One Seminary's Amazing Anti-Woke Promo & Explaining Cowardly Conservatives

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna talk about something I mentioned before today, the coalition building strategy, the coalition building strategy that is going on right now.

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And it's not just an evangelicalism, it's beyond that, but I think about it in an evangelical context. So those who are not social justice driven people, they're concerned.

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Most of them, you don't know who they are because they're silent. They're afraid of the buzzsaw coming, canceling them.

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Or just whatever repercussions, negative repercussions would come their way. And some of them who want to kind of step out, want to see something done, will kind of inch out slowly.

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Look around, make sure there's other people with them. Okay, yeah, I'm not too far from the center. Usually they feel comfortable if there's someone else who's charged and gone way out there, that's kind of made room for them because they like to feel like they're the moderates.

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They don't like to be on the extreme right because if they are, it's just an uncomfortable place to be.

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And they're going to get all the negative press. And so if they can kind of slowly inch out and do it with other people and not ruffle the feathers too much, not really, not capsize the boat, just kind of let the boat keep smooth sailing towards social justice, but try to just change that sail ever so slightly.

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So we just kind of veer off a little bit. You know, that's that progressive kind of, what I mean,

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I mean gradual, not progressive in a political sense, but that gradual kind of trying to diminish risk to oneself and do it with other people.

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That attitude was just someone, so this was a few weeks ago, but it was

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Governor Kristi Noem. She nailed it. She nailed it. She just, she articulated exactly what it is that's wrong,

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I think, with that whole approach because she's taking it on a certain issue. So we're going to talk about that.

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First announcements. Number one, hey, I know

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I've said it before. I'm going to say it again. If you know anyone in Lynchburg, Virginia, if you are a Liberty student, if you know a Liberty student, if you live near Lynchburg, come on out on Saturday.

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Seating is limited. You want to see Ron Riesco and Paint the Wall Black. I'll be there.

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It's going to be a great time, 7 p .m. Saturday night at Liberty University. Check it out.

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Link is in the info section. All right. Now that we, oh, one more announcement. Oh, check this out, by the way. This is a longer announcement.

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Okay, so let me set this up. Many people have asked me this question. In fact,

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I just got an email about this recently. John, what seminary should I go to, right? And I've been more hesitant to answer that question for a variety of reasons, which

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I'm not going to go into right now, but there is, I'm just going to plug this, sort of.

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I don't know much about Southern Evangelical Seminary. I don't. I do know someone who is connected to Southern Evangelical Seminary who says very good things about it.

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And I thought in the past that this might be a really, this may be a good seminary to go to. It may be, in fact, if you're looking for a seminary that's not on the social justice side, it may be the best seminary to go to.

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I'm not sure. Then I saw this advertisement. And now, well, I'm going to let you watch it and you can draw your own conclusion.

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Here we go. Hey Christian, I have a question for you. Are you woke or awake?

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The woke say love means affirming a person's feelings and ideas, unless your ideas disagree with them.

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The woke believe everyone defines reality for themselves until your reality impacts theirs.

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The woke replace the gospel with the confused notion of social justice, even though it is anything but just.

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We can't love our neighbors well by appealing to a wokeness ideology. The Bible says to expose the untruthful deeds of darkness, awake sleeper, arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

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It's time to firmly stand on the inerrancy of God's word and the objectivity of knowledge.

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It's time to boldly proclaim the gospel into the darkness. It's time to courageously engage bad ideas in the public square.

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It's time to confidently defend objective truth and goodness. It's time to wake up.

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Southern Evangelical Seminary and Bible College, proclaim, engage, defend.

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Now they did not pay me to play that. I've had no communication with Southern Evangelical Seminary whatsoever.

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When I saw that though, I'll be honest, I was blown away. That's bold and it's dead on, it's dead on.

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Objectivity of truth, the true gospel. I mean, they nailed all the problems. I mean, in such a short video, well, not all the problems, but the big ones, in such a short video,

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I was just impressed, guys. This is the pinned tweet on their Twitter account. It's at apologetics,

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SES apologetics, I think, at SES apologetics. It's their pinned tweet. They're putting that out there in front that this is who we are.

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That's boldness, guys. And I don't know a lot about the seminary, but I know in this environment to do that.

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I mean, I wish that other seminaries would do that. I mean, I get emails sometimes from people that'll say, hey, our seminary is really good.

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Our seminary is really biblical. And look, there may be some really great things, but I've always asked the question, like, okay, well, can you show me to anything that says that your seminary is taking a stand or prominent professors there, that they're really taking a stand?

