Session 2: Q&A with Darrell Harrison and Virgil Walker, Part 1

This is a question and answer, sort of an opportunity to meet our speakers. Just looking at you guys right now, I realize we probably look like an Oreo cookie sitting.

Up here, don't we?

That's a good look for you.

All right.

Darrell, first question. Your biography says that you are a, quote, 2013 fellow of the Black Theology and Leadership Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary. What is a fellow? We don't even have fellows at Kootenai Community Church.

Yeah, so a fellow, I have to give some background on what that program is. In 2013, Princeton Theological Seminary launched what they call the Black Theology and Leadership Institute, or BTLI for short.

The institute exists to teach, promote, and propagate the black liberation theology of James Cone. I don't know how many of you are familiar with James Cone or black liberation theology, but when that program was launched in 2013, Princeton was offering only 50 fellowships, basically 50 grants, if you will, 50 full ride, fully paid for opportunities to come up to Princeton and study black theology.

So this was global. So it was a global application process. You had to submit an essay basically stating why you deserve to be awarded one of the fellowships. So by God's grace, I applied for a fellowship.

The motivation for me applying for that fellowship was because I knew enough about black liberation theology to know that I did not concur with that teaching. So as my wife, who's here, she's not at the table right now, as my wife Melissa would explain it to you, she would say, well, I just went up there to cause trouble, which is not totally untrue.

Yeah, I can see you doing that, bro, for real.

Yeah.

That used to be a problem.

So you got a guy, at the time I was enrolled, I was doing my undergrad online at Liberty University. I was majoring in Christian counseling with a minor in psychology. But when I had an opportunity to apply for the fellowship, I de-enrolled from Liberty.

When you get a chance to go to Princeton to study, you take it.

That's right. Especially if they're paying for it.

Especially if they're paying for it. And so I'm surrounded by people who have, you know, multiple letters after their name. I mean, these were theologians from Yale, Harvard, Duke Divinity School, Chicago Theological Seminary, but the worst of it was the folks who came from Union Theological Seminary in New York.

I don't even know why they call themselves a seminary anymore. Because Union is universalist, they're ecumenical, you can be Muslim, Jewish, a Buddhist, you don't even have to denounce your religious affiliation to go to Union.

So yeah, so that's what the fellowship was. It was an opportunity to come and be amongst, in their words, I'm not saying this about myself, a distinguished group of theologians and scholars discussing and debating the Black Liberation Theology of James Cone.

So that's how that happened.

Are you the only person with your worldview, your perspective, that's amongst those fellows?

Yes, literally, I was. Matter of fact, by the time I graduated, they had penned this nickname to me, they were calling me Doctrine Darrell. Because I was always taking them back to what the scripture says.

All the time. This is what the scripture says. I don't care what James Cone says, this is what the scripture says. So for me personally, something that motivates me quite a bit is the truth. I really don't care who you are.

I don't care how many degrees you have after your name, the truth is the truth, and I don't back down from that. So I'm in a room full of, I mean, incredibly learned theologians. Most of them were female, ironically, because the cohort was led by a female, a black female.

All the speakers that came in were black female theologians, with the exception of one, there was one black male that came in. And it was through that program that I learned the distinction between feminism and womanism.

So what I found is that, and you'll find this as well as you're engaging in cultural debates and dialogue as frequently as Virgil and I are, is that feminism is for white women. Womanism is for black women.

Never call a black feminist a feminist. They are womanists.

Okay?

What is a woman?

What is a woman? Well, yeah. What is a woman?

Yeah.

And then what is a womanist? So now you see how we get into this cyclical deconstructionism of just asking question after question after question and never getting anywhere. So yeah. So I literally was the only one who held to an orthodox biblical worldview in that cohort.

And the thing that struck me is on the campus of Princeton, when you walk that campus, you find plaques and markers throughout the campus of just the stalwart theologians who had passed through that institution over the decades and centuries.

