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.

Because none of those people were actually connected to proper biblical harmoneutics.

They were drunk on homiletics, the manner in which, the style in which, the

way in which someone presented words and orated what they were

going to share.

And if that sounds like King, then almost a lot of blacks, and it's sad to

say, have a Pavlovian response to this kind of

sound and intonation.

And so they begin to follow, but again, going back to Justin

Gibney, I think his response was Pavlovian as well in that, because

if you think about the two and a half minute stretch of

interview that you shared with us, I'd say less than 30 seconds of it

actually mentioned King, right?

Less than 30 seconds of it.

And a sentence that he objected to required him grabbing his laptop

and writing a, you know, a thousand word article that gets published

with someone very foolish, who did not do a good

job editing his work and exposing their own agenda and allowed

it to get published.

No good editor would allow language like the -.

Well, B, let's remember now who's running CT.

Oh, I know. I know.

Let's remember.

There's that.

There's that.

Yeah.

So the Jesus that did not bodily come out of the tomb is, if Jesus has not been

raised, we are still dead in our sins, right?

Absolutely.

Listen, if Jesus hasn't been raised, we've got nothing.

We've got nothing. Nothing.

And Justin, really, when you break it down to its most fundamental elements, the reason we're on this interview right now

is because Jesus has been raised from the dead.

Absolutely.

What I mean by that is that the truth matters here.

We're not just talking about, really, when you look at it from the standpoint of

biblical apologetics, the conversation we're having around Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. matters,

not necessarily because, not in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter

what King believed with respect to simply criticizing King and critiquing King.

But in a broader spectrum, what King taught and the fact that so many people today

still subscribe to what King taught matters because of the resurrection.

King taught another gospel as it relates to the resurrection.

Now, there are other examples of him teaching a different gospel as well.

But to your point, Justin, when you cite that text of scripture that you just did, if Christ is not

raised from the dead, Paul says we are to be pitied even among

others who believe false religions.

We're even to be pitied more than them.

So the resurrection matters.

What King taught about the resurrection matters, not because of King, but because the

resurrection matters.

So for him to say that you can believe whatever you want about the resurrection, I mean, that's ridiculous.

That's absurd.

And I do want to say one last thing about the CT article by

Justin Gibney.

Gibney in that article says this.

I'm quoting Gibney.

He says, the details of King's theological journey have never been the principal

concern of his detractors, unquote.

Now, I want to counter that by saying to the extent that Virgil and I have written

so extensively about King in our writings, all we've done is

to critique his theology.

That's all we've ever done.

We have never written a single syllable about King's personal life

or anything outside of his theological beliefs.

Every single word we've ever written, every single word we've ever spoken, critiquing Dr. King

has literally only been to critique his theology.

So Gibney is wrong on that.

Point.

Yeah.

One of the things, Darrell, that I get pushback, when I did

this article this year and kind of tightened up some older writings that I, I mean,

you've read the stuff I've written.

I send stuff to you for you to edit.

You send stuff to me for me to look at.

We're both checking each other's work.

And we have editors in our own perspective areas of where we work and such

who look at our stuff where it's factual content, it's theological acumen, all of those things.

And so any article that you see we've put up, it's gone through a pretty intense grid

before it's actually posted or goes up.

With that said, more times than not, the challenge that we get back or the pushback that we get is always, well, you

didn't talk about, you know, Whitfield or Edwards and their slavery, or you didn't talk about, you know,

this.

And my response to that is this, and I'm sure Darrell, I can

almost imagine what Darrell's going to say, but I'll let him say that.

My thing on that is this, I'm not even looking at, if Edwards or Whitfield

had some errant theology, some unorthodox belief that they were

positing as Christian, I'd have the same visceral response that needs to be

addressed and say, okay, Whitfield got this wrong theologically, or, you know, or Edwards got this

wrong theologically.

I'm not, we can talk about the, you know, the issue of slavery or what have

you.

Right now I'm simply dealing with a theological matter, and neither of those men are in error

theologically speaking, right?

So that's the first thing.

The second thing is simply because I critique King does not require me to

critique any other person of any other ethnic hue.

That is not a requirement.

I can look at the man who said what he said or did what he did on the merit of their own

words and their own writing, examine that against the backdrop of Scripture.