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Send me, you know, have they signed the Dallas statement? Maybe. Is there anything you can point me to?

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And usually the answer is no, but we're biblical. It's like, I don't know what to do with that. There's not much I can do with that.

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I hope you're right, but this is going beyond even what I've asked people about the seminaries that they've sent, you know, information they've sent to me.

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This is not just saying, hey, we signed a statement or we have a statement. This is, no, we're gonna actually put, make this our main promotional talking point that we're not woke, we're not social justice.

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Well done. I don't know what else to say. Well done. If you're considering seminary, I'm not telling you to go there, but you might wanna at least check out

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Southern Evangelical Seminary. And it's in, I believe, North Carolina, if I'm not mistaken.

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I think Charlotte, outside of Charlotte, something like that. So check that out. All right, now to the topic at hand that we're all pumped up by watching this promotional video from Southern Evangelical Seminary.

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I honestly, I really hope that they get a lot of the people who are hungering for a institution that's not woke.

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I hope they get them to come. Anyway, let's contrast that with this.

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We're gonna start with a tweet Michael O 'Fallon made, and then we'll get to the governor of South Dakota.

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Michael O 'Fallon says this, and he's talking about people in Christianity. He says, if you first stood up and spoke against the wokening of the church, in 2012 to 2016, you were courageous.

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In 2016 to 2017, you were bold. In 2018 to 2019, you were doing the obvious.

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In 2020 to 2021, you were waiting for the rest of us to make sure that your grifting path was safe for you to speak up.

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Ouch. It's an interesting statement, but the more you, it sounds really harsh, but the more you think about it, the more you, and this of course assumes that someone knew what was going on.

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I mean, I don't know after 2018 how you could not have known what was going on if you were in evangelicalism. That was the

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MLK 50, the T4G when David Platt and Lincoln Duncan went all woke.

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I mean, it was there. You had the Dallas Statement. That was 2018. If you didn't know by then, and you just weren't paying attention,

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I don't know what else to say. But okay, some people come to the game late and get it. But there is,

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I do have this concern that he does that there are people that now wanna come full swing against social justice.

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It's like, you're a little late, guys. Like, where were you in 2018 or 2019? And this isn't to dismiss their contributions.

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It's just, I just think it is good to be aware of that, that there might be people who are doing this for not the best reasons.

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And look, Paul even said those who preach the gospel out of bad reasons, praise God for that.

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And so I think there is a sense in which you can praise God for it. But I don't think that those people are necessarily worthy of respect.

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And I think Michael, this is what I think he's trying to communicate. He was one of the early people on this whole issue.

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He, it was Pulpit and Penn. It was, I'm trying to think who else? Brandon House.

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Those were kind of some of the early ones within Christianity who were saying like, hey, there's some Marxism or postmodernism or something going on.

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And those guys were, you know, they were discernment bloggers. They were hated, all these things. Well, time has proven that a lot of the things they were warning about have been true.

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And I'm not saying that you should respect or agree with every single thing those figures have said. I'm just saying they were alone, voices crying in the wilderness in some ways when no one else was saying the things that they were saying and they were being made fun of and all those kinds of things.

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And there is a certain amount of vindication that I think has taken place. And now there are people who are now starting to try to build a platform off of fighting this stuff.

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And, you know, where were they when it costed them? It doesn't cost them quite as much now.

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It still costs, I think it still has a cost attached, but there's a market now for, you know, going against social justice.

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So this is what he says. Now, those who are confused right now, I'm leading up to something. Anyway, I'm gonna continue to tweet.

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He says, sorry, this is the truth. And so many of us had to withstand many of those now proclaiming themselves experts in these matters.

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And let's see. And many of these men still have not signed. This is, okay, so what he's saying is there's this statement on socialjustice .com.

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And a number of people have signed the statement on social justice and the gospel. Michael O 'Fallon was the one that engineered that.

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Him and Josh Bice. And I need to be clear on this with you guys because I think the history of this is almost being rewritten.

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I'm not sure exactly why. I could take a guess at it, but it was

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Michael O 'Fallon and Josh Bice, from my understanding, that were the ones that were spearheading this statement on social justice and the gospel.

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Michael is kind of on the periphery in some ways. Now, the sovereign nations,

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I should say, that's the ministry or the organization. It's not a ministry, the organization. They're a little more on the periphery now.

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But he was the one, Michael and sovereign nations hosting conferences about this issue.

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Hosting, he hosts the website for the statement. And they're usually, he's not mentioned.