B .B. Warfield, Gerhardus Voss, A .A. Hodge, Charles Hodge, J. Gresham Machen, all these great theologians. You wouldn't believe it today. Princeton existed. It was a reformed theological institution that existed primarily to train men to go out into the world and share the gospel as missionaries.

They have plaques all over the campus dedicated to those individuals. But now Princeton is about as woke as you can get. It is not B .B. Warfield's Princeton Theological Seminary anymore.

And Jonathan Edwards is one of them.

You would not recognize it today. It's unbelievable how that institution has sold out to wokeism.

So both of you gentlemen have been called white supremacists by some of your tractors,.

Right? Yes.

That's correct.

You sounded very white.

What's up, Whitey?

What's that?

What up, Whitey?

My man.

You think it bothers Princeton to have a white supremacist as a fellow of black theology and leadership?

No, it doesn't. Because here's the thing. Virgil, I'm sure, has something to add to this. See, Virgil and I aren't black. See, we're not black. If we were black, it would bother Princeton. And let me explain what I mean by that.

See, Virgil and I, we're ethnically black. But see, to be black in wokeism, in wokeness, you must also be ideologically black. You must be culturally black. You must be politically black. You must be socially black.

So because Virgil and I don't ideologically, politically, or socially align with the woke worldview that Princeton now espouses, they're not ashamed of us because we're not black to begin with.

Right.

You see? You understand? Are you following me? So that's the distinction between being black and blackness.

Yes, that's good.

Well, I could have pinned that because Joe Biden said, if you don't vote for him, you ain't black.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

And I'm guessing neither of you.

Don't get me started on that.

Neither of us did.

So you're not black.

No, I'm not black.

No.

No.

I'm not Joe Biden black.

Right. He's not. He's not Biden black.

Yeah.

Joe Biden black's a whole lot of black.

He's not Biden black.

All right.

Yeah.

This is all becoming very clear now.

See, Virgil, you just need to build black better. That's what you need to do.

Oh, that's excellent.

Don't get us started. See, you got to go. Regret inviting us here by the time we leave.

All right.

Let's move over to you. How did the Lord save you? Give me your salvation testimony. You're not a fellow, so you can't talk about what it was like to be a distinguished non-black.

Fellow.

White supremacist. The Princeton Black.

Right.

No, I cannot.

No, he can't.

No, he can't.

Can you just tell us how the Lord saved you?

Yeah. Yeah.

I came to knowledge of Christ in high school, which was really about five or six years ago. So a dear friend of mine by the name of John Lindsay, in fact, John Lindsay and I are still connected to this day.

Came back. We were best friends in middle school, then we went to high school, and he was a couple years older than me. I remember between his junior and senior year, he'd gone away for the summer, and I was like, man, my best friend.

I can't see him. He comes back, and this guy is on fire for the Lord. I mean, he is, and I'm like, bro, what happened to you? I mean, we were, you know, this was when, the timeframe was when Billie Jean and Beat It was all happening, and you know, that was about the timeframe of my growing up, and he was like, man, I'm not listening to that.

I'm focused. I'm like, but it's Michael Jackson, man. I mean, it's like, nope, not doing it. He brought his Bible to school, and I thought, man, this is a phase, right? This is a phase. It'll last for just a little bit, and then he'll get back to being the same way that he was.

He would bring his Bible to school, high school. We would sit at the table at lunch. He'd have his Bible there, and people would come up and ask him Bible questions, and the more they asked him different things, the more, I guess, knowledgeable he got.

I didn't even know it was called apologetics. I just watched this guy grow in his faith before my eyes, and I knew who he was six months ago, eight months ago, before the Lord changed and transformed his life, and I knew who he was now, and I was really intrigued by that.

I don't know if we'll end up talking about our religious background and kind of where both Daryl and I kind of grew up in the church, but from a standpoint of salvation, this was the first time that anybody explained the gospel to me, and I got a chance to walk with my brother for about three months and just watch, A, his life transform and change, and then the opportunity to be with young people and hear them listen to men who could share with them the message of the gospel.

So, as a result, over the course of time, I just recognized that I was a sinner who needed salvation and needed a Savior, and it would be not long. Later in the year, I want to say like October, November timeframe, there was a fall kind of retreat thing.

