Nearly Two Hours on Critical Race Theory, White Privilege, T4G, and More

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:32

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line today. There are lots of topics that I would like to get to.

00:40

I actually didn't even get a chance to finish watching the new film coming out, Fragments of Truth.

00:47

I'd like to tell you a little bit more about that. I think it's premiering this week or next week or something like that.

00:53

I think it's next week. Anyway, definitely something you might want to be taking in, taking a look at.

01:00

We'll have some interaction with that, especially from an apologetic perspective.

01:06

Maybe we can get to that later in the week. It's just an incredibly busy week for me.

01:11

All sorts of things are going on, especially in the evenings for some reason. But as it may, it's been a very busy week since we were last on with you.

01:24

I went out of town and had a good time, other than the 60 mph winds that I had to deal with one day.

01:35

Cold weather is weird. I sat outside for lunch today at the little restaurant that I frequently go to.

01:45

There were a couple of times I was like, and this is April. I remember very, very, very clearly riding

01:57

El Tour de Phoenix in the first weekend of April back in the 90s, and it hit 104 mph that day.

02:04

This global warming thing, we can all thank the global warmists for all that.

02:17

Over the past week, there has been a lot of interaction, a lot of comments.

02:23

T4G took place, and there were a number of sermons that were delivered there at T4G.

02:36

I recognize that the issues of race in the United States do not connect with our global audience.

02:49

I recognize that in the vast majority of instances outside the

02:54

United States, these issues have been dealt with in very appropriate ways.

03:07

In the United Kingdom, the issue of slavery was dealt with without a civil war, for example.

03:14

You go to London, you go to South Africa, and you walk into a church, and it is going to be incredibly diverse, ethnically speaking.

03:29

The reality is that for the vast majority of us, that's absolutely natural, that's wonderful.

03:36

We don't even give it a second thought. If there are issues that come up, they're issues like, well, within our culture, we do

03:45

X, Y, or Z, and so the church struggles a little bit with certain people's willingness to do these things.

03:50

It's not that you ignore these things, it's that you recognize, especially in many of these cultures, when you're in such a minority.

03:59

I think one of the issues in the United States is that there's so many

04:05

Christians. I mean, a brother from down in Australia was just visiting here in the United States, and he wrote an article on Facebook about how blessed we are.

04:15

He says, I just couldn't believe the public expressions of Christian faith all over the place, which you just don't see anyplace else.

04:23

Well, that's a blessing in one way, but there are problems that it raises as well. When the church is such a small functional minority, as it is in the

04:36

United Kingdom, it doesn't matter, I mean, look at the Church of England in England.

04:43

Very, very, very small percentage any longer. When you are the cultural minority as a whole, the distinctions between the members of the church based on their skin color just simply can't have a meaningful place.

05:03

They just can't. And so the unity that you have is the unity of a small religious group in a society that is driven by very different forces than the

05:18

Word of God and things like that. So anyway, I recognize that overseas, you may look at this and go, you people have problems.

05:30

And we do. But my concern, quite honestly, is that the

05:37

United States has a tendency to export its problems to other people.

05:49

And I would truly hate, in light of MLK 50,

05:55

T4G, I would really hate to see critical race theory, neomarxism, and the other bedrock assumptions that are hiding behind a lot of the religious languages being used.

06:15

Even by people who don't even realize how deeply they've been influenced by those other sources.

06:22

I would hate to see that spread out to outside of the

06:29

United States and to start causing division elsewhere. But the problem is major conferences like T4G are watched all around the world.

06:40

And so I do have a concern that some of these things might end up causing problems where there weren't any problems to be being dealt with in the first place.

06:54

And so given some of the interaction that I had over the past week,

07:01

I do need to take some time to address these things. I apologize. I would rather be talking about fragments of truth and getting back to Bart Ehrman and things like that.

07:09

But we have, in essence, inevitably been drawn into this because of the assertions that are being made and because of the interactions that have been had with some of the leaders in this movement.

07:28

And so we want to provide a meaningful response. I remember it was in this studio, so it couldn't have been all that long ago.

07:38

I remember talking a little bit about racial theory when

07:46

Barack Obama was first elected or was running for president, as I recall. And we read some quotes from some of the black theologians that had greatly influenced, you know,

08:03

Cone and others that had influenced his pastor and himself and things.

08:09

It was years and years and years ago. Those things have not gone away by any stretch of the imagination.

08:16

But what we're seeing now is influence within what calls itself

08:22

Reformed Christianity, conservative Reformed Christianity, because of the fact that leaders in seminaries and in churches are adopting this perspective and promoting this perspective.

08:39

And I just don't think a lot of people are familiar with the underlying assumptions that are resulting in us not having any meaningful conversation.

08:48

I mean, I'm going to look at some quotes here a little while from people like Kyle Howard and Dwight McKissick, who are leaders in this movement.

09:01

And if they are indicative of what we have coming in the future, it's not their desire to have a meaningful conversation.

09:12

It seems that from that perspective, to have a meaningful conversation means you start by accepting their fundamental assumptions.

09:23

You start by accepting your own guilt. And the only conversation that anybody wants to have is what shape your repentance is going to take.

09:35

It's really nothing more than that. And so it's very troubling, and it's sad to see, but there's a reason for it.

09:43

We need to understand a few things. There is an article that is—what's the date on this?

09:57

March 30th. So this was only a few weeks ago. There is an article,

10:05

Critical Race Theory, RTS, SBTS. And it's by a former

10:11

Presbyterian, who, by the way, obviously would not have a whole lot of particularly high views of myself.

10:18

Because at one point toward the beginning, yeah, he says,

10:25

I can't buy that a Baptist can be characterized as Reformed or Calvinistic. Okay, so this is not somebody who's enchanted by my ministry or my writings or anything like that by any stretch of the imagination.

10:40

So this is by William H. Smith on the Aquila Report. Critical Race Theory, RTS, and SBTS are the ways of looking at race associated with Critical Race Theory compatible with the views of our

10:51

Lord and his apostles. And what is useful, especially in this particular article, is some of the definitions that are provided.

11:01

So when we look at Critical Race Theory, CRT, CRT recognizes—this is a definition provided by the

11:13

UCLA School of Public Affairs. So not exactly an overly theological source, but CRT recognizes that racism is ingrained in the fabric and system of the

11:24

American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture.

11:33

This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures.

11:38

CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color.

11:49

CRT also rejects the traditions of liberalism and meritocracy. Legal discourse says that the law is neutral and colorblind.

11:57

However, CRT challenges this legal truth by examining liberalism and meritocracy as a vehicle for self -interest, power, and privilege.

12:06

Are you hearing a lot of these terms? Because we've been hearing these terms. We've been hearing these terms from pulpits, but they're coming from Critical Race Theory.

12:17

CRT also recognizes that liberalism and meritocracy are often stories heard from those with wealth, power, and privilege.

12:27

These stories paint a false picture of meritocracy. Everyone who works hard can attain wealth, power, and privilege while ignoring the systemic inequalities that institutional racism provides.

12:41

Intersectionality within CRT points to the multidimensionality of oppressions and recognizes that race alone cannot account for disempowerment.

12:51

Intersectionality means the examination of race, sex, class, national origin, sexual orientation, and how their combination plays out in various settings.

12:59

This is an important tenet in pointing out that CRT is critical of the many oppressions facing people of color as it does not allow for a one -dimensional approach to complexities of our world.

13:09

So you've been hearing a lot about intersectionality. You've been hearing it all over our culture.

13:16

You're hearing, and I'll just be honest, I have seen tremendously obvious, to me anyways, parallels in the way

13:27

I have been treated by those promoting the woke church and the way people promote the

13:37

LGBTQ movement in our society today. They're functioning out of the exact same playbook, whether they realize it or not, even recognize it or not, they're treating people in the same way.

13:53

They're promoting their perspectives in the same way that the LGBTQ people are because it's working within our society.

14:02

So it's a very practical thing, but there's a lot of connections in the way that this is presented.

14:10

Another component to CRT is the commitment to social justice, an active role scholars take in working toward eliminating racial oppression as a broad goal of ending all forms of oppression.

14:24

And again, realize oppression from this perspective, trace it back.

14:31

We're talking neo -Marxism. We're talking the idea that liberty and freedom should not be freedom of opportunity, but equality of result.

