Pope Francis, Andy Stanley, and Stephen Wolfe Walk into a Bar....

Alpha & Omega Ministries iconAlpha & Omega Ministries

78 views

Believe it or not, there really is a connection between all of that, and an important one. And we covered it all on an hour and 45 minute program today that was delayed 15 minutes while Rich ran around with his hair on fire finding a way to get the sound from my laptop to work! But we covered the Pope's move with reference to blessings for same-sex couples, Andy Stanley's talk to his church from Sunday morning, and Stephen Wolfe's comments as well. Enjoy!

Comments are disabled.

00:31
Well, greetings, welcome to the dividing line.
00:33
My name is James White.
00:34
We're back in the regular studio, which we just tore apart.
00:38
In fact, you know, Rich has a bad knee.
00:40
It goes out once a while.
00:41
I was just, I'm just sitting here waiting to see him, hear him scream and end up rolling around and him.
00:47
He's going, yeah, I was expecting the exact same thing because he was diving under this thing.
00:52
And I don't understand this.
00:55
Um, I've used this program for years.
00:59
Uh, that may be the problem.
01:01
Um, called audio note taker.
01:03
It does a really good job when you have an audio file and you want to play sections of it and you want to like speed it up, slow it down, just get to what you need to get to.
01:15
Um, that's what I put Andy Stanley's sermon in, uh, to get to the key issues.
01:20
And it's so strange.
01:25
Um, I can fire up Apple music and play music and it comes through just fine.
01:31
I switch over to audio note taker, nothing.
01:35
It won't be the HDMI, uh, feed and we don't know why.
01:41
Um, so I finally said, well, it hasn't plain old ear earphone output.
01:47
Can we, and rich is like, ah, ah, ah, uh, but he got to it.
01:54
He got around to it eventually and, and had to reprogram a bunch of Bach, a little box thingy.
01:59
I don't know what was just going on, but we're here and, um, we are live and we will be able to comment on the Andy Stanley sermon, which is what I promised we would do anyways.
02:11
And before we jump into all that, uh, I want, I felt badly that I'd not show this before.
02:18
And so I'm going to do this before I forget it.
02:19
Cause it's going to be a deep show today.
02:21
Um, you've got important stuff to talk about.
02:24
Here is the, um, what did we call this? Did we call this the road trip, road trip, band trip, uh, t-shirt.
02:33
And here's, here's what it looks like on the back.
02:35
So 40 years of ministry, alphanumeric ministry, uh, and there's the debates.
02:40
Now it's already two behind cause we got to keep doing this stuff.
02:45
Um, and I figure probably the next one we'll do will be a 200 if, if I survive that long, if I, if my brain doesn't fry before that happens.
02:56
Um, but is there, is there a link doctrineandlife.co you can get this.
03:05
Okay.
03:06
Uh, that's how you get the, um, it's got the date and the topic and the person that I debated.
03:13
And, uh, so 40th anniversary celebrations on Saturday.
03:18
Uh, they're actually people, this astonishes me that are flying in to be a part of that.
03:24
Um, and to be here for that.
03:27
And there are people right now in the big room over there, uh, setting up and, um, Chris Tonholtz just posted a picture of the, uh, of the t-shirt.
03:39
And so hopefully we are moving them pretty, pretty well at G3.
03:43
Uh, every time it's, they came up to me and said, just really appreciate all the debates.
03:48
I said, then you probably need that.
03:51
That was being a good salesman there.
03:53
I can promote things if I have to.
03:55
Um, so yeah, I'd want to make sure everybody saw that.
03:58
Uh, I saw them in black and gray.
04:00
I'm not sure if there are other colors, but I, I know it's available in black and gray and, um, I need black anything to, uh, yeah, uh, help out along those lines.
04:11
And, um, so yes, there we go.
04:14
All right.
04:14
So much to get to today.
04:16
Uh, it is amazing.
04:18
Um, I had my whole computer all set up and I had all my stuff sitting there and ready to go and, and, um, all that stuff is gone.
04:28
And so that's just sort of how it is.
04:31
And it's gonna take me a little while to, uh, uh, open auto saved session.
04:38
What's today? Today's the, yeah, let's give that a shot and see if that works.
04:43
Um, there's a whole discussion in regards to, uh, presuppositionalism and Thomism and stuff like that, that we need to get to that is actually interestingly enough related to, um, the other topics that we're going to have to deal with first, because they are, um, so important.
05:11
Uh, you know, if, if, if we wanted to just completely, um, you know, go with what's current, we'd be talking about the fact that the United States House of Representatives is currently out of business.
05:28
I have known, well, as when, when this happened and Rich said that they can't do anything anymore until this case gets taken care of.
05:38
I just reminded him and he remembered it as well.
05:41
Someone said, and I don't know who it was, um, that no man's liberty or property is safe when the United States Congress is in session.
05:50
So now not much can get done.
05:55
So, you know, you, you might appreciate the day or two that you get from, from all that stuff, but we will not, uh, be worrying ourselves, uh, about that.
06:06
Uh, instead, um, Pope Francis.
06:10
Okay.
06:11
Let's let's Pope Francis and Andy Stanley.
06:14
Now there is an interesting conjunction, but they have become very much connected.
06:21
Um, it is providential, maybe certainly interesting that the Monday after Andy Stanley gives a sermon that they don't live stream.
06:39
I don't know that that actually delayed the audio from getting out by more than three or four hours.
06:47
Um, but they didn't live stream because he was talking to their group of churches, not sure how New Testament that is, but their group of churches about what they believe in regards to homosexuality in light of the fact that they had a conference and at that conference, they had people like David Gushy speak and they had two men and I didn't have a chance to, I was, I'm assuming that the Justin that he makes reference to is the author of Torn.
07:30
And one thing I did not have time to do, and I'm sorry, I didn't have time to do it.
07:34
And I don't know that I will have time to do it.
07:35
And maybe somebody out there would be willing to do this for me.
07:39
Uh, but I debated Justin Lee in 2013.
07:43
Uh, JD Hall moderated that debate and my recollection now, this wasn't, this wasn't terminology that was being regularly used at that point or hadn't become overly popular.
08:00
But my recollection was that Justin Lee was side B um, that is talking about being, um, celibate and, um, so on and so forth since then has become side a, which happens with great frequency, um, and has profane the marriage bed.
08:27
I mean, that's, that's the only way, that's the only way I can, I can express this.
08:33
Um, you know, when you talk about quote unquote, um, gay marriage, gay Mirage, as some want to put it, um, to say that two men got married does impact, uh, what I and my wife did in front of witnesses over 41 years ago.
08:55
It does, it, it, it defined, it redefines everything.
08:58
It's a redefinition, um, Obergefell's redefinition.
09:02
And so he had people speaking at this conference who are most definitely, uh, in support of a gay Christian movement of various types and kinds.
09:19
And so I want to play some sections.
09:23
There's already been, um, he started off responding directly to Albert Moeller.
09:28
Now he knows Al Moeller because Andy Stanley's dad was president of the Southern maps convention.
09:36
So he probably, you know, had dinner with Al Moeller as a kid.
09:40
I would have, I would assume, um, or at least young man.
09:45
And so he responded directly to the fact that Moeller had written an article.
09:49
Now we, we talked about this upcoming conference a long time ago, uh, six weeks more, uh, maybe eight weeks.
09:58
Anyway, Moeller put out an article and I had it in my browser for quite some time.
10:07
Um, called the train is leaving the station.
10:12
Andy Stanley, Andy Stanley's departure from Orthodox Christianity.
10:17
That's my recollection of the subtitle might be biblical Christianity.
10:22
Anyway, Andy Stanley starts off responding directly by name to Al Moeller.
10:30
And we'll listen to a portion of that.
10:33
And I think this may be one of the most important issues facing evangelical churches today.
10:40
I have said this over and over again, and I apologize for being repetitive.
10:46
Um, but we have been behind the curve on this subject from the start.
10:53
Our, my parents would never have discussed it.
10:57
Their parents would have never thought it could ever be discussed.
11:02
Um, we are, we are playing catch up and most evangelicals are still most evangelicals who haven't bought into the cultural, Hey, this is great because a lot of people have mainstream dominations are all gone.
11:17
Every single one of them is gone on the issues of homosexuality.
11:23
And if you're gone on homosexuality, you're, you're hopeless on transgenderism.
