Riot Evangelism with Isaac Banegas and Pastor Joel Webbon

Well, welcome to another episode of Provoked. This is our first episode of 2021.

Hi. Hi.

So, I'm on the first episode of 2021.

Yeah, you are.

All right.

I'm sitting here with my friend, Isaac Banegas. He is a deacon at our church.

That's right.

And you also pretty much run the show here at Apologia Studios, right?

Typically, I work behind the camera doing production. Of course, I don't plan out the shows, but mainly any production, camera work, post-production, whatever it may be. That's what I'm involved in when it comes to Provoked.

Right.

I love the show. The content's great. So, I get a firsthand experience every single time we record.

Oh, thank you. And thanks for filling in. You're filling in for Zach because he's had some sickness in the family, but they're on the mend, but he's still taking care of his family. So, my brother from another mother and father is here today.

That's right. That's right.

And of course, praying for Pastor Zach and Jessica. Hopefully, by the time this episode airs, they're doing well.

Yeah, yeah. Lord willing, that would be great. And while Zach's not here, I feel like I just wanna talk about how great he is because he will not let me compliment

Oh, he's phenomenal.

He won't let me compliment him. He is just, he's such a blessing. I love him so much. And every Sunday when I'm at church, I get at least one or two people coming up to me saying, your brother is just the best.

He helps me so much. So anyways, I just, I love the guy. Zach, we love you. I love you. And I'm so thankful that you're my brother and my pastor.

Yes.

And I miss you being on the show, but I'm excited about today's show.

Yeah.

And yeah, we've almost been doing this for a year. It'll be a year in April. And I think April

Was it in January last year?

Well, I think that's when we started.

To try to get things rolling. Oh, announced it. Yeah, that's right.

Okay, yes.

And then our first episode actually aired in April. So the Lord has just done so much already, and we're so encouraged. So thank you to all of our listeners just for kind of hanging in there with us while we worked out some of the first initial creaks and kind of getting used to this whole podcast thing, but we appreciate your time.

And if you aren't an All Access member yet, we really encourage you to become one because you're just going to be blessed by all the content that you're gonna get. And it's getting better with Bonson You, right?

Bonson. You, I mean, 2021, I think we're really gonna take just a huge step forward in our production and our content. If you guys are not an All Access member, just like Desi said, I would encourage you to sign up.

Great content there from, of course, just being able to access the free content, a lot of free content that we put out there, but also some special content for those who are our supporters. We wanna bless you.

So we're always thinking about how can we can improve, but a lot of deep theological, rich content. And I think 2021 and just kind of where we're headed as a nation, I think we're gonna have to go even deeper.

Absolutely.

So that's gonna be the pursuit. So sign up now and anytime we upload something, you're gonna be blessed.

Yeah, absolutely. And we are having a Rally for Life, January 22nd.

January 22nd.

Yeah, at the Arizona State Capitol. So do whatever you can to make it out. It's gonna be a historic day. We're looking to push a bill of abolition or to support Walt Blackman, who's going to be presenting a bill of complete abolition here in Arizona.

So do what you can to come out. We'd love to see you and it's going to be, and if you can't come out, pray, because this is a big deal. So yeah, we're excited about that. And, oh, and you can find out more information on rallyforlifeaz .com about that.

So January 22nd, Arizona State Capitol. Today, we are honored to have a very special guest on, Pastor Joel Webbin. And he is a pastor of Covenant Bible Church in North Austin. He's actually just planting that here in April.

He's going to start opening, you're gonna start having services. He is a pastor, though he was my pastor in San Diego and he's just moved. And he's a very, very special person in my heart. And I just love him so much and his wife, Megan, and I'm excited to have him on.

And he also has an awesome new podcast called Theology Applied, where he's had some very, very heavy hitter guests on. He's had Doug Wilson, right? Have you aired the one with Doug Wilson yet, Pastor Joel?

Doug will be coming up in about a month. But we just recently had his daughter, Rachel Jankovic. We've had Virgil Walker and Daryl Harrison from the Just Thinking podcast. So yeah, we've hit on issues, political issues, theological issues, which really, they all kind of blend together.

Politics tends to flow downstream from culture and culture seems to flow downstream from ultimately what we believe, our theology. And so every episode kind of deals with theology and then its implications and applications, hence the name Theology Applied.

