Skillet Non-Controversy, Conciliar Authority, CN Documentary

So the Babylon Bee just posted, thousands of potentially career ending posts thwarted by internet outage.

It's true. The internet had a major league hiccup this morning and there may be people who still have their jobs because that happened,

I don't know. Welcome to the program. I'm gonna be keeping an eye on the radar here.

There is a real, I don't know if you looked out there, but thick, dark clouds and they're just missing us.

They're probably hammering you out there. They're over to our west. And I mean, they're just missing us, but I think we could get nailed during the program here.

Some unsettled weather in the Phoenix area. And it's great. We got some real good rain.

And it's, I think the high of the day is supposed to be in the 60s, isn't it? For us, that'll be the first time since like,

I don't know, February, that it's been that cool. And it won't last long.

We have to enjoy every moment of it. That's why we talk about it, is that, oh, it's so wonderful because we know what's coming.

The days are getting shorter, but that won't last long either. And I know the rest of you, you don't like it being dark at 4 .30,

fine. Those of us who live south and still don't play with our clocks.

And you know the worst thing, it sounds like they're gonna try and make it permanent. So we'll always be stuck.

I don't know. I don't know. I, you know, Trump's a little authoritarian, so he might just, you know, send troops to Arizona, make them change their clocks now.

Yeah, okay, whatever. Okay, so welcome to the program today.

Uh, real quick, I don't know, sometime last week, look, if you've listened to this program for any period of time at all, you know that I am literally good friends with the band

Skillet. And John and I talk a whole lot more than I do with anybody else, but I, Seth and Jen and Corey, when

I was in Nashville just a matter of weeks ago, I drove out to John and Corey's house and Corey cooked dinner, and we sat there and talked about church and church problems and all sorts of real life stuff like that.

And so I've spent hours in the

Skillet bus at various concerts, and he and Corey flew out for our 40th anniversary for Alpha and Omega and surprised me, just walked right through there, right where I'm looking at right now, just shocked me.

And it didn't shock me that they would want to be here, it shocked me that they'd be able to be here.

I mean, they're normally, they just got back from, I think, South America, and just huge concerts and huge crowds.

And when they perform in Eastern Europe, 100 ,000 people, these things, it's just massive.

They've had global, global impact. So anyway, it looks like it's raining. Anyway, yeah, for us in Phoenix, that's exciting.

I know if you live in Seattle, it's like, please stop mentioning this, I don't want to know. Anyway, so last week

I saw a little blurb on John's XFeed about Okam Okam Emmanuel, and it was just a brief little clip of a song they did, a version of Okam Okam Emmanuel.

So I immediately, I'm texting him like, you guys are doing a Christmas album? A Christmas album? That'd just be absolutely awesome.

He says, well, actually, no, just one, just one song. And since then, I've texted everybody in the band.

Jen, Jen, this would be great. Seth, dude, I mean, wow. And I'm going,

Mannheim's getting a little old, and we love, I still love my Mannheim steamroller, but dude, we could really use, and they all said the same thing, by the way.

Everybody said the same thing. They said that song was Corey's genius. Now, Corey is a genius.

I mean, John admits Corey's just way beyond him.

He really is. He married way up, and she's just a musical genius, arrangement and hearing stuff and getting it just right.

And she did all that arranging and stuff like that for this song. So I'm all excited, and I'm like, oh, this is great.

And he said, would you like to see the whole thing? So he linked me to a pre, two days before it came out,

I got to grab the whole thing and watch it. And, you know,

I mean, I love Skillet, and look, that's not the normal kind of music I listen to.

I'm a, if I'm listening to something secular, it's gonna be 1930s and 40s big band.

John Tesh, John Denver. Okay, that's sort of my bailiwick.

But, you know, I have all of Skillet's music, and there's some beautiful ballads and stuff in there.

I mean, Your Light Will Terrify the Dark, just a gorgeous, gorgeous song. And on the last album, they had

In the Valley of Death. Wow, I mean, that is deep, deep, and very, again, mainly piano, choreo on the piano,

I'm pretty sure it was. Anyway, this video, I start watching it, and you have to watch it and think, because it starts off with John in this hospital room.

And that was the first thing that caught me, was that looks like a monitor behind him, and it looks like an

IV bag, and what's going on here? And he's looking at an empty hospital bed.