There's not some biblical requirement, you did a black guy, you know what's next, you gotta

do a white guy.

There's no, if someone give me book, chapter, verse where that's found, you know, I'm happy to take a look at that, but the

reality is at the end of the day, you can critique King on his own

basis, based upon theology, and that be it.

Finally, and I shared this in a response that I gave to someone, you know, I think if

Edwards or Whitfield had a day that the entire country

stopped what they were doing for the purpose of acknowledging their holiday, and there were some

moral issues that needed to be addressed, I think it's fair game, right?

I think it'd be fair game.

I'd have the same level of intensity to examine their lives.

At the end of the day, there's no requirement here.

And all anyone is doing when they bring up those kinds of charges or claims is exposing their own

ethnic idolatry is what they're doing.

They're exposing the fact that they have an idol, that that idol is melanin, and that they are bowing the knee to

that idol.

And so no one of a certain level of melanin is able to be critiqued because they get a pass

because of the fact that they're black.

That's kind of how that ends up working.

And you know, V, whenever I hear somebody try to, they go, that's whole, but what about his morale?

The whole, what about his morale?

They want to talk about Edwards.

They want to talk about Whitfield.

I'm like, no, no, let's not talk about them.

Let's talk about the slave owners in your line of family.

Let's talk about your ancestors who was like, because I guarantee you, you had some.

I guarantee you, you have some.

So no, let's not talk about Edwards and Whitfield and the fact that they own slave.

Let's talk about the people in your own ancestry who own slave, maybe in my own ancestry, who own

slaves, who I know for a fact own slaves.

Let's just bring that home.

Let's not, let's not go back 200 years.

You have some people in your, in your lineage back there with your same melanin level

who own slaves?

Own slaves.

Yes, I do.

Absolutely.

I've got, I can name you one Anderson Jewell.

My great -grandfather, my great -great -grandfather Anderson Jewell owned 260 slaves on a plantation in North Carolina.

Wow.

He was a mulatto, so he was mixed.

Yeah.

Owned 260 slaves on a plantation in North Carolina.

Okay.

So, I mean, you talk about the whataboutism, but Virgil's absolutely right.

That's the instinctive reaction that we get.

They want to bring up Edwards.

They want to bring up Whitfield.

No, let's talk about the owners in your family.

Because I promise, it's like Sonny Holston on The View, who was shocked.

I don't know why she was shocked when she found out that some of her

ancestors actually owned slaves.

And when you look at this in the context of Act 1726, which clearly says

that every last one of us is descended from one man,

you think that logically, if we're all descended from Adam, at some

point in time, every single person on this earth probably can trace

in their genealogy, at least contemporarily, to someone who was either a slave

or a slave owner.

And we don't even want to deal with the issue of slavery.

I can promise you, no one wants -.

Well, they don't want to talk about that.

I promise you, no one wants to have a conversation with Darrell or me on that subject altogether.

That's a non -starter.

They don't want.

To go there.

I promise you.

I would love to see the two of you and Dwight McKissick have a conversation about that.

So, brothers, let's go back to Giboney's article here because he makes and Virgil, you

touched on it a little bit, but I want to flesh it out a little bit more.

He says, MacArthur may take issue with some of King's early theological work, which did

question Christian doctrine.

However, as Mika Edmondson, himself a pastor and systematic theologian, insightfully

explained, quote, King's early seminary papers don't reflect his final, fully -formed

theology.

Not unlike Abraham Kuyper and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, King wrestled with theological

liberalism but later seemed to, quote, shift back toward the faith of his conservative

black Baptist upbringing.

So, you have to acknowledge that King clearly wrote

against the basic elements of the gospel.

So, to kind of rescue King amongst, at least for theologically conservative

evangelicals, whatever that means, to rescue him from himself, they've got to say that he returned

to a more orthodox, conservative, biblical stance and understanding of

Christianity.

Is that true?

Well, I'll start here.

Where's the evidence?

Listen, every statement that I made in my article, I backed with a link

directly to an original source.

So, everything I stated in the way of a charge, in the way of a

statement, something I posited, an idea, I connected the dots back to

an original source.

You can posit a whole bunch of ideas.