11:28
Um, you've already lost the fight that there's no foundation upon which to stand.
11:33
You're standing in quicksand.
11:35
Um, good luck fighting, standing in quicksand.
11:38
It doesn't, it doesn't work.
11:40
So the majority of people who haven't gone that direction still haven't developed a robust biblical doctrine of marriage, sexuality, gender, because we never just never thought they would ever need, need something like that.
12:00
And ironically, since we're talking about Pope Francis, many Roman Catholics don't have these things because, Hey, we've got the church, we've got tradition.
12:09
Uh, these things have already been spoken to.
12:11
And now all of a sudden you're finding out maybe not because the great tradition is a little bit on the malleable side.
12:22
When you have an infallible interpreter, we'll get to that in a moment.
12:27
So Stanley preaches this sermon.
12:32
It really wasn't a sermon.
12:34
Okay.
12:34
He, he gives this talk and the next day Pope Francis releases a letter immediately before, um, a conference that's going to be held Synod, I guess in Rome, that's going to be discussing these very issues as to the church's teaching on homosexuality, marriage.
13:02
Um, I'm not sure if transgenderism is included.
13:06
We know that Francis is very friendly toward the LGBTQ movement.
13:11
We know he's a liberation theologian and therefore has no real choice other than to be friendly, uh, toward the LGBTQ movement, no matter what the tradition of those who came before him.
13:28
And he's also at this Synod going to be re-releasing it.
13:33
My understanding is this is an old, uh, encyclical, uh, that he, I think it was from 2015 on the environment that he's updating.
13:46
And, uh, you know, it just means this could be more radical, more socialistic and more self-deceived.
13:56
Um, I'm not sure how Roman Catholics who are fully aware of the climate fraud can just sit back and watch Pope Francis.
14:08
Who's completely taken in by completely taken him by it.
14:13
And he's going to be your, your infallible Pope is going to be releasing an encyclical that is going to be based upon completely fraudulent information.
14:22
And it's sort of like, maybe you just sit there and go, yeah, well, the Pope's not infallible when it comes to the world and creation and the environment.
14:31
And he is a Darwinist.
14:33
So he's already proven that.
14:35
So rich has been watching too much of, of, um, Fox news.
14:43
Um, maybe we should send Matt Gates over there.
14:46
Um, that would, that would be interesting.
14:48
There happens to be a picture of him yelling at the people going, Oh, boo, all you want.
14:52
I actually saw that.
14:53
I was, I was eating lunch when, when they booed him for, for what he said.
14:57
But anyway, um, so in the process, you now have this letter coming out from Pope Francis and I'm going to the wall street journal, um, obviously has bias stuff in it, every which direction, but here's how they reported on it.
15:23
Pope Francis softens Vatican's ban on blessing gay couples.
15:27
Pontiff statement is likely to inflame tensions with conservative church leaders by Francis X Roca.
15:33
This was updated yesterday.
15:37
And, uh, Pope Francis softened the Vatican's ban on blessing same-sex couples saying that priests may use their discretion in giving such blessings so long.
15:50
Now listen to this.
15:52
Now, I don't know if we want to move over here or what, um, so long as they don't imply a same-sex union is equivalent to a heterosexual marriage.
16:08
Okay.
16:10
Think that one through for a second.
16:14
Priests may use their discretion in giving blessings to same-sex couples.
16:23
So long as they don't imply a same-sex union is equivalent, is equivalent to a heterosexual marriage.
16:28
How do you do that? How does that work? If this is profaning the marriage bed, it is Hebrews chapter 13 verse 4.
16:40
Um, these are disordered desires.
16:43
This is against the creation mandate.
16:45
Um, Jesus taught, look, folks, think about it.
16:52
Jesus defined marriage for us, didn't he? Isn't Matthew 19 clear? And if the infallible vicar of Christ can't understand the clarity of a passion like that and its relationship to the old Testament law, why are you following him? Why? Can you tell me? The Pope's statement in a letter released by the Vatican on Monday marks a significant shift in the Catholic church's stance on blessing gay relationships.
17:24
Its release comes on the eve of a major Vatican meeting that will consider possible changes to church teaching and practice on matters such as homosexuality and women's ordination.
17:35
Oh, I, I, I'm old enough to remember being told over, can't be changed.
17:42
It's, it's, it's the census fidelum.
17:45
It's, oh, okay.
17:49
Well, uh, Catholic priests in Germany, those Germans, I know about Germans.
17:58
They're a very, very, very difficult people.
18:02
Um, Catholic priests in Deutschland and some other Northern European countries have for years held ceremonies to bless same-sex couples in defiance of a Vatican ban.
18:15
The issue has contributed to the deepening polarization between progressive and conservative tendencies in the global church.
18:21
Francis has taken a conciliatory approach toward gay people without formally changing church teaching.
18:28
Hmm.
18:29
He endorsed civil unions for same-sex couples in a 2020 documentary film, worrying many conservatives that he was signaling a liberalization of doctrine.
18:40
This month's synod is a major part of Francis's effort after a decade in office to consolidate his progressive legacy.
18:47
On Wednesday, the opening day of the synod, the Vatican is also scheduled to release, that should be today then, a, or tomorrow, a papal document on environmental concerns.
18:57
That's what I was talking about.
19:00
Francis's letter was a reply to a letter from conservative cardinals, including U.S.
19:05
Cardinal Raymond Burke and Ghanaian Cardinal Robert Serra, who raised questions relating to the synod, including how much authority it will have.
19:14
Among the cardinal's questions was whether the blessing of same-sex unions can be consistent with Catholic teaching, which holds that gay people must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity, but that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.
19:29
The inclination to perform them is objectively disordered, and under no circumstances can they be approved, all in quotes.
19:38
In his reply, written in July, the pope noted that the church defines marriage exclusively as the union of a man and a woman and avoids any kind of right that could imply that something which is not marriage is recognized as marriage.
19:52
Well, there you go.
19:53
No problem, right? But he said that priests acting out of pastoral charity and not as judges who only deny, reject, and exclude.
20:06
Can I point something out here? That's the language of the left.
20:12
That's the language of leftism, and that's the language of Andy Stanley.
20:20
You're going to hear Andy Stanley saying, Jesus didn't draw lines, he drew circles.
20:28
Now, that's a rather pious and senseless statement, but you get what he's saying.
20:34
But judges who only deny, reject, exclude.
20:37
Sounds just like what Andy Stanley's saying.
20:39
It's coming from the pope.
20:42
Should aim to discern whether there are forms of blessing requested by one or more people that do not convey a misconception of marriage.
20:56
Same-sex couples? No misconception of marriage? Really? He added that such pastoral charity should apply even in situations, quote, that from an objective point of view are not morally acceptable, end quote.
21:19
The pope suggested that such blessings should remain an unofficial practice.
21:23
So, if the pope allows you to do that, it's going to be unofficial.
21:28
Writing that such exercises of pastoral prudence in certain circumstances need not be transformed into a norm.
21:38
Remember, this is a contradiction of last year's position.
21:44
So, how long does that take to be transformed into the norm, is the question.
21:52
Francis's letter appears to mark a significant softening of the Vatican stance in a 2021 decree whose publication he approved.
22:00
Infallibly, I'm sure.
22:01
The Vatican's doctrinal office prohibited the blessing of a gay couple saying that God cannot bless sin.
22:08
But now, again? 2021 wasn't that long ago.
22:14
Now, everybody was wearing masks.
22:16
There was less oxygen in the brain.
22:17
Maybe, maybe that's the argument.
22:20
I don't know.
22:21
But I'm just sitting here going, hmm, seems like things can change, huh? I mean, for a thousand years, Rome believed that the state could righteously engage in capital punishment and now it doesn't.
22:39
So, you can believe things for a long time, but the pope's words are likely to inflame a controversy that has been running for years.
22:49
On Monday, Burke said he and the other conservative cardinals who wrote to the pope were concerned by his response since blessing same-sex unions suggests that homosexual acts can be good, that is, are not in themselves contrary to the moral law.
23:05
Yet, that is what it's suggesting, isn't it? It is.
23:10
Francis de Bernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ Catholics, no plus on that one, I noticed, said that the pope's reply, quote, implies the church does indeed recognize that holy love can exist between same-gender couples.
