September 7, 2020 Show with Phil Johnson on “Can Critical Race Theory Be Reconciled With Scripture?”

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This is Chris Arnzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Labor Day on the seventh day of September 2020 and this is

Monday September 7th and I am thrilled to have back one of my favorite returning guests in fact

I'm still very confident he holds the title for the most interviewed guest in the history of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio since we first launched in 2005 his name is

Phil Johnson and he's the executive director of the media ministry of Dr. John MacArthur pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley California and world -renowned

Bible teacher and author and teacher on television and radio and the

Grace to You ministry is one of the most valuable ministries in the media because it is certainly one that has not caved into the pressure of being politically correct and to softening the truth to spare the feelings of the masses and I thank

God for Grace to You ministries and I thank God for not only Dr. John MacArthur but also Phil Johnson our guest today we are going to be discussing can critical race theory be reconciled with scripture and it's my honor and privilege to have you back again on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Phil Johnson hey thanks for having me

Chris and if you could before we go into the the topic at hand and some even some additional information about Grace to You for the sake of our

Christian listeners that are perhaps very new Christians and haven't heard of Grace to You I think you would have to be a very new

Christian not to have heard of Grace to You and even some of those that are not Christians at all who listen to the show but before we do that if you could let our listeners know why we are not discussing a topic that we originally were going to at least discuss in part today and that is we were going to give an update on John MacArthur versus the state of California and all of the things that are going on at the hands of the governor and other authorities in California because of Grace Community Church's refusal to shut down their services or comply with other mandates that seem to be an intrusion on Christian freedom and liberty to worship as we please but if you could let us know why we're not going to be talking about that yeah because the case is still in litigation so the legal team have asked all of us who are connected with Grace Church not to make sort of public statements that talk about why and how and what's going on the last hearing was on Friday and the judge said he would make his he would take the case under advisement and make his ruling sometime this week so we expect of course no no earlier than tomorrow because today is a holiday the judge won't be there so we're just waiting for the next ruling and I'm sure people will be able to read about it in the news or see it even on Twitter as soon as the judge issues his ruling and we might even see dr.

MacArthur on one of the Fox programs or elsewhere as he has been the more frequent guests than ever they're discussing these things if very briefly but he's still been given a voice on there and we will be sure to give you updates as we can well

I'll let our listeners know for the sake of those who are probably a very tiny percentage in our audience who are unfamiliar with grace to you ministries let our listeners know about that yeah grace to you is the media ministry of John MacArthur our goal is to expand the scope of his teaching ministry using mass media as widely as possible so we are on radio on the internet pretty much everywhere media goes is even a television program grace to you weekly and just basically broadcasting

John MacArthur's teaching ministry as it comes from the pulpit of grace Community Church and if anybody wants to have more information about grace to you and where they can either watch the television program or hear the radio program or anything about the books written by dr.

John MacArthur and other valuable resources provided by dr.

MacArthur and grace to you and grace Community Church of Sun Valley California go to gty .org

gty .org which stands for grace to you and one of the reasons

I know that you wanted to discuss this critical race theory we have addressed this before on the show and we've addressed all things that come under the umbrella of the woke movement and the black lives matter movement and other

Marxist movements that have infiltrated even allegedly conservative and allegedly reformed

Christian churches and denominations and fellowships but one of the reasons is that our president has pleasantly surprised many folks who are opposed to these movements and who consider them dangerous by something that he recently did if you could pick up where I left off there yeah on Friday actually the president through the office of oh it's called the office of budget and management

I think issued a memo where he has canceled funding for all of the diversity and inclusion training which is basically sort of propagandist sessions to teach critical race theory to all government employees the government's been doing that for about a decade it started by an executive order of Barack Obama and they paid millions literally multiple millions every year of taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate people in critical race theory which is basically a kind of neo -marxist approach to identity politics and class warfare it's it's

I in my opinion it is the poisonous foundation under which all of the current unrest and rioting has more or less been fomented and so it's a truck put an end to it on Friday and he says that government agencies and then by the way they were doing these training sessions for the

FBI every government agency and from from now on government agencies won't be able to have those sorts of training sessions well praise

God and you have said that it's quite a shame and quite a blemish on the church and quite an embarrassment that this president of ours president of the

United States Donald Trump who I have a strong feeling you would agree with me in lacking confidence that he is a truly regenerate person and yet he has stepped up to the plate and had the courage to do something that many leaders in theological circles that you and I would travel in have not had the courage to do right in fact you contrast this move on Friday canceling the indoctrination of CRT from government employees contrast that with what occurred at the

Southern Baptist Convention national meeting two years ago and I in 2019 where they passed a resolution infamous resolution number nine declaring critical race theory a helpful analytical tool is the way they said it and of course you can see the influence of that in among Southern Baptist leaders in you know we refer to sometimes as Big Eva the large organizations like together for the gospel and the gospel coalition which have shifted their focus over the past five years so that now they talk really more about social justice and other issues that grow out of the critical race theory worldview they seem more concerned about that frankly than they do with gospel truth anymore so while this movement has been growing among evangelicals it's it's effects can be seen in the secular world because of ten years of indoctrination

I'm glad to see that finally ending at the government level I think this is a classic example where as Jesus said that the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light where you have a secular leader with with more showing more wisdom than some of our spiritual leaders have shown and why don't you give a little bit more detail on exactly what this critical race theory is like critical race theory is an expression it's a neo -marxist view of social issues racial issues in particular it did

Marxism Marxism looked at economic disparity and critical race theory has taken the

