News Roundup: Israel, Slavery, ShepCon, Driscoll, Revival, & More

Conversations That Matter

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I don't think I really understood in seminary how relentless this battle would be, and how much discernment it would take, and how it would affect relationships, how many relationships eventually look like they're going in the right direction but are sacrificed to an unwillingness to do battle.

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And you wind up sort of at the end of your life having been stripped of people who at some point gave in to the other side, and the ranks get thinner and thinner.

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I'm sort of living in that era. I'm living in an era on one hand as a shepherd and a pastor where I have 50 years of loving people who have filled my life with so much love and so much kindness and so much affection that it's just beyond comprehension, and that's

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Grace Church, and that's the people who hear the Word of God and believe it and follow it. But on the other hand,

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I watch my life as it comes to an end being stripped of relationships with many, many evangelical leaders, because at some point they're unwilling to stand where I stand.

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They will call up and ask, how do we re -engage with MacArthur? What did we do?

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And it really comes down to whether or not you're a faithful soldier.

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Well it is time for the Conversations That Matter podcast, and you just heard the voice of John MacArthur. I have played that clip before, and I know

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I play it now with some sadness. You can probably hear some of it in my voice.

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I miss him, right? And there's a lot of people. I was realizing that this morning that I miss, not just personal but public figures.

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It wasn't that long ago, it feels like to me at least, Rush Limbaugh died, and I wasn't a huge follower of Jerry Falwell or anything, but I remember when he died, and it was like a giant fell.

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It was a moment that everyone just thought, what's next? And we're in that moment now, and we're in that moment in ways

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I've never seen it, with John MacArthur and of course Charlie Kirk and Vodie Bauckham all around the same time and following some scandals that took guys out that were guys that could have been waiting in the wings, at least in the evangelical reformed world.

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Anyway, God's in control. God knows what he's doing. You are on this earth for such a time as this.

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I don't think God made a mistake. I think he knows exactly what he needs to do. He's the kind of God who sifts the chaff, he saves the wheat, he makes sure that his people are protected, that if you serve him, he will make sure that you have food, you will have shelter, and all you have to do is seek first his kingdom.

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So I look at those things, I cling to his promises, but there are times, and I'm going to admit, I say, Lord, why that person?

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Why did you take, I mean, if you're going to take John MacArthur, why didn't you at least leave us Vodie Bauckham, right? Why did you have to take both of them?

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And I know I'm not alone in that. I've mentioned this before on the podcast, but I can't help but saying that as we open the podcast today, hearing that clip from an old friend,

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John MacArthur. I play that clip, though, for a specific purpose. I play it because the

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Shepherds Conference lineup, and I've had many people ask me to talk about this, is public, and it's been public for,

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I don't know, about a month or so. It's coming up in 2026 in the, I think it's, and usually it's end of February, beginning of March, somewhere around there, and I should probably know this.

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I have the website open right in front of me. When is it? It is in 2020,

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March 6th. OK, yeah, that's about right. So the lineup, though, is a little surprising, and I play that clip to set the stage for my commentary on this, which

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I don't think is going to be too long, but I don't think it'll be a surprise where I come down on this.

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The first four speakers in the lineup are, of course, John Piper, Lincoln Duncan, Albert Mueller, and Mark Devere.

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And John Piper, I know this confused some people because he had differences with John MacArthur, especially on cessationism and even the social justice stuff to some extent.

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But they re -cultivated a relationship because they met again at the Puritan Conference a few years ago.

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And my understanding is that some fences were mended and, or bridges mended,

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I suppose, if there were bridges that were in disarray. I know some of these other guys have talked to him since 2018, but there was a moment, and some of you may not remember this because of time.

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I'm not going to play the clip, but you can go on YouTube and find it if you want. And it's from the Shepherds Conference Q &A in 2018.

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And I believe it was 2018. I always confuse that. I was like, was it 2018 or 2019?

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It was pre -2020, right? It's all a blur pre -2020. I believe it was 2018. But either way, it was before 2020.

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And it was when the social justice movement was at a high pitch. Things were just in the evangelical world.

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You had the MLK 50, you had the T4G conference where Lincoln Duncan got up there and started weeping and saying that he had been complicit in racial discrimination of some kind because of the way he was taught.

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And you had and I was at Southeastern. I was actually in seminary when this was going on.

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And you had the Shepherds Conference. And that was kind of like the clarifying moment.

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That was the the question was on everyone's mind at that time. OK, we know that there's a problem.

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We know Russell Moore is a big part of this problem. We know Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary is a part of this problem. I remember they gave credit to students who would go to the

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MLK 50 conference. We know the Gospel Coalition is a problem. We know that the ERLC is a problem.

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We know David Platt's a problem. We can see all this clearly. We knew at that point that Ted Tripp was a problem, that these guys were saying things that were not orthodox.

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Ted Tripp even saying that there's the gospel of God's grace and there's the gospel of his justice. What does that even mean?

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And. We thought many of us that or we hoped that the big boys, the adults, the grown up table was going to take care of business and Shepherds Conference was going to be the place that was where you had

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Sinclair Ferguson, John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Mark Devere, Lincoln Duncan. And Al Mohler, and they were all sitting up there.

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And there was a lot of confusion because the Dallas, this must have been 2019, because I think the

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Dallas statement was 2018. So the Dallas statement had just come out. And John MacArthur, it was a few months previous, had signed the

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Dallas statement on social justice. You can still sign it. I believe the website's still active, I think. And John MacArthur was becoming bullish about this.

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In fact, after I think it was after the Q &A, it was right around the same time. He even said it was the greatest threat, meaning social justice.

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It was the greatest threat to the gospel that he had ever encountered in his ministry. That is quite the statement from a man who had been battling heretics of all kinds of stripes.

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Social justice, though, he thought this is the worst. This is of all the threats. That's the worst one to the gospel. So that happens.

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And. There's confusion because Al Mohler doesn't sign it and he gives some weird answer about it.

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I played it on the podcast at the time, I played it since then, but essentially says he doesn't want to send the wrong message. Right.

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Tim Keller says, well, it's speech act theory to sign this. There's this thing called speech act theory.

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And it suggests that it's not the meaning in the text that's the problem.

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It's the impression it would give. I don't want to give the wrong impression like I'm somehow, I guess, for racism.

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Al Mohler gave a very similar response to that. Racism is such a problem. And I guess if you sign the Dallas statement, you must be winking and nodding at racism.

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You had Mark Dever who didn't sign it, you had John Piper who didn't sign it, you had all these guys, you had

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Lincoln Duncan who didn't sign it. And the clarifying moment comes and Phil Johnson asked

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Al Mohler, do you not see what's happening? And Al Mohler becomes irate, he becomes frustrated and you see a flash of anger.

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And it was clear to everyone at that point, oh, there is a difference. They're not all together. And Lincoln Duncan gave some weird response about why he didn't.

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I remember this also clear as day. He he talked about how he didn't want his grandkids to be kind of funneled into the

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LGBTQ plus lobby. He didn't want them to go to them and see them as favorable.

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So he had to prove to them somehow that he was advanced and progressive on the topic of race.

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Or else they would just go, they would see Christians are hypocrites and they go to the LGBTQ direction. Mark Dever told a story about a young black man needing to have the talk about police officers, and this was that prevented him somehow from signing the

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Dallas statement on social justice. And so the insinuation from all of those men was that if you were

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John MacArthur, you're kind of being soft on racism. That's the most favorable, charitable way to read that.

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The very worst, you are actually pro racism of some variety. And at that time, of course, the term racism itself was being redefined and people didn't know exactly what was meant by that, but we knew it was bad.

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John MacArthur's for something bad. And as things progressed, you could see the riff getting wider.

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You saw when the covid stuff happened in 2020, there was a church shutdown. And John MacArthur opens up his church and who countersignals him,

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Jonathan Lehman from Nine Marks Ministries. Who decides to sponsor or at least to promote a

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BLM style march in Washington, D .C., while their church is closed, guys from Nine Marks.

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When the Beth Moore go home controversy starts, which was, I think, right before that.

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John MacArthur is against women pastors, and that was really the context, Beth Moore should go home, she shouldn't be preaching to mixed audiences, that's against the

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New Testament. Lincoln Duncan goes out there and I remember this, clear as day, I did a whole podcast, it's still the most popular podcast

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I've done. And Lincoln Duncan countersignals John MacArthur.

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And he makes some kind of sanctimonious kind of tweet about how there's this doctrinal rigidity out there that it's it sees itself as doctrinally correct, but it's missing the big picture, essentially.

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And it was right at the same moment. And I'm like, there's no mistaking what what he was countersignaling at the time.

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And sure enough, those guys are not back at Shepherds Conference, not since that time have they been back at Shepherds Conference.

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And John MacArthur makes that statement in a chapel at the

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Master's Seminary. That I think it was after the Q &A, it was it was within the year or so.

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It was not long after, maybe a year after. Maybe it was 2020, but it was it wasn't that long after and it was he doesn't name any names.

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But I remember I went out on my podcast, I said, this sounds awfully like the guys who abandoned him on the

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Dallas State Statement. And then, of course, it's a chapel that for some reason gets scrubbed from YouTube.

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I understand it is available in other places. I have I downloaded the full thing because that was such a great message from John MacArthur, but that one gets scrubbed.

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OK, I don't know why I'm not I don't. I don't pretend to know why exactly. But I thought it was a significant moment when he said what you heard at the beginning of this podcast.

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So the question that I've received is, John, did my signing the

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Dallas Statement mean anything? Did acknowledging and agreeing with John MacArthur that social justice, the greatest threat to the gospel, one of them, it is a threat.

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And those guys not going along with it, not. Putting shields up to deflect that threat, in fact, going the extra mile,

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Ligon Duncan went the extra mile and wrote the forward to woke church.

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A book that claims that Africa's. Anti -apartheid program and denazification program in Germany, that these things are programs that can teach

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Christians how to apply the gospel. I'm sorry, a bunch of pagans, but well, a bunch of people who aren't

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Christian, they're not doing it in Jesus name, that it's just it's an ethical thing. These are these are the people that are going to teach you how to apply how to there's the works involved.

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And I guess people who aren't Christian can be involved with the gospel. I mean, what are we talking about here exactly? But Lincoln Duncan thought it was great.

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Goes the extra step during John MacArthur's lifetime.

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These guys weren't around. And I don't know. And I haven't asked and I'm not going to. And I don't and part of the problem with it is, can you even believe

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I don't know who to believe? I don't know. I don't even know where to start with trying to figure out why would they invite these guys?

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And I don't even think it's that big of a deal as far as my personal plans. I'm not going to Shepard's Conference. I have many friends who are and it's fine if you want to go to Shepard's, no problem with that,

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I just I know how new evangelicalism works. And I'll put it this way,

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I would not be surprised. OK, so this is John's opinion. I would not be surprised if.

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It's harder to attract people when you don't have John MacArthur and you don't have Votie Bockham anymore and you don't have

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Steve Lawson because he's disqualified. Who are your A -listers now in the reformed evangelical world?

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How do you sell tickets? And the answer to that is, I don't know exactly,

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I don't. These were some of the former A -listers who have not been at Shepard's Conference.

