Insights from Startling Phrases in the Bible, then More Wokeplosions

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's an early morning edition, I guess you could say, for us anyways.

For those on the East Coast, it's actually one o 'clock, I think. But we're actually, it's been sort of odd for ever since I moved over to Apologia Church.

We end up being competitors, doing Apologia Radio and The Dividing Line at the same time.

I'm not sure why we haven't been able to work out a schedule, you know, something like that.

But today I'm going to be on Apologia Radio live at one o 'clock. And so I'm here early.

And just to give you a heads up, at least the last time we talked, we're supposed to be discussing

Jeremiah and then the article that came out from the

Gospel Coalition on theonomy yesterday. Well, it was supposed to be on theonomy, it really isn't, but that's what we'll be talking about.

And so that'll be this afternoon, one o 'clock our time, which is four o 'clock Eastern time.

So that's why we're here early this morning, at least our time, not early for me,

I got up at 3 .50 this morning, I was racing at 4 .50. I sort of figured that was going to be a disaster, but it wasn't actually worked out.

Some people go, how can you be racing? It's online. And a lot of people go, that's not real.

Believe you me. Yesterday I climbed Mount Ventoux in France.

And the nice thing is France is shutting down because of COVID again. And I got to climb Mount Ventoux in France, about the only person probably could, unfortunately, sadly.

And if you haven't experienced smart trainers,

RGT, Zwift, things like that online, I'm going to tell you some of the hardest workouts you will ever, ever, ever, ever do.

So I keep trying. Anyway, if you, before we look at our daily dose of craziness, which is every day, no matter what we do, daily dose of craziness,

I, you know, I've sometimes wondered if we were to ask evangelicals, what's the main point of this chapter of the

Bible? There are certain, there are certain books that I think people do fairly well with.

I think, I think most Christians could probably do 80 % of the chapters in John.

Chapter seven might lose somebody, you know, chapter 19 might lose somebody, you know, stuff like that.

That's always something to be going for. If you've been wanting to have goals to work toward, having an accurate knowledge of the outline of major books of the

Bible, doesn't sound overly spiritual, but wow, is it helpful? Really, really helpful.

Something that you could homeschool moms and dads, that's something to think about along those lines.

But when you think about Romans, when you think about Romans, where does chapter 16 fit in?

Now, there are a couple of controversial passages in Romans chapter 16, but I saw someone on Twitter about a week ago, maybe a little more, say something about a particular phrase in Romans 16.

And I looked at it and was struck by, by the text.

And so I want to just starting off the program before craziness descends upon us,

Romans chapter 16 verse 17, now I urge you brethren, keep your eye on, look carefully to the ones causing dissensions and scandals contrary to the teaching, which you were taught, which you learned and turn away from them.

Now, the, the first, the first dissensions, divisions that, you know, we, we talk about divisions all the time and, and if you, these days, if you say almost anything from a biblical perspective, you will be accused of causing divisions and so on and so forth.

But on the other hand, a lot of us have been warning for quite some time now that when you bring in extra biblical sources of authority, you will be creating unnecessary harmful divisions.

The point is that as Paul closes this letter with all these personal greetings and, and everything else in it, you can see him, he's dictating this letter.

We know that the, the Emanuels is going to give his name here in chapter 16.

Paul wants to warn them, keep your eye, be looking out, be recognizing, recognize that this is not shocking that this type of thing is going to happen.

So I exhort you, I urge you brethren, keep your eye on those who cause divisions and, and scandala, hindrances, stumbling blocks, scandals, but it's, it's not scandal in the sense of the

RZIM scandal at the beginning of the year or something like that, because it's contrary to the teaching which you learned.

Now, well, I suppose you could actually shoehorn that in there, but this is more in regards to divisions from people bringing false teachings in because notice the next verse, for such men are slaves, not of our

Lord Christ, but of their own appetites, actually the term there is stomachs.

And so any translation that renders that as appetites is not being directly literal, but that's what it means.