14:46

Not equality of opportunity, but equality of result. Equality of result is

14:52

Marxism. That's the goal of Marx, is we all get to have the same apartment and the same public transportation and the same amount of money and the same amount of food.

15:07

And it doesn't work. It is not biblical by any stretch of the imagination, but that's where it's coming from.

15:15

And people become extremely sensitive about having this pointed out to them without really then responding by saying, no, this is where I'm against that.

15:25

This is where I would be opposed to the application of Marx's theory where he sets one societal group against another societal group to break down the structures of that society so as to open up the space for this communistic, socialistic system of equality based upon outcome rather than equality based upon opportunity, which would be a significantly more biblical concept.

15:55

So you'll hear this idea of oppression is built into the system. And the only way that oppression can finally be gotten rid of is to equal out all of those groups so that nobody has power over anybody else.

16:16

But we all know it doesn't work that way. You can say the state's going to do that, but we all know that's not how it worked in the

16:25

Soviet Union. That's not how it works in communist China. It's not how it works in North Korea. It's not how it works in any place.

16:33

Marxism doesn't work because Marxism does not have a biblical view of man. And so it can never function in that way.

16:40

But this idea of oppression, working toward eliminating racial oppression as a broad goal of ending all forms of oppression.

16:47

So originally Marx, it was the oppression of the rich versus the workers, the poor.

16:55

Now, and it was a systemic thing. And the only way to get rid of that oppression was to destroy the system.

17:02

Now, you apply it to race, you apply it to sex, you apply it to gender, whatever it is, as a mechanism of breaking down so as to replace with something else.

17:15

And you don't have to understand that that's your final goal to be used by this movement to accomplish that final goal.

17:25

You can have all sorts of other reasons. And if you can get religious people to think that doing this is somehow good religiously, more power to you, because you'll get them to be right there, right up to the point where they lose all their religious liberties.

17:41

And then they'll realize, oh, hmm, that probably wasn't good. And by then it's too late.

17:49

So you hear these terms oppression, power, privilege, so on and so forth. This is the eventual goal of CRT and the work that most

17:57

CRT scholars pursue as academics and activists. So here's just some of the things that CRT presents.

18:06

Now, what this article does is very interesting. It then gives us some quotes from Jarvis Williams.

18:15

And Jarvis Williams is a graduate of Boyce College and holds THM and PhD from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

18:23

So he wrote in Part 1 of Why Racism May Defeat American Evangelicalism, which was a

18:31

RON article, though RON isn't RON anymore. Reformed African American Network, I'm not sure what it is now.

18:42

Prioritization of whiteness. In mainstream American evangelicalism, whiteness is the privileged majority.

18:50

By this I mean those who identify as white evangelicals experience certain privileges by being part of the majority group in white evangelical and American culture.

18:58

By pointing out the privileges of white evangelicals in a predominantly white and complex evangelical movement,

19:04

I don't mean to suggest white evangelicals work easier or are undeserving of the privileges and benefits they have received, yet one can work hard and still be the recipient of privileges and advantages because of one's whiteness.

19:19

In the American evangelical movement, white evangelicals still benefit from being in the privileged majority, and most of the privileged majority continues to think racism is not an issue in American evangelicalism.

19:30

Then the evangelical movement stands no chance at seeing holistic racial reconciliation within its churches, institutions, and communities.

19:40

White colonization of black and brown cultures. Certain white evangelical denominations have more black and brown members than others.

19:48

The larger evangelical denominations tend to have more black and brown members than smaller ones. But black and brown evangelicals are still the minority in the

19:57

American evangelical movement. That is, black and brown evangelicals who are members of certain predominant white evangelical denominations might feel the pressure to give in to predominant white cultural colonization.

20:10

Now, I hope what you're hearing here is this is totally a political, cultural analysis.

20:20

This is not a biblical analysis that says God builds

20:25

His church. I'm going to be mentioning this when I look at Brother Platt's sermon here in a little while.

20:34

What you do is you preach and teach faithfully the

20:41

Word of God, and then you trust God to bring to you those that He would have you have as part of that fellowship.

20:54

At our church, we've just always trusted that God will bring through the door those who are looking for a consistent teaching and preaching of the

21:05

Word of God. We follow the keep it simple, stupid philosophy. We don't have a bunch of programs.

21:13

We don't have a bunch of stuff for people to be doing. We don't have a choir program, because we've got no place for a choir.

21:21

And believe me, when you hear us sing, you wouldn't want us to have a choir anyways. It's best to have a bunch of people singing so that it covers over that fact.

21:34

Anyway, and besides that, music ministries are normally the source of many divisions in many churches.

21:41

That's another story. Anyway, the elders choose the form of worship.

21:52

And for us, it has been consistent for many, many, many, many years. It hasn't changed.

22:00

We don't do any surveys. We've got plenty of people who contact us and say, hey, if your pastor had this length of hair, wore this style of clothes, had this kind of music, this is what's going to attract in your area.

22:14

We don't care. That's not the point. The point is the centrality of the teaching and preaching of the

22:22

Word of God, and our confidence is that God will bring to us those who want to have the same thing.

22:29

And we've had plenty of people who've come, and they love the preaching, but they want all sorts of kids programs, and they want swimming lessons, and they want a bigger facility than we have, and so they go someplace else.

22:43

More power to you. God bless you in your ministry.

22:51

So, the whole idea that we have is that God's the one that determines what a church looks like.

23:01

And He does so based upon drawing people to the ministry of the Word. And I haven't heard anyone addressing that.

23:13

And that just clangs up against the idea of white cultural colonization, because it sounds like what's being said is, you know, we have black members of our congregation, and Chinese, and Filipino, and Korean, and lots of Hispanic folks.

23:35

And it sounds like what's being said is, well, this is white colonization.

23:43

If they want to fit in, then they somehow have to abandon their particular ethnic, well, as Platt's going to put it, preferences.

23:54

Well, the reality is, we all, doesn't matter what the color of our skin is, we all get to put aside some of our preferences, because the priority that we have is unity around the central things.

24:12

So, we sing from the Trinity Hymnal. We sing old hymns from the

24:18

Trinity Hymnal. We sing one from the

24:23

Psalter that talks about monsters in the sea. We sing another one that talks about the destruction of our enemies.

24:35

You know, it's all straight out of the Psalter, but you wouldn't hear it being sung almost anywhere other than the

24:42

OPC and the Reformed Baptists. We're about the only ones that sing those songs anymore. And they sing slowly.

24:49

Yes, I do my best to drag it along as quickly as possible, but I do believe that by the sixth verse, we are a minimum of 15 % slower than verse one.

24:59

I don't think there's any question about that, no. Anyway, but preference -wise, don't tell my fellow elders, but I love

25:11

Keith Green. I'd love to have some worship choruses and maybe some of Keith Green's greatest hits.

25:22

But I lay that aside for the greater good of the unity of the body in focusing upon the ministry of the

25:37

Word of God and preparing the heart for that, and that's how we do it. And if somebody does it differently, that's great.

25:44

That's fine. That's wonderful. The Lord brings people to that place, and it's going to be made up of people who have those desires.

25:50

But this idea of predominant white cultural colonization is the application of purely secular societal standards to the work of the

26:04

Holy Spirit of God, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Anybody who looks at what we do at our church and calls that predominant white cultural colonization is just not even on the same page.

26:16

We are just not even talking the same language at all. I continue, cultural colonization happens when members of majority cultures compel minority cultures, in this case members of black and brown cultures, to conform to acceptable cultural norms of whiteness.

26:36

This conformity can be seen when minority black and brown cultures identify with cultural whiteness and dissociate from aspects of their black and brown cultures to assimilate within the white majority cultural

26:47

Christian group. How about recognizing that the Holy Spirit of God can actually cause white and brown -colored

26:58

Christians to so love the consistent, deep exegesis of the

27:06

Word of God that they want that to be the central aspect of their worship, they want that to be the central aspect of their service, and therefore they associate with other

27:17

Christians and none of them care about what their ancestors did or what the color of their skin is.

27:25

How about that? Think that might work? Yeah, it does work.

27:31

It works all over the world. Works all over the world. I've seen it, been there, done that, got the t -shirt.

27:45

Anyway, I would recommend, you know, there's just so much in here and there's so much to get to today.

27:51

I'm sorry, I'm already half an hour through. But, you know, all sorts of privileges, white spaces, evangelical spaces, you know, all this terminology, white spaces, white spaces is between words, you know, it's between the lines.

