Paul Washer
Paul David Washer (born September 11, 1961) is an American Protestant Christian evangelist with a Calvinist theology affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Biography. Washer reports converting to Christianity while studying to become an oil and gas lawyer at the University of Texas at Austin. He moved to Peru where he became a missionary for 10 years. In 1988, while in Peru, Washer founded the HeartCry Missionary Society to support indigenous missionaries witnessing to people of their own culture. As of 2017, the organization supported 238 missionary families in 41 countries. Washer later returned to the United States , and has resided in Radford, Virginia since 2010, where he continues as the missions director of HeartCry. Washer is sometimes identified as part of the New Calvinism movement, although he has expressed concerns with this movement. In 2002, Washer preached a "shocking youth message" in which he suggested that most of his "Christian" audience could end up in hell. As of 2021, the YouTube video of the talk has received more than 3 million views. Washer appeared in the 2018 Netflix documentary "American Gospel: Christ Alone", in which he said "In other religions, you get to heaven by being good , by earning it." Universalists such as Rick Pidcock, writing for Baptist News Global, argued that this "falsely categorize[s] all other religions as people trying to earn their way to heaven." In 2017, Washer suffered a non-fatal heart attack.