Marxist theory about economic disparities and applied it to race and so everything now you see this on the nightly news everything is a racial issue and if you disagree with certain policies whether they actually have anything to do with race or not you can be labeled a white supremacist or a racist or whatever for people who have never heard of critical race theory or they're interested in finding out what it is

I'll recommend the Wikipedia article I don't always recommend Wikipedia but I think it's helpful to get an overview of something like this and it's a pretty thorough discussion of critical race theory what's entailed in it and with lots of quotes from people who promote and propagate ideas borrowed from critical race theory but you've heard of intersectionality that's another term that gets thrown around a lot these days intersectionality is the notion that there are there are various ways to be oppressed in various levels of oppression and they're different for different people but it always has to do with the identity group it's it's not so much an individual thing as it is the group you belong to that defines how oppressed you are so that if you're a white person you could be the poorest person you know living in your car and yet a critical race theory says you benefit from white privilege and you need to check your privilege you are a racist you will always be a racist and so these ideas have become quite common and you're expected to sort of make a public confession of your your white privilege and renounce it it becomes almost a religion in fact

I wrote an article a few months ago I think I think it was titled wokeism is a religion or wokeism is a hateful religion was the title of it it's it's at my blog you could do a

Google search for that title wokeism is a hateful religion well I pointed out that this type of thinking that grows out of critical race theory has you know its own its own views of confession kneeling and you know reciting a prescribed profession confession whether it has its own rituals it has its even its own hymnology and it's become a kind of religion and that's one of the issues that leads to the president saying we're not going to do this kind of indoctrination for government employees because it really in effect becomes a kind of government establishment of a religious credo now you mentioned moments ago things that you consider to be a part or not just you but have been generally been a part of what has been nicknamed the

Big Eva can you repeat those groups that would be under that umbrella

I think I mentioned the gospel coalition together for the gospel isn't too big ones and it's interesting because the history of those two organizations in particular goes back about probably 15 years now they were founded in the in the later half of the the first decade of this new millennium and they were founded it seemed at the time to refute the dogmas of the emerging church movement the emerging church movement was a sort of left -leaning movement of disaffected evangelical young people who had grown up for the most part in pragmatic churches where you know the secret sensitive style religion where there was more entertainment than teaching while they went by the name evangelical they really didn't have a grasp of basic evangelical truths and the emergent generation began reading things a little more in -depth approach to Christianity and some of them were drawn back to you know medieval forms formalism and all that others were drawn to the notion of social justice and it was a hodgepodge of a whole lot of different ideas that all had one thing in common they wanted to deconstruct classic evangelicalism historic evangelicalism which

I would define as true evangelicalism what the term originally meant was it's a system of belief that centers on the gospel that says gospel truth is the center of everything that's what we need to cling to and that's what would keep us theologically straight if we do but evangelicals actually moved away from that and by the middle really of the 20th century

I think evangelicalism had become had come to mean something entirely different and if you if you you know

Google search for how to define evangelicalism you'll find there are there's a plethora of different definitions of what people think evangelicalism is and the movement itself became so broad and so shallow and so devoid of any real doctrinal conviction that when the emerging church came along they were they just wanted to dismantle that whole system but it ended up being an attack on pretty much every principle of orthodoxy as well and so the emerging church movement faded away and dissolved within within a decade as I predicted it would at the time

I wrote many blog posts about it and criticizing what they were doing what they were saying how they were attacking the authority of Scripture the historic

Christian faith and the movement died as was predictable but the thing that has survived is some of the ideas that they threw around and the main one is this whole idea of social justice that the gospel isn't complete with the story of Christ's death burial and resurrection as an atonement for sin but they say the other half of the gospel is social justice and the church needs to be fighting for social justice and it draws the church into all sorts of you know political realms and usually makes makes younger

Christians I think more sympathetic to leftist notions and so the idea of critical race theory is very appealing to someone who thinks this secular notion of social justice is part and parcel of the gospel and what happened in really five short years time is that these concerns about race and justice and all that have begun to overwhelm and and cloud the gospel message itself so these two organizations that were both founded as a response to the emerging church movement because they saw the emerging church movement beginning to assault even the doctrine of atonement the idea that Christ died as a substitute for sinners that was anathema to most in the emerging church movement and the founders of gospel coalition and together for the gospel wanted to defend the whole notion of substitutionary atonement which is a great goal

I was supportive of both movements when they began but when they took up the issue of social justice the same thing has begun to happen in those two groups as happened with the emerging church movement they've moved off message and we refer to that as big eva because that is

I think the biggest segment of the visible evangelical movement and there are lots of people

I think we think if you don't go along with the party line there if you if you're not sympathetic with being

Eva's thrust towards social justice then you're forever to be an outsider and in the minority and you lose your voice so there is that threat and then of course even in the secular realm critical race theory tends to address all of its adversaries by simply labeling them racist and once you acquire that label once somebody calls you a racist it really doesn't matter if you have a racist bone in your body or not if that label can be successfully attached to you in any kind of public propaganda or whatever regardless of whether there's any truth to it or not you forfeit your voice in public discourse so as a result people are afraid to take positions that have been associated with anything that's conservative or traditional or in our case biblical yeah we have to be clear that we are not vilifying everybody whose name is attached to either the gospel coalition or together for the gospel who may not even agree with the critical race theory or the woke movement or the black lives matter movement at all but for some reason they find a useful voice being a part of the internet media and the conferences that they offer obviously it's a debatable thing whether they should be doing that but I even know men who have vilified friends of mine for being parts of other things that occasionally will have some bad apples involved in them and they how dare can that person be a part of this or that conference and that kind of thing and those are things that good men will always debate about until we're in heaven

