By Adam McManus

Four years ago, Pure Passion Media released a life-changing, 2-hour-long film which featured the compelling story of 26 former homosexuals who were transformed by the power of God.

Winner of five professional and festival awards, including “Best Documentary”, the film features Drs Michael Brown, Robert Gagnon, Neil T. Anderson, Julie Hamilton as well as Kay Arthur.

The documentary title – “Such Were Some of You” – comes straight from 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

“Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

The World View spoke with David Kyle Foster, the producer, who says this:

“When I started with the ministry in 1987, my goal was, number 1, to create equipping resources for the church in areas where there were none. Back in 1987, there was absolutely nothing on homosexuality. And, even to this day, there isn’t very much training for prospective pastors in the area of sexual brokenness in seminaries or Bible colleges.

“And, number two, we’re trying to reach those who are sexually broken themselves and show them that Jesus Christ actually loves them and He has the power to transform their life if they will turn their life over to Him.”

Foster described what he means by “sexual brokenness.”

“Sexual brokenness is a term used to cover pornography/sex addiction, childhood sexual abuse, homosexuality, transgender disorders, sex trafficking — any number of issues that are sex-related that result from the person being broken. Sometimes people who have this kind of background end up trying to cover up their pain by acting out sexually.”

Foster explained who the film will help.

“Such Were Some of You”, the film, was made for those who struggle with homosexual confusion, people who, through no fault of their own, are attracted to the same sex sexually and don’t really know what to do about it. So our film shows them the roots of such same sex attraction and what Jesus Christ can do to heal those wounds and bring them back into normalcy.”

One of the testimonies featured in “Such Were Some of You” is from 25-year-old Kegan Wesley.

“Kegan is a young man who was sexually abused as a child, and for a boy that often can result in homosexual confusion. He got radically born again through The Eddie James Ministry. He started giving his testimony at various Eddie James conferences around the country. He would consider himself to be a heterosexual who was broken and has now found healing through Jesus Christ.”

Indeed, Wesley is now on fire for Christ and pastors The Refuge Church in Louisville, Kentucky. (Watch Wesley’s extended interview for the film as well as a CBN 700 Club interview.)

David Kyle Foster, the producer of “Such Were Some of You”, explained that Wesley is a good example of someone who was once homosexually confused, but now has enthusiastically embraced his heterosexuality with God’s help and is committed to chastity until marriage.

“Anyone who comes out of homosexuality and is truly born again and radically transformed by the power of God, they tend not to go back into any kind of sexual sin area because they’ve seen the fruit of it and it’s nothing but ugly.”

Foster explained that those who have struggled with homosexual confusion have been tremendously grateful for the film “Such Were Some of You.”

“We’ve had countless emails and phone calls and various postings on Facebook and YouTube thanking us profusely for coming up with the resource that the Body of Christ has needed for a long, long time.

“Because in the film, not only do we lay out the Biblical case for heterosexual one woman/one man in marriage for life — with no sexual behavior outside of that — and we use experts from the world of Biblical scholarship to lay that case, but then we also go into what has caused the homosexuality in the 26 people that we interviewed, what the gay lifestyle was like for them, and then what Jesus did to bring them to salvation, and finally how He has been healing them.”

Since 2014, the DVD has been for sale online for $9.99, and it still is. However, Foster decided to make the film “Such Were Some of You” available for free on YouTube.

“We put it out on YouTube live this past week and we’ve already got 3,000 or more views just in the last few days. I don’t know if YouTube’s going to take us off.

“We were taken off of Vimeo because of our stance that homosexuals can find healing through Jesus Christ. They didn’t like that so they took all 850 of our videos down off the internet and cancelled our presence on their platform.

“The gay activists have made it known to our ministry that they are going to go after Facebook and Google and YouTube and Twitter and all the other organizations to take us down as well. So we are facing a great deal of activism from gay activists who don’t like the truth to be known that homosexuality is a disorder and that you can find healing from it through Jesus Christ.”

Amazingly, the film is also being released in 11 additional languages, including Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Estonian, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. “Such Were Some of You” can be viewed in those languages on YouTube.  Watch it below:

I’d love to know what reaction you receive after those in your circle have watched it. Email me at adam@TheWorldView.com.

This film, in God’s hands, will literally transform their lives.

And as you spread the film far and wide, pray for each one you send it to – that God will open their eyes and draw them into a saving relationship with Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ.

This article was originally posted by TheWorldview.com

Written by Weston Gentry, Christianity Today

Exodus International president Alan Chambers has, in the past week, explained the Orlando-based ministry’s recent U-turn on reparative therapy to everyone from The New York Times to NPR to MSNBC’s Hardball.

