Discernment and Disqualification with Phil Johnson from Shepherds Conference

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All right, so today on The Wrap Report, we're gonna have a very special guest. Just saw him recently at the

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Shepherds Conference, and he had one of the best messages at Shepherds Conference dealing with, well, many of us who are in the internet and many of us who like to somewhat do discernment ministries in a way, and we're gonna get to him in just a moment.

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Welcome to The Wrap Report with Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and applications.

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This is the Ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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All right, we welcome to The Wrap Report brother Phil Johnson, and I have to say that yours was, in my opinion, the second best message, only because to top

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John MacArthur's first message when he opened this conference with was hard to beat. That was probably the best.

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You're ranking me way too high. You know who blew me away was Mike Riccardi, and he's also a

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New Jerseyite. I don't know if you knew that, but he's a Jersey boy, and I thought he had the most stunning and profound message in the whole conference, like you say, next to John.

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But wow. Well, see, I can't compare his because I was not, when he preached,

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I was not around. So he was one of the ones I'm waiting to hear when it gets on to the back.

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When you do hear it, you'll definitely move me down the list. I don't know.

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This was a pretty hard message to move down, Phil. If you don't move me down after hearing Mike's, I will question your discernment.

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Well, with that, you preached out of 2 Timothy 2, and it was,

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I mean, I think it was so super helpful because we do have issues with people online, on Twitter, on Facebook, who fancy themselves as if they're pastors, fancy themselves as if they're doing discernment.

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And, you know, recently on an earlier podcast episode, I had Todd Friel on, and Todd did an outstanding job of laying out six points he thinks of before he is going to name someone publicly or address an issue, which is helpful for us because there are times that we should not mention names.

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There's times where we need to mention names, as you mentioned in your sermon, Paul did. There's a time and a place to do that.

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But let me first ask this question of you. How much do you think the internet has amplified these discernment bloggers?

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And I know you and I go back to the guy with the discernment notebook, I forget his name, back in the, what was it, the 80s when he used to have that notebook.

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And now I see a lot more of that than I used to see back then. Do you think the internet has played into that?

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Yeah, I'd forgotten that guy's name too. But you're right. What he did was, he was a compiler of other people's information.

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Most of the stuff he collected in that notebook, other people had done the work and he compiled it all.

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Parts of it were helpful, but parts of it were just hypercritical. And you could tell by the way it was constructed that he just went looking for negative comments and negative info on anybody who was famous.

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I mean, anybody who was a respectable, respected evangelical, he had an entry on them with everything negative that had ever been said about them.

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And yeah, I thought that was most unhelpful, and in fact, was pretty critical of him at the time.

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When I first got on the internet then, I noticed that that sort of thing proliferated.

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And let me back up and say, too, that passage, 2 Timothy, it was the second half of 2

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Timothy 2. I said in my message, I chose it because it poses a certain challenge to me, it steps on my toes.

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There are times when I think I look back and read something I wrote sometime previously,

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I was going to say years ago, but it isn't all in the years past. My besetting sin is a tongue that may be too sharply honed for sarcasm.

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And every now and then, I'll see something I wrote before and kind of be ashamed that I was so curt or so sharp -tongued, and we're not supposed to default to that.

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There are times when even Scripture says, false teachers deserve a sharp rebuke.

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Jesus rebuked the Pharisees with very harsh words. He turned over their tables and all.

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So it would be wrong to say, as I think most people think, that it's always bad to use any kind of sharp rebuke or be harsh in your criticism.

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Sometimes that is appropriate. But I think what Paul is telling Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 is, don't make that your default reaction to everything you disagree with.

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Don't just automatically pound every ant with a sledgehammer. You have to sort of accommodate your tone to the seriousness of the mistake that you're dealing with.

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And I find it's much easier for me to do that when I'm actually talking to someone than when

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I'm writing out my criticism. It's not as easy to convey tone or attitude in writing.

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And my writing style is not wordy,

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I don't fill everything with emojis. It's not always easy to discern my attitude.

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And so that is a sin I grapple with. That's why

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I chose that passage. I wasn't picking on any individual in particular and saying, you know, trying to...

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We all know people who fit that category, that actually what I said applies to any number of people on the internet.

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I mentioned this before, there are these nests of self -appointed discernment experts who lots of what they say may be good and valid, but it's not helpful because it's blended with so much stuff that is over -critical or over -harsh that they actually do a disservice to the gift of discernment, to the ministry of discernment, because they make it so odious for people to read criticism and have to filter out what's overstated, what's exaggerated, what's necessary, how harshly should

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I respond to this? And I think you're right because of the internet, because the internet gives every disgruntled person a big megaphone that reaches the whole world.

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That sort of attitude where people try to outdo each other to find the most critical thing about the most respectable person, and it's like there's a contest to do that.

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Who can we embarrass that everybody would be shocked if we embarrassed this guy because he's respectable, because he's been faithful, because he's preached the gospel for years, and now we found this thing we disagree with him on, let's magnify it.

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And that's the opposite of what scripture says love should be inclined to do. Well, it's interesting because I'm very guilty of being very terse when

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I type, and people often assume motives that aren't there.

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One of the things with me, as you know, I grew up a Jewish, and we grew up debating.

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That's just, it's a way of life. That's probably why so many Jewish people become lawyers. It's the ultimate job for a

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Jewish person, they get paid to debate. But there's no emotion in debating, the way that I was raised at least.

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You don't have the emotion there, but so many people assume that. One of the things you said in your message, though,

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I found very, very helpful, is you brought up the term youthful lusts.

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And you did address that it deals with the passions, lustful passions that most people think of when they think of that.

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You had more that you put into that, that I think is really helpful for the discussion of discernment and people that are online.

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How is it that you saw that term defined? Well, it's because of the context.

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That whole passage, second half of 2 Timothy, starts and ends with Paul warning

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Timothy not to be quarrelsome. And it stands out, it sticks out hugely to me, because normally you hear

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Paul telling Timothy to be courageous, be a good soldier, fight the good fight, you know, it's a lot of militant language, and a lot of encouragement to Timothy who, if you read between the lines, it seems

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Timothy was a timid fellow. He wasn't as, he certainly wasn't as bold as the

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Apostle Paul, who is. But Paul just peppered everything he ever wrote to Timothy with encouragements to be bold, to be willing to suffer, to be willing to say the hard thing or take the hard stance.

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And right in the middle of this is this half of a chapter that warns against being argumentative and harsh.