I think but right and I'm not talking about I'm glad you said that because to be clear not talking about individual people here

I've specifically refrained from mentioning anyone's name on that but I am talking about the direction those movements are going the message that comes from the organization what they put on the web what they put in in their tweets it's begun to be more and more focused towards issues of social justice and less and less on the message of Christ himself

I think that's an indisputable fact and that which is not to say as you said that everyone connected with those organizations is is therefore you know guilty in some way

I think there are lots of good I know there are lots of good men who are and have been associated with the movement but the drift of the movement is a matter of concern and and I think the more clearly we say that the better the message will come across now what do you think is the reason why men who are it seems on the surface at least to be theologically orthodox to be even theologically affirming the same doctrines of sovereign grace that you and I affirm and that Dr.

MacArthur affirms and that many people or if not all of those who signed the paper on social justice which is a a very strong critique of the social justice movement and obviously connected with that the woke and black lives matter movements why is it that some of these men even those that may have been on the same platform with you at conferences where you have been sitting there listening to them speaking only amen amen and enjoying fellowship with them why on earth are they endorsing these things yeah you know

I'm reluctant to speculate as to motives but I think there are a lot of genuinely good people who think somehow because they haven't they don't really maybe contemplated the issue carefully enough or studied it deeply enough they think that because the word expression social justice has the word justice in it it's the same thing as biblical justice but it isn't and many of us have made that argument repeatedly why why does it seem to penetrate

I don't know uh but I think things are changing I think what you're seeing seeing in the in the even in secular society right now is a shift because it's becoming more and more obvious that all of the talk about critical race theory social justice all the propaganda that we've been fed has not done anything to quell social unrest but everything to stir it up there's more racial animosity in America now than there was 15 years ago things aren't getting better because of all this talk about social justice it's getting worse and um you know the narratives are easily debunkable but the problem with you know these postmodern times in which we live is that logic really doesn't matter as much as the dominant narrative you don't have to prove your case logically anymore you just have to have enough people repeating the narrative and um uh is so we've got a generation of people who really haven't been uh conditioned to be critical thinkers and what you're seeing is the effect of that and it goes right into even evangelical leadership where there are lots of evangelical leaders who

I think don't have the capacity because they've never really learned or or practiced critical thinking and isn't one of the reason why this is strange that biblically solid men uh theologically sound and faithful men are endorsing these things especially those who have a passion to oppose racism as that these very movements are endorsing racism itself uh it's amazing to me how anyone could be blind to the very painfully and palpably obvious fact that the folks who are leading these movements are promoting racism they're promoting the idea of judging people by the color of their skin by the lack of their melanin content by the lightness of their appearance uh rather than the content of their character as from the famous speech by martin luther king jr who who longed for a day then when men were judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin it's just it's just amazing to me how anyone could not see that this is obviously and I say that in all capital letters racism that they are promoting yeah but the the fact that you see that chris suggests that you haven't been uh thoroughly indoctrinated with critical race theory because one of the one of the principal tenets of critical race theory is the idea that you cannot be a racist if you are a member of the oppressed class if so black people can't be racist minorities can't be racist generally and uh racism is uh is an effective white privilege so it only goes one way and so you can despise somebody because of his skin color if you're not white uh but if you are white even if you don't despise somebody because of his his skin color you're susceptible to the charge of racism so it's redefined racism and um and even anti -racism which is what you just described as racism a critical race theorist would say that's anti -racism which you just described as anti -racism even though you know by the classic definition uh by any reasonable definition of racism it is racism or a person who may be a minority with darker skin to hate people other people because they're not members of his of his ethnic group uh you and I would say that's they would say no that's anti -racism we're we're simply responding to that's the proper way to respond to white privilege to hate it there's some videos on youtube that are just astonishing when you look at it this is the kind of thing that the presidential order bans look up some of the youtube videos that show these training sessions for critical race theory and you'll see that they're basically indoctrinating people to think in a kind of backward way about what racism is so that you may not hate anybody but but you're uh you're participant in uh systemic racism simply because of the color of your skin it's not anymore about the quality of your character it is all about the color of your skin and they don't see that as racism they see it as anti -racism it's simply a redefining of terms you can only do that in a in a post -modern approach to language and deconstruction but because we've got you know two or three generations thoroughly indoctrinated in post -modern ways of looking at language and reality where the narrative is what's important name your own reality and reality in fact is a social construct uh once you buy into all of that then it it seems to make perfect sense even though it's totally irrational well we have to go to our first break right now if anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com

as always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter obviously if you are opposed to the critical race theory and all connected movements you might be fearful of losing your job by speaking out publicly and identifying yourself well so we will we will grant your request to remain anonymous but uh feel free to remain anonymous if it's personal or private but please if it's not give us your first name city and state and country of residence we'd also like to hear from anybody who might wholeheartedly and aggressively agree with critical race theory they think that we're off the wall we're wrong we're racist well feel free to send in a question that's chris arnzen at gmail .com

