Mohler Video Follow Up, London Preacher Arrested, & Anti CRT: a Winning Issue for Conservatives

Conversations That Matter

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Conversations That Matter podcast, my name is John Harris. We're going to talk about a few issues, items, I should say, today.

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One is a follow -up on the Al Mohler video, which many of you have seen. And then we're going to talk about an evangelist who was arrested in London.

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I'm going to read the article, I'm going to show you the video. And then why opposing critical race theory is a winning issue.

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I'm going to give you my thoughts on that for Republicans. And so those are the three big kind of items.

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I want to say first before we get to those, though, that I'm very thankful to all of you for your support.

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I know many of you pray for me and all the different projects that I have my hands in. And I just appreciate your support.

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I couldn't do this without you. I know if you're a big author, you get paid by the publishing companies to write books.

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I'm writing one now on the social justice issue. It's the second one. The first one was a history. This one is more of a hands -on kind of apologetics book.

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And I'm planning on having kind of a small group workbook with it, along with some videos.

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So you can take a Bible study or that small group or something like that through it. And an eight -week course, something like that.

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But it's because of your donations that I'm able to do this and still meet my obligations to pay my bills and those kinds of things.

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So I just want to say I don't take any of that for granted. I'm very grateful. And so thank you to everyone who does support what

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I'm doing here. One other thing I wanted to mention, for Last Stand Studios, I am going to a couple places.

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One of them, though, is Auburn, Alabama. That's going to be soon, like next week, I think. On the 12th,

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Tuesday, the 12th, I think that's the 12th, I am going to need a place to film some things, preferably something historical, whether that's a church or just an old house.

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If not, just a place would be fine. So if you have any connections in Auburn, Alabama, please reach out to studiolaststandatgmail .com.

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That's studiolaststandatgmail .com. I'll put it in the info section. And then if anyone has connections in that vicinity,

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I'll be driving, I think, from Atlanta early that morning to Auburn, Alabama.

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I would like to see if I can rent maybe a few lights and possibly a teleprompter.

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So, yes, it is a project that I'm excited about, but needs some additional things.

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So I may be making some more announcements as we do shoots in different areas, because I know there's people that listen to this podcast who are from around those areas.

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So I'm not going to be there long. It's going to be a very short thing. So I don't think it's going to be possible for me to do dinner or anything like that.

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But if anyone has specifically connections to a place to shoot or any of those items,

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I would really appreciate it. Let's see. Oh, I wanted to show you this.

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I don't know what to make of this. I saw this the other day. And so here's a picture.

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This is just kind of for humor's sake. But the Carter Center, you can see

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I captured this two hours after it was posted, I think, two nights ago. The Carter Center on Facebook posted this picture, which

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I don't quite understand, of the Bidens with the Carters. And it really looks like they're in a midget house or something like that.

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Some of you may have already seen this. But I mean, it's I was thinking that that cannot be the proportion that that just that's not possible.

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It could be like one of the I don't know. Tell me what you think. I don't know how this is possible. Maybe Biden is kind of like out farther.

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And so there's a perspective thing going on. Maybe that's kind of what's happening there. There's out farther than the

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Carters are. But you are maybe a life. Maybe eating peanuts does something to you in your old age.

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I don't know. But the more interesting thing, in a way, is look at the look at the

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Carter Center, which has Jimmy Carter and his wife, the pictures of them. Look at the icon at the top and you'll see they both have masks.

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Well, then look at the picture with them and the Bidens. Neither the Carters nor the Bidens have masks on.

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So I wanted to point that out just to say, I thought that even if you had the vaccine, you had to have a mask.

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I mean, Biden has been on video in Zoom sessions where he has the mask.

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But apparently you can be that very close to an elderly person and you do not need the mask.

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So just food for thought. I guess they don't take them as seriously as they say they do.

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But moving on, on to more serious things, I wanted to show you just a little things that there's been a tremendous reaction to the what happened to our video.

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And this was sent to me after the video, but I didn't know about it. So back in well, and that's not really that far.

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It's actually a couple of months ago, a few months ago. It's November of last year.

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Someone had posted this. Guy named JD is wearing a mask. And he posted about the phrase

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Black Lives Matter. He says the phrase predates the organization. And by the way,

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I've gone through the history of that before. Black Lives Matter organization takes credit for coming up with the slogan.

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So, of course, people had said the phrase Black Lives Matter as just an English, you know, it's just it's a sentence in English.

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But as far as or it's a phrase, I should say in English, not technically a sentence.

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But as far as a slogan with the hashtag and everything that does not predate at least the founders of the organization, to my knowledge, they came up with it.

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But anyway, I digress. He says, I guess most people don't even know the organization exists. You all, really?

