Thoughts on "The Reverse Matt Chandler"

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Alright, well the idea for this video and the title for this video came from a listener on YouTube who emailed me and he just had a few things to say and seemed like a pretty smart guy.

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He's a young man, 20 years or so younger than me, so I guess that qualifies as being a young man. But anyway, seems like he has a good head on his shoulders, so God bless you brother, thank you for the question, and I hope that this is a helpful video for you in particular, but also for everybody else.

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Here's what his question says, I'm just going to read it exactly how he asked it. He said, I'm emailing you to ask you a question.

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Of course, Mr. Matt Chandler is famous for saying that he would hire a black 7 over a white 8.

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Do you think a church who knew of two anti -social justice speakers, one colored, one white, and chose the colored speaker is falling into the same partiality, hence the reverse

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Matt Chandler? I ask because I've heard that Mr. Avadi Bakum gets asked to speak on social justice more than other topics.

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I assume many people ask him to speak on the subject because his message is empowered by the fact that he is a black man.

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Is that partiality as well? This is a very good question. In fact, I've been thinking a lot about this exact topic because I've seen a lot of people make the accusation from the social justice woke cult perspective that white people only want to elevate certain black voices and oftentimes they're disparaged as the most ignorant black voices or the stupidest black voices or things like that.

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In evangelical circles, this is often Mr. Avadi Bakum himself. They say that they only want to talk to Avadi. Avadi, Avadi, Avadi.

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And Avadi is inferior to all these other woke cultists and stuff like that. That's the accusation anyway.

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In secular circles, the whipping boy or rather whipping girl in this case is Candace Owens.

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Candace Owens is seen as inferior, stupid, you know, things like that. And they say, well, white people only want to want to elevate the stupid black voices instead of the super smart black voices that agree with the woke cult.

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And it's obviously a tactic. Everybody sees that for what it is. But I want to I want to it's not even true.

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Number one, number one, it's not even true. I mean, obviously, people on the woke on the non woke side of this issue will promote and interview all kinds of people that oppose the woke cult.

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Blacks, whites, Jewish people, the whole nine yards, Latinos, it doesn't matter. Even if you look at the social justice statement, the anti social justice statement that was produced in the evangelical church.

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I mean, yes, there were a few black people that signed on to that statement and participated in building it.

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But there were also white people like this is just not true. They they just like to say that kind of stuff. It's not even true.

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But even if it were true, we're going to talk about whether or not it's a reverse the reverse Matt Chandler. But just for fun,

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I thought we would remind everybody about what the Matt Chandler hiring process is.

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So here is a video that I responded to back in 2018. It was probably one of my most popular videos at the time where Matt Chandler talks about the very difficult search for a black pastor for his church plant.

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This is pretty interesting and pretty hilarious. It's actually very unintentionally racist as well. So let's

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I just thought it'd be funny to play this again. It's a blast from the past. It's not a slight on that, that ecclesiology.

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It's just we feel like the Lord's wanting to do something different with us. And we have she's talking about the ecclesiology of having multiple campuses where you do the video projection of Matt Chandler, giving the presentation across multiple campuses as if that is a legitimate ecclesiology in any way.

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He just wants to make sure that, you know, he's not disparaging that because I'm sure that that that comes directly from the

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Bible. Virtual church directly from the Bible. I struggle to find men who can be a campus pastor for a season and lead into being the pastor of an autonomous church down in Dallas and out in Fort Worth.

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And so we we've been looking and having conversations and I have called every

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African -American man I know and went, who you got? I mean, here's what I need.

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How do I help me? Right. He's like he's like yucking it up here.

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He's laughing about how difficult he can't find a single qualified black man. He wants to find a black man.

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He's calling every black man he knows, but nobody's qualified to lead his church. Can you imagine the struggle that he has here?

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This is the most. Why are the woke cult like the most racist people on the on the planet

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Earth? I could probably name off the top of my head five black men that would be qualified, that would want the job and stuff like who knows?

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Listen, you're not asking me. I'm just some ignorant Puerto Rican, I guess. I've got a lot of white friends, a lot of.

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But what I would love to just say, here's here's 2000 people in an 11 million dollar building.

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Go lead them. Look at his face. He's just like, I would just I would just love to be that that savior who says, listen, listen,

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I've got a lot of white friends. But listen, black man, I've already built this. I've got an 11 million dollar building.