It's the, it's the inward desires is what's being referred to there. So they are, they are slaves, but not of the

Lord Jesus Christ, which you want to be. Slavery to Christ is a good thing, but of their own appetites and notice this, and by their smooth and flattering speech, smooth and flattering speech, they, the, the, the non -evil ones, they, they lead astray, they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting, the innocent ones.

There are a lot of people who know how to make error sound so good, especially today when, when all across our society, there is no longer a desire to think clearly, to think logically, to honor truth.

Everybody emotes now rather than thinks, which would have caused a problem in the light of verse 19 for the report of your obedience has reached all, stop for a moment, stop for a moment and ask yourself the question, is, is that what we would be driving for?

In our own lives, in our own churches, the report of your obedience, your obedience to what, but the very idea of being known that those are, they are an obedient people.

They are in submission to the will of God. They are obedient to God's revelation.

The report of your obedience has reached all, therefore, I am rejoicing over you. Paul says, what would, what would cause an apostle or the

Lord himself to rejoice over us today? How would we be obedient today?

But he says, I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.

That's a, that's an interesting one in of itself right there. I want you to be wise in what is good.

To be a sophist, a wise person that's normally used in a negative sense, but here it's being used in a positive sense.

I want you to be wise ones, sophists in what is good. I want you to have a wide range of understanding of how to express good in our society.

In our world, I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.

We really, I think one of the, one of the negatives, honestly, of apologetics is very frequently as we become experts in what is evil.

I mean, to engage in debate with certain people, we have to spend a whole lot more time than most

Christians do examining falsehood. I've jokingly said, I read all the heretical books.

You don't have to. But that, you know, I've never forgotten, never forgotten that early on, early, early on in my ministry,

I remember a man, I remember his name to this day. I struggle with some names, not this name, but I remember a man who, when

I first met him, knew more about Jehovah's Witnesses than anybody.

There was only one other person who was himself a former witness. This guy wasn't a former witness. And I was just stunned, but he was never a churchman.

He wasn't a part of the church. And it was just this one group that he knew all about.

So there was, in hindsight, clearly a major imbalance. And so I was just blown away when he became a

Jehovah's Witness. Now, I don't think he stayed. I don't know whatever did happen to him, to be honest with you.

But I was still in Bible college at the time, so very young.

And his becoming a witness was important in my studying a number of different issues to respond to him.

So, you know, the Lord used it. And that information has been used and useful to many other people in the years since then.

So that is one advantage about being an older saint is you can look back and go, well, see that and see that.

Boy, at the time that looked like, and now I see how you can put some things together.

You're still to trust God one way or the other. But God wants you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.

All of that precursor to the phrase that I saw someone using. And I had to think about it.

Look at 1620. There's only three more verses after this.

Well, okay. Take that back. There's a, notice the line there.

So there's some question about exactly where the rest of them go. But 1620, the

God of peace, the

God of peace. So theos teis Irenaeus. Now that's the same term, Irenaeus, that is used in Romans 5 .1.

Therefore, having peace with God. So this is the Greek correlative to Shalom, which is a very rich Hebrew term in its meaning.

So the God of peace. Now, how are we to understand that phrase?

Is it the God who is descriptive himself as being peaceful?

Or is this the God from whom peace comes? This is one of the issues.

I didn't go into this when we did our sort of Greek lesson earlier, when we were in the big studio earlier in the week.

But the genitive, when you learn it in the 8K system, is actually broken in two cases, genitive and the ablative.

And so there is a sense in the genitive of origin and source in its form.

This is a genitive, the God of peace. So is this the peaceful God or the God from whom peace comes?

This is the God of Shalom, the Shalom God. But what does the

Shalom God do? Well, the end of the sentence, en takai, will soon or will quickly crush

Satan under your feet. There are a number of places in scripture where I think the author wants you to stop and go, you know, there's all these gifs, gifts, whatever you call them, of people going, you know, some just get so old.

I mean, you sort of wish the person who first designed it would have gotten money for it. They'd be able to retire.