28:09

I don't know what it's like to live your life with these racial lenses implanted.

28:17

I mean, we're not talking putting on a pair of glasses you can seemingly take off very easily.

28:24

This seems to be surgical implantation and it might require spiritual surgery to get rid of these lenses that are so deeply, deeply ingrained in people.

28:36

Well, let me talk a little bit about some of the interactions

28:45

I've had. Then I wanted to look at two sermons from T4G. Well, I wanted to look at just portions and comment on two sermons from T4G.

29:00

I have mentioned to you my interactions with Kyle J.

29:06

Howard, who is a leader in this movement. He identifies himself as a racial trauma counselor.

29:17

Now, I would just like to suggest that if your primary focus is on dealing with racial trauma, you're somewhat invested in the narrative that gives rise to the concept of racial trauma.

29:35

And so I was not even aware of the fact that Mr.

29:42

Howard had been taking shots at me for quite some time. And going back,

29:48

I found, for example, in October of last year, October of last year, when

29:57

I don't think I had said anything about anything at all at that particular point in time, other than a year and a half, two years earlier.

30:05

And I've had Dr. Baucom on, so evidently that has something to do with it.

30:11

But 15th of October, thanks to this,

30:18

James White has helped raise up a new generation of racially insensitive

30:24

Christians by using terms like ethnic Gnosticism. Now, of course, somebody pointed out,

30:31

I didn't invent it. Yeah, that's Dr. Baucom's terminology.

30:39

He says he has a ton of influence among young white reformed guys, and he has led many of them to be enemies of love and compassion.

30:48

Love and compassion. Yeah, I said it. When it comes to ethnic reconciliation and conversations about racism,

30:58

James White fans are the worst, worse than unbelievers in that regard.

31:05

Now, remember, I was having no interaction with the man. This is stuff that he's firing off at me, and I honestly don't even know who he is.

31:16

At least, I don't recognize the name until just recently. Then when someone points out, well, that was

31:26

Votie Baucom that utilized that terminology, he says, yeah, I believe

31:31

Votie was first to use it, which is very disappointing. White has used it way more frequently and has normalized it.

31:39

Now, if you take everything that I said up until two weeks ago on this subject, it would be one ten thousandth of what

31:51

Votie has said about this subject over the years. But I'm the one normalizing it.

31:56

There's no balance here. The man is extremely imbalanced when it comes to this kind of rhetoric.

32:07

So, a few weeks ago, when I first heard about his comments,

32:14

I mentioned on Facebook the subjects of the dividing line, and his response to me—this was before he blocked me on Twitter, I guess, to create a safe space for himself— or you could just repent, and we could be friends.

32:29

So, from their perspective, this is a sin issue.

32:35

And I think it's one of the reasons that many of them just are not overly interested in having any kind of balance.

32:44

There was a guy this morning, a PhD student at Southeastern, and I just pointed out the double standards that he was utilizing, and they don't seem to care because, from their perspective,

33:01

I'm the one that needs to repent. I'm the one in sin. And so you don't need to have equal scales.

33:07

You don't need to have balance. You don't need to have the same standards. It's the other side's all wrong, and we're right, and so just repent.

33:18

Just repent. Kyle J. Howard again. Now, I happen to know that, behind the scenes, if you have anything to do with me, he'll contact you and try to put pressure upon you to isolate me.

33:46

This is part of, I guess, what racial trauma stuff is all about.

33:54

Well, yeah, they're definitely taking their cues from secular sources. Some fellow, and I mentioned this earlier, a fellow by the name of Michael Kelly, I just looked at the same thread, and one of those guys has a post on how

34:11

Hitler was just trying to protect his country from the Jews. And Howard's response is, yep, and that's one of his followers.

34:17

Just proves the point. His rhetoric is appealing to folks like that. So all I've got to do is find somebody commenting on his stuff that, well, of course,

34:25

I can just find him commenting on his stuff, saying wild things, and hold him accountable for that. No, no, no.

34:32

From their perspective, the idea of having equal scales and fairness and balance, no.

34:40

Once you have the CRT lens implanted, there's no reason for any of that, because many—I've seen it in a number of the threads.

34:48

When people say, well, that sounds like you are a racist, the response is, minorities cannot be racists.

34:55

We don't have to worry about it. This is one of the real major concerns, because you see, racism, hatred of someone based upon their race, ethnicity, skin color, etc.,

35:08

etc., is a sin. And don't look at me and call yourself an Orthodox Christian and tell me there are certain sins that you can't commit because of the color of your skin.

35:21

I'm hearing all sorts about racial insensitivity on the part of, quote -unquote,

35:28

Anglos, whites, people not of color, etc., etc. I'm seeing almost nothing about the tsunami of black racism that we see.

35:40

I mentioned the black Hebrew Israelites, and it's like, so? That's because of white supremacy.

35:45

Really? So sin is because of the sin of others? No. Don't even start going there.

35:57

That's the kind of stuff that is being perpetuated regularly. And then we did mention his tweet when the

36:07

ERLC announced a special scholarship fund. This is where it's at.

36:12

White evangelicalism wants to become a true ally to black community. It must begin investing financial resources owed,

36:21

O -W -E -D, back into it. So this is the perspective.

36:27

I guess you owe stuff. We even had somebody call, and I've said a million times this is not the way to get hold of me, but someone called the church and left a message wanting to talk to me about the subject of reparations.

36:44

And there's a lot of people. You even raised that subject. Oh, he's called you, too?

36:50

Oh, okay. All right. Didn't even know that. Didn't even know that. Then, of course, we had, and it's still echoing back and forth, it is amazing to me the number of people

37:02

I have seen who can read the direct words of Kyle Howard, where he talked about,

37:10

I would not feel safe as a black man in his presence alone. That is me. Yes, I'd fear for my physical safety, not saying

37:17

I think he would punch me in the face, but he has power, and if things got heated, I have no confidence that I would not end up being another hashtag or just slandered.

37:26

And they look at that, they know what it means. These are intelligent people, and they defend it.

37:32

Well, you don't know what his experience has been like, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I had, again, a guy on Twitter basically saying the same thing.

37:42

Well, you might accuse me of heresy. And when you try to understand how these folks cannot see the hypocrisy of their actions, the answer is found in the description of critical race theory that I read earlier.

38:00

Once that lens is in place, the idea of fairness is no longer applicable.

38:09

In fact, it runs against the CRT mechanism and way of thinking, because if you are the white person, you're in the position of supremacy, you've got the privilege, you've got the power, then asking for equality is ridiculous.

38:28

And so it just doesn't even click. And can you see how this is absolutely destructive to any meaningful unity within the church?

38:40

Once you accept this CRT thinking, there's not going to be any way to build a doctrine of the union of the saints based upon an already accomplished reconciliation, because the whole idea of this system is that racial reconciliation will always be down the road.

39:02

It can't happen in this life. Because if it does, then the whole reason for the revolution, the whole reason of pressing forward is gone.

39:16

So you can't have that. That's why I said, what is the end game here? What does it look like?

39:23

Is it an annual meeting of repentance on the part of all white people?

39:29

And this whole white people thing, does that mean Scottish, Irish, English, Welsh, German, French?

39:36

Boy, those poor Norwegians, they are so white. And the Swedish and the

39:42

Finns and the Italians and the Russians and Ukrainians. Have I covered all of them?

39:50

Do you realize how many wars those people have had with each other and the differences between them? Oh, that doesn't matter.

39:57

All those distinctions, they don't matter. You can dismiss them.

40:06

But do we all have to get together each year? Six months? What about the other minorities?

40:13

It's been really bugging me. Because this only seems to be focused upon one minority.

40:23

And that's the problem we have here in the United States. And that's what we don't have elsewhere.

40:29

Which is why elsewhere you've got a much better situation, in some instances, in the churches, where this stuff just doesn't come up.

40:38

But if we do an annual white repentance day in regards to the blacks, then six months later, what about, for example, the way the

40:55

Chinese were treated in the American West? Was that any different than slavery?

41:00

In the building of the railroads and in mining and the horrific abuse of Chinese people.

41:10

So do we need to set up a monthly thing? Because then you've got the internment of Japanese during World War II.

41:19

If you're always looking for some grievance in the past, you're going to be able to find something to fill up pretty much every weekend of the year doing penance towards somebody.