We went to a church event, and they had done the whole gospel presentation, the altar call. Here was the crazy part. All the kids were like at the altar crying, and I'm there like happy, right? I'm like, my sins are going to be forgiven, and I'm going to be, and this is like, why are y 'all crying?

Do you know what this means? I mean, that was kind of my whole demeanor, and the pastor was smart enough to say, hey, I want you to go home and think about your sins, think about this commitment, what it means, and how real it is.

As a result, I would go home and got on my knees, and I really believe that that's the point at which the Lord saved me and transformed my heart, changed me, and then shortly thereafter, I'd be baptized, and early on had fruits of repentance actually taking place in my life, even in high school.

Again, I would love to say that it was a straight shot upward, but I had some slips and fallbacks and setbacks, but man, the Lord's been gracious, good, and kind, so that's my salvation story.

How'd you get saved?

How'd I get saved?

I'm assuming you are saved. That shouldn't have...

Yeah, see, that's an assumption you should never make. That's actually a great point. That's a great point. Am I saved? Oh, no, I'm just kidding. I don't know if the question... Let me push back a little bit.

I don't know if the question is how I got saved, because I know how I got saved. Was God monogistically working in my heart, in the heart of this miserable wretch of a sinner, and by His grace and His mercy, had pity on me to say, yeah, I'm going to save.

Him?

He worked in my heart unexpectedly. I don't have a story to tell, to be honest with you about that. I can't pin a date or a day down as to when I first believed in Jesus Christ. I mean, I think Virgil and I, Virgil mentioned just a second ago, he and I have, our lives, and bro, we didn't even know each other until, what, five years ago, but our lives, life stories really mirror one another.

It's like a hand-in-glove kind of fit. We both have similar ecclesiastical backgrounds, you know, growing up in the black church, which is really sort of very charismatic, very Pentecostal, very sort of emotional, very Arminian.

When you talk about soteriology and salvation, it's very, it's like a partnership with God, where, you know, God does His part, and then you do your part to make the decision to ultimately believe or not to believe.

But then it was when I was exposed to Reformed theology where I first understood that that wasn't true. You know, where God monogistically and sovereignly and providentially works in the heart of a sinner to first regenerate that heart so that they can believe, so that they can come to faith.

So, Jim, if I'm considering your question in the context of how I understand biblical soteriology right now, how salvation happens with respect to how God independently, apart from me, works in my heart, I've probably only been saved for about 15 years.

Now, prior to that, I thought I was saved, because, in fact, that actually brings up something I want to bring up to you. We need to do an episode on Christian moralism, because my understanding of salvation prior to that point was moralism, is what it was, especially as it relates to sin.

Don't do, don't curse, don't lie, don't this, don't that. So it's still a very self-oriented, self-centered, self-structured idea of salvation. Well, if I call myself saved, I can't do anything wrong.

What that causes is what would take place in black churches, especially in Pentecostal settings, where every Sunday you were getting saved all over again.

Right.

Every Sunday you were showing up, because you messed up during the week, so on Sunday you made up for it and you got saved all over again.

It's sort of a weird, sort of ethno-ecclesiastical working out of Roman Catholicism, is what it was. And believe it or not—.

Say that again.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it's all in English words, but it's much like the Ibram X. Kendi phrase you were using.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what Princeton was doing for you.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what black religious theology was doing. Let me put it this way, Jim. I am not lying, as I sit here. I'm not exaggerating this at all, but the first church I grew up in was a hybrid black Pentecostal charismatic reform—I'm sorry, Roman Catholic church.

So you had a female pastor—.

I can't even see this, man.

You have a female pastor and two Catholic priests off to the—the female pastor was a black female, two white Catholic priests. I can see it in my head right now. I was probably six years old. Two Catholic priests off to the left.

You're singing Shirley Caesar. You're singing James Cleveland. You're singing all these black, or what they called then Negro spirituals. You're singing all this gospel music. And at the end of the service, I promise I'm not lying to you, it was a small house and literally it was a house that they converted into a church.