And he's talking about, O come, O come, Emmanuel, free your people. And it's talking about death.

You know, this is an empty hospital bed, someone has died, and there's sadness, and it's longing for the eventual banishing of death.

And it's based on the words and the imagery that the words evoke.

I think a lot of their critics just sing these songs without ever thinking about what imagery this is supposed to evoke.

And then it switches to a church, and I asked John, I said, where'd you find the church? He said, well, in the church, it was a set.

It looks just like a church, but it was a set here in Nashville. And most of the vocals for Skillet start with John, and then

Jen comes in. And so I thought it was really cool, he's starting the next verse, and then she's walking in, so that when she starts doing the sort of echo refrain vocal thing they do on a lot of their songs, she's now sitting in one of the pews too.

But again, it's really dark, and it's longing. And so as it develops, light starts coming in through the windows, the stained glass windows and stuff, as it's talking about the advent of the

Messiah, and the banishing of death, and all the rest of this stuff. And so it's really, really well done in following what the music's about.

Then, of course, they do a Skillet verse, where it's back to Dominion, and White Horse, and all the big hits they've had, and it's hard rock.

Seth's out there, John swings his bass around his neck, he's gonna kill himself doing that someday.

John Cooper was taken to the hospital after his bass choked him to death.

Anyway, so they do the, Jen's going on the drums, and Cory's, I don't know how

Cory doesn't have a chiropractor on constant standby. The way she swings her head around,

I would be completely debilitated. I would not be able to walk,

I would not be able to move. She's amazing. So anyway, so they do that, and then it immediately breaks into the conclusion, which is just a brief, right back down to the quiet, oh come, oh come, he is with us, he is with us.

It's just super well done. And so I was telling the family about it, I said, wow,

John just shared this thing with me, it's coming out in two days, this is really, really great. And so, you know, and I ripped the audio to put into my

Christmas music list so that I'll have it in there. I won't tell you how many

Christmas songs I have on my Christmas list because that would be used against me everywhere. Let's just say it would take a long time for I'd heard it again, like six days.

Anyways, listening 24 hours a day. But then it comes out, and it's like, you know, most people are like, wow, that's awesome, this is great, they're all saying the same thing, we need a

Skillet Christmas album, and you know, I was like, believe me, I'm already telling them that, it'll be a smash and it'll be great.

But then here come, here come the people that are still putting on the talks at churches that my parents took me to 50 years ago about how certain beats came from Africa and are demonic.

And, you know, there's one guy, he's written a self -published book on the evils of Christian rock, and he's going at it, and then they start just picking the band apart.

Oh, you were wrong here, and you were, and one of the things that went after him was the thing with the shack. And it's like, excuse me, in that studio over there,

John was on my program and was on our program, that he repented for having been involved with that, that they didn't know what the shack was, he should have done more research and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

It was on our program that he first said that, and he said it on others too, I think with Elissa Childers and on his own podcast, he said, hey, that was a misstep, we messed up there.

How many bands do that? How many go, sorry, we, you know,

I mean, come on, they've been in this since 96, 30, they're coming up on 30 years.

How many bands have been cranking out quality music with high quality lyrics for 30 years?

And you might, well, I don't like that song over there, I don't like that song, okay, fine. And I'm not saying you have to love their style,

I mean, they do a wide variety of stuff, let's be honest, but okay, you don't like the guitars, you don't like the driving sounds, maybe you don't weightlift, maybe you don't ride a bike like I do, they're great for that kind of stuff.

Going for a PR, better fire up skillet, you know, that kind of thing, fine, no problem.

I'm not sitting here saying because they're Christians, you have to like that kind of music, but man, the stuff that I started seeing from people that obviously had not even sat there long enough to go, wow, that's a pretty strong message that's got there, and boy, they really did, they really thought through the lyrics and that really does communicate powerfully and, you know, ignore the guitar riff section and Jen going crazy on the drum, leave that aside, watch the rest of it, leave that out and go, did they nail this or did they nail this?

I mean, how many people sing that song, they never even think about what it's, it's actually a post -millennial theme if you listen to it carefully.

Most people don't even realize that. They put it into a different context, but if you listen to it carefully, that's what it's doing.

