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

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line today. There are lots of topics that I would like to get to. I actually didn't even get a chance to finish watching the new film coming out, Fragments of Truth.

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

We'll have some interaction with that, especially from an apologetic perspective. Maybe we can get to that later in the week. It's just an incredibly busy week for me. All sorts of things are going on, especially in the evenings for some reason.

But be that as it may, it's been a very busy week since we were last on with you. I went out of town and had a sort of good time, other than the 60 mph winds that I had to deal with one day. Cold weather is weird.

It's actually... I sat outside for lunch today at the little restaurant that I frequently go to. But there were a couple of times I was like, and this is April. I mean, I... What? Yeah, I know. I know.

I remember very, very, very clearly riding El Tour de Phoenix in the first weekend of April back in the 90s. And it hit 104 that day. So this global warming thing, we can all thank the global warmists for all that.

But anyway, over the past week, there has been a lot of interaction, a lot of comments. T4G took place, and there were a number of sermons that were delivered there at T4G. And I recognize that the issues of race in the United States do not connect with our global audience.

I recognize that in the vast majority of instances outside the United States, these issues have been dealt with in very appropriate ways. In the United Kingdom, the issue of slavery was dealt with without a civil war, for example.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

But my concern, quite honestly, is that the United States has a tendency to export its problems to other people. And I would truly hate, in light of MLK 50, T4G, I would really hate to see critical race theory, Neo-Marxism, and the other bedrock assumptions that are hiding behind a lot of the religious languages being used.

Even by people who don't even realize how deeply they've been influenced by those other sources. I would hate to see that spread out outside of the United States and to start causing division elsewhere.

But the problem is, major conferences like T4G are watched all around the world. 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.

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

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. 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. I remember talking a little bit about racial theory when 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, Cone and others that had influenced his pastor and himself and things. It was years and years and years ago.

Those things have not gone away by any stretch of the imagination. But what we're seeing now is influence within what calls itself Reformed Christianity, conservative Reformed Christianity, because of the fact that leaders in seminaries and in churches are adopting this perspective and promoting this perspective.

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

And if they are indicative of what we have coming in the future, it's not their desire to have a meaningful conversation. It seems that from that perspective, to have a meaningful conversation means you start by accepting their fundamental assumptions.

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. 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.

We need to understand a few things. There is an article that is, what's the date on this? March 30th. So this was only a few weeks ago. There is an article, Critical Race Theory, RTS, SBTS. And it's by a former Presbyterian, who, by the way, obviously would not have a whole lot of particularly high views of myself, because at one point toward the beginning, yeah, he says, 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. 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 Lord and his apostles.

And what is useful, especially in this particular article, is some of the definitions that are provided. So when we look at Critical Race Theory, CRT, CRT recognizes this is a definition provided by the UCLA School of Public Affairs.

So not exactly a overly theological source, but CRT recognizes that racism is ingrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture.

This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color.

CRT also rejects the traditions of liberalism and meritocracy. Legal discourse says the law is neutral and colorblind. However, CRT challenges this legal truth by examining liberalism and meritocracy as a vehicle for self-interest, power, and privilege.

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

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

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

So you've been hearing a lot about intersectionality. You've been hearing it all over our culture. You're hearing, and I'll just be honest, I have seen tremendously obvious, to me anyways, parallels in the way I have been treated by those promoting the woke church and the way people promote the 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. They're promoting their perspectives in the same way that the LGBTQ people are, because it's working within our society.

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

And again, realize oppression from this perspective, trace it back. We're talking neo-Marxism. We're talking the idea that liberty and freedom should not be freedom of opportunity, but equality of result, not equality of opportunity, but equality of result.

Equality of result is 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. And it doesn't work.

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

This is where I would be opposed to the application of Marxist 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.

So you'll hear this, 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 everybody, well, so that nobody has power over anybody else.