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And now they're back now, you make of that what you will. I think the ranks are thin,

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I think this is a problem, the ranks are thin at the higher levels, and we have been used to in reformed evangelical circles, at least having guys who are able to draw a crowd.

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Those guys aren't around as much anymore, if you want to attract anywhere from, you know, seven to or six to twelve thousand people, how are you going to do it anymore?

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It's a different environment. Things are very fractured. People have fractured over social issues.

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What do you do? Well, I don't I think this is this is my personal opinion.

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I don't think this is very respectful to the legacy of John MacArthur to be quite frank, especially to have

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Ligon Duncan, Albert Mueller and Mark Dever there. Why weren't they there during John MacArthur's lifetime?

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They had been consistently there. Then all of a sudden they weren't after the Shepard's Conference Q &A. And then you see all the circumstantial things that I just pointed to.

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So who's who's inviting them now? Why? Why invite them now? Is this an opportunity for them to repent, to say that John MacArthur was right?

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We were wrong on these things. That would be nice. But why wait for the conference to do that? Right. Some have suggested that, you know,

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John, hold on. Maybe that's what this is. Now, there's another conference that has also been.

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Getting some attention and I'll address that. The Clear Truth Conference, Clear Truth Media Conference, which and I've had,

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I think, one or two articles published with Clear Truth, and I like a lot of the guys there. Nothing personal against any of those guys.

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It really what has happened and this is what I told some people, I think that this is more of an opportunity for those who really don't like Mark Driscoll to kind of seize the moment while he's in the spotlight for replacing

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Bode Bauckham at the upcoming conference and to say. Let's draw a line, let's redraw a line, really no

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Mark Driscoll in our circles, right, because he's he's coming in in some avenues and it's really not hard to figure out why he's better and he's good on many social issues that other guys who are theologically more correct and have proven themselves to have much more virtue and in some ways they just haven't been maybe as vocal or as good on some of these social issues.

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And a lot of the lines now are more political. That's true. That's that's one of the things that's happening. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time here, but I will take you on a trip down memory lane and I will introduce you to a few things that I believe for a long time about Mark Driscoll, because this isn't a new thing to me.

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I will reveal some of the things that I was taught in 2011 at Master's Seminary concerning Mark Driscoll as well and how the that particular crowd more or less saw him and why they had objections to him.

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I actually share some of those objections, although I did not share them to the extent that I heard them at that time.

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But I think many of the critiques that even MacArthur had of Mark Driscoll have been fleshed out.

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They have been. Validated to some extent, so where do you go from here?

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That's the question, where do you do with someone like Mark Driscoll? What do you do in an environment where you can reinvent yourself very easily?

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It's like no time in history you have access to equipment that gives you a studio that looks as good as a professional studio.

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You can do it in your home. You can do it in your bedroom. I mean, how do you how do you show that?

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No, what we're doing is more official. We've actually gone through the ranks or through the process of peer review and all the things, the stopgap measures that are supposed to make sure that you're qualified.

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You can look qualified so easily today, and this is I'm going to say this is a problem.

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I did a democratization of the narratives and truth and all that. That does have some challenges.

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There's some advantages because when you have the wrong people that are into lies controlling that narrative, then you have a problem and the truth can't get out there.

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But once you open up the floodgates and everyone has access to the social media levers, then you can get very bad actors who can reinvent themselves.

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They can be like the main character in The Music Man and just kind of get everyone kind of whooped up into a frenzy about their their marketing plans and all of that.

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And they're a fraud. That's very easy. Well, is that Mark Driscoll? The answer to that is

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I don't I don't completely know. I'm not going to actually go beyond what I do know, but I will tell you what I do, what I know.

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I won't go beyond what I know, but I will tell you what I do know. And I think that I would be very cautious personally about Mark Driscoll.

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And I will tell you why. I'll tell you why as we get through this. But here's the Cleartruth conference.

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This is March 6th through March 5th through 6th. Actually, is that the same? So you can either go to the Shepherds Conference or the

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Cleartruth Conference. I guess you have an option. And Mark Driscoll's replacing Bode Bauckham.

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You have Doug Wilson. Actually, what does it say here? It's a Stephen Whitlow. I've had some pretty good exchanges with him.

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I think he was the one actually published some of my stuff with Cleartruth. David Englehardt, Megan Basham.

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And Rob McCoy, Charlie Kirk's pastor. They're all going to be there. So I wouldn't dissuade you from trying to go to this conference at all.

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But Mark Driscoll, I think, does present an issue. And the issue is, this is the real question.

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What are the standards for when you have failures, ministry failures?

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What do we require? What standard or what failure is too far that you can come back?

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And then if you can't come back, what do we require? Where are the standards? And I can tell you where standards more or less have been, right?

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An affair takes you out. Now, that's not true anymore, by the way. That's not true. That's changing.

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Guys like Tooley and Tavitian can come back and build a platform. You can say, you know,

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I'm going to keep preaching and you'll have an audience. That wasn't something that used to happen. But affairs took people out.

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Other kinds of sexual indiscretions would take people out. They still do. In many circles, at least, but that is changing.

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Financial indiscretions would take people out. You manipulate finances, you steal people's money.

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You play with your church's finances for personal reasons and so forth that you break laws when it comes to finances, you get in trouble.

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And and I'm not talking about, you know, minor tasks, you know, IRS has an immense,

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I'm talking about like premeditated, you were trying to skim that gets you in trouble as well.

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Those were the two main things. Now, there is a third thing. If you had a severe temper, anger and violent issues, that would also take you out if it was severe enough.

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It definitely would. You as a pastor, you have to be self -controlled. Now, where does Mark Driscoll fit into all of this?

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It's probably the third one more than anything else. But I want to remind you of some things,

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Mark Driscoll has become. Somewhat famous, at least the narrative, the Christianity Today has on him from the

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Rise and Fall of Mark Sills podcast, which I haven't even listened to, I just don't care enough. I knew enough about it at the time it happened, it was it was enough for me to say,

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OK, there's some bad stuff here. Maybe it's not all as it was portrayed, but there's enough there for me to say, yeah, not good.

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Well. During in 2007, is 2007, yeah,

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Christianity Today was singing a different tune, the pastor provocateur by Colin Hansen, love him or hate him.

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Mark Driscoll is helping people meet Jesus in one of America's least church cities. Mark Driscoll looks no different than he does any other day.

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So it goes on, let's see, and then we can't access the whole article. I was frustrated because there's a number of Christianity articles I wanted to show you from this era and I could not show them all to you.

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But this was more or less a favorable article about Mark Driscoll and Colin Hansen actually wrote a book on the young reform movement.

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He included Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll. Those are two of the major churches he focused on. And two of the major things he focused on were the contextualization issue that Mark Driscoll and Tim Keller were both doing something.

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They were giving you a model for how to do church. And it was different than the previous models. Now, you already know me.

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If you listen to this podcast, innovation is I'm very careful with innovation. I'm a,

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I like tradition and innovation. You got to tread carefully. I'm not saying all change is bad. I'm just saying you got to really think through it.

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I remember I was there. I, I was, I was there 3000 years ago, whatever. I, I was there when the emergent church was kind of like, uh, people like Doug pageant and Brian McClain, uh,

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McLaren and, uh, Rob Bell. And these guys, they were making their inroads. And at the same time you had

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John Piper and Tim Keller and sort of a more popular

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John MacArthur and Francis chant and, uh, Tim Chalise. And all these guys were becoming popular.

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And Mark Driscoll was in that mix and Tim Keller was in that mix. And there was a resurgence of reform theology.

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There was also though a focus on contextualization, taking the gospel and going into a community and trying to quote unquote, meet the people where they were at.

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When in Rome, right? Becoming all things to all men. It was the word that was used at the time.

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It was missional. It was missional. Mark Driscoll was one of the guys who used the term quite a bit and it was applied to him.

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He was missional and he broke from the emergent guys, even though he had their style on many things, he, uh, he did wear the casual style of dress.

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He still does. I mean, he'll preach with a baseball cap on, you know, this is something that the older generations did not appreciate that, but he was doing so.

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And, uh, uh, was it Seattle outside of Seattle, I guess. And he, or right.

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I think it was right near Seattle or in Seattle. It was like right there. And it was a, it was an unchurched area and this was kind of a new method and it seemed to be working.

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He was doing the satellite thing, innovative. Uh, you would pipe him in to local churches.

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Now this is personal for me because a little bit, I had a cousin who was attending one of the satellite campuses.

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And when everything fell apart, because it's all contingent on one man, I saw the personal fallout.

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I saw what that did. I saw how that affected real people. And I, it was bad.

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It was a crater. It was bad. And that's something that doesn't get talked about often is all the people who were kind of let down by this.

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And because their, their faith was, yeah, it's okay. It's in Jesus. Some for some of them, but it's also in this guy and when it's like dominoes, the one falls, it all falls.

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So he's bringing in these methods. And one of the things he did for contextualization was, well, you know, the pagan secular people, they're really into, you know, pornography.

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They're into, uh, they're sexually loose. They're casual.

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You can't do church as usual. So what you need to do is do a different thing for them.

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You got to meet them where they're at. And so that's where you find his song of Solomon series.

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I don't recommend if you have children reading to them at all, it's pornographic. I mean, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a good interpretation of song of Solomon at all.

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My opinion, it comes from like someone with a pornographic mindset, in my opinion, uh, to come to some of the conclusions he does.

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And he, he, he creates laws out of it. Basically he creates directives for marriages and what wives should be doing for their husbands and this kind of thing, uh, based on the song of Solomon.

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These are commands from Jesus to, to engage in certain sexual things. He has his book on marriage, had some good things.

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I read it, but his stuff on sexual positions and all of that, it was just, it was unnecessary.

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It's you could have given principles without getting graphic, right? And he gets known for being kind of like the cussing pastor saying things that are off color.

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This becomes part of his reputation. And this is something that he champions.

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He, he defends that says, no, it's good. I'm ready. People are coming to church because of it. I got a pagan.

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Um, I got a man who's coming to church cause his wife, uh, heard that I told I, and this was in public,

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I think it was on a Sunday service that, um, that she should be doing a certain act to him.

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And this attracted him to church. It was, this is now why people are coming because they, you know, they want to know what this pastor saying.

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And you, and you remember he did these, these, uh, night services where you could text in any question, no matter how off color and he would answer it.

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So this is how he did church. And at the time, uh, so I'm at,

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I go to master's, uh, seminary for a semester and I'm there and I'm in a class.

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I'm in a, um, discipleship class. And it was, it was probably one of, it was my least favorite class because we weren't really learning anything.

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It was, it was a lot of, it was just like, uh, getting together in the morning and talking about this kind of stuff.

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Right. Uh, the, the inside scoop on Francis Chan or the inside scoop on Mark Driscoll.

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And so I was there one morning. I, I, that was actually the class I missed the most. Cause I was just like, I think the lowest grade

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I got in seminary. Cause I just didn't show up half the time, probably not a good model to follow, go to class.

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But, uh, I was just like, yeah, I'm here to study the Bible. And I just didn't like it. But I do remember that we had a class, we were talking about Mark Driscoll and it was like all the ins and outs about Mark Driscoll.

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And the main, but I'll just summarize it. The main objection to him was actually what was behind.