You could make claims all you want, but it's attached to nothing.

And if all they have is the kitchen conversation,

that is vacuous.

There is no there there.

There's no repudiation of previous doctrines regarding

the deity of Christ, regarding the resurrection of Christ.

There's no gospel.

There's no proclamation.

There's no advance of the gospel proclamation to say, oh, he now believes in a biblical

gospel that he's presenting in this instance.

What King is doing is what he's always done.

He's borrowed biblical language when it suits him.

He's put that before people that he knows wants to hear it.

And even in this, even in this instance, it does not, it still does not connect the dots

solidly to a biblical gospel.

It doesn't.

There's no there there.

Right.

You know, Justin, you're familiar, you're extremely familiar with the work that Virgil and I

do on the Just Thinking podcast.

And one of the things that Virgil and I take pride in, which is one of the reasons why we don't put out episodes

more frequently than we do, is because we spend so much time doing research.

That's right.

We spend so much time doing research and homework and citing our sources.

If you, if your viewers were to see the notes from an average

episode of the Just Thinking podcast, you will probably, you will probably see

close to 30 pages of single page notes, single spaced notes with close

to 40 to 50 citations, 40 to 50 footnotes.

Right.

We take accuracy very seriously on the Just Thinking podcast.

We don't cut corners.

We don't take shortcuts.

So when I look at what Mr. Giboney said here towards the end of his article in

Christianity Today, where he cites Mika Edmondson, and then he

says that Mika Edmondson insightfully explained, and that word explained is hyperlinked

to a Twitter post.

That's see, I thought I found it interesting that Giboney didn't say, he said, as

Mika Edmondson insightfully explained, he didn't say as Mika Edmondson insightfully documented.

He didn't say that.

Right.

He didn't link to a document, a documentation that supports

or endorses or affirms his suggestion, and I use that word lightly,

that King changed his theology in his later years.

There is nothing that documents that.

Right.

That King changed his Christology, his theology, or his

soteriology.

There's nothing there.

Darrell, I've got to interrupt you here.

Go ahead, V.

And here's why.

You've written for a number of publications, brother, in journals, in

different periodicals.

You've written blog articles, everything from a journal, which is

something very in -depth, theologically dense, to a

blog article.

And even in the lightest form blog article, the places that you and I both have submitted our

articles to would never, never let you or I get away with making a

statement like that, attaching it to some random tweet, and

acting as if that was documentation for the purpose of making our case.

They wouldn't do that.

An editor would look at that, laugh, and go, you need to go find an original source, and

come back.

Now, had they used the tweet to say, this

person said this, that's one thing.

That's one thing.

But if they're trying to make a case and are using this tweet to make a case, it's not

documented proof of anything.

Anything.

At all.

And no good editor, again, I apologize for the interruption, no good editor, I have to make this point, no good

editor would allow that to happen.

No.

No good theologian either.

No good systematic theologian either.

Who Giboney describes Mika Edmondson as, quoting himself, speaking of

Edmondson, Giboney said, himself a pastor and systematic theologian.

If he's a systematic theologian, intrinsic with the word systematic is preciseness.

You want to be precise, you want to be accurate.

Because a systematic theologian, being precise, accurate, and

thorough is inherent to that label, to that title.

But linking to a tweet where someone is basically

offering an opinion, essentially, with no objective

second or third party confirmation of what you're suggesting, that's

not documentation.

No.

No.

That would not stand up in court, as they say.

That would not stand up in court.

But that's the mindset that Virgil and I have in our preparation on The Just Thinking

Podcast.

We will not get behind those microphones and say anything that we cannot cite

or support outside of ourselves.

We're not going to do it.

Forget a good writer or a good editor, a good systematic theologian would never

let someone else say that about them if it can't be asserted in some other secondary

or tertiary.

Way.

It's just not going to happen.

That's right.

That's right.

And two, to that point, if King did return or if he did in

his later years embrace a biblical gospel,

then real repentance bears real fruit, right?

He would have come out, and Virgil, you said it earlier, he's one of the most documented individuals in the modern

era.

If he had truly gone from darkness to light, if he had truly been granted

faith and repentance, he clearly was not a Christian by denying all the

fundamentals of the faith.

