Evangelical Responses to Cultural Decay

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line, one of the articles
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I have in my Dividing Line materials from Michael Gerson in America that is losing faith with religion.
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And just a few things here that are interesting and enlightening in light of the current discussions.
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You are having discussions, unless you live in a cave, I suppose, you are having discussions with people.
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I see things being posted in channel all the time, things being posted in Twitter and references to Facebook.
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There's a tremendous amount of, well, let's be honest, very shallow dialogue taking place regarding morality and ethics.
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And of course, we know as believers that a discussion of morality and ethics requires man to recognize his true nature as the creature of God.
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And a discussion of morality and ethics that begins with man as an autonomous being, not created, a brief period of existence, the grass that springs up in the morning and fades by the evening, that it's really sort of a meaningless exercise.
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When you have an autonomous human being who does not see his or her proper place, you have a little demigod who, by its very nature, is going to trivialize every meaningful issue that they address.
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And so, what I'm seeing in our culture is not serious moral and ethical reflection.
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It is people who have received most of their instruction from no more than 30 -minute programs and frequently much shorter than that, on cable
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TV, or have imbibed it almost unconsciously from the slavish observance of Hollywood movies, blabbing about things about which they really have no understanding at all, but demanding that their opinion is equal to everyone else's opinion.
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No one has more right to be heard than every single individual, even if they have devoted absolutely no meaningful thought whatsoever to the subject, and they're just going with the flow.
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It is a sad thing to observe, but it should not surprise us.
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I know it continues to bother me. I suppose I should always be bothered by it, but I shouldn't be bothered by it by, oh, this shouldn't be happening.
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I should be bothered by it because this is the natural progression of the decay of a nation.
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In fact, I had to rush in, and I apologize for that, had a lot of stuff going on today.
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But there is a quote that I saw, and, oh, if I could just find it real quick, it was, there is a, is there a wiki quote page, something like that?
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Because there is a John Adams quotation about morality this morning, and I think
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I re -quoted it actually, and I would love to pull it up for you, but in essence, it was a statement that said, ah, there it is, there it is, found it, that was, gotta love, gotta love the internet.
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But, we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.
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Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest, and by the way,
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I actually looked at this, there's two versions of this, and this is coming from his collected works, there's another place this letter appears, it doesn't say gallantry, it was a reference to sexual license.
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Anyways, would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net.
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Listen to this, our constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people, it is wholly inadequate for any other.
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Man, our constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people, it is wholly inadequate for any other, and we are not a moral or religious people any longer.
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And here you have the evidence of that in the article that I was referring to by Michael Gerson, this is in the
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Washington Post. The nation's religious composition, as revealed in a recent presentation by Luis Logo of the
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Pew Research Center, is changing. In 2012, America ceased to be a majority Protestant country, the result mainly of a decline in the number of mainline
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Protestants, though there have been smaller losses among white evangelicals as well. Catholicism is holding its own with a stable 22 % of the public, but its ethnic composition has shifted dramatically, about half of all
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Catholics younger than 40 are Latino. One group, however, has swelled, those with no religious affiliation, also known as nuns, as in none of the above.
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In the 1950s, this was about 2 % of the population, in the 1970s it was about 7%, today it's close to 20%, there's almost as many nuns as there are
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Roman Catholics, which is sort of funny, but anyway. These gains can be found in all regions of the country, including the
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South, the trend is particularly pronounced among whites, among the young, and among men. Not all the nuns, it is worth pointing out, are secular.
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Only about, now of course, I'm going to disagree with his use of secular here, only about 30 % of this group, 6 % of the public, are atheists or agnostics, the rest of the nuns describe themselves as indifferent to religion or as nothing in particular, 64 % of the nuns, however, say they believe in God or a universal spirit with absolute certainty.
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Even 9 % of atheists and agnostics, defying both dogma and the dictionary, report themselves absolutely convinced of God's existence.
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Well, we've always said that people like Christopher Hitchens, Doug Wilson was right, he's absolutely certain of two things,
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God does not exist and he hates him, and that's exactly correct. About equal proportions of the religiously unaffiliated 19 % and the affiliated 18 % report having seen or been the presence of a ghost.
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I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything, but this is a Washington Post article.
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So the nuns are united not by reading Richard Dawkins or any particular set of theological beliefs but by a complete lack of attachment to institutional religion.
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Yet while conversion has increased the ranks of the nuns, retention is not particularly good, Protestants, for example, loses about 20 % of those raised
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Protestants, of those raised unaffiliated, 40 % fall away from the non -faith and rebel toward religion, making for a new generation of awkward thanksgivings.
