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? 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 you'd be a problem. You got a guy, 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 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 a, 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, 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 Darryl 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 dialogues 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, well, yeah. What is a woman, 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 difference, 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.

And 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.

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

So both of you gentlemen have been called white supremacists by some of your directors, right? Yes, yes. You sounded very white.

What's up, Whitey? What's that? What up, Whitey? My man. I'll do it. Do you think it bothers

Princeton to have a white supremacist as a fellow of black theology and leadership? No, but see, 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 or 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, between 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. Joe Biden black's a whole lot of black.

He's not Biden black. All right. 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 gotta go regret inviting us here by the time we leave. All right.

This one, 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, white supremacist, the

Princeton black. No, I cannot. No, he can't. Can you just tell us how the Lord saved you? Yeah, well, yeah. I came to knowledge of Christ in high school, which was really about five or six years ago.

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 kind of middle school. Then we went to high school and he was a couple of years older than me.

I remember between his junior and senior year, he'd gone away for the summer.

And I was like, I'm 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, this was when, the timeframe was when

Billie Jean and Beat It was all happening. And 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. And I had a, I don't know if we'll end up talking about our religious background and kind of where both

Darrell 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, there was a later in the year, I wanna say like October, November timeframe, there was a fall kind of retreat thing.

We went to a church event and they were, 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 gonna be forgiven and I'm gonna be, and this is like, why are y 'all crying?

Like, 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.

And 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 has 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 matter. Yeah, see, that's an assumption you should never make.

That's actually a great point. That's a great point. Am I saved? Let me, oh no, I'm just kidding. I don't know the question.

Let me push back a little bit. I don't know the question is how I got saved because I know how I got saved. You know, was

God monergistically, you know, 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 gonna save him. So 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 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, and Virg, that actually brings up something

I wanna 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. Right. Don't lie.

Right. 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. 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. To be at the alternate safe. 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. So yeah, yeah. So you got. Because all those were all English words, but it was much like the Ibram X.

Kendi's phrase you were using. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what Princeton will do for you. Yeah, yeah. That's what black religious theology will do for you.

And 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. 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. 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 graduate 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. What's it is? 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. And 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 easy

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 by, 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 gonna listen to us.

Because we're gonna send you and say, hell 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 gonna 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 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?

You know, so. All right, so you mentioned the names of your kids, Penelope, Philip, Paul. Yeah, yeah.

Who were they? You have a fascination? They're all P's, yes. Does that come from your Southern Baptist background? You got alliteration and everything?

Absolutely, yeah. Alliteration, homiletics, all of that, yeah, yeah. 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, she was like, why are y '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 and so when you start that way, you know, you can't name the second child

Bob or. Right, you gotta see it through. Yeah, you gotta see something through, right. Don't wanna be a quitter.

Right, don't wanna be a quitter. So now I had to create some things and Tameka wanted, my wife Tameka, 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 gonna work.

So I was a big fan back in the day, we're both fans of Prince, you know, back in the day and so I was like,

I don't wanna 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 wanna miss Sunday school. You're not gonna come in purple, are you?

Virg, don't be. Don't be giving stuff up. Bro, come on, man. Okay, Doc, 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'd be great and my wife was like, really?

And I said, yeah, and so she's like, nah, 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.

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 a 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, I'll 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 four years, engaged four years, and then we got married.

All right. 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 gonna 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, right? Yes. I stalked him on Facebook, that's it. And 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 on the subject.

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 at the time,

I had come out of a very abusive marriage where my wife was the abuser. So unrepentant in the sin and whatnot, so we ended up getting divorced.

So I was a single father with two kids. Matter of fact, God used that situation to put me on the track of biblical counseling.

So Melissa and I both do biblical counseling back out in LA. 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...

I don't have a wife. It's the humility, right? Absolutely, brother. It's the drawing factor.

I'll tell you, man, I'm growing more humble about the minute here. So she sends me a

DM, not on Facebook, she sends me a DM on Twitter. I think we were live tweeting, I was live tweeting the president debate between Obama and Romney.

Yeah, the loser, so. In more ways than one. In more ways than one. So she

DMs me, her phone number, said, hey, give me a call sometime.

So eventually I did, I did call her. And so yeah, so that's how we met. We met via social media.

And 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 yeah, so that's how we met. And 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 of 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, all across all of Twitter, the 20 most active people in terms of number of posts and likes, retweets, et cetera, per day.

This is number 14 in the world. So, 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 don't know. I think it's good. Yeah. Given what you, the way you use that platform, that's a fantastic thing.

So this is obviously somebody who uses, you're 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.