23:30
This statement is one big straw towards breaking the camel's back of the marginalized treatment, oh, here, says LGBTQ plus people experience in the church, marginalized treatment.
23:45
In March this year, Germany's liberal Catholic bishops defied the Vatican ban by voting in favor of adopting formal ceremonies to bless same-sex relationships.
23:53
In late September, several priests held a blessing, a group blessing ceremony for same-sex couples outside the cathedral of Cologne, Germany.
24:02
The Vatican has recently hinted at more flexibility on the issue.
24:05
The doctrinal office's new head, Cardinal Victor Emmanuel Fernandez, said earlier in the summer that he would consider the possibility of blessing same-sex relationships as long as they were distinguished from heterosexual marriage.
24:18
Y'all remember this, right? Y'all remember it wasn't very long ago? We don't want marriage.
24:25
We just want unions.
24:27
We want civil unions.
24:29
We just want this.
24:31
We just want that.
24:32
Now you've got same-sex marriage.
24:36
This is how the left works.
24:39
It's incrementally, one little bit at a time.
24:45
Conservative prelates have warned that the issue could precipitate a schism or a permanent split in the church, ya think? When's that gonna happen? How far does it have to go? Really, seriously, have you thought about it? When German bishops and lay Catholic leaders debated same-sex blessings in March, Bishop Gregor Maria Franz-Hunk of Eichstadt warned against the proposed move, saying that he hoped this step is not going to tear us apart the way the Anglican church finds itself torn apart.
25:19
And we haven't talked about this.
25:21
I've had it on my screen a bunch of times and never gotten to it.
25:24
The article even says, conservative Anglican churches, including some in Africa that include nearly half of the world's estimated 100 million Anglicans, have broken off relations with churches that espouse liberal teaching and practice on homosexuality, including the Episcopal Church in the U.S.
25:38
In February, after the Church of England decided to allow the blessing of same-sex relationships, a dozen leading archbishops, mostly from the global south, called for a break with that church.
25:47
The historical progenitor of the worldwide Anglican communion was how they ended.
25:52
And that is a huge story, and I've wanted to cover it more, and maybe we'll get some involved with it to come on and talk about it.
26:01
But anyway, wow, I scratched the desk really badly today.
26:06
I didn't mean to do that.
26:07
Trying to get that thing out, and evidently a MacBook Pro is tougher than the wood on this desk by a fair amount.
26:14
That's a shame.
26:14
I hate doing things like that.
26:16
Anyway, so here's the problem.
26:22
You can sit there all day long and say that you have your infallible magisterium, but the fact of the matter is, by abandoning solo scripture and by investing in the ecclesiastical offices, which are not biblical offices, but these ecclesiastical offices, the authority that you have invested in them, you cannot stop this from happening.
26:50
The Pope has filled the College of Cardinals with his acolytes.
26:55
When he resigns or dies, there is a very, very good chance that the next person will be even more committed to environmentalism and socialism and liberalism and leftism and the LGBTQ movement.
27:15
And you got nothing you can do about it.
27:18
You can sit there and say, well, we can go back and we can demonstrate.
27:22
But see, that's just your own personal interpretation.
27:26
And now you're just personally interpreting the teachings of the church, which you're not allowed to do.
27:34
Sorry, I hate to point out the obvious to you, but this is the reality.
27:41
And a lot of people have had the idea for a long, long time.
27:44
Oh, Rome can't.
27:44
No, no, no, no, no, Rome.
27:47
You don't understand.
27:48
No, I do understand.
27:50
I do understand.
27:51
And I think Ratzinger understood.
27:53
And I think John Paul understood.
27:58
But things happen.
28:02
And you have a leftist liberation theologian prelate, and he gets to...
28:13
There's some dispute about this, but it's quite possible that one pope said, I am tradition.
28:23
And certainly many of them have acted that way.
28:26
Francis doesn't act that way, but he definitely has an agenda, and he's pushing that agenda forward.
28:40
And his successor will probably continue that.
28:44
And eventually, all you can do is say, well, yeah, that must be what they intended, because that's what the church today says.
28:51
And you and I both know that's not what people in the past intended.
28:54
That's not what they believe by any stretch of the imagination.
28:59
And here you have, how do you bless a same-sex union? Well, you have to buy into the idea, and it was in the language even of the article.
29:14
You have to buy into the idea that same-sex sexual attraction is an innate reality to people.
29:24
Ignore the fact that the vast majority of the sexual revolution that has taken place over the past 15 years has been so obviously prompted through social media, the internet, YouTube, Google, Facebook.
29:46
No, no, no.
29:47
It just happens to be that the percentage of young people today identifying these things has increased 400-fold.
29:57
It just happens that there's just a lot more people being born this way.
30:02
Really, we both know, we all know that this explosion of rapid onset gender dysphoria and homosexuality and all the rest of this stuff, that it's a social contagion disease, and it militates directly against human flourishing.
30:30
Catholic theologians have known this in the past.
30:35
But, but, but, but the foundation that they base their argumentation on has always, by necessity, been flawed.
30:48
You see, you can do natural law arguments on any side because you don't have, you don't have a word from God.
30:55
You're not appealing to an objective reality.
31:02
You're appealing to our experience of the natural world rather than a word from God.
31:10
And so you can do all your natural law stuff and go at it, have fun, but you need to realize you can easily make a natural law argument for abortion, and you can easily make a natural law argument for homosexuality.
31:26
Just watch what the Darwinists do.
31:28
Darwin couldn't do this.
31:29
Darwin, look, today's Darwinists, which include Pope Francis, today's Darwinists are not like the Darwin of old.
31:43
They've had to so modify their theory.
31:48
Remember, Darwin didn't know anything about what we know today about cellular biology and DNA and all that.
31:53
It's clueless.
31:55
And so to keep that hobbled theory going, they've had to make a lot of adjustments.
32:06
And so I've listened, I've even heard Dawkins make an argument for homosexuality from a Darwinistic perspective.
32:14
Now remember, Dawkins is the guy that tells you, hey, it's all about natural selection.
32:20
But then when you try to make that fit together with a leftist leaning political perspective, well, you see, in reality, there could be an advantage to having homosexuals in a community because they'll take care of other people.
32:40
And even though their genotype won't continue on, they help other people's genotypes to continue on.
32:45
And so even when Roman Catholic moralists and ethicists have argued against the LGBTQ position and came up with perfectly fine terminology, disordered, fundamentally destructive, the basis upon which they did so is not something that can survive the constant onslaught of the left.
33:21
Because this is how leftism works.
33:25
It's like the pounding of the sea.
33:28
The rocks of the seashore are very hard and you would think they'd be able to survive just getting sprayed with water, but you know that's not how it works.
33:37
It's the constant pressure over time that breaks those rocks down into the sand that you see elsewhere.
33:46
And that's how progressivism works, on what you thought was absolutely solid, unless you recognize, well, you know, in mainstream denominations, their view of scripture crumbled in the same way.
33:59
It's not scripture that crumbled, it's their view of scripture that crumbled.
34:02
The scriptures aren't changed by any of this, but the Pope's interpretation of his own tradition could and is.
34:13
It's happening.
34:16
This is why the debate that took place a month ago is so important.
34:21
Actually, it wasn't even a month ago for crying out loud.
34:23
That was the 16th.
34:24
It's only been two and a half weeks, three weeks, something like that.
34:27
Yeah, three weeks.
34:28
Um, that's why it was so important.
34:33
Side B Christianity, the arguments for gay Christianity.
34:40
You need to understand what they are and you need to understand that they very strongly appeal to the mechanism by which the next generation thinks they think, but it's not thinking.
34:58
It's their emotion.
35:00
They emote rather than think.
35:03
And so you tell stories and it's the narrative and it's the story of this person and the story of that person.
35:09
And, and by the way, that's the exact same thing that's happening now.
35:15
For those who promote intergenerational love, you tell stories, you do the narrative and you look down upon and you denigrate those who would draw lines rather than circles.
35:34
And that's exactly what we're looking at when we look at what happens, what's happening with Andy Stanley.
35:44
And I said, I've said for years, there is a trajectory.
35:48
There is an arc to what Andy Stanley is doing.
35:53
And it's, it's necessary.
35:56
He has a vision of moving out of and staying out of what he considered to be restrictive and erroneous in his own upbringing in being the, the son of Charles Stanley.
36:17
And daddy's gone now.