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I think most people do. You all are getting hung up on a red herring. In this country, at this time, all people of goodwill should agree with the simple premise that Black Lives Matter, all caps.

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Now, you know, all caps, Black Lives Matter, that's the slogan. So anyway, that's who would, you know, no one would care except for the fact that actually

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Al Mohler liked this. He doesn't like a lot of tweets, but someone sent this to me. He actually liked this tweet, which is interesting to me because we've talked a lot about this.

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Hey, what about separating the phrase from the organization? Can't you do that? And I've given a number of examples.

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I mean, it's like, you know, saying that, you know, this is my body.

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And that means something in Christianity. And then what if like a pro abortion organization took that and made that their slogan?

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We rightfully, I think, be kind of like upset about that. You know, there's there is something there is something related to authorial intent that defines the meaning of something.

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And those committed to a grammatical historical hermeneutic should be the first to say, hey, authorial intent is important.

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Another example would be like, you know, saying taking allahu akbar and probably pronounce that wrong. But God is good.

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You know, we're in the Muslim religion. This is, you know, a common in Islam.

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It's a common phrase that's used. And then Christians just hijacking that. We're going to take that now. We're going to use that. Well, it creates confusion.

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And the purpose of communication is not to create confusion. So if you can take the the slogan

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Black Lives Matter and try to separate it from the organization and say it means something different now. At best, you're creating confusion.

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And you're on purpose because you're siding with an organization that the intent that they have, what they mean by that is not what you mean by that.

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Right. So when they say Black Lives Matter, they're talking about Black Lives Matter means that it insinuates that there's some kind of systemic oppression against black people, maybe related to the police.

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That's specifically what they generally harp on. And so you saying that is insinuating that black lives don't matter in this country or to the police or in whatever, you know, in general, you know, systemically, there's this problem and that, you know, the solutions of Black Lives Matter organization are meant to correct that problem.

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So when you say that, that's what most people are going to think you mean. And that's what it means in the broader culture. So if you're if you're going to take that and then just say, well,

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I just think it means that this sort of general statement that black lives matter, just like any other life matters because they're made in the image of God.

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And it's just as general statement. Well, then it wouldn't be controversial, right? It's just a general statement.

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But it is controversial because there's more packed into that. There's more assumptions that it's resting on, and it's the way that people use it.

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And it's the people who developed it who are the founders of Black Lives Matter, the organization. So I just thought it was interesting that Albert Mueller like that.

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So someone sent that to me. I would have included it probably. I mean, you might think that's not a big thing, but taken together with everything else that I showed you last in last episode, then

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I think it's significant enough to mention. And then you have Michael O 'Fallon from Sovereign Nations.

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And this kind of kind of a bomb in a way, because Michael is a guy who has worked with Al Mueller and he's put on events for Al Mueller and for organizations that were hosting

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Al Mueller. So he knows him and he's known him for years on a kind of on a business level at the very least.

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And he says this, I think we can all say with confidence that the Southern Baptist Convention would not be what it is today without the strategic vision and guidance of Albert Mueller.

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That's quite the statement. He's saying basically blaming Al Mueller for the liberal drift, if you want to call it that, or the social justice drift, if you want to call it that.

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But wherever we are, the Southern Baptist Convention, he's saying Al Mueller's responsible.

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So then someone sent me this, and I'm going to play this, set it up real quick.

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So there was some pushback against the video I did, and I tried to really set it up. I mean, it's airtight stuff.

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I put the link in the info section if you want to check out all the sources. But there were still people who thought that I was lying.

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I mean, it's to be expected. Or that I should have gone to him first.

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The general things you hear whenever you say anything possibly discerning about someone in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, I've just gotten used to it. But I think the most serious charge that I made was that I was open to the idea that Al Mueller may have taught some false teaching.

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And I gave you examples of that in that last video. And I said I actually put him in the category of more of a

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Peter, where I think he stood condemned, but not anathema. He's giving cover for the false teachers, and he's being confusing, purposely confusing, so as to not get in trouble with the social justice crowd.

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He's walking this line. But I said, look, I'm open, because he has said some things that really lend themselves to false teaching.

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It really sounds, in some of the statements that I read, like he's merging some kind of social justice work with the gospel itself.

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And I have multiple examples of it. Kind of a serious charge, right, that I made. And so some people didn't like that.

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Well, someone sent me a definition of false teaching, and I thought, you know, I should play this definition of false teaching and see what everyone thinks about it.

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Because in the video, I had said, look, you've got Tom Rush, you've got Russell Fuller, I know of others. But at least those two have publicly said, yeah, we've confronted

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Al Mueller, and we didn't get anywhere. So what constitutes a false teacher?

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If you're a false teacher, what does that mean? What would you have to do to be a false teacher? Well, here's an interesting definition.