It was on a very narrow road. It was Rankin Street, Southeast Atlanta. I could take you there to this day. But at the end of every church service, you had to leave the pew, walk up to the pulpit, and kiss the ring on the pastor's hand.

Just like they do in Roman Catholicism. So that was my first exposure to church. Later on, I graduated high school. I go into the military. I did six years in the U .S. Army. I come out, go back to the same church that my parents were attending.

But the Lord struck me one Sunday and said, why are you here? You're not learning anything. And he was right. So I left that church, ended up at Dr. Charles Stanley's church, First Baptist Atlanta, downtown Atlanta.

Ended up being there for 23 years. Was serving there in Sunday school, singing in the choir, men's Bible study. That was the first church I ever attended where they didn't use the King James translation.

And with all due respect to you who prefer the King James translation, when I saw Dr. Stanley use a wry, New American standard, that was the first time I actually understood the Bible. So it was during those years that I sort of matured from a reader of the scriptures.

To a student of it.

There's a difference. There's a difference. But stayed at First Baptist Atlanta for 23 years. Left there because I bought a house and the distance to drive was almost an hour and a half. So I found a Southern Baptist church near where my new house was.

The pastor there was Reformed. So that was my first exposure to Reformed theology. This is about 2005, 2003, 2004, 2005. So I started reading R .C. Sproul, What is Reformed Theology? So I get that book.

But then I get exposed to John MacArthur. First time hearing the expository sermon. I can tell you the sermon. It's a sermon titled, Hacking Agak to Pieces.

It's one of my favorites.

It's absolutely my absolute favorite sermon that John MacArthur's ever preached. I probably have the sermon memorized. But that was the first time I heard anyone preach an expository sermon from one text.

As you know from John MacArthur, he doesn't just preach verse by verse. He preaches word by word if the case calls for it. But that's why you're so blessed to have Jim here. He's an expository preacher.

The Just Thinking Podcast is his expository podcast. So you put those two together. You put R .C. Sproul, and again, God in his providence introducing me to Reformed theology through R .C. Sproul, expository preaching through John MacArthur.

You can't have either of those. You can't have expository preaching and Reformed theology. You cannot have either of those together and not become a voracious reader. You will become a voracious reader.

As my wife will tell you, growing up, I say this in all humility. I say this to establish something else. I was a very good student at school. But I hated to read. I didn't like reading. I thought reading was boring.

Maybe it's because I caught stuff so easily I just didn't need to read. But when I became exposed to expository preaching and Reformed theology, my personal library exploded. And you know, if you listen to Virgil and I often enough, we cite so many sources that you need to set aside a book budget if you're going to listen to us.

Because we're going to send you and say, no, you need to get this book, you need to read this, you need to read this Puritan, read this theologian, read this systematic theology. You cannot listen to us because once you listen to us, we're going to challenge you to go out and prepare yourselves just like we prepare.

So all that to say, Jim, I don't know when exactly I was saved. However, my understanding of salvation has matured from an Arminian view to what is referred to now as a Reformed view where the Arminian believes in salvation.

You cooperate with God. Reformed theology, you do not cooperate with God. You have nothing to do with your own salvation. Now, sanctification, that's another matter. So don't confuse the two. I'm not talking about two different things.

But my understanding of salvation has matured, and as I understand salvation now, yes, I can confess here today before all of you that I am a true, regenerate believer in Jesus Christ because what other kind of believer is there?

All right.

So you mentioned the names of your kids, Penelope, Philip, Paul.

Yeah.

What were they? All Ps, yes. Does that come from your Southern Baptist background? Absolutely, yeah.

Alliteration, homiletics, all of that.

So what are the kids' names again?

Princess is my daughter. Princess Asia is actually her first name. Mom wanted Asia. I said she'll always be my princess. And so while Mom was coming off of the medication and the delivery, why are you all laughing?

I wrote on her birth certificate. I hyphenated her first name, Princess Asia. My thought was that's a dad thing. I just did that, no big deal. She'll be my princess as kindergarten, first grade, second grade.