Yes. Explain how it is that you ended up, you're living in Atlanta, explain how it is that you ended up at Grace to You. Yeah, so the way

Melissa would like to tell the story, Melissa's the best storyteller. She says it this way.

I'm just gonna interview Melissa. Next time, yeah. Next time. Next time, Ms. Carroll. Every answer is, I'm gonna tell the story the way

Melissa would tell the story. But the way Melissa would tell the story, she and I were just, we 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, 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.

My studio's up in Alpharetta, Georgia, which was about an hour and a half north of where we were living. He says, hey, in August, I'm putting on this

Q &A panel together to talk about social justice. He said, I've been reading your stuff on your blog.

Love what you're writing. He said, I'd love for you to be a part of the Q &A panel. We're gonna be doing it live at my studio in front of a live audience.

He says, by the way, if you agree to do it, with one caveat, Phil Johnson, the executive director of Grey's News says, he's agreed to do it, but only on the condition that you agree to do it.

So I turned Todd down. I said, no, not doing it. Don't know how many of you have ever been to Atlanta.

Somebody should have called me, because I'm used to hearing that. Yeah, yeah, right. I'd just be like, nah, you're gonna do it.

We'll figure it out. I'll massage you, make sure you get there. If you've ever been to Atlanta, Atlanta's just a very sprawling metropolis.

I mean, you have to drive, you need a car in Atlanta. Let me just tell you that. So I turned

Todd down, because he's gonna do it on a weeknight. I would have had to go to work the next day.

It was just too far to drive. I'd have spent three hours round -tripping traffic. Didn't wanna deal with that. But as God would have it,

I rethought it, reconsidered it, consulted with Melissa about it, so I agreed to do it. August rolls around, we're at Todd's studio for the night of the event.

This is where I meet Phil Johnson for the first time ever. Never talked to him before then. Meeting for the first time, meet

Josh Bice for the first time, meet Tom Buck for the first time, other panelists. I meet them for the first time. Well, unbeknownst to us, or to me anyway,

Todd Friel had arranged to take us out to dinner at a local restaurant near his studio. Everybody's carpooling with one another, and Phil Johnson asked

Melissa and me if he could ride with us. So us being, just trying to be nice, good Southern hosts and showing some

Southern hospitality, he said, sure, absolutely. So I don't know if we ever got over being starstruck with the fact that the voice of grace to you is now in the backseat of our car.

Did you hear that voice in the backseat of your car? It's the voice you hear on grace to you all the time. And here he is in the backseat of our car.

Well, we're trying to follow the caravan that's ahead of us to try to find out so we don't get lost going to the restaurant, but we get stopped at a traffic light that quick, at that red light.

Phil says, Darrell, we want you to strongly consider coming to work for us at grace to you. At a red light, this is

Phil Johnson. Asking you, Darrell, will you alter your entire life, pack up your family and move from Georgia to California?

Melissa and I looked at each other like, is he serious? He was serious. Two weeks later, I get a job application with the grace to you logo on it via email.

Call Melissa and I said, look at this. I fill it out, send it back. About a month later, I'm flying to Washington DC to meet with my direct boss,

Jay Flowers, who's the COO at Grace to You, meeting him at a restaurant in DC for a four and a half hour dinner.

November 2018, they're flying us out to LA for a formal interview, which was really an informal thing.

We fly back to Atlanta. Deacon friends of ours from our church meet us at the airport. First thing they ask us after they say, hey, glad to see you guys.

Hope you had a great flight. They asked us, so are you guys gonna be leaving us? We looked them in the eye and we said, yeah.

Yeah, we're gonna be leaving. We've been in this small reformed Baptist church for almost six years, about 150 people.

They loved on us, we loved them. We were doing biblical counseling there. I was teaching Sunday school. We were very active there. That's the hardest thing for us to do was to leave that church.

It was easy for us to say goodbye to our blood and flesh family than it was to say goodbye to those brothers and sisters we had at that church.

So that's how it happened. That's how I got from Atlanta to LA at Grace to You. So I've been out at Grace to You since what,

January 2019. We booked a one -way flight from Atlanta to LA and we've been serving the

Lord out there ever since. What is G3 Ministries and how did you land there? G3 Ministries is the ministry of Dr.

Josh Bice who is the founder and president. He did the same thing that you're doing here,

Jim, which was he wanted to have a locally church -based theological conference.

And so that's what he did. In 2013, as the pastor there, he started a theology conference, opened the doors of the church.

700 people showed up the first deal, first day, the first conference. 2014, it's packed again.

They can't fit any more people in the building. They continue that every year with a waiting list and they're trying to figure out how to put people in different spaces and places.

By 2017, I had been in Omaha, Nebraska watching video of the

G3 conference from afar, 2017. I'm a bright -eyed kid just trying to figure out what this

Reformed Theology thing was. Loving what I was learning. Darrell said about 2012, you ran into Reformed Theology.