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Though the nuns are varied and occasionally confused, their overall growth has been swift and unprecedented. This has occasioned scholarly disagreement over the causes.
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I don't think there's really much of a reason to be confused about what the causes are.
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These kinds of polls all the time massively inflate the number of people who are called
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Christians. We know that the vast majority of our fellow citizens do not bow the knee to the
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Lordship of Jesus Christ. They do not make decisions in their lives based upon God's will or scripture or anything of the kind.
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If you take even semi -seriously the biblical definition of what a disciple of Jesus Christ is, there is no way that these polls mean almost anything, which means you have a tremendous amount of nominal
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Christianity, and once you have nominal Christianity facing the constant wearing effect of secularism, the secular educational system, which has been completely taken over by the opponents of anything that's godly at all, this is what you're going to get.
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You're going to get people who, again, think that they are, well, wiser than God, and think that, well, none of the above, you know, all those people and all those things, you know, all that stuff that's gone on before me isn't relevant.
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I don't even need to be concerned about it, don't need to think about it. It doesn't matter what people were thinking in the past.
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I just don't have to do anything, I have nothing to do with any of it. I'm a none, N -O -N -E, and the result of this is a tremendous amount of soul -searching on the part of quote -unquote conservatives today.
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Now, I know there are people who listen to this program, I don't know why you listen to this program, but there are people who listen to this program who do not share with me fundamental presuppositions in regards to the accuracy, inspiration, binding force and relevance of the scriptures, but you listen anyways.
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I don't really know why I would get bored listening to someone like me if I didn't believe in those things, but anyway.
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And there are people who, for example, do not believe that we should be pointing out the history of the papacy and the
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Roman Catholic Church and the Inquisitions and the false teachings and the
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House of Loretto and all the rest of that kind of stuff. We shouldn't be talking about those things because we all need to be pulling together to save our society as if political alliances are the mechanism by which a society is going to be saved one way or the other.
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And you don't like hearing about stuff like this. You don't like when we talk about Roman Catholicism, you don't like when we talk about the fact that there's actually a much smaller number of true
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Christians in our society than polls would indicate because simply asking someone, well, what do you think you are, is not the biblical standard of discipleship.
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Okay, that's, read 1 John. You know, when it says, by this you may know, there was a bunch of stuff that came before the by this, including the love of the brethren and, you know, serious
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Christian discipleship and stuff like that. That's all the result of grace anyway. Right. And so when you look at what's going on, there are a lot of people that are scratching their heads and gazing at their navels and they're going, how could this have happened?
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And I'm saying, how could it have not happened? I mean, it looks like, I mean, I'm not a prophet nor a son of a prophet, but listening to the reports and listening, especially to the actual recordings of the questions from the
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Supreme Court justices yesterday, you know, it struck me, you know, you know, the one thing that could not be said within the chambers of the
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Supreme Court yesterday is that there is anything morally wrong with homosexuality. Not even allowed, not, it can not even be on the table.
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And as a result, I think DOMA is going down. I think they're going to pass on Proposition 8 on standing.
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That's my there's my prediction. OK, they're going to pass on Proposition 8 on standing should never have come before us and which will mean it's going to go back and start all over again.
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It's a couple of years for that one gets back in it. It'll probably be irrelevant by the time it does because of some other case that comes up by them.
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And DOMA is going down. And people go, how can this be?
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I mean, this was so fast, how did it happen so fast? The speed is due to the fact that the foundations have been gone for a long time, we've been running on inertia.
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Been running on inertia, the foundations have been gone, it's a little bit, to be honest with you, like Wiley Coyote.
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Ever noticed Wiley Coyote can chase the roadrunner right out into space?
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You know, 10 yards off the edge of a cliff. And it's amazing how long it takes before he starts to fall.
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It's it's the inertia thing. Now, I realize that that's not really true to physics, but you understand what
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I'm talking about. But the foundations were gone a long time ago.
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And it's just that the fall is happening so rapidly now because we're looking at a younger generation that is now, unlike their parents, their parents had had parents that still had some deep influence from scriptural teaching that infiltrated the society.
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Now you're getting to a generation, it's just it's completely gone, it's completely gone.
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And that's why you look at what people watch on television and you and you you see just an abject moral nightmare.
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And I just go back to John Adams. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people.
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It is wholly inadequate for any other. We are now the other. We are the other.
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And the Constitution just is inadequate for even attempting to deal with this kind of stuff.
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So there are evangelicals who are very concerned about these things and they're trying to position themselves.