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And it says, correct people who have false doctrine, but do it with gentleness. You may win them over, he says.

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And so it's in that context that he says, flee youthful lusts.

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And I have to think one of the lusts he had in mind, and it is a youthful passion that trips us all up, is that sort of adolescent itching for an argument about everything, you know.

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That's one of the youthful passions that clearly that Paul is telling Timothy to avoid, because that command is sandwiched between warnings not to pursue fruitless arguments, not to pursue arguments over mere words, and not to be harsh.

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Yeah, I will say, I think John MacArthur is probably as bold as Paul, but if we were going to look for somebody, he might be there.

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You know, you brought up the issue of these, a lot of these bloggers, podcasters, discernment people, like the guy with the discernment notebook, guys who have

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YouTube channels where they're going to call everybody out, and they're self -appointed.

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We actually, we were talking about one who you and I both, who I know, I've met personally, but you know of, who is a self -appointed, he's never attended a church that I know of, can't find a church that holds to his standard.

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But he feels he's qualified to call John MacArthur out, believes

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Justin Peters isn't saved, which is crazy if you know Justin Peters. But why is it that so many of these people, you mentioned the self -appointed, that seems to be consistent with many of these so -called discernment people?

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Yeah, well it's, part of that youthful passion that makes people argumentative is this sort of notion that I have to prove myself right by discrediting everybody else, and there's this heady feeling that they get from doing that.

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The problem is then, if you become that hyper -critical, you're going to be critical of everyone close to you as well.

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You'll treat your friends like you treat your enemies, you will, you'll find it very hard to find a church where everything is done just the way you would want it to be, because let's face it,

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I don't know anybody who goes to a church like that. Any of us could point to certain things that are either done or said or taught or believed by people in positions of teaching authority or whatever in our churches, that maybe we don't quite agree with or whatever, and if you become so picky that every small disagreement is the same as every big disagreement, and every friend needs to be treated the same as every enemy, just to prove that you're not partial to anyone, you're not preferring your friends, then you're literally going to start to treat everybody like an enemy and treat every disagreement as if it's some cardinal doctrine that you're defending, and you will be forced by your own misguided convictions to separate from people whom you ought to fellowship with, which means ultimately you won't be able to partner with any church or fellowship or belong to any church, because you essentially cut yourself off from that kind of fellowship.

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And so there are tons of people like that, and some of them are fairly well -known, you know, discernment experts on the internet who, as far as we know, don't belong to or attend any church, just a little group of people in their living room, and usually that's their family who are required to be there, and they might call that church, but it isn't really a church.

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Yeah. I mean, you and I have dealt with, I forget the guy's name, who used to email us like 30 -page emails.

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Oh, he's the guy from Europe, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And, you know, that's another tendency that these guys had.

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That guy would find any sort of tenuous connection, like, you know, six degrees of Kevin Bacon and tie anybody he wanted to to some kind of error.

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He sent out countless emails accusing me of having some ties to a guy in Europe who,

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I think, was a Roman Catholic or something like that, a guy I never even heard of, because somebody who is friends with me had also done a conference with,

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I don't know, Paul Washer, and Paul Washer had done this conference with another guy, and you could trace all the connections back to this

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Jesuit guy or something like that, and to his view, that proved that we're all tainted.

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And he would send me private letters for a while, insisting that I speak out and disassociate myself from this guy who

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I've never even heard of, and I started to just put all his emails in the bin and finally blocked him from emailing me altogether, but I think he's still out there somewhere actively trying to spread negativity about a whole list of really good people.

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Oh, yeah. You know, I had, he got me, supposedly, I was, I forget the details, but somehow

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I was supporting a woman who was raped, and the thing that he didn't realize is there's actually two people with the name

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Andrew Rappaport. The other happens to be like a state attorney. Not that guy.

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Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't mind being the other Andrew Rappaport, Andrew S. Rappaport. He's a venture capitalist.

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I wouldn't, you know, mind that, maybe. Yeah. Well, you know, Phil Johnson is a fairly common name, too, and I think the most famous Phil Johnson in Christian media circles is a musician who did all the music for Jimmy Swaggart, and his name's all over Swaggart's albums and stuff, and I sometimes get both thanks and criticism for the

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Jimmy Swaggart records. So, yeah, I mean, there's that problem. There's another guy in Europe, by the way, who pieced together this conspiracy theory in his mind, because he had visited

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Grace Church, caused some kind of trouble, I don't know what happened, but one of the security guys who works at our church took a photograph of him, and he knew that this was happening, and so he chased the guy's car down and took a photograph of the security guy, put it on the

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Internet, and said, does anybody know this guy? And someone misidentified the picture and said, oh,

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I think that's this fellow, and the person that they named is actually married to a member of the royal family from,

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I won't be too specific, but a member of European royalty, like a distant royalty, but royalty.

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And so this guy had put together this whole conspiracy theory where he actually did an hour and a half long video, put it on the

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Internet, floating this theory that the security team at Grace Church has ties to the,

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I think the county sheriff in Los Angeles, and since there was a sheriff in Los Angeles who was arrested for illegal weapons sales, and this person who he misidentified had a tie to European royalty, he had this theory that our security team were engaging in some kind of international illegal arms sales.

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I mean, it was the most bizarre, and he was serious about it, it was a whole long video with PowerPoint slides and the whole thing.

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So if you want to buy a, you know, anti -tank weapon, see me,

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I can hook you up with it. Or at least his lookalike. Really, we laugh about that, but not only was he serious, the truth is there are gullible people all over the

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Internet who see something like that and think, wow, that's profound. Look at all of the web of networks that this guy pieced together, and it was all based on a wrong identification anyway.

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But I spent a week answering questions from people who saw that video and said, what's going on here?

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Yeah, and I want, you know, there seems to be a trend that I noticed with guys that are doing full -time discernment, where there seems to be a pattern.

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And I want to talk to you about that pattern after this commercial. Ding dong,

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And you will get Andrew Rappaport's book at whatdotheybelieve .com. All right.

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Now, Phil, you have a pretty extensive library. And I actually went through that library once when I was at Grace To You.

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I asked you, I didn't... You're not the one that took my books on hyper -Calvinism, are you? No. A whole slew of books that disappeared.

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Well, if they've disappeared in the last like year and a half, it wasn't me. But I don't mind.

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I don't mind taking them. I'm kidding. But I remember

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I was talking to you. I said, I went through your entire bookshelf and I did not see my book, What Do They Believe, anywhere.

