John MacArthur, Christianity Today and MLK: Was Martin Luther King Jr. a Christian?

Welcome to the program, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Justin Peters. I hope that this finds you and your family doing well today. I want to thank you so much for joining me. Martin Luther King Jr. All of us should be very grateful for the needed and overdue societal changes that God in his providence used Martin Luther King Jr. to help bring about and enact in this country, the United States of America.

But was he a Christian? He was a preacher, but was he truly a Christian? So a few weeks ago, John MacArthur was doing a live Q &A session at his church, Grace Community Church, and a question was asked to him about T4G and the Gospel Coalition.

And John MacArthur answered that question, and he talked about, he kind of lamented the fact that TGC hosted the MLK50 conference back in 2018, which lauded Martin Luther King Jr. as a Christian, a true believer.

But John MacArthur said that MLK Jr. was not a Christian at all, and that caused quite a firestorm on social media. Articles were written rebuking John MacArthur for that. And I want us to look at one of the more prominent articles that was written by a man named Justin Giboney at Christianity Today.

And so we're going to look at the article, but we're also going to look at Martin Luther King Jr. We're going to look at his theology, his beliefs, and we're also going to talk about some of the personal integrity and character issues related to Martin Luther King Jr.

Now to help me in this discussion, I have employed the aid of two good friends of mine, Virgil Walker and Daryl Harrison, both of whom have done enormous amounts of research into Martin Luther King Jr., and so they are going to help us in this discussion.

So without any further delay, here's my interview with Virgil Walker and Daryl Harrison as we talk about Martin Luther King Jr. and consider the question, was he a Christian? Well, Daryl, Virgil, brothers, good to see y 'all.

It is a joy to have you on my YouTube channel and folks, Daryl and Virgil and I have been friends for the last number of years. We've spoken at a number of the same conferences together and I've come to really treasure and value their friendship and very much like minded and brothers from another mother, as they would say.

So brothers, welcome to my channel. Thank you all so much for coming.

On. Thanks for having us, man. Justin, thanks, man. Glad to be with you. Yeah, my honor.

My honor. So brothers, tell us, just give us a brief little bio sketch of each of you and like who you are, what your titles are, what you do, and maybe even talk about the Just Thinking podcast, anything like that.

So I guess we'll go in alphabetical order.

Daryl, you first. Yeah. So Justin, first of all, man, thanks for having us on. We love you, man. We love it. Just want to say that to everybody who's watching how much we love you, man, and your work on behalf of Christ and his kingdom.

So thank you, brother, for having us on again. So yeah, Daryl Harrison, co-host of the Just Thinking podcast, along with my partner in crime here, Virgil Walker. So current role right now, I'm on the pastoral staff at Redeemer Bible Church here in Gilbert, Arizona.

So been on pastoral staff here since January of 2024. So about three months prior to that, spent the previous five years on staff at Grace to You, which is the media ministry of Dr. John MacArthur. Just want to say hello to all my friends and my dear friends back in Southern California at Grace Church and at Grace to You.

So I'm originally from Atlanta, which is where Verge is based out of now, Metro Atlanta. So originally from Atlanta, married my wife, Melissa. We have three adult children, Yasmin, Colin, and Naomi. They all reside back in Georgia, which is where all of our family is.

And yeah, that's about it. I'll.

Turn it over to Verge now. Glad to be with you, Justin. It's a joy as always, man. I am Virgil Walker. Again, half of the dynamic duo of the Just Thinking podcast. I am the vice president of ministry relations here at G3 Ministries.

I provide executive oversight for all of our conferences, workshops, overseas tours, and the like. And I get the opportunity to engage in ministry relationships, partnerships, and donor relations. And so love what I get to do here.

It's a joy to do that. I'm married to Miss Tomika Walker, and that captures a smile on Daryl's face because like most who have had a chance to engage my dear bride, you definitely experienced Tomika. She's an experience.

She's a joy to be around. And those who know her know exactly what I mean. We've got three kiddos. Two of them are back in Omaha, Nebraska. In fact, today, actually, Justin, as we're recording this on March the 12th, is actually my daughter's birthday.