But just hit you and you go, that's not what

I expected. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

So crushing Satan is something that the

God of peace does. So you either have to dismiss that as the ramblings of some weird religious person, or you have to go, hmm, his concept,

Paul's concept of peace might be different than mine. And in fact, the crushing of Satan under your feet, that might be necessary for peace to exist.

Huh. So sometimes there needs to be some crushing going on to bring about a true situation of peace.

So there's a, from one perspective, there's a contradiction. The God of peace will soon crush

Satan under your feet, but it's not a contradiction. And if you allow it to just stay at the level of contradiction, then you haven't gotten as deep as the writer wanted you.

To go, to be able to go, ah, hmm, the

God who will establish that situation of peace, there is a process of tribulation through which we must go before that peace can be established.

So God establishes peace between his people and himself through the tremendous tribulation of the cross, the entire incarnation, the humiliation of Christ, his entering into human flesh, his ministry, his beating, his death, his burial, his resurrection.

These are all a part of the process that God has used to bring all of this about.

It didn't look very peaceful at the time. Uh, if you had seen the murder of the, of the younglings, um, because of Herod, that didn't look peaceful.

You know, the world would look at that and go, what, what is, what is God doing? But he was bringing about, as Ephesians 1 expresses, he was summing up all things in Christ.

And that can look really messy along the way, but that's what he was doing.

Of course, none of this makes any sense outside of basic Christian orthodoxy in regards to God's sovereignty and decree.

You don't believe in God's sovereignty. You don't believe in God's decree. None of this makes any sense to you. You have to come up with some other way of understanding it.

And we'll normally not have a whole lot to do with what the author intended. That's what's, what's out there.

Um, but that, that phrase, the God of peace will soon crush

Satan under your feet. There are a number of places where the, when, you know, Paul himself, he, he says to the

Corinthians, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. That's, that's meant to make you go, crucified the

Lord of, you can't, you can't crucify the Lord of glory. Well, when the Lord of glory takes on human nature, takes on that, he becomes man, becomes flesh, then yes.

And that was his purpose. But that would be a, that's just such a strain. They crucified the

Lord of glory or in revelation six, when, when Kings and mighty men and slaves, in other words, all of the economic and societal strata call upon the mountains to fall upon them, to hide them from the wrath of he who sits upon the throne and of the lamb, the wrath of the lamb, hide me from the wrath of the lamb.

Now there was that. I don't know if you saw, I don't know if you saw that video.

I retweeted it of a, I guess it was a lamb, some type of a sheep.

Oh, that looks interesting, Rich. We'll just wait here a second till, there we go.

Rich is distracted by other things. And then all of a sudden, poof, we've got a diamond up on the screen. It's like, okay.

And then, then you're looking down, like someone's coming at you down the hallway or something like that. It's like, it's like, what, what?

Now let's, let's, let's get, got some caffeine out there a little early in the morning. I know a little, a little tough, you know, but try to, try to, try to get back with us here.

Anyway, I'm glad I looked up there. I don't know if you saw that video of,

I guess it was a sheep that attacked that guy. I mean, takes a running leap.

Actually, it was like a matrix move. It was like Trinity on the wall. And take this guy out.

I bet you that guy ended up with a very warm coat out of that one. Yeah, that was, that was, that was interesting.

But generally sheep are not known as the most aggressive animals. But again, the writer wants that contradiction to stand out and make you think past that.

Why would the lamb have this, why would there be the wrath of the lamb?

Well, because there has been the grace of the lamb. There has been the offering of the lamb, but that doesn't last forever.

That isn't that there comes a time when judgment is going to come. So just thinking about the

God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. Now we might want to stop and go, what does that mean?

Soon, soon crush Satan under your feet. Some interesting questions are raised by that.

Is there a immediate fulfillment of this? If so, what's it referring to?

Because the Roman Christians are going to be persecuted as a community for another 260 years, give or take a few years, along the way.

So what is that referring to? Something you might, you've got to sort of figure out on your own there.

I'm not going to spend too much more time on it, but just something to be keeping in mind.