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Do you remember what you said as a response? I probably said,

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I carry it with me in my car. No, it was great. You were like, oh no, I keep it at home.

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And your wife was like, oh yeah, he has more books at home. And you're like, yeah, I keep it right by my bedside. I put my water on it every night.

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That's right. I use it as a coaster. That's true. So I hope you don't do that with the second one that you wrote the forward to.

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But I noticed when it comes to guys that do discernment, and I've tried to warn folks with this, is that even you take a guy like that guy that did the discernment notebook, he started out,

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I think his initial claim was he exposed some things with Billy Graham.

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And usually you get one or two legitimate things that they expose and it's good.

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It's good for the body of Christ that they've come out and exposed these things. But once they get a fame or nowadays with internet, once they start getting some traffic, it almost seems like we got to keep that going.

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Instead of being like a Todd Friel, where he does discernment, but does other things as well, does teaching as well as discerning.

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It seems that these guys want to keep that platform going. And in order to do that, like the guy with the discernment blogger, discernment notebook,

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I noticed what he started to do is kind of cut corners. Then it wasn't as being in context didn't matter as much as such as the case with making up the thing with John MacArthur and denying the blood of Christ and just taking something out of context.

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And then he went to the final stage, which is he just makes stuff up, just blatantly make things up about people.

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It seems that there's people that do full -time discernment seem to fit into those. They start off with something good that's helpful for the body of Christ, but then to cut corners, they start ignoring context and then making things up.

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Do you see that trend when people are doing full -time discernment and is there a solution to that?

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I think you had one actually in your sermon. Yeah, no question about it. I'm always wary of someone who never produces anything other than criticism of other people.

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Anybody who's read my material online knows I'm not averse to legitimate criticism because there is a ton of stuff that has been sort of into the evangelical movement and become very influential that really deserves to be and needs to be critiqued.

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We live in those times when people don't endure sound teaching and they want their ears to be tickled with fables.

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Christians today are very susceptible to false teaching and foolishness that desperately needs to be critiqued.

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There aren't enough people doing critiques like that, but I'm always wary of someone who that's all they ever do.

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They never do anything that's positively edifying. They would never open up say 1

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Corinthians 13 and teach on what Paul says about love being the greatest of the gifts. And in fact,

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I've heard some of the online discernment experts actually bristle when you quote 2

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Timothy chapter 2 to them and tell them, look, scripture tells us to be as gentle as possible when we're correcting error.

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They're not interested in being gentle. They think you have to be as harsh and sarcastic as possible or you're just not doing it right.

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And I'm always wary of people like that. If you have nothing, and in fact, it's amazing over the years how many of them ultimately fail morally or discredit themselves some other way.

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It happens routinely. And I think honestly, the devil uses that to discredit people who want to do legitimate critiques.

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You can look at any of their, even take the worst, you know, discernment gurus online, the very worst examples of hatefulness and hypercriticism.

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And you'll find a lot of stuff in their material that is true and good. I mean, the notebook guy that you're talking about, because he borrowed that from here and there.

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Some of it was actually very good, but it was, it was, I mean, this is how Satan does.

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He disguises himself as an angel of light and then blends untruth with truth and makes it impossible for people to sort it out.

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And gullible people think that just because this guy is critiquing, you know, bad doctrine and he's right on maybe some of the big issues, he's not somebody

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I have to exercise discernment on because he's the discernment expert. And so I just take everything he says and swallow it all.

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And so these guys have a tendency to form their own little cult of followers who will echo and even exaggerate everything they say.

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And one of the things that you had mentioned in your message was the fact that really the focus, because I see what a lot of these discernment blogger guys, their focus is breaking the next story on get nowadays with the internet, getting the traffic, getting the attention.

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You kind of laid out some points of what we should be doing. You had said this actually in your, one of the things you said with what you were saying earlier is from your sermon at Shepard's conference.

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Paul is not commending brutish or venom or malice.

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He's not suggesting that every disagreement needs to be answered with sharp -tongued severity and snark.

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That's a lot of what we end up seeing, but you laid out what this text gives as a solution to that.

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So what's the solution to some of this, the bad discernment we see online?

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What is this text tell us we should be focused on? I don't know how to answer that because I don't remember what

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I said. You're looking for something very specific. Well, I mean, you were talking about guarding the teaching was the first point really was the...

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Oh, right. Right. Okay. So my first point, which is, yeah, watch out for your own teaching first, right?

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Study to show yourself approved unto God. That's the context in which Second Timothy 2 .15

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where Paul says, study to show yourself approved. In other words, give diligence over, keep a diligent watch on your own teaching.

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That's the starting place. And I don't know that that's like an all purpose remedy, but if you start there and you're concerned mostly about your own teaching and keeping it orthodox and sound and edifying,

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I think there'll be a natural balance to what you do and say that would avoid most of the criticisms you and I have talked about so far, that sort of extremist, always negative stuff.

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If you're focused on your own teaching and making it orthodox, number one, that will automatically refute some of the errors.

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And number two, it will help keep you balanced so that you don't become enthralled with negativity and harsh speech.

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So you talked in your sermon a little bit about really the issue of kind of truth versus guarding yourself.

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I mean, there is a time and you made a case that Paul was very much against false teaching and would call it out.

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And yet he was also talking about guarding self and there's a time to just ignore it.

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So how do we know when we should address this and when not? My wife got to watch the sermon that you presented and she said, here was her question is, so what do you do when someone's attacking you personally?

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You've been involved with John MacArthur for many years and he's come under countless personal attacks.

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Do you treat it the same way as you said in your message of just teaching and kind of moving on from it?

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Is there a difference when it's false teaching versus personal attacks? How do we handle those two type of situations?

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Yeah, that's a great question. And it's the hardest thing I think to do is to refrain from unnecessary self -defense.

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When somebody attacks me, I, of course, like anybody else, my knee jerk reaction is to think of a snappy answer to humiliate the person who's just insulted me.

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And that's where you most have to guard your tongue. And I'm not always successful at that.

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But, you know, John MacArthur is a great example of that. You mentioned him. Of course, he's subject to lots of criticism everywhere.

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He won't defend himself. And this was actually the Apostle Paul's policy as well.

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He wouldn't defend himself. The way Paul said it is, I won't boast. I hate to boast. But there were times in the book of 2

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Corinthians, for example, where he was forced to defend himself. I just preached on this

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Sunday, in fact, 2 Corinthians 12, the thorn in his flesh. That passage starts with him sort of telling a story, he uses the third person, so it's not immediately clear that he's talking about himself, but it becomes clear he is talking about himself, that he was caught up into the third heaven.