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 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. Marxism doesn't work because Marxism does not have a biblical view of man. And so it can never function in that way. But this idea of oppression, working toward eliminating racial oppression as a broad goal of ending all forms of oppression.

So originally Marx, it was the oppression of the rich versus the workers, the poor. Now, and it was a systemic thing. And the only way to get rid of that oppression was to destroy the system. 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.

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

And then they'll realize, oh, hmm, that probably wasn't good. And by then it's too late. 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 CRT scholars pursue as academics and activists.

So here's just some of the things that CRT presents. Now, what this article does is very interesting. It then gives us some quotes from Jarvis Williams. And Jarvis Williams is a graduate of Boyce College and holds THM and PhD from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

So he wrote in Part 1 of Why Racism May Defeat American Evangelicalism, which was a RON article, though RON isn't RON anymore. Reformed African American Network. I'm not sure what it is now. Anyways, prioritization of whiteness.

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

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

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.

Then the evangelical movement stands no chance at seeing holistic racial reconciliation within its churches, institutions, and communities. White colonization of black and brown cultures. Certain white evangelical denominations have more black and brown members than others.

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 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.

Now, I hope what you're hearing here is this is totally a political cultural analysis. This is not a biblical analysis that says God builds His church. I'm going to be mentioning this when I look at Brother Platt's sermon here in a little while.

What you do is you preach and teach faithfully the Word of God, and then you trust God to bring to you those that He would have you have as part of that fellowship. In 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 Word of God.

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

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

That's another story. Anyway, the elders choose the form of worship. And for us, it has been consistent for many, many, many, many years. It hasn't changed. We don't do any surveys. We've got plenty of people who contact us and say, Hey, you know, 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.

We don't care. That's not the point. The point is the centrality of the teaching and preaching of the Word of God, and our confidence is that God will bring to us those who want to have the same thing.

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.

And more power to you. God bless you in your ministry. So the whole idea that we have is that God's the one that determines what a church looks like. And he does so based upon drawing people to the ministry of the Word.

And I haven't heard anyone addressing that. 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.

And it sounds like what's being said is, well, this is white colonization. If they want to fit in, then they somehow have to abandon their particular ethnic, well, as Platt's going to put it, preferences.

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. So we sing from the Trinity Hymnal.

We sing old hymns from the Trinity Hymnal. We sing one from the Psalter that talks about monsters in the sea. We sing another one that talks about the destruction of our enemies. You know, it's all straight out of the Psalter, but you wouldn't hear it being sung almost anywhere other than the OPC and the Reformed Baptists.

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

I don't think there's any question about that, no. Anyway, but preference-wise, now don't tell my fellow elders, but I love Keith Green. I'd love to have some worship choruses and maybe some of Keith Green's greatest hits, you know.

But I don't—I lay that aside for the greater good of the unity of the body in focusing upon the ministry of the 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, 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. But this idea of predominant white cultural colonization is the application of purely secular societal standards to the work of the 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. 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.

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 Christian group.

How about recognizing that the Holy Spirit of God can actually cause white and brown-colored Christians to so love the consistent, deep exegesis of the 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 Christians and none of them care about what their ancestors did or what the color of their skin is.

How about that? Think that might work? Yeah, it does work. It works all over the world. Works all over the world. I've seen it, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Anyway, I would recommend, you know, there's just so much in here and there's so much to get to today.

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.

I don't know what it's like to live your life with these racial lenses implanted. I mean, we're not talking putting on a pair of glasses you can seemingly take off very easily. 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.

Well, let me talk a little bit about some of the interactions 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. I have mentioned to you my interactions with Kyle J. Howard, who is a leader in this movement.

He identifies himself as a racial trauma counselor. 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.

And so I was not even aware of the fact that Mr. Howard had been taking shots at me for quite some time. And going back, I found, for example, in October of last year, when 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.

And I've had Dr. Baucom on, so evidently that has something to do with it. But 15th of October, thanks to this, James White has helped raise up a new generation of racially insensitive Christians by using terms like ethnic Gnosticism.