She'll grow out of that. She'll be Asia. Never happened. She was always princess. She's princess to this day, and all of her friends call her princess. And she's loved it. So when you start that way, you can't name the second child Bob.

Right.

You've got to see it through.

Jerome.

Don't want to be a quitter.

Right.

Don't want to be a quitter. So now I had to create some things. And Tamika wanted, my wife Tamika, she wanted a son named after me, Virgil Lamont Walker. I said don't harm the kid like that. Let the kid have his own identity.

And so we're like princess and Virgil. That's kind of whacked out. That's not going to work. So I was a big fan back in the day. We're both fans of Prince, you know, back in the day. So I was like I don't want to have a princess and a prince.

Speaking of which, just to give the folks a little bit of a teaser, we're both fans of Prince.

Yes.

You don't want to miss Sunday school.

You're not going to come in purple, are you?

Virg, don't be.

Don't be giving stuff up.

Bro, come on, man.

Okay, Doc.

All right.

All right.

Don't miss Sunday school. Seriously.

So we appended T-O-N. So Princeton, Princeton Virgil, middle name Lamont Walker. So I've got Princess Asia Amaya Walker. I have a Princeton Virgil Lamont Walker. Poor guy. He goes by Princeton. And my youngest, I was reading Proverbs voraciously during the time of his birth.

So I thought Solomon is such a great biblical name.

It would be great.

And my wife was like, really? And I said, yeah. And so she's like, no, I don't think so. And so I thought about Price, you know. And my thought was just, you know, he's valuable to us. He's our last child.

So Price Solomon Samuel, he's the one that just graduated. So Princess, Princeton, and Price.

Any grandkids?

No.

I'm not that old yet.

Hey!

I didn't say anything about his age.

He was asking me.

Yeah.

If you had hair, I'd be able to tell whether it was gray or not. So I would know.

And that's the point.

So I don't know.

And that's the point.

All right.

Your kids.

Yeah, so Melissa and I have three children, three adult children. Colin, Colin Edward is my oldest, our oldest. Naomi, Michelle, is the middle. And then Yasmin Nicole is our youngest. And they're all back in Georgia.

How did you meet your wives?

Mine was, I mean, it was at church. I met her at church. I mean, she came in. Man, this is not good to tell this story without her here.

Then don't tell it.

Yeah, I'll just say it this way.

Met her in church. We were at a charismatic kind of Word of Faith Pentecostal church. We were in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you know anything about Tulsa, it's the home of Oral Roberts University. It is ground zero for the Word of Faith movement.

It is ground zero for the Word of Faith movement. Justin Peters could tell you all about that. I was at a church by a man by the name of Carlton Pearson. He was my pastor. There's a Netflix documentary called Come Sunday.

It's about his life, his story, where he went from a kind of a Baptocostal kind of preacher to an absolute apostate and a heretic who really denied justification by grace through faith. He became a universalist and wrote about it.

Well, I was there at the church watching the entire transformation take place. I could tell you more about his life and what I encountered there than the movie did. But everything you see in the movie was accurate and true.

Needless to say, met my wife there. She was a student at Oral Roberts University. So, again, I haven't shared this with Jim, but I have shared this with Justin. It was the ministry of one Justin Peters that helped us get out of all of the baggage that came with Prosperity Gospel and its theology.

We literally spent two or three years unpacking, my wife and I, unpacking the scriptures from what we were taught to what's actually biblical, orthodox, and theological. So when I finally got a chance to meet Justin, it was almost in tears.

I was just so grateful for his ministry and what that has meant in our lives. But long story short, met my wife there. We were friends for two years, dated for a year, engaged for a year, and then we got married.

All right.

Yep.

Well, my wife is here, and my wife Melissa is here. She's sitting right up front with the branded Justinian t-shirt on.

So appreciate that.

But I'm going to tell the story the way my wife would tell the story. My wife stalked me on Facebook. That's how we met.

That's a better story, man. I like that.