And so excited for her. She just turned 25. She's there in Omaha with my firstborn son, Princeton, and then a son who came with us here on the trek from Omaha to this new role here at G3 here in Douglasville, Georgia.

His name is Price, and he's still with us there. Other than that, man, I do a lot of things, not the least of which is the podcast, a lot of writing. Daryl and I have written a lot on the topic I know you're wanting to cover.

And so we're.

Excited to be with you. Thank you so much, brothers. Thank you. It is a joy to have you. So, all right, well, let's get down to brass tacks here. So what started all of this, the genesis of this video, a few weeks ago, as of this recording, John MacArthur was doing a Q &A session, live Q &A session at his church on a Sunday evening.

And the question was asked him, kind of dealing with T4G and the Gospel Coalition. That was the broader context here that MacArthur was engaging. So I want to play that clip right now for people to hear that.

But within that context, he also mentioned something about MLK, Martin Luther King, Jr. So let's listen to this, watch this clip here, and we'll come back on the other side.

Yeah, so there are some major organizations that have been around for the last at least 10 years. One was the Gospel Coalition, started out with noble intent to bring different people together, leaders, pastors, theologians, around the gospel.

It was very much like T4G, Together for the Gospel, that had that conference. We had as many as 10 ,000 people. I was a part of every year at these huge conventions, and it was Together for the Gospel.

But both of those organizations, well, T4G is basically nonexistent. They bought into the deceptiveness of the woke movement and the racial baiting that was going on a couple of years ago, and it literally put them out of existence.

I was thinking the other day how interesting it was that the last panel discussion that I was on at a T4G event was to honor R .C. Sproul, who had died, and I spoke at his funeral. This was, I think, 2017 or 2018.

So the T4G guys wanted to honor him with a panel, and we spent an hour and 15 minutes, and it was just beautiful tributes to R .C. from all of us who knew him so very, very well. And the strange irony was a year later they did the same thing for Martin Luther King, who was not a Christian at all, whose life was immoral.

I'm not saying he didn't do some social good, and I've always been glad that he was a pacifist or he could have started a real revolution. But you don't honor a nonbeliever who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel in an organization alongside honoring somebody like R .C. Sproul.

Okay, brother. So we just heard John answering that question. Again, the broader context, he's talking more about T4G and the gospel coalition than he was MLK. But the brief little comment there about MLK when he said that MLK Jr., Martin Luther King Jr., was not a Christian at all, whose life was immoral, that sparked a rather furious backlash and article from Christianity Today, which is led by, of course, Russell Moore.

But this particular article was written by a man named Justin Giboney, and Justin Giboney is the head of the AND campaign. But let me read to you a quotation from this article, and I'll get y 'all to respond.

So Justin Giboney writes, MacArthur cast these condemnations casually, with an apparent air of self-righteousness that suggests his theological expertise is paired with an infantile understanding of neighborly love.

And I'm just dripping with condescension here. But he says, Deep knowledge of systematic theology, unfortunately, can exist alongside a desperate need for remedial instruction on the greatest commandments and a failure to, quote, distinguish good from evil, including King's good work of peace and justice informed by scripture and motivated by the gospel.

I spoke at MLK 50, and I don't recall seeing any speakers who weren't unambiguously orthodox. MacArthur's accusations aren't only too lightly made, they are plainly slanderous. So guys, so Justin Giboney accuses John MacArthur of slander, and I might add that slander is a very serious sin, listed in Romans 1, which marks the lives of unbelievers.

So this is a pretty serious accusation. Is John MacArthur guilty of slander, as Justin Giboney asserts?

Steve, why don't you kick us off?

Yeah, I'll start by saying the short answer first and just say, no, absolutely not. I think MacArthur's position is informed not by some infantile idea, as Justin Giboney asserts, but on the basis of MLK's own writings, what Martin Luther King Jr. said himself, based upon his own admissions, the fact that he did not believe in the deity of Christ, that's documented, that he did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ, that's documented, he did not believe in the virgin birth, that's documented, he did not believe in hell, that's documented.