41:38

And then once you start doing that, oh no, guess what happens? Well, there's this

41:45

World War II thing. And there's the rape of Nanking by the Japanese against the

41:50

Chinese. And so I guess there needs to be a weekend for Japanese Christians to repent toward Chinese Christians.

41:59

And you've got all sorts of issues, you know, you start getting over into all the stuff in Asia between Koreans and Japanese and Chinese and you can get down into, you get the point, it doesn't matter where you go, you can go to South America, and there will be racial tensions there.

42:19

You can go to Africa and oh my goodness, the tribal tensions there. Even amongst people who have the exact same look and skin.

42:27

It never ends because that's its goal. That's its goal.

42:33

It never ends. There's no reason to live in light of these past things anymore.

42:49

That's what's so amazingly frustrating, to hear people who know this truth, but because of this lens that they've bought into, it gets filtered out.

43:01

You don't see it anymore. It's astounding. So anyway, the double standard.

43:12

Oh, okay, well, just happened to look over to click on the thing to get to the next screen.

43:19

Oops, I just went to the wrong screen in getting to the next screen. You are the worst person to talk about racial reconciliation in the church.

43:27

Every word you speak about it makes things worse. How can you compare the

43:33

Chinese and Japanese treatment in the U .S. with slavery? Really? You think they were treated nicely?

43:43

Do you have any idea what those gangs were like and how they were treated?

43:49

Do you question that? Do you know what the rape of Nanking was?

43:57

Have you read anything about it? I have. I have. I read a book by a woman who having researched it so deeply, she wrote the book, did a film on it, and then committed suicide because she could never get the horrific nature of what the

44:15

Japanese did to the Chinese in Nanking out of her mind. You can ignore that if you want.

44:21

You can call me the worst person in the world if you want. But you're ignoring the facts. You're not reasoning logically.

44:28

And that's to Christ's witness, whoever in the world that is, just tweeted me and clearly has the lens on, only hears, well,

44:37

I guess the lens is not just here, it's here too. You only hear that which fits into the narrative as well.

44:46

But we'll get into more of that in a moment. Because one of the issues that came up,

44:56

Kyle Howard, and we'll transition over to the next person, I am more confident in MLK's conversion by the end of his life than I am of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.

45:05

Out of the three, only one had a life marked by divine love and a pursuit of biblical justice.

45:14

Why is that one the only one questioned? Now, that led to a conversation with Dwight McKissick.

45:30

Dwight McKissick. Now, Dwight McKissick, where did my, well, that's weird.

45:42

I may have accidentally closed the program that had that. I guess

45:47

I did. Didn't expect to do that.

45:52

Dwight McKissick is a pastor down in Texas.

46:02

And we had some interesting encounters over the past 10 -15 days in social media.

46:17

Pastor McKissick believes it is appropriate to immediately question your integrity, your honesty.

46:30

He goes to the invective very, very quickly and includes this in a lot of his tweets.

46:37

And interestingly, when I pointed this out, and I said to him, you know, I don't really feel like I want to invest a whole lot of time with someone who starts off with the invective, with attacking you personally, with questioning your motives, your intelligence, or whatever else it might be.

46:59

And the defense I got back from some of his followers was almost the cultural appropriation, white colonialism thing.

47:12

Well, maybe in his culture, that's okay. And that's immediately where I go, there's one of the problems.

47:19

Because he's a pastor of a Baptist church, and so am I. And hence, our cultures don't matter.

47:26

We have an overriding authority that tells us how we are supposed to speak to one another.

47:32

And I was being told, doesn't matter. Hmm, looks like that lens even trumps scripture itself.

47:39

I point to Ephesians 4, doesn't matter. I just call it like I see it.

47:47

Hmm, okay. He wrote to Sanko Woods, I'll let you enjoy being a co -assassin with James Earl Ray.

48:03

I'm bowing out. History has affirmed the great legacy and God -ordained prophetic ministry of MLK.

48:10

In the grand scheme of things, what you think really doesn't matter. Now notice the God -ordained.

48:18

And then later, Dwight McKissick, there's always been a group who stood on the sidelines or criticized or held the cloaks while Stephen was being stoned.

48:29

God's truth is marching on. MLK 50 was God -ordained. The fruit of the movement gathering will be felt for years to come.

48:35

The MLK 50 was a signature moment in the SBC. Fellow by the name of Gabriel Hughes asked him, who's being martyred?

48:41

Who's doing the martyring? And who's holding cloaks while it's happening? His answer,

48:47

Russell Moore, Vance Pittman, Charlie Dates, Micah Freese, Kyle Howard, Beth Moore.

48:55

They stood up for MLK 50. James White, Seth Dunn, David Dorian, and a host of others who oppose

49:04

MLK 50 for baseless reasons or reasons you disqualify all

49:09

SBC honorees. Now, in attempting to reason with Brother McKissick, I had said to him, you do realize, sir, that filling your tweets with invectives makes it considerably less likely that someone will conclude it is a worthy investment of time to respond to them, yes?

49:31

Your insistence upon the use of such language cheapens the topic and intent of communication. His response, artful dodge.

49:42

When one refuses to give an honest answer to an honest question, they usually have something to hide. Based on your reputation,

49:49

I honestly expected you to answer my question. Now I see otherwise. An honest answer could not withstand the scrutiny it would bring.

49:57

Notice that for Pastor McKissick, the other side is dishonest.

50:04

It's just a given. It's a starting point. To even have the conversation, you have to start with the assumption.

50:10

The other side is dishonest. And though people called him out on it, that's just the way it is.

50:17

In fact, I'll just finish with this one. Did you just engage in invective speech toward me?

50:26

That's really a non -issue for me. Seems too important to you and JW. That's me. And you know

50:32

JW never answered the original question. Sure, I can read his heart and know his answer.

50:41

His non -answer is the answer to answer would incriminate. Let me just read that again.

50:49

Sure, I can read his heart and know his answer.

50:58

Well, evidently, Pastor McKissick is not a cessationist because he has that special gift whereby you can remotely read people's hearts and minds and know what they intend to say.

51:12

And it certainly puts all of the rest of us mere mortals into a very difficult position of attempting to argue with someone who can read your heart.

51:21

Well, of course, he can't. What was this question?

51:27

Well, this question was the one that arose out of the topic of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.

51:40

Now, again, I'll read Kyle Howard's statement here.

51:45

I am more confident in MLK's conversion by the end of his life than I am of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.

51:51

Out of the three, only one had a life marked by divine love and a pursuit of biblical justice. Now, what this raises, one of the reasons that I got crossways with Pastor McKissick is, of course, he's attacking me from the start as being lacking integrity, honesty, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth.

52:24

And so it doesn't seem like he would be an individual to have a meaningful conversation, especially via Twitter, on something as important as this issue.

52:37

What was interesting, and I didn't have the screen cap, what was interesting is

52:44

I asked him a question, and I made reference to Philemon and Onesimus.

52:57

Because we have, very clearly in the New Testament, references to masters and to douloi, slaves.

53:13

And obviously, it was a deeply relevant reality in the early church when, by the

53:20

Spirit of God, a master and a slave were both converted, and they're now at the same table in the church.

53:31

Obviously, that reality is incredibly corrosive to the institution of slavery.

53:41

Now, Hebrew slavery, Roman slavery, and American slavery were of different types and sorts.

53:54

One could, obviously, talk about serfdom in the medieval period, and you discover very quickly that – the screen went blank, so I was just wondering –

54:09

We're struggling. We're struggling. Oh, great. Wonderful.

54:18

Yeah, first time in how long we have problems with YouTube. Yeah, great. It's disappearing again, so hopefully you got good recording, because we've been going at it for nearly an hour now, and I don't want to go back over all this again.

54:36

When you consider the subject of slavery down through the ages, there have always been gradations.

54:51

The Assyrians, you were lucky if you could become a slave.

54:56

I mean, the Assyrians were some of the most brutal people ever, and if you lost in battle against the

55:04

Assyrians, you were lucky to be a slave, and if you were a slave, there would be absolutely nothing there in regards to you being treated as a human, nothing at all.

55:21

There are numerous texts in the Mosaic Law concerning the subject of slavery and the treatment of slaves.

55:30

It is a major area that a lot of people have never given thought to, and we certainly don't have time to go through all of it today, but the reality is that slavery has existed.