For me - About 2013, yeah. Yep, for me, it was about 2014. About the end of 2013, 2014, I get into Reformed Theology.

And so I'm drinking it down everywhere I can find it and G3 was one of those places and spaces.

By 2017, I get to show up to my first G3 when they have it at a convention center, conference center, it opens up.

There are 2 ,300 people at the Georgia GICC, the

Georgia, I think it's International Conference Center there at the airport. That was 2017.

They had plans after that to go back to the church with 700. They usually open up early bird registration during the first day of the conference.

And after the first day of the conference, early bird registration had filled up the auditorium back at the church and they had a decision to make.

Because now they had to either shut the conference down because they couldn't offer it for an entire year until the next conference, or they had to make a commitment to be at the

Georgia Congress Center. So they made a decision to stay. And it went from 2 ,317 to 3 ,518 to 4 ,500 in 2017.

In 2019 to 2020, there were close to 5 ,000 people, about 4 ,800 to 5 ,000 people there.

That was the 2020 was the first time Darrell and I got to actually be on the main platform there delivering a

Just Thinking podcast live. He and I are floored, are shocked by A, the success of Just Thinking.

I think at this time, you had made the move to LA and were there at GTY and he was already putting in, like he always does, hey, y 'all need to hire

Virgil. Hey, y 'all need to hire Virgil. We tried to get you. I know, so I wouldn't go going all that, but.

Well, I'll do it. So Phil Johnson had reached out and was trying to just make connections and then

COVID hits, right? COVID hits and things begin to shut down. Grace To You is having to deal, or Grace Community Church, is having to deal with all of what is happening out in California.

And I called Phil, I wasn't, I was honored. I was humbled that anybody from John MacArthur's ministry or Grace Community Church thought that I was worth coming that direction for.

That was sufficient for me. I didn't need, I mean, I called him and he said, listen, we've got issues we're dealing with, that with the state of California, if you'll sit tight,

I promise you when this all is over, I'll come and get you. And I said, absolutely.

So Josh Bice did not know this, but he had started reaching out to me because of the podcast, because of our relationship.

He had been watching me from afar, kind of like what Phil was doing. I wasn't writing, my experience, exposure in reform circles was directly due to, tied to the podcast.

So he reached out, Josh Bice reached out and said, hey, we're trying to expand. He said, I wanna get back to pastoring a church rather than being a conference pastor or a person providing oversight.

We need to hire an executive director of operations to run the conference component. But in the meantime, he said, what we're doing is we're transitioning from a conference -based ministry that provides resources to a resource -based ministry that has awesome conferences.

We wanna provide curriculum and we wanna write books and we wanna, and his initial phone call to me was, based upon you and Darrell's connection, he said,

I'm gonna reach out to Darrell as well. I would love for you guys to just write a column for G3.

And I was honored by that. I was humbled, I was like, absolutely. You got the call as well to write for G3. And then he asked me, he said, what are you gonna be doing over the course of the next five years?

And my trajectory at the time was I was at a mega church, 1 ,700 people there at the church.

I was the associate pastor there of discipleship, provided oversight there. The folks that were there, they were gracious to me, loved on me.

It was a traditional SPC, so though it wasn't reformed, the lead pastor knew that I was.

And so long as I didn't stir things up too much there. So as long as you didn't go attacking 95 theses.

Right, right, right. I was okay. And let me tell you something, the church was so kind.

They were gracious enough to, anytime I needed to go speak somewhere, got asked. I mean, again, same story that you have with your church.

Folks who loved us well, cared for us well, all of that. So long story short, long story long, when

Josh Bice reached out to me again, he said, well, if you're not making plans to be a lead pastor, either there at that church or something like that,

I would love for you to consider applying for this position and role. What he did not know is that I had served as a manager for a pharmaceutical company before coming into ministry.

And then prior to that, I'd done logistics work in the military, I'd worked at the Pentagon in the past, a number of different things that God has orchestrated in my life to absolutely prepare me as a hand and glove fit for the role as executive director of operations for G3.

Tell the people what the three G's stand for. The three G's stands for gospel, grace, and glory.

And so that's G3. And so I've been there now for, coming up on a year, about 18 months, did the national conference, have done two other conferences.

And again, had no idea what I was getting into with the overwhelming nature of putting on a 6 ,400 -person conference.

But God is blessed and the family's doing well. You attend Grace Community Church? Yes. Do you serve in the church in a way that's not connected to Grace to you or not connected to Just Thinking?

Do you have a role there that you serve in? No, no role at Grace Community Church right now, at least not that I know of.