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that's nasbible .com to place your order welcome back this is chris arnzen if you just tuned us in our guest today is phil johnson the executive director of john macarthur's media ministry grace to you we are talking about the theme can critical race theory be reconciled with the bible if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

chris arnzen at gmail .com please as always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the usa only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter that's chris arnzen at gmail .com

and phil i don't remember if this was something we discussed prior to the show or something you said on the air uh today but even if you did mention it on the air if you could go into more detail about how this discussion reflects on luke chapter 16 verse 8 the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light it had some connection to our president uh donald trump making a wiser and more biblically faithful stance against this stuff than many of our so -called christian leaders yeah i i think in order to uh terminate this sort of training in the government agencies it shows a great deal of wisdom you can see i think as as most people should be able to that uh all of the rhetoric about uh white supremacy and uh systemic racism and all the code words that you keep hearing these days this has done nothing to uh quell racial division it's done everything to make ethnic hostilities worse and worse and worse you see that every night on the news uh in the riots that are taking places place in american cities i think he realizes correctly that it's the the worldview that is at the foundation of this kind of violence and it's a destructive worldview it's uh it's uh actually moral insanity at its root and if we can see that it it amazes me that evangelical leaders so many evangelical leaders don't see it as clearly but evangelicals are talking about critical race theory as a valuable uh a valuable tool you know uh and so it is a classic example of what jesus was talking about when he said the sons of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light sometimes worldly people make decisions that are better and wiser than people who ought to know better and i think one of the reasons for that is the church tends to follow the world it's not what we're supposed to do and in fact we're commanded not to love the world not to imitate the world uh and scripture's full of commands like that and yet if you just survey the past 50 or 60 well you could actually go even further than that the past century of evangelical uh movement watch what the evangelical movement has done it evangelicals love to imitate the world they they change their church services so that uh instead of christian liturgy you know they're they're following whatever is popular in the world uh instead of preaching scripture they'll exegete the latest you know popular movie or novel or whatever and one of the besetting sins of the evangelical movement has been its tendency to imitate the world so maybe they'll imitate president trump's move on this and begin to back away from critical race theory i hope so yeah if you want a sample of what these critical race uh theory training seminars look like uh there's been one that's floating around on twitter the last couple of days it's actually a couple of years old it's by a woman named ashley shackleford who does lectures on uh inclusion and diversity the very kind of thing that president trump has just said taxpayer money shouldn't fund and there's a there's a video of her it's a short video but she's standing there in front of some whiteboards on which are written all white people are racist that's in large terms all white people are racist when the camera turns around you can see she's lecturing a group of white women who are nodding and smiling and you know following this and one of the most shocking things she says along the way is this and this is an exact quote from her she says i believe white people are born into not being human i believe white people are brown not being human she says white people are subhuman basically and and which of course is on the face of it as you said earlier that is racism but critical race theory says no if that comes from their oppressed class and she belongs intersectionally to multiple oppressed classes she's black she's a woman she's overweight all of that so she gets all these intersectional points she can say something like that and no one who's brought into critical race theory will dare tell her that's a racist thing to say well that sounds like it comes right out of lewis farrakhan's handbook because and believe me i'm not making this up lewis farrakhan and the nation of islam cult which is not even true islam they are guilty of shirk according to true muslims because they believe god is a black man and to believe that allah has any partners uh which would be any mixture of god and man at all is the worst sin you could ever commit but putting that aside uh the nation of islam believes that the white man the white race was created by a mad scientist in a laboratory and i'm not making that up so that well you know some of the some of the contemporary uh critical race theorists have actually said things that make lewis farrakhan sound like a moderate uh oh this one you want to give us some examples of that well she also uh in the same breath practically says that uh white people are demonic that we're we're raised and taught with demonic views and demonic tendency so stuff like that that's very common um and uh her white audiences are expected to confess the sin and um you know agree with her if you disagree you will be labeled a racist yourself let's go to some of our listener questions before we have to go to the midway break in fact i'll just go to one of these questions before the midway break uh we have john and banger main who says even though you have connected these woke and related movements with atheism and marxism obviously those who are christian among the supporters of these movements claim that the broader evangelical world has ignored or fallen short from addressing the theme of how sinful and wicked and damnable racism truly is so how do you respond to those who say we are merely trying to address an issue that seems to be ignored or that many pretend doesn't exist that people are thinking of themselves more highly of more highly than they ought which is forbidden by scripture and that they are indeed racist in looking down upon those of darker skin colors how do you respond phil to those who are claiming that they're just trying to follow the example of jesus uh in identifying uh bigotry and racial hatred as sin and then they're trying to do something about it well i think every every sane person would say actual bigotry actual racism is sin to hate someone because of the color of his skin that is sin i think it's a twisting of history to say that uh evangelicals have overwhelmingly been guilty of racism or pro -slavery or whatever slavery the the first major opposition to slavery in the world came from william wilberforce in england who was uh himself an evangelical and um evangelicals in general have always opposed uh the oppression of people based on skin color or ethnic background or whatever there have been people in evangelical circles who've been virulent racists no question about it we all deplore that i hope and no one wants to see the resurrection of jim crow um but i would say this is the mirror image of jim crow what's happening today with black lives matter and uh uh the the riots in the street the the the turnabout of uh society's values based on uh you know racial identity and identity politics itself is it suffers i think from the very same error as jim crow was based in identifying people according to whatever ethnic group they belong to or what how they look or whatever um that sort of identity politics is is simply its own brand of jim crow frankly and that's what it's going to lead to and that's why uh unrest in america is getting worse instead of better and all of this is based on a twisted history it's not it's absolutely untrue that evangelicals in general have shown a pattern of you know being racists um so i just i disagree with that reading of history i think it's totally wrong and i think if you read a bit about uh the evangelical luminaries who fought against slavery uh in fact ultimately slavery in the western world was done away with because of the influence of christianity amen and we will be going to our midway break right now and please be patient with us folks because this is the longer than normal break in our show because grace life radio 90 .1