55:50

It exists today in some places in the world, in Africa. It has been practiced,

56:01

I think, by every culture at some point in time, or at least by every ethnic group, if not by a particular governmental, over the history of time.

56:16

It has plagued mankind. At the same time, there is no call in the

56:25

New Testament. Paul does not write to Philemon and say, release your slaves, all of them.

56:32

He does ask for Onesimus, and that lays a foundation, but the reality is that the

56:44

New Testament does not call for the end of slavery in the Roman Empire. It also doesn't call for almost any other social justice concept.

56:54

There was the exposure of young children in ancient

56:59

Rome. There were the games in ancient Rome. And while Christians would stand against those things, the

57:09

New Testament did not command them to take those stances.

57:15

It gave them the foundation to be able to speak to such things, but it did not command them to do those things, because the gospel has to be able to go into all sorts of different cultures.

57:29

And to tie certain social justice norms to the gospel would be similar to what you have in Sharia, in Islam.

57:42

A political or cultural normative set of standards to where when the gospel goes into a place, that place has to become aligned with those particular standards.

57:58

Instead, what the gospel does, it changes hearts and minds over time with the application of God's truth, then you have the movement, similar to the yeast in the bread type of a situation.

58:13

You have the movement toward that which is honoring to God. And so, what was interesting was

58:24

Pastor McKissick specifically made reference to the idea that Roman slavery was nothing like American chattel slavery.

58:35

Well, nothing? I can guarantee you that there were

58:43

Roman masters who were far worse to their slaves than good masters were in the

58:53

American context, and vice versa. So in other words, there would have been Roman masters far better to their slaves than bad masters in the

59:05

American system. So the idea that you can draw absolute lines of demarcation is not even borne out by the testimony of slaves themselves in America, who recognized good masters and bad masters, and indifferent and hateful and loving and everything in between, because that was the experience.

59:31

You want to try to pretend you can draw lines like that? Well, it doesn't accomplish anything, but you can go ahead and try.

59:41

So, what was brought out—well, first, in this one tweet, out of the three, only one had a life marked by divine love.

59:54

Now, what concerns me here is the utter dismissal of the self -sacrificing love that was shown by Edwards and Whitefield, and the exaltation of the self -sacrificing love of MLK based upon critical race theory and the lens.

01:00:28

Now, I'm going to be straightforward here, and if you want to isolate this from everything else and put it out there and do your thing, that's fine.

01:00:37

But if you think that serial adultery, and if the

01:00:43

FBI material that was released, what, six months or so ago, which substantiated things that had been said earlier in other biographies, but the kind of regular—not once in a while, not one slip -up—regular practice of serial adultery and not just with one woman at a time is showing love for your wife and your family, you and I are on different pages.

01:01:22

And to my knowledge, there is no evidence whatsoever that Jonathan Edwards or George Whitefield were ever even once unfaithful to their spouses.

01:01:36

And by allowing your racial lens to take center point, do you not realize you have fundamentally attacked the centrality of the husband -wife relationship by making a statement like this?

01:01:59

Now, I know what's being said. He didn't love his neighbor as himself because he didn't see—I'm speaking of Whitefield and Edwards, who had slaves—they didn't see that slave as their neighbor, i .e.

01:02:18

as their equal, and therefore set them free. MLK fought for—well, not for slavery, but for equality under the law, the

01:02:27

Jim Crow laws and things like that. Therefore, that expression of social love is more important than the consistent fidelity within the marriage relationship demonstrated by Edwards and Whitefield.

01:02:48

I don't know how a Christian comes up with that, I'll be honest with you. Well, I do.

01:02:55

It's the lens. It's the lens. It ends up twisting everything. And so, you have the issue of MLK's theology.

01:03:10

I have had a number of people say, well, you know, toward the end of his life, he said this, he said that, he said this, he said that.

01:03:15

Now, the clarity of his schoolwork and the article later in his life, where he talks about how he—his theological journey out of liberalism, not to fundamentalism or conservatism.

01:03:34

When he talks about leaving liberalism, what he's talking about is he rejects liberalism's too high view of man.

01:03:46

I have yet to see—I would love to see someone point me to—I've had people say, well, he said he returned to the

01:03:53

God of his fathers. That's—no, sorry. If you are a non -Trinitarian, if you did not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, and then were converted to believing these things, you're going to say something more than I've returned to the faith of my fathers.

01:04:13

You're going to repudiate what you have taught in the past, and you're going to clearly confess your faith now.

01:04:20

Now, I know—I know that there are many people that if you have not experienced liberalism, you can hear liberals speak and go, that sort of sounds like what

01:04:35

I believe. I went to Fuller Seminary, and I am well aware of the fact that liberals can utilize language that sounds like what we believe, but when you dig in, it's nowhere close.

01:04:55

Because they really—they sort of have to borrow our language anyways. I have yet to see a clear, straightforward statement from Dr.

01:05:05

Martin Luther King that I could understand as an actual confession of fundamental

01:05:12

Christian belief about the nature of God, the nature of Jesus Christ, and the resurrection of the dead.

01:05:19

And they say, well, you said the grave was empty. Yeah, so did John Dominic Crossan, but he didn't mean it was empty of the body, but of the spirit.

01:05:31

Go listen to the debate that we did with John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Porter, me and Jim Renahan. Go listen to them, and you'll go, oh, yeah, okay, that's how liberals think.

01:05:41

And it is. It's exactly how it is. So, here's the question that I would have for Kyle Howard and a number of these other gentlemen who are pushing this perspective.

01:05:57

I remember 15 years ago, maybe? May have been more.

01:06:03

May have—man, it could be nearly 20. I don't remember what it was, but I was at a conference, and the conference organizer came up to me, and he said, maybe you can answer this lady's question.

01:06:20

She was a black woman. And she said, what is the name of that homeschool group back in,

01:06:31

I think, Florida? Becka Books. I think

01:06:37

Becka Books. I think they do homeschool curriculum. And he said, are Becka Books cultic?

01:06:44

And I'm like, what do you mean?

01:06:54

And she goes, well, I was looking at one on history, on American history, and it said that Robert E.

01:07:02

Lee was a Christian man. And we know that's not possible, so did a cult put out the

01:07:11

Becka Books? And I was like, no, no, they're put out by good

01:07:19

Christian folks, but I did not want to even go there at that particular point in time.

01:07:26

We were standing in the middle of the foyer, had places to go, things to do.

01:07:32

But that's the attitude. So I really do wonder, do these individuals believe that your view on this is more important than your view on the

01:07:46

Trinity, the deity of Christ and the resurrection? Because I think that's what

01:07:52

I'm hearing from a number of people. I think that's what I was seeing on Twitter today, is that evidently the idea is that everybody who wore blue between 1861 and 1865 was a

01:08:07

Christian, everybody who wore gray was Satan incarnate. And that makes me go, so what gospel saves again?

01:08:18

What is the gospel? If you can be a non -Trinitarian who denies the resurrection of Christ, but you have a

01:08:27

God -ordained prophetic ministry, and then you can have an

01:08:33

Edwards, a Whitfield, they're the century earlier, but they own slaves.

01:08:41

And Whitfield even successfully got Georgia to allow for slave ownership.

01:08:48

Now you might ask, by the way, I'm not finished that point, but you might ask, why would he do something like that?

01:08:54

He was convinced it was necessary economically to be able to work the land.

01:09:00

That was his conviction. Now, he was very strong against abuse of slaves, but not the ownership of slaves.

01:09:11

And you go, that's inconsistent. Yes, it is. But here's the problem.

01:09:18

Everybody today seems to ignore, and this is something I see over and over and over again. We saw it during the

01:09:24

Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, Martin Luther stuff last year with the Reformation. Many people today who don't ever take time to read history, to read original sources in history, very easily transfer everyone from the past into our modern day and judge them by our standards.

01:09:48

When you do that, you may end up being one of the last Christians standing. For example, what about Luther and the

01:09:59

Jews? Well, did a whole presentation on why

01:10:05

Luther held his view that he did concerning the Jews. But I remember one of the folks that came in our group said to me,

01:10:16

I just cannot possibly believe that a Christian could treat other people the way that Martin Luther treated other people.

01:10:24

I'm like, better be careful, because if you take that perspective, you're not going to have any

01:10:29

Christians in the past. The idea of looking at Edwards and Whitefield in their day is considered reprehensible because, well, you're excusing what they did.