Check this one out. Evidently, this chick is a, well,

I think I read someplace that she does guest judging on cooking shows or something.

My wife would know, but she's out of town. Padma Lakshmi.

Because her picture doesn't look like she's actually a regular judge on cooking shows. When you're a regular judge on cooking shows, you don't look quite that skinny.

But Padma Lakshmi, this is the voice of the benighted secular society.

That's the only way I can put it. I mean, society has gone south many times in the past, but now once you join it with secularism, it's ugly.

If you can't accept your child for who they're telling you they are, then you have no business being a parent.

Behold the wisdom of the world. If you can't accept your child for who they're telling you they are, then you have no business being a parent.

Now we know what this is about. This was March 31st. And today, of course, is

April 1st. So don't believe anything you see online. The company that makes the running shoes

I use sent out an email this morning about their new line of dog shoes.

It's April 1st. Yes, it's April 1st. So don't believe anything that you see.

We got stuck. Yeah, yeah. The calendar has not refused, won't move from April 1st of 2020.

The reality is from anyone who has ever been a parent, has children, knows that it is your job as the parent not to help your child in their process of discovery.

You need to let your children know what maturity is. You need to let them know what is expected of them.

You need to give them discipline. You need to give them guidance. And only when you do that do they have the proper parameters in which to find their

God -given talents and callings. But we're in a day now where if your two -year -old boy grabs hold of a pink doll out of the toy chest, oh, let's get puberty blockers.

Let's stop their mental development. Let's mess with their internal organs. Let's mutilate their bodies.

Anybody who's been a parent knows that your children go through phases where they're

Power Rangers. I mean, when, you know, I shouldn't tell these stories publicly, but they are my kids and so they're stuck with it.

But, you know, when Summer went to kindergarten, the first day of kindergarten,

I think we still have the pictures. She was the yellow Power Ranger. Now, Janie's the yellow

Power Ranger. But you don't leave your kids or your grandkids thinking that they need to be going out fighting monsters.

Now, it's okay if they do. It's okay if they go out in the backyard and fight monsters. Even though, obviously, there were horrific racial stereotypes in the

Power Rangers. Just as there were cowabunga amongst the

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I hope you all saw the meme, which

Steve Camp rebuked me for reposting it. I'm just like, you poor man, you poor man.

But there was someone made up a meme. And when I first saw it, I didn't get it. But if you saw it, there was this woman in the top part marked

Beth Moore. It may have even been misspelled. Now I think about it. But the bottom part of the meme was the

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shaking hands with the Power Rangers. And they're all celebrating.

They probably just beaten some horrendously badly costumed creature from outer space.

And someone had put on the Power Rangers Presbyterians and on the

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Reformed Baptists. And when I first looking, I'm going, what does Beth Moore have to do with any of this?

I don't get it. And then slowly, you know, it got to me. Oh, she's what she was the the bad alien that that was just defeated by the

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Power Rangers. OK, so that's the Beth Moore part.

OK, all right. Didn't really matter. But because what I thought was awesome was not only the

Power Rangers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles working together instead of having debates about baptism. But I just thought it was extremely appropriate that everybody knows the

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are cooler than the Power Rangers. And so the Reformed Baptists were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

So and we've got Jeff Durbin. So that was probably why they did that is you don't you don't take

Jeff on because he he was one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In some cartoon thing, but he was part of the franchise briefly anyways, but he was and he still trains, so don't mess with him.

So we get the, you know, Michelangelo and Leonardo and Raphael and stuff like that.

So we get we get those guys and Presbyterians can have the folks in the leotards.

I'm not going to mention who the Pink Ranger would be. The Yellow Ranger or anybody like that, because there are a few

Presbyterian leaders that would fit in really well there right now. Anyways, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah.

So that takes us back to Pat and Lakshmi. I didn't leave my daughter thinking that she was a

Power Ranger. Of course, back in those days, there wasn't really any confusion as to boys and girls.

I didn't read the article, but I guess CNN made sure that yesterday we knew that you can't tell at birth whether you have a boy or a girl.