That's awesome. Well, yeah, that was my next, was just for you to introduce yourself. So yeah, go ahead and tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, maybe a little brief testimony, kind of what you're doing right now.

Tell them about Theology Applied, your new church, and all that good stuff.

Great, yeah.

Thanks, Desi. Well, I'm honored to be on the show. Definitely miss Zach, wish he could be a part of it, but excited to get to meet Isaac, one of the deacons at Apologia. And as Desi said, probably my greatest achievement in life, apart from marrying my wife, was the fact that I used to be Desi and her husband Don's pastor.

It's not for nothing, but it was years ago at this point.

Four years now, Desi? How long has it been?

Yeah, three, yeah, three years ago.

Three, okay, three years. So Desi and Don, they kind of led the way with inspiring my wife and I to do what all Christians should do, which is to leave California. That's my opinion. And so I'm actually, we're doing some writing and things like that about loving California by leaving California.

And so we're working on some book stuff right now with that. I do really want to encourage Christians. I know that there is a category, obviously, for being a missionary and being in difficult places.

But one of the key differences, I think, is North Korea and China and Venezuela, the kind of countries that California aspires to become. One difference between California and those places is that the people in those places are trapped.

They can't leave. And so we send missionaries with the good news of the gospel to faithfully preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, as well as God's law, to these people because they need us to come to them because they can't come to us.

California is unique in the sense that people don't have to be there. And a lot of people that live in California, not everyone, of course, but there are a lot of people who are there precisely because they are pagan and because they are godless and because they are living in rebellion.

And they don't want traditional and conservative values. They don't want the message of the Bible. They don't want God's ultimate truth. And so there is a certain point where God may call some people to be there, but for my wife and I, we really just felt released from that culture and that context.

But I do want to be clear that in leaving California, my goal is never to stop loving California. And I actually think that there is a way of loving certain people at times by shaking the dust off your feet.

I think in some ways, the least loving thing that a member of the father's house could have done for the prodigal son when he was in a far distant land, a famine had come across all these different areas and he was destitute and poor and longing to be filled with the pods that he was feeding to the pigs.

I think one of the most unloving things that could have happened in that moment is if a member of the father's house had found him and given him another handout because it's at the end of his rope. It's at the bottom of the barrel that the Bible says he came to his senses and realized that he should go back home.

And so in some sense, I just started to feel convicted that my family and I, along with many other Christians, were kind of keeping Californians from coming to their senses by the salt of the earth, Christians in California just kind of propping the state up.

If every hardworking, diligent, God-fearing Christian left California, they'd have to lay in the bed that they'd been making for decades and there might be some change. So that's my opinion. So we moved to the North Austin area of Texas by God's grace.

Our goal is to plant a new church, Covenant Bible Church. As you said, Desi, we're gonna start holding services in April. And my little spiel on why Christians should consider moving from California was persuasive enough to convince another 15 adults to come with us and their children.

And so we have a church planting team of 17 adults and about a dozen kids and we're excited to see what the Lord has for us.

Current Events, January 6th, and the Danger of Idolatry

That's exciting. Awesome. Well, I'm excited today to talk about, well, first, you know what? I wanna talk about some kind of current events. The name of the show is going to be is Riot Evangelism. I can't even talk.

Riot Evangelism with Pastor Joel Webben. So we're gonna talk about evangelism in the first church of Acts and how Jesus did it and how the apostles did it. And actually Christians throughout ecclesiastical history, how they did it and how the American Evangelical Church does it now.

Pastor Joel, you had preached a sermon about this when Dawn and I started going and I remember it so clearly because we had just come out of a, you know, like a mega non-denomination church. It was a good church, sweet people, Christians that I love.

But once the Lord opens your eyes to Reformed theology and the doctrines of grace, there's no going back. So we had gone to that church and then shortly after you preached this sermon on Riot Evangelism and I was just, my jaw was on the floor.

Like I was just so fired up and so pumped up. There's like this meme of a poor boy with like a soup bowl and he's like, please son, can I have some more?

That's just me.

I was so hungry.

So this sermon was preached while you were attending the church?

No, I had left. We had finally, after a lot of prayer and counsel, we had moved to the Response Church and this was probably, I would say, if my memory serves me right, a month or so after that we had moved there.