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He had this spectacular revelation of Christ that he seems to say elsewhere in 1

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Corinthians 15 that he literally saw the risen Christ. So he was caught up into heaven.

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And if you read 2 Corinthians 12 carefully, it seems like this happened on multiple occasions.

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This, I believe, is how he was discipled and prepared to be an apostle during those years he spent in relative obscurity after his conversion.

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He describes that in Galatians 2. And he learned the gospel and he was discipled by Christ, and yet he never talks about it.

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He mentions it there in 2 Corinthians 12, but he instantly then turns to this story about the thorn in his flesh, which the

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Lord gave him to keep him humble. And he says, that's what I'll boast about. Not the great revelations and the trips to heaven, but that which keeps me weak so that the power of God can be magnified through me.

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Because when I'm weak, then Christ is strong. So that was Paul's policy.

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He didn't like to defend himself. He only defended himself when it was necessary to do that in order to defend the gospel.

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And that was the situation in Corinth. Because these false teachers were saying, we're super apostles.

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We are a higher level of apostleship than the apostle Paul. So whatever he told you, you can either put it down the list of priorities or do away with it altogether because we're going to give you truth here that he didn't give you that supersedes what you think you learned from Paul.

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So they were undermining the gospel. And I think these were very much like the false teachers in Galatians that Paul is answering there.

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They were adding legal requirements for salvation. That's pretty much what this group of pharisaical legalists that followed

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Paul around. They were Jewish men, probably former Pharisees, according to Acts 15, who desperately wanted the

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Gentiles to be put under Old Testament ceremonial law. And by teaching that,

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Paul said they were undermining the gospel. It's what Galatians is all about. And he was defending the doctrine of justification by faith.

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And if you read 2 Corinthians in its full context, you see that though there are times when

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Paul has to refute accusations that he's disqualified in some way or another.

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So he defends himself, but he spends the minimal amount of time doing that and the maximal amount of time teaching the truth that compacts those errors.

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He's not interested in self -defense as much as he is in defending the truth. That's how we ought to be.

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It's a thing that I've noticed. We've discussed this on the board at Striving for Eternity, is this idea of teaching ministries versus polemics ministries.

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And I think there's purposes in both. But I think that those ministries that have the long haul, that have that lasting, the topic of the conference, for Shepherd's Conference, is your faithfulness, that have that faithfulness of longevity, it's usually based on teaching.

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Here's something that you had said in your sermon. In the process, you will do more to persevere and propagate the truth than you could ever do through a purely polemical, argumentative approach.

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Instruction is a better way to deal with error than taunting and insults. That's really a heart of what

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I see is the difference in discernment that's being done. And I'll name names.

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Guys like Todd Friel, Justin Peters, James White, yourself, John McArthur.

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These are guys who do way more teaching. Even when I had the podcast episode with Todd Friel on,

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Todd said that when you do polemics, when you do discernment, it should be teaching.

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Teach something. So what do you see as the goal that we should have?

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Should we be doing far more teaching than polemics? Or should the polemics be teaching? Well, there's a bit of both.

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You can't teach faithfully without getting into polemics at one point or another.

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But if what you enjoy is the fight, the argument, the tension of all of that, then you probably ought to back up and think again.

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Because what Paul is commending there to Timothy is teaching.

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And he's specifically saying, rather than just arguing, teach people who are in error. I learned this the hard way.

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I mean, you listed me with those examples of people who do it right. And I feel almost like I don't deserve in that list because I have learned this by my own negative experience.

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And I started a blog back in the early part of this new millennium, mainly to answer what

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I saw was the danger of the emerging church. Back in a time when almost nobody was saying anything critical of the emerging church, and Christianity Today was doing cover articles saying this is the next great thing and all that.

34:29

So I saw significant dangers there and began to critique it, which was fine.

34:35

A lot of what I wrote was indeed instructive teaching. It wasn't full of snark and nastiness.

34:42

But what happens when you write a blog is you get a lot of negative comments from people who do use snark and nastiness.

34:50

And the temptation is just to argue with them, just to give them back, to mirror their attitude and their level of sarcasm.

34:59

And I wasn't always successful in resisting the temptation to do that. But that's exactly what

35:04

Paul is telling Timothy in 2 Timothy 2. Don't do that. Don't engage in mere arguments about words.

35:12

He is not saying that words are unimportant. And he's not saying that doctrine isn't important enough to argue about.

35:18

Because Paul, of all people, spent most of—well, in every one of his epistles except for Philemon, he is answering false doctrine.

35:28

And sometimes he does it with harsh rebukes. But that's the rare exception. Normally it's instructive material.

35:35

His aim is to edify and instruct. And even with the Galatians, who he tends to get sharp with every now and then, and he says,

35:43

I'm concerned about you. He's saying to them, I'm not sure you're really truly converted yet, because you're being seduced by this obvious corruption of the gospel.

35:51

And yet his answer to them was full of tender pleas and instruction and, you know, every now and then a sharp comment to sort of draw them up and make them take very seriously what he was saying.

36:05

But Galatians is one of my favorite epistles because of the clarity with which

36:10

Paul uses instruction to answer this dangerous error that was so subtle that even

36:17

Peter for a time didn't seem to see the danger of it. And so—

36:23

Well, I would say this— This is what I aspire to do, is to use—and if you listen to my sermons,

36:29

I think you'll find that. I touch on polemical issues every now and then, but I'm not a controversialist when

36:35

I preach. I'm, you know, my goal is to teach the people who sit under me so that they're equipped to resist the false doctrine.

36:45

Well, I'll say this, that what you just said is a great encouragement to those of us who, like you, have failed, especially as you mentioned earlier, the youthful lusts.

36:56

It's an encouragement to know you're not that same guy that was blogging years ago, and you've learned.

37:03

I hope I've learned sometimes, but— Well, truthfully, I am the same guy.

37:09

I just may be a little bit better at mortifying those evil tendencies that I have.

37:16

Well, but that's what we need to do. We all have those tendencies, right? I mean, it's not like we don't.

37:23

It's just that we have to put those down and do what's better or right, even though our flesh may want to do something different.

37:31

And it's encouraging to me to sit here and see you saying that you still, you think you're not up at that level, and I'm going, well,

37:38

I think you are. For others who, as young, having those youthful lusts, having those youthful desires, it's encouraging to know, hey, guess what?