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What is a false teacher? A false teacher is one who teaches falsehood. I would just add to that.

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Amen. But I think there is, in the New Testament, a clear reservation of that, not just to one who teaches falsely, but who is uncorrectable, who resists correction.

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I mean, Apollos was a false teacher. But when he was corrected, when he was taught how to preach a better way, how to be more faithful to Scripture, he was corrected.

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So there's a difference between a false teaching, because just about any preacher starting out, especially if he's going to teach something that's false, that's quite different than being,

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I think, a false teacher, uncorrected and uncorrectable. And the chief characteristic of his teaching is falsehood.

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So there you have it. Al Mohler himself defining false teaching and what false teaching is.

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And I'm just throwing it out there. For those who didn't like my take on false teaching, well, what do you think of Al Mohler's take on it?

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I kind of agree with that. I think there's something to that. That there's sort of a knowingness.

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There's some kind of knowledge that someone has when they're doing it. They've been corrected in some way. That would confirm that there's knowledge that they're doing something wrong, and they're doing it anyway.

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So I think there's something to that. And that's Al Mohler in his own words. So throwing that out there for you guys.

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Let's talk about something probably a little more important here on a civil level here.

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Pastor John Sherwood was arrested for a homophobic comment. Here's an article by Christianity Daily on May 4th.

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And then you have the video posted on Twitter by Jason Noble saying that this happened in London.

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How is this acceptable in any way, shape, or form? I'm going to show you the video, and then we're going to read this article. So here is the video of the pastor getting arrested.

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I'm going to spoil the video.

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Okay. You want to come down.

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You need to come down, otherwise we'll pull you up. Are you going to come down or not? You're under arrest.

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I need you to come down. Are you going to step down? Easy, easy.

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Come on. He's an old man, mate. He's an old man.

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He's an old man. He's an old man, mate.

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Take it easy with him. Preaching the word of God. Why, why, why? The Lord God Almighty. Persecution has come to Britain.

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God bless you. Look what he's carrying, this old man.

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Look at this. It's hard to even watch that.

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I mean, it's not particularly violent or anything, but it just shows you kind of where things are at in London.

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I thought at first it might be because he didn't have a mask on. I thought maybe that's what's going on, but it turns out that's not the issue.

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I'm going to read for you. This is the story at Christianity Daily. I wasn't making any homophobic comments.

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I was just defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. I was only saying what the Bible says. I wasn't wanting to hurt anyone or cause offense,

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Sherwood said. He also said that he was just doing his job of preaching the gospel.

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When the police approached me, I explained that I was exercising my religious liberty and my conscience. I was forcibly pulled down from the steps and suffered some injury to my wrist and to my elbow.

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I do believe I was treated shamefully. It should never have happened, he further said. He was arrested under Section 5 of the

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Public Order Act for the said offense. He was held for a night in jail and released without charge, but his case will be reviewed by the

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Crown Prosecution Service. The pastor revealed that the officers also questioned him about his attitude toward gay people.

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In a video clip taken during his arrest, the pastor was pulled forcibly down. You saw that.

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And the spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said that in accordance with their professional standards, the footage showed that the officers did not commit misconduct in the arrest.

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And so, yeah, anyway, that's pretty much the gist of it. This is concerning because you know that this is the same exact thing that's coming here.

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We're not that disconnected from what's happening in Great Britain. And I remember,

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I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to remember not too long ago before Obergefell, when we were told, when conservatives were told, social conservatives, that basically it was done.

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Once same -sex marriage was approved by the Supreme Court, there wouldn't be any further pushing.

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Just give in, let this marriage equality thing, quote -unquote, happen, and that's it.

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And there were some of us who could see that this was not it. This was the beginning. And I think this is just a look down the road, not too far in front of us, for what's going to be happening in certain areas, probably in the

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United States. In fact, in some cases, I know it doesn't have the same force of law as in London, but I know there has been harassment and things like that over this same issue in the

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United States already, but nothing quite like this. And this is a gentleman who's elderly.

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He's been there a long time doing this. Several people I saw on social media who had been to London who are

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Christians said, yeah, we know who that guy is. I don't know a lot about his theology, but that would affect everyone, any evangelical, or really just about any

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Christian and members of multiple other religions if they wanted to express what their religion teaches on the relationship between men and women, husbands, wives.

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And so this is a concerning thing. It's happening. It's coming. And in London, it's there.

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And so our solution is just to keep being faithful and to keep doing what we need to do.

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Don't let that intimidate you. But they are trying to make an example of him.

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That's what it looks like, at least. Next issue I want to talk about is that opposing critical race theory seems to be a winning issue for conservatives.

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I live in Virginia, and I've seen over the last week, actually, a lot of the gubernatorial candidates rush to say how they're against critical race theory.