01:10:46

No, I'm understanding how you can read Whitefield, what he says, the necessity of preaching to the black man, the condemnation he makes of the mistreatment of slaves, but without the call for the freeing of slaves.

01:11:16

Because in his mind, that would result in economic chaos and possibly even starvation, loss of life.

01:11:27

And it's so easy for us today to go, oh, well, how do you know it wouldn't have happened? How do you know it wouldn't have happened?

01:11:37

That was their concern. You can say it was wrong, but that was their concern. You can't just ignore it.

01:11:43

It was the reality they dealt with. And could those things be used as excuses?

01:11:50

Of course they could. But that's where they functioned. So let's now move up back to my story of the lady.

01:12:00

What is the gospel? And I'm very concerned when people will literally sit there and say,

01:12:08

I don't care if someone repented their sins, and I don't care if they're absolutely orthodox in their confession.

01:12:16

I don't care if they lived out a life of sexual purity.

01:12:25

They would never cheat another person out of a red cent.

01:12:35

But they were on the wrong side of this political issue, or in this case, with Robert E.

01:12:41

Lee, he fought for the South. He extended that war. He was probably one of the greatest generals

01:12:47

America ever produced, no question about it. Could not possibly have been a true follower of Jesus Christ.

01:12:56

If you say that, you're gonna end up saying the same thing about Martin Luther and about the Jews. And the problem is we can go back in time and we can find almost everybody you want to talk about had some pretty strange views of this, that, or the other thing that we today would say, no.

01:13:14

What's the gospel? Is that what's really being said? I think on the part of many people, it is.

01:13:19

They want absolutely simplistic solutions to all of this, rather than dealing with the reality of where these people were.

01:13:49

A couple hours later, I linked to an article in 1994 Methodist history,

01:13:56

I think it was, linked to an article on Whitefield and slaves.

01:14:04

And it was fair. It quoted from original sources, it quoted from correspondence.

01:14:13

You couldn't put that on Twitter. And it's just one perspective. It's just one take on the subject.

01:14:21

And his conclusion was he was a man of his age. And unfortunately for people today, that's not enough.

01:14:32

That's not enough. Can't allow that. Can't allow that. Let me tell you something.

01:14:37

Someday you're going to be judged by the next generations. And when they hold you to their standards, well, you're not going to be around to care much about it.

01:14:47

But the point is, you wouldn't appreciate it if you were around to be able to know about what's going on.

01:14:57

All right, I'm never get to this stuff if we don't get to it. Um, to just a couple clips.

01:15:07

Um, I guess let me see if this is Hello. Hello. Nope, not working.

01:15:13

Not working a bit. It's it's not not nothing there. Okay, well, we're gonna have to keep this thing in here.

01:15:21

Um, one clip. Test, test, test. Yep, that's working.

01:15:28

From Brother Platt. I'm going to be looking at his exhortations briefly.

01:15:37

But I wanted to play this one particular clip because it was, this is from T4G.

01:15:44

Because this was referenced a lot in in social media. I mentioned earlier,

01:15:49

I've been convicted in my own life on this issue. Because I look at my life and ministry.

01:15:58

And in so many ways, my world has been so white.

01:16:10

Okay, evidently, I have to have it over on the other screen. You don't don't see the video.

01:16:22

You over here? Oh, well, that's what I said. You need to have it over on the other screen. Too late now.

01:16:29

Anyway, I'm sorry, you just had the audio there. No, no big deal. My world has been so white.

01:16:41

I don't know what that means. I guess what he's saying is he purposefully, intentionally isolated himself from any other ethnic group.

01:16:57

But I don't think that's the case. Is there a situation where you could say, my world has been so black?

01:17:18

My world has been so yellow? My world has been so brown? I don't understand this white.

01:17:28

Certainly, you've been dealing with people from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds who have light skin. Because there are all sorts of us like that.

01:17:38

So, he goes on to ask the question, why are our churches so white?

01:17:51

He did not ask the question, why are some of our churches so black?

01:18:01

Why are some of our churches so Chinese? Urban to a Chinese Baptist Church?

01:18:07

We've got at least one in the Valley. It's simply called Chinese Baptist Church. There are

01:18:15

Korean Presbyterian churches. I've been to one. That's right.

01:18:21

And I was welcome there. Is that wrong? I would guess the idea is, yeah.

01:18:30

Those are all wrong. But this is where, when we get into the exhortations that were presented, this is where I really struggle with what is being said.

01:18:50

For example, David Platt gave six exhortations.

01:19:00

We are to look at the reality of racism. Racism is sin.

01:19:14

But you don't get to redefine racism. Because I've been told that if, for example, you even dare to point to the reality of the source of so much of the problems within what's called the black community in the

01:19:31

United States today, and that is rampant immorality, sexual immorality.

01:19:37

Women having babies by multiple fathers, fatherless boys, is the single greatest reason why there are neighborhoods you simply don't go into in Chicago.

01:19:54

Why there are more people being shot in Chicago than in Afghanistan.

01:20:02

It's a war zone. The main reason? Sin. And that sin knows no color, knows no boundaries.

01:20:13

It's a human reality. So there are white racists.

01:20:21

There are white racists who think that their white skin somehow makes them better than other people.

01:20:28

That's just stupid. That's just stupid. There are black racists who think their black skin makes them more valuable or gives them privileges over someone with white skin.

01:20:47

Amongst the Asians, it is well known that between the

01:20:52

Chinese and Japanese and Koreans, great tensions, which we can't understand unless we've lived in that culture.

01:21:01

And I haven't. But great tensions. Racism knows no color boundaries.

01:21:08

And we only show ourselves to be very American -centric when we think it does.

01:21:16

So look at the reality of racism, but all of racism. And not the critical race theory definition of racism.

01:21:26

For the Christian Church, this definition of racism should come from Scripture, hatred of your brother, pride, arrogance, all the related things.

01:21:41

Not from a definition that goes back to politics, culture, law, whatever else it might be.

01:21:50

We need to go to Scripture when we look at the reality of racism. Live in true multi -ethnic community.

01:21:58

Well, right here is the problem. Are we talking about quotas?

01:22:08

Are you really saying that we should try to target people based upon skin color?

01:22:15

See, call me naive, but my view is you dedicate every fiber of your being to the accurate, consistent teaching and preaching of the whole counsel of God.

01:22:40

You organize your worship. That's the central act of worship.

01:22:45

So you organize every other element of worship. Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, the reading of the

01:22:52

Scriptures, the prayers of God's people, the ordinances. You organize it all so that it points to that and is based upon that, and then you trust

01:23:03

God to bring to you those sheep that He wants to be a part of your flock who are likewise dedicated to the consistent ministry of the

01:23:17

Word of God. And you don't do quotas. You know, in our church, when

01:23:26

I first started attending, nothing was said to me whatsoever about teaching or having leadership position until I expressed the desire to become a member—not until I expressed the desire,

01:23:41

I'm sorry—until after we became members of that church. When I became a member of that church,

01:23:47

I already had my master's degree. I'd already written three or four books. And when we joined that church, as far as I knew,

01:23:53

I was just going to sit there and learn. It was only after he made the commitment. Now, there were different races in the church.

01:24:05

Didn't even cross my mind. Didn't even cross my mind. Melvin McChwire would sit in the back.

01:24:13

He was a black postman who worked for the post office, delivered mail.

01:24:20

And I've said many, many times, I'll never forget, we were doing a hymn sing, and maybe it was afterwards during the fellowship meal,

01:24:32

I forget when, but Melvin McChwire said, I do wish that we would put—and he did.

01:24:39

The one person you could hear really singing the amen was Melvin McChwire.

01:24:46

Because I had never sung amens. You know, I mean,

01:24:51

I came from a Southern Baptist church, and there was no amen in that hymnal. And if anybody had sung it, they would have been doing it solo.

01:25:01

And Melvin McChwire said, oh yeah, you'd only do three verses. Yeah, not like every verse.

01:25:07

It's got nine verses, we're singing all nine of them. But Melvin McChwire said, when we sing the amen, it should sound like we're saying it is true.

01:25:21

It shouldn't be how the hymn dies. Because that frequently was how it was, you know?

01:25:28

And so I guess, maybe that was a part of his cultural heritage being added to the distinctive of all of us, that I've always remembered, we need to sing the amen.