And while the organization’s stance remains acceptable to most evangelicals, some scholars fear that Chambers’s theological convictions—sprinkled throughout those interviews—have not.

“It’s not that he is simply not saying the warnings [against homosexual activity] in Scripture. I could live with that,” Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor Robert Gagnon said of Chambers’s recent comments. “It’s that he is saying the exact opposite of what Scripture clearly teaches … . He’s preaching an anti-gospel.”

The theological heresy in question is antinomianism. The term was coined by Martin Luther to refer to those who believe that since faith is sufficient for salvation, Christians are not obligated to keep God’s moral law.

Gagnon, author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice and a plenary speaker at Exodus’s 2009 Freedom Conference, said that a June interview in The Atlantic shows that Chambers’s views have veered. “Some of us choose very different lives than others,” Chambers said of gay Christians in same-sex marriages. “But whatever we choose, it doesn’t remove our relationship with God.”

When asked to clarify whether or not that meant “a person living a gay lifestyle won’t go to hell, as long as he or she accepts Jesus Christ as personal savior,” he replied, “My personal belief is … while behavior matters, those things don’t interrupt someone’s relationship with Christ.” In the course of the interview, Chambers made it clear that he believes that homosexual acts are sinful.

A 35-page response written by Gagnon called into question not only Chambers’s soteriology, but also his ability to continue his 11-plus years of leading Exodus, which boasts some 260 affiliates domestically and internationally.

According to Gagnon, Chambers’s statements unwittingly affirm that active homosexuals need only make an “intellectual assent” or “pray a prayer” to guard against eternal punishment, instead of stipulating the importance of repentance and change.

“I am not saying [Chambers] has to—in a sort of callous, unloving way—shout from the rooftops, ‘You are going to hell,'” said Gagnon. “But he does need to make clear that there are these warnings [against homosexual behavior] in Scripture. It would be unloving and ungracious for him to assure people of things that Scripture does not.”

Echoing the criticisms of “cheap grace” popularized by the late German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gagnon said that Chambers’s remarks “provide assurance to people that all is well when they live a life not led by the power of the Holy Spirit, but are led by the controlling influence of sin.”

“In reality, all is not well,” he said. “[Chambers] unintentionally deceives people into extending this philosophy of ‘cheap grace’ in their life, which puts them at risk of not inheriting the kingdom [of God].”

Defending his public remarks, Chambers told Christianity Today, “If someone tells me that they have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ—in the way I understand it and have experienced it—they still know Jesus regardless of what types of behavior they’ve chosen to be involved in.”

“I don’t know how anyone could call grace cheap when it cost Jesus everything,” said Chambers. “I find it disheartening that we [evangelicals] are so inconsistent and over-focused on one group of people over another. We aren’t talking about this in any other subculture of people except this one [the LGBTQ community].”

Chambers says he isn’t advocating that gay Christians simply “lie down and give up.” The 40-year-old ex-gay husband and father of two maintains that celibacy is a gay Christian’s most biblical option. But he prefers encouraging people to “seek Christ” over “shaming them into a particular set of patterns of behavior.”

“Our focus should never be on how good we do, but on how good God is,” Chambers said. “When we are focused on the truth of his word and the grace that he embodied, I don’t think your life can help but be changed.”

Some critics traced their concerns over Chambers’s soteriology to his home church, Grace Church Orlando. Senior pastor Clark Whitten, who serves as Exodus’s chairman and recently published Pure Grace, could not be reached in time for comment. But he explains on the church’s website that only God can judge those “who say they are Christian yet continue in their sin,” so “the best thing we can do for that person is to keep loving them and telling them about our awesome King who died for them.”

Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, finds Chambers’s motives commendable but his doctrine problematic.

“I can only imagine the sort of situation he finds himself in—trying to speak in a winsome sort of way to people who feel hated by evangelicals,” said Moore. “I just think that he has uploaded some really bad, reactionary tendencies from popular evangelicalism.”

“There is something going on in evangelicalism where everyone is always reacting against whatever error they encountered in childhood,” said Moore. “A lot of people who grew up in legalist, performance-based churches are over-reacting with an antinomian, repentance-lacking gospel.”

“The problem biblically is: legalism sends people to hell and antinomianism sends people to hell,” he said. “Reacting against a hellish-legalism with a hellish-antinomianism is still sending people to hell.”

Unfazed by the accusations of theological error, Chambers addressed his detractors with some pointed words.

“It’s disappointing to see Christians drive personal agendas at the expense of other human beings,” he said. “We’ve received a tremendous response from men and women who are desperate for grace.”

(Read Laurie Higgins’ take on this controversy HERE.)

Originally posted at Christianitytoday.com.