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Even Glenn Youngkin, who endorsed Be the Bridge, we've talked about this, which posits every tenet, all the seven tenets of critical race theory, and he's agreed to read this and endorsed it on some level.

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Now he's saying, no, I don't believe in critical race theory, and we're not going to teach it here in Virginia. So it's hard to tell the posers from those who actually are against it.

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But if you can remember the two broad categories critical race theory breaks down into, the teachings, number one, the

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Marxist element, that there's these hard and fast lines between oppressor, oppressed, and that in these power relationships between the two groups when they interact, there's some kind of oppression, some kind of racism that manifests itself in subliminal ways even.

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So racism is normative. That's the header I'd put over that. Racism is normative. It's everywhere, even if you can't see it.

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It's just part of the fabric of society. The second assumption is from the postmodern end, and that is that you need these standpoints, these minority glasses to understand reality, to understand oppression.

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If you have those two things, you have critical race theory, basically. And I think that there's some people who believe one or both of those who are saying that they're against it because it's to their advantage now.

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And so be careful of that. Be aware of that. There's now a market in opposing this.

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It's to people's advantage. People who don't even know what it is, haven't read anything about it, haven't taken the time to try to understand it, they're opposing it now.

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Here's just some other examples of where this is being debated or where it's been a winning issue. Coca -Cola has paused its new woke initiatives after major pushback and boycotts.

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Remember Coke was saying you've got to be less white. You have in the state of Tennessee, there was a debate,

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I think this was actually today, about teaching critical race theory. Here's NBC News reporting that opponents of anti -racism education, it's actually people who oppose critical race theory indoctrination, but they win a big, bitterly divided election in South Lake, Texas.

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Conservative candidates who opposed a school diversity plan won every local race, taking about 70 % of the vote in the wealthy

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Dallas -Fort Worth suburb. This is a winning issue, guys. And that's why you're seeing it now.

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All of a sudden, this delayed reaction. I would not believe all of it. Just be careful.

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You want to test to see that the people who are actually opposing this actually oppose it. Because I think so many of them probably don't.

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And that's just my caution. It's to people's advantage. It's to market themselves as against critical race theory.

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I've already said this before in the SBC and in Evangelicalism. The litmus test, one of them at least, needs to be, are they willing to name names in their own backyard, in their own denominations, where they have the most power to do something about it, are they willing to name the names?

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Because if they just go after it and say, I'm against critical race theory, yeah, everyone is now rushing to say that. But do they actually understand it, and are they willing to name the names of the people who are actually pushing it?

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Okay. Let's see. What else do we have here? Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention this. Why is it a winning issue?

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Number one, these are two examples that I noticed recently.

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Virginia schools to change names from slaveholders Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. So two founding fathers that public schools are named after.

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Yeah, we're going to change those names. That's racist. This is one of the reasons.

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It's this kind of thing that is causing people to say we don't want this taught. Virginia moving to eliminate all accelerated math courses before 11th grade as part of an equity -focused plan.

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So dumbing down the curriculum. Dumbing down the curriculum. That's, I think, why it's a winning issue.

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It's getting into people's personal lives. And last but not least, I think, yeah, this is my last slide here.

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Ryan Fournier posted this, posted two things. Someone sent this to me and I was like, okay,

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I'll include this on the podcast. He's a conservative activist, I guess, for lack of a better term.

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And he posted this on his Twitter. Boy Scouts of America is now facing potential bankruptcy. That's what happens when you give in to the left's gender nonsense.

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A few moments later, this is about Bruce Jenner, now calling himself

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Caitlyn Jenner, running for the governor of California. He says, boom, just contributed.

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We need real leadership in that state. Democrats have destroyed it. So then you have, you know, this is,

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I thought this was just a good illustration to kind of put in this slideshow of people who say they're against critical race theory, right?

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In this case, it's a different social justice issue. It's people who say they are against the left's gender nonsense.

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But then, you know, Caitlyn Jenner, that's real leadership in the state of California.

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I'm going to contribute to that, that campaign. It just, you know, strikes,

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I'm just telling you, just look into these people before you follow their lead. You just might want to do a little bit of research to make sure they're being actually consistent.

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Well, that's all I think I have for you today. Hopefully that was beneficial, little news roundup there.

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There's a lot more. I've actually been writing down potential shows, and I've gotten a lot of requests.

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Hey, John, can you talk about this person? Can you talk about this issue? And in due time, I am trying to get to as much as I can.

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But, again, trying to write a book here as well, and do some filming, and there's just a lot going on.

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But I wanted to just close by reiterating thank you for all your support. It does mean a lot. It does help.

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And if anyone's in the Auburn, Alabama area, I really appreciate someone reaching out and letting me know that they know of a place that we can do some filming at.