37:50

You can grow. You can mature. So, you know,

37:55

I think one of the things that I want to talk about after the next break is the issue of the qualifications of an elder.

38:04

You talked about this a bit, how an elder, if he's basically dealing with these things in an inappropriate way, actually could be disqualifying himself.

38:16

Since so much of this is a pastor's conference, talking about faithfulness, I think it was an important thing, and I'd like to talk about that after this break.

38:24

Can you answer the following questions for your children or for the person to whom you are witnessing?

38:30

Number one, is the New Testament reliable? Two, can you explain the Trinity to me?

38:36

Three, how is Jesus both God and man? And a slew of other questions you will be able to answer if you get

38:43

Andrew Rappaport's new book, What Do We Believe? It will help you a ton.

38:49

Get your copy at whatdowebelievebook .com. Whatdowebelievebook .com.

38:54

And I will say that probably the best part of that book is probably the foreword written by, well, our guest.

39:02

That was actually, you know, I do have to, I will say publicly, I don't think I've said this publicly, but your foreword to that book was so insightful, and I think

39:10

I told you privately, one of the things I was so glad was most people know me as an evangelist, and you know me as more of the discipler that I, you know, evangelism is part of that, but your testimony that you had in there was very insightful for folks to see how theology helped you.

39:30

Yeah, thanks. Let me publicly thank you for that. Thank you. So you mentioned throughout the sermon at Shepherd's Conference, and again, this is a conference, two pastors, dealing with the topic of faithfulness.

39:45

John MacArthur had been pastor of Grace Community Church for 50 years. I don't know another man that's been a pastor.

39:54

I spoke at Shepherd's Conference with Alexander Strzok, who's been at the same church for 50 years, but 10 years ago, he has installed new leadership.

40:03

So I don't know anybody that's been in one church for 50 years, and not only was he there for 50 years, but 50 years without any public scandal.

40:14

That's like almost unheard of nowadays. So much of what we're talking about when we talk about discernment, when we talked about this in your message, there are ways that people disqualify themselves from eldership in the way they communicate.

40:32

What were you trying to communicate with that? Well, nothing specific other than to say that this is not,

40:39

Second Timothy 2 is not an isolated point that Paul tries to make one time with Timothy. Those sorts of admonitions about gentleness,

40:50

I mean, he says to the Thessalonians, I treated you like a nursing mother. I mean, he himself strove to be tender in his care for people who came under his teaching, and all that.

41:03

And so the point I was making was, this is even built into the requirements for an elder.

41:09

He's not to be pugnacious. He's not to be a brawler. He's not to be someone who loves the controversy.

41:17

You can't be in ministry and utterly avoid controversy. I made that point too.

41:23

Ministry is spiritual warfare. There's controversy built right into it. But if what you like is the controversy, then you probably don't qualify to be an elder.

41:35

And that's the thing I see a lot of is, it's almost when you look at the qualifications, he shouldn't be a brawler.

41:43

And some of these guys, that's really what they are. They're looking for the fight. They're looking for the next argument to be made.

41:50

They're looking for the next conspiracy to expose or flaw in someone else.

41:56

I almost, you know, we don't want to judge motives and things, but it almost seems like some people, not all, but some people almost want to expose the faults in others, maybe to cover up the faults of their own.

42:10

And you had mentioned something about that, I couldn't find the exact quote, but you mentioned something about the fact that these guys, the very thing that they go after, it's like the log that's in their own eye.

42:21

That's the log in their eye. And is this a thing, a trend where you see people who may be, not all,

42:29

I don't want to blanket statement everyone, but for a lot of guys, is it, well, like that guy

42:35

Joshua we're talking about, you know, doesn't attend a church, but exposes everyone else for things that aren't even mentioned in scripture and yet clear things in scripture he ignores, he doesn't obey, and yet he could justify that and say he's exposing everyone else.

42:52

Do you see that they could be covering up for their own sin by trying to expose others? Yeah, that's certainly one of the motives.

42:59

I think it may in some cases be something just as simple as pride, which is a sin, you know, but they,

43:06

I think there are people who think that somehow their status is elevated if they can, you know, discredit somebody who is respectable.

43:17

And so it's not like they're out there criticizing the gross errors of Benny Hinn all the time.

43:25

It's that they're looking for someone like, you know, John MacArthur or some highly, the most respectable person they can think of, or they can find that has anything questionable about him, then, you know, that's what they'll go after.

43:42

John Piper is a good example. People respond to,

43:48

I mean, there are numerous things, it's obvious, that I disagree with John Piper on. He's a continuationist,

43:54

I'm a cessationist, you know, we have different personalities and different emphases on various things.

44:03

And there are things I would criticize him, I have criticized him for, but in the midst of some of that criticism that I've made of him,

44:13

I've also scolded people who want to treat a gnat like it's a camel, you know, they want to treat a small disagreement, a relatively small disagreement as if, well, this is tantamount to denying the gospel.

44:29

And you know, like I said, every, like I said, really at the beginning, that they get to the point where every disagreement is like a cardinal doctrine that has been denied.

44:39

And it seems to me, Dr. Piper has probably taken the brunt of that, maybe more than anybody else.

44:47

And so he might, he might deserve that. Here's a stark difference between, you know,

44:53

John Piper and you, you try to emphasize and try to do all you can to be clear in your speech.

45:02

And he doesn't. I mean, I think the reason he's been the brunt of it is he, he likes to be nuanced.

45:07

He likes to, I mean, he writes a book, Desiring God, and has to spend like two chapters explaining the term that he wants to use throughout of Christian hedonism, instead of trying to be nuanced, just use the language we all accept.

45:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, and that I think is a fair criticism of him. He likes to be provocative. That's a criticism you could throw at me too.

45:31

There are times when I would be deliberately provocative. I don't think that inherently is wrong in and of itself.

45:37

But when it means that you're, you're being deliberately ambiguous or vague or trying to be shocking about some really important issue, and you end up confusing people, then you have an obligation,

45:49

I think, to be the one to straighten out that confusion instead of just, you know, perpetuating it.

45:56

And so that's one of the things I think he could legitimately be criticized for, but it doesn't mean that he's a damnable heretic.

46:04

And my frustration is with people who refuse to draw that line. They'll treat anyone who, with whom they have a disagreement with, they look for reasons to try to portray that person as, you know, maybe outside the faith even.

46:23

And I've seen that about Dr. Piper. People accusing him of being a wolf in sheep's clothing and that sort of thing.

