Response to Liberation Theology

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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.
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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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Theology matters and today we're going to see just how important theology is when it comes to how we understand the purpose of the Christian faith.
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Very recently there was a video that made the rounds online of a man by the name of Ibram Kendi.
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The video I'm looking at it actually says, Woke Guru Ibram X Kendi.
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So I hope that I'm saying the name correctly or in the proper way and the statement that he made was regarding something called liberation theology and he compared liberation theology, which he defines as the proper Christian understanding of theology, with what he would reject, something he calls Savior theology.
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And I want you to listen to what he's saying because this is gaining traction in many churches.
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It's nothing new, it's been around for a long time, but it is gaining traction with a lot of people who are woke in their theology.
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This really is a big part of woke Christianity and I have to make mention of this because I noticed it right before I began to record today's program that Dr.
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James White has also, on the dividing line, made comments about the video that I'm about to mention and since I noticed it before I went on to record, my encouragement to you is if this short interaction that I give today, you know my show is only 10-15 minutes a day, if my short interaction with this whets your appetite and you want to go deeper into this subject, I would definitely encourage you to go listen to Dr.
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White and the dividing line on this subject.
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So without any further delay, we're going to listen to Ibram X Kendi's statements and then we will interact with them.
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Here you go.
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Liberation theology, in other words, Jesus was a revolutionary and the job of the Christian is to revolutionize society, that the job of the Christian is to liberate society from the powers on earth that are oppressing humanity.
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Everybody understand that? So that's liberation theology in a nutshell.
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Savior theology is a different type of theology.
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The job of the Christian is to go out and save these individuals who are behaviorally deficient.
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In other words, we're to bring them into the church, these individuals who are doing all of these evil, sinful things and heal them and save them.
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And then once we've saved them, we've done our jobs.
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And to me, anti-racist fundamentally reject savior theology that goes right in line with racist ideas and racist theology in which they say, you know what? Black people, other racial groups, the reason why they're struggling on earth is because of what they're behaviorally doing wrong.
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And it is my job as the pastor to sort of save these wayward black people or wayward poor people or wayward queer people.
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That type of theology breeds bigotry.
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And so to me, the type of theology of liberation theology breeds a common humanity, a common humanity against the structures of a power that that oppress us all.
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Now, I imagine for many of you, that was maybe something new, maybe something you've never heard before.
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I know that when I taught systematic theology in Sunday school a few years ago at our church, we went through various types of theological systems and I brought up liberation theology.
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And many of the students in the class, when I asked, have you ever heard? Because, you know, many people have heard of different types of theology.
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And when I when I mentioned liberation theology, a lot of the students maybe had heard of it, but not really understood what it was and even what, you know, how it affected different churches and how it was related down through the ages.
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And ultimately what Ibram Kendi, I think I'm saying his name right.
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I hope I am.
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I'm certainly not intending to to mistake.
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If I am making a mistake, but he this this person who you just heard speak identifies liberation theology as essentially the what what we might we might have called it at one point, social gospel theology, the idea that the purpose of Christianity is to make a social impact.
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It is to raise up the oppressed.
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It is to eliminate the oppressive power structures that are in the world and to come along and provide the world with social solutions to problems that happen because of inequalities.
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And this is the issue that is the main issue.
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This is the focus.
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It's not about sin.
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It's certainly not about salvation because he compares it to salvation theology, savior theology, and he says that's wrong.
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It's not about sin.
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It's not about salvation.
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It's about oppression.
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And it's about pulling people out of oppression and eliminating oppressors.
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And essentially it's about establishing equality.
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And for some people, that sounds really good for some people that really scratches them where they itch because they say this is the problem in the world.
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The problem of the world is not sin.
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The problem in the world is not hatred of God.
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The problem in the world is not disobedience to God's word.
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The problem in the world is that there are the haves and have nots.
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And the goal is to eliminate that inequity.
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The goal is to eliminate that discrepancy.
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The goal is to bring a balance to the world.
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And that is Christian's goal.
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And that is what we should be focused on.
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And we should be eliminating inequalities.
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And furthermore, the the savior view of Christianity, as this person described, reinforces inequalities.
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It reinforces the idea that there are some behaviors that are wrong.
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There are some behaviors that are not to be encouraged.
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There are some behaviors that are to be to be called out and to be and to be treated as wrong.
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And he you know, he and he named he it's interesting that he equated.
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Being a person who is of a different race to being a person of a different sexual sexuality.
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You know, he mentioned people that were black and then he in almost the next breath mentioned people that were queer.
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And that was his term that he used.
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So it's it's interesting.
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The point that he's making is that Christianity isn't about salvation from sin.
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Christianity is about eliminating oppression.
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And here's the thing that we have to look at, first of all, when we consider this whole argument is that he is not making a biblical argument, even though I am sure that there are places in scripture that he might go to try to point to places where Jesus stood up to people in power or where Jesus, you know, dealt with people who were poor and helped people who were in bad situations.
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Certainly there are there are places that he might go to appeal for his argument.
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But understand this, the heart of arguments like this are not based in scripture.
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Even if he could appeal to one or two passages taken possibly out of context, he is not making a biblical argument and he does not care.
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Understand that he doesn't care that he's he's not making a biblical argument because that's not his purpose.
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It we have gotten so far down the rabbit hole of bad theology that it doesn't matter if people are making biblical arguments as long as their arguments are.
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Are satisfying the the desires of the modern woke system that sees everything through the paradigm of race, sees everything through the paradigm of inequality, sees everything through the lens of this this idea that there there are people who are inherently oppressive.
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There are people who are inherently oppressed said, and therefore the oppressive must be eliminated and the oppressed must be exalted.