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chris arnzen at gmail .com and as always give us your first name city and state and country of residence if you live outside the usa only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter don't go away we'll be right back with phil johnson chris arnzen host of iron sharpens iron radio here i want to tell you about a man i have personally known for many years his name is dan buttafuoco dan is a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer but not the type that typically comes to mind dan cares about people and is a theologian himself recently he wrote a book titled consider the evidence for the bible ravi zacharias wrote the foreword dan also has a master's degree in theology dan handles serious injury and medical malpractice cases in all 50 states he represents many christians in serious injury matters all over the country dan is an exceptional trial lawyer he wrote the test for the national board of trial advocacy and currently his firm has over 100 cases that have settled for 1 million dollars or more and in approximately 10 different states in illinois his lawyers had the fourth largest settlement in the state's history in new york his case involving a paralyzed police officer made the front page of the law journal if you have a serious personal injury or medical malpractice claim in any state i recommend that you call dan consultations are free there is no fee unless you win dan buttafuoco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878 1 -800 -669 -4878 or email me for dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail .com

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before we return to our discussion on critical race theory with our guest today phil johnson i just have a couple of announcements to make our friends at ligonier ministries contacted me today requesting that i make an announcement for them they have always been very supportive of iron sharpens iron radio and i do dearly miss dr rc sprawl that's for sure but they have asked me to announce that the ligonier ministries state of theology survey which provides insights on how americans view a wide range of christian beliefs well the comprehensive report providing key findings on beliefs about god truth the bible worship and ethical issues conducted by ligonier ministries along with lifeway research this survey which polled a national represent representative sample of u .s

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and put i need a church in the subject line that's also the email address where you can send in questions for our guest phil johnson the executive director of grace to you ministries the media ministry of dr john macarthur on our theme can critical race theory be reconciled with scripture that's chris arnson at gmail .com