I just sort of wonder what all those doctors have been doing all these years, especially before ultrasounds.

I mean, that was a big deal. Big, big deal. I mean, you wanted to know immediately, but now we're being told you can't know.

And that's where we are in our wild, crazy, insane world.

So I knew this was going to happen. Oops. Oh, I guess it does do that.

Oh, cool. A suspect.

Well, it's not suspect. Little. I have a note for criminals in New York City.

If you walk down the street in New York City, you are being observed by cameras everywhere.

It's not just New York City, but in New York especially. You will get caught if there are enough cops still working for the city to catch you.

That's sort of the issue. And so the guy in the video that we all saw over the weekend who attacked the 65 -year -old

Asian woman who was walking to church and the two coward guards guys inside the building from which the video came.

I don't know what's going to happen to them, but anyway, he's been caught and they know who he is and they've got him in custody and stuff like that.

But I knew as soon as you say anything like this and point out, um, you know, it really seems like almost all of this sudden anti -Asian thing is being perpetrated by black men.

And that that's what you've got all the video of. So I knew that today in this world, there is only one.

What are you looking at? Oh, I thought you're looking down the down the like people were breaking in or, you know, the woke folks were bang on the door or.

Oh, man, he's he's. Rich has got more toys.

And so what that has done is it has distracted him, of course. And that's so if you end up with funky looking stuff on the screen, it's it's there because Rich has got new toys.

And so he's he's playing with his toys. So anyway, there's only one one explanation now in our society for all evils.

Global warming, white supremacy. The guy just fell down on the roof.

White supremacy. Actually, there's roofers up there. So if you hear some stuff, that's that's what's going on.

Nothing we can do about. Black guy kicks

Asian, older Asian lady and tries to stomp on her head. White supremacy.

Here you go. Here's an M .D. medical doctor, Eugene Gu. Black on Asian crimes only occur because of our system of white supremacy that strips

African -Americans their economic opportunities while taking respect and dignity away from Asian -Americans.

Also, white people in power are experts at dividing and conquering to stay in power. See, it doesn't matter what it is.

It has nothing to do with the heart of a black man that's filled with hate. No, it's white supremacy.

So when you have white people. Whose hearts are filled with hate and they do evil things, that's white supremacy.

When black people do evil things because they hate in their hearts, that's white supremacy. Um, there are

Asian gangs in major cities, and when they do evil things, that's white supremacy.

Um, just name, just name the group. It doesn't matter. Any action of evil in the heart of mankind is now white supremacy.

It's all it is. Now, 10 years ago, would anybody have believed that? Well, I suppose a few wackoids and a few universities that were starting to teach it.

But for the vast majority of us, we would have gone, what are you talking about?

I mean, until last year, a white supremacist was somebody in a Ku Klux Klan robe.

You just what? What do you what? Who's making this stuff up?

But now, you can look at a man who purposefully, nobody's holding a gun to his head, who purposefully acts on the evil of his heart.

And he's being made to do this by somebody else, by a system.

Do you see how dehumanizing all of this is? It is secularism in whatever manifestation it takes.

And it can change. It can change. Don't forget that Dalrymple quote.

Under the Soviets, I hope the roof holds, under the

Soviets, the rhetoric from Pravda, everybody knew it was a lie.

And it was forcing you to believe and repeat the lie that broke you down. So that when the next lie came out, it could be the exact opposite of the lie you were forced to say last year or last week.

But you still have to say it again. You still have to repeat it. And it breaks you down.

It destroys your moral fiber. It makes you less human. And the day will come when the narrative will switch because it needs to.

And it will no longer be the narrative to say that boys can be girls and girls can be boys.

But they won't do that because that's what's right. And that's how God says.

And that's just reality around us. It'll be because we need more workers.

And so we need male -female relationships and we need babies. And if we keep having young girls mutilate their bodies, they can't have babies.

That's not good. So we'll change things. Now, of course, once you develop, and it is interesting, almost every dystopian novel somewhere down the road has artificial human reproduction without the covenant of marriage.