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Josh Bice usually isn't mentioned when the discussion of the Dallas statement even comes up. Usually it's

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John MacArthur. John MacArthur definitely signed it. He wasn't the one though that spearheaded this. And so Michael is one of the, and I don't know what his entire motivation in bringing this all up is, but I think there's,

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I'm gonna pull out the helpful things here. It is helpful for him to say, look, if someone's taking a stand in evangelicalism against social justice, and they're saying they have, and they haven't signed the statement on social justice and the gospel, why not?

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It's a legitimate question to ask. Maybe there's a legitimate reason, but why not? Especially if they're willing to sign other statements.

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Ask that question. He says, now, I will, of course, leave room for those men that just suffered from cognitive dissonance, as men that they respected were teaching deconstruction and finally saw the light.

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Many of these good men have repented, stepped away and fixed their compass on truth. And I do understand the thought that majority of woke

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Christian leaders decided to bow their knee to this great paradigm shift out of both fear and promise of safety on the other side of the fourth industrial revolution is nauseating, but that is what has happened.

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He's talking about what the great reset is supposed to bring about, the fourth industrial revolution. Look it up. Maybe on a time when you're, maybe not directly after this video.

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It's some scary stuff if you start looking into the fourth industrial revolution. Anyway, Michael goes on.

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And now that this is happening, there are men that will be experts in critical race theory and intersectionality that will appear, but will never oppose the leaders who pay their salaries, secure their jobs and elevate their careers.

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And they will be praised by the likes of Aiken, Duncan and others. Now he's naming some names.

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Listen, he's saying that there's people employed or receiving money or receiving platform from people like Aiken, Duncan, I'm sure

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Moeller would be in this. And they're not going to name those names. They're not gonna go after Aiken. They're not gonna go after Duncan. They're not gonna go after Moeller.

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They're not gonna go after Dever, maybe. I don't know. They're not gonna bite the hand that feeds them, right?

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And they're gonna try to oppose it in the places they have the least amount of influence and not oppose it in the place they have the most amount of influence.

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That's another clue as to whether they're actually opposing this or not. Are they going to oppose it when it costs them?

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Are they going to sign the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel? If not, you gotta ask why.

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The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel is a perfectly fine statement. It has been tarred and feathered by the likes of Tim Keller and Al Moeller, suggested that it takes racism lightly, all these things that it's not true.

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Are people staying away from it because they're afraid of that negative press? I mean, or they don't wanna be associated with someone like Michael or Josh Bice or John MacArthur, or, you know, what's the deal?

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You gotta ask those questions. So keep going here. Here's the thing,

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Michael says, in regards to stopping the wokening of the church, the leadership of the majority denominations and seminaries have about as much credibility of stopping the deconstruction of the church as Joe Biden does in securing our southern border.

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So that's kind of vicious, but I think it's accurate. If you haven't taken a stand, if you haven't even bothered when this has been such a front and center issue to oppose it with your church or with your organization, then how can you be trusted?

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I mean, that is like being in Utah, actually, or we'll make this situation different.

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That's like being in Iran as a missionary, but you're not gonna talk about Islam. That's the one thing you don't wanna talk about it.

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And when you do, it's kind of vague and just, well, I'm against Islam, but you're not gonna get specific with anything.

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You're not gonna name any names. The people in your community who are actually going to the mosque, who are being radicalized perhaps in some cases, you're not going to oppose any of that.

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That's how similar this is in my mind. I mean, neo -Marxist language, postmodern language is just infused in so many things in our culture.

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You cannot not avoid it. It's there. So you have to speak on it. And if you're not willing to, or if you're coming at it so late, when now that it's more convenient to do so, you have to ask why is that?

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And why won't you take the steps necessary to combat it when it's close to you? It's not this general, take the example of someone living in Iran, or maybe another

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Muslim country. It's not the person Islam vaguely described that is the problem so much as it is the mosques in your community and the people that are going to them.

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So yeah, Islam is the problem overall, but it's the situation you're in that the people you're trying to minister to in, you have to speak out against that specifically, against the people that they're going to hear from that are lying to them.

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That's the kind of thing that's not happening. So this isn't how the apostles functioned.

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It's not how the prophets functioned. It's not very brave. But this is what Michael's describing.

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And I've had this inkling now for more than a year at least. I've had this thought, because there's certain people, sometimes

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I'll even communicate with, sometimes behind the scenes sometimes, you don't see it. But sometimes they appreciate what

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I do, and I just sometimes wonder, so why aren't you coming out?

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Why aren't you really swinging at this thing? You're working for an institution where this is happening.