All of those are documented, not based upon some innuendo, some idea, some novice trite thought process, or some lack of desire to affirm King in some way. Those are King's words that anyone can read for themselves.

I've written about it and added links so that people can see what King actually said about these things. And so slander by no means. Giboney may have said he's in error, but to lay the charge of slander is absolutely beyond the pale.

Furthermore, if you go back to what Giboney asserts, I don't know who's editing Christianity today, but let's just start with the fact that anytime you can get away, even in an opinion piece, by using words like an infantile understanding, I think of all the things that you would say about MacArthur, the last thing that you would ever say about him is he had an infantile understanding of the subject matter that he would engage in from the pulpit.

You may disagree with that, but the fact that an editor allowed that kind of language into the piece speaks volumes about the agenda that is there, not only with Giboney, but also with Christianity today.

I'll finally land the plane here and simply say that Giboney says that the need for remedial instruction on the greatest commandment and a failure to distinguish good from evil, including King's good work of peace and justice informed by the Scriptures and motivated by the Gospel, I think perhaps Giboney's ears were clogged at the point at which if he would have paid attention, even in the short clip, I did hear MacArthur confirm or affirm that there were some great civil rights things that King did, and he attributed those good things to him, but also laid the charge on the basis of King's own theology that he was not a Christian.

And so that whole section, I mean, and that's just one section. I mean, we could go line by line through this piece and absolutely shred it to pieces. At the end of the day, his own language kind of leaves, lets us know that he has an agenda.

When you write infantile understanding, when you talk about someone who needs remedial instruction, of all the things that you might say about MacArthur, those two things would not be a part of any sentence or paragraph that you would.

Relate it to him. Right. I mean, it's like Justin Giboney just couldn't even veil the disdain that he has for John MacArthur, which I found absolutely appalling. But Daryl, help us here, brother. What.

Are your thoughts on this? Yeah, just to add to what you and Virgil have already said, I think Giboney's arrogance is representative of a lot of woke social justicians who always think that they have the higher ground than anyone else.

I think the consternation over ML King as a man, as a theologian, as a representative of the church is really rooted in what I believe is the misunderstanding that the majority of professing Christians have who believe that salvation comes by works.

I think that is at the root of all the consternation that you're seeing demonstrated when a person like MLK is objectively critiqued, objectively critiqued, because within their paradigm of what a Christian is, what Christianity is, what salvation is, is a paradigm of the good person versus the bad person.

So they see King as a good person who did quote unquote, and I'm saying good with air quotes, who is a good person who did good works, who helped a lot of people, and isn't that a good thing? So they translate all that quote unquote good into a soteriology, whereby they can say, well, how dare you criticize this man?

I mean, he's tantamount to being a saint. The only thing left to do for MLK is to beatify this man. So I think that's at the root of what people like Giboney are trying to argue here. And when you look at Giboney's use of the word slander in terms of MacArthur, you know, slander is a legal term.

But as loosely as Giboney apparently defines that term, I could just as well assert that he's slandered MacArthur in this paragraph that we've been talking about earlier. When he accuses MacArthur of having a, of number one, of casting these condemnations towards MLK casually with an apparent error of self-righteousness paired with an infantile understanding of neighborly love.

And so he doubles down on the infantile understanding by saying, suggesting that King has a rudimentary understanding of these biblical doctors and principles. Now, John MacArthur is going to be 85 years old in June of 2024.

I don't know how old Giboney is, but he's not 85. So the infant here is not John MacArthur. Okay. Just chronologically speaking, the infant here is not John MacArthur. Let me just say that. But based on Giboney's construct of slander, I could just as easily argue that he slandered MacArthur here.

But this is the arrogance, this is the hubris of social justice warriors who think that they are the only ones carrying the flag of what is right. They're the only one carrying the flag of virtue. They're the only one carrying the flag of anything that's redemptive about human nature.