36:20
And it doesn't shock me that much that this conference took place not all that long after that, but the unhitching from the old Testament, for example, you cannot make, and this is, there's a whole movement amongst evangelicals that I flirted with for a while.
36:44
And then just couldn't make it work, but this was back in the nineties.
36:50
But you cannot develop a coherent, consistent, ethical, and moral understanding of the world and human behavior from only part of the Bible.
37:04
You need the whole Bible.
37:07
And the reason for this is that the new Testament writers, and there are people who say, I just want the law of Christ.
37:17
Does that include Jesus' teaching in Matthew chapter five, that if you teach anyone to break the least of these commandments, Moses' commandments, you will be the least in the kingdom of heaven.
37:27
Does it include that? Does it include all the, see church history got here for a second.
37:33
Remember Marcion, the Gnostic heretic, second century, who came up with an edited version of the new Testament that took out all the old Testament citations and anything that was friendly toward the Jews.
37:48
Can you imagine what the new Testament looked like when you did that? That's what, that's what's pretty good about having a printed edition of the Bible that has the old Testament citations so that you can see them very easily.
38:01
We need to have a Bible, need to have an electronic Bible that all the old Testament citations will blink in a certain bright color and all the old Testament allusions in a different color, but maybe not quite as bright, but you still know that they're there.
38:21
That'd be most of Revelation.
38:24
You couldn't, you can't figure out Hebrews without it.
38:28
That's why I said when we interacted with what Andy Stanley said about unhooking, unhitching from the old Testament, you'll never understand the book of Hebrews.
38:37
You can't.
38:38
The writer assumes that you are thoroughly hitched to the old Testament.
38:43
You know it's the word of God.
38:45
It's not just a storybook and it is the Bible of the early church and it was.
38:52
There's no question about any of that.
38:56
So Andy Stanley has been on this trajectory for a long time, but I think especially if you've listened to the debate from the 16th of last month, you will hear and understand what he's saying.
39:16
Now, we had technical problems.
39:19
I told you about top program.
39:21
We're going to do our best to make this.
39:23
This is not the normal quality of audio that you'd get from a downloaded video or something like that.
39:33
This is somebody's phone in the audience and we're having to do stuff to get it to you.
39:43
It worked just fine before the program started and if it doesn't work now, I just want everyone to know it is completely Rich's fault.
40:00
You've been watching me.
40:01
Have I touched anything? I have not touched anything at all, but Rich is behind the window and so he may have been doing stuff.
40:11
I don't know.
40:14
We will see.
40:16
It's not my fault.
40:20
Obviously, someone wanted to be Han Solo and didn't get to do that at the Prescott High School.
40:28
All right.
40:29
I'm definitely not going to speed it up because of that.
40:32
Let's listen to what Andy Stanley had to say.
40:36
I'm only going to play a few minutes of it, but we need to hear what's going on here.
40:41
Misleading.
40:42
In my opinion, just my opinion, his version of biblical Christianity is the problem.
40:49
His version, this version of biblical Christianity is why people are leaving Christianity unnecessarily.
40:55
It's the version that causes people to resist the Christian faith because they can't find Jesus in the midst of all the other stuff and all the other theology and all the other complexity that gets globbed onto the message.
41:08
Bottom line.
41:09
Okay, so this is in response by name to Albert Moeller.
41:15
He's saying, hey, I am not a part of your definition of biblical Christianity.
41:22
In fact, I think your definition of biblical Christianity isn't biblical Christianity and it drives people away from Christ.
41:30
You can't be much more clear than that because Dr.
41:33
Moeller is going to affirm 1 Corinthians chapter 6.
41:36
He's going to affirm 1 Timothy chapter 1, Romans chapter 1, Leviticus 18 and 20, Genesis 18-19.
41:45
He's going to affirm the continuity and consistency of God's law from beginning to application in the New Testament.
41:56
And he's going to press that rather firmly.
42:00
Now, Moeller did have a change in 2014 in having interaction with Matthew Vines about the concept of orientation, which I wouldn't necessarily agree with.
42:18
But he's calling Stanley out in fundamentally, I'm going to say discombobulating, disconnecting, atomizing the biblical text and the narrative of scripture in regards to sexuality, gender, marriage, things like that.
42:41
He goes on to say, that version of Christianity draws lines and Jesus drew circles.
42:50
He drew circles so large and included so many people in his circle that it consistently made religious leaders nervous.
43:00
And his circle was big enough to include sinners like me.
43:05
Now, that sounds wonderful until you try to actually go, what exactly does that mean? What exactly is being said here? What does it mean that Jesus didn't draw lines? He drew circles.
43:23
Well, it's trying to be inclusive.
43:26
It's trying to include lots and lots of people.
43:29
Okay, let's run with this for just a second.
43:32
Let's run with this idea of drawing circles.
43:38
May I suggest to you that the only semi-coherent, rational reading of the New Testament text is that Jesus' circles were drawn in one word, repentance.
44:01
So, Jesus draws a big circle for anyone who will be repentant.
44:11
He draws a very clear line for those who will not.
44:17
So, you might want to talk about circles all you want.
44:20
You can try to do the inclusivistic thing and I'm not sure how he would even resist inclusivism and its claims.
44:31
Maybe he doesn't anymore.
44:32
Maybe he won't five years from now.
44:34
I don't know.
44:36
But what is obviously missing in the entirety of Andy Stanley's paradigm is repentance.
44:46
Jesus draws a big wide circle for repentant sinners.
44:51
He said sinners like me.
44:54
Okay, no.
44:55
Not sinners like you.
44:56
It's sinners like those shown in the gospel who were repentant.
45:02
Now, Andy Stanley has long been an advocate of the anti-lordship, no repentance necessary for salvation perspective.
45:11
That is not only grossly unbiblical, but it is so disconnected from the New Testament that it's hard to even know where to start.
45:21
We've debated that subject with Dr.
45:23
Wilkin in the past.
45:24
I think it was 2009, if I recall correctly.
45:28
Anyway, it might have been earlier than that, but I just remember where we were.
45:36
The idea of non-repentant acceptance, of utter rejection of God's revealed law as to what is pleasing to him, what is right in his eyes.
45:55
That's what we're looking at here.
45:57
That's the problem here.
46:00
You can talk about circles all you want, but if you're going to be talking about the circles Jesus drew, they are circles for repentant people.
46:09
That fits perfectly with Paul.
46:12
When he lists all those things in 1 Corinthians 6, including covetousness, which is an attitude of the heart and mind, he then says such were some of you, not such are some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified.
46:35
That's what happens when repentance takes place.
46:38
That does not happen without repentance.
46:42
There is no washing without repentance.
46:48
Yet, if Pope Francis is going to bless same-sex unions, where's the repentance? If you're going to bless that union, are you also going to give them the same thing? Even from your own theology, are you? How can you do that? How can you bless that which God's Word says that what is going on here is morally disordered? It's sinful.
47:23
The Vatican was actually right when it said God cannot bless sin.
47:29
Who would ever thought there could have been a debate about that? It's the Pope Francis days.
47:39
We continue on.
47:41
Rarely, rarely, rarely ever engaged in any same-sex behavior.
47:47
He's talking about they had students, middle school students, coming out to leaders at their church about same-sex desires.
47:59
Listen to how Andy Stanley understands this.
48:05
He understands this as an innate, inborn reality.
48:13
It is not something to be repented of.
48:18
What you're going to hear here is the same stuff that you are going to hear from side B and side A people who want to still have some type of religious expression.
48:31
This is an innate orientation.
48:34
It is not evil in and of itself.
48:37
You can pray and pray and pray to have the desire taken away, but it won't be taken away.
48:45
Again, if you listen to the debate, what was one of the most important elements of that debate? You don't pray to have a desire taken away.
48:57
You pray for the grace to cultivate the proper desires out of obedience to Christ and His law.
49:09
How can Andy Stanley do that? He lost the law a long time ago.
49:13
He disconnected it a long time ago.
49:17
If you don't have repentance, how do you actually cultivate godly desires? How do you say to a young man, your sexual desire is given to you by God to be a father, a husband, and one who will have children that you can train.
49:42
You can then have grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
49:47
You can really impact the kingdom of Christ by how you are obedient to your father and grandfather.
50:01
They didn't do what you're doing.
50:04
Then bring others who will be obedient in the same way.