And when we were at the, we were just hungry for the Word. We were hungry to just go share the gospel with people and it felt like, and about that church, it was not necessarily the tactic that they did.

They were more invite people to church type of church. So this was like a drink of cold ice water. Imagine on the 120 days out here in Phoenix, it was just so quenching to our souls. Yeah, so refreshing.

So anyways, I'm very excited to talk about that. And I kinda wanna just start off by talking about this week. It's been a crazy week. By the time this airs, it'll be a little bit later, but it's January 8th.

So just two days ago was January 6th and you were in D .C.

Yeah, we were.

So I wanna hear a little bit about that from you. And then Joel, we can maybe we just have a discussion on what this looks like moving forward.

Yeah, and you guys maybe know more about the details because since being in D .C. on the 6th, I haven't watched any media, any news. I haven't read too much as far as the articles. I read something that night that kind of laid out some of the details, but I'd imagine some things have come out since then.

We were there. We went there because we wanted to provide some type of Christian commentary to the whole situation when it came to that Save the Vote rally. We do believe that if there is any type of fraudulent election, then it is something that needs to be addressed because we want justice.

But ultimately, we wanted to provide Christian commentary as far as when it comes to, like I said, pertaining to any type of fraudulent election, if there is any. And of course, there seems to be some evidence that maybe some things had taken place.

I don't know if it's enough to overturn any type of vote, but at this point, they're moving forward. Biden's gonna be president. But I think just for the whole rally itself and I think just to the conservative community as well, bringing the gospel even into that context.

So that was our goal. And also to promote the rally that we're having on January 22nd here at the State Capitol in Arizona. We didn't know what to expect going into it. Lots of people. I heard there maybe was over 500 ,000 people.

So it was packed just to see if people didn't know what to expect, didn't know if it was gonna be chaotic, violent, what. The rally took place. Trump spoke. He fired up the crowd. The only thing I could say as far as from what I heard was just kind of haunting because the rhetoric that he was using, but also the response from the people.

At a certain point, people, the whole, I mean, 500 ,000 people just chanting, we love you, we love you. To me, it just sent like there was a ton of idolatry just taking place there. And so once he was done speaking, we headed over towards the Capitol.

We were a little ways from the Capitol, heard a bunch of sirens and didn't know what was going on. Started asking around and finding out that they breached the Capitol. We were kind of removed somewhat from the cast.

So we moved closer and we were able to see some, just the crowd of people at the front and on the steps of the Capitol. But I mean, it was an experience and we got some content and I'm hoping that people are gonna enjoy that and hear some of, I think, some good insight pertaining to what took place and what's going on in our nation today.

But you guys may have more details or what your guys' thoughts are, but that's kind of what I experienced.

Right, and I was just so thankful because that day, I mean, I was searching on the news for anything and of course, my only options are left-wing media, which is dominating everything. So you don't really know what the real story is going on.

There's some news stations now, Newsmax, I think is one of them. There's a handful, I can't remember the other ones, but it was really, it was hard to get any information that you could feel like, okay, is this what's actually happening?

Because you just don't know now. And so I was really thankful that you guys were out there and then Pastor Jeff had done a live stream because I know you guys couldn't go live that day.

We couldn't, no, there were so many people. I think the towers were just pretty much at capacity when it came to data or something because couldn't text, couldn't go online, nothing.

Yeah, maybe it was that, but in my mind, I'm like, are they suppressing?

There was talks of that, but I'm pretty sure it was just because we have 500 ,000 people in one area.

Yeah, that's probably it.

There's only so much that I guess could be done.

Yeah, but anyways, I was really encouraged by Pastor Jeff's Facebook live he did at the hotel that night. And just the part that really hit me too was what you were talking about, the idolatry, that even though this hasn't gone the way that we wanted it to go or that even if there's some unfairness or whatever the situation is, like Trump is not God, you know?

And he was just talking about the people that had like the Jesus with the Trump with a MAGA hat on. And it can, I mean, our hearts are idol-making factories, like Calvin said, like we so easily will just, we wanna worship something other than God.

And so we have to be careful not to do that and to turn our eyes from that. And so I was super thankful and encouraged by his, you know, just saying that because I think it needs to be said, especially to Christians right now.

We have to be careful of that. And yeah, anyways, that was kind of my thoughts on the whole situation. How about you, Pastor Joel? What were your thoughts?