And John was a post -millennialist before I was, by the way. So, yes, you have your -

Oh, I was just gonna say, you need to understand that there are so many people, and I think of this every time

I read them online, that they drink, they just, they drink pickle juice for breakfast. And so they walk around with that look on their face all day long and then they see something wonderful and they just can't, you know, more pickle juice, here we go, you know, so.

They have to, they have to attack it and they must not be enjoyable people to be around, that's all

I can say. But, you know, I've, I am Skillet's official theologian and so I have been defending them online.

Seth's been online, John has contacted me. Hey, he said, hey, thanks for having our back.

And let me just, let me just tell you one thing, okay? I could tell you a lot of things about John and Corey and Jen and Seth that demonstrate they're real, okay?

They're not playing games, all right? I didn't play this, did

I? I don't think I played it on the air. Maybe I did. Anyway, it was during COVID, they were playing in, well, no, no, it was after COVID.

They were playing in London. And I get this text from John and it's a video.

And he says, James, James, you've got to see this. And so he's using his phone.

And so he's talking to this fan after, outside the venue after the concert. And he says, tell them the story.

James will get to see this. And I don't know how they had hooked up, but she was talking about, if I recall, it was her daughter who

I think came along during the video. And through this webcast, through this ministry, her daughter had been led to Christ and had wanted to be baptized.

But the UK had locked down doing anything like that. You weren't allowed to get baptized. They literally snuck into a park while it was snowing and baptized her like in a fountain, in the pool of a fountain.

That's called using cold water, like the Didache said. And they had heard that John and I were friends.

And so they are telling John about it. And he's videotaping this and sending this to me.

You know, they had come, they wanted to hear Skillet. When they were down in South America, he sent me a couple of shots of signs that people were holding in the concert.

And both of them had a very similar message, a little bit different, but basically it was, I had given up,

I was ready to commit suicide. Your music kept me from killing myself.

And you're just like, he has boldly proclaimed the gospel in some of the, let's put it this way.

John Cooper has boldly proclaimed the gospel in places that most of these people not only would never go, but they would never open their mouth if they found themselves there.

So there you go. So those of you who have just said, well, you know, it's just on my cup of tea. You know,

I have different musical tastes. It's fine, no one was saying anything other. But for all these people, get a life, please, get a life.

I just, anyway. Go back and listen to the programs we've had. We need to have

John on again, but go back and listen to the programs. Listen to the story where he talks about one of his favorite songs that was born out of a situation with abortion and stuff like that.

Don't just judge because he's got a big beard and tattoos or something.

That's just so surface level. Judge on the basis of content and character over time.

That's what you need. Okay, all right. So there was that. Now I have commented on the skillet controversy.

I just, like I said, guys, please, this is all, please. I even volunteered to drive out there.

If you've got like a section, you'd like something narrated, you know,

I could. Like if you wanted to avoid any copyright issues and you wanted some scripture texts, I'll translate them myself.

And then I can narrate my own translation. And since I'm Skillet's official theologian, then there's no cost involved or anything like that.

I'm doing what I can, guys. Really, I am. There's a bunch of you out there going, yes, go, go, go.

And a bunch of you else going, I just can't, I can't listen to this man anymore because he listens to that music. Then don't listen.

We don't care. Go listen to somebody else discuss the broad range of things we do.

Not too many who do, not too many who do. Okay, all right. When I saw this,

I was like, all right. Matthew Barrett, Matthew Barrett left being a

Baptist many years ago. He just kept walking in the suit and getting the paycheck and bringing more people out of being

Baptist for years after he probably should have, I think with integrity, just walked away and started teaching the places he's teaching now.

And so now Credo Magazine, which I have written for, they can't erase that,

I have a copy somewhere with my article in it. Credo has blocked me on X, just a terrible, horrible person, aren't

I? And they're doing everything they can to introduce the

Renaissance in Thomistic theology. Thomas Aquinas, greatest theologian to ever live, right?

Crossway has very unwisely contracted, I think, five books with he and others to introduce

Aquinas to Protestants. I have Roman Catholic friends, shockingly enough, and every one of them knows exactly where I stand and most of our conversations are theological.

And one of them was talking to some monks and Benedictine monks,

I believe. And he mentioned all these

Reformed Baptists who were really getting into Thomas Aquinas and they smiled and said, that's wonderful.

They'll be with us soon. And that's what's happening. Hey, if Chris is in channel or in the think tank thing or something like that, my recollection is he sent an

X post to Matthew Barrett that included a picture of Barrett in some sort of liturgical dress that included a huge golden statue of the

Virgin Mary. And I would like to see if someone could pop the reference up for that.