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It wasn't just that, Oh, he cusses. Oh, he's got profanity. It was what was behind it, the philosophy behind it.

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Why is he doing these things? And I think I agree with the objection. He's doing it because he thinks it makes him popular.

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He he's doing it because he thinks it's what people want to hear. And they'll hear the gospel. If they hear that he's doing it because it sets them apart.

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He's doing it because that's how you're supposed to do church in a deep blue area, which

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Seattle was. Meanwhile, simultaneous, there was another man in New York city who was also doing contextualization and he was in a very deep blue area also.

29:43

And this was Tim Keller. And at the time, both Keller and Driscoll had, there was a big overlap between the people who followed both of them.

29:51

They were both doing contextualization. They were doing it slightly differently, though. Driscoll was kind of like shouting at men.

29:58

I mean, his most famous clip is how dare you mistreat a woman, right? And it's very different, by the way, than the manosphere red pill guys today.

30:06

There's a lot of comparisons made, but it's actually very different because a lot of the manosphere red pill guys are going the direction of kind of like toxic empathy.

30:13

And kind of being more maternal, to be quite honest, like you're a victim of your circumstances and maybe you can't even get out of them and never be hard on men, right?

30:22

Because men have had it hard enough, right? Mark Driscoll was the opposite of that. He was hard on men all the time.

30:30

And some people said even too hard, but it was it was a very much, you know, pull yourself up, be a man, take responsibility.

30:39

Some of it was good. And and then kind of being the dressing like the working class, kind of like the

30:45

MAGA style, you know, the trucker hat kind of goes to church before MAGA.

30:52

Very populist level stuff, trying to reach the common man, the man who's been left behind because he doesn't understand the worship songs that are being sung.

30:59

They're too emotional. And he just really he wants to to be there, but he's got to have a masculine church, right?

31:06

This is Mark Driscoll. Now, you could look at him now and say, well, maybe not a lot has changed in that regard.

31:12

I think he still does that to some extent. Maybe that is authentically kind of how he is. Tim Keller was different.

31:18

Tim Keller was more we're going to attract we're not going for the middle class kind of working class kind of guy.

31:25

We're going for the the public radio listener, the

31:30

PBS watcher, the TED talk consumer. We're going for the more sophisticated urbanite.

31:37

And we're going to do so and we're going to do so by appealing to them, by quoting

31:42

The New York Times and talking about the things that they're reading, meeting them where they're at.

31:47

So we got to go a little more kind of progressive to get there. We're going to be soft pedaling some things and we're going to be downplaying some things, upplaying other things.

31:57

And it's like that. Was it Samantha? I don't remember her last name, but the journalist who wrote about she was a member of Tim Keller's church, and she thought this is great until she realized what

32:07

Christians believed about abortion. And she she's like, well, I never heard that at Tim Keller's church. So I know it wasn't confronted with it.

32:13

Right. This was the way to grow your church. And these two models were they weren't in like avid competition.

32:21

They were somewhat complimentary, but they were different. And guys who wanted to do contextualization, who were looking for the key, how do we kind of make this reform theology work in these areas?

32:32

This was the initial objection to Mark Driscoll. Just it was like, why do you have to change the style?

32:37

Why do you have to change the focus and go profane and go vulgar?

32:44

Why don't you just go preach the gospel, preach the Bible, have a higher standard, don't wear a baseball cap when you're preaching.

32:53

That's disrespectful, like uphold some of the standards. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with meeting people where they're at in their brokenness and their sin and addressing their sin problems.

33:03

But you don't have to like bend over backwards to appeal to these people by talking about the perversions that they're into in graphic detail.

33:13

Right. That was basically the objection. Well, then a few other things happened. And one of them was

33:20

Mark Driscoll ends up there, there's sort of a scandal that happens. This is for the basis for the

33:25

Rise and Fall of Marshall podcast. And you can go online, you can still read the 40 charges signed by all these elders against Mark Driscoll.

33:34

I will spare you all the details. I mean, some of the names in here are names you would recognize from people who are who have talked about this, who are basically on the progressive left on many issues.

33:46

And I think that arouses a lot of suspicion. Now, I'll say this, that should arouse some suspicion, but you should also not just discount something because someone on the left necessarily said it.

33:55

There is good reporting that does happen sometimes by people who might be your left. Does it mean that you should check it out?

34:02

You should do your homework and all of that. But I don't just throw it out because of that. I want to assess what do we know?

34:09

What are the primary sources, all that kind of thing? This is the kind of thing that elders at Mark Driscoll's church were saying about him during that time.

34:17

I'm about to rip your head off and excrete down your neck.

34:25

In my role, all of the central staff reported to me. So everybody, we had 200 some odd employees in the central staff, resurgence, all of those things,

34:37

Marcel Books, Marcel Music, everything like that reported up through me. And then

34:43

I reported directly to Mark. He was my boss. I also sat on the board with Dave and Mark.

34:49

So we were the three that were on the board and we had four board members that were outside. And any time that Mark went to speak,

34:57

I was there. I lived down the street from Mark. I would typically meet him at his house and his executive assistant, and we would drive to wherever he was preaching.

35:10

I'd be with him the whole time there, wherever we were preaching, and then I would come back.

35:17

So, I mean, you could say during that time period between 2011 and 2014, nobody spent more time with Driscoll than I did.

35:27

Dave and I were the only ones to have one on one meetings with Mark during those three year period of time.

35:32

We had to isolate him because he was so harsh on staff members that we had to literally relocate an office to house

35:45

Mark. And then Dave and I would go there as well on the days that we met. So, yeah,

35:50

I saw a lot of that. You know, and to not be, and some of the things that, so, yes, there was a lot of accusations that were during, and it really started in 13, 2013.

36:10

But the formal charges, the 25 formal charges are listed, and I've actually, in my notes that I published, pulled some of those items when the investigating elders literally asked

36:30

Mark about each one of those charges. And many of those, you will read, he says, oh, yeah,

36:37

I did that. Oh, yeah, I did that. He admits to the sin. And so, yes,

36:45

I saw some, and I'll just give you an example to give you from that.

36:51

We were at Ballard. That was one of our churches, our 15 churches locations, the oldest church location.

37:01

And it was eight o 'clock. So, we had an eight o 'clock service. So, typically, sometimes we would do five to seven services.

37:10

Mark would preach five to seven services on a weekend, and we would go to different churches, typically.

37:16

The eight o 'clock service at Ballard was very young. A lot of young people would come.

37:22

There was no time limit on the outside of it. So, typically, he could preach for as long as he wanted to.

37:29

And one night we did a call to baptism. It was an incredible response to the gospel.

37:38

A lot of people wanted to go and get baptized. During the day at Ballard, they had run out of towels and shirts, because we would provide short shirts and shorts to people.

37:50

So, when I saw the response, I was trying to find, backstage, trying to find towels and things.

37:58

The campus pastor and some of the other people were running. Mark, when he realized what was going on, you know, we're playing music, people are getting baptized.

38:08

Mark grabs somebody by the throat, against the wall, and says, and I'll clean this up, because there was a lot of cuss words.

38:20

But he was mad at the person for not having enough shorts and enough shirts.

38:26

And I'm about to rip your head off. And excrete down your neck.

38:34

And this is full up against the wall with somebody that was actually a pastor of the church.

38:42

OK, so you have witnesses to events like this, and so it's not just one person saying it.

38:49

This is something that's been more or less confirmed by a number of people. And Mark Driscoll has agreed that some of these things did take place.

38:57

And this becomes the sort of foundation for the rise and fall of Marcell. Now, since then,

39:03

I've seen clips of Mark Driscoll saying that there was a setup and there was it may be a whole big mess is what it may be.

39:10

But there was an anger issue there of some kind. Right. So this has become one of the major things.

39:15

Now, there's a few other things. There's the charismatic stuff. Now, Justin Peters, I know, has done a lot on that. I haven't watched his episode on it, but I know there's people in the chat that are talking about it.

39:23

And I will get to your comments in a moment here. And then there's also and this is the big thing for me,

39:29

I think, bigger than the other stuff is just to me, this this the anger stuff's an issue.

39:36

The I think the charismatic stuff, the heavy charismatic stuff is an issue.

39:42

Mark Driscoll's changed his theology. He's rejected the Calvinism stuff that he promoted before.

39:50

He has some very, I would say, kind of rigid views on cessationism, continuationism.

39:58

I mean, he thinks that if you're a cessationist, you're basically a practical atheist. And so, you know, can

40:04

Mark go to a place where there's other people who are practical atheists? They're speaking with them. I guess he can because he is.

40:10

But he's found new places. This is this is the thing that I'm this is what

40:16

I'm watching out for. He kind of cut himself off from a lot of the places he used to be popular.

40:26

And so what has happened? He's popular again. But where is he gone? He basically was his reputation was somewhat revived because of the fact that he was on the

40:35

Steven Crowder show. So there's sort of a now I was gonna say Steven Crowder's edgy, but maybe not now for the standard that we have now.

40:43

But at one time he was sort of like an edgy ish right wing podcaster ends up bringing

40:49

Driscoll on. And you have Driscoll going to charismatic events where he wasn't speaking before.

40:56

But now that that matches his new theology is essentially now he had charismatic stuff before. I would say he all of what you just heard happened, but it's become more so.

41:06

And people who have studied it deeply, more deeply than me, like Justin Peters, can point you to all the sources.

41:14

Now, the big thing for me, this is the issue that I sort of bristle at more than anything else. Christina Day ran a piece on this.

41:21

There was a number of places, though, and this was in 2013. Mark Driscoll improperly copied paragraphs from Bible commentary.

41:30

And this was in his Janet Mefford actually was one. Janet Mefford now I know is he's like against me.

41:35

She says, I don't know what's happened to Janet Mefford. I can't speak for that. But at the time you can go back and you can listen. Janet Mefford confronted

41:41

Mark Driscoll. He did not have good answers on why he had plagiarized, why he had taken without attribution material exact quotes and use them for his book.

41:54

This is kind of an issue. Now, the other issue that I'd say go along with this is Pastor reportedly buys his way into New York Times bestseller list.

42:05

That's according to a news report outlining how Mark Driscoll, an evangelical pastor, paid two hundred and ten thousand to Result Source, Incorporated, a professional firm in the business of making bestsellers.

42:13

The result, Driscoll's book Real Marriage, which he wrote with his wife, skyrocketed in the

42:18

New York Times bestseller list. Now, so you could call this kind of like gaming the system. This was the next year. This was 2014.

42:23

I remember this vividly because I read the book and then this basically scandal, mini scandal breaks out that like this is how he's promoting himself.

42:33

This is how he's gaining a platform. He's building it himself, but he's doing this with church money. He's doing this with plagiarized, taking shortcuts that a pastor shouldn't be taking.

42:46

And I think the big red flag is he doesn't back off of it. And I look this morning, someone maybe can link me if I missed it somehow, but I didn't find any examples of him repenting for any of this, which is

42:58

I think that's a major red flag to me. So I think that was about it that I wanted to say.

43:06

Okay, so here's the long and short of this is my conclusion on Mark Driscoll, where he stands now.

43:12

It's been years. You could say since then. Right. It's been over 10 years. Why would we still bring some of this stuff up?