50:08
You break all that off when you do this.
50:11
So it's cultivating positive desires for what God has made you to be, the gifts He's given to you, the anatomy He's given to you, obedience to Christ.
50:32
All along, you hear this, pray the gay away, pray the gay away.
50:37
What? How about thinking about what Dr.
50:49
Coles did not respond to in our debate? What was the main point that I made repeatedly that he never responded to? I pointed out the parallel to covetousness.
51:00
Covetousness is an attitude of the mind.
51:02
So are we going to get this idea? That's what he's going to say here.
51:05
What Andy Stanton is going to say is these young people, they didn't ask for these things.
51:10
They didn't ask for these desires.
51:11
They want these desires taken away.
51:14
What do you say to a covetous young man? I've met covetous young men who's ruining their life.
51:23
They couldn't be satisfied with anything God gave them.
51:27
Are you going to say to them, it's just the way God made you.
51:31
Just the way it is.
51:32
That's how you are.
51:34
You're going to continue to experience covetousness.
51:36
No, we say you need to have discipline in your life to create contentment.
51:45
So contentment is the antidote to covetousness.
51:50
And that is something that you can work to create in your heart.
51:59
Don't we have a holiday coming up next month that's central to that? Thanksgiving? You practice Thanksgiving regularly and you will experience contentment in your life.
52:16
So you don't just, oh Lord, I pray that you take away this covetousness.
52:21
That's not enough.
52:24
You're sort of going, I don't want to have to do any work here.
52:28
I don't have to be disciplined.
52:30
I realize the passages in the New Testament about discipline and sobriety, and I don't just mean alcoholic sobriety, but sober, working.
52:39
I realize those are not the most positive texts in the New Testament.
52:44
Well, they're very positive.
52:45
They're not the most popular.
52:46
Sorry, not the most popular text.
52:48
But they're there.
52:50
They're there.
52:52
And if you make those disordered desires, those same-sex desires, just a, everybody experiences it type thing, then you're closing the door on the very means of dealing with it.
53:08
That's what I was trying to say to Gregory Cole.
53:11
So keep that in mind as you listen to this.
53:13
They have rarely, rarely, rarely ever engaged in any same-sex behavior.
53:19
And this is an important distinction because of the way terminology is thrown around, and unfortunately, the ways that Christians throw it around sometimes.
53:26
To the contrary, the realization that they are even drawn in the direction of same-sex attraction is terrifying to a middle schooler and terrifying to a high school student.
53:37
They don't embrace it.
53:39
They resist it.
53:41
They try to convince themselves that what they're feeling isn't real.
53:45
They try to convince themselves that perhaps this is just going to go away.
53:48
If I don't think about it, if I don't tell anybody, maybe it's just going to go away.
53:52
And most are overwhelmed with a sense of something is wrong with me, even though I haven't done anything wrong.
54:00
Something is deeply wrong with me, even though I haven't done anything wrong.
54:06
And they find themselves in a battle, not against a behavior.
54:11
They find themselves in a battle against a defining attraction that they did not choose, but somehow has chosen them.
54:21
So there is your, and straight out stated, it's innate.
54:27
It's the way you're created.
54:30
It's not a disordered desire.
54:34
You've closed the door to all the other, there's so many homosexuals that will tell you, oh, there was abuse, and there was, you know, I saw this, that, and I was exposed to pornography at this age.
54:48
All that stuff just gets lost, because the narrative is, it has to be innate.
54:56
There can't be any of the rest of this stuff.
55:00
And again, my experience is, when I look back over the past 15 years, 20 years, when I see mainly men, but there are women, but mainly men coming out and initially doing this, it's just, you know, from the first time I had sexual feelings, this is what it was, 10, 15 years later, they're not only involved in the homosexual community, they're involved in homosexual sex, they're involved with gay marriage, but they're getting honest enough to say, yeah, there was abuse.
55:38
I'm not saying that there aren't some that experience that, but it reminds me honestly, a little bit of my experience where I've had multiple Mormons over the decades tell me in first person that they experienced this particular thing, and it's all the same experience.
56:02
In other words, it's very clearly a story that gets passed around, it becomes part of the narrative, and they find it to be useful and effective.
56:12
And I think that happens in a lot of these situations as well.
56:22
Truth is the majority of gay adults acknowledge that at some point in their lives, they ask God to take it away.
56:32
Take it away.
56:34
Pray the gay away.
56:38
Can you see how Andy Stanley does not start with a biblical understanding of repentance? And so he's got no place else to go.
56:49
He has no defense against this narrative.
56:54
At all.
56:55
He's got no way of even putting it in a proper biblical light.
57:00
In my experience, I've talked to many, many, many, many gay men in particular, and I would say they don't just ask God to take it away.
57:08
They beg God to take it away.
57:12
They weep and ask God to take it away.
57:16
They're afraid of disappointing their parents.
57:19
Depending on the church that they attend, they are literally afraid they are going to hell.
57:26
Not because of anything they've done, but because of who they are.
57:32
Because of the message, not of culture, the message, the church.
57:38
Catch that? That's vitally important.
57:40
You need to hear what just was stated there.
57:45
Not because of what they've done, but who they are.
57:49
Innate identification.
57:52
The way they're made by God.
57:56
And then the church comes along and says, you're going to hell.
57:59
And so it's the church's fault.
58:02
So he has bought hook, line, and sinker, the entirety of that innate, made-that-way, born-that-way ideology, which works just fine in the secular world.
58:21
It does not work at all in the biblical world.
58:25
It can, but he's already hacked up the biblical.
58:30
Anyways, that's a bit of a problem.
58:31
So proud of our church.
58:32
In preparing for this, our presentation I did on, I think it was a Thursday night.
58:38
Again, I couldn't find any helpful resources.
58:40
So I knew who could answer this question best.
58:45
Some months earlier, I had met with about 15 gay adult attenders who attended our campuses that we had contacted through the years.
58:53
And I was wondering, why do you attend our church? Based on how we teach and preach, why do you attend? So I'd had this fascinating conversation, so I knew a bunch of their stories.
59:03
So I emailed, I think, six or seven of them.
59:06
And I said, I'm putting this training together.
59:09
I'm kind of making some of this stuff up.
59:11
But you've had a bad church experience that I know you don't want repeated for this generation of kids with same-sex attraction.
59:18
So help me out.
59:19
And I asked several questions.
59:20
This is one of the questions I asked them.
59:22
How do you wish the church had responded when you came out? In other words, what would have made a difference in your life? Because all of them that I talked to, all of them grew up in church.
59:32
In fact, 86% of LGBTQ plus folks in the United States grew up in church.
59:38
But they leave church at twice the rate of straight people.
59:43
So I knew they'd grown up in church, had a bad church experience.
59:45
So I asked them, what would help us help this student, group of students, not experience what you did and that you experienced in your local church? Okay.
59:57
So here's the most important part of this to me.
01:00:01
Who do you go to? I couldn't find good resources.
01:00:06
So he goes to personal experience.
01:00:11
He goes to how many of these individuals are actually repentant? Would that even figure in his thinking? I'm not saying there's something wrong in hearing stories.
01:00:26
But one thing that Christians should understand is you're only hearing a part of anyone's story.
01:00:34
You can never fully enter into anyone else's experience.
01:00:38
And without an external, objective word from God, we will never have any idea what's going on any direction at all.
01:00:48
We will wander in confusion.
01:00:52
Have you ever sat there for 10 minutes and listened to these women in the rainbow stoles in the Lutheran churches and Presbyterian churches and Methodist churches and whatever else, all these ultra leftist liberal chicks, and you listen to them and you go, wow, these people are really confused.
01:01:16
I mean, they're throwing religious stuff in, but they sound just like the world and they just wander all over.
01:01:21
You wonder why that is? They don't have an objective word from God.
01:01:25
That was taken from them a long time ago in their denomination.
01:01:31
And it's sad to listen to in some ways.
01:01:35
It's disgusting in other ways.
01:01:38
But that's where this goes.
01:01:39
That's the only place it can go.
01:01:42
He didn't go to scripture.
01:01:45
He went to the wrong source because he's started to lose his confidence that that source could actually give him the answers that need to be given to people.
01:01:58
You're not helping people when you do not explain to them what repentance is.
01:02:05
You're not helping people.
01:02:08
You're damaging them.