Yeah, pretty crazy times. Trump is certainly not God, but he certainly is what we might call a cult personality. And so unfortunately his following is not merely made up of Bible-believing, God-fearing Christians who are gravitating toward him and his administration strictly on the basis of conservative biblical policies.

I do believe that his administration has promoted and defended certain conservative policies that are much more in line, although not always perfectly, but much more in line with the teaching of Scripture than the opposing political party.

And so I always think of Timothy Keller, where he kind of, he always does this middle thing. He's like, you know, there's Democrats here and there's Republicans here, and the gospel's right in between.

And I would say a hearty no, no, Timothy Keller. Once again, wrong. That's not true. I think it's very popular for pastors to act as though the truth of God's word, the truth of the gospel, the heart of God, the character of God, the character of Christ is just perfectly in between whatever two options, two cultural options, two political parties, whatever there might be, which ironically, that's a very political thing to do.

That's what a politician does, right? He wants to keep the widest base of popularity he can. So he wants to encompass everyone. If he's going to say anything negative, he wants to equally offend all parties.

The reality is that republicanism is not synonymous with the gospel. It's not synonymous with the scripture. But for whatever reason, in the sovereignty of God, the Republican Party is certainly much closer to biblical principles and biblical truth than the Democratic Party, that is a party of death and murder and theft, civil theft with socialism and all these different things.

The Democratic Party is racist in the truest sense of what it means to be a racist. They stoke division, all these kinds of things. And so all that being said, my thoughts is that Trump is not God. The Republican Party is ultimately not our savior, not even close.

I do want to see Christians fighting for conservative values those things that align with the truth of God's word. And I do think that there's idolatry, but I know that there are God-fearing Christians that have appreciated Trump.

They reject the cult personality. They reject some of the Twitter feed and those kinds of things. But there is a sense, I think one of the most insightful things that Trump said throughout his time in office was he said, they don't hate me, they hate you.

And I'm just standing in the way. And I think that's true. I think the cultural and political left in our nation today hates any conservative, especially a conservative, God-fearing, Bible-believing, Bible-preaching Christian.

They hate us. And all the hatred that we've seen toward Trump ultimately is just him standing in the way. And I think when there's a bully on a playground, people like to say that Trump is a bully and I think he can have some bullyish tendencies.

But I think the biggest bully culturally and politically, at least for quite some time in our nation has been the political cultural left, whether it be Hollywood or big tech or it's just the Democratic Party, AOC and the new wave of socialism following in the footsteps of Bernie Sanders and all these people, they're bullies, the way that they handle themselves.

And when a bunch of powerless people, powerless kids on the playground are getting just obliterated by a bully and somebody stands up and says, I'm gonna be a defender of these people who are being pushed around and been pushed around for decades by the culture and by politics and all these things, it's natural, like you said, Desi, quoting John Calvin, the heart is an idol-making factory, but it's natural for the human heart to have a sense of loyalty, a sense of affection, a sense of appreciation for that person who's coming to their defense.

And I think there's just a lot of people in our nation who, I mean, we see what happened at the Capitol, that absolutely Christians should condemn what took place. It was insurrection, it was violence, it was rioting in the negative sense, not what we're gonna be talking about, right, evangelism, but rioting in a wicked and sinful sense.

And so all that should be rightly condemned and not condoned. However, at the same time, I'm sympathetic because when you push people around for decades and you tell them they're stupid and you tell them that they're racist when they're not, and you tell them that they're homophobes and they're this and that, you just, you call them names and you make them synonymous with, you know, like they're monsters and you just, you know, you call Nazis and, you know, all this kind of rhetoric that we've just had pushing from Hollywood with every movie that comes out, every single left-wing politician at all, you know, at the cultural level, political level, even progressive liberal churches at a theological level.

And just for decades, just this bombarding of rhetoric that just, that takes conservative salt of the earth people and makes them feel stupid, makes them feel evil, makes them, you know, the enemy of everything and the origin of all bad things in this nation.

And then eventually, yeah, you kind of get bothered by that. You get mad. And then if somebody comes in and steps up and finds himself as the commander-in-chief in the White House, and he starts pushing back on the guys who've been pushing you for decades, and he actually has a spine and he's not a squishy pseudo conservative, like Mitt Romney, and he, you know, he actually, and you're like, I don't know if he's saved.