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What are we supposed to do? This is coming. We've got even in the midst of all the the the facts in the world that demonstrate that abortion is the murder of an unborn child.
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I don't think that's going away because it's a matter of convenience.
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It's a matter of allowing for sexual activity without without any consequences, which, of course, fits with the new worldview that we're just animals.
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It's time to realize that we are strangers and pilgrims.
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We've just my generation. Hey, you know, we could take comfort in the idea that there is a general morality in our nation.
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Not any longer. And we've just got to get over it. Someone's moved my my cheese and I'm very bothered by that.
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We just got to get used to it. What that means, of course, is becoming a prophetic voice.
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And our job. And it's not a comfortable job. It is not a job that is going to make us popular.
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Our job is to deliver a message of repentance. Remember John the Baptist? He didn't do too well with that.
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Remember, he's popular for a while. But then he wasn't.
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And in fact, he ran afoul of the authorities and and lost his life. And so we have a job.
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And our job is not to lament. Oh, the good old days. Our job is to recognize the good old days are gone.
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And we have a message and it is going to be a message that is going to absolutely offend our society.
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And that is repent and believe. For the wrath of God abides upon any people who engage in these activities.
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And you go, oh, come on, man, are you out of are you out of step?
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Am I out of step with what? I certainly hope I'm out of step with this society, for crying out loud.
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I want to be out of step with this society. This society is running full bore away from God toward destruction.
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I don't want to be in step with that. But am
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I out of step with the Bible? Am I out of step with what John the Baptist did? What John the
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Baptist do? What got him killed? He told a powerful political leader, you, sir, are living in sin.
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Now, was John the Baptist wrong for doing that? Answer the question.
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Those of you who are, quote unquote, evangelicals, who are who are looking forward to the time when when evangelicals become comfortable with gay marriage.
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If you are actually to the point of saying that that we really just need to move on and accept this.
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Then I just want to ask you, where do you get your marching orders from? Where do you get your paradigm from?
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Is it is it CNN, Fox News, or do you get it from Scripture?
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John the Baptist told a man, a governmental authority, you are in sin.
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God's wrath will come upon you. Cost him his life. And I can just hear a lot of people today going, well, you know, he shouldn't have done that.
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He could have had a much longer ministry and impacted many people if he had just controlled what he was saying.
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Right? I can hear people saying that right now. I get it all the time.
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You're going to drive people away. Well, what brings people to the church in the first place? Oh, theology matters again.
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Isn't it? The preaching of the word of God, the calling of repentance, made alive in the heart by the spirit of God?
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Yeah, theology matters. And so there are people who are, well, for example, there is a story in the
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Huffington Post. Evangelicals face growing tension between political and personal views of gay marriage.
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Of course, I reject that terminology and always will. It's no such thing. If you're going to say that, you need to be able to explain why that is, by the way.
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And quickly and clearly and concisely and without stumbling all over yourself. Interesting discussion of Tim Keller.
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Here from Huffington Post is not exactly your conservative source of information here.
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Keller holds a view that marriage between one man and one woman, shocking, sorry, but he has avoided focusing on the gay marriage debate, preferring to emphasize
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Christians' responsibility to love their neighbor. He has said that, quote, heterosexuality does not get you to heaven, end quote, which earned him criticism from more conservative evangelicals.
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Well, I'm not sure what about that is offensive. It would be the context in which it was stated. Heterosexuality does not get you to heaven.
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But homosexuality means you're under the wrath of God because it's a sin.
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Heterosexuality can be a sin in the sense of the exercise of that outside of marriage or incestuously or all sorts of other things.
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I just don't know what the context was. There is a link. I suppose I could look at it. But anyways, at the
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Ethics and Public Policy Center Forum, however, Keller made a somewhat surprising prediction, giving the speed with which much of public opinion seems to be swinging in support of gay marriage.
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And by the way, why is that? I'm hearing it all the time, all the time.
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Eighty percent of the millennials support gay marriage. Why? Is it because of the overwhelming power and depth of the arguments for it, which would require you to believe that every generation before this one was a bunch of stupid, stilted, idiotic bigots?
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Well, I know a lot of young people that would go, yeah, oh, that's the way it was.
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You all are a bunch of stupid bigots. Is it because of that? No, it's not because of that.
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It's not because of that at all. This is a dangerous time because it is a people changing course without thought.
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It's driving, it's a child jumping into the seat of a semi truck and deciding to just spin the wheel.
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That's what you've got here. People who just don't have any respect for the past at all.