01:02:12
That's not what the world will say because the world doesn't believe in repentance, doesn't believe.
01:02:15
Hey, we're all good.
01:02:16
We're all fine here.
01:02:17
All good here now.
01:02:19
Just a few more.
01:02:20
Parents, and this is why Justin and Brian were invited, the two married gay men at the center of all the controversy, and I'm sure that you've heard all about that.
01:02:29
I did not have a chance to see this.
01:02:32
Throw Justin and Brian, Andy Stanley conference at Google and see what comes up.
01:02:41
I'd be interested.
01:02:42
Didn't have a chance to, I was rushing.
01:02:46
No, I'm actually Scottish.
01:02:48
No, I'm sorry.
01:02:48
I was rushing to get this stuff put together.
01:02:52
You should see the look.
01:02:55
You should see the look I just got through the glass.
01:03:00
The glass is actually melting now.
01:03:01
It's pretty interesting.
01:03:03
Anyways, even if it's not, is it Justin Lee? Yep.
01:03:12
Okay.
01:03:12
All right.
01:03:12
There you go.
01:03:13
The guy debated in 2013, and he wasn't there yet, but that's the trajectory.
01:03:18
That is the trajectory, and I don't see anything that would stop it.
01:03:25
I really don't.
01:03:27
You want to see that trajectory? There's Justin.
01:03:30
Want to see that trajectory? Brandon Robertson? We'll see how long Gregory Cole's last, honestly.
01:03:42
That's one of the reasons I asked him a question.
01:03:43
Why are there so many side B that end up side A, and he's like, oh, I don't really think that there is, so I go back.
01:03:52
Parents, and this is why Justin and Brian were invited, the two married gay men at the center of all the controversy, and I'm sure that you've heard of it.
01:04:00
Okay.
01:04:00
The two married gay men.
01:04:04
As a Christian minister, Andy Stanley is calling that marriage, whether he intended to or not.
01:04:11
I cannot do that, and I suggest to everyone, as much as it may cost you, and it will cost you, think about what you're saying.
01:04:22
Think about what your words are communicating.
01:04:29
Stories.
01:04:34
Journeys.
01:04:36
This is all you hear from the pulpits of United Methodist churches, and PCUSA churches, and Episcopalian churches, and ELCA churches.
01:04:47
Their stories.
01:04:48
Their journey.
01:04:49
That's the authority here.
01:04:51
There's no word from God.
01:04:53
Nothing.
01:04:55
In church, and maintaining their faith in Christ, and their commitment to follow Christ all through their high school, and college, and singles, and all up to the time that they were married.
01:05:07
Their story is so powerful.
01:05:11
So they're going to follow Christ, and Christ's teachings, up to the point where they don't anymore.
01:05:18
But that's powerful.
01:05:21
Really? How is that powerful? I don't get that part at all.
01:05:29
They've defiled Christ's teachings.
01:05:34
They've defiled the marriage bed, and that's powerful? Can you tell where Andy truly is on this issue now? For parents of gay, especially kids, that it's a story gay parents or gay kids need to hear.
01:05:53
It is virtually impossible, and you know this if you stop to think about it.
01:05:56
It is virtually impossible for a straight heterosexual parent to understand what's going on in the heart and mind of their same-sex attracted child, when oftentimes their own child can't or won't verbalize it.
01:06:10
And these two guys have an incredible way of helping parents understand what's going on in the mind and the heart specifically of their gay kids.
01:06:19
They do an incredible job helping Christian parents understand this, because they have been where those parents' children are.
01:06:28
And have ended up in self-destruction.
01:06:36
How can Andy Stanley stand there? He's going to tell his church, we believe marriage between a man and woman.
01:06:41
On what basis? You just stood in front of your people and said that two men who have knowingly and with full and clear knowledge defied the teachings of Jesus Christ, but their story is so powerful that you needed to make sure that your people heard that.
01:07:01
So how are you going to stand firm on marriage? You're not, and you know it.
01:07:07
You know it.
01:07:09
You're not gonna.
01:07:10
It's not gonna happen.
01:07:12
Not gonna happen.
01:07:14
So we knew exactly what they were going to talk about at the conference, but again, this was not a theology conference, it wasn't a bible conference, it was a pastoring conference.
01:07:24
And I just want to say...
01:07:25
Did you catch that? Not a bible conference, it's not a theology conference, it's a pastor conference.
01:07:34
And if you're pastoring outside of the solid foundation of theology drawn from the bible, the result will be the destruction of the people you think you're helping.
01:07:47
It will be the destruction of the people you think you're helping.
01:07:51
That's the really sad thing.
01:07:53
All right, one last one.
01:07:54
One last one.
01:07:59
Okay, so notice it's gonna get really quiet here.
01:08:07
Hopefully you can hear enough of it.
01:08:12
And I'm looking at the...
01:08:14
It's not a waveform.
01:08:16
This breaks it up into blocks, and there's all sorts of spaces here.
01:08:19
That's what happens when someone's getting really emotional, trying to bring you along on the emotional part.
01:08:26
But he's talking about...
01:08:27
And man, this impacts people.
01:08:30
He's talking about, well, what's it like to be...
01:08:34
If you're a homosexual and you make the commitment to be celibate, then no family.
01:08:40
You can go visit other people at Christmas time or something along those lines.
01:08:52
But...
01:08:53
Okay, all right.
01:09:03
Well, this is...
01:09:04
What Rich sent me says that Lee has been side A for 20 years.
01:09:10
Okay, I thought he was more side B when we first did the debate, but like I said, I didn't have the chance to go back and review the debate to double check on all that kind of stuff.
01:09:26
So anyways, this is one of the common narratives of why homosexuals should be allowed to redefine marriage, is they'll be so lonely.
01:09:40
I mean, God has given you the idea of how to deal with that, but no, we can't do that.
01:09:47
So we will not discipline our desires and cultivate godly desires.
01:09:56
We can't do that because we bought into the idea that this is an innate thing, and so we're stuck with it.
01:10:00
And so we're going to be lonely, so therefore we should get to redefine marriage.
01:10:06
But there's an admission made here.
01:10:09
Listen to what the admission is.
01:10:11
They prayed for that, and God didn't answer their prayer.
01:10:14
Many are convinced that traditional marriage is not an option for them.
01:10:17
So they committed living a chaste life in old-fashioned words.
01:10:23
And for many men and women who put their faith in Christ, they just decide, okay, I'm just going to buckle down.
01:10:29
I'm just going to bear down.
01:10:30
I'm just going to be by myself.
01:10:31
I'm not going to have family.
01:10:32
I'm going to be sexually pure.
01:10:35
And many, many, many, many do that for long seasons of time.
01:10:38
And for some, it's their whole life.
01:10:41
But for many, that is not sustainable.
01:10:47
And so they choose the same-sex marriage.
01:10:51
Now, Moeller focused in on this.
01:10:54
That is not sustainable.
01:10:59
What if you claim to have innate desires for children? Well, I guess it just isn't sustainable not to act upon them.
01:11:13
How about for family members? Well, it's not sustainable.
01:11:20
Now, he's right in this sense.
01:11:25
Rosario Butterfield sent me an article.
01:11:26
I don't have it in front of me.
01:11:29
It's a different computer.
01:11:30
But it was by a lesbian Christian, I guess is the claim she's making for herself.
01:11:45
But she just came straight out and said, we talk about on side B, sexual purity, chastity, celibacy.
01:11:54
But could we just be honest? We're all lying about it.
01:11:59
We're not actually doing it.
01:12:01
We're telling the world we're doing.
01:12:03
She was just straight up about it.
01:12:05
And given the number of side Bs who have ended up over in side A, that seems to be the trend.
01:12:12
That seems to be the direction.
01:12:13
It doesn't seem to go the other way.
01:12:16
So it is true.
01:12:20
If you do not deal with sexual desires the way scripture says to deal with sexual desires, they'll get you eventually.
01:12:31
They'll get you eventually.
01:12:32
No tways about it.
01:12:33
Not because they're convinced it's biblical.
01:12:36
They read the same Bible we do.
01:12:38
They chose to marry for the same reason many of us do.
01:12:44
Love, companionship, and family.
01:12:50
Sadly, many, many people in the audience would not know how to argue against his use of the term love there because we don't define love biblically.
01:13:03
We've all, my generation onward, we've had love defined by the love songs on the radio, not by scripture.