So almost everybody realizes that that's the big thing in the way. That's what you got to get rid of, which is why it's under attack.

But anyway, there is nothing that cannot be explained by white supremacy.

Now, it's not rational. It's insane. It's nuts. But once you form people's ways of thinking to default to this, that's what they'll keep doing.

And that means if you are not a person of color, your guilt is never ending.

It is absolutely positively never ending. Yesterday, there was a, yesterday, there was,

I'm not sure if I, I don't think I did mention it on the program yesterday, but Al Mohler made reference to a class action lawsuit.

Some of you remember, probably more than five years ago now, or somewhere around there, I made some predictions on the wretched radio program.

And one of the things I've been saying for a long time is that eventually, all

Christian organizations, and especially educational organizations, will have to cut all ties, all connection with any government funding source whatsoever.

Now, the problem is, okay, like right now, I'm talking about student loans,

Pell Grants, things like that. And that means for a lot of the big box schools, that's the end for them.

I mean, they're indebted up to their eyeballs with all the buildings they've had to build and stuff like that. But the wiser institutions have already been moving that direction, knowing what was coming.

A class action lawsuit has been filed to basically bring this about, to end religious exemptions for religious institutions for discrimination.

In other words, forcing all educational institutions to celebrate homosexuality, transgenderism, the whole

LGBTQ plus sexual revolution agenda. And so there's a lot of ways that that could have happened.

I can assure you that if one of two things happens, if the lawsuit's successful, or the

Equality Act is passed, the accrediting agencies will follow suit, and you will have the end of accredited

Christian education in the United States. Now, I've talked about accreditations since 1998.

I've had extensive discussions about it. It was right around that time. It was about 90, was that 99?

No, 98, 99. I was teaching for an extension seminary.

The main campus was accredited, and then they had to get the extension campuses accredited.

So I actually had to be involved in the accreditation process for this major Southern Baptist seminary in the

Phoenix area. And so I had to sit in meetings,

I had to read stuff. And I can tell you from experience, the only thing accreditation did for that seminary was raise the cost so that you had to hire someone with a master's degree in library science to oversee a tiny little library.

And of course, you had to buy a bunch of books to get it up to a certain level. Now realize, at the time, we were meeting,

I'd say, eight miles, as the crow flies, from Arizona State University, which has a huge library and a very good theological section.

But you had to repeat, and there was nothing that was in that little library they made that wasn't at ASU, five miles away.

But the primary discussions were about the library and having sufficient parking places for full -paying students over against parking spaces for students who were auditing classes.

And that's important stuff. In other words, accreditation was about protecting the big box schools.

It was the money that you paid to get to keep competition out of your area.

It wasn't anything about scholarship. And over the years, what I've heard, as I've taught at other places, is that these people started talking about what you needed to be teaching and how you needed to be teaching it.

And so the reality is that there's already massive pressure to conform to the woke culture and the demands of all of the revolutionaries if you want to keep your accreditation.

But as soon as the Equality Act passes, this lawsuit is decided positively, anything along those lines, every one of those accrediting organizations will have to go along with those outcomes.

And that's it. If you want to attend an educational institution that actually believes what

Jesus taught in Matthew 19, actually believes what the Bible teaches in Romans 1, 1

Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1, Leviticus 18, Leviticus 19, Genesis 18 and 19, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Not only will you not be able to take out government -protected loans, to do that, but the issue of accreditation will no longer be an issue.

It's gone. It'll be done. And so what

I've said for a long, long time is scholarship is something you do, it's not something you buy. And that's going to have to be something that is put into practice, finally leaving the realm of, well, that's a nice thing, but...

And those denominations that have been playing the game... There's a lot of small denominations that realized a long time ago, we can do this far more effectively if we do it in a different way.

But all denominations are going to have to get to that point. The faithful ones, all the liberal ones will be fine because all of their schools will continue.

They won't even know anything happened because they don't believe anything the Bible says about that kind of stuff. I ran into online a guy named

Curtis Freeman, Dr. Curtis Freeman from Duke University.