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Anyway, large numbers of evangelical Christians, even younger ones, he said, will continue to hold the view that same sex marriage runs counter to their faith, even as they increasingly decide they either support or do not oppose making it the law of the land.
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Okay. I have encountered a lot, many people, of many evangelicals, many people who profess to claim the name of Jesus Christ.
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I have met many of them who have said, why are we worried about this? Marriage is something
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God established. And so why should we care? A lot of people take that perspective.
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And at that point, again, theology is going to matter.
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And because a lot of evangelicals are infected with an utter disrespect for the old covenant scriptures, an utter disrespect for God's law, and have never been challenged to think through the relationship of God's moral law to nations and kingdoms.
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And there are movements, the new covenant theology stuff. Specifically said,
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I remember being in a conversation once with one of the promoters of new covenant theology, and I asked the question, will this public leader who has promoted abortion, et cetera, et cetera, be held accountable before God for his actions?
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And no, no, not at all. Will not be held accountable. So there are a lot, there's an entire theology out there that says, nope, there's a big divide, and you're just judged on what you do personally, and what a person does in promoting homosexuality, profaning marriage, murdering unborn children, just promoting the whole culture of death versus the biblical culture of life.
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Doesn't matter. It doesn't enter in. And that's when you have to go, all right, if that's the perspective you take, you need to explain to me what the message of the church is to be in the world.
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Or I guess there are some that don't believe that there's any message at all. That we're not to proclaim
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God's moral standards to the world. We're to stay out of it. Just keep our mouths shut.
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That's only for within the church. If you become a Christian, then God has standards of morality for you. Otherwise, you're just an unregenerate person, and you can do whatever you want.
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Now, the problem with that, of course, is that the very first words out of Jesus' mouth when he preached was, repent and believe the gospel.
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Repent for what? Well, I guess there would be some people who would say, well, just your personal sins.
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But there's this one little problem, and that is you have the testimony of the
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Old Testament scriptures. We recently, for example, at our church, have been going through the book of Jeremiah.
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We're almost done. That last chapter is a long one. And I've actually been missing a lot recently because I've been doing a lot of traveling.
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So maybe we're done. Ah, we couldn't be done yet. Pastor Frey did mention he was going to be going somewhere else.
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But as he said, he didn't know where yet. But anyone who goes through Jeremiah, or you go through the
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Minor Prophets, will find these odd little places where the scriptures all of a sudden address nations and cities that are not a part of the covenant people of God.
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They are outside God's covenant people. And yet there is, and I think a lot of people just skip over this stuff because they're like, that was a long time ago.
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I don't know where these people are anymore. And I don't really care. But there are all these sections where Babylon and Egypt and Philistia and all these, you know,
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Tyre and Sidon and there's just, you can find them all over the place. And since most people don't know much about the geography of the
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Old Testament world, they don't really concern themselves about it. But God, through a prophet, sends a word of warning that God's judgment is going to come upon them.
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And sometimes it's because of how they've treated God's covenant people. Sometimes it is. And Jesus, woe to those who offend even the least of these and all the rest of that stuff.
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But some of the other things that are said aren't about that. In fact, there's this stuff about justice and there's this stuff about oppressing widows and orphans and stealing from people and engaging in military campaigns and murder and sexual immorality and the promotion of idolatry.
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And it seems like God warns these nations that when you break my law, judgment will come upon you.
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And so here we are. We are now in a nation that has just, in a short matter of years, thrown off the restraint of Judeo -Christian morality.
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Just thrown it off. Just said we don't want it. We're tired of it dragging on us.
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We want to be able to have sex the way we want to have sex with whom we want to have sex. And we don't want these restraints anymore.
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And we don't believe that the greatness of this nation was the result, even though if they knew anything about history and if there's one thing
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I can say about young people today, they don't know history and don't care about history.
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But if you were to read, even as recently as the Second World War, the official proclamations of the leaders in Britain or in the
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United States, there was much discussion, much discussion of the role of God in the blessing and pursuit of liberty and freedom and peace and everything else.
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But we don't want to think about that anymore. And so all the blessings we've had and the prosperous economy and the fact we haven't had wars on our land since the 1860s, it's not a blessing of God.
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That's just our own wisdom, you see. We've just been good. All that's been thrown off.
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Just all thrown off. And the results, well, the results are obvious.
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And so, as it says here, even as they increasingly decide, they either support or do not oppose making it the law of the land.
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If we have, if those prophetic pronouncements of judgment in the minor prophets and the major prophets in the
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Old Testament were valid because those nations had sinned against God's law as nations, what are we supposed to say?