46:31

Yeah, you know, there was a discernment blogger that wrote some articles about Piper that when you actually looked, the argument was, oh, he believes that works are necessary to earn salvation.

46:45

It had that in quotes, but the word earn was added. I couldn't find that quote anywhere. Yeah, well, that's the key issue,

46:53

I think, on which you could legitimately say he has been unfortunately ambiguous.

46:59

And I fear deliberately so, because you'll make a comment like, you know, you can't be saved without works, which is not the same thing as saying your works are meritorious.

47:13

It is true that you can't be saved and be utterly devoid of good works.

47:19

I mean, even the thief on the cross who was saved in the dying moments of his life, he repented.

47:25

He rebuked the other thief who was still mocking Christ. He wasn't utterly devoid of any signs of conversion.

47:34

And Jesus recognized the signs of his conversion and assured him of heaven. So you can't, there is this belief out there in Christendom today that was especially popular before John MacArthur wrote the

47:47

Gospel according to Jesus. You have people writing things like, I think Zane Hodges was the one who said, it's possible to be an unbelieving believer.

47:56

He was saying, if you've ever believed and now you've abandoned the faith, you'll still go to heaven.

48:01

Whereas scripture says, if you once profess to believe, but you've abandoned the faith, that's proof that you were never a true believer to begin with.

48:10

That's 1 John 2, verse 19, I think it is. So the way

48:19

Piper says it lends itself to confusion, or at least needs more explanation.

48:25

And I feel like he doesn't really, he likes the shock that it gets when he says things like that.

48:31

And I don't know, I don't know his motives, so I don't want to judge that. I just think his critics have been far too harsh with him.

48:37

And it's always worth trying to understand what somebody's saying before you critique it.

48:43

Yeah, you know, one of the, one of the guys on our board of directors and one of the speakers for Striving Fraternity, Frank Mullis, he's, he loves

48:50

Jonathan Edwards. He's got a background in studying Jonathan Edwards. And one of the things he pointed out with this whole thing was he said, wait a minute, didn't

48:57

Edwards use that same language in debating someone in his day who was trying to argue very much like many of the people that argue for the new perspective of Paul N .T.

49:08

Wright argued. And when I actually did the research, I realized John Piper, who loves to study

49:14

Jonathan Edwards, is actually using Edwards' language. And when that, when

49:19

I understood that, things kind of made sense what he's trying to do. But people don't know Edwards well enough to see that.

49:26

Yeah. Well, in all candor, and I love Jonathan Edwards, he's very helpful and perhaps the most brilliant theologian ever,

49:34

America ever produced. But there were things that he wrote and said that were subject to misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and people ran with certain things he said and went off the wrong direction, including his own son and grandsons.

49:52

And so it was just a generation or so after Jonathan Edwards that you had the, you know,

49:58

New England theology that ultimately gave rise within a century to Charles Finney.

50:04

And Charles Finney actually revered Jonathan Edwards and believed that he was sort of developing ideas that Jonathan Edwards had thrown out there.

50:14

I think he misunderstood Edwards. Yeah, just a bit. Yeah. But, but there were things

50:21

Edwards said and wrote that could have used a little more clarification. That's true of all of us. I'm, you know, the challenge for all of us is, is not to resent it when somebody points out those ambiguities, but to do the clarification yourself.

50:36

I've had to do that so many times, I've lost count of it. It actually helps you to not only hone your theology, but your communication skills.

50:44

So that the next time you teach this, hopefully you will be clear.

50:52

So, the discernment cult, the sort of extreme discernmentalists, you know, these guys who are self -appointed hypercritics, they think, again, that every time you find an ambiguity or a mistake, the thing to do is, you know, hit it with a nuclear option.

51:10

And that actually creates more problems for the truth than it, than it helps.

51:17

Yeah. And I think that, I mean, you just nailed something that I hope people understand because this is needful for us to take into account what someone said, what they mean by what they say, give, give grace.

51:31

That was really the, a big part of your message was, and what you're saying now, not to use a hammer for everything.

51:37

But you know, one of the things that you, when talking about pastors and, and the like is, you ended up saying this in your sermon,

51:46

Paul himself was at the vertex of controversy throughout his ministry.

51:52

This controversy, this was controversy over key tenets of the gospel truth.

51:58

He was arguing with fresh seminary graduates over, you know, over the fine points of dispensational charts thing.

52:04

Yeah. He was not arguing. Not arguing. Yeah. He wasn't doing useful or useless arguments.

52:10

He wasn't, he wasn't in a online forum arguing the fine points of, you know, what

52:16

John Piper wrote last week or whatever. He was, he was defending cardinal doctrines.

52:21

These were important arguments that he was in. And that's what he's telling Timothy, don't, don't get sidetracked by all the, all the little people who want to argue or pick a fight with you or whatever.

52:31

You don't even have to answer those people sometimes. And in fact, I pointed out in my message that the examples he gives, people he names are

52:40

Hymenaeus and Phileas. Hymenaeus was a particular, I think I used the term theological miscreant.

52:47

He seemed drawn to novel ideas and bizarre ones because Paul actually rebukes him twice in his epistles to Timothy.

52:56

Once he pairs him up with Hymenaeus and Alexander. I think that's Alexander the coppersmith, who

53:01

Paul later says, did me much damage. And in that context, Paul says, I've turned him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

53:09

Basically saying, I have, I have exercised my apostolic authority to summarily excommunicate him because his error is so grievous and so damaging.

53:19

And then he comes back in, in second Timothy two, and he names Hymenaeus again. This time he's paired up with Phileas and Paul is specific about what his error is.

53:30

It's kind of preterism. He says the resurrection is already passed. And Paul says this upsets the faith of people because it was in effect, the denial that of the bodily resurrection, that we will be resurrected bodily from the grave.

53:46

And I don't know what he was teaching or what arguments he was using to sustain it because Paul simply dismisses him.

53:53

He doesn't argue with his point of view. He doesn't post any arguments against it other than the fact that it upsets the faith of people.

54:00

And you might think, well, that's not like Paul because when he attacks a similar error in first Corinthians 15, where people were saying there is no resurrection of the body,

54:12

Paul meticulously dismantles that in a whole chapter, the longest chapter in all of first Corinthians.

54:18

He takes that argument apart piece by piece. But when it comes to Hymenaeus, he just dismisses him and says, don't argue with people like this.

54:27

So you have to ask why, what's the difference here? Well, in first Corinthians, he's trying to help people who were confused by false doctrine.

54:36

In second Timothy, he's telling Timothy, don't get embroiled in an argument with the guy who has already spurned correction.