Yeah, and I attend Praise Mail, which is the church that's connected with G3.

And what's phenomenal to me is to watch a church of about 180, 200 people, 100 volunteers, put on a conference that is impacting the world from that little bitty local church.

It's breathtaking to see what they're able to accomplish in that space. When I think about the resources that I had at the other church, at Westside, compared to the resources that are there, it's just phenomenal how

God sees fit to use certain people. I barely passed membership class, so at Praise Mail.

How do you fail a membership class? I didn't fail, but I'm on a trial run.

They wanna try me out. Now, Tamika, my wife, they gave her full membership immediately with all the rights there hitherto.

For me, it was like, we gonna put you on, we gotta put you on probationary period to see if you're gonna work out.

And you're like, I'm black, I've been on probation before. Absolutely. We're on lifetime probation.

Yeah, exactly, no doubt about that. So no, I don't fulfill any role there in an official capacity, though this coming

Sunday, I think Pastor Josh did ask me to preach for him, so I've gotta put my message.

While I'm here this weekend, I've gotta figure out some time to put a message together. Can I leverage what you said about Praise Mail?

I wanna encourage the people here at Kootenai Community Church as well. Vernon just mentioned about, it's really amazing how a church of probably less than 200 people can put on this massive conference where you have thousands of people coming from all over the world, and they do this every year.

And I think the reason God blesses the efforts of that small church is because of the faithfulness of, first of all,

Josh Bice in preaching the word of God, preaching the gospel faithfully and accurately. And everyone at Praise Mail, they just stay in their lane.

And what I mean by that, you work within your local body as God has gifted you individually to serve that local body.

So I wanna encourage those of you who are in attendance here today who are members of Kootenai Community Church to not strive to be the next

Praise Mail. Don't strive to have this conference become thousands of attendees.

Don't make that your mission. Just be faithful doing what you're doing right now.

I think Josh would echo the same sentiment regarding what God did in that space. He never set out to plan to do a conference that size, nor did you or I, not to compare.

With a podcast. With a podcast. I mean, it was just, hey, I love this guy's writing. Let's do this. And what God has done with it as we've been faithful, it's been amazing.

You got a guy here in gym who's faithful to the text.

He's faithful to what the scriptures say. And I would just encourage you guys to just stay that course right here in Kootenai.

Stay that course right here where you are. And just look at God do amazing things through all of you.

All right, thank you. How did you guys meet? Wow. We met. You stalked me on Facebook.

I stalked him on Facebook. You gonna let him tell the story as Melissa would tell it?

Yeah. Some of that's true. In that, he had an interview.

We have a mutual friend named Dwayne Atkinson. Dwayne is the executive producer, the producer of our podcast.

And he had a podcast of his own. He had a network of podcasts. Gosh, now

I don't know how many there are, probably more than a dozen, probably 20 or more that he's put together in this group, provide oversight, gives them information, tells them how to best deliver their podcasts.

He and I were friends. Both of us have a very similar background with regard to prosperity gospel stuff.

I helped him on a page called Be Not Deceived. That page is actually still on Facebook, but I used to run a thing called a

False Teacher Fridays. I was, you talk about K -State's Calvinism. I was K -State's coming out of prosperity gospel.

I was angry. I was mad that I'd been lied to. And so every Friday, I had False Teacher Friday, and I would throw up a false teacher and go off.

And the thing about it was, I was still connected to all the people who attended those churches. And so they would jump on my

Facebook page and it would be crazy. And so I think he saw fit to try to help me calm down, put me behind the wall of this

Be Not Deceived so that people didn't know it was me, but we could push and promote the page. We did that. That was our relationship.

I knew that Dwayne had a podcast. He saw Daryl's writing, loved it, and wanted to interview him.

He was interviewing all kinds of folks that, different folks within evangelicalism, names that you would recognize as well.

And so he had Daryl on. As soon as he got off with Daryl, he called me, said, V. He just calls me V. V, you're not gonna believe this, man.

I talked to this brother. His name is Daryl Harrison. Man, you guys think alike. There's a lot of similarities.

You need to listen to the interview. And I said, okay, cool. So who is he? And so I started looking.

I started reading what Daryl was writing. And I was, like Phil Johnson and others who encountered

Daryl's writing, I was blown away by his turn of phrase, the way that he put ideas together.

I'm not a writer by nature. I've become a better writer hanging out with this guy. Because you have to, your

A game had better be there. So I've become a better writer as a result of hanging out with this guy.

But I saw his writing, and after I heard the interview that Dwayne did, I thought, there were about a half dozen questions

I would have asked Daryl that Dwayne didn't. Dwayne has a very specific set format. So I asked him if he would have any problem letting me get back on his podcast and doing another interview with Daryl.