43:18

The question is, oh, one more thing. Okay, hold that thought. Mark Driscoll also came to Shepard's conference around the same time.

43:28

It was, I think, maybe 2012 or so, and he brought with him a stack of his books, and he is quoted.

43:37

I remember there was some news stories about it where he wasn't actually an attendee. He just drove over with books, boxes of books.

43:45

And there are these conflicting testimonies about what happened and all of this. But the long and short of it is he was quoted as saying he didn't like even reform people in these tribal.

43:55

We're too tribal is basically what he said. We need to be less tribal. The implication being that the guys at Shepard's, I guess, there's tribalism there.

44:03

And so he starts handing out his books for free without any kind of going through what you would expect to be the proper channels.

44:12

Right now, maybe he thought he could do that. Whatever. It was seen as disrespectful at the time. And even I thought that's kind of a brash move.

44:20

So it's a minor thing, but if you put all these things together, the question that I ask, and this is the sort of my long and short conclusion about Mark Driscoll is, okay, what kind of man is he?

44:30

What is there a pattern here? What's what's his integrity like? Is he the kind of man that owns the mistakes that he makes, owns the sins that he has, publicly talks about them, backs off of them, right?

44:44

That's number one. Number two, is he the kind of man that is.

44:52

On shifting sand, he will change his beliefs, not because of growth, but because of.

44:59

Maybe he thinks it's growth, but but because of opportunity and platforming and these kinds of things, that's an open question in my mind.

45:05

I don't know, but it is odd to me. He would change. He was he was known as like the Calvinist and he changes his core conviction on that.

45:12

OK, people can change, but it's a convenient change. Is he the kind of person with the anger, with the trying to gain popularity through purchasing books that to make it to inflate the numbers with taking shortcuts with?

45:31

Is he the kind of person that has the virtue necessary to actually lead a church?

45:37

Now, the only way you can answer this is by going to scripture. It doesn't matter what my opinion is. What are the qualifications, right?

45:43

He should be a man of beyond reproach, husband of one wife, having children who believe not accused of indecent behavior or rebellion.

45:49

Well, I guess you could say indecent behavior beyond reproach. I mean, those things maybe come up in this must be beyond reproaches.

45:56

God steward, not self -willed, not quick tempered and quick tempered, pretty specific, not overindulging in wine, not a bully.

46:04

That's pretty specific, not greedy for money. I don't know,

46:10

I mean, greedy for fame, is that for influence, for platforming, for selfish ambition, hospitable, loving what is good, self -controlled.

46:21

That's another sticky one, righteous, holy, disciplined, holding firmly the faith, faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching so that you'll be able to exhort in sound doctrine, refute those who contradict it.

46:32

So based on this, I think that there's a few sticking points there. There's that he was not qualified at one point.

46:42

Is it enough to say he's permanently disqualified? Well, the answer is

46:47

I think this depends on prudence. And whether or not there's a tremendous amount of growth and it's evident and he places himself under people to help them get those who are spiritual are supposed to restore, whether or not those tendencies do not manifest anymore, that there's been an actual change and above all that there's been actual repentance.

47:13

I'm not, I'm ignorant on most of those things. I am unaware. I have not found the repentance factor.

47:21

So for me, this is the next step. Would I share a stage with Mark Driscoll? I would go a lot of places and share stages with people

47:29

I disagree with as long as I'm not muzzled, as long as I'm not told, oh, you can't say anything against Mark or what

47:35

Mark believes. So maybe depending on the circumstance, if wisdom dictates it, but I would never want to give the impression and I don't think it necessarily does just sharing a stage alone, but I would never want to give the impression that I endorse him as qualified for ministry because I more than hesitate to answer that in the affirmative.

47:57

His theology certainly doesn't match mine on some things, but his character was the issue that eventually took him out.

48:04

Has his character been restored? I don't know that time, there's been enough experience and time to be able to tell that.

48:12

Now, there are people who vouch for him, who say he's great. He's kind.

48:18

I don't doubt any of that. I'm sure he is. The question is, though, is he a pastor? Is he, does he meet those qualifications?

48:24

Has a restoration taken place where he can actually be restored to the pulpit ministry?

48:30

Because he's going there and speaking as a pastor. That's his role, not a podcaster, not anything else. A pastor, not a politician even, right?

48:38

And I know these lines are getting blurred in some places between podcaster, political pundit, pastor, professor.

48:45

Pastor is an actual office in scripture with actual qualifications, though, not just derived from tradition.

48:52

They're derived in God's holy law and they're very specific. So I will take comments and questions on that before we continue on with the podcast.

49:02

We're already 49 minutes in. I'm smoking some brisket and ribs. So I'm trying to keep an eye on that, but I may end the podcast early because my temperature app for some reason isn't working.

49:13

So I don't know what's going on out there and it's having me worried. I want to have really tasty, good brisket and ribs later.

49:19

Anyway, some comments that I want to bring to you, cosmic trees and John, I was there when the strength of men failed.

49:25

Yes, yes, I was there when the strength of men failed it back in 2006 through 2011.

49:32

Donna, what is going on? Driscoll is a creep. Justin Peters did a video about it. Justin Peters probably knows a lot more than I do, so I will defer to him.

49:40

I don't know if I would agree with all his takes, but I think in general, Justin Peters is, he at least goes to the primary sources and he's going to show you the bad theology and all of that.

49:49

So sure, I would, I have a fair amount of confidence that Justin Peters would correctly at least bring to you some of those theological issues that Mark Driscoll has had.

50:00

The 2019 ShepCon was the dividing line between pastors who will stand firm, exemplified.

50:05

It was 2019. Thank you, John MacArthur and the social justice beta males, pastors like Duncan, Polar and Piper. They might be, uh, gamma males.

50:14

They might be gamma males. That's also a possibility. Paul trip, says James Weirson, uh,

50:19

Paul trip, not Ted, right? Yes, absolutely right. I messed that up. So let the record show.

50:26

I meant Paul David trip, not Ted trip. And I apologize for that. I'm please forgive me.

50:31

Uh, shepherding a child's heart is a good book and I did not mean to saddle you with the things your brother said.

50:40

Uh, marooned says Christian, Kirsten powers is the journalist you were thinking about with Keller. Okay. Yes, that's right.

50:46

I think it was Chris. So I, what did I say? I said a totally different name. Okay. Yes, you're right. Kirsten powers. And then tie bow says his sermons, meaning

50:53

Driscoll's are now drastically different from his Mars Hill sermons. I think he's changed. Okay. Some people do think that, and they're going off of things like that.

51:00

I don't listen to his sermons much. I, I, I saw the display he did at a conference, maybe two years ago where he said there, there was an

51:09

Ashcroft poll there and stuff. I actually kind of defended him. Cause I just thought, well, if, you know, if this is sincere, then, uh, there was, it was some ridiculous stuff going on there, but, um, it was a weird situation.

51:21

The whole thing was just a weird situation. And I don't know. I don't know what to make of it completely.

51:27

Um, Mr. Perry says that's, uh, why did so many people flock to Marcel in the first place only to abandon it?

51:34

Was it just because they wanted to follow a celebrity pastor? This is a question I've asked. And I think behind all of this is the question of new evangelicals have always been after influence.

51:44

They want, they are attracted to celebrity, those who are popular. And it's been a bad, it's been our downfall guys.

51:52

It's frankly, let the platform grow around you. Let virtue build a platform.

51:57

Let theology build a platform. When you start, when you start thinking in terms of like, well,

52:04

I don't have the A -listers anymore. I got to bring in other A -listers. Well, I'm going to bring in people that they may be different.

52:10

I don't agree with everything you start because of popularity, you're motivated to do this. You start waffling on things.

52:17

That's like the, I'm not accusing anyone of waffling necessarily, but I'm just saying that is the road that leads there.

52:23

And I am suspicious, careful, concerned about those things. I don't want to see that happen.

52:29

If it's a smaller platform, it's a smaller platform. If other guys are getting a lot of people flocking to them and they're, they have bad character or they don't have the necessary astuteness when it comes to theology, let it happen.

52:42

Let God build it. And it's okay if people are popular too. I'm not against popularity.

52:48

I'm just saying, don't let popularity be the driver. That's what I'm saying. As far as shepherds conference says,

52:54

Jared, where is Ligonier? Don't they have a list guys that could pull as an audience? Why not? Tom Askell?

53:00

I don't know fully. Why not? I think there, I think there are, I'll put it this way and they're formed evangelical world.

53:07

And this is goes for a lot of worlds. It's like a soap opera behind the scenes. Sometimes there's a lot of drama.

53:12

There's a lot of personalities. There's a lot of differences. It doesn't usually make sense to those who are consuming the sermons because they're like, well, he's sounds similar to what he said.

53:20

There's a reason that I'm not invited to most of these places and haven't been. And it's not because I wasn't popular enough.

53:28

Sometimes it is, or, but it's, there's just a lot of politics and it's not a world. I don't want to play the politics.

53:33

I don't like it. It gets tiresome. And anyway, there there's reasons.

53:40

I think that it's not like that, but I'm going to leave it there. I'm going to leave it there.

53:46

We're going to skip PCA stuff. I'll save that for another time. I will highlight this. Danny Aiken is resigning from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

53:55

I probably exposed Danny Aiken just as much, if not more than anyone on, I could play you so many videos and I, it doesn't matter.

54:01

It doesn't matter at this point. He's stepping down guys. So I think that he's responsible largely for the wokeness.

54:06

I don't see him as a very honest guy. I see him as someone who is, uh, who led

54:12

Southeastern in a bad direction. And the question is who's going to take his place. And since, uh, the board is comprised of a bunch of people

54:20

I don't recognize, but Ed Litton is the one, the only one I do recognize I've got to like Ed Litton, the guy who plagiarized,

54:27

I'm not really seeing this as a good sign. So pray for Southeastern.

54:32

I mean, by some chance someone gets in there who can shake things up, that would be great. But, uh, yeah,

54:39

I don't know. I don't know what to say. Okay. We're going to switch gears a little bit and I want to, let's, let's finish evangelical stuff.

54:48

Should I get into this now? Yeah, I guess we'll do it real quick. Um, I'm going to play this clip, uh, from Allie Stucky.

54:55

She was on a show called Jubilee, which I, I really don't like Jubilee Jubilee's this show, or you're, you've seen it before.

55:01

Probably you're surrounded by all these people who disagree with you and you have conversations and there's a timer and it seems like it's just for the sound, the soundbite sort of made

55:10

YouTube short generation, but a lot of people watch it. And I, I have, I'm going to say this first, this is,

55:17

I'm going to offend everyone here, but I actually have a lot of respect that Allie for Allie for doing this. I mean, it's not an easy thing to do that.

55:23

And I think from the clips I saw, I saw a few, it seems like she did a fairly good job.

55:29

I know she was not, she was more like kind of rigid. I think that's just who she is.

55:35

Like she, people are different. Charlie Kirk was someone who could sort of sit there and have a conversation, find common ground.

55:41

And not everyone's like that and different tools for different situations. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with just contradicting someone who's wrong.

55:50

Um, but Allie, you know, she held her ground. I think she did a great job and I actually appreciate a lot of the things Allie says. There was a clip that was going around though.