54:44

He's already been excommunicated. He's clearly a false teacher. Don't give him the artificial dignity of treating his arguments as if they deserve a detailed answer.

54:55

Just dismiss him. He's false. And there are times when you have to do that. But true discernment needs to know the difference.

55:04

And I think so much of John MacArthur's ministry has been in that vortex of controversy.

55:10

And yet he's always risen above that because it's really a teaching based ministry. Yeah. Well, and if you know

55:16

John personally, he hates controversy. It's funny that he is such a lion in the pulpit.

55:23

But in face to face conversations, he's just as gentle as anybody

55:30

I know, even almost gentle to a fault. It's very hard for him to tell people no, or, you know, we've always said if somebody needs to be fired or demoted, don't let

55:42

John do it. He'll accidentally give the guy a promotion. So and I love that about John.

55:48

He is, in every other way I can think of, John is as consistent as he can possibly be.

55:55

The same person you see in the pulpit is the same person you see in private. But in that one thing, and that is how dogmatic and firm and, you know, determined he can be in confronting error, he hates conflict.

56:11

And so in face to face encounters with people, he'll do anything he can to avoid conflict.

56:18

And I love that about him. It's it makes him so easy to work for and work with his gentleness.

56:24

He could say like Paul, and like Paul, he has a reputation for correcting error and dealing candidly and fearlessly with errors when he's teaching.

56:34

But like Paul, he could he could say to everyone at Grace Church, I've been as gentle with you as a nursing mother, because he is.

56:43

And, you know, there's one key that I want to spend some time with after this announcement that really, I think, is the essential key to your sermon.

56:51

And it has to do with God's sovereignty. So I want to get to that after I make this brief announcement for folks who maybe are getting something, finding some value in this podcast, this ministry.

57:04

There's some ways you can support us. One way is you can share it. If you find value in this, share this podcast with others, subscribe to the

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57:23

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57:32

slash donate. You can go there or to our Patreon, which is in the show notes. Either one, what we do is if you donate just two dollars a month, two dollars a month, you will get a free copy of What Do We Believe?,

57:49

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57:57

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58:03

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58:15

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58:28

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58:38

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Those are some of the things that you could do if you are willing to support us. And you can go to striving for eternity dot org slash donate to do that.

59:13

So with that aside, Phil, let me give you something that from your message that I really thought was whether maybe you thought it or not, the underlining to how we do everything you said in your sermon.

59:28

And that is as you mentioned this quote, it says in your sermon, you said this. It is his unshakable confidence in the sovereignty and steadfast faithfulness of God.

59:41

That that was what you were saying. Paul gives Paul the ability to have this gentle, dignified manner about him when it comes to teaching.

59:53

I find that there's many people who say they believe in God. Sovereignty. But when you look at their actions, it doesn't look like they actually believe

01:00:02

God's sovereign. They're not willing to trust him. They feel they got to do it on their own. They got to solve it themselves.

01:00:08

That almost seems like that is the discernment blogger compared to as we look at what you're saying from Paul, what

01:00:15

Paul is trying to teach Timothy to let these things go and let God trust that God's going to take care of it.

01:00:21

How much does God's sovereignty play into this? Yeah, you know, it's an inconsistency about God's sovereignty.

01:00:28

And I would say it's not just the discernment bloggers, but this is a this is one of the facets that I would be most critical of with the with new

01:00:38

Calvinism, the young Russell's reform movement and, you know, even older Calvinists like myself,

01:00:44

Calvinists who are living and ministering in the Internet age. Age, we tend to have absorbed a great deal of pragmatism from our culture.

01:00:55

And so you have, you know, young wrestlers and reform guys who claim to be Calvinists and they sign a

01:01:02

Calvinist statement of faith. They I think they really believe it, at least intellectually.

01:01:08

But when you watch what they do and how they how they operate their churches, how they function in worship, how they argue points and all of that, they seem to be very concerned to to try to blend this sort of seeker sensitive pragmatism methodology with their preaching of the doctrines of grace.

01:01:31

So they'll preach about the sovereignty of God, but but operate their church as if if we don't somehow tickle people's ears, entertain them, make them happy, serve them beer while we discuss theology or whatever, then we have to have some pragmatic tool to attract them, because the gospel itself and they would never say this.

01:01:53

In fact, I don't think they believe it, but they function as if it were the case that the gospel itself really isn't powerful enough to draw the elect.

01:02:00

So we have to we have to do it ourself with various other kinds of enticements. And a similar thing is true, as you say, with the discernment blogger who, you know, the reason

01:02:13

I even brought that up in this context is this is where Paul is telling Timothy, you know, don't get in arguments and stuff like that.

01:02:19

And then he quotes from the Old Testament, the Lord knows who are his. He's actually paraphrasing,

01:02:25

I think, from I think it's number 16, where the the rebellion of Korah. And you remember the ground opened up and swallowed the conspirators with Korah.

01:02:36

And in that context there, the Lord says or Moses says the Lord knows who are his and and he's going to deal with them.

01:02:43

And he did. And a person who really believes in the sovereignty of God will trust that, you know, as long as I'm teaching the truth, refuting error as I'm commanded to do and all that,

01:02:54

I don't it's not my task to humiliate or punish the false teacher.

01:02:59

God will do that. God will take care of them in his time and in his way. The Lord knows who are his.

01:03:06

He quotes that. And right alongside it, he quotes another or paraphrases another passage from number 16, where he says, let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

01:03:16

In other words, get away from those false teachers. It's a it's a it's a command that speaks of human responsibility and separatism, you know, that you don't you don't embrace the false teachers in the same way you would embrace a true brother in Christ.

01:03:37

And depending on the seriousness of the error, you know, depart from iniquity. Don't have anything to do with someone who is, you know, deliberately corrupting the gospel.

01:03:47

Now, someone who's confused is a different thing. You you correct them by instructing them rather than by, you know, like I said, the nuclear option.

01:03:56

So it's difficult. Discernment means that you have to be able to figure out the degree of error you're dealing with and how to deal with it, what method to use, whether it be gentle, which is should be our default response, or whether someone like Hymenaeus, who has already resisted correction and persisted in his error, deserves a harsh rebuke.

01:04:19

And we may not always agree on even the guys who are devoted to exposing the error may not always agree on what's the right response.

01:04:30

But scripture lays out enough guidelines that we ought to know, A, that you don't just ignore error and B, you don't answer every error with the harshest possible response.