That's literally how she begins the story. So what's one of the most famous introductions to us? It was a dark and stormy night.

Yes.

I stalked him on Facebook. She was writing a book about this. I stalked him on Facebook.

That's good.

Yeah, so when we met, I was more active on Facebook than I am now, and I was writing some political commentary. Melissa and I were very politically active around this time, and we were both conservatives.

We were in this sort of same Facebook groups and whatnot. So, you know, at the time I had come out of a very abusive marriage where my wife was the abuser, unrepentant in the sin and whatnot, so we ended up getting divorced.

So I was a single father with two kids. As a matter of fact, God used that situation to put me on the track of biblical counseling. So Melissa and I both did biblical counseling back out in L .A. But that's a side note, but she noticed that I posted some pictures on Facebook with just me and my kids.

So Melissa was like, well, where's the wife? This guy have a wife around here. I thought, well, this guy, he's too cool, he's too handsome. He's too good. I don't have a wife.

It's the humility, right?

Absolutely, brother.

It's the growing factor.

I tell you, man, I'm growing more humble about the minute here. So she sends me a DM, not on Facebook, but she sends me a DM on Twitter. I think we were live-tweeting. I was live-tweeting the presidential debate between Obama and Romney.

Yeah, the loser.

In more ways than one.

In more ways than one. So she DMs me her phone number and says, hey, give me a call sometime. So eventually I did, I did call her. So that's how we met. We met via social media. Where I was living in Georgia, she lived just a little bit southeast of me, about a little over an hour, hour and 15 minutes from me.

So that's how we met. We have a crazy, crazy backstory to our relationship that we don't have time to share here, but would really make for a great movie. When you talk about the providence and sovereignty of God.

When you say he was humble, you meant it.

Absolutely, brother.

You're getting a little more humble than me, bro.

All right, now you are the Dean of Social Media for Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur, which means that your job is to sit and scroll through Twitter all day long, basically.

Well, that's not my job, job, job. But, yeah, so my job in that role as Dean of Social Media for Grace to You, my job is to execute on the social media strategy for Grace to You, which is to leverage the social media platforms where we have a presence on to make John's materials available to everyone around the world through those platforms.

So that's pretty much my job in a nutshell.

Just last week, just this last week, I saw on Twitter, somebody posted the top 20 most active users on Twitter. This is worldwide or across all of Twitter, the 20 most active people in terms of number of posts and likes, retweets, etc. per day.

This is number 14 in the world. And that's just his account. That's not Grace to You, John MacArthur, or anything to deal with.

Yeah, because if I posted what I post on Twitter through the Grace to You account, I'd get fired. Those are two totally separate accounts. I never post personal stuff through Grace to You. I have my own Twitter account.

But I don't know if being number 14, is that something to be proud of or ashamed of?

I don't know.

I think it's good.

Given the way you use that platform, that's a fantastic thing.

So this is obviously somebody who uses the platform well and prolifically, and therefore you were able to do that job. Now they didn't have a post, Dean of Social Media at Grace to You, when Phil asked you to come and work for Grace to You.

So Phil made up a job and a job description to get you to come to Grace to You. Explain how it is that you ended up living in Atlanta. Explain how it is that you ended up at Grace to You.

Yeah, so the way Melissa would like to tell this story, Melissa is the best storyteller. She says it this way.

I'm just going to interview Melissa.

Next time.

Next time.

Every answer is, I'm going to tell the story the way Melissa would tell the story.

But the way Melissa would tell the story, she and I were in Atlanta, we were just minding our own business. And we really were. We were just minding our own business. We were cool. I was a project manager at the DMV in Georgia.

She was an assistant manager at a local Lifeway store. We were doing our thing. Everything was great. We weren't looking for relocation. We weren't looking for new jobs or anything like that. How many of you are familiar with Todd Friel, Wretched Radio?

So May of 2018, we're in Atlanta, minding our own business. I get an email from Todd Friel out of nowhere. I had a blog that I'd been writing for for years. He says, hey, you don't know me? I'm Todd Friel, Wretched Radio.