And what I found when it comes to MLK, it's always an emotional reaction to even to objective criticism by people who pretty much see this man as some type of Moses figure that has yet to lead us out of yet another promised land.

So they can't stand, they cannot tolerate even a modicum of objective critique. And when I say objective, I mean by sources that are outside of my own opinion of the man. This is where Virgil and I come in because we have written extensively on MLK citing sources outside of ourselves to establish and support our argument that MLK was not a Christian in the biblical definition of the word.

He was not even a preacher in the biblical definition of the word. He wasn't a pastor in the biblical definition of the word. Anyone can stand up and be a good orator in a pulpit, and King was that. He was probably one of the most brilliantly gifted communicators of the 20th century, if not all of human history.

But that doesn't make you a pastor, that doesn't make you a preacher, that makes you a good speaker, that makes you an orator, that may make you eloquent, but that doesn't make you theologically correct.

So there's a lot of, really, I believe there's a forensic lens that we need to place upon MLK and look at this man in terms of what the Bible says as opposed to, you know, whatever affinity for or appreciation for someone like Gibney might have to where he gets all consternated when someone like a John MacArthur has the temerity to say that King was not a Christian.

I would challenge him to look.

At King more objectively than he does now. Yes, well said, brother, well said. Speaking of looking at King objectively, y 'all have both written extensively on King, you've done one or more podcasts on King, multiple, I believe.

So Virgil, you said a moment ago that King denied many of the fundamental tenets of historical Christianity. Can y 'all flesh those out for us? So when we say that Martin Luther King was not a Christian, what was his theological framework?

What did he affirm? What did he deny?

Yeah, he denied the deity of Christ. He wrote in a paper during his time in seminary, and I'll quote from the paper. The article is, you can find it at g3men .org. It's titled Truth Behind MLK's Social Gospel, The Truth Behind MLK's Social Gospel, but this is King writing on the humanity and the divinity of Christ.

He writes this, quote, the orthodox attempt to explain the divinity of Jesus in terms of an inherent metaphysical substance within him seems to me quite inadequate. To say that Christ is divine in any ontological sense is actually harmful and detrimental, so that the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ in my mind is readily denied, end quote.

As it pertains to the resurrection, he says this, King writes this, quote, this doctrine, the resurrection, upon which the Easter faith rests symbolizes the ultimate Christian conviction that Christ conquered death.

From a literary, historical, and philosophical point of view, this doctrine raises many questions. In fact, the external evidence for the authenticity of this doctrine is found wanting, end quote. Right there, if we just stop there, he denies the deity of Christ.

He denies the bodily resurrection of Christ. We can stop there and say the person who holds those positions is not a Christ follower, is not a Christian. Now, they may use Christ. They may use religious language.

They may use Christian language in an effort to support their social justice ends, but from a standpoint of what they believe and whether or not their belief is orthodox and Christian, it absolutely is not.

In addition, he denied the virgin birth, the second coming, and literal hell. I won't go into all of those quotes, but they're all available. You don't have to do a lot of heavy lifting in order to determine what King believed.

The idea, and I know you'll go here in a bit, but the idea that he came to some clairvoyant, definitive difference in his mind or a change of mind or heart in his latter years is absolute folly. It is absolute folly.

No one can produce a shred of evidence that King refuted these early claims or that he stood in an orthodox position on these issues in any way, shape, or form. I know people go to the kitchen conversation that he had in that conversation and in many others, not to mention multiple sermons which we have access to.

If anything, King is one of the most documented people that we have information on in modern times, and at no time will anyone, I dare anyone, to find King preaching an orthodox gospel about the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

You will not be able to find it. King's life, I'm sorry, the life of Christ, the death of Christ are always metaphors for some social justice plan or initiative, and that's what you have with King.

That's right. That's right. Darrell, I want to, and Virgil, this was not a one-off, right? You mentioned this was, you quoted from his paper in seminary. So what year would that have been, roughly, if you know that off the top of your head?

We're talking

Early 50s, probably. It was 1950. The paper was written, yep, 1950.