I tend to think he's not. I don't know if he's regenerate, but for whatever reason, like King Cyrus, you know, God in his sovereignty is using this guy to defend biblical principles. And more than that, to defend me.

He's defending me. There's a bully on the playground. He's been pushing my face in the mud for 30 years. And this guy is standing up to him and pushing him over. And then, yeah, you get 500 ,000 people shouting, we love you.

And I'm not saying it's right, and I'm not saying it's not idolatry. I tend to agree with you, Desi, and with you, Isaac. My whole point is just to say it's understandable. Not that it's acceptable, not that it's right, but it's understandable.

And so all that happened, it's crazy, but I think there's just this, there's this double standard in our culture today and in all the media that like what happened on January 6th is just the most horrible thing.

In the world. It's deplorable.

I can't believe that these right-wing nutjobs would do this. And it's like, what about the last six months? Like all over the nation, people burning down, but not just breaking a window and climbing inside, but burning down people's businesses, fires in major cities all over the nation, destroying people's livelihood.

Dozens of people have been killed. What, and so I think as Christians, my final point and my thoughts on this is, this is why we have the Bible. This is why we have God. This is why we have an ultimate standard.

The left has always a double standard. If they didn't have double standards, they had no standards at all. And so as Christians, we deplore, we hate unequal weights and measures. We hate double standards.

We hate hypocrisy because it lies about God. It says something false about the nature of the triune God. And so as Christians, we condemn what took place on January 6th. And in the strongest and equally strong terms, we condemn also Black Lives Matter and Antifa and the left and the rights that have happened over the last six months.

And so we say, both are wrong. And here's why, and here's the standard. But what I don't want to do is I don't want to be that squishy pseudo pastor, Tim Keller sort, who's gonna speak out on January 6th as a pastor with any kind of platform, any kind of podcast, any kind of Twitter account and use that notoriety and say, we can't believe what happened on January 6th, but act like that's the first thing, the first crazy thing that's happened in our nation.

And like I was born yesterday, like contrary to what most people's opinions seem to be, like I actually was alive and cognitive for the last six months, right? We're not talking about like something historical that happened 50 years ago or a hundred, it was six months ago and it was six months long.

I mean, it just, and so I just wanna say that we can't stoop to that level. We can't fight fire with fire. What happened on January 6th was insurrection. It was rioting in the worst kind. It was unbiblical, it was wicked.

And likewise, what we've seen on the other side of the political aisle for six months is also wicked and also unbiblical and both parties are guilty. And as Christians, I think we have to rise above it.

Yeah, yeah, we can't condone lawlessness, you know?

Yeah, no, I think you're right on, Pastor. It's such a blessing for us to have a written revelation from God who's created all things because in the midst of all this chaos beginning in February of last year up until now, it's the solid Christian who has a Christian worldview who's been able to maintain a sense of balance and order and wisdom and insight.

And there's been consistency all the way through. And it goes back to the fact, like you said, Pastor Joel, because we have the standard that we can appeal to. And so we don't have to be tossed to and fro because the media is saying this or this chaos here or this riot here or this incident here.

We can turn to our source and interpret all things in light of it. And of course, even in the midst of the Christian community, there may be some level of disagreement, but it's not gonna be too far off when you talk about somebody appeals to scripture as the final rule of faith and practice.

So it is a blessing as a Christian for me to know that I can lean upon God to give me insight and to understand and move forward in the midst of this chaos. So it is truly a blessing. I think you're right on when you were saying.

Also too, just what we've had to endure, like you said, it is completely understandable that people who are fallen would not, that they would be subjected to their emotions at a time like this after being bullied for maybe the past four years beyond, whatever it may be.

And yeah, we'll see what, of course, this brings. 2021 is gonna be definitely, I think, a unique year, but exciting too. It really is, it's exciting. And I know you guys are gonna talk about, of course, evangelism and what better opportunity do evangelists have than a time like this?

Because even at the Trump rally too, and that's the thing, I'd imagine there was solid Christians there. I don't know how many people stopped us to say, Pastor Jeff, thank you for your ministry. I mean, at least, I would say at least over 50 people stopped us during that whole time just saying, thank you for what you're doing.

There were some street evangelists there. There were some street preachers there that just was bringing me encouragement. There were some people who were hooked up with EAN there preaching and had their signs.