And here's just a sample of wokeism. Worse, evangelical

Christianity is the greatest threat to human existence today. It must be laid waste.

I mean, there have been a flood of really, really, really bad sci -fi movies that have come out over the past 18 months.

And I mean really bad. As in 8 % rotten tomato grade bad.

Not even B -level bad. Bruce Willis has been in almost all of them. I mean, he just must be having tax problems or something.

I don't know. He was in some bad ones.

Anyway, this sounds like something like a line out of one of those really, really, really bad

B -movies. It must be laid waste. I mean, it's not even as good as Nuke It from Orbit.

It's the only way to make sure. I mean, that was classic. That had... And it is interesting that he's standing out in the middle of the road in his picture.

It's generally where you get run over in both directions. But he is a quote -unquote

Baptist, which again illustrates for us all the fact that the term Baptist really does not mean anything.

Baptist simply means what you believe about a form of baptism.

And there are non -Trinitarians, anti -gospel people who believe that baptism is by immersion.

So what? So what? Now, my understanding is he did remove this for obvious reasons, but he posted it.

And that's where these people are really coming from. That's their thought process.

It must be laid waste. It really must. Okay. Oh, a couple other things before I get to the last thing.

Did you hear about the Gallup poll that said for the first time in American history, less than 50 % of the population is a member of a church?

Now, I am not saying that poll is not significant.

What I am saying is, I have said for a very long time, I think back on my time at a

Southern Baptist megachurch. Made a lot of dear friends, good relationships there.

Rich and I met there. He was a wild, odd, charismatic.

It scared me to death. First time he walked up to me, I'm like, Oh! Like, I mean, you're just putting off static electricity, like Anyway, but he was with a very kind, gentle soul.

That sort of helped. Most of the electricity was zapping the kind, gentle soul guy. So that was good.

Have you looked him up recently? You need to try to track that man down. He's out there somewhere. Gotta find him.

Anyway, it's my 40th high school reunion year.

So I'm doing the walking down memory lanes. I ran it. I hooked up yesterday.

I hooked up yesterday with a fellow that I don't think I've literally talked to in coming up on 40 years this summer when we graduated from high school.

And so I'm just walking down memory lane a lot these days.

But I've said about that church, had 20 ,000 members, but we could never find more than 7 ,000 of them at any one given time.

Part of the reason was you had to personally submit your own death certificate in triplicate to get off the rolls of the church.

Yeah, that's, I did not, I personally, you had to present your own death. That was the point.

So I've said for a long, long time that the numbers that are reported, like, you know, the membership of the

Southern Baptist Convention, really? How many of those people attend 45 out of 52 times a year?

I mean, that's fairly regular. 45 out of 52. What percentage? A third, maybe?

So, and when you ask, when you, when you poll people, that's completely different than if you then went to the local church to find out if they actually were members anywhere.

Because they'll always tell you, oh yeah, sure. I'm a member of a church.

And what they mean is, on Easter Sunday and sometime before Christmas, we'll go visit a church somewhere.

Whoever's having the, whoever's having the donkeys and the camels. And so that makes us members of a church.

Functionally, the percentage has been way below 50 % for a long, long time. Not nearly as low as the

United Kingdom or Germany or any of those European places, even

Australia, but it's been down. So I, you know, I heard that and I was sort of like, okay, whatever you say.

And so what I wanted to look at was this one here.

A couple of weeks ago,

Jamar Tisby did, so the

Witness, which used to be RON, the

Reformed African American Network, is doing

Leaving Loud. And so all their primary people are getting together and talking about Leaving Loud.

So in a way of protest against white supremacy in evangelicalism, they are leaving and they're leaving loud.

They're leaving with protest. And so start off with the vice president and then

Jamar did his thing. My name came up, really didn't say too much about me, actually.

Like I said, just was confused about some of the timing and stuff. Which, you know, it was years ago, I understand. But I'm a terrible, horrible white supremacist, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of Ninth Commandment violation stuff, which is just, it's just built into being woke.

It's just, it's how you speak. You just can't speak truthfully about stuff like that. It's just the way it is.