55:58

And this was the one I saw more than anything else where she's interacting with a guy named from the new evangelicals, who's a progressive evangelical.

56:07

And they're going back and forth about the Bible and slavery, which is something that I've talked about in many podcasts in the past.

56:14

And, um, I thought, uh, given what I think, what I assume, what

56:20

I presume Allie, the kinds of apologetic materials she's probably consumed and the assumption she has going into it, which

56:26

I don't really falter for. I think that's just sort of where the evangelical industry is at. I think she did the best she could with what she had, but it's, and people were saying, oh, it's because she's a woman and stuff.

56:38

There was, there was comments like that. I don't think it's because she's a woman. I think it's because the apologetics industry has been wired to kind of reconcile itself to liberal assumptions or modern assumptions on the subject of women.

56:52

What's the first thing a Christian apologist will say when you say, well, the Bible sexist they'll say, well, no, look who was found

56:58

Jesus first at the tomb. It was women. Look at how the old Testament women can actually be a witness in a case.

57:05

And we'll go through all this stuff on women and say, compared to the ancient world, women were treated better. Okay. You can make that case.

57:12

But to try to then sort of assume that women are more equal because this has been something the

57:20

Bible has given us. And we can thank our liberal society today for that. Not necessarily the egalitarian instinct that exists today are actually in conflict with scripture.

57:31

And you're never going to be able to reconcile what the Bible says, which is a patriarchal book, essentially in an ancient context with what modern people think about the sexes, right.

57:41

And equality in those ways. The same thing is true for a number of other issues, capital crimes in the old

57:47

Testament, homosexuality. I mean, how many Christian apologists try to get away from that? Same sex attraction is okay.

57:54

You could say something like those old Testament laws were for then. This is now

57:59

Jesus changed. They always try to get away from those things. It's like these are those laws of reflection of God's holiness.

58:06

You can't get away from it. You can't make you end up trying to do a separation between the new Testament and the old

58:11

Testament. You end up trying to kind of whitewash God. You end up trying to get him off the hook and be his lawyer.

58:17

And it's like, just let him just don't apologize. Just, yeah, the Lord, the Lord did set up a society in which there are capital crimes for these things.

58:25

It was theocratic. You know, when it comes to something like slavery, yes, the old

58:31

Testament and the new Testament both have regulations concerning this practice. It, it does, it doesn't mean that the system itself is a positive good in a perpetual kind of universal sense.

58:46

But it does mean that when those systems existed and Greco Roman slavery being worse than American slavery in many ways,

58:53

I don't remember any gladiatorial arenas in Alabama. God actually had a way to regulate it.

59:00

And I, I, I, I've said this so many times, I think it's good to go on the offense in these things, right? We got debt slavery.

59:07

We got, uh, you know, the criminal justice system that functions as a type of slavery.

59:13

We have generational welfare that functions as a type of slavery. We have sweatshop labor and cobalt mining that goes into our electronics.

59:20

We have socialism, which is a state slavery. Basically, we have all these things, sex slavery.

59:27

And we somehow look in the past and say, well, we're better than them. Oh, we've just recategorized things.

59:33

We have things that do not conform to the law of God that you could consider adjacent or if not slavery.

59:39

And we look back and we, we, we can certainly judge forms of slavery according to what God laid down in the old

59:45

Testament. He laid down the moral laws concerning these things, but we don't want to whitewash those either.

59:51

And what you'll often hear from people is that the slavery in the old Testament, it wasn't really slavery. It was indentured servitude.

59:57

You have to ignore a whole lot to get there. You have to ignore the fact that in the old Testament, you could have a pagan slave and keep that pagan slave perpetually.

01:00:09

Jubilee didn't free them. Um, that's, I mean, that alone would show you, well, it's not exactly the case.

01:00:16

That's slavery, right? It's not just indentured servitude. It's not just selling yourselves into it. There's a mechanism for obtaining slaves from foreign countries through war.

01:00:24

There's a difference between the foreigner, pagan nation, people, and those in Israel. And you want to go down the race -based thing, right?

01:00:30

And Roman slavery, Roman citizenship mattered. You couldn't be a slave if you're a Roman citizen. And the slavery at that time, you know, sex slavery was normalized.

01:00:40

It wasn't really normalized and it happened, but it wasn't looked upon as a normal positive thing in the 19th century in the

01:00:47

United States. At least it was, it was, it was even being a slave, being a slave trader was very much condemned. Um, it was, so you have to kind of, you have to actually historically go back and understand the times you're looking at what happened.

01:01:00

I've actually done, I maybe I'll just make it public. I put it behind a paywall, but for my patrons,

01:01:06

I did a two -part series on this just because I thought that the apologetics industry hasn't done a good job.

01:01:11

But the long and short of it is I think the apologetics industry is kind of behind the curve. They're just now figuring out how to deal with wokeness.

01:01:18

It's like that should have been figured out in like 2015. And I wrote something this morning.

01:01:23

I don't know if true script will pick it up. I wrote a post about this. I have nothing against, and I admire many of the people who are going out there trying to do apologetics and on the social issues, they're sort of getting it wrong because they just don't have the great information.

01:01:38

They're buying into liberal narratives about the past and then trying to sort of reconcile the

01:01:46

Bible, reconcile this ancient book to these modern notions. And on specifically the topic of slavery, if you try to do this the way that it's been done, you end up either eradicating our many, much of our founding generation.

01:02:02

And you end up going to, it's no wonder people go to 1619 project direction on things or because that's just against Christianity, right?

01:02:09

George Washington was against Christianity. I mean, he wrote the, was it Cornwallis and said, Hey, you got something that belongs to us.

01:02:16

You got our slaves. You got to bring them back. Declaration of Independence. The end of it is basically going after King George because look what he's, he's trying to foment insurrections.

01:02:26

Well, what were those insurrections? Slave insurrections, because he's offering them freedom. It, we could go on a while, but where the point is you either cut off that or you cut off scripture.

01:02:36

It's like, or both, you know, scripture, uh, you, you portray it in such a way.

01:02:43

That's just not accurate. And the smart atheist can pick up on this. He can tell he's like, wait, no Roman slavery had these elements.

01:02:49

Paul is regulating. Paul was saying, this is how you behave in this. He's even returning fine. Lehman. And you're going to tell me that the

01:02:56

Bible is this grand egalitarian kind of crusade against it because of scripture you took out of context because of things like Jesus came to set the captives free.

01:03:04

Excuse me. That's from sin. Look at his other parables. He even talks about slavery. He uses that as an example, like a smart atheist can see through the charade.

01:03:14

So, uh, so anyway, all that to say, I think the best way to approach is go on the offense, point out the things today that we've recategorized, but they're essentially slavery and they're, they're a worst kind in some ways.

01:03:27

And also you can certainly critique forms of slavery that, uh, conflict with what the pattern of the

01:03:32

Bible set down, the moral pattern of the Bible set down for how to treat slaves. And, um, and also, uh,

01:03:39

I think you can certainly, and this is something I do quite a bit. I think the ideal, which is what, if you want to focus on what should be, what ought to be, the ideal is not slavery.

01:03:49

The ideal, and you don't find anything in scripture that says this, right? The ideal is, and I say this as an

01:03:55

American and as a Christian is self -government. Why? Because you have the latitude to follow the laws that God has prescribed for husbands and wives and families.

01:04:02

When you're under someone and you're, and you're permanently under them, it makes it more difficult. Um, if you have a better, healthier society, when people all take personal responsibility.

01:04:14

So that's the ideal. It's good, good riddance to slavery, right? We don't, I don't want that. No one wants that. I'm glad we got rid of it.

01:04:20

The way we got rid of it was, was not good in a way, a war -torn region and a million of them starving, get sick and die, uh, former slaves.

01:04:28

Yeah, that's great. That's just a great way to do it. And poisoned race relations for years to come. That's just great. But look,

01:04:35

I'm not, no one's saying bring back that. No, of course not. Um, I find the idea of it, uh, repugnant.

01:04:43

I'm, I don't want that. Right. But I'm all, you also have to be realistic. You live in a world where I would have been a progressive emancipationist, probably like a lot of Christians at the time.

01:04:52

There's abuses within this. Even Dabney said there's a slave trades and iniquitous traffic. The trade itself was certainly fraught with all kinds of abuses.

01:05:01

Um, we, we need to, we need to end this practice, but what's the best way, right?

01:05:07

Good, better, best. What is the best way to do this? And when there's not a plan for compensation or integration, then you're going to have a mess.

01:05:16

And we've been dealing with a mess for a long time. And as many of the problems we have, even in inner city areas trace back to over a century ago and how things were not handled right from the beginning, uh, in many ways.

01:05:31

So, um, I'm not here to give a whole history lesson, but I want to give that background because I think some people have been confused and I'm going to play the alley

01:05:38

Stucky clip and I'll just, I'll comment on it. Um, and maybe just tell you what, what I think would have been helpful if maybe she did it a little different.

01:05:45

This is positive critique, nothing against her, uh, respect her for going there and doing it.

01:05:50

Um, I just think this is helpful for you to see, okay, this might be a better way to approach it.

01:05:55

And if she listens, I, you know, maybe that would be helpful. And I don't mind if people do this to me as well. We're all, uh, learners and progress here.

01:06:01

So let's play the clip here. It is when he says that slavery can be great. If you had the right master. No, I don't.

01:06:08

I don't know that statement in context. He's talking about slavery. MacArthur is a great teacher or was a great teacher, but he said that.

01:06:15

So is he wrong? But I've never read that quote. And so I would have to know for sure exactly what he's talking about. But of course

01:06:20

I condemn all dehumanization and all objectification of people who are all made in the image of God.

01:06:28

No person should be owned. It comes from the same belief that I have about abortion, that it's wrong to kill babies inside the womb.

01:06:33

Do you think it's always wrong to kill an innocent person? The only problem with that though, is that your evangelical fundamentalist tradition was on the other side of this conversation all the way.

01:06:41

Bob Jones, the founder of Bob Jones university, use your exact same framework of how he saw the Bible to justify why the racist should say separate.

01:06:49

And then he said all kinds of frameworks to justify all kinds of bad things because we're really imperfect.

01:06:54

He used your framework and he said that people, he said that people who wouldn't, who wouldn't.

01:07:00

Now I'm gonna point out something here. Allie's actually right. She makes a good point. People could use the

01:07:05

Bible to justify all kinds of things. That's absolutely true. She's good. Good on Allie for saying that. And Whitaker here is he is conflating the issue of segregation with the issue of slavery, which are different issues.

01:07:20

So, uh, he's, he's saying that Allie's way of reading the Bible or the way that conservatives read the

01:07:26

Bible on the issue of separating the races, uh, that this was the same thing as, as slavery and so forth.

01:07:33

They're not actually the same issue. And I would have probably pointed that out. It's like, I don't know, maybe I would have said what

01:07:39

Allie said up to this point of like, look, you know, let's, let's, we're gonna talk about slavery. Let's talk about what slavery in the

01:07:45

Bible says. But people can justify all kinds of things using all kinds of reasoning. And much of the reasoning that was used to justify segregation from a biblical standpoint, at least many of the things that I've seen, uh, didn't don't, um, doesn't don't fly.