chris arnson at gmail .com uh we have grady a faithful listener and faithful financial supporter of iron sharpens iron radio in ashborough north carolina grady says greetings brothers chris and phil i didn't even know what critical race theory was until the last together for the gospel conference that dr macarthur spoke at when did you realize this was trying to be pushed on the church well for me i think it was uh probably that same year in an earlier conference as i recall by uh the gospel coalition where they devoted virtually the entire conference if not literally the entire conference devoted to the issue of social justice and um the the idea of critical race theory kept coming up uh and that prompted me to look into it more i've heard the term for several years probably and i just never uh after the demise of the emerging church movement it didn't occur to me that this would become a major thrust among evangelicals even though i had predicted when the emerging church movement died i made the comment then that the movement may be dead but a lot of the ideas that they threw out there into the evangelical movement would be like so many dandelion seeds that uh that would ultimately sprout you know and and some of the same ideas that we fought against in the emerging church would would become popular evangelical concepts this is one of them i didn't really anticipate it i probably should have but um i began to look into it at that point and realized this is this is nothing more than neo marxism uh it has clear roots in in marxism and and uh atheistic left -wing theology it's just been imported into the church and and you know covered with a veneer of evangelical terminology but that's really what it is is leftist ideology attempting to find its way into the evangelical movement it's actually been being promoted by groups like sojourners for maybe more than 40 years but sojourners used to be kind of an outlier as far as evangelicals were concerned but now i would say they probably wreck they probably represent maybe even the dominant opinion among evangelicals today if you look at the evangelical movement well thank you grady always good to hear from you and we have an anonymous listener who says i am always greatly encouraged listening to pastor john macarthur as far as i understand he is convinced now that america is reaping the harvest of deacon of destruction for which it has sown romans 1 and says it will get worse do you think there will be a revolution in america uh well yeah i i think that is the pattern that's certainly the the pathway that the nation is on and the whole culture uh and i can't predict the future wouldn't pretend to there have been times in history like this uh where you know entire empires have been destroyed from within by their own degeneracy and you see that happening to america but there are other times in history where uh a huge decline like this is suddenly turned around through a revival of gospel influence and so i'm actually hoping for the latter and uh want to see evangelicals get back to proclaiming the gospel and get out of all the uh the you know political political stuff well thank you anonymous we have another anonymous listener who says i have for nearly my entire christian life benefited enormously from dr da carson's writings and speaking engagements i am baffled as to how he could be connected with these things should we stop reading and listening to dr carson should we contact him to voice our protest to this woke movement garbage what is your opinion because i know that dr macarthur has also shared a respect for dr carson as well yeah i'm reluctant to answer a question like that i would never write off a person completely just because he holds a troublesome opinion unless that becomes the very heart of his message i haven't really followed dr carson closely enough to know uh you know how much this dominates what he's saying what he's writing right now i would say though that it concerns me because he is one of the founders and most influential people in the gospel coalition and um the fact that the gospel coalition seems to be devoted to pursuing this direction uh at the cost of you know support from evangelical people who see the danger of it and i don't i don't i share the the listener's concern about why he doesn't see it and and why he hasn't used his influence to help try to turn it around but uh in the meantime my advice to my answer to the question would be i think you have to evaluate everything he writes on its own merits because it's true that some of what he writes is is quite good uh and so you know evaluate everything and hold fast to that which is good that that biblical principle applies to a question like this and in fact i think the listener has a good point at suggesting or asking if he should uh contact dr carson in any way uh he possibly can through either the gospel coalition or i don't know if he's still teaching at trinity evangelical divinity school in deerfoot field illinois um i'm not sure about that either but uh i mean contact him and say hey brother i love what you have contributed to the body of christ what are you doing you know isn't it isn't that completely legitimate and right thing to do it is it is it's of limited value but i think it's an important thing to do because uh one letter probably isn't going to change his mind or even arrest his attention but if enough people do that uh then i think there comes a point where uh someone like dr carson even has to has to step back and take a look at the big picture and maybe reevaluate the direction he's going yeah i i have no go ahead i'm sorry go ahead i was just going to say it can't hurt yeah i happen to share my listeners love for dr carson's writings and have benefited greatly have always been baffled by him being enamored by tim keller uh tim keller has never sat right with me even though a lot of my uh brothers who believe nearly identically to what i believe if not completely identically have have held dr keller in very high esteem i've never understood it although i'm not writing off everything he's said or written by any stretch of the imagination i just don't understand uh the affection for him at the level that it is being demonstrated and especially somebody's discerning as dr carson has appeared to be but uh now i've had him i've had dr carson on this show and ironically this is by the way years ago when i was broadcasting out of new york before this critical race theory was raising its ugly head in reform circles anyway and uh ironically it was about the same time that i also interviewed sabiti anyabwile and anthony bradley who are now movers and shakers in this movement who when i interviewed them nine years ago were completely opposed to the kind of rhetoric that is dominant in these things in fact they were both mocking the the mindset of these things nine years ago on my show and it's just it's a mystery uh especially when you have sabiti anyabwile writing a really phenomenal extraordinary book i think that from my recall i agreed with every word in the decline of african -american theology and he even traced the beginning of the decline to not only the 60s civil rights movement but even more so uh initially to the abolitionist movement uh when it became a secular rather than christian movement when it devolved into a secular movement he he lays the the fault of the decline of african -american theology at the root of the secularization of of the abolitionist movement uh to to where the the genesis of the decline began and i don't think he would ever say that publicly today yeah no i i agree and i've pointed out to i think as as long ago as four or five years ago i i wrote a blog post uh pointing out the discrepancy between what to be was saying in the early years of together for the gospel contrasted with what he's saying now he was saying then that it was if you get into all these social issues and everything you bought off message and uh and my answer was by his own standard what he was saying in the early days he's gone off message i recently saw a tweet from him uh i think just this weekend where he he said he regrets the years when uh evangelicals and himself were involved in uh theological discussions because he thinks that uh too argumentative and he wishes there was less uh argumentativeness now and i don't know if that means he wishes people would disagree with him less i don't know but i think anybody who dispassionately analyzes what he's written over his career can see a shift and not to pick on him i think the original question was about da carson and and i'll broaden it and say i think a lot of men in evangelical leadership have far too much concern for academic respectability uh what's going on in the in the trends of not only the the christian academy but the secular academy they don't want to do or say anything that is politically incorrect and so political correctness has far too much influence on what the leaders in the evangelical movement uh will say or do say that's why you see so few of these men are really courageous prophetic voices saying what nobody else is saying a lot of them simply echo what's already popular in the popular culture i think they have the misconception that somehow that's the way to win the world let's let's be what the world wants let's be what the world likes let's do what we see happening in the world and that goes back to the problem of pragmatism that i talked about in the early part of the first hour i think we've inherited after several generations of pragmatism a tendency far too much among evangelicals to uh to care what the world thinks of us as opposed to being faithful to what christ has commissioned us to do amen we have rj in white plains new york who asks to your knowledge has dr macarthur lost close friendships over his opposition to critical race theory and has he voluntarily on his own accord ended relationships because of it i'll answer the second question uh first no i don't think he's voluntarily ended any friendships uh relationships and i i don't think he would say that he's lost any friends over it uh i don't think he'd use that kind of language but uh what he would say is that friendships that were once close and and deeply personal uh just don't seem to be that way anymore um i don't think there's anyone uh who you know now shows him animosity that didn't used to but there are there are men who used to stand shoulder to shoulder with him in theological battles who uh have been i mean notoriously obviously backing away from him and some of the some of the issues that he's been under fire for recently we have harrison in mechanicsburg pennsylvania who asks i don't know how much you have familiarity with the southern baptist seminary or the southern baptist convention in general but do you see a collapse in the future over this critical race theory that they seem to be very soft on if not outright endorsing um i wouldn't say a collapse but i think i think it's inevitable that there's going to be a split uh and i think it's a mirror of what happened during the conservative resurgence in the uh in the 80s and and there about when there was a battle between moderates and conservatives over control of the uh denomination and conservatives won that battle um i don't know how this one's going to come out because it seems to me that the majority of leading voices in the convention right now are either either completely on board with or silently acquiescent to the thrust to make social justice and critical race theory and intersectionality uh sort of defining features of the southern baptist message and and um maybe that's not how they would state their intention but i think that's how it's become and you've got a handful of voices that have opposed that tom askell and some others uh tom has been the main one and uh and they're distinctly in the minority uh and and yet i think for the rank and file southern baptist church member uh they don't seem to be in my opinion uh all that comfortable with the thrust towards um social justice and and i would say a blended gospel where you're blending the message of christ and what he has done with a call for you know social reconstruction or whatever um i don't think the person in the pew is all that favorable towards that so and i don't see it as a resolvable conflict uh i think i think it's it's already gone too far in variant directions and i think in the future if not sooner perhaps later the southern baptist convention will split into two groups and um i hate to see that but uh i think there are enough people still faithful to the simplicity of the biblical gospel that uh they'll they'll find it impossible i think to uh to fellowship with and support people who want to make social justice uh just one leg of a of a three -legged gospel stool or however they would describe it um i've actually never been a big fan of denominations anyway uh i don't understand how for instance the wonderful folks who are firm advocates of the doctrines of sovereign grace uh can be in the same denomination with people who are outspoken enemies of those things i'm not talking about people that just don't believe in them but think hey you know we'll be friends to the end of time but you go to your church and i'll go to mine i'm not talking about those uh i'm talking about those who are hostile enemies to the doctrines of grace i don't know how you could link arms in the same denomination with them let alone something as insane as the woke movement yeah that that is the difficulty with any large organization i mean when we talk about big evo we're talking about the large organizations like the gospel coalition and the southern baptist convention which which have purposely tried to broaden their boundaries enough to to bring in more and more people as opposed to clarifying their convictions in a way that eliminates people who aren't completely on board with the central thrust of the denomination and the effect this is true of the evangelical movement as a whole as well the effect is it's a it's a movement that's defined by its diversity and um rather than its unity and and that it seems to me on the face of it goes against every biblical principle uh and it makes it necessary to water down the message if you're trying to keep a coalition of people together who don't share the same theological convictions then you're going to have to soften some of your statements or or even compromise some of your convictions in order to keep the coalition together and um that's that always ends in disaster i don't understand why people think that's better than having a smaller group of people who are truly like -minded but that's how it is and it seems to me that there's a biblical principle at play here as well in that i mean if you look at the history of old testament israel it was always the small remnant that remained faithful to yahweh and he preserved his message and his people through the remnant not through the majority and i think that's still true in the today uh it's the reason that the majority of churches in america i'm just talking about you know buildings with steeples and and groups of people who met and professed to be christians the majority of them are apostate the entire range of mainstream denominations sold out to the social gospel with some of the same principles that we're seeing compromised today a hundred years ago and so again history is cyclical we know where this is going to end and the lord will preserve his message and his people through a remnant by the way since you mentioned our mutually dear friend dr tom askew i wanted to plug his ministry a very valuable ministry within the southern baptist convention founders ministries it's called founders because all of the founders of the southern baptist convention in the 19th century were thoroughgoing five -point calvinists and the website for that ministry is founders .org