Now, of course, somebody pointed out I didn't invent it. Yeah, that's Dr. Baucom's terminology. 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.

Love and compassion. Yeah, I said it. When it comes to ethnic reconciliation and conversations about racism, James White fans are the worst, worse than unbelievers in that regard. 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. At least I don't recognize the name until just recently. Then when someone points out, well, that was Votie Baucom that utilized that terminology, he says, yeah, I believe Votie was first to use it, which is very disappointing.

White has used it way more frequently and has normalized it. Now, if you take everything that I said up until two weeks ago on this subject, it would be one ten-thousandth of what Votie has said about this subject over the years.

But I'm the one normalizing it? There's no balance here. The man is extremely imbalanced when it comes to this kind of rhetoric. So, a few weeks ago, when I first heard about his comments, I mentioned on Facebook the subject 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.

So, from their perspective, this is a sin issue, and I think it's one of the reasons that many of them just are not overly interested in having any kind of balance. 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, I'm the one that needs to repent, I'm the one in sin, and so you don't need to have equal scales, 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. Just repent. Kyle J. Howard, again, the most racially antagonistic Christians I have ever encountered on social media and in person have been those who are devoted followers of James White.

He is in no way an ally, and I don't support his ministry. 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.

This is part of, I guess, what racial trauma stuff is all about. 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 Hitler was just trying to protect his country from the Jews, and Howard's response is, yep, and that's one of his followers, 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, I can just find him commenting on his stuff, saying wild things, and hold him accountable for that.

No, no, no. From their perspective, they don't even, the idea of having equal scales and fairness and balance, no, 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.

When people say, well, that sounds like you are a racist, the response is, minorities cannot be racists. 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., 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. I'm hearing all sorts about racial insensitivity on the part of, quote-unquote, Anglos, whites, people not of color, etc., etc.

I'm seeing almost nothing about the tsunami of black racism that we see. I mentioned the black Hebrew Israelites, and it's like, so? That's because of white supremacy. Really? So sin is because of the sin of others?

No. Don't even start going there. That's the kind of stuff that is being perpetuated regularly. And then we did mention his tweet when the ERLC announced a special scholarship fund. This is where it's at.

So this is the perspective. 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.

And there's a lot of people. You even raised that subject. Oh, he's called you too? Oh. 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 I have seen who can read the direct words of Kyle Howard where he talked about, 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 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.

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

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.

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

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

So you can't have that. That's why I said, what is the endgame here? What does it look like? Is it an annual meeting of repentance on the part of all white people? And this whole white people thing, does that mean Scottish, Irish, English, Welsh, German, French?

Boy, those poor Norwegians, they are so white. And the Swedish and the Finns and the Italians and the Russians and Ukrainians. Have I covered all of them? Do you realize how many wars those people have had with each other and the differences between them?

Oh, that doesn't matter. All those distinctions, they don't matter. You can dismiss them. But do we all have to get together each year? Six months? What about the other minorities? It's been really bugging me.

Because this only seems to be focused upon one minority. And that's the problem we have here in the United States. And that's what we don't have elsewhere. Which is why elsewhere you've got a much better situation, in some instances, anyways, in the churches, where this stuff just doesn't come up.

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

In the building of the railroads and mining and the horrific abuse of Chinese people. Do we need to set up a monthly thing? Because then you've got the internment of Japanese during World War II. 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.

And then once you start doing that, oh no, guess what happens? Well, there's this World War II thing. And there's the rape of Nanking by the Japanese against the Chinese. And so I guess there needs to be a weekend for Japanese Christians to repent toward Chinese Christians.

And you've got all sorts of issues. You start getting over into all the stuff in Asia between Koreans and Japanese and Chinese, and you can get down into... You get to the point, it doesn't matter where you go.

You can go to South America, and there will be racial tensions there. You can go to Africa, and oh my goodness, the tribal tensions there. Even amongst people who have the exact same look and skin. It never ends.