01:08:02

So, uh, you know, things like the Tower of Babel separated the races you're bringing back together.

01:08:07

Okay. Like you can, you could have a discussion about it, but there's no direct application in the scripture that says therefore forced segregation or something.

01:08:17

Right. That's, that's kind of my point. Uh, you're dealing with principles that need to be discussed. Um, anyway, separate issues.

01:08:25

And, uh, up to this point, I think Allie's doing a pretty good job. Our liberals are progressive, trying to distort the truth of the gospel.

01:08:33

This is the white evangelical tradition that you're drawing from. I would say that he was on biblical, just in the way

01:08:39

I think that you all says slaves will be your master. Oh, it absolutely does. It does not condone. I think it acknowledges that it is a part of society.

01:08:49

I think it is acknowledges that it is a part of society, but the Torah. Whitaker's right.

01:08:55

It does regulate it. It's, it's not just an acknowledgement that it's part of society. It Paul. So they're kind of talking past each other here, but Whitaker is right to say it regulates slavery.

01:09:06

That is the teaching of scripture. It regulates it. And Allie's kind of out.

01:09:11

This is the point I think where if I, you know, Allie would have been okay to say just, yeah, it does. It regulates it.

01:09:16

That's exactly true. We actually, let's find some common ground here. We agree on the Amago day. I would argue prohibits the ownership of you would be on the side.

01:09:26

Okay. So there's some conflation here. The Amago day, this is the same argument.

01:09:32

Russell Moore uses to say our immigration policies are somehow out of step with scripture because the

01:09:37

Amago day you have to go through what, okay. So how does the Amago day apply then?

01:09:43

How is, how does God apply these Amago day? Let me give you the first application of the

01:09:48

Amago day in the book of Genesis. He who sheds man's life by man, his life, his blood shall be shed for man is made in God's image.

01:09:58

That's the application of the Amago day, capital crimes, capital punishment. Now you should treat people with respect.

01:10:07

You should treat them different than the animals because they're made in the image of God. But that also means there is our capital crimes.

01:10:15

There are crimes that are not capital. There are also that involve restitution and so forth.

01:10:20

There are also labor practices and arrangements, civil arrangements that when it comes to immigration, when it comes to the religious, who can go where in the temple and how long it takes to become a citizen and who can, what slavery laws apply to who, and all of those things are in scripture and they do not contradict the

01:10:42

Amago day. So once you start saying and owning a person, that's another, this was one thing that you, this was an objection that a lot of the abolitionists gave you.

01:10:54

You're owning someone. Well, you're owning their labor. It is not possible technically to own someone's soul, right?

01:11:00

Only God can own someone's soul. If you want to say owning their labor or holding them, you could say that,

01:11:06

I suppose. So I'll just fine tune the language, but it's, this is a bad argument. This is, if you use this argument, there's no reason

01:11:14

Russell Moore can't use the argument. Our immigration laws are also contradicting the Amago day. A better argument would probably be what

01:11:21

I mentioned before. Uh, self -government is a better system. If we can have people with virtue that it's high enough to, uh, where people actually are responsible for their own actions, uh, in order to fulfill what

01:11:35

God has given to men and women as they operate in the economy and so forth.

01:11:41

Uh, that's what we're shooting for. Also, um, there's labor relationships, labor arrangements.

01:11:49

You can compare and contrast pros and cons in them. There are many cons that you could talk about with 19th century slavery.

01:11:55

Uh, there are many cons you could talk about with the kinds of tax framework and just the, even the illegal migrants and how they're abused on the job site today and so forth.

01:12:07

Like you can, you could actually have a good discussion about that and how we could reform that, but reformation of a system, changing the system, these kinds of things you're operating off of principles at that point.

01:12:17

So you can say, look, uh, slavery did 19th century. Slavery did not accord, uh, fully at all with the, what scripture has laid down concerning the regulating of it.

01:12:27

Uh, there are better, uh, systems, labor systems that we should have worked toward and that we still today can work toward.

01:12:37

And that make that the Christian kind of like die on your Hill position and then start going after all the things that Whitaker, uh, is ignoring.

01:12:48

Right. Is socialism slavery? What if the means of production zone by the government is that what's that called?

01:12:54

Government just owns your labor. You're just a number, right? Uh, how much debt is on each of our heads?

01:13:00

That's slavery according to Proverbs. I mean, is it, what are you for slavery? Progressive Christian, right? So anyway, that's how

01:13:06

I think about this debate more. I think that's a better way to sort of get people outside their box. If you were back in the day when race -based child slavery happened, because you know, the argument was against that.

01:13:16

The word of God hasn't changed. Well, that's a different conversation, but the argument would be this.

01:13:24

It's not really an argument though. The word it's true that the word of God hasn't changed, but where the word of God, Whitaker here is actually correctly.

01:13:33

This should have been, your terms are acceptable, right? He's saying that it regulates slavery. It does. So just say, yeah, it does.

01:13:40

Don't fight it, right? Just, just go along with it because what he's, the move he's going to pull next is kind of like the

01:13:47

KO move. If you were around during race -based child slavery, show me in the

01:13:52

Bible where it condemns slavery. And they couldn't. And I would say that we are made in God's image. Paul says for slaves to obey your masters.

01:13:58

You agree with that statement? Of course I agree with the Bible. Okay. So you agree with the statement? The Bible does condone slavery.

01:14:04

That does not mean that I agree with instituting slavery. But that's not what I said.

01:14:09

There's a, yeah, I caught that too. I mean, that's not really what he said though. That, that is shifting the conversation.

01:14:14

He's saying, what specific Bible verse would you go to, to condemn it as inherently sinful?

01:14:21

And the answer is someone like a George Washington or Robert E. Lee, a Thomas Jefferson, a

01:14:26

George Whitfield. You couldn't go to them and say, the Bible condemns what you're doing. You are in perpetual sin here because the

01:14:32

Bible says, look, the Imago Dei. I mean, that's a good question. I mean, this goes back to the woke stuff where they're trying to say,

01:14:39

Jonathan Edwards can't, is he even a Christian? Mark Dever, I think was the one who said, I don't even know if George Washington saved because he had slaves.

01:14:46

It's like, was Abraham saved? Was that was different.

01:14:52

John is a different system. Blah, blah, blah. Right. It's like, okay. But Greco -Roman slavery, where it was attached to many abuses, were those guys saved?

01:15:00

Right. This is the question. And the answer is those guys actually were saved by Lehman was saved.

01:15:10

And the unit, they had to obey the regulations God laid down.

01:15:15

That was really the question. Were they operating in the system? Now, there's a separate conversation about what's a superior or inferior system, what system has more abuse in it.

01:15:24

You're going to have abuse no matter what labor system you have. We live in a fallen world, but what system has more or less abuse or allows for more or less abuse and that kind of thing?

01:15:32

Even the Confederacy in their constitution outlaws the slave trade. So there was some acknowledgement that we got to phase this out, guys.

01:15:39

Something's got to give here, right? There was an acknowledgement of this. But towards the end of the war, of course, they actually make it's too late.

01:15:50

But if you fought as a slave for in the war effort, you would gain your emancipation.

01:15:56

But so there were these things. The moral spine was there to end this, but there was no positive way that people could come together in the country to figure out a plan to do it.

01:16:14

So anyway, getting back to the apologetics discussion, I think to keep coming back to the

01:16:21

Imago Dei prohibits it and then to shift it to the system instead of what

01:16:27

James Whitaker, is it James Whitaker? Whatever his name is, Mr. Whitaker, what he's trying to say, which is the

01:16:33

Bible doesn't specifically condemn as sinful the relationship of master and slave. You're just talking past each other at that point.

01:16:41

And I think, again, a smart atheist is going to pick up on this and say, I don't think there's an argument here. I said the

01:16:46

Bible condones slavery. You said, no, it doesn't. I brought the passage where Paul says, slaves obey your masters. You should not agree with the

01:16:52

Bible. He did not say in the book of Philemon. In the book of Philemon, what happens in the book of Philemon? Do you know?

01:16:57

I'm asking you to, I gave you a passage, hold on, you keep, you are very good at this. She's got a smile on her face like she's got a gotcha.

01:17:05

But I'm thinking like, if he knows Philemon, though, you're kind of in trouble because Paul returns a runaway slave in Philemon.

01:17:14

And the best argument you could make that it's anti -slavery would be just like, receive Onesimus as a brother.

01:17:22

So, but then you got to read into it. And that means emancipation and against the slaves.

01:17:27

Like, all it means is you have spiritual equality. There's neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free or male or female.

01:17:33

There's spiritual equality in that sense. If you're the ground is level at the foot of the cross. So that's not making an argument about labor dynamics or anything like that.

01:17:43

To keep moving the goalposts. Okay, how, how many of you made that? The Bible does not keep going around and around about slavery.

01:17:50

I'm not going to let it go. Paul says slaves to obey your masters. Do you agree with Paul on that?

01:17:56

Wives submit to their husbands. And this is all in the context of children submitting to their fathers. That does not mean that as an institution that he is condoning slavery saying it's good.

01:18:05

I think we can read God's heart behind that. Well, that's a, that's a deep interpretation. That's not in the text.

01:18:11

What was not in the text? Like I said, I'm going to hammer it again. Paul says that slavery is good.

01:18:17

Paul knew what was going on. You could have condemned it. Do you think he's saying that slavery is good? Let's talk about a different kind of slavery that existed, which was bond servant, for example.

01:18:26

So people were in debt. So she, she's not getting anywhere.

01:18:31

Cause I think Whitaker does have the text on his side here. Paul is, uh, regulating something when he could have outright condemned it as an institution, but he doesn't do that.

01:18:43

He just, here's the rules for regulating this relationship. You have this labor relationship.

01:18:49

You have this familiar relationship. You have relationships with your civil authorities. You have all these connections.

01:18:55

If you want to say connection instead of relationship, some people think I'd say relationship, I'm soft peddling things. I'm not, it's just, it's a connection between people and Paul saying, this is how you behave as a spiritful person, a word focused person in this environment.

01:19:09

But you do have to read a truck load through to try to say there's a condemnation in that, or to say that Paul isn't saying what

01:19:17

Paul is saying. Um, then to, to switch it to this, and this is sort of like another classic move

01:19:23

I mentioned before to say, well, it's not really slavery. It's not really slavery because there's, you have bond servant.

01:19:29

Now bond servant, if we're talking about do loss, no, that's slavery, man. That's I mean,

01:19:35

John MacArthur wrote a whole book and I'll play John MacArthur's clip in a moment, but no, that, that would, that would be slavery.

01:19:41

Um, you're not getting out of it by any, there's no legal remedy really to get out of it.

01:19:47

I mean, even in American slavery, there was a mechanism, at least for some that they could work themselves out. Some masters allowed for that kind of thing.

01:19:55

Wasn't like enforced by law or anything, but there was, there was a difference, I suppose you could say between indentured servitude and slavery.

01:20:01

And that indentured servitude had a sunset on it. Slavery was perpetual. Um, uh, there were sunsets implemented in some

01:20:10

Northern states, but there was sunsets on the slave trade, but that, that's kind of what separates the two more than anything else.