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Was that just back then? Is it okay now? What changed?
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Unfortunately, the vast majority of evangelicals have not even given thought to such things. Have not even given thought to it.
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Now, Keller goes on to say here, there's a tendency to say, where are evangelicals going? I think they're going to look more and more politically, actually, like conservative
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Roman Catholics and like African Americans. I think that's where they're going, Keller said. I don't understand any of that.
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Continuing, but the inertia of the Bible keeps them from, I think, getting really very liberal when it comes to theology and social ethics.
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Keller clarified that, quote, you can believe homosexuality is a sin and still believe that same -sex marriage should be legal, end quote.
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This is the argument that some, this is not a quote here. This is the author again. This is the argument that some religious conservatives are already beginning to make and looks likely to be the position that most evangelicals end up settling on.
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Articles on changing attitudes among GOP youth illustrate the move towards separating government -sanctioned marriage and church -sanctioned marriage.
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Let me read that quote again. You can believe homosexuality is a sin and still believe that same -sex marriage should be legal.
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Now, again, I, we're hearing that a lot. The article is correct in identifying that as being a perspective that is definitely out there.
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So is that simply a statement that homosexuality is a sin, therefore same -sex marriage is sinful?
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It is not blessed by God, but in a pluralistic society that decides to allow it, that's like saying abortion should be legal or adultery should be legal or what?
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I don't know. But I would like to hope that somewhere in those comments, there was a statement that said that if same -sex marriage is legal, it should also be legal for Christians to say such profanation, profaning of a
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God -ordained institution will bring the judgment of God.
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That's necessary. It's got to be there. If you don't say that, you're not speaking the truth.
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Well, I was going to say, and you made the point, what's the difference between that and a Roman Catholic? We see politicians all the time say, well, you know, abortion's bad, and I'm a good
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Roman Catholic, and I, you know, but I don't want to force my religious beliefs into the political realm, you know?
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Yeah, we get pretty disgusted with Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden when they proclaim their orthodoxy as Catholics and then do everything in their power to promote the exact opposite of Roman Catholic teaching.
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We go, that's hypocrisy. It's exactly the word I was thinking of. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy, and they can see it when they look in the mirror.
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Don't tell me otherwise, you know? Oh, there's no question about it. So how can an evangelical say homosexuality is a sin, which, by the way, as I said, could not even be allowed into the discussion before the
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Supreme Court? The morality of the act, it's now a given.
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It's now a given. Wow, people are filling the channel with quotes from the
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Old Testament about— I was going to say, in listening to it myself, I just felt like the class status designation is already there by default in the discussion.
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Yeah. And that's 90 percent of the ground right there. It is. There's no question about it.
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So I don't know how you can believe homosexuality is a sin and still believe the same -sex marriage should be legal unless you believe that the laws of the land can be directly opposed to God's law and that that's okay, or you're just saying that in a pluralistic society that's going to happen, but it is our duty then to call that nation to repentance for having those laws.
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Because it sounds like what they're saying is, we're going to stop talking about this. Once the fight's over, we're supposed to shut up and allow that which is evil to be called good.
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I don't see how this doesn't force the real Christian Church into a defensive posture against the government and society, and the only message we can have at that point, and not be hypocrites, is repent and a loud call to repentance.
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And I mean, otherwise, what light are we shining here? What's the point? I don't know.
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Privately, some conservatives say they're waiting to see what the Supreme Court decides in June before they make a tactical retreat.
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But regardless of the court's decision, conservatives will likely conclude they have lost the broader cultural argument, especially among younger
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Americans, over the legality of gay marriage. Excuse me, there hasn't been an argument. If you think what's going on in Facebook and Twitter is an argument, you don't know what an argument is.
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An argument requires thought. Meme pictures are not arguments, for crying out loud.
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Movies are not arguments. Rock stars are not arguments. We haven't lost an argument, because the argument hasn't been allowed to happen.
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The argument ahead, then, will largely be over the question of religious liberty, and whether moral objections to homosexuality within religious faiths deserve to be protected, and to what extent.
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I'll read that again. The argument ahead, then, will largely be over the question of religious liberty, and whether moral objections to homosexuality within religious faiths deserve to be protected, and to what extent.
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Wow. Wow. I've been saying it for a long time.
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We are now cultural heretics. And cultures treat heretics pretty badly.
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Culturals, they really do. It's just a matter of time. We were talking about this just the other day. Just a matter of time after this unfolds, before the first guy and guy walk to the largest church in their town and demand that the pastor marries them.