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And there must be a balance brought and inequalities must be removed.
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That is that that's the point.
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It doesn't matter what the Bible says.
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That's the key to all of this.
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Those people that are in the woke movement and I've heard their defenses, I've seen them write out their defenses and oftentimes their defenses, they make little appeals to scripture here and there, but they are not biblical.
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Just that that is the plain truth.
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And then when he describes the savior theology, which certainly is seeking to attack biblical Christianity, he does not define biblical Christianity.
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He doesn't define because, again, when he says the goal is for the pastor to go to black people or queer people or whoever and and change their behavior.
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That is not in any way, shape or form a proper description of biblical evangelism.
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It is not a proper description of biblical ethics or how we do biblical ethics.
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This is all false.
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He is, first of all, describing a system that he adheres to liberation theology that is unbiblical.
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And then he is given a false understanding of what he calls savior theology, which is certainly the theology that he would say that I hold to and that all other biblical evangelicals hold to.
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But it's wrong because of the way he describes it.
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He is not describing biblical theology as what he says is savior theology.
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It just simply is not that.
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And let me just explain why, because there is in no way, shape or form an attempt to go out into the world and say, you know what, we need to save black people because they're black or we need to save this person because they're this or this person because they're that.
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The reality is the Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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That is all white people, all black people, all Asian people, all queer people, whatever, whatever category you want to put people into.
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The apostle Paul breaks down all walls of category when he says that we have already charged that they are all under sin.
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Jew and Greek alike are all under sin.
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And he said in the language of scripture, that means all men.
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That means it doesn't matter.
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It's either Jew or Gentile, Jew or Greek.
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You're one or the other.
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And if you're not, if you're in that category, you're a sinner and nobody's not in that category.
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So we are all under sin.
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All have turned aside.
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All have gone their own way.
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Everyone is a sinner.
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No one seeks for God.
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There's none who does good.
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No, not even one.
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And that's the point, that we are all sinners.
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And so there's not an evangelist in the world that I know or that I've ever seen who says, you know what, I'm only going to go and talk to black people because they're wrong for being black.
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That's stupid.
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That's not the way that this works.
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And Ibram Kendi ought to be ashamed of himself for even insinuating such a thing, because that's not true.
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Nobody goes and says, oh, we're only going to go evangelize homosexuals.
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No, that's not true.
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That's not how it works.
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Now, we do look at a situation and we say, if we have people that are in a particular sinful situation, we would call that person to repentance.
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But we are not calling them to repentance of only that one sin.
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We're saying you need to repent of sin, all sin, and you need to turn to Christ.
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I'll tell you a quick story.
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A few years ago, we were at the fishing hole, which is our evangelism booth.
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We do it at the fair every year.
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We go out and hand out tracks and a lady walks by and she screams out to us, I'm a lesbian.
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I'm going to hell and I don't care.
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And she laughs and she walks away.
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Well, I holler back to her.
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I said, I said, I care because I don't want you to go to hell.
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Well, the next day we're at the fair again.
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This lady is there again.
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And this time she's standing at a distance from us.
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And one of our men who is handing out tracks just happens to walk over and hand her track.
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And she asks the question to him.
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She goes, do you really think I'm going to go to hell just because I'm gay? And this man who handed her the track wasn't comfortable having that conversation with her.
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He said, do you mind talking to my pastor? She says, no, I'll talk to anybody.
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So he came and got me and I walked over there and talked to her and her first words out of her mouth.
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She goes, I've been told my whole life that if I'm gay, I'm going to go to hell.
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Is that true? And I said, well, let me ask you a question before we even address that.
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I said, have you ever told a lie? And she says, oh, yeah, I've told lots of lies.
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I said, well, then you're a liar.
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And she goes, well, yeah, I guess so.
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And I said, well, the Bible says in Revelation 21, 21, 8, that all liars will have their place in Lake of Fire.
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I said, so whether you're gay or not, you're a sinner.
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I said, and if you are a sinner, you are going to face the wrath of God if you are outside of Jesus Christ.
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And her face changed.
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Everything changed in her face because she understood at that moment that it wasn't just her homosexuality that was separating her from God.
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It was her sin in Toto that separates her from God.
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And apart from Jesus Christ, every one of the sins that she has ever committed against God is going to take her to hell.
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Not just the fact that she's gay.
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So when Ibram X, Kendi, whatever his name is, says that, you know, well, we're just going around trying to change people's behavior.
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That is wrong.
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Now, do we call people to repentance? Yes.
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But we call all men to repentance.
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The Bible says God has commanded all men everywhere to repent.
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The Bible says that we are to preach repentance towards God and faith in Jesus Christ.
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So when a person is evangelized, whether they be white, whether they be black, whether they be Asian, whether they be anything, any group that they want to associate with, LGBTQ, whatever, we call all men everywhere to repent of sin and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.
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And is that Savior theology? Well, certainly not as Ibram X, Kendi has described it, because his mocking of Savior theology, his mocking of understanding biblical theology just goes to show that his woke understanding is totally wrong.
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And unfortunately, it is very common that such a wrong thought is popular in churches today.
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And that such a person is allowed to speak in what appears to be a church is a shame.
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And so that is a short look at liberation theology and how he would describe Savior theology and what the Bible actually teaches.
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And that is we do need a Savior.
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And there is only one Savior.
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The Bible says there's no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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So my encouragement to you today is if you do not know Christ, you do need a Savior.
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You are desperate for a Savior.
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And I would encourage you to turn from your sins and turn to Christ.
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He is a much better Savior than you are a sinner.
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Thank you for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
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As you go about your day, remember this.
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Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth and the life.
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And no one comes to the Father except through him.
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May God be with you.