity could take place
in religious precincts. I have now lived
long enough to have witnessed such low living at the worm’s eye view. But it still distresses me when I encounter
it. Lord, please save us from this
untoward generation!
You can’t be too committed to having a clean heart and a clean mind. I often say to myself and when I am preaching to others: They that bear the vessels of the Lord must have clean hands (and hearts) which is from Isaiah 52:11. If I could beg of you anything, it would be for you to live your life at the highest state of spiritual health that you possibly can. I sometimes read scary books that tell stories and issue warnings about this kind of destructive behavior that destroys ministers and their influence.
I am adding some homework with this letter. It was more than twenty years ago that I ran across Randy Alcorn’s list that is so very sobering. In fact, I have copied it down in three of my Thompson Chain KJV’s. I always put it at the end of the blank section following Genesis 50 and have a note marked in Genesis 39 which is the story of Joseph that points me to it. His list is called, “Anticipated Consequences of Immorality.” I have also written it down in multiple journals over the years. Your homework is to copy this list down in your Bibles, journals, prayer journals, and anywhere else you can think of. Here are his points that he personalized of what takes place when someone gets involved in this sin. I have personalized it as well for my family and I think you should as well:
1.
Grieving my Lord; displeasing the One whose opinion
matters most.
2.
Dragging into the mud Christ’s sacred reputation.
3.
Loss of reward and commendation of my Lord.
4.
Having one day to look Jesus in the face at the
judgment seat and give an account of why I did it. Forcing him to discipline me in various ways.
5.
Following the footsteps of men I know whose immorality
forfeited their ministry and caused me to shudder. (Write a list of these names.)
6.
Suffering of innocent people around me who would get
hit by my shrapnel (Achan).
7.
Untold hurt to my loyal wife and best friend, Teresa.
8.
Loss of my wife’s trust and respect.
9.
Hurt to my children, Justin, Nate, and Lauren. Now added are daughter-in-laws, Alyssa and
Tabitha; more additions are grandchildren, Asher, Addie, Laney, Reagan, and
Emmie. (Why listen to a man who hurt Mom
and us?)
10.
If my blindness should continue or my family be unable
to forgive, I could lose my wife and my children and grandchildren forever.
11.
Shame to my family.
12.
Shame to my church family.
13.
Shame and hurt to my fellow pastors and elders. (Make a list of these.)
14.
Shame and hurt to my friends whom I have influenced. (Make a list.)
Men, it is NOT worth it! Do everything you can to maintain your integrity and your influence to forward the Kingdom of God that you have been called into! We are drawn away of our own lust! Do a verse-by-verse Bible study on James 1:13-16 and then preach it! We cannot blame sexual immorality on anyone else; it was and is a personal choice that we make to go down that path. Go do a verse-by-verse Bible study on Proverbs 6:20-35 and Proverbs 7:6-23. All of these warnings of Scripture are always helpful!
I have also written this quote from Thomas Watson just above the list that Randy Alcorn wrote. It is what he describes as a definition of lust from his book The Mischief of Sin:
Lust first bewitches with pleasure, and then comes the fatal dart. ‘Til a dart strike through his liver.’ (Proverbs 7:23). This should be as a flaming sword to stop men in the way of their carnal delights. Who for a drop of pleasure would drink a sea of wrath? . . . Lust is when ignorance reigns in the understanding, lust rages in the affections.
I will never forget when I was 28 years old and one of my personal heroes fell. It was shocking and very depressing. In fact, one day several months after it happened my wife told me that I was going to have to move on from it. I did and I have but I have never allowed myself to be fooled that I couldn’t fall to that kind of sin nor any other kind of sin. I think that is one of the biggest follies that I see among Pentecostals: to think they are above sin and the ploys and pulls. Don’t fool yourself!
I have listed a number of books below. Obviously, I don’t want you to break the bank but the books this time are themed around the thought of this letter and are very helpful. In fact, I am sure that it will affect some of your sermon content in the coming months.
Faithfully,
Philip Harrelson
2
Tim 4:2 & Gal 6:9
BOOK RECS
John
Street—Passions
of the Heart
J.
Garrett Kell—Pure
in Heart: Sexual Sin and the Promises of
God
Joe
Barnard—Surviving
the Trenches: Killing Sin Before it
Kills You
John
Whitlock—The
Great Duty of Keeping Ourselves from Iniquity
Laila Mickelwait—TAKE DOWN: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking (NOTE: This is a very dark book, but it is a very sobering and insightful book about the days we live in.)
The
following are older books that have benefited me over the years:
John Armstrong—The Stain That Stays
Tim Lahaye—If Ministers Fall, Can They Be Restored?
Richard
Exley—The
Perils of Power
Richard
Dortch—Integrity: How I Lost It, and My Journey Back
Albert
N. Martin—You
Lift Me Up: Overcoming Ministry
Challenges (Quote: Backsliding—a spiritual decline manifested
first in the prayer closet.)
John
MacArthur—Lessons
to Learn from the Fall of Jimmy Swaggart (This was a chapel sermon that you
can find to download at www.gty.org. It is well worth the time to track down and
listen to.)
Ann
Seaman—Swaggart: The Unauthorized Biography of an American
Evangelist
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