01:25:46

It shouldn't just be how the hymn dies. But it just never crossed my mind.

01:25:52

I came to that church because the word of God was consistently preached. Period. And that's the only reason anyone joins that church.

01:26:02

I wouldn't even know how we would even quote -unquote target. How would we come up—I don't know.

01:26:08

I don't know. We open the doors, we preach the word.

01:26:16

Keep it simple, stupid, or keep it simple, saint, I guess. That's how we do it. So, true multi -ethnic community,

01:26:25

I think, is when we're a small congregation, and when we have the

01:26:33

Lord's Supper, normally what we do is we have everybody who's on the right side of the pastors, the pastors facing us.

01:26:42

Those on the right side move over to the left, so we're closer together. It's easier to pass the elements.

01:26:51

It's easier for the men to serve us. And to me, true multi -ethnic community is that everybody sitting in those pews comes to one table, hears the same instructions, celebrates the same supper, and there is not a single thought.

01:27:16

Not a single thought. About my ancestors, your ancestors, what your ancestors did to my ancestors, or my ancestors did to your ancestors.

01:27:28

The unity that we have is looking away from ourselves and looking to the one who binds us together, which is

01:27:36

Christ Jesus, who was not of the ethnic origin of pretty much anybody in that room.

01:27:41

I don't think we have any former Jewish folks, not formally

01:27:47

Jewish, but converted Jewish folks off the top of my head, but you see, maybe we do. We don't make any deal about it, and that is not white colonialism.

01:27:56

That is spirit colonialism. That's gospel colonialism. I like that.

01:28:02

It's good. It's good. It's a good thing. Listen to and learn from one another.

01:28:09

Well, who can argue with that? Who can argue with that? But does that go both directions?

01:28:18

I haven't gotten that feeling. Dwight McKissick didn't give me that feeling. Kyle J. Howard didn't give me that feeling. When I dared talk about the plague of abortion in the

01:28:33

Black community, fatherlessness in the Black community, I got my head handed to me on a platter.

01:28:40

So I guess this only goes one direction. I guess there's only one direction it can go there,

01:28:47

I guess. I don't know. Love and lay aside our preferences for one another. Now, this was something that I caught when

01:28:58

I first listened on Friday morning to David Platt's presentation.

01:29:12

I'm always sitting here going, so what does this look like? What's the end game? What is the desired result of all this stuff?

01:29:20

How does it come to a conclusion? In the Christian faith, there's a forgiveness of sins. So what does that look like?

01:29:28

Or is this just something that has to keep going on and on and on and on and on? That's antithetical to the gospel.

01:29:35

So what's the end game? And when he got to the practical stuff, all of a sudden he switches and starts using the term preferences.

01:29:46

Laying aside our personal preferences. If I recall correctly, he was making application to kinds of music and stuff like that.

01:29:57

And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. Time out. Cultural preferences?

01:30:04

So now you have to have some kind of quota of Black hymns versus White hymns?

01:30:13

How about some Jewish hymns or some Brazilian hymns or Chinese hymns or whatever? I mean, is this what we're reduced to?

01:30:21

I mean, when you make a commitment to be a member of a church, you already know what the priorities of that church are.

01:30:33

I mean, there's no reason for someone to come to my church who wants to have drums and guitars blaring the most current

01:30:45

CCM music for worship. There is a very white haired elderly man who is going to usher you out the back if you really want to try to make trouble over that.

01:30:56

Let me tell you that. I ain't going to happen. So preferences?

01:31:05

We need to be repenting of our preferences? What if these are the decided mechanisms by the elders of a congregation whereby

01:31:18

God's truth is best honored in its presentation? Look, I travel all over the world.

01:31:28

I've been in services that had the guitars and the drums and the most recent

01:31:35

CCM music. Not really my thing, but I actually have a very wide appreciation of different churches.

01:31:47

And if the elders of that church have chosen that as the methodology to prepare the heart, if I'm in their church,

01:31:58

I ain't going to sit there and whine and complain about it. I'm going to do the best

01:32:04

I can, if I'm speaking, to bring the Word of God to bless these people where they are. Now, I know some folks from my tradition that couldn't do that.

01:32:13

I can't. Okay, fine. What is this sacrificing preferences for? So we all look the same?

01:32:21

I think individual communions and communities should look different.

01:32:28

I don't think every church should be identical to every other church. Do you? I don't. God calls different people to minister in different places.

01:32:37

There are people who just cannot handle my way of preaching or my fellow elders way of preaching.

01:32:44

Well, they shouldn't be sitting there being miserable. They should find a place where they can hear the

01:32:49

Word of God. But I don't understand what sacrificing of preferences. Leverage our influence for justice in the present.

01:33:00

This is where you start going, yeah, could you give me some specific

01:33:05

New Testament commands that illustrate the church going out and militating for political things in the

01:33:16

Roman Empire. They changed the Roman Empire by changing people through the proclamation of the gospel.

01:33:23

There's a difference. There's a major difference. Huge difference between those two. There's everything good about standing up for what is right.

01:33:33

But there's everything bad about missing the reality that the power of God that changes hearts is the gospel.

01:33:41

And once the church starts thinking there's something else we need to be doing other than that preaching outwardly of the gospel and inwardly of the gospel, that's when we start having problems.

01:33:55

And let's long for the day when justice will be perfect. Well, you know, you always finish your sermon with an easy one because you want everybody to agree with you there.

01:34:15

All right. Now, let me see if I can move this one over and get it right this time.

01:34:27

And we'll probably be wrapping up with this. Sorry about that. I know I've gone very, very long already.

01:34:33

I just wanted to get this done. What's that?

01:34:39

Well, I gotta find it first. Unfortunately, I had it set up right, and I'm afraid

01:35:00

I lost it. And I apologize for that. So I'm sitting here trying to find it as quick as I can.

01:35:07

I'm gonna have to start and stop. Sorry. I apologize. For some reason, this program, which

01:35:12

I thought before I've been able to use, let me do it this way.

01:35:20

Sorry. I just unplugged the sound so I can hear it only in here. Oh, that's nice.

01:35:28

Now I can't hear it in here. Oh, it's

01:35:35

HDMI. Well, all right.

01:35:50

Okay. I have to summarize and won't be able to use it.

01:35:58

I've got to work on my technology stuff here. Dr. J. Ligon Duncan spoke, and he spoke on the whole,

01:36:09

W -H -O -L -E, in our holiness. And toward the very end, he wanted to make two applications, and one was to the issue of racial justice, doing justice.

01:36:28

And he spoke very emotionally and very fervently about God removing the blinders from his eyes.

01:36:38

And what he spoke about was the American South, which, of course, is where he's from, and how the

01:36:49

Church had mishandled the issue of slavery

01:36:57

And this was the most important part. Well, not the most important part, but the part that caught my attention.

01:37:03

How, because the issue was divisive, it had been said, we're not going to talk about it anymore.

01:37:12

Now, at that point, I have to go, well, how'd you get Southern Baptists and Northern Baptists, if that's the case?

01:37:17

It was divisive, and it resulted in division. You had Northern Presbyterians and Southern Presbyterians.

01:37:23

You had Northern Baptists, you had Southern Baptists. They didn't stop talking about it. It's that once the divisions took place, then it didn't have as central a life any longer because the divisions had taken place.

01:37:39

You now had the Southern Churches doing their thing and the Northern Churches doing their thing, and it happened along in many denominational grounds.

01:37:48

But then he made basically saying, hey, Ligon Duncan is not into Neo -Marxism.

01:37:55

Well, I'm sure Ligon Duncan isn't. But once you buy critical race theory, you may not consciously follow and trace the line back to where it comes from.

01:38:07

That doesn't change the fact that that's where it comes from, and that's how it's being used. So the idea was, hey, people there are saying, don't be divisive.

01:38:17

This is political. And they said that back then. Well, they may have said that back then, depending on which part of the divide you were on.

01:38:26

And Dr. Duncan may have been taught that you can just not worry about that because that's just the way things were, and they just stopped talking about it, and so we should not talk about it too, and all the rest of that stuff.

01:38:39

I don't know what his experience in Jackson is. I've not lived in the

01:38:46

South. I was born in Minnesota, raised in Pennsylvania, and then

01:38:52

Arizona is neither South nor North. We don't have a culture here.

01:38:58

Everybody here is from someplace else. So I've never been a part of that, and I'm sure that that Southern culture has something to do with what it is that he is talking about and the strong emotional statement that he made.