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I've got 2000 people. I know you can't do it on yourself. I know you can't do this. But I'm going to give it to you.

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That's how humble I am. I'm going to give you this 11 million dollar building. I'm gonna give you these 2000 people.

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Go lead them. I mean, it'll be great. I'm the one who did it, though. I just want to make sure you understand that it was me and not you.

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This is just so unintentionally racist. It's ridiculous. But let's just continue to get to the spicy part.

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And so one of the firms that's helping us find men said, let me ask you a question, Pastor Matt.

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I happen to be a bit of a recruiter myself. I can help you find a guy. Listen, I'll charge you a fair fee.

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I'll find a black pastor for you. How do you like that? He'll be qualified. I'll go to the

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Bible. I'll get the qualifications and all that. And then you can pay me. I'll do it. I'm willing to do it.

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If we find an Anglo 8 and an

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African American 7, which one do you want? I said, I want the African American 7. And he said, what if we find an

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Anglo 8 and an African American 6? And then I said, then give me the Anglo 8, because the

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African American 6 will look and feel to our people like the kind of tokenism that I'm preaching against.

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I bet you he wish he could have that one back. That's just so stupid. If you just get a window into the way that a social justice warrior thinks, it's so idiotic.

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There's nothing biblical about this. So what he's saying is he'd prefer to have a less qualified black than a more qualified white to be the pastor of his church.

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He's decided that he's adding an extra qualification for an elder of his church.

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Skin color, that's important to him. So he'd be okay with a less qualified black, because obviously no black could be just as qualified as a white person.

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That's off the table, off the bat. So he'd want the 7 over the 8. But not the 6, because the 6 is too underqualified, and that would look like tokenism.

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See, it doesn't matter that it is tokenism. It just matters if it looks like it's tokenism. Because he preaches against tokenism.

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I don't know what verses he's using to preach against tokenism, but he preaches against tokenism, so it can't be too underqualified, but underqualified is okay.

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This whole system is nonsense, obviously, but that's the Matt Chandler. That's what this emailer is referring to.

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So what the emailer asked me is, is the reverse Matt Chandler okay? Is it okay if you have two qualified anti -social justice speakers that are against this kind of insanity and nonsense?

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This is not biblical in any way. It's very easy to defeat this kind of stuff, by the way. But if you have two speakers, one's black, one's white, or Latino, or whatever, and you choose the black or Latino over the white, is that the reverse

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Matt Chandler? Is that partiality? And actually, so number one, off the top,

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I don't think this is very common. I mean, people that are against social justice oftentimes will talk to all kinds of people.

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White people, Indians, Chinese people, Korean people, Latinos, the whole nine yards, right?

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So it's not even true that this happens very often, but let's just say it does, right? Let's just say it does. Is that partiality?

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I would say no. I would say no, that this isn't an example of partiality. And let me explain what

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I mean, because when I think about partiality, what I think of is favoritism, and specifically favoritism that is undue or unfair, that kind of favoritism.

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And so when you think about partiality before the law, right? So that's a very common theme in the scripture.

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It's about the law court, about criminal situations, things like that. You shouldn't show favoritism because the law should only be considered with what you're actually doing, what has been done, was there a right or wrong done.

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It shouldn't be considering the color of your eyes, the color of your skin, your hair color, things like that.

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That should be irrelevant to the law itself. It's all about what you've done, not what you look like or what your victim looks like.

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That shouldn't really play a factor. In fact, there's no such thing as a hate crime in the Bible. Murder is murder.

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It doesn't matter if you murdered someone of the opposite race or your own race. It's wrong and it should be the death penalty if you get convicted on the evidence of two or more witnesses.

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And so partiality is favoritism that's not due, right? Nobody would accuse me of being partial to my own children because obviously that's due favoritism.

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I do favor my own children over other people's children in some way. But that doesn't mean that I can break the law when it comes to my own children versus someone else's children or something like that.

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So it's undue favoritism. Unfair favoritism is what partiality is. But I think when it comes to other situations outside of the law court or in the church or when you're doing ministry or stuff like that,

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I think sometimes favoritism can be due and it's not really an unfair favoritism. So let me give you an example.

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Let's say you wanted to do a ministry to prisoners, right? To prisoners. You could make a case in your own mind that it might be a good idea to hire somebody that had been in prison before.

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It would be awesome because they could relate. They could speak the language. They know what it's like to be in prison, stuff like that.