Well, when Daryl got on, we talked for a little bit, some niceties, and we hit the button.

We pressed record, and it was on. I mean, you would have thought, my experience was, and I didn't know if he felt this way.

I feel like I've A, known this brother all my life, and B, it's just natural. It was not put on fake.

There was not, I mean, it was just two brothers who loved theology, talking. And I think what was supposed to be about 30 minutes in length ended up being an hour and some change.

And so that was kind of the first beginnings of what might be the podcast. After we wrapped up our conversation,

I told Daryl, I said, Daryl, I love your writing, and if you ever wanted to do something out there in a platform with a podcast,

I'd be happy to help you. I have a little bit of a background in radio that I did for some years off and on, and I'd be happy to help you out in that way and to push you forward.

I'm not trying to be lead guy. In fact, I can't be lead guy. I was at a traditional

SBC, and I had to be very careful about what I shared with regard to Reformed theology, specifically in the area of soteriology.

I wanted to be careful. I wanted to respect the place and space where I was, but also do some things around culture.

So I let him do kind of the heavy lifting, and I would come alongside. And so I told him that. I was excited about that.

I got ready to get off the phone, and you told me what? No. I said, no.

I said, not doing it. I'm a big believer in believers operating in how

God has gifted them. And as it relates to the invitation that Virgil posed to me about doing a podcast,

I didn't think I was gifted as a speaker to get behind a microphone and articulate my thoughts verbally.

I just didn't think I was that good at it. I was a writer. My gift is getting behind a keyboard and putting words on a page.

That's how I operate. But again, as God would have it,

God had other plans. So yeah, so we ended up partnering together. We dropped our first episode of the

Just Thinking podcast. I remember using Microsoft Publisher to create the logo and everything, just that sort of clip art stuff.

And that's essentially still the logo today. I mean, we're not trying to impress anybody. So we dropped our first episode

December 2017. Here we are a little over four years later. We're probably gonna surpass, by the end of the summer, probably surpass our five millionth episode played.

Five million plays. We have listeners in over 80 countries around the world.

As again, Jim mentioned, Phil Johnson has called us the most influential long -form Christian podcast in the world.

And to see what God has done with a platform that was never our goal to grow the podcast.

We were just trying to be the best we could be at it, at what we do. And I just wanna say,

Virg, I don't mean to embarrass you, but what you guys hear as he and I interact with one another on the podcast, we get complimented all the time about how well we just get along together and how we flow well together.

Well, it's because we love each other. I didn't even know this brother existed four years ago. Didn't even meet him in person until we'd been doing the podcast for two years already.

So we do the podcast, he's on one coast, I'm on another coast. But I love this brother as if he were my own flesh and blood brother.

So that's what you hear first and foremost when you press play on one of our episodes. We love one another and we love the

Lord and we love putting in the effort and the work that it takes for us to produce the episodes that hopefully you all are being equipped through.

Amen. What has shaped your theological, political worldview positions?

You guys politically do not represent the Biden Black community at all, theologically, politically, your worldview.

Did you, were you part of the Biden Black community at some point and you came out of that or have you always had the ethnic, theological worldview stance that you have today?

Has it always been part of where you've been at? Yeah, for me, it's always been. I think the first president

I voted for was the first Bush. I've never voted for a

Democrat ever. So I say that simply to say that I was always politically conservative.

I identified, before I even understood why or even understood what a biblical worldview was,

I knew as I looked at what the parties offered that one was not for the wellbeing and benefit of black folks in particular and the rest of America in general.

And so I knew that, understood that and grew in that. In fact, when I mentioned my foray into radio, it had everything to do with being black and conservative in my view politically.

It wouldn't be until later after doing things on radio for a while that I actually developed a rich understanding of how theologically my worldview needed to be shaped to inform my politics and not the other way around.

And so that for me was the shift. If there's any shift or transition or transformation that's taken place, it's that I'm now informed by and armed by a biblical worldview first as primary, not simply a defense of conservatism.

Being conservative, you kind of stumbled into a biblical worldview, not necessarily the perfect mirrors of one another, but now your biblical worldview informs your political positions.

Absolutely. And at least you can see the foundation upon which your political convictions are to be built. Absolutely, absolutely.

And you? I think I speak for verse to verse. You can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but when people ask me that question,

Jim, I tell them I have to go back to my parents. My parents shaped my worldview.

Absolutely. My parents did that. That's good, that's good. My mother, my father did that. I grew up inner city

Atlanta, some of the most poor neighborhoods even today that you can go to on the west side of Atlanta.

We didn't have much of anything. I mean, seriously, we had almost nothing growing up in poverty, public housing.