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And when the pastor refuses, here comes the lawsuits. And it will domino from there.
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Now, there is a discussion here about—it says, Keller devoted most of his energy at the
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EPPC forum to laying the groundwork for greater tolerance of the evangelical view, which, of course, was once the only view in our society.
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He cited author Jonathan Rauch, who has helped pioneer the arguments in favor of gay marriage, and said
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Rauch himself has acknowledged that, it's really pretty obvious the Bible has a problem with homosexuality, end quote.
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Rauch's exact words in his December 2010 column for The Advocate were this, quote, Unlike white supremacism, disapproval of homosexuality is still intrinsic to orthodox doctrines of all three major religions, end quote.
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Rauch continued, That will change, and is already changing. Younger evangelicals are much more accepting of same -sex relations than are their parents.
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But for now, it is a fact we must live with, end quote. Keller did not seem to share
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Rauch's conclusion that a change in evangelical belief is inevitable. But he emphasized Rauch's point that even if there is a change, it will take a long time.
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He argued that for the foreseeable future, many adherents of the evangelical faith will not abandon their religious views of homosexuality, even if increasing numbers of evangelicals support legal rights for gay couples.
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Keller continued at some length to expand on Rauch's point. If you say to everybody, anyone who thinks homosexuality is a sin is a bigot, he says, you're going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the
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Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You're basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door,
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Keller said. And he says that's not going to happen very fast. Why not?
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It's happening very fast right now. Now he hopes it happens now. And this is where it got strange.
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I guess this is Keller talking about Rauch. And he says that's not going to happen very fast. Now he hopes it happens eventually.
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He did say that. But he says, I think this is Keller talking about Rauch. This was rather unclear. But he says to think that in two or three decades, the needle, how many white supremacists are there anymore that are really out there?
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Not many. And to think that the same thing is going to happen about reservations to homosexuality is just la -la land.
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Keller later in the session came back to Rauch and specified how long he thinks any change would take. He says, if Orthodox faith does morph to the place where people still have that high view of the text, there are still people to book, and we've completely embraced homosexuality as one way of loving and married, if that does happen, it will take a long time, a very long time, not the sort of thing that could happen in 20 years or 50 years, in which case we need to learn to live together,
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Keller said. Now, I don't know how you can have a high view of the text, be a people of the book, and not allow the book to define what loving relationships are.
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It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. None.
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None at all. Anyway, I'm actually going to be on the
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Janet Mefford show on Monday, I believe, to talk about this particular discussion with Timothy Keller at the
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EPPC. So I'll have more to say at that particular point in time.
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I'm just going to read it again. We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.
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Avarice, ambition, revenge would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net.
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Our constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
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There was another one in here somewhere, was very interesting, where he talked about debt, national debt, and said, look at what has happened to other nations.
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We will not long last if we if we engage in that kind of thing. And it's like, well, OK, some are prophetic.
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Some are prophetic. John Adams, U .S. diplomat, politician, founding father of the
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United States. It's true. 877 -753 -3341 is the number.
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And we do have a phone call, I guess. So I guess we'll go ahead and take that. And depending on other calls, move on to another subject from there.
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Let's talk with Steve. Hi, Steve. How's that going? How are you? Doing good. And it's hard listening to.
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I actually want to thank you for you took a call from someone who was dealing with on Tuesday.
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He said he had a libertarian friend that really took that position that you're kind of describing about why should we care?
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And, you know, you actually your response to him gave me some reason to go back and kind of do my.
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I was going to working on a blog post about basically kind of the same thing, although I'm not like an extreme libertarian, but man,
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I really struggle with just the reality that, like you said, this is it's common and we're not going to be able to stop it.
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So I wonder if, you know, should we not devote all of our energies on the gospel side of things?
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And, you know, our message needs to be strong and unswerving, but it just feels like we're putting a sword into the other side's hand to, you know, to cut our throats with the longer we focus on the political side of things.
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Well, I think for every generation, I think one of the reasons that you've seen the decay in evangelicalism is because of the fact that every generation, our only call is to proclaim the gospel.
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It's our only call is to evangelize. And we have such a narrow definition of what evangelism is.
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Evangelism is not just standing on a street corner passing out a tract. As Paul said to the
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Romans, I want to evangelize you. Well, it was a church for crying out loud. So to preach the whole counsel of God, I preached an installation service this past weekend in New York for my good friend
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Doug McMasters, and I used the text from Acts 20 where Paul says,
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I am innocent of the blood of all men because I did not hesitate to proclaim to you the full counsel of God.