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What's the holdup? What's the problem? And I don't know every situation, and that's what's giving me pause sometimes. It's like, okay, I don't know everything, but I've realized this is an epidemic, to take a word everyone's familiar with now.

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This is very common. And I have to believe on some level that there's a fear there, and an unwillingness to confront something when it could cost them.

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They'd rather have someone else take the swing and not them. And then if they have to say something, come out against it vaguely.

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So I just ask people out there to test these things. And the big reason

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I wanna say this is, if this is causing you to question maybe some of the people that you know personally, or have connections with, or ministries that you support, that you give money to specifically,

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I would ask you to confront those ministries about it, and say, hey, where are your resources on this issue? Or if they're close to certain evangelical leaders, or have platformed those leaders who are going the social justice direction, why haven't you called them out?

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Or have you tried? Are there conversations we don't know about? Why haven't you distanced yourselves from them? Why haven't you warned people?

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If this is truly a false gospel, isn't that worth warning people about? That kind of thing.

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Why don't we do what Paul did, even in Galatians when he confronted Peter?

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So you're not saying that every single person is anathema, but maybe they're in error.

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And why isn't this being confronted? Those are the kind of questions I think still need to be asked of some of these ministries.

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Because I do know people who are financially supporting some ministries that I'll be honest, they'll fight everything else.

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They'll fight the prosperity gospel. They'll fight Roman Catholicism. They'll fight other cults. But this is the issue that they just have such a hard time dealing with.

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And by now we should have Sunday school materials. We should have multiple books. We should have so many resources.

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So it's not to complain. It's not to rant. I've said some of this stuff before. It's more to encourage you to confront these things.

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And if you're supporting a ministry that's just unwilling to fight, don't support that ministry anymore. That's my encouragement to you. Because this, like I said, it'd be like you're in Utah and that's the context you live in and they're not gonna fight against Mormonism.

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Well, or name the names of the people in your community that are preaching a false gospel.

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So here's what sparked all of this though. Here's why

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I started thinking, this is what I see Republicans doing. This is what I see people in other areas doing.

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It's not just an evangelicalism. I saw this clip. And it's Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota.

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This was a few weeks ago. I want you to listen to this. Check this out. This is regarding a bill that South Dakota had passed to try to basically say that, girls are gonna be in girls' sports, boys are gonna be in boys' sports, to combat the executive orders from the

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Biden administration. And basically this is what Kristi Noem had to say.

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She's on Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is saying, why didn't you sign the bill? And this is what she says. And back since November, I've been consulting with legal scholars and professors across the country, asking them, how do

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I protect women's sports? And they've gone through the steps to how I would legally challenge the

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NCAA and keep them from bullying the state of South Dakota. And what they've told me to do is that I need to build a coalition.

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So that's why today I launched defendtitle9now .com. And that's going to allow us to build a coalition of states that can fight the

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NCAA. Listen, I'm sick and tired of the NCAA threatening states, challenging us and bullying us.

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And so we're gonna build a coalition All right, I'm gonna stop it there. She keeps going on and on about this coalition in the interview.

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And it struck me when I saw that, I said, that's it. That's it. Because Tucker Carlson comes back and basically says, why don't you just take a stand on principle?

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This is actually, maybe I should just, maybe we should just continue watching it. I probably paused it a little too soon. Here, I'm gonna keep playing it for you.

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So check out Tucker Carlson's response to this. Leaders, athletes, and people who want to protect women's sports and want to make sure that our women keep

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Title IX in place to protect their right to be competitive and to be rewarded by participating in these team sports and make sure this coalition can fight the

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NCAA to make sure we're protecting Title IX. But these standards far predate

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Title IX. And I'm not exactly sure why Title IX is relevant or even really worth defending. I mean, this is thousands of years of common sense and tradition.

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Girls play girls sports, boys play boys sports. Why not instead just say, bring it on, NCAA? I'm a national figure.

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Go ahead and try and exclude us. I will fight you in the court of public opinion and defend principle.

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Why not just do that? Tucker, you're preaching my sermon. That's what

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I did today. Today, I with Herschel Walker. So she goes on, but she's building a coalition, so she's doing that.

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And she's speaking totally past, it's political speak, past Tucker. Tucker's saying, why don't you sign the bill and say, you know what?

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In South Dakota, we're not gonna do it this way. Boys play boys sports, girls play girls sports. And she's saying, no,

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I gotta build this coalition. And so it's a pragmatic move. It's a self -preserving move.

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You feel a lot more comfortable when there's others there with you. It's hard to be a Daniel and stand alone.