01:13:17
And Andy Stanley certainly bought into it.
01:13:20
Because the love that endures in a marriage is covenantal.
01:13:25
It involves commitment.
01:13:27
It very often has to overrule emotion.
01:13:33
But that's not what we're talking about.
01:13:36
Within the homosexual relationship, all you can have is narcissism.
01:13:40
Because you're in love with a mirror image of yourself.
01:13:43
That's not ace or connecto.
01:13:45
That's not similar to me, but different.
01:13:49
You've denied that fundamental issue from the creation narrative itself.
01:13:56
That's not love.
01:13:58
It's selfish, narcissistic.
01:14:02
But it's not biblical love.
01:14:07
Our society has lost the foundation upon which to even define the term anyway.
01:14:12
And in the end, as was the case for all of us, this is the important thing I want you to hear me say.
01:14:17
It's their decision.
01:14:22
Our decision is to decide how we respond to their decision.
01:14:27
Our decision as a group of local churches is how are we going to respond to their decision.
01:14:34
And we decided 28 years ago, we draw circles, we don't draw lines.
01:14:41
We draw big circles.
01:14:43
If someone desires to follow Jesus, regardless of their starting point, regardless of their past, regardless of their current circumstances, our message is come and see and come sit with me.
01:14:55
And this is not new.
01:14:57
This is who we are, it's who we've always been, and this is why I love our church and this is why I'm so extraordinarily proud.
01:15:03
So there you go.
01:15:06
It's been clear, and we have said frequently, that Andy Stanley has a fundamentally unbiblical definition of discipleship.
01:15:16
Since it doesn't have repentance, since there is no real revelation of what God's will and God's law is, it's been disconnected from the Old Testament.
01:15:29
Anybody can be a follower of Christ, it doesn't matter whether they care about his commandments or not.
01:15:36
It doesn't matter whether they're obedient to his commandments or even have a desire.
01:15:40
Look, no one perfectly follows the commandments of Christ.
01:15:43
I get that, but we're talking about literally making a lifestyle out of rebelling against those commandments.
01:15:57
Do you see the connection with Francis? Do you see the worldview issues here? Neither one of them is under the fundamental, ultimate authority of Scripture.
01:16:15
I brought...
01:16:17
I actually have, let's see, one, two, three, four.
01:16:22
I have four Jeffrey Rice rebinds in here now, and I brought the one that I got in Tullahoma in February.
01:16:37
Pope Francis is not under the authority of this.
01:16:43
He claims to be the Holy Father.
01:16:45
He claims to be the Vicar of Christ.
01:16:47
He claims the very titles of the Trinity, and Rome rejected Sola Scriptura a long time ago and anathematized those people who believed in it.
01:16:57
Now, I am not pretending that Francis holds the same views the Council of Trent did.
01:17:04
He doesn't.
01:17:05
It's actually reason for you to abandon Roman Catholicism and the claims of Francis.
01:17:12
But he's not under the authority of this.
01:17:16
Sadly, neither is Andy Stanley.
01:17:20
This is how you define what marriage is.
01:17:23
This is how you define what mankind is.
01:17:25
This is how you define what godly desires are.
01:17:32
You don't have anything here about pray the covetousness away, do you? No, it's repentance.
01:17:39
It is positively cultivating thanksgiving and contentment, and the worship of God, because covetousness is idolatry.
01:17:49
That's a direct statement of scripture.
01:17:52
Why is it? Because you're questioning God's goodness in having given you, not given you something, he's given someone else.
01:17:58
It's idolatry.
01:18:02
These are the issues, and it's already in Europe, and it's already in Canada, and it's coming here.
01:18:13
How many churches will be willing to suffer the consequences of standing firm on this issue when groups like Andy Stanley are already showing the way of how to get out from underneath it? Biblical authority is the issue.
01:18:40
It's interesting, shifting topics here, I'll have to be brief.
01:18:43
We've already done almost an hour and a half, I think, from when we started, and we only have, what, another 15 minutes, right? That's all we got.
01:18:55
12 minutes.
01:18:57
19 minutes.
01:18:58
I have 19 minutes before Twitter kicks us off, right? Oh, great.
01:19:05
Oh, well.
01:19:06
So I will be limited.
01:19:12
I made a statement about the resource movement on Twitter.
01:19:24
I was looking at some of the people who, the resource movement, resourcing Thomas Aquinas' theology, resourcing medieval sources.
01:19:38
Resourcement is not a bad thing in and of itself, but when it ends up elevating any authority system, philosophical system, to the point of compromising the sufficiency and ultimacy of scripture, then it will end up being destructive and will lead to bad stuff.
01:20:06
And I made the statement, the resource movement is populated by men who have very, very little experience in, or it seems, interest in evangelizing Roman Catholics.
01:20:16
Now, it's not just the resource movement.
01:20:22
It really seems that the more popular people become amongst evangelicalism, the less willing they are to say anything about Roman Catholicism at all.
01:20:33
If you want to keep your ministry nice and small, evangelize Roman Catholics, talk about issues regarding the gospel with Rome, things like that.
01:20:42
Do the same thing with Muslims and you'll remain, and be Calvinistic in your proclamation.
01:20:48
You'll stay nice and small.
01:20:50
You won't have any problems with any of that.
01:20:54
And I stand by my statement.
01:20:57
Who are the people who are actually debating Roman Catholics and are reaching out to Roman Catholics? And who are the people who are having Roman Catholics on their podcasts and schmoozing with them and wanting to go to conferences with them? And that wouldn't be happening if over dinner at those conferences there was a call for them to abandon the idolatry of the mass, right? To stop following the false teachings of Francis.
01:21:31
To recognize that purgatory is a fundamental denial of the finished work of Christ.
01:21:37
Standing for sola scriptura against the traditions of Rome.
01:21:42
It seems to me there's a bunch of scholars today that are spending more time directing their students to Roman Catholics as the best sources of information and they are not calling those people when they meet with them to faith in Jesus Christ and saying to them, you can have true peace with God.
01:22:03
You can know that you have peace with God if you will but abandon your faith in these falsehoods.
01:22:12
The gospel of Rome will never give you peace.
01:22:15
It will keep you on a perpetual treadmill of penances, indulgences, and confessions.
01:22:24
Because there is no finished work.
01:22:25
There is no non-imputation of sin.
01:22:29
No Roman Catholic can answer the question, who is the blessed man of Romans 4, 6-8? Because Roman Catholic theology denies that fundamental reality.
01:22:39
That's what was behind my statement.
01:22:42
Is that I don't see these people who are so comfortable saying the best people you can read on this subject here and an important subject on the Trinity are Roman Catholics.
01:22:56
I don't see them.
01:22:57
I see them wanting to go to the conferences and getting published and doing all that stuff.
01:23:02
I get that part but I don't see them calling these men to repentance and faith and they're scared of us to do and they're embarrassed by it.
01:23:15
Not because they can refute anything I just said and not because they have spent any time face-to-face these individuals talking about these things but they have their scholastic careers to be concerned about.
01:23:31
Well, Stephen Wolfe, the author of the rather wildly popular or at least wildly discussed work on Christian nationalism, responded to my tweet by saying, reformed resourcement threatens people like James White because it has shown definitively that their apologetic approach and the theology and conclusions around it have very little precedent before the 20th century.
01:24:08
Now, I have made mention of the fact that I reject Stephen Wolfe's approach because he is a Thomist.
01:24:18
He claims to be reformed but he's not a theonomic and he's not post-millennial and he's certainly not presuppositional and that's what he's talking about when he says their apologetic approach and the theology and conclusions around it.
01:24:36
In other words, in regards to the quote-unquote Christian nationalist, and by the way, I didn't see this coming but I am so glad that there are two sweater vest dialogues out there between Doug Wilson and I and in both of them, I have been consistent in saying I get the reality that secularism is destructive to human flourishing and human culture, that we need Christ's law, that it is appropriate to desire blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh and sin is a stain, it's a reproach to any people.
01:25:19
So, when you have the Dianne Feinsteins of the world promoting godlessness, that is a stain upon a people, it's a reproach upon a people, it's a judgment upon a people.
01:25:34
I get it.
01:25:37
There is, we are trying to bring to bear, just got word Sunday that we have someone in, I believe it's the Iowa legislature, who's going to work with us in bringing a bill of equal protection to protect unborn children in Iowa.