All right, and Darrell, so I want to read to show that this was not a one-off. Darrell, I'm going to read a quotation here from a sermon that Martin Luther King, Jr. preached entitled, A Walk Through the Holy Land Easter Sunday Sermon, delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church on March 29th, 1959.

And to Virgil's point here about the crucifixion and resurrection being metaphorical, I'm going to read this, and Darrell, get your thoughts. King said in his sermon, quote, and I'll provide the link below.

Everybody can see this.

Whatever you believe about the resurrection, the revelation, resurrection is something that nobody can refuse. That is the important thing. Some people tell the disciples they're plagiarized the sense of the immortality of the soul with the Jewish Hebrew doctrine of resurrection.

And he talks, as you remember, you read it about a spiritual body, spiritual body.

Darrell? Yeah, man, I'm speechless. Right. I'm speechless at this. And listen, I'm going to try to communicate this in a way that doesn't sound disjointed. But as I'm listening to you, Justin, recite that section.

I'm thinking about the style of preaching that is currently and has historically been the case for the majority of predominantly Black churches, where you hear the same type of sermon that you just quoted from from King, that's erotology.

Now, we know now I say narratology as being distinct from narrative because we know that one of the genres of a biblical content is narrative. There are narratives in the Bible. So you can describe certain segments of the Bible, sections of the Bible as narrative.

But what I'm talking about is narratology. So King was a narratologist. This is why I make a distinction between defining King as a preacher versus a storyteller. What you just cited for us was King being the storyteller when he integrates.

And I'm going to get back to the resurrection issue for a second. Sure. But when he when he tries to contextualize his theology of the resurrection by commingling Paul with Plato and making the resurrection a philosophy and not a theology, that's problematic right there.

But you don't get today as we sit here in 2024 in the predominantly Black churches like those churches that King pastored, you don't get expository preaching so that you can exegete. You can pick apart and you can examine forensically the various parts of King's belief system that you just cited in those few sentences right there.

So that notwithstanding, I just want to mention that that's a problem in the Black church today. You got people in the pulpit who are telling stories. They're not preaching, and let alone are they not preaching, they're not preaching expository.

So that's a fundamental problem right there. So I think we need to start right there. Now, to this matter of where King, as you were reading that, Justin, matter of fact, when you read the first sentence where King says, whatever you believe about the resurrection this morning isn't important, I'm thinking in my head, stop right there.

Stop right there. Now, King, and listen, what Virgil and I do on the Just Thinking Podcast is we don't do this intentionally, but we make people mad because we refuse to veer away from the Orthodox truth of Scripture.

We plant our flag on the sufficiency of Scripture. But that very first sentence there, Justin, I'm asking myself, if Martin Luther King were here today sitting in on this interview, I would ask him, don't you think that sounds a little bit hypocritical?

Now, and the reason I would ask it is because everywhere, so he has interspersed throughout this sermon that you referenced, Justin, King has interspersed throughout this sermon the virtues of Christ as a person, how he is to be admired.

He was a moral example. He was a standard that we should look up to, that we should try to model and exemplify and emulate. And then at the same time, you're going to tell me that it doesn't matter what you think about the resurrection.

So my question is, why did King put any credence whatsoever or validity into Christ at all if he was just a man who, when he died, he stayed dead?

Right.

Why should I pay attention to anything that King has to say about Jesus, wrong or right, if Jesus Christ was just another man who, when he died, he stayed dead?

That's right.

Of what significance is he to me today?

Right.

He's nothing. So when King says, whatever you believe about the resurrection this morning isn't important, the form that you believe in, that isn't the important thing. Now, when something is resurrected and the form matters, otherwise, how can you even call it a resurrection?

So if King, if Christ rather, if King says that the form in which Christ was resurrected isn't important, I mean, Justin, forgive me, brother, but the more we exegete these comments that King made, the more my mind just wants to explode, trying to juxtapose them because he says one thing, and then the next thing he says, he contradicts the thing that he just said.