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But the thing is, though, that you can't then say, and being a prisoner is now a qualification for elder.

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You see, being an elder, God sets the standard for that, right? So because you wanted to have a church with a prison outreach does not allow you to add qualifications to the role of elder because God sets those qualifications.

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That's what made what Matt Chandler said so ridiculous and offensive. It's because he was adding a qualification to elder.

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And furthermore, he wasn't even only adding it. He was actually giving you extra credit for it. So he's saying, look,

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I'll hire a less qualified applicant if they have this one aspect about them that they have no control over, their skin color.

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When it comes to the social justice issue, it can be very helpful to talk about your intersectional bona fides.

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In fact, I bring up my intersectional bona fides all the time, not because I think being Puerto Rican gives me any extra insight into anything, but because I know the people

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I'm trying to reach do think that being Puerto Rican gives you extra insight into something.

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And so I'll say oftentimes in my videos, I'll title them a reasonable Latino. And I do that intentionally, not because I think being

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Latino makes you any smarter or lets you interpret the Bible any better or anything like that. I don't believe that at all, but I do know that the woke cult teaches that.

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And so if I can nip that in the bud up front, then all the better. But the thing is, like, I don't think when

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I make recommendations, I don't actually consider skin color in my recommendations. If I see someone that's making good points and I agree with what they say and I think the video is helpful,

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I'll share it regardless of if they're Puerto Rican, they're black, they're white, what does it make a difference to me if the points and the ideas are good?

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However, for the people you're trying to reach, it might make a difference. And so that's why I think Vaughty Bockham gets brought up so often or Candace Owens gets brought up so often, because the ideas are first.

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Obviously, they're not going to share someone's ideas that they don't agree with. But if they're black or they're

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Latino, it doesn't bolster the arguments, of course, but in the eyes of your opponent, it definitely might.

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And so this is what I would call this. When I title a video, A Reasonable Latino Responds to Something, to me, that's answering a fool according to their folly, lest they be wise in their own eyes, because it's very easy for a fool to say, oh, a white person would say that.

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But when I title a video, A Reasonable Latino Says So -and -so, then that's not even an option for them.

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And if they choose to use that tactic, oh, a white man would say that, they just look like a moron.

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And so I don't actually think that that's an example of partiality. I think it's an example of being strategic in the way that you confront things and things of that nature.

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I think it's an example of answering a fool according to their folly, because the thing is, Vaati Baakam being black is an affront to the entire system that these woke cultists are promoting, because Vaati Baakam shouldn't exist in this woke cult.

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I shouldn't exist in the woke cult's worldview. And so the fact that I do exist is an argument almost in itself that their worldview is insane.

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And the fact that Vaati Baakam will share the stage with tons of white people that agree with him is also an affront to their whole system, because according to them, these two groups,

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I mean, blackness and whiteness, these are opposites. You know what I mean? And so the more that we kind of show ourselves as being united and one in Christ and stuff like that, the more obvious the insanity of their system becomes.

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I mean, we're doing reconciliation better than you are, and you're the ones that are focused on it.

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And the way that we know we're doing it better is because we will talk all together, and never do we say that our skin color somehow makes our opinions less or more valid.

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It's just that we think Vaati Baakam and we interpret the

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Bible correctly. That's what we're concerned with about the Bible. We're not concerned with the skin color. The skin color has nothing to do with it.

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We both can read. You know what I mean? And so I don't think this is an example of undue or unfair favoritism to Vaati Baakam.

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I don't think Vaati Baakam has shown favoritism. In fact, I think that Vaati Baakam is probably under more scrutiny than most people.

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I think, in fact, if anything, Vaati Baakam, he's not shown, I mean, he's, what's the opposite of favoritism?

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I don't know, scrutiny? I don't know. But I think it's actually the opposite's true. So I wouldn't call that the reverse Chandler. I would call that, you know, listen, this guy's got strong ideas, and he's a member of these supposed groups that are oppressed.

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And so if on some weird kind of alternate universe, skin color did somehow give you extra insight, even then the

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Bible still says what it says, and Vaati Baakam can show you that the Bible still says what it says, regardless of what fake class you belong to.

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And so I think it could actually be helpful in the same way that if you were trying to quit smoking, I'm not saying that someone who's never smoked couldn't help you quit smoking.

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I'm not saying that, but what I'm saying is it's very helpful to know that someone who's giving you advice on how to quit smoking actually has quit smoking before.