If he somehow later did become a Christian in his later years and embraced the true gospel,

then he would have come out and said that.

He would have said, look, I've been preaching a false gospel for all of these years.

I've been preaching a different Jesus.

I was deceived, and in so doing, I was deceiving even you.

And I've brought reproach upon the name of Christ.

And I realize now the bodily resurrection, what you believe, it actually does matter what form the

resurrection comes in.

It actually matters a lot.

It matters eternally.

And he would have said, I'm now born again.

I've been brought to life.

All things passed away.

All things are made new.

He would have made that very clear, and yet not one syllable of evidence that that ever took

place.

No, what you have is a lot of.

Evidence to the contrary.

Again, and we don't spend a ton of time on this, but given his lifestyle,

given what others have said about him, the way that he lived, the womanizing, all

of those kinds of things, there's a ton of evidence to the contrary that can actually be brought to

bear.

Like I said, Daryl and I don't spend a lot of time discussing those matters.

Those will see the light of day when they do.

And most of those related issues, people, unfortunately, are going to dismiss anyway.

But they do serve as evidence of a life.

That is not regenerate.

That's for sure.

That's right, Virgil.

And since you brought it up, I want us to bring this up because it is germane to this discussion.

The sexual immorality and promiscuity of Martin Luther King Jr. is beyond dispute.

I mean, it's not even debatable.

Maybe the degree to which is somewhat debatable, but one of his

closest friends was a man by the name of Ralph Abernathy.

He was a fellow civil rights leader with Martin Luther King.

He was King's probably his closest friend, most trusted confidant.

Their children referred to the other man's father as Uncle

Martin or Uncle Ralph.

These were close personal friends.

They labored together.

And Ralph Abernathy, he wrote an autobiography on his close personal friend titled, And the

Walls Came Tumbling Down, in which he says that Martin Luther King Jr. had many

adulterous affairs.

In fact, he says that the night Martin Luther King Jr.'s last night on earth

was spent in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

And he says of his dearest friend for his entire adult life, he says that there were two women

spending the night with King in that hotel room, neither of which was his

wife.

And one of the women was the first black woman

state senator from the state of Kentucky.

Her name was Georgia Davis Powers.

And she herself openly admitted, I think she died maybe about, I think 2012, if I

remember correctly.

But she herself admits, openly admitted to being one of those two women who

spent the night with King, his last night on earth in the Lorraine Motel.

Now, and then there's apparently, we talked about this before we started recording, there are FBI tapes

that are scheduled to be released in the year 2027 that

document if 1 of what I'm reading about these tapes is true,

King was not only guilty of prolific sexual immorality, but to the point of

criminal sexual immorality.

Now, what are y 'all's thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, one, when I hear that, when I hear anything like that, my heart absolutely

breaks.

Absolutely.

For everyone involved, for King to be engaged in

that, for those who were involved, for those who were around him that knew, my heart

breaks when I hear that kind of thing.

And regardless of who, regardless of the situation or circumstance, absolutely breaks.

Secondarily, and sadly, unfortunately, this kind of information is not

unknown.

It's clear.

The challenge is most people like those who stand with Giboney,

ignore it.

It's irrelevant.

They find it absolutely irrelevant.

For them, this is not germane.

It's neither germane to King's

claim of being a Christian, nor is it germane or clouds any

of what they believe good King did.

His abuse of Christianity and Christian language and Christian ideas

for the purpose of his own, of the promotion of his own social agenda.

That is all that matters at the end of the day for the vast majority of these people.

So while I think it is important to look at, to examine, most who

carry water for King will ignore it.

They won't.

They'll pay little to no attention to it and believe anyone who brings it up to be racist or to

have some kind of an agenda.

Right.

Yeah.

I would just add to what Virgil just said.

I think we haven't talked about this thus far in the conversation, but I think

not withstanding the allegations of Martin Luther King's

faithfulness to his wife or unfaithfulness to his wife, I should say, his

lifestyle when he was not in front of the public.

One of his closest confidants was an open homosexual, Bayard Rustin,

the man who organized the march on Washington.

He was one of Dr. King's closest confidants.

But I think, you know, I can't, unlike

some who want to link to a tweet, I can't sit here and say that I read

Dr. Abernathy's book.