Within, I think, two weeks, we have this tweet from Ibram X Kendi.

Yeah, Ibram X Kendi, the nationally known anti -racism racist.

Okay, he's, that's what it is. It's, he's, he's the guy that, you know, all whites are racist and it's, you know, there's nothing you can do about it.

And, but this is not a Christian organization by any stretch of the imagination. Jamar Tisby was

J. Ligon Duncan's personal assistant while at RTS Jackson. Okay.

You wonder why there's all this woke stuff in the PCA all over the place.

You can fill hours of video with the stuff. Didn't start yesterday.

So here's Ibram X Kendi. I'd like to warmly welcome Jamar Tisby, our new assistant director of narrative and advocacy at the

Anti -Racism Center. Tisby is the New York Times best -selling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism.

He is the founder of The Witness and co -hosts the Pass the Mic podcast. And so here's

Jamar's commentary here. The Center for Anti -Racist Research with its reach, resources, and vision is uniquely poised to help lead the nation in fighting racism.

This is a humbling opportunity and I am eager to get to work. What excites me the most about the Center is its mission to utilize the resources of the

Academy to help change the public narrative around race and accelerate the impact of grassroots organizations.

This is research designed and deployed for transformation. Jamar Tisby, assistant director of narrative and advocacy.

I wonder who the director is. I have a feeling it's probably Ibram Kendi. We have attempted repeatedly to point out the fact that what motivates this narrative, assistant director of narrative, change the public narrative.

I just call it The Narrative with a capital T and a capital N because that's the most important thing now is the narrative.

You have to repeat the narrative. You have to defend the narrative. Anything that contradicts the narrative has to be altered.

So when the numbers don't fit, when the facts don't fit, when the statistics don't fit, then you've got to attack them and you've got to attack anybody who would repeat those numbers and those statistics.

That's just the way it works. So narrative, narrative, narrative. It's everywhere.

The problem is this narrative organically grows out of a non -Christian substrate.

It's the origin and source of Ibram Kendi's anti -racism can in no way possibly be made to be consistent with a

Christian profession. It can't be.

It's simply impossible. And so back in 2016, when

I first was attacked by Ron for that one 532 word

Facebook comment about a young black man flipping off cops, and I mentioned, and back then it was like 72%, now it's 80%, numbers gone up since 2016.

When I said what black men and women say in the community all the time, they came after me and I said at the time, this trajectory is troubling.

This trajectory is troubling. If you follow this trajectory, these folks are not going to remain reformed.

And if you listen to what they're saying, they are literally embarrassed about the reality that in the 2000s and up to 2014, they were going to the same conferences with us.

They were speaking on the same subjects. We were talking about the beauty of justification. We were talking about the beauty of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

We could all get together and celebrate the Trinity, the incarnation.

I've told you before, when I met with Lecrae and his guys, what did we end up talking about?

Well, I did a presentation of liability of the New Testament, but what did we end up talking about? The hypostatic union, the relationship of the divine human

Christ, the various early errors of Polynarianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, William Lane Craigism, he's a

Neo -Polynarian, but anyway, they are embarrassed that they once did not have as the absolute frame the lenses through which they looked race, race, race, everything is race.

They're embarrassed that there was a time when they knew what it was to lay that aside and to have a different foundation of identity.

They're embarrassed by it. We said then, boy, you keep following this trajectory, and this is where it leads.

This is where it goes. And there's Jamar Tisby, and he's now at the anti -racism center.

There you go. It's sad, but it's where we are.

It's what we're dealing with today. And the trajectories are no longer trajectories.

The rocket has landed and exploded and took out everything near it. And that's what we're seeing in the church.

And the division is real. All right, well, Lord willing, and God continues to allow us to fly under the radar, literally, of the anti -racism center and everybody else.

We will be back with you next week. I'm not sure exactly when yet, but we'll obviously let you know as best we can.

Always keep an eye on the blog. Keep an eye at ailmen .org, because you never know when the hammer will fall, because it will eventually.