01:25:57
Will that get shot down? Of course it will and that means we go back the next time and we go back the next time and we keep doing it because this is what God's law says and this is what is right and we live in God's world and we're never going to have peace until we recognize we are God's creatures living in God's world so we need to know how to live in God's world.
01:26:17
I agree with all that stuff but I also recognize that the only way any of that is ever going to become established in any broad fashion is by a massive work of the Spirit of God in changing hearts and mind and if you try to enforce that based upon a minority move, the result always is going to end up being the state determining what the church is to do.
01:26:55
It's called sacralism and Stephen Wolfe has mocked that.
01:26:58
Well, fine, mock all you want, you claim to know church history, you should understand the development of Constantinianism all the way through the modern period, you should be able to see these things, maybe you're just blind to it, I don't know.
01:27:15
By the way, I don't think Stephen Wolfe's a kinness.
01:27:18
He said some things that are unwise and there are kinness out there.
01:27:24
Good grief, I remember I ran into kinness in the old BBS days in PhytoNet.
01:27:29
That was in the 80s and it's disgusting and it's vile and I reject it in toto.
01:27:40
But this issue is not about kinnism because there are people that were ignoring what I was saying, oh, he's just a kinness anyways.
01:27:46
No, no, no, no, no, there's something important here.
01:27:49
A Christian nationalism that's based upon Thomism will lead to sacralism.
01:27:54
It will not lead to any kind of freedom or liberty of religious belief.
01:28:00
It can't.
01:28:03
It can't.
01:28:06
So I think it's fascinating that not only, and you know, this idea, the theology inclusions around it have very little precedent before the 20th century.
01:28:19
I'm not sure what he means by that, but is he talking about the fact, the reality that the Reformation was a sacral movement at the start? I agree.
01:28:31
That's why Fritz Erbe died in a hole.
01:28:34
And if you don't know who Fritz Erbe is, shut up about church history.
01:28:43
That's why he died in a hole.
01:28:45
I can point you to 30 or 40 people that heard me consistently in 2017, right before the Reformation in Germany, talking over and over again about the reality of who the Reformers were and my refusal to present a caricature of who they were.
01:29:06
And if being Reformed is to be just to accept whatever came out at that particular point in time, then I'm not Reformed.
01:29:15
You happy? I believe in Semper Reformanda.
01:29:19
I see a development even in Luther.
01:29:22
I see a development in many of these people.
01:29:24
And if it's guided by scripture, that's the way it ought to be.
01:29:29
I am sick and tired of Reformed people telling me that holding to this as the supremacy is somehow anti-Reformed.
01:29:39
If you're going to make that Reformed, I'm turning my card in because the end will not be well for you and for your movement at all.
01:29:53
So, I'm not saying anything new here.
01:30:00
He responded later, no one denied natural theology, no one was a theonomist, no one rejected Rome's dualisms, there was no category of sacralism, that's all 20th century garbage.
01:30:16
Sir, that's garbage.
01:30:18
Pure garbage.
01:30:19
You don't know what you're talking about.
01:30:21
You really don't.
01:30:23
And if you want to say you do, I'd like to see your debates with the leading Roman Catholic apologists on this subject.
01:30:28
Could you point them out to me? Because I can't find them.
01:30:32
I can't find them.
01:30:33
I wonder why.
01:30:38
There is a massive difference between a Reformed proclamation that is focused upon a recognition of God's absolute sovereignty, the clarity of the Revelation, the necessity of recognizing the presuppositions and the thoughts and minds of lost men, that puts forth that supremacy of the Revelation in Christ, and is absolutely unashamed of being able to say that wisdom begins with the fear of God.
01:31:13
Not with man's natural thinking.
01:31:17
I will not be cowered by those of you out there who have decided that Vangelis misled us all.
01:31:24
That's Paul, buddy.
01:31:26
And I'll defend it any day.
01:31:30
We need that insight now in this day when we're dealing with secularism.
01:31:35
They weren't dealing with that in Calvin's day.
01:31:37
We're dealing with it now.
01:31:40
And we need that insight.
01:31:42
It's a biblical insight.
01:31:44
And if you want to call me a biblicist for emphasizing a biblical insight, you go right ahead.
01:31:50
I will be honored by the term.
01:31:54
I will be honored by the term.
01:31:56
And this was a coordinated attack.
01:31:59
The editor-in-chief of American Reformer joined in right in the same thread.
01:32:05
Huh.
01:32:06
Wonder how that works.
01:32:07
Seems like there's some connections going on there.
01:32:12
There's one problem, guys.
01:32:14
You can do all your politics you want.
01:32:17
You can't touch me.
01:32:18
We don't owe our existence to all of your little political stuff.
01:32:23
You got nothing on us.
01:32:26
We can do and say exactly what God requires us to do and say, to be faithful to this.
01:32:33
And we have never put ourselves in a position of owing our continued existence to our political alliances with anybody else.
01:32:41
That's why we've got a little office, and it's me and Rich.
01:32:44
And I'm awful glad these days that's exactly how it is.
01:32:48
And that's why you can't control me.
01:32:50
And that's why I scare you to death.
01:32:57
Woke you up, didn't I? Sorry.
01:33:02
Had to be said.
01:33:03
Had to be said.
01:33:06
Wow.
01:33:07
Well, that'll make me popular.
01:33:08
No, it really won't.
01:33:09
But that's okay.
01:33:10
I don't care.
01:33:12
I don't care.
01:33:15
The positions we're taking right now are absolutely consistent with where we've been all along.
01:33:21
All along.
01:33:22
And I'll continue to defend those things.
01:33:25
And you know what? I think the vast majority of people are on our side.
01:33:29
I really do.
01:33:31
I really do.
01:33:32
When I talk with people, they're all like, yep, yep.
01:33:35
And the people that are out there doing the snobbish stuff, I'll just be honest with you.
01:33:43
Get out of your library and go start doing something meaningful.
01:33:49
I think Turretin would have told you the same thing.
01:33:51
Not the modern Turretin fan guy.
01:33:54
The guy who's been dead for a long time.
01:33:57
Yep.
01:33:59
Anyway.
01:34:00
All right.
01:34:01
So, Lord Willen, we'll be back on Thursday? Hope so.
01:34:08
Yeah, yeah.
01:34:09
Rich is looking down at...
01:34:13
That happened before.
01:34:14
It happened before.
01:34:16
It's the program.
01:34:18
And I don't know what I did to fix it because I know I've used that program since then and it's worked fine.
01:34:24
So, by the way, there's a whole new Mac update, new iOS version that I was going to install after the program anyways.
01:34:32
Okay.
01:34:33
Watch, watch, watch.
01:34:34
I install it and it works.
01:34:35
Yes.
01:34:36
But let everyone take notice that you, you just now said it was your fault.
01:34:41
So there.
01:34:42
Okay.
01:34:42
I said it was the program's fault.
01:34:44
I did say it was the program's fault, but I did come up with the fix.
01:34:48
Okay.
01:34:49
I was like, well, couldn't just, you know, it's the speakers, you know, the headphone jack, maybe.
01:34:55
I, you, you, you came up with the idea.
01:34:58
I'm in here pulling boxes all over the place and throwing wires everywhere.
01:35:02
That's true.
01:35:02
I just cleaned this place up, you know.
01:35:04
Who put all those boxes out there? I did.
01:35:10
You know me, I keep stuff.
01:35:12
I know.
01:35:12
You never know we're going to need it.
01:35:14
And we're using it.
01:35:15
Well, I just cleaned stuff up for Saturday.
01:35:17
Now I got to put it all back.
01:35:19
I know.
01:35:20
I know.
01:35:21
But it's not my fault.
01:35:24
You just want to be Han Solo.
01:35:26
You just, that's just all there is to it.
01:35:29
Anyway.
01:35:29
All right.
01:35:30
Well, we've been going for an hour and 45 minutes.
01:35:32
So we've got it.
01:35:34
We've got to wrap stuff up here.
01:35:35
Thank you very much for watching the program today.
01:35:37
Lord willing, we will see you on Thursday, which will be the last program right before our 40th anniversary celebration on Saturday.
01:35:44
Pray that the Lord will be honored and glorified and all that.
01:35:47
Thanks for listening to the program.
01:35:48
We'll see you next time.