So, but again, somebody's going to watch this interview and they're going to say, wow, Darren, you're pretty hard on King. Well, listen, I'm looking at, I say some of this in light of 1 John 4, 3, where John says, well, anyone who denies that Jesus Christ came into the flesh, okay, you need to run from them.

All right. Now, to me, you can't, so King, on the one hand, he's acknowledging that Jesus came into the flesh, came into the earth in the flesh. But again, we have to ask the question, why does that matter to you, MLK?

Why does it matter that Jesus came in the flesh? You know who else came in the flesh? Muhammad came in the flesh.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, but Muhammad wasn't pre-eternal.

Right.

Muhammad wasn't incarnate. He wasn't God in the flesh. So you can't just sit here and say, well, you know, King taught about Jesus. King preached about Jesus. Well, the question is, what did he preach?

Which Jesus?

Which Jesus are you talking about?

That's right.

Yes.

So I think the more we flesh this out, I think your viewers and your listeners are going to get a clear picture that though King talked about Jesus, he did not talk about the Jesus that was the Christ.

That's right.

That is a very, very crucial point to make here. He talked about Jesus as a good teacher, a good moral example, but he never talked about Jesus as the Christ. A Christ, a Jesus that was not resurrected is not the Christ because he's not a savior.

He's not a Messiah at that point. There is so much more we can say about this, brother, but I'll just wrap up right there.

That's right. There's a lot of different Jesuses out there, if you will. There's the Mormon Jesus, the Jehovah's Witness Jesus. There's the Jesus of Islam. There's a lot of different, and you're right, this Jesus that he preached is just as much a different Jesus as is the Jesus of Islam.

Right.

And this is the precursor, Justin, to the Jesus of Black Liberation Theology is what this is. This is the Jesus of James Cones. This is the precursor Jesus to all those who would embrace social justice, to those who would embrace critical race theory.

This is that Jesus. This is a Jesus who does not save. This is a Jesus who does not exist. This is a Jesus who is not real. And so it is clear why MacArthur said, knowing that the Jesus of Martin Luther King was not the Jesus of the Bible, it was easy for John MacArthur and anyone else who's clear about these issues to say they were not a Christ follower.

This Jesus that they're preaching, that they're teaching, that they're talking about is incapable to save.

Yeah, that's right.

And Justin, if I could just dovetail on what Virgil just said there. Virgil's absolutely right. This is a Jesus of today speaking contemporarily Raphael Warnock, who ironically, right, now currently pastors Ebenezer Baptist Church in downtown Atlanta.

This is the Jesus of Kelly Brown Douglas, who wrote a book titled The Black Christ. Virgil's exactly right. So in black liberation theology, you rob Jesus of so many of his incommunicable attributes as God in the flesh, as the second person of the Trinity.

You have to strip him of those things and reduce him down to a rebel, a revolutionary. So you take out of his role as redeemer of all sinners, and then you strip him of that divinity. And then you make him, like I like to say, you take his divinity off, you put on humanity, and then that's all that he wears.

He only wears his humanity so that he's a revolutionary. He's a rebel, but he is never a redeemer. And in black liberation theology, he can't be a redeemer because in black liberation theology, salvation from your sins is not the salvation that they're trying to achieve.

They're trying to achieve economic liberation, political liberation, political power, corporate power, and things of that nature, which we're now seeing with the expansion of CRT, especially as it relates to DEI.

So Virgil's exactly right. The Jesus of the social justice movement to which King himself, in a paper he wrote while a student at Crozer Theological Seminary, the paper was titled Preaching Ministry, said, and I quote, I am a staunch advocate of the social gospel, unquote, King confessed to being an advocate of the social gospel.

But in the social gospel,.

Jesus is none of who he himself said he is. That's right. That's right. And Darrell, to that point, to that exact point, I want to read another little excerpt from this same sermon. Judging by the transcript here, if he had been preaching, well, probably just a minute or two after the first section.

So he continues with this, per to your point.

So this morning, let us not be disillusioned. Let us not lose faith. So often we've been crucified. We've been buried in numerous graves, graves of economic insecurity, the grave of exploitation, the grave of oppression.