Being an Atlanta native, I'm familiar with Ralph David Abernathy.

You know, growing up in Atlanta, you get that, you get all that history.

You know, I was a child in school in the seventies.

So you get that history of Dr. King, Ebenezer Baptist Church and the

Civil Rights March, Civil Rights Movement, rather, the march on Washington, and you get all

of that.

So I'm very familiar with that just from being born and raised in Atlanta.

But I want to use this sort of as a metaphor of what Virgil's talking about, how

when it comes to people like Giboney, they like to separate

certain things about King and just sort of toss those aside as if they're just totally irrelevant.

I'm not a chef.

I'm not a baker.

But as I'm listening to Virgil, I'm thinking about how I've never tried this, but I've seen on

cooking shows and whatnot, when you can crack an egg and you try to separate the yolk from the egg white.

That's what Virgil's talking about, what people like Giboney like to do when it comes to King.

They try to separate the yolk from the egg white, but you can't.

It's still all the same egg.

It's still all the same egg.

You can try to separate the yolk if you want to and then separate the egg white, but it's still the same egg.

And what's really sad here, and I concur with both of you

guys, my heart breaks when I, listen, when I listened to you a few minutes ago, just sort of run through that,

Justin, I wasn't over here giggling and sneering.

I mean, that was heartbreaking.

But see, here's the thing when it comes to idols and idolatry.

What's ironic is we won't accept, because we're so,

as congenital sinners, we're so inherently enemies of God,

that we won't accept God's loving, merciful,

graceful boundaries for our lives.

We won't live by those while at the same time for our idols though,

we'll accept the worst in them because they're our idols, because we don't want our idols and our

idolatry of those idols challenged.

We don't want them challenged.

So we'll accept even the sin or the alleged sin of a Martin

Luther King, if this man is

so apart of who I identify myself with, that I can just let all of his,

no matter how egregious they are, I can let all of his sins go, no matter how egregious they were, no matter who they

hurt, no matter who they harm, even if the harm was done to himself.

But see, here's the thing though, and this goes full circle back to my earlier comments about most Christians

have a moralistic Christianity.

It is not a monogistic Christianity.

So they think with King that he had it within himself, if he did

change his theology or his Christianity later on, that he would have been empowered in himself to do that.

You see, as if some epiphany came upon him, whereas we know

that you only come to the light of the truth if God draws you to it.

God has to bring you to it.

Salvation is not of yourself.

Regeneration is not of yourself.

People who argue that King came to a different, although we have no documentation of this, that

King's theology, his Christology matured in his later years as if he himself

would have been able to come to that realization, well, that's erroneous, but that's those people who think

salvation is by works, that we can do enough good works to endear

himself to God, whereas to choose salvation, to

choose to be saved, and then again, to say in and of themselves, oh, yeah,

I was wrong about that.

I was wrong about that.

Hey, I read this book, and all of a sudden, my heart changed.

No, that's not how this works, but they don't want to put the work in.

Y 'all really need to do more than just read letters from a Birmingham jail.

People who get behind King, yeah, you should read his letters from Birmingham jail.

Well, have you read his papers that he wrote when he was in seminary?

Mm -hmm.

The papers King wrote at Crozer Theological Seminary represent the

same Martin Luther King all the way up to when he was assassinated in 1968.

That's right.

That's right,.

And you're exactly right.

There's no evidence that he ever embraced a biblical gospel.

If he had, he would have done what we've been talking about.

He would have made that known.

You can't go from being dead in sins to alive in Christ and not tell people about it.

But see, King never taught.

The thing about King, King never taught.

King never had a homardiology.

No, and that's the.

Doctrine of sin to throw out.

That's a big doctrine of sin.

He never had a doctrine of.

Sin, so he never had a doctrine of sin, which again, I can't find it, and listen, we studied,

Bert and I have studied King profusely.

I can't find a single sermon where he preached on.

Repentance and confession of sin, not one.

Not one.

That is not to be missed.

Okay, not one.

I can't find a single one.

I can't find a single one.

I've studied him for years.

I've not been able to find one.

Yeah, that's the open and shut case right there.

If he truly embraced a biblical gospel, towards the end of his life, he would have made that known.

That would have been his all -consuming compassion, not compassion, to preach the gospel, and

he didn't do it.