founders .org and dr tom askew actually has an article right at the top right now anyway it's right at the top of founders .org

a brief critique of critical race theory and there's also information on their upcoming bible conference on the doctrine of god uh that you could register for which is taking place january 21st through the 23rd in 2021 and there's a treasure trove of other of other information there at founders .org

we have to go to our final break right now it's going to be a lot more brief than the last two breaks if you want to join us with a question do so now because we're rapidly running out of time chris arnzen at gmail .com

chris arnzen at gmail .com give us your first name at least your city and state or your country of residence if you live outside the usa only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter don't go away we'll be right back with phil johnson after these messages from our sponsors was your business shut down during the covet 19 pandemic depriving you of earning any money causing you to default on your rent as you try to survive without income maybe you've had to close your doors for good the good news you thought was that you purchased business interruption insurance as a part of your business liability policy with a major insurance company who told you they are a good neighbor or that you would be in good hands you filed a claim only to be told that it was denied due to the pandemic exclusion clause the pandemic exclusion since 2006 most insurance companies added this clause to enable them to deny your income loss claims in the event of a worldwide pandemic do not give up no matter what state you live in call buttafuoco and associates now at 1 -800 -669 -4878 buttafuoco and associates is a part of a large multi -district litigation and they are working with lead council to bring what they believe will be a successful lawsuit for these claims it is the best way for you to proceed there's absolutely no risk to you you do not have to pay them out of pocket and there is no fee unless you recover on your claim you need to call 1 -800 -669 -4878 right now trust the law firm where the attorneys of one of the largest business firms on long island new york are sending their own clients for representation during this lawsuit buttafuoco and associates here to help business owners rebuild their lives in the wake of the pandemic call 1 -800 -669 -4878 james white of alphanomega ministries here if you've watched my dividing line webcast often enough you know i have a great love for getting bibles and other documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity and besides that they feel so good i'm so delighted i discovered post tenebrous lux bible rebinding no radio ad will be long enough to sing their praises sufficiently but i'll give it a shot jeffrey rice of post tenebrous lux is a remarkably gifted craftsman and artisan all his work is done by hand from the cutting to the pleating of corners to the perimeter stitching jeffrey uses the finest and buttery soft imported leathers in a wide variety of gorgeous colors like the turquoise goat skin tanned in italy used for my nestle allen 28th edition with a navy blue goat skin inside liner and the electric blue goat skin from a french tannery used to rebind a reformation study bible i used as a gift the silver gilding he added on the page edges has a stunning mirror finish resembling highly polished chrome jeffrey will customize your rebinding to your specifications and even emboss your logo into the leather making whatever he rebinds a one -of -a -kind work of art for more details on post tenebrous lux bible rebinding go to ptl bible rebinding .com

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that's solid -ground -books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past or present you can unearth from solid ground solid ground christian books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of iron iron iron iron radio first launched in 2005 the publishers of the new american standard bible were among my very first sponsors it gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the iron trumpets iron radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the nasb i'm pastor nate pickowitz of harvest bible church in gilmanton ironworks new hampshire and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor rich jensen of hope reform baptist church in quorum new york and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor sule prince of oakwood wesleyan church in toronto ontario canada and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor john samson of king's church in peoria arizona and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor chuck volo of new life community church in kingsville maryland and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor steve herford of eastport baptist church in jacksonville florida and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor roy owens jr of the church of friendship in hockley texas and the nasb is my bible of choice here's a great way for your church to help keep iron trumpets iron radio on the air pastors are your pew bibles tattered and falling apart consider restocking your pews with the nasb and tell the publishers you heard about them from chris arnson on iron trump and zion radio go to nasbible .com