But for those of you who have read our books, Bert and I, we have similar dedications to our parents in just thinking about the state, our first book.

But my dedication in that book reads to my parents, Barbara and Samuel, who taught me never to make excuses.

That's right. Never. The work ethic that I saw my parents display in trying to put food on the table for their three children,

I don't have very many memories of my father growing up because he was working two or three jobs, trying to put food on the table.

But they never made excuses. They never, and I will confess, maybe this, Jim, maybe you can lay hands on me later on, but even to this day,

I have a low tolerance for people who are lazy and who make excuses. So my conservatism, for lack of a better word, began there.

You work for what, it's like Frederick Douglass said. Frederick Douglass said, you may never get everything you work for in this life, but you're gonna have to work for everything you get.

And that's what I saw my parents exhibit. That's what I've tried to exhibit in my own life.

My parents just never made excuses. This is why to this day, and when

Verda talks about having a biblical worldview, we're gonna talk about this this weekend, I'm gonna try to explain to you the distinction between equality and equity.

Verda's already touched on it in his opening message. But what you see the culture trying to advance today as equality and equity is not biblical equality and equity.

Growing up the way I did, there were things you were able to have and there were things you weren't able to have.

It just was a matter of could you afford it or could you not? There was nothing discriminatory about it, nothing racist about it.

I remember now, as a boy, the one gift I wanted so bad was a yellow and black

Tonka dump truck. Was never able to get it. Do I blame

Jim? No. I had one. I did.

I had more trucks than I had friends. But see, social justice would say, Jim, you owe me that truck.

Because it was racist that you had a truck, Jim, and I didn't have a Tonka truck. No, I didn't complain.

I didn't get the Tonka truck. I'm sorry, I didn't. I just didn't get it. I would echo that. My parents had a heavy influence on that.

My dad had all of a sixth grade education. He worked on a farm to take care of his younger brothers and sisters who were able to go to school.

My dad was functionally illiterate, meaning that if he had memorized something, he could remember it to read it, but he couldn't sound out words or anything like that and read on his own.

I remember sitting with my father as he had a business, besides the full -time job he had, he had a business where he did janitorial work for different companies, corporations.

So we would go in, and there was a restaurant that he had a contract for, and when we were mixing up the stuff to put in cleaners, he would have me read to him what the formulas were so that we could make it all work and wouldn't blow something up or tear up a floor with wax or what have you.

But that was kind of my upbringing. My dad never complained because he couldn't read.

We figured it out, and again, it never stopped him from working. We heard the stories, okay, you're black, you're gonna have it rough, but here's what you need to do at the end of the day.

You need to work harder, work smarter, work better, and blame no one for what you do or don't have.

The only person you need to look at is yourself. That was the foundation. So when I hear, as a young man, young adult, when

I hear what sounds like what my parents were saying, I resonated with that.

And so politically speaking, that's how it is. The irony of what your father told you in that you're gonna have to work harder, you're gonna have to be smarter, you're gonna have to do everything better, the irony of that is that the reality of that, to whatever degree it has become a reality for both of us, is that we have had to do those things up and against the resistance of other black people.

That's true. I've never had my path, to my knowledge, I've never had my path obstructed, prohibited, inhibited by anyone who is white.

Some of you have heard me share this with you on the podcast, you've heard me say this. I've been held up at gunpoint twice in my life.

Each time it was a young, black teenager. The epithets that Virgil and I experience, especially on social media, we've been called every racial or ethnic epithet in the book.

You know what we should do? Every time I use the word race, racial, racism, any of those words, we should have to put $5 in a jar or something like that, we'll call it the racist jar.

But every ethnic epithet that we've had thrown at us has been somebody who looks like us. I've never had a white person call me coon, never had a white person call me nigger, never had a white person call me

Uncle Tom. So your dad was right, but the irony is that we've had to face those obstructions through other people like us.

I wrote a blog article on my, by the way, you can get to my blog at deacondaryl .com. Daryl is spelled with two

R's and two L's, deacondaryl .com. I wrote an article titled The Myth of Black Community.

Black community's a myth. But that went over well. It went over, like everything else we do, goes over well.

But we don't care that it doesn't go over well. We don't care. We really do not care. But in that article,

I explained to you why the idea of black community is based on melanin.

But when you come into those communities, communities in air quotes, when you come into those communities with a different worldview, boom, you get the boot.

You're ostracized, you're demeanored, you're totally discounted, which is why now we're considered by many people to be white conservative.

We carry the white man's water. We're just - We're providing cover for the white man.