He never did it.

And the immorality, the apparently prolific, if not

even criminal, sexual immorality, that is just, I mean, that's what you

expect from a lost person.

That's what, you know, lost people do what lost people do.

As being unregenerate, he did not have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God.

Therefore, there is no restraint on his flesh, right?

And so that's just kind of what you would expect from someone who's unregenerate.

Justin, can I say one more thing real quick?

I want to harken back to the sermon that we were talking about earlier in our conversation, A

Walk Through the Holy Land.

This is King's Easter Sunday sermon that he delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church,

March 29, 1959.

Now, I want you to tell me, I'm going to play this game that Virgil likes to play a lot.

He calls it, Who Said It First?

Okay, who said it first?

I want your audience to guess, who said this?

Was it Martin Luther King or was it Joel Osteen?

Now, let me read from that sermon and I want you to guess, was this MLK or was this

Joel Osteen?

From that sermon, King says this, he says, so often we come to those points when it gets

dark.

It seems that the light of life is out.

The sunlight of day moves out of our being and out of the rest of our faith.

We get disillusioned and confused and give up in despair.

But if we will only look around, we will discover that God has another light.

And when we discover that, we need never walk in darkness.

I've seen this so often in my own personal experience, but when it was dark and tragedy around, seemed

that the light of day had gone out, darkness all around and sunlight passing away.

I got enough strength in my being to turn around and only to discover that God had

another light.

Now, who said that?

Was that Martin Luther King or was that Joel Osteen?

You could flip it either way.

You could flip it.

That's exactly my point.

You could flip that either way.

Either way.

It'd be a jump ball.

I could almost hear that in Joel Osteen's accent actually, but that's from MLK.

But yeah, it would fit perfectly with Osteen.

That's right.

That's right.

So guys, to wrap this up a little bit, going back to Giboney's article, he says,

in as much as MacArthur or any others reject or even obstruct the American church's efforts to repent

of injustice, imitate Christ and heal our country's racism, sexism and economic inequalities,

they will only find themselves fighting against God.

Now, full article, if you want to read it, he is playing off of Gamaliel's advice in Acts chapter five,

which Gamaliel's advice was bad advice because Gamaliel was not even a believer and it doesn't pass a common sense test, but

that's another program.

So, I mean, that right there, it reflects his social justice,

social.

Gospel bent, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does.

He ends the article that way.

I mean, at the end of the article, he connects social justice with the gospel, right?

And so from start to finish, he kind of lays out his case and

shows you his cards and lays the charge to MacArthur that

he's the one being slanderous when actually not at all the case.

In fact, everything we've laid out in our conversation here

is evidential proof of why MacArthur made the statement that he

did.

It follows logic, it follows reason, it follows the evidence,

and it's substantiated by King's own words.

And so, at the end of the day, I think this article, and

those who published it, it's telling, it absolutely is telling

what they're doing, why they're doing it, all of it to raise up King rather than the

King of kings and Lord of lords, who is Jesus the Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

And what's at stake here is to portray King as a

genuine Christian who preached the real gospel, you're cheapening the gospel, you're

preaching to people a different Jesus, a different gospel, and a different gospel

does not save.

So we're talking about matters of eternity here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm so happy to hear you emphasize that, Justin, because, listen, souls are at stake.

The truth is at stake here.

We're not just talking about a man's perspective on who Jesus is.

We're not talking about just, you know, siloed opinions here.

This man, King, here we are

almost 60 years after he was murdered.

People are still leveraging his theology to not only

develop their own theology, but to also continue to expand on an already

false theology, which is liberation theology.

That liberation theology still has legs.

Liberation theology in the American church, you know, we're going on over 100 years now

of this poison penetrating the evangelical church, but it is continuing

to do particular damage in churches with predominantly black congregations, because

now a lot of those churches, a lot of the pulpits, especially in urban,

large metropolitan areas like Atlanta where Virgil is, you've got young

pastors, young men rather, who many of them, not that you have to be,

but many of them not seminary trained, they've got their pulses on a

certain bit of the culture with BLM, with the whole George Floyd thing.

They buy into DEI.

They buy into critical race theory.