And so even in the midst of it too, like I said, there was, of course, people who, like you said, want a biblical policies, at least that are more in line with the Bible, these policies that would give us at least space and time to continue to press forward and hopefully make new ground when it comes to pursuing what we want in this country, in this nation.

And of course, Trump, he was the one that would, at least in this election, be the one who would give us that space and time more so than, of course, Biden. Not that God can operate in a Biden administration as far as through his church.

But yeah, no, so thank you for that insight, Pastor Joel. I don't know, I think you guys wanna talk about evangelism at this point or did you guys wanna continue with that topic?

Words, Violence, and the Power of Preaching

Yeah, well, I think I was just gonna kinda lead into it by just saying, I think after everything settled on the 6th I really felt a lot of fear from Christians because we're like, okay, now it's finalized.

Biden's going to be the president or Kamala Harris,.

Eventually. Right, at some point.

And it was just almost like this just cloud of, okay, this is what we're looking at, this is the next four years, what's gonna happen? He was on there calling last night or the night before, I don't remember now, I have a four month old, so everything kind of blends together.

But I was watching this live feed of him calling the people that had broken in terrorists and don't you dare call them protesters. Well, he was talking about the handful of extremists that went in, but what about the other half a million people or whatever it was that were not there that weren't extremists, they were protesters.

But it just got me thinking like, we're not far behind that he's gonna start saying, street preachers are, it's gonna be hate speech. And don't call that free speech, it's hate speech. And those of us who go out to the abortion mills, oh, don't you dare call them protesters, they're domestic terrorists.

He's gonna, it's just the beginning of redefining words. And I don't know, I started getting all of these visions of my friends and my loved ones going to jail. And, but if that's God's will, then that's the Lord's will.

And I think now is the time more than ever, in our lifetime anyways, that we need to really go back and reform evangelism and go back to what it really means to evangelize here in America. And like I had said in the beginning, it wasn't just the Church of, the First Church in Acts that was going out and proclaiming the good news of the gospel and then getting kicked out.

And Pastor Joel, I'm gonna let you go into this more, but we look at the scriptures and see, they were getting beat and then rejoicing and going on to the next town. And then Donna and I were just listening to Fox's Book of Martyrs on the way to San Diego a couple of weeks ago.

And I mean, it was just Christian after Christian, not only being killed for their faith, but like tortured. And just hearing the story after story of people just giving everything, watching their families die.

I mean, it just goes to show you how weak we are in America, like what wimps we are. We think that persecution is when we get blocked on Facebook, but we may be seeing some real persecution. Our kids may be seeing persecution like the martyrs.

I thought kind of the same thing too, because I knew ultimately the media would kind of twist the narrative. Like you said, we have over 500 ,000 people present and yet there's maybe comparatively to that number, a handful that inside is something of course that we would condemn as well.

And I think the idea is that ultimately language causes violence. So that's gonna be kind of where things go, because that's what they've been saying with Trump from the beginning of his administration is that language causes violence and look at what he said, look at what happened and what followed.

And then of course the direct link to that is ultimately the church, the exclusive message that we have or the intolerant message we have, however they wanna spin it. But it's interesting that you thought that, because that's exactly what I thought too right after.

Oh really? That's interesting.

That's a good point, Isaac, like language causes violence, because as Christians, we do believe that. We would word it a little bit differently. We would say that language causes action for better or for worse.

Really what we're talking about is the power of preaching. If we didn't believe in the power of language, I mean, that's what we have.

We have the word.

In the beginning was the word, the logos, the language, the logic. It's the word of God, the eternal living word of God, the second member of the Trinity that turned the world upside down. And he did it by words.

It wasn't his healings, right? All these were signs and wonders that attested to who he was so that people ultimately would listen to him and listen to the message. Jesus even says, like, for which of these works, you've seen me do many miracles, for which of these works are you trying to kill me?

And the crowd, the mob responds by saying, none of the works, right? We're fine with the miracles. You multiply bread and loaves and fishes all day long. We like free lunch, you know, and you can raise the dead even.

Those things kind of intimidate us. But at the end of the day, it's not the works,.

It's the word.

It's what you say. It's because you make yourself by word, by what you say, your message, you make yourself out to be equal with God. And so Jesus, ultimately, you don't crucify nice guys, you crucify threats.