Because that's its goal. That's its goal. It never ends. This racial reconciliation. Except in the Christian Church, where it's already ended. It's already taken care of. There's no reason to live in light of these past things anymore.

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

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

Every word you speak about it makes things worse. How can you compare the Chinese and Japanese treatment in the U .S. with slavery? Really? You think they were treated nicely? Do you have any idea what those gangs were like and how they were treated?

Do you question that? Do you know what the rape of Nanking was? Have you read anything about it? I have. I have. I read a book by a woman who, having researched it so deeply, wrote the book, did a film on it, and then committed suicide because she could never get the horrific nature of what the Japanese did to the Chinese in Nanking out of her mind.

You can ignore that if you want. You can call me the worst person in the world if you want. But you're ignoring the facts. You're not reasoning logically. 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, I guess the lens is not just here, it's here too.

You only hear that which fits into the narrative as well. But we'll get into more of that in a moment. Because one of the issues that came up, 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.

Out of the three, only one had a life marked by divine love and a pursuit of biblical justice. Why is that one the only one questioned? Now, that led to a conversation with Dwight McKissick. Dwight McKissick.

Now, Dwight McKissick, where did my, well, that's weird. I may have accidentally closed the program that had that. I guess I did. Hmm. Didn't expect to do that. Dwight McKissick is a pastor down in Texas.

And we had some interesting encounters over the past 10 -15 days in social media. Pastor McKissick believes it is appropriate to immediately question your integrity, your honesty. He goes to the invective very, very quickly and includes this in a lot of his tweets.

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.

And the defense I got back from some of his followers was almost the cultural appropriation, white colonialism thing. Well, maybe in his culture, that's okay. And that's immediately where I go, there's one of the problems.

Because he's a pastor of a Baptist church, and so am I. And hence, our cultures don't matter. We have an overriding authority that tells us how we are supposed to speak to one another. And I was being told, doesn't matter.

Hmm. Looks like that lens even trumps scripture itself. I point to Ephesians 4. Doesn't matter. I just call it like I see it. Hmm. Okay. He wrote to Seiko Woods, I'll let you enjoy being a co-assassin with James Earl Ray.

I'm bowing out. History has affirmed the great legacy and God-ordained prophetic ministry of MLK. In the grand scheme of things, what you think really doesn't matter. Now notice the God-ordained. 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. God's truth is marching on. MLK 50 was God-ordained. The fruit of the movement gathering will be felt for years to come.

The MLK 50 was a signature moment in the SBC. Fellow by the name of Gabriel Hughes asked him, who's being martyred? Who's doing the martyring? And who's holding cloaks while it's happening? His answer, Russell Moore, Vance Pittman, Charlie Dates, Micah Freese, Kyle Howard, Beth Moore.

They stood up for MLK 50. James White, Seth Dunn, David Dorian, and a host of others who oppose MLK 50 for baseless reasons or reasons you disqualify all 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?

Your insistence upon the use of such language cheapens the topic and intent of communication. His response, artful dodge. When one refuses to give an honest answer to an honest question, they usually have something to hide.

Based on your reputation, I honestly expected you to answer my question. Now I see otherwise. An honest answer could not withstand the scrutiny it would bring. Notice that for Pastor McKissick, the other side is dishonest.

It's just a given. It's a starting point. To even have the conversation, you have to start with the assumption. The other side is dishonest. And though people called him out on it, that's just the way it is.

In fact, I'll just finish with this one. Did you just engage in invective speech toward me? That's really a non-issue for me. Seems too important to you and JW. That's me. And you know JW never answered the original question.

Sure, I can read his heart and know his answer. His non-answer is the answer to answer would incriminate. Let me just read that again. Sure, I can read his part. Read his heart, I'm sorry. I can read his heart and know his answer.

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. 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.

Well, of course, he can't. What was this question? Well, this question was the one that arose out of the topic of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Now, again, I'll read Kyle Howard's statement here.