In other words, they're woke, so they either are put into these pulpits, or

they may start their own church, you know, and lead their own

congregations down this same heretical path, which is rooted in,

speaking of black liberation theology, is rooted in envy, jealousy, covetousness,

hatred, and sinful partiality.

I could probably go on, but black liberation theology, and I studied this at Princeton.

This is why I went there, Princeton Theological Seminary, to study the black liberation theology of James Cone.

You have now, starting with Cone, you're probably on your fourth generation

within black communities of people, young people, who are swallowing up the

poison of black liberation theology and not realizing that the

salvation that James Cone preached is not the salvation of the Bible.

It is not the gospel.

Souls are at stake here.

This is why it matters what Dr. King taught, is because what

he taught, in terms of being an unbiblical, false, totally

another gospel, is going to send people to hell.

That's right.

That's why this conversation matters.

That's right.

We're not having this conversation just to diminish

Martin Luther King Jr. in people's eyes.

That's not what any of us is motivated by.

We're motivated by the truth, and we're energized by the real

gospel, the true gospel, not a false gospel.

Listen, I would have this same conversation if we were here talking about the modalism of T .D. Jakes or the prosperity

gospel of a, who's my guy, Creflo Dollar.

I wouldn't care who it was.

If the person's in error, we need to have that conversation.

Right, and the difference here between, for those who would say, well, okay,

y 'all talked about King and what he did in the bedroom with someone who was not his wife, but you didn't talk

about the slavery of Edwards and Whitlock.

The issue at the end of the day, I'm sorry, Whitlock,

and the difference, we don't even go into why I said that.

The difference here at the end of the day has everything to do with who preached the right

gospel.

What was the gospel that was preached?

We don't have to ignore the issues of slavery with those men.

We can lay that on the table.

We can talk about that, how wrong it was, horrific, the transatlantic slave

trade.

We have no problem discussing any of those issues.

I would love to talk about that, actually.

I know you would.

Maybe we need a part two.

Yeah, I know you would, but at the end of the day, we can talk about it.

No one's embarrassed by that.

We can look, we can stand flat -footed, clear -eyed, and talk about those issues and the danger

of that and what was sinful about it.

We can do all of that in the same way that we do about King and his issues

with women.

At the end of the day, what matters is who got the gospel right.

What about the gospel?

If there's an incorrect proclamation of the gospel, that absolutely needs to be addressed, and we

can address it all.

We can address it all, absolutely, but at the end of the day, what matters is that which will stand up in

eternity.

Scripture is clear that it is appointed unto man once to die and after that to judgment.

Was your knee bent?

Was your heart transformed, regenerated as a result of hearing the

proclamation of a biblical gospel or not?

That's the bottom line question.

Yeah.

See, the thing, and I'll say this, and I'll let this be my last word, Justin, but as I'm listening to Virgil there, I just happened to

flip to Romans 5, Romans 5, 6, where it says, for while we were still weak, at the right time

Christ died for the ungodly.

So when you take a guy like King, King will acknowledge that Christ died, but if he didn't rise again, if there was

no resurrection, then his death is irrelevant too.

His death is totally irrelevant.

So I would challenge any of your viewers, any of your listeners to ask themselves,

especially even if they're a believer in Christ, if they're a professing believer in Christ, why does Jesus matter to you?

If Jesus only matters to you from a standpoint of morality, you don't understand who Jesus was.

You've got the wrong Jesus, you've got the wrong gospel.

It's not enough to acknowledge that Jesus died.

Now, when King says that how you think about the resurrection doesn't matter, and him saying that inherent within that

conversation is an acknowledgement that Jesus died.

You can't have a resurrection of anything that doesn't die.

So he acknowledges that Jesus died, but you cannot stop there, but that's where he stopped, apparently.

That's where he stopped.

If the resurrection and even the form in which Jesus was resurrected doesn't matter, then

that means his death doesn't matter.

So we have to be clear on this.

This is a holistic thing.

It's not just one piece.

We're talking about an entire biblical theology of the gospel, and if you don't get that, like Virgil said, if you

don't get the gospel right, I just don't know what else to say.

So I would challenge even your viewers here to ask, you know, who is, hey, it's the ultimate

question, right, of mankind.

Who do you say Jesus is?

Right.