We're providing cover for the white man. And I was telling Jim last night at dinner at his house,

I was sharing with him and the others we were fellowshipping with that my favorite epithet is being called

Uncle Tom. That's my favorite one. It's my favorite one because usually folks who throw that epithet out at us haven't read

Harriet Beecher Stowe's book to find out where the origin of that was, that that term came from.

So you read Harriet Beecher Stowe's book, and I was telling Jim, I said there's two books that every American needs to have in their library. There's Uncle Tom's Cavern by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and there's

Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington. Yes. Add those two books to your library if you don't have them.

But in Uncle Tom's Cavern, spoiler alert for those of you who haven't read it, the entire story is a story of the gospel.

It's a gospel narrative where Tom is the Christ -like figure in that story. Because the way the story ends, and many historians credit

Uncle Tom's Cavern with launching the abolitionist movement to end slavery in America. But at the end of the story,

Tom is literally being beaten to death with a whip by his master. Why?

Because Tom won't tell him where these two young escaped black female slaves, these two young slave girls, have run off.

And Tom refuses to give them up. He refuses to tell his master where they've gone. So his master is literally whipping him to death, whipping him to death, but as Tom is being whipped to death, he's dying, being beaten to death by his master.

He is preaching the gospel to his master as he's dying. He is entreating his master, begging his master to repent, to come to faith in the

Lord. And so Tom is a Christ -like figure in that he sacrifices his life for the sake of those two slave girls who were able to get away and save their lives.

So someone who calls me Uncle Tom, they're unbeknownst to them and they're ignorant. They don't realize they're paying me a compliment, actually.

But you don't know that if you haven't read the book. So I would just urge anyone who's sort of feeling sort of inspired to refer to either of us as Uncle Tom.

If you can read, read the book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and I think you'll thank me later for it.

So my next question was, what is the response that you get from the black community, the Biden black community?

Yeah, it's something. Something else.

I'll answer that question in two parts. One is, you know, it's everything you can imagine that Darrell has talked about, vitriol, it's crazy.

I mean, you know, folks doing really incredible things. There was something that one of the

Black Lives Matter ladies did about, you know, five things that I wish the white community would do or six things that white people need to do for me or something like that.

And I took that, those six things, and said, these are six things that the black community need to do for themselves.

And I wrote those out and I posted that. And yeah, that was a problem. Ruh -roh. Yeah, that was a problem.

So that thing got about, I don't know, 40 ,000 shares. It went crazy. And because of that, all of their people,

A, saw it, and B, you know, started flooding my inbox and there were threats and all kinds of stuff, pictures of my wife and family and done up in different ways and all that kind of stuff.

I don't think my wife, I don't even think I told my wife about it. I don't usually. Most keyboard warriors are actually not very brave.

And so I really don't sweat that. So does it come? Yes. Do we care?

No. We even have a mug that says that. But in addition to that,

I always wanna, in audiences like this, or anywhere we go, I wanna dial back any glamorization of that that might be in your eyes.

Wow, they get the arrows thrown at them. Wow, they're in the front lines. I mean, the stories of the martyrs, right?

Burned at the scene. That's frontline, right? That's, nobody's pulled my arm apart with horses in all directions.

Nobody's tied me to a stake and lit me on fire. Nobody is, do you know what I mean? So do we receive pushback?

Absolutely. It's to the degree that it comes nowadays with stuff that people put in social media.

Can we handle it? Yes, we were born for that. You were born for that, right?

All of us are apologists. All of us are defenders of our faith. For 1 Peter 3, verses 15 and 16, you're to give an answer for the hope that is in you, right?

And you're told to do so with gentleness and respect, right? Why? Because even though you operate in that regard, there will still be people who will say evil things and create falsehoods and maliciously align you, right?

But they won't be doing well in that regard. So yes, we are. Yes, it's a lot at times.

It doesn't bother us. It really exposes where the person is, that their arguments have run out, and we don't care.

So none of it bothers us or hurts us or hurts our feelings, but I also don't want to glamorize any aspect of what we get for the purposes of people going, oh, wow, you guys get so much.

I mean, sure, I mean, and we know that, but it's not to, I mean, when you examine it again against the backdrop of church history, there are people that you should really look at and go, wow, that was a payment for, that was a price paid for, for standing on that tree.

But the other, oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Jim. I was gonna say, on the other side of that, you obviously have people who would come to you and say, you changed my mind on this subject.

I listened to your podcast. I never saw racism and race in this biblical perspective. It's not gonna be a one -to -one.

You're gonna have far more haters than you. The ratio of haters versus, you know, those who are being convinced to change their worldview is incredibly disproportionate.

So, but there's a word you just used, Jim, that I wanna sort of plant a flag on real quick.

There are people who come up to us and say, yeah, you know, you guys changed my mind on this, but our goal is not to change anyone's mind.