01:39:18

But what I was concerned about was, basically, it sounded like what he was saying is, if you say that people are being divisive, then you're like the people defending the slave owners.

01:39:29

What I'm saying is that when one side puts the other side all into one major category, does not allow for distinctions, and simply says, repent, yes, you're being divisive.

01:39:46

That is not parallel by any stretch of the imagination with what was going on from 1830 to 1861.

01:39:58

There's no connection there. The other thing, politics. Well, yes and no.

01:40:10

I mean, there are political aspects. I mean, if we were in a situation where someone was running on the platform that you should take away rights from people today, well, that would be one thing.

01:40:27

That's not what we're talking about. When we talk about political things, we're talking about bringing critical race theory in and making application to intersectionality, making application to structures of oppression.

01:40:45

And can we have a discussion about the fact that in most national elections, the black community votes 98 % the same way?

01:40:57

Can we have a discussion about the centrality of abortion and Planned Parenthood?

01:41:06

Should not these be things that we can actually address because they have directly moral applications?

01:41:13

I mean, there is a, you've heard what Margaret Sanger said about blacks?

01:41:19

I mean, you want racism? You want real racism from a white person?

01:41:25

Let's talk Margaret Sanger. So why is her organization still getting half a billion dollars of our taxpayers' money every year with the

01:41:37

Republicans in charge? Can we talk about that? Okay, I guess we could talk about that. But it seemed to me that those comments could be understood as basically saying, if you identify the critical race theory foundations and language and intersectionality and everything else that is coming through the language of this movement as political, then you're with the slave owners.

01:42:04

There's no slave owners today. If you say this is divisive, that's what they said back then.

01:42:11

Well, does that mean that nothing is divisive today just because it was falsely used in the past? If the reality is that you are forcing the other side into categories that are not their own, and that are not biblical, that is divisive.

01:42:28

That is divisive. And you need to be able to identify it as such. I'm sorry I couldn't play the section. I forgot.

01:42:35

I had it queued up yesterday, and for some reason that program, when you open up another thing in it, instead of doing two windows, replaces it, and so you lose what you had.

01:42:44

Probably a setting, probably my fault, because I know I've used it before to do that, and I don't know why it didn't do that there.

01:42:52

So, when someone preaches a wonderful sermon, just a beautiful sermon, be careful at the application time.

01:43:05

Because the tendency on the part of many of us is to hear how well someone has handled the material, and how deep their knowledge of the background, the text, and language might be, and then you get to the application.

01:43:21

And both in regards to Amos 5 with David Platt, and then the application that was made by J.

01:43:29

Ligon Duncan, in both instances, I just had to go, man, it really felt artificial to me.

01:43:36

It did not seem to flow whatsoever from what was actually in those texts that were being looked at.

01:43:44

When J. Ligon Duncan says, this isn't politics, this is just the dad -gum Second Commandment, by the way, when

01:43:51

I first heard that in Twitter, I'm looking at the Ten Commandments, sort of going, what? Second Commandment?

01:43:58

First Commandment, love God. Second Commandment, love your neighbors yourself. Leviticus 19. So, don't be confused.

01:44:05

I was. I actually was looking it up going, is this the Exodus one? Is this the Deuteronomy one?

01:44:10

I'm confused. Once I got a chance to listen to it, I was like, oh, Second Commandment as defined by Jesus, love your neighbor as yourself.

01:44:20

And there is no question that if someone starts promoting slavery today, they're not loving neighbors themselves.

01:44:33

There is no question that 150 years ago, no matter how kind or beneficent a slave owner might have been, and by the way, there were some in the

01:44:44

North, too, for a long time. No matter how kind or beneficent you might be, were you loving your neighbor as yourself if you were involved with the institution of slavery?

01:44:56

No, you weren't. Did you know it with the clarity we would know today? No, you didn't.

01:45:05

No, you didn't. Does that excuse it? No. Do you want

01:45:10

God to judge you based upon what you know or what you don't know?

01:45:18

Be very careful how you answer that question. Be very careful how you answer that question. So, I don't know what more there is to say.

01:45:28

If you put this program, nearly two hours now, an hour and 45 minutes, if you put this program together with the sort of initial program a couple weeks ago, where I walked through Colossians chapter 3,

01:45:46

I don't know what else needs to be said. But I am not naive.

01:45:53

I recognize it's not what is being said that matters, and that's the problem.

01:46:04

When you are pushing an agenda, it doesn't matter whether the foundations have been exposed or not.

01:46:12

You're going to keep pushing that agenda. So, my hope and prayer is simply that whether you are, no matter what your ethnic background is, no matter what your ancestors did, vast majority of us don't know anything about it.

01:46:36

Vast majority of us have no idea. And even when you read stuff, are you sure?

01:46:43

Are you really certain about that information? The people who win the wars get to write the histories. I don't care what color skin you have.

01:46:54

I don't care what your daddy did. I don't care what your great -granddaddy did. If you bow the knee to Jesus Christ, if you recognize that the entirety of your standing before God is based upon the truth that God has eternally been

01:47:15

God, Jesus Christ was the God -man, that He truly became man,

01:47:22

He was truly incarnate, that He gave Himself voluntarily on the cross of Calvary, that He was buried and rose again the third day for our justification, that by my faith in Him, I have forgiveness of sins,

01:47:41

His righteousness is imputed to me, my sins imputed to Him, He is my sin -bearer, He has taken them as far as the

01:47:46

East is from the West. If you recognize that the entirety of your relationship to God is based upon what

01:47:54

Jesus Christ has done for you, you and I are brothers or sisters, brother and sister, brother and brother, in faith in Jesus Christ.

01:48:08

And I don't care what your color is. I don't care what your color is. If you want to share with me some of the joy you get from your ethnicity, great.

01:48:24

Just don't ask me to eat any of your ethnic foods. You're just gonna have to bear with me at that point.

01:48:32

I'm more of a cheeseburger guy. And with ketchup and mustard on it, that's right.

01:48:39

Actually, mayo is really good, too. I can get a little wild. And you know what?

01:48:46

Once in a while, I'll actually post a picture at a formal event where I'm wearing one of my kilts.

01:48:54

And I hope that's okay with you, too. But I'm not gonna make my kilt relevant to our fellowship, ever.

01:49:06

And you can't make any of your ethnic markers relevant to our fellowship, either, as long as you understand that we both stand on the exact same spot before God.

01:49:21

That's the reality. And if you love the Word of God, if you want to know more about the

01:49:29

Word of God, if you want to worship Him in purity and holiness, then let's do it together.

01:49:36

Let's do it together. And let's resist any attempt to bring division.

01:49:46

The world is coming after us. California is going insane.

01:49:53

Illinois is going insane. I almost took time today to talk about some of the stuff that's going on there.

01:49:59

The forced LGBTQ indoctrination of first and second graders in Illinois.

01:50:08

California is just about to make the Christian religion illegal. It really is.

01:50:15

The people in that legislature are nuts. They're crazed.

01:50:22

This is not the time. This is not the time for us to be dragging critical race theory into the church and dividing us.

01:50:32

We need each other. And it doesn't matter what your skin color is.

01:50:40

The secularists aren't gonna care. They're not gonna care. And if we end up in the same cell together, we ain't gonna care.

01:50:51

We ain't gonna care. So, long time. Sorry.

01:50:59

But obviously a bunch of stuff's been going on, and we need to cover all of it.

01:51:06

And I want to move on. I want to move on to other things.

01:51:14

I don't think we're gonna be allowed—but we can't just simply go, Okay, that's it. We can move along.

01:51:21

I'm not that naive. I realize that's not how it's gonna work. But I want to lay it out there, make it clear, address these issues, and hopefully encourage folks that are finding it as discouraging as I am to see what's going on right now.

01:51:43

If nothing else, we need to pray for the unity of the body, knowledge of what the gospel brings us as the great heritage of the people of God, and to understand that tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations—the reason they're all one is because they're not holding anything their grandparents did against one another.

01:52:10

They're not looking at themselves. They're not looking at the color of the person next to them. Their eyes are fixed on the

01:52:15

Lamb. That's what we need as well in the church today. Those are my thoughts.

01:52:22

Thanks for listening to the program today. Sorry about the technical issues. I guess we're gonna have to upload a new edition so that it's all there, but it happens.