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But this is such an obvious thing, and the public opinion is even with her. But there's a fear there.

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And that's what I think I see in a lot of other places, a fear of standing against the social justice mob, because you might lose.

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You might, I mean, how can you, though? Were they to send federal troops? They could, I guess, to South Dakota. How's that gonna look?

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Why not do what James Coates is doing at his church in some ways and just say, look, we're not giving up.

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You're gonna have these fences up. We're gonna keep meeting right outside the fence. We're gonna be a thorn in your side.

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And we love you to the police officers. We want you to come to Christ. But we're not ever backing down.

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And that's what I don't see a lot of. And so here's what this is all leading up to.

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And I wanted to, this is the Bible story that came across my mind. It's from Numbers 13, 25 through 33.

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It says, when they returned from spying out the land at the end of 40 days, they proceeded to come to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran and Kadesh.

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And they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Thus they told him and said, we went into the land where you sent us and it certainly does flow with milk and honey.

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And this is its fruit. Nevertheless, the people who live in that land are strong. Cities are fortified and very large.

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And moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. Amalek is living in the land of the Negev. And the

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Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country. And the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the

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Jordan. Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, we should by all means go up and take possession of it for we will surely overcome it.

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But the men who had gone up with him said, we are not able to go up against the people for they are too strong for us.

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So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land, which they had spied out, saying the land through which we have gone in spying it out is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people whom we saw it are men of great size.

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There also we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim and became like grasshoppers in our own sight.

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And so we were in their sight. So they're saying there's giants, it's too much, we can't, it's too dangerous.

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There's no way we can defeat these people. And the land that God promised us, we just can't go into because, look at how dangerous it is.

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And, you know, Joshua and Caleb had faith and that's what's lacking guys.

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That's the bottom line. I see the parallels in that story. The majority of the spies do not wanna go into the land.

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And I guess that's just human nature. That's just how it often is. That the majority of people are very self -preserving and don't have a lot of faith that God will preserve them, protect them, keep his promises to them.

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And that what they actually have is really worth fighting for. And sometimes their strategies, coalition building strategies aren't always wrong.

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It's not at all. Coalitions are actually very good things and they can be at least. But there are times that you just need to do the right thing and stand up and go forward and name names and take the shots that come your way, just take it.

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Because people, truth is worth defending and the harm that this brings to people is also very negative.

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And if you love people, you wanna keep them from lies. You wanna keep them from following people who are dangerous, that you don't have correct judgment.

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That's why we name names on this. That's why this wasn't something from the beginning that I never talked about this issue because I thought it would make me any friends.

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I talked about it because initially I was concerned about people going to the seminary I went to. And I thought, man,

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I don't want them to go through the experience I went through thinking that it's gonna be biblical in every respect. And actually there's some social justice stuff.

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And at the time, I didn't even know how to express that. I called it politically correct. I called it Marxist, but I wanted to warn people about that because I love them.

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And I don't wanna herald myself as the big example here because look, I got my own cowardice in me and we all have areas in which we're afraid.

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There's people I'm afraid of. I've calculated in my mind before, at least that process has started. But I always try to remind myself of who

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God is. And there's an old saying that God, one person plus God is a majority, right?

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If God is on our side, who can be against us? And that's the big point I wanna drive home is what are you waiting for?

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If you're someone on the fence, get off the fence. If it's true, it's true, fight for it and leave the results to God.

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Seek first his kingdom is righteous. He'll provide for you. If it's doing something that, oh my goodness,

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I could lose my professorship. I might have to go to do a trade or to sell cars or to be a pastor or I don't know, to tutor children or something.

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Okay, is that so wrong? Is that bad? I didn't think there was any problem in those professions.

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There's nothing to be ashamed of there. It's better than living in a way that you're always compromised.

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Do the right thing. Give other people courage. And when you have courage, it's infectious. Other people also decide, you know what, they're gonna have courage.

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And if you're supporting ministries or individuals, I would just ask you to hold their feet to the fire if they're not opposing the social justice movement.

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And if they're not willing to name names, then I think that's gonna look different for different people, but you need to try to encourage them to do just that.

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So that's all I have for you today. I hope that was helpful in some way. I hope there's a little bit of an inspiration there at the end.

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We can be Joshua's, we can be Caleb's, and we don't want to be like the spies who had no faith.

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And we can have faith. God is good, he's big. I know it's discouraging sometimes, but he does have a plan in all this.

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And it's not an accident that you are in this as well. You're part of this story. If you're listening to this podcast and you're alive right now, you're part of this story.

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And it's not an accident. God doesn't do accidents. So that's all