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I'm not showing partiality to them. I'm still scrutinizing their words according to what I know from the

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Scripture. So if they tell me the way to quit smoking is to say, inshallah, then I know that they're, that's actually,

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I'm not going to listen to them just because they've been successful to quit smoking. Anyway, I don't know if that's helpful.

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I mean, it might be, maybe if you think that I'm wrong about this and actually that this is an example of partiality, this reverse

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Chandler type situation, I'd be open to hearing your arguments. But I think that partiality, like certain kinds of favoritism, like favoritism within the family, like obviously

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I do things for my family that I wouldn't do for just anybody necessarily. I'm responsible for my family in a way that I'm not responsible for everybody else.

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So there's a difference there, but I don't think that's undue or unfair favoritism. I think what the Bible's talking about is undue or unfair favoritism, like the favoritism that says that you can have less qualifications but actually be a better fit because, you know, your eyes are the right shade or something stupid like that.

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Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. God bless. So I'm trying to think of a different way to put this to maybe make it more clear.

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And so maybe this helps. Vati Bacchum is an elder. You know what I mean? He was examined,

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I'm assuming. He's been a pastor. He was seen to have handled the word of God, you know, correctly.

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And he was called to ministry. You know what I mean? So he met those qualifications that God set out in the scripture specifically.

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He met all those qualifications. And I'm assuming that the people who decided that he met these qualifications did not say, well, also another qualification is that he's so black.

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I'm pretty sure that didn't happen in Vati Bacchum's case. Maybe it did. I don't know. But the point is that when you share one of his articles or if you share one of his videos or one of his sermons or things like that, the standards for the sermon that you're sharing and the truthfulness of it and the way he's handling scripture, the standards that God sets for that are different than the standards he sets for the qualifications for elder.

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Skin color is not one of the qualifications for elder. Therefore, it's inappropriate to make it a qualification for elder.

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However, if you have a context where you know that people that you're speaking to and that are trying to argue against you think that somehow their skin color makes their opinions more legitimate than your opinions because you're white or lighter shade of skin or something idiotic like that, which is what the woke cult essentially says, that black skin gives you certain insight into the scripture that white people don't have.

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This is said again and again and again and again. This is taught in many seminaries. This is insane, but it's taught.

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So then in that context, sharing an article that you agree with biblically, that you feel is truthful, but it's written by a black man, might be a strategic argument in itself.

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And I don't think that's undue favoritism. That's just being, you know, wise as a serpent. Being smart about things, right?

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Because you are saying, okay, he's preaching the truth. He's qualified as a minister according to God's standards.

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Blackness had nothing to do with it. But the fact that he's black is an affront to the entire system at the face of it.

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It actually undercuts their whole argument that you're just a white man. What you say doesn't matter. Like it undercuts the whole thing.

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And so it can actually be a smart thing. I don't think that's the undue favoritism that the Bible was talking about in Deuteronomy and in the

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New Testament as well. And so maybe that's helpful because he's already qualified as a minister. It's not like you're adding blackness to the list of qualifications, the way

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Matt Chandler did. But anyway, maybe that's helpful. One more thing, notice the impenetrable fortress system that they've attempted to set up.

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Because think about what this is being said. When they say that, oh, you just quote Buddy Bockham because he agrees with you.

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So think about what they've set up, this system. It's kind of ingenious if it wasn't so stupid. So if you don't share any content from black people, well, then you're just a racist because you only agree with white people and you don't agree with any black people.

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If you do share some black person that agrees with you, well, then you're still a racist because you're only elevating the most ignorant black people of all time.

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You see the system that they've set up? It doesn't matter. In their religion, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

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And I mean that in a technical sense. And so my suggestion is to stop caring about these people, what their opinions of you are and things like that.

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Their religious system is set up to make you guilty no matter what you do. If you share Buddy Bockham, if you share

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Candace Owens, you're guilty. If you don't share anyone like that, you're still guilty. It doesn't matter.

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So don't care about what their system says about you. Just because somebody calls you a racist doesn't mean you are.

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Just because someone calls you a white supremacist doesn't mean you are. Don't worry about that stuff.

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Just try to please God. Honor the truth because the truth is a person. So, you know, you should care about what's true because the truth is a person.

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Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. So that's my suggestion for you. Notice that kind of, you know, that weirdness in this system.