Who do you say Jesus is?

Is your Jesus the Jesus of Martin Luther King Junior,.

Or is your Jesus the Jesus of Paul in Romans 5?

That's right.

That's right.

Can't be both.

That's right.

Can't be both.

Can't be both.

Well, brothers, I just want to conclude.

We probably will have a lot of people watching who have imbibed to one degree or another the

social justice gospel.

So I want to give folks the true gospel, just a clear, succinct,

what is the gospel in either one of you, whoever wants to do that.

I got to hand it off to my guy, Virg, because he does an amazing job.

Virgil, give us the gospel, brother.

Absolutely.

The gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is His life, death, burial, and

resurrection for the forgiveness of sin.

The fact that God the Father in eternity past knew that we would be sinful, that

we would fall into sin, and as a result, laid out a plan before the foundation of the

world that He would send His one and only Son in the form of human

flesh, born of a virgin, to live the perfect life that none of us could live.

He lived a perfect life for His entirety in thought, in word, in deed,

never, ever sinning.

And as a result of this perfect life that He gave of Himself by dying

upon a cross and rising from the dead, confirming that the

substitutionary death was received by the Father, and that those

of us who would repent of our sin and place our faith in Him would

indeed experience and have eternal life.

And those who would repent, and again, bow the knee to the pride, bow

the knee to their desire to win some temporal goal or

opportunity or some economic goal, a

rung on the ladder, if they would let go of that and recognize their sinfulness before

a holy God, repent of that sin and place their full faith in Christ, again, they would inherit

the free gift of God, which is eternal life through Jesus Christ.

Amen and amen.

Brothers, thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you for helping us think through these issues.

Thank you for your ministries.

Thank you for your personal standpoint.

Thank you for your friendships.

I treasure both of you men very much so.

Justin, we're going to be together in April, right?

Yes, we are.

That's right.

April in Jackson, Mississippi.

So yeah, I'm looking forward to the Bible Belt Conference.

Oh yeah, that's right.

I forgot about that.

Yeah, Virgil, you're going to be there too.

I'll actually be there too.

I'll be there too.

Hey, all right.

I'm looking forward to that.

I'm looking forward to that.

So I'll put a link to that too, but down below in the description.

Is that how they say it down there?

Just Jackson?

Yes, I've heard people say it.

Not normally.

No, it's not the typical pronunciation.

That's a bit of an exaggeration.

I'm originally from Vicksburg, which was about 45 miles due west of Jackson.

Very, extremely historic city, Vicksburg.

It was.

With the Civil War and everything.

Very familiar with that area.

Yeah, that's right.

You have a lot of history there.

A lot of history there.

All right.

Well, brothers, where can people...

I want to point people your direction.

So where can people find out more about...

You don't just do the Just Thinking podcast, link down below, but you've also written some books.

So how can people find out more about you and your resources and avail themselves?

You could check us out on...

You can get us on Amazon.

We've got Just Thinking About the State, which was published with Founders

Press, as is Just Thinking About Ethnicity.

And then we've got here at G3 Press.

What is it?

That's it right behind you, man.

Why are you afraid?

That's right.

The book right behind me.

You've written so many books, you can't even remember them all.

The book's right behind me.

Why are you afraid?

And yeah, in fact, you can order any of these on Amazon or go to g3men

.org or go to Founders Press.

Yeah.

And any one of those, founders .org.

You can order the books there and have those in front of you as well.

Yeah.

Download the Just Thinking podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts on your favorite mobile device, or

you can listen online at justthinking .me, justthinking .me.

And then Virgil and I are both active on social media, so you can find us on social media as well.

All right.

It is one of my great joys for this YouTube channel to be able to point people in the direction of some good, faithful

brothers doing some good work, good resources that will encourage and edify them and strengthen their walk with

Christ.

And it is my joy to do that.

So folks, go their directions.

All right.

And Virgil and Darrell, Lord willing, I will see you guys in person in about a month.

And thank you, brothers.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for having us, man.

Love you, man.

All right.

Love y 'all too.

All right.

Well, dear ones, thank you very much for joining us.

I hope this was encouraging and edifying and helpful for you to think through these issues.

Thank you so much for watching.

Until our next time together, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit

be with you all.