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Well, we haven't been proclaiming the full counsel of God because we've been thinking that these political alliances and everything else is how we're somehow going to, you know, promote our cause or whatever else it might be.
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And so I just think we're going to be forced back to the basics because we're living in a culture where this is, you know, things have changed.
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The foundations have gone. We, you know, people blame us. Well, in some ways that's true.
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I mean, there's obviously things to look at in regards to the church and how, but I like to try to make the distinction between the church and the external church, because there is a large amount of religiosity in the
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United States that has nothing to do with Christian faith in any way, shape, or form. But very much like how we get the crusades dropped on our doorstep, we're the ones that have to foot the bill for it.
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And I think that guys like you, Todd Friel, is, you know, I think getting it that, I mean, the sooner we can take away the argument of, well, you're oppressing my rights, you're, you know, you're oppressing my rights, the sooner we can say, well, actually, no, but let me talk to you about the real issues,
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I think that that's probably the best bet that we have. The real issue for anyone, the real issue for anyone is that the wrath of God abides upon you, what are you going to do about it?
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Precisely. That's the real issue. And when we stop saying that, and there are many people who would tell us we shouldn't say that, there are many people who believe that Jesus' approach doesn't work today.
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There are many people who believe that all we should be talking about is, you need to have a friendship with Jesus.
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Well, that's nice, but why do you need to have a friendship with Jesus? Jesus actually answered that question.
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A lot of people tell us today, we shouldn't answer that question. And that's why the things that you've, the articles you're reading, like,
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I kind of, I'm kind of in that direction, but I don't like the, the spin that I would put is, we need to proclaim that the wrath of God abides on you, and we're not able to even get that message out, because all they're hearing is our vote in the political sphere.
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Yeah, it was interesting, I was talking to someone in Dublin, and he asked me, are you a
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Protestant? Now, I already knew that that is, in Dublin, is a political question.
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It's not a religious question. And so, I provide the historical background.
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But yeah, you have to know these, you have to know what words mean in your culture. And there's no question that today, you know, the political thing can very frequently get in the way.
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But at the same time, we have to recognize the Gospel has ramifications to a society.
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And if we back off on those things, we're not being faithful to our calling, we're not being salt and light, and we're just not being obedient, and we need to be obedient.
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And that's my question is, are those really our only two options? Either back off and not talk about it, or do what we've been doing, which is clearly not turn the tides.
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I think that the third option is, we still talk about it in the public square, but we really go full bore on the preaching side of things.
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And it seems to me like we're falling out of one ditch, and a lot of people are falling into the other with capitulation.
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And, you know, it's like, the last thing I want to do is fall victim to just naked pragmatism at the same time, you know?
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Well, you're not going to fall victim to naked pragmatism by proclaiming the
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Gospel amongst a people that are under the judgment of God. I mean, if God were to graciously pour out repentance upon our land, wonderful.
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But the reality is that if we look at the Old Testament paradigm, there were lengthy periods of time when beleaguered prophets proclaimed
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God's truth and suffered. Jeremiah ended up in the miry clay, and I think your coffee's done.
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Or your Hot Pocket, one of the two, I'm not sure which. Now you're making me hungry.
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But, you know, that's what happened. And there was a period of time during which that took place.
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And the question is, how many are going to be faithful? How many are not going to bow the knee to Baal? There are only 7 ,000.
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You know, that's what we're facing. And people who are a quote -unquote part of the
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Christian movement, simply because it was popular to be so, man, I think the none category is going to be huge 10 years from now.
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It's going to be huge. But you know what? I don't think that's a bad thing, because all that means is the polls are going to more closely reflect the reality.
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Because I think the 50 % nuns that'll show up 10 years from now, that extra 30 % in there might be quote -unquote loosely related to some quote -unquote religion here, but they're not
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Christians. So let's have some accuracy here. I think that's a good thing.
50:59
I think it's a good thing. Hypocrisy is never a good thing. When theology matters, you know, if we as Reformed folks must have to ask, is
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God bringing on some much -needed persecution and purging? You know, he's wanting to purify his bride, and the
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Lord knows that it needs it. Yeah, yeah. And that immediately raises all the questions in everyone's minds, what would happen to me if, and I've started saying this,
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I've said this on the program, I'm going to say it again, because I have to preach to myself at this point. The only power the world has over any one of us is the power we give to the world by loving it, by loving the things of the world.
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That's the only power the world has over us. If we don't love our life, if we don't love our things, the world cannot stop us, cannot silence us.
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But if we love those things, then we will be willing to compromise because then we are granting power to the world.