01:20:17

I suppose you could say. Uh, in fact, I think I had queued up a definition of slavery.

01:20:23

Um, let's see here. A slave is one who works, uh, in difference from a higher hired servant in that they do not receive wages.

01:20:32

They are members of the master's household and they are legally subject to the master's will within legal boundaries. There you go. That's the difference.

01:20:38

But yeah, a bond servant, a due loss would totally fit within the definition of slavery. And so to pay their way out of debt, sometimes they would have bond service for a certain amount of time to pay their way into freedom.

01:20:49

It was not always the same as the chattel slavery that we see in the 19th century in America, for example.

01:20:56

And so it was a different context and it was a different time. That does not mean that any of us should condone slavery.

01:21:03

All I want to say, so in Roman slavery, the Roman citizens could not be slaves. Slaves did not have legal rights.

01:21:09

They could not have a real family. Legally, civil punishment for crime was generally more severe for them than it was for Freeman.

01:21:15

Kidnapping to obtain slaves was not uncommon. A master's could kill, rape, and use them for prostitution with social approval.

01:21:21

Gladiators were forced to fight within the death for the, to the death for entertainment within social approval. This is the

01:21:27

Roman slave system. Uh, slavery, um, in the new tech, I mean, this is the dual, this is dual loss.

01:21:33

And so obviously there's things like that are way outside of, uh, out of step with biblical morality in that.

01:21:40

But my point is, um, to try to shift to say, this is being a bond servant and bond servant is somehow like an indentured servant or like someone who could buy their way out.

01:21:50

That's, that's just not the case. Uh, you could make the same application to 19th century

01:21:56

American slavery and say, well, you had people who could buy their way out. You did. So therefore the whole system is, you know, it, what's good for the goose is good for the gander is that you perfectly gave the framework for why we don't believe that homosexuality in the

01:22:12

Bible is the same thing as it is today. And there it is that, that, and I made this point,

01:22:17

I don't know how many times that is exactly, he's exactly right. And unfortunately, you know,

01:22:23

I totally disagree 180 degrees diametrically opposed to Mr. Whitaker, but he's a hundred percent right on this.

01:22:30

That the same arguments that the abolitionists, I'm not going to say all of them, but many abolitionists used to condemn slavery as intrinsically evil, that relationship of master and slave, uh, as a sin in and of itself.

01:22:43

The same arguments that they use were the same kinds of arguments that were later used to promote, uh, feminism, the idea that you could have female pastors, uh, the egalitarian society, and also homosexuality.

01:22:56

And it really, it comes down to this. There's an overriding narrative of the Imago Dei and an overriding narrative of love.

01:23:03

And those two things, you don't have to get into the details of God's law. You just have to invoke the overriding, uh, kind of flow of scripture.

01:23:11

And that becomes the law. And then you can just apply that wherever, however you want. So, Hey, God's about love.

01:23:18

God's the Imago Dei means I shouldn't discriminate against my trans neighbor. And so now you can make an origami out of it because you can just comp, you can override the clear teaching with,

01:23:28

I mean, this is one of the principles of hermeneutics, the clear teaching defines the more unclear or the, uh, the teaching that is more specific actually lets, you know, helps you understand the teaching that is more general.

01:23:42

But this is the opposite of that, that you see happening right here. And I'm not, again, nothing against Allie at all.

01:23:47

I think she's brave to take this on. I think she's doing the best she can with what she has. But she's trying to shift. She's, she's going all these places.

01:23:53

And that was the clencher. And I, I, and I was like, and that was the moment I was like, Oh man, he, he really, he nailed it there because you could take everything she's saying just about and make the same argument for normalizing homosexuality.

01:24:08

It's Hey, it's the Imago Dei right now. I understand it's not the Imago Dei, right? It's not the

01:24:13

Imago Dei, but if you can just kind of take it and make it what you want it to be, then there there's really nothing to stop you.

01:24:22

Even the clear teaching of scripture doesn't stop you. Then, then, then what are you going to do? Right. And this is, it's sort of set with Mr.

01:24:29

Whitaker up here for the slam dunk. It's the same thing. You can't say slavery in the

01:24:35

Bible back then was contextual and different than what race -based child slavery is. And then not do the same for homosexuality.

01:24:42

Correct way. The Bible has prescriptive and descriptive. I agree. Allegory and 100 % literalism.

01:24:50

And so we have to read none of that. That's not none of that's relevant, though, really. I mean, it because he's saying, like, look, if you're just saying his argument is if you can just sort of contextualize anything and say that was then this is now there are some things that you can do that with.

01:25:08

But when you're talking about universal moral laws, they only applied to that context, but they don't apply now or vice versa.

01:25:15

Then that means that morality develops, that there's progressives, progression made.

01:25:22

And these are progressive Christians. Of course, they believe that morality develops, that it gets better and so forth.

01:25:27

So it's kind of it's opened her up to a weak spot because she has to admit, well, we've made progress on this issue as Christians beyond where the

01:25:40

Bible has. He's trying to force her into that, at least read everything in context. And when we see homosexuality, not only explicitly condemned, but we also see again from creation all the way to Revelation 20, that it's an earthly reflection of an eternal reality.

01:25:57

The marriage between Christ and the church, which is gendered, by the way, as we see in Ephesians five, we see that reiterated over and over again.

01:26:04

So it's not only that the Bible condemns it again. It is the only relationship that God calls good.

01:26:11

All right. She did a good job on that. She did a good job. She was right on marriage. So that was great.

01:26:17

And it's hard when you're in the hot seat. I'll be honest. I've done some formal debates and you got to prep for them.

01:26:24

But this is so chaotic. You don't know who's coming next. So I give her a lot of credit for even throwing her hat in and doing it.

01:26:33

And yes, of course, homosexuality is there's a more clear. Condemnation of that, right?

01:26:41

But you could ask then, I mean, if Whitaker had time, he could have said, so why doesn't the Bible condemn slavery in the same kind of terms?

01:26:48

So anyway, that was that. And and I don't know what happens when you get to the bell. I've never seen someone do that.

01:26:53

I don't think so. I think that means like the convert, no one tapped out. They thought that Mr. Whitaker here was doing a good job.

01:26:59

OK, so that's that. I just thought I would go. I think we need some some sharp people to really do some work.

01:27:08

It can't be Tom Holland stuff. It can't be. You know, I don't want to name any other names. There's other names, but it can't be the guys that typically are quoted who don't do a good job on this.

01:27:17

We need some sharp guys who are honest with the history and honest with the Christian ethics and can provide a good apologetic.

01:27:23

I've tried to do that with my two part series on this as best as I can. But it's it's not something that you see reflected much in the

01:27:32

Christian apologetics spaces that I see spaces. I thought

01:27:37

I tried to ban myself from saying spaces places. OK, let's get to some questions and comments and cries of outrage and all of that.

01:27:49

Mr. Perry says, I think you can't start on their grounds. What say of scripture? Yep. Should a man be at a woman's

01:27:55

Bible study with a woman teacher? Man, I don't there are there are some circumstances where maybe if he's going there to correct the false teacher.

01:28:05

But no, in general, I don't think that no. Paul says that he women should not be teaching to a mixed audience or that is actually part of having spiritual authority over them.

01:28:17

Seth says the topic so important, the myth of the American Civil War has made us blind. The word slavery equals bad.

01:28:23

Modern instances of slavery, as you listed, equals good. Someone has someone written a book on this specific.

01:28:31

I mean, I've done I have extensive PowerPoints on this. I've not written a book on trying to compare modern and with ancient or 19th century.

01:28:44

I haven't done that. That's why I'm saying we need some guys who are willing to do this kind of work.

01:28:51

OK, let's get to some more. Cosmic says W4 is technically slavery. The Marxists were right about wage labor, slavery.

01:28:58

They were wrong that it's always exploitation. Seth says modern sins don't damn you only ancient sins.

01:29:06

Come on, John. Well, I think the Bible is ancient, but it's also timeless. So there's some morality is timeless.

01:29:13

The application is in specific context. And in the ancient world, slavery was part of it. So the application of moral laws was in an ancient context.

01:29:22

So you could say Christianity is an ancient religion. It's also a timeless religion. And I don't know.

01:29:29

I didn't say that ancient sins damn you. It's timeless sins, actual sins, authentic sins, damn you.

01:29:36

Reflections of God's nature and contradicting it is what damns you. Missing the mark.

01:29:42

That's what sin is. Nobody here. Let's see. Cosmic treason. OK, I inserted myself into a conversation that I am not part of.

01:29:51

OK, I think that's about it. Let's talk. Let's switch gears here.

01:29:57

Oh, I was going to play John MacArthur clip real quick. Strange that we have such an aversion to slavery because historically there have been abuses.

01:30:08

There have been abuses in marriage. We don't have an aversion to marriage particularly because there have been abuses.

01:30:14

There are parents who abuse their children. We don't have an aversion to having children because some parents have been abusive. Of course, it can have any kind of situation where abuse can be involved.

01:30:24

The reason unions grew up in America was not to free slaves. The reason unions grew up in America was because there were people who had businesses and they were abusing their employees.

01:30:35

So to throw out slavery as a concept simply because there have been abuses,

01:30:41

I think, is to miss the point. In any kind of human relationship, there can be abuses.

01:30:46

There can also be benefits for many people, poor people, perhaps people who weren't educated, perhaps people who had no other opportunity.

01:30:55

Working for a gentle, caring, loving master was the best of all possible worlds.

01:31:01

If you had the right master, everything was taken care of. So we have to go back and take a more honest look at slavery and understand that God has in a sense legitimized it when it's handled correctly by saying, this is the way you're to view your relationship to Jesus Christ.

01:31:19

The perfect, all wise, all loving, all compassionate. I'm going to stop it there for sake of time.

01:31:27

But yes, I agree with John MacArthur. I mean, he wrote a book, Slave Now. People have said, well, that was about spiritual slavery.

01:31:34

Right. But John MacArthur's right here. The picture that's being used, that's being appealed to is an earthly relationship that they would have understood.

01:31:44

And if you just think that that relationship must always be sinful in a universal sense, then you will miss the spiritual point that's being made.

01:31:51

And John MacArthur, all the clip I just showed you, he's talking about the earthly relationship. He's not talking about the spiritual relationship there.

01:32:01

Okay, so let's go to, let's do kind of like a quick response stuff.

01:32:09

I want to talk about a few things. If I can show them on the screen.

01:32:15

Oh, man, I can't get to everything, guys. I got too many things. I'm going to try to do it quick. All right.

01:32:21

So there was a Politico hit piece, if you want to call it that. Young Republican chats, members out of jobs as condemnation intensifies.

01:32:30

So I'm just, I'm not going to say much about this. Some of it was in my state, but young Republicans, some high up young Republicans were saying some awful things about joking about the

01:32:39

Holocaust in ways that are just about rape.

01:32:46

Now, the piece initially had some things that were, you know, they mixed in some very awful things with very contextual things.

01:32:55

And chat groups are very contextual that were probably humorous and weren't as bad. And they were, so they're, they're trying to create a whole narrative, but there were some things that are genuinely awful.