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that's grace church at franklin .org this is pastor bill sasser wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign lord god savior and king jesus christ today and always hi this is john sampson pastor of king's church in peoria arizona taking a moment of your day to talk about chris arnson and the iron sharpens iron podcast i consider chris a true friend and a man of high integrity he's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the christian faith i've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray i believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide this is a day of great spiritual compromise and yet god has raised chris up for just such a time and knowing this it's up to us as members of the body of christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances i'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting iron sharpens iron financially would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry i know it would be a huge encouragement to chris if you would all the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

where you can click support that's ironsharpensironradio .com james white of alpha and omega ministries and the dividing line webcast here although god has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach preach and debate at numerous venues some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with pastor rich jensen and the brethren at hope reform baptist church now located at their new beautiful facilities in corham long island new york i've had the privilege of opening god's word from their pulpit on many occasions have led youth retreats for them and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my new york debates i do not hesitate to highly recommend hope reform baptist church of corham long island to anyone who wants to be accurately taught discipled and edified by the holy scriptures and to be surrounded by truly loving and caring brothers and sisters in christ i also want to congratulate hope reform baptist church of corham for the recent appointment of pastor rich jensen's co -elder pastor christopher mcdowell for more information on hope reform baptist church go to hope reformed li .net

that's hope reformed li .net or call 631 -696 -5711 that's 631 -696 -5711 tell the folks at hope reform baptist church of corham long island that you heard about them from james white on iron sharpens iron radio welcome back and phil johnson we have a question for you from a bb in cumberland county pennsylvania bb asks do you think that an advocacy of the woke movement would warrant church discipline in a biblically faithful church i don't know about church discipline i definitely would if someone in our church began to advocate wokeism i would try to persuade the elders and it wouldn't take much persuasion our elders i think would would instruct him to stop it and if then he continued then it would be grounds for church discipline i wouldn't automatically uh discipline someone for holding a wrong belief or or talking about it but i would give them a word of caution and say that's a that's essentially a heretical um secular religion and it's not to be promoted here at our church and then if he continued yes you'd have to excommunicate him well uh perhaps you should clarify what you just said you said you wouldn't uh want somebody to be disciplined over a belief obviously if they were outright denying the deity of christ or the gospel that would be a call for immediate discipline of some kind right yeah well not immediate you you go through the process you warn them uh there are actually two processes matthew 18 you you go privately and personally to the person and if he fails to hear you go back with one or two witnesses and he fails to hear them then you tell it to the church and if he fails to respond even to that appeal from the whole church then he's excommunicated in titus three it says you've got a divisive person that is someone who's trying to split the church then you reject him meaning you excommunicate him after one or two uh warnings so so um it's a if the person is being divisive with it then yes you foreshorten the process but there's still a process uh before you can excommunicate somebody you don't summarily excommunicate somebody without any kind of warning or process yes i i i perhaps used wrong terminology but what i meant was that being in and of itself a a beginning of the church discipline process yeah yeah that's what that's what i meant that's right you start the process well i'm going to give you uh three minutes if you could summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners about this subject today uh it would be that critical race theory roguesm the gospel of social justice all these things are interlinked and all of them come not from scripture but from secular culture and they should not be brought into the church any more than any other false ideology from the world uh you should be imported into the church if you do that it will corrupt the gospel every false ideology that has ever been and brought into the church does ultimately corrupt the gospel and this one's no different and in fact if anything this is more pernicious because roguesm critical race theory actually are designed to sow discord and division to put people in class and race groups and ethnic groups and and create tension between them uh the the ultimate goal of the the uh marxist who promotes this sort of thing is to see uh the meltdown of society so that he can rebuild society according to his own socialist agenda uh but you have the same effect in the church you import these ideas into the church and it will increase the amount of division you see and we see that already in the broad evangelical movement just in the past five years uh so be wary of this uh be very cautious about anything you read or imbibe even if it sounds good because it uses christian terminology and blends it with terms like social justice um don't buy it look for biblical teaching look for ideologies that are rooted and grounded in scripture and if you hear it if you hear an idea that is an echo of something that's being promoted in the secular world it's not going to be good for the church okay we have a final anonymous question isn't it easy to get so overwhelmed by all the riot riots and violence and all the political correctness and the fusion of social gospel with the clear gospel that we can forget that it's a huge oh the question disappeared that we can forget that it's a huge spiritual battle that we should be in prayer and fasting for yeah it is easy to forget that and scripture constantly reminds us and ephesians 6 reminds us too that we're it's not flesh and blood that we're wrestling against and even the purveyors of uh you know neo -marxism in the secular world they are not our enemies they're our mission field and what we're really warring against are ideologies and uh and powers that principalities and powers as well that uh that that are under the control of satan and exist in the spiritual realm and it is a spiritual battle so we must arm ourselves with prayer and and the truth of scripture uh and that's the battle we fight paul describes it in second corinthians 10 that our job is to tear down false ideologies uh and and liberate the people who are enslaved to those wrong ideologies so again all the people who are writing and rioting and promoting these ideas they're ultimately not our chief enemies they are the mission field our goal should be to win them okay and our i remind you that the grace to you website is gty .org