That's not our goal. Here's what I mean by that. What Virgil and I do on the Just Thinking podcast, and even when we're out speaking opportunities like this, occasions like this here in Kootenai, is we are motivated by presenting the truth of the gospel.

Since the early days of the church, you read the book of Acts and how thousands of people were saved simply by hearing the gospel preached.

No smoke, no strobe lights, you know, no pizza, no nothing. See, that's how

God still works today. He still works through his Holy Spirit that same way. What we do is we present the gospel.

Every word of the gospel has always operated through the

Holy Spirit in penetrating a person's heart. We can't do that. That's why you will never see us have a guest on the

Just Thinking podcast. The Just Thinking podcast is not a debate platform. You will never hear anyone's voice on that podcast other than Virgil Walker and Darrell Harris.

We are presenting you what this book says. This book says what it says.

You can do with that whatever you want. We trust

God that he will make his word effectual in the hearts of those whom he chooses to make it effectual.

So we're not trying to change it. When we did the episode on George Floyd, we're not trying to change their mind.

Now, we pray that your heart will be changed, so that, as we said in that episode, my concern about what happened to George Floyd begins and ends with the fact that he was a fellow image -bearer of God.

I couldn't care less that the police officer was white and George Floyd was black. But what

I'm most proud of in that episode is that we raised a question that no one, even to this day, is still, no one to this day is still not raising the question.

I said this in the episode. The question we all should be asking about George Floyd was, was he saved?

Yes, come on, man. Because he's dead now. Where is his soul?

Nobody's asked that question, nobody. So as it relates to,

I think Virgil made a great point. We're not martyrs for the pushback and the vitriol that we take.

We should expect that. Yes. That's a sermon on the mountain. It's Matthew 5. We should expect that.

But what's sad about that, what's sad about the pushback that we do get is that it comes from a place where people have a tribalist worldview as opposed to a biblical worldview whereby they think it's more virtuous to represent a tribalist, collectivist worldview as opposed to an

Imago Dei worldview where Genesis 127 says that each of us individually is created in the image of God.

And part of that, part of being created in the image of God is that you get to use your own mind.

You get to make your own decisions, your own choices as an individual, as an individual, not as a tribalist collective.

And that's what's so sad about what happens to me. Listen, Virgil and I have been through a lot in our lives.

I've told you about, I've been held up at gunpoint twice. We both have experienced an older brother dying from complications of HIV -AIDS.

We both have watched our respective older brother die right in front of us. We don't go around bragging about that experience, but it's like we say all the time, we expect sinners to sin.

We were talking about this last night. I just really don't get it. Why, with what happened with George Floyd, with what happened to Breonna Taylor, why is it that it only makes news when the melanin is of a certain shade?

We should have a biblical worldview, as Virgil said. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 8 that all of creation has been subject to corruption because of what happened in Genesis 3.

2 Peter 3 .13, though, says that for believers, we are awaiting a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells.

See, the lie of the social gospel, the lie of social justice, the lie of liberation theology is that you can create that heaven right here.

Yes, yes. It's up to us to do it. We can do that. But we should never be surprised, never.

It's like we said in the George Floyd episode, a man or a woman who wears a badge, see, that badge is not regenerative.

Every police officer is a sinner. Every sheriff is a sinner. Every fire person is a sinner.

Every politician is a sinner. I'm sorry,

Ecclesiastes 5 .8 says when you see a politician basically cutting deals with other politicians, don't be surprised.

So don't be surprised when sinners sin. So that's how we just take it all in stride.

Sinners are gonna sin. So when a sinner is demonstrating towards us what a sinner is innately designed to do, we're not sure.

Why should we care about that? It rolls right off of us. We brush it right off, we keep moving.

Right, bro? That's it. All right, well, that is the end of our Q &A time for the first one.

Wow. Yeah. I better get ready for the next one. So we're gonna break for -

So this was the easy one, right? Yeah, this was the easy one. It was the easy one, yeah. So we're gonna break for lunch and this is not the one that you will need your lunch ticket for.

That is for dinner tonight. And so we will start, I'm gonna pray. I ask that you let these two gentlemen go through first so that they can get their meal, come up here and get started eating and then prepare for the next session after lunch.

And just maybe start on this side of the room, kind of work your way down both sides of the table and back to your place.

And with that, let's pray. Our Father, we are grateful for this time that we can have here, that you have brought both of these brothers here to instruct us and equip us.

We're very grateful for the fellowship that we enjoy in your son. And as we gather around this meal, we thank you that we can enjoy the abundance of your provision, your goodness to us in every way.

We ask your blessing upon this time, the rest of our day and upon our minds as we focus our thoughts upon you and upon what your word says.