01:04:42

You know, and this is a can of worms we won't be able to do now. But when you were talking about God's sovereignty,

01:04:48

I was just thinking of all the discussions we've seen about social justice, whether they're trusting in God's sovereignty.

01:04:56

Maybe we'll have to get you back discussing that because that's a can of worms you're not going to be able to answer quickly.

01:05:03

It is, you know, issues like this come up in a cyclical way in the church.

01:05:08

Twenty years ago, or I'm rounding in big numbers, let's say 25 years ago, it was the pragmatism of seeker sensitivity.

01:05:18

Rick Warren and Bill Hybels were all the thing, you know, and now Bill Hybels is basically discredited.

01:05:23

And Rick Warren isn't as influential as he used to be because everybody moved on from that shallow, superficial pragmatism to, for a brief time, the emerging church.

01:05:33

And so for a decade or so, everybody was like the emerging church is the hope of the future. And it had all these liberalizing tendencies in it.

01:05:40

And when I began to critique that movement, I got lots of pushback from, you know, otherwise sound and sober evangelicals who were like, don't be so critical.

01:05:52

But I said, no, this is there is precedent in church history for where this is going to go.

01:05:59

And I said at the time, I don't think this is going to last 15 years. It didn't even last 10 years. And the movement sort of melted down.

01:06:05

And my comment then was, I'm glad the movement, the emerging church movement died. But the bad ideas that they dispersed out there are like so many dandelion seeds.

01:06:15

We're going to be dealing with the fallout of that in the next four or five years. In my view, the social justice issue is a subset of what the emerging guys were saying.

01:06:27

And it likewise has liberalizing tendencies that need to be addressed.

01:06:32

And when I say that, I get the same kind of pushback. I used to get from people who thought I was being too harsh with the emergence.

01:06:38

And so my response is, wait and see. Give it time. I think you're going to see my criticism is not, you know, misguided.

01:06:48

But after the social justice thing ceases to be a fad, it'll be replaced by something equally bad or worse.

01:06:57

And there's never been a time in church history when the devil wasn't disguising himself as an angel of light and trying to get into the church.

01:07:06

The problem is every generation thinks, yeah, that's that applies to those past generations.

01:07:11

We don't have to worry about false teachers now. I mean, look at how look at how pleasing these people are.

01:07:17

And yeah, they're disguised themselves as angels of light. Well, let me let me do this.

01:07:24

Let me I want to close out with your closing comments of your sermon and then give you the floor with anything else you want to end with.

01:07:33

But this is how you kind of ended it. I think this was a great encouragement for us. You said, let me say this candidly as possible for the sake of my brothers who think of themselves as especially gifted in the realm of discernment or polemical theology.

01:07:47

If you want to be a guardian of truth, but do but you consistently ignore or even throw scorn on the clear message of the text, you sacrifice a significant amount of credibility and everything else you say.

01:08:04

If you really want to be a faithful guardian of the truth, you need to guard your own heart against any temptation to ignore, downplay, explain away or minimize the truth of what

01:08:16

Paul is saying to Timothy in this chapter. I think that was a great encouragement to many.

01:08:22

I want to give you the floor anyway. Anything you want to share before we close out? Yeah, what I was saying in that section you just read is that you undermine your own credibility because you're taking something that Scripture very obviously stresses, the need to be gentle in our correction of error.

01:08:40

And you are in some cases I've seen, you know, discernment guys just turn up their noses at that at that passage or the truth of it.

01:08:48

They'll dismiss it in ways like, well, but you see what Paul says to the Galatians. Look what Jesus did with the with the money changers.

01:08:56

And it's OK to be harsh. But Paul's point is it's not always OK to be harsh.

01:09:01

That's that shouldn't be our go to response every time we see an error. And he's very clear about that.

01:09:09

There's so much emphasis on that in Scripture. And it's so clear to the average reader that if you purposely deny that command to be gentle and you just constantly say, no,

01:09:21

I don't have to live by that scripture. That doesn't apply to me because I'm a discernment expert. What you're doing is actually undermining the truth because you are you are dismissing such a clear precept of Scripture and undermines everything you say.

01:09:36

And a rational person is not going to see you do that and think that you're someone whose advice ought to be heeded.

01:09:43

And so everything you say that may be true is going to be dismissed by a lot of rational people because they're going to say,

01:09:50

I can't trust this guy because he doesn't he doesn't follow Scripture. And and therefore, some of the people who do the worst damage to legitimate efforts at exercising discernment are the people who talk the most about discernment and think they they themselves are the greatest.

01:10:09

Paragons of true discernment, they're not so. Well, I want to thank you again for coming on, but for the message you delivered at Shepard's conference, it was,

01:10:19

I think, very powerful. I can't wait till the sermons get back online. So we can we can share that when they do.

01:10:26

I will link them in the show notes because I will go and listen to my message.

01:10:31

But right now, you're in the number two slot of the message that I would

01:10:36

I mean, John MacArthur's first message, we didn't get to talk about that. But that was phenomenal, kind of warning people about being the celebrity pastor, the celebrity

01:10:47

Christian, really just saying, hey, we should aspire to be a third level galley slave.

01:10:53

That should be what we aspire to. That was so needful. Yeah. So I thank you for coming on.

01:11:02

And I'll remind folks, if you want to help, Justin Peters and I are headed to the Philippines to basically address some issues with the

01:11:09

NAR and some of the word of faith that's going on there. We're going to be doing a two weeks conference for two weeks.

01:11:17

And basically the churches there are going to take care of everything once we land in the Philippines.

01:11:23

But both Justin and I have to make our way there and back. And it's not exactly a cheap thing to do.

01:11:29

So if there's any way you can help support that, you can go to Scribing for Eternity dot org and you can send some finances that way to help pay for that.

01:11:38

So we can kind of give some truth and discernment in there in the Philippines. You also can go to JustinPeters .org,

01:11:45

donate there. So for Justin's side of his flights. So you can help both of us so we can get over there and kind of correct some error that is there.

01:11:55

So until next week, I think next week what we're going to do is while I was at Shepherds Conference, I got some interviews with men like Darrell Harris, someone that I think

01:12:04

Phil may know that name. I think he just hired him. And so but we have

01:12:10

Darrell Harris. I have Alexander Strzok and a couple others.

01:12:15

So we'll probably play those, give you some different bits of those in the next couple of weeks of the wrap report.

01:12:22

So until then, strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. This podcast is part of the

01:12:28

Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to Striving for Eternity dot org.