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And I know the truth of that. I know the truth of that. But we also have to experience it.
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Sure. So, Steve, everyone in the audience is now asking the question, what are you about to partake of?
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Oh, oatmeal for my driving job. Oatmeal for your driving job. We had, in channel, there were people going, is it a hot pocket?
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Is he going to burn his mouth because he's not paying attention, because he's still listening carefully to what
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I'm saying? Or was it a coffee? We just couldn't tell. Oh, there's coffee in there, too.
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Oh, there's coffee in there, too. Okay. All right. There you go. There you go. So now everyone in the channel can relax and we all know what's going down.
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All right, Steve, thanks for your call. Thank you, Dr. White. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. I just want to point out here, now that we've gone from being very serious to something light here.
53:14
Well, I don't know that he had light oatmeal. Yeah. That may have been the heavy one. I'd like to make sure that Algo and Tiquid and all the rest of the guys who roam the
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Catholic Answers forums, just keep on the lookout for the post that will inevitably occur after this program about how
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James White hates nuns. He hates nuns while eating kittens.
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Definitely, probably will appear there. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
53:44
That's probably going to happen. We don't have any phone calls, do we? I guess sometimes the topic is heavy.
53:58
And I had something else. I actually have a whole thing. I'll be honest with you.
54:05
Sometimes trying to bridge from one topic to another just can't be done.
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I'm sorry, the clutch doesn't go down far enough. The old transmission just can't do it.
54:23
How in the world could someone suggest to me how I could have transitioned from this discussion of the society and all the rest of that stuff to responding to Bassam Zawadi on the subject of Surah 5 and the fact that a lot of my
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Muslim friends, including Bassam, just can't seem to understand what I'm saying. I think you sort of have to start the program out with that to be able to make the transition or use a break, a complete hard break.
54:58
I think that's the only way to do it. You got a phone call. You said no?
55:05
Just said no. But oh, wait, even worse than going to... Oh, oh, okay.
55:12
So it's a completely different topic than what we've been on today. Totally, totally different. Maybe a biblical text or something like that.
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I don't know. Well, anyway, I did a post on the blog.
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And by the way, is the blog going to be looking different too? No, it's still going to have the same colors and all that kind of stuff?
55:36
Well, as the blog, as the website redesign is slowly turning along,
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WordPress, which we have not been using, is our goal to basically do stand up an entirely new site using the
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WordPress content management system. And that will have a radically different look.
55:58
But WordPress also functions as a blog, just like Nucleus, the stick in the rock we currently use, does.
56:06
And I happen to throw out, since things are going so slowly in the development side of the other, hey, why can't we just go ahead and do what we're doing with Nucleus with WordPress?
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So no one will really be able to tell the difference, except those of us that write blogs will be using
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WordPress now, and it'll be easier to put images in and stuff like that. When we switch over to the
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CMS, right now we're just going to try to basically take all the text and content that we've moved from Nucleus over to WordPress and switch the two out to where you're becoming more familiar with WordPress and you guys are using it to do all the blogging with.
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Most people won't even notice it. They should not notice the difference. All right, then forget everything I just said.
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I hope they don't notice the difference that way, because it could be really ugly.
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Then forget everything I just said. I was just figuring, since I had been told that I need to get ready to use
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WordPress, that you all might be seeing a difference. This affects you guys, and publicly shouldn't have an effect.
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All right. Okay, well, but eventually you will be seeing a new website, and if you've seen the store, then you know it's going to look a lot different, and I'm looking forward to all of that as well.
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Anyway, I think, you know, I didn't bring it up fast enough to be able to answer this question.
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I may not be able to do this before the music comes up, but I think we're good next week. Yes, we are good next week, second and fourth.
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It's the week after that that is going to be interrupted on Thursday, because as the banner ad on the blog says,
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I'm going to be speaking in Honolulu, Hawaii. So I'll be flying out there, I believe, on the 11th of April.
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So next week, we are good to go on the second and the fourth. I will be, as I said, doing the
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Janet Mefford show on the first, which is April Fool's Day.
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And also going to be recording the Reform podcast on Monday as well. And I just got my first invitation to do a, this being
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Canada, the radio interview on the new book, which hopefully I will be seeing in just a matter of weeks.
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Excited about that. Much, much going on later on in the year, but we'll talk about that later. Thanks for listening.
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God bless. I stand up for the truth, won't you live for the
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Lord, because we're pounding on, pounding on, waiting by the door. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
59:21
If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602, or write us at P .O.
59:27
Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
59:32
World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N .org, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.