We've watched justice trampled over and crucified. And I'm here to tell you this morning, Easter reminds us that it won't be like that always. It reminds us that God has a light that can shine amid all the darkness and he can bring all of the light of day out of the darkness of the midnight.

See, that would make a good Hallmark movie on Lifetime, that script. That would fit really nicely into one of those little romance movies on the Lifetime channel. But that's not theology. That's not biblical theology, what you just read there.

I mean, again, so what you have in that section there that you just read, Justin, is you've got eisegesis going on. You've got narratology going on. You got a little homiletical stylization going on there.

But again, as I'm looking at the same quote, where King says, and so this morning, let us not be disillusioned. Let us not lose faith. I mean, lose faith. I mean, what or who is your faith? If Jesus isn't resurrected, and King's already said that, just go ahead and discount the resurrection with respect to what form Jesus took or whether you even think it happened.

Go ahead and discount all that. So when he says don't lose faith, faith in what? Faith in who? So now you've got the narratology going on here where he says, so often we've been crucified. We've been buried in numerous graves, the grave of economic insecurity, the grave of exploitation, the grave of oppression.

Matter of fact, King used those same graves to support Planned Parenthood, by the way, because it was the grave of economic insecurity that he used as an excuse for why young Black women should murder their babies, so much so that Planned Parenthood awarded him their highest honor in 1966, the Margaret Sanger Award.

So now you've got all these metaphors. But the thing King doesn't realize, if economic security was a grave, see, graves you don't get out of. Graves you don't get out of. I would rather King, instead of using all these irrelevant metaphors, I would have encouraged him to read, and I would encourage your listeners and viewers to read, Justin, go out and find Frederick Douglass' speech titled Self-Made Men, where Douglass, who was a slave, Douglass, 90-some-odd years before King was assassinated, would have talked about how to get yourself out of these graves, graves being air quotes, the grave of economic security, the grave of exploitation, the grave of oppression.

But apart from that sort of sociological linguistic gymnastics, there is nothing, again, there is nothing biblical in here at all, oh, as in terms of, number one, why are you even here at church listening to this sermon?

Why are you even here? Why should you even be here listening to me if all you're going to take away from this is, again, oh, well, I guess I just have to, you know, I just got to keep plowing away on my own, you know, I got to keep plowing away on my own, because King has got you so focused.

This sermon right here, to tell you the truth, Justin, was the first, Living Your Best Life Now. It was this sermon right here, because he's telling these people, well, you're not living your best life.

You're not living your best life, but there's a light.

Out there. Okay, well, what is it? What is it? Right. Everything's about the here and now.

It's the here and now. It's all temporal. It's all temporal, but that's what Virgil was alluding to earlier. This is the salvation that, this is the soteriology that Black Liberation Theology.

Teaches. What does your material quality of life look like? Yep, that's right. No emphasis on the eternal, everything's about the here and now. Nothing about the soul, nothing about the state.

Of your soul, nothing about you being in a right relationship with the Lord, nothing at all about when you take your last breath, would you go to heaven? Nothing about Matthew 121, where the angel said that you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins, nothing about.

That. Right. This Jesus, in some ephemeral way, saves people from economic, I mean, the graves of economic oppression, and injustice, and economic insecurity, and all those graves, but not.

Sin, not sin. Right. I think what you're witnessing even in this is that people are, those who are listening to him have bought hook, line, and sinker that their way, their road to salvation is through Dr. King, okay?

They can't think that it's through Jesus Christ because they've not been presented a biblical Jesus. They are drunk on homiletics and have no desire to hear proper biblical harmoneutics. I could even in my mind hear King saying this in that whole, and so this morning, let us not be disillusioned, let us not lose our faith, so often we've been crucified.

And see, I can hear, I can see people, because the current day idiots, and I don't use that word lightly, who get out and do this same fake homiletic, you know, it's cosplay is what it is. It's 1960s cosplay today that a lot of these leaders engage in, in an effort to sound like King, with the hope that their words can move the masses in the same way that King's did.