01:33:03

So here's the question, right? Why did they do this? I think it's because of Jay Jones. I think what's happening in Virginia is why they did this, because he literally is talking about killing the children of his opponent and he's a

01:33:14

Democrat and they're standing behind him. And so there's a moral equivalency being drawn. Well, the

01:33:19

Republicans do it too. No, the Republicans don't do it. You don't have specific threats in there of like, or specific, like,

01:33:27

I want to see this person die. It's not as severe as Jay Jones. Jay Jones is also running for office. These people aren't, it is a different level of responsibility.

01:33:35

And you have condemnations going out there from the, and jobs being lost.

01:33:41

Whereas in the Democrat party, this guy's probably going to get the job of attorney general of the state of Virginia. The Democrat party is standing behind him.

01:33:47

So the next question is, what do you do about this? I think it depends who you are and where you are. I think if someone condemns this, if they're close to the situation, or you might have to make a statement.

01:34:00

I mean, you might have to say, I didn't know, or this person, or that doesn't reflect the character that I observed in this person.

01:34:08

I'm sorry to see that. I don't know, but you may want to make a statement of clarification or something. And in that statement, condemn some of the bad things.

01:34:16

I don't think universally condemning it though, is the right political move. I think it's because of the political context we're in and because of what happened, what's happening in the state of Virginia right now.

01:34:30

I think it's fair to point out this is a political maneuver that those guys don't have the positions and they're young Republicans that they had anymore.

01:34:40

And that hopefully they learned a lesson and it's a lot of it's juvenile.

01:34:47

Some of it is awful. It depends on particular circumstances, what chat message we're looking at.

01:34:54

But I think the broader thing I wanted to say, I'm kind of with Vance on this. I'm kind of with Vance of like, look, there's no moral equivalency.

01:35:00

We're not letting them get away with that. I'm not rushing to condemn like, oh, Politico did this piece.

01:35:06

What I wish would happen is that the right would be able to sort of police these things within its own boundaries.

01:35:12

Don't use the left's hammer to go after these things. This should have been stopped at a lower level. And I think we have to have latitude to be able to correct these things within our circles.

01:35:22

And if we don't, then you end up with this stuff and it does become a liability. And this is what part of what

01:35:29

I mean when I say young men shouldn't disqualify themselves at early stages. This is the kind of thing that really becomes a bummer at an early stage.

01:35:36

If you are going to be in the political world and you barely made it off the ground and you're saying how much you love

01:35:42

Hitler and how much you wish your enemies were raped or holocausted, I got news for you.

01:35:47

You're probably not going far, right? And you probably have some issues. So not probably.

01:35:55

There's something wrong there. And I understand some of this is a hazing ritual in some of these group chats. People say these things that don't mean them and so forth.

01:36:03

But the right's got to get these things under control themselves because I don't think you should jump every time the left says jump.

01:36:09

That's the reason. I don't think the left should be exposing these things. I think the right should be policing these things internally.

01:36:16

Knock it off, guys. You got a problem. You're not getting into an authoritative position with that kind of language, right?

01:36:23

And I know I'm going to offend a lot of you. John's a boomer again, right? John's a boomer. And I just believe I believe in God's law.

01:36:30

I believe in basic decency. I don't like the boundaries being shifted on those things.

01:36:35

And I just think why do this? Why do this, right? So that's kind of my two cents on that.

01:36:41

And it's unfortunate. There are guys who are getting fired and all the rest. Some of them maybe don't deserve it.

01:36:48

They're just in the group chat. That's not fair. Obviously, you need to investigate those things.

01:36:53

But it's like we wouldn't even have to ask the question if it never happened. All right. So I have a few pieces

01:36:59

I wanted to highlight, but I just don't have the time. One was from Chronicles Magazine, a conservative incorporated ceaseless quest for the great black hope and then black slaveholders.

01:37:08

I was going to get into from the Abbeville Institute. I was going to get into some of these pieces really overall about the issue of black trying to find a way, an onramp for black people on into the

01:37:23

Republican Party, into the conservative movement and the way that it's been done. I don't know that it can happen permanently the way it's been done.

01:37:29

The way it's been done is like we're the party of Lincoln. We freed you. Democrats are bad. I don't know that that's the way to move forward, but I don't have time to get into it.

01:37:37

So we won't also get a piece from Chronicles by on Gen Z.

01:37:45

I don't have time for I do want to talk about Laurel, Mississippi. There's a piece from.

01:37:52

The Federalist. OK, maybe should we do this now?

01:38:00

Let's do it quick. So from the Federalist, Kelly Buzzard writes this,

01:38:05

I just returned from a girl's trip to Laurel, Mississippi. This is not far from where much of my family lives. That's why I'm proud of it and I wanted to talk about it.

01:38:12

The South self -styled city, beautiful, a small town made famous by HGTV's hometown, a popular show about renovation.

01:38:21

She's on a creepy. I mean, it is idyllic. I mean, I just love going down there. So she talks about it and how beautiful and idyllic it is.

01:38:29

It's like Chip and Joanna Gaines, but it's in Mississippi. She studies the one of the beautiful houses down there, and there's a beautiful city movement or a city, beautiful movement that was inspired by Baron George's Eugene's Haussmann's radical transformation of Paris in the mid 19th century.

01:38:47

That vision was wide boulevards, uniform neoclassical facades and verdant parks. And they're doing that there.

01:38:54

They're bringing back classical architecture. American planners are doing this in Laurel, Mississippi, and it's a beautiful thing.

01:39:04

Greco -Roman neoclassical designs, that's quintessentially Southern. It's beautiful. It's human, guys.

01:39:10

It's it's a it says something about you. And she's saying this is the way forward.

01:39:16

Laurel, Mississippi is the way forward. It's in she cites my favorite Roger Scruton on beauty. It's just it's a great piece.

01:39:22

And I'm kind of summarizing here. But she's saying the hometown revival proves what's possible.

01:39:27

I once facade town now buzzes with history, pride and commerce. You can do a lot by just changing the architecture, changing the feel, taking ownership of your city.

01:39:40

So hope for small town America. OK, Chris Tomlin sees signs of spiritual revival after Charlie Kirk's memorial.

01:39:46

No playing games anymore. And this is an interesting piece. So he's very moved by what happened.

01:39:52

And he says Tomlin said that he he met an Uber driver who is affected by it.

01:39:59

He's talking to all these people. Everyone's affected by Charlie Kirk's death. And he just has a lot of hope.

01:40:05

So kind of a white, white pill moment. Is he correct? I don't know. I don't know. I think here's my thing.

01:40:10

If we're going to see a real revival, it's going to mean repentance. It's going to come from within the church. First, you're going to see people who don't have good theology.

01:40:20

You're going to see heretics. You're going to have your false versions of it. But it's primarily going to be driven by theologically orthodox people who are being listened to more, who are preaching the actual gospel.

01:40:31

And it's the gospel that's making these inroads. And then you're going to see towns change. You're going to see people taking ownership.

01:40:36

You're going to be seeing the people voting more conservative because their values now reflect the

01:40:42

Bible and what the Bible says about things. Okay. Trump says there's no reason to be good other than to go into heaven.

01:40:52

And he doesn't think he's going to necessarily make it. This was recent. I'll just comment real quick. Maybe that does mean there's a revival.

01:40:59

Trump's saying that he may not make it. Maybe he's not good enough. And it's like Trump, there's got to be people around him that have said this, but it's not about being good.

01:41:09

It's about knowing the person who was good, Jesus Christ, and gave himself as a substitute, as taking the penalty that God had for you.

01:41:19

He took it on himself, made a way that if you repent and believe you can be made right with God. That's it.

01:41:25

And Trump just seems like in his latter years, he is so fixated on whether he's going to heaven or hell and being good and that kind of thing.

01:41:35

So maybe if people realize they're not good and they can't match the standard and that Christ matched it for them, maybe that's the turning point.

01:41:47

That'll let us know if there's a revival. Trump also signed, obviously, this deal earlier in the week, protecting

01:41:54

Israel. Well, that's how the federalists put it, but it's the hostage relief situation.

01:42:01

The only thing I was going to say about this, really, there's a bunch of things, but the only thing I want to say now is

01:42:07

I think this is an incredible foreign policy achievement. And anyone who tells you otherwise, I just wouldn't listen to them.

01:42:13

Honestly, if you're still blackmailing, Trump achieves, he ended a war.

01:42:18

Now, you could say he's managing a conflict because this conflict is going to come back because these people are diametrically opposed to each other.

01:42:24

But he did. And look, Hamas is bad.

01:42:29

I don't know. I feel like they need to say that they're bad guys. Like people will focus on, well, Israel had 1700 of their own, quote unquote, hostages, their own people they've taken and more.

01:42:40

But here's the thing. Israel and I'm not defending all of this. I don't know enough about all of it.

01:42:45

I try to keep up with the news and stuff, which generally contradicts so much of what I see on my Twitter feed. But so I know enough to say this.

01:42:53

Hamas, there's a reason that the women, it was only men that made it back, that the women did not.

01:43:00

And that's not something you can say for Israel. Hamas is cruel. Hamas does evil, barbaric things.

01:43:09

And it's not, I don't see the moral equivalency. Yes, I do see the bombed out things that Israel's done in Hamas.

01:43:17

I know it's very hard to wage warfare there. I know Hamas also sets up themselves up in hospitals and so forth. I also think it's hard for me to believe that Israel hasn't gone overboard when you see some of the pictures.

01:43:27

But if you watch the footage from October 7th, you're also like, oh, my goodness,

01:43:33

I can't. I mean, this is just ancient warfare between Israel and its enemies from the past to today.

01:43:40

It's like generally in these situations, and Ari MacIntyre's right about this, one side wipes out the other. And when you see what was done to Israel, you're like, they didn't wipe out everyone like that.

01:43:49

There's you also have that going on. So obviously, what I think many of us have wanted, including myself, is we wanted to see peace.

01:43:57

We wanted to see ceasefire, even if it's temporary. We want the killing to stop. And Trump achieved that.

01:44:04

That's a big success, guys. That's hard to do. And I think that if guys are still blackmailing and saying

01:44:09

Trump's really just he's an agent of Mossad, like, come on, guys, he stopped a war.

01:44:14

OK, he's an agent of peace. China still flexing its muscles.

01:44:22

One day this is going to come. This is going to be a problem. They rammed a Philippine vessel in the South China Sea a few days ago.

01:44:29

There's a picture of it. China keeps doing stuff like this. I know Taiwan was on high alert a few weeks ago.

01:44:35

We've heard about this for like the last 10 years, but one day it's going to be real, guys.

01:44:42

One day China is really going to do it, really going to invade Taiwan. There's really going to be a conflict. That's why

01:44:47

I agree with Steve Bannon. I think the Israel Palestine stuff is a sideshow of a sideshow in a way like there are big things brewing geopolitically that have the potential to make that look like a walk in the park as bad as it as it is for the people who are involved in it.

01:45:04

Turkey labels Christians national security threat to deport them. Rights Group warns this is this has been a problem in Turkey for a while.

01:45:10

There's an increasing Islamification kind of transitioning from secular to Islamic. Pray for your brothers and sisters in Turkey.

01:45:19

And we're going to end it there. I want to just let you know, too, about speaking of brothers and sisters, you can do something for your brothers and sisters who are persecuted in Nigeria.

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