I forgot to grab it. I wanted to see that because it'll be relevant to what we're saying.

Let's just put it that way. So a few days ago, I think it was, yeah, it was

Credo Magazine that posted some video clips from a presentation that Matthew Barrett gave very, very recently.

And here is a brief, let's see, this is all of 31 seconds.

Not a long one, but it touches on the key issues.

Those of you who know this controversy, and if you don't, well, you should. Those of you who know this controversy know that starting in 2021, we started losing friends and influencing fewer people because we started responding to this classical theology

Renaissance stuff going on amongst Baptists. And our concern was the relationship between creeds and confessions, church councils and scripture and the church.

This is something that we have addressed in this ministry for decades. Why? Because we've been involved in dealing with Roman Catholicism for decades.

When most of these people, Matthew Barrett wrote a book defending sola scriptura nine years ago.

I do not believe he would republish it today. I do not believe he continues to believe what he wrote in 2016 at all.

I'd be really interested to see if it's still in print or if it's available at all any longer.

And I think someone should have the temerity just simply ask him straight up, do you continue to affirm everything you said in your 2016 book on sola scriptura?

Or are you going to modify it? Are you going to pull it out of print? Are you going to write something else? So we have been addressing this stuff for a long time.

When I have used the phrase semper reformanda, always reforming,

I have been told and I have heard reformed Baptists in whose churches I have preached in years long past saying that semper reformanda was made up by Karl Barth as a means to just simply change whatever theology you want to change.

I've heard them say it. It wasn't made up by Karl Barth, by the way. It pre -exists him by hundreds of years.

But it wasn't a reformation phrase. Most of the solas were not.

Those were later generations looking back and identifying the key elements of the theology.

But I have defended semper reformanda, I have to, because when

I look at Rome and I see its fundamental compromise of biblical categories of authority,

I have to say, look, this is the issue.

As we see right now with Pope Leo, Francis before him, there's a tremendous quandary amongst

Roman Catholics. These people are continuing the trajectory, Leo's continuing the trajectory of Francis.

And it's obvious to me and to many others, including Roman Catholics, that it is a movement away from historical

Roman Catholic traditional beliefs on many subjects. In the same way, the

Eastern Orthodox, I have said from the beginning, they're ossified. They're trapped in the eighth, ninth centuries and the tradition of that time.

And that becomes the only category in which anything can be interpreted.

Basically official Byzantine theology of the

Byzantine empire is what they're stuck with, as if that's what gives them their continuity.

And so this is something we've addressed. What's the relationship? I was called a

Neo -Sassanian, again, by men that I had worked with, because I dared to say that the authority of the

Council of Nicaea is based upon its consistency with, it's being derived from the truth of scripture.

I do not invest in a council, an authority that stands next to or above scripture.

Any authority of a council has to be under scripture, not next to or above scripture.

I had always taught that. You will not find me teaching anything else in the history of anything that I've taught.

I mean, going back to the first dividing lines in the 1980s, especially once I started dealing with Roman Catholicism, then there was a tremendous amount of focus in this area and consistency in this area.

So starting in, I believe it was January of 2021, we started responding specifically to people who were saying, well, you can't understand the

New Testament unless you read it through the lens of the Council of Nicaea. Well, I reject that.

The New Testament was understandable before 325 AD. And if you say that you have to do that, you are subjugating scripture to an external authority that will eventually have to be grounded in some type of ecclesiastical community and some kind of extra biblical claim to authority.

There's no other way to do it, you're stuck. So this is important stuff.

And when Barrett and Credo started doing their thing at the same time, we criticized it.

I put Craig Carter's stuff up on the screen. We read it, we walked through it. And while they're blocking us and trying to ignore us, we're reading them and reading them out and going, what about this?

What about that? What about this? One side's engaging the other, the other side, no, not really interested in doing that.

So when I heard this portion of this talk, the first thought across our mind is how quickly converts act like converts.

How quickly they start reflecting upon the position that they had six months ago, six months ago, as if they have now reached the pinnacle of maturity to be able to look back.

And I have said that I believe that given the things that Matthew Barrett is saying today, sharp

Roman Catholic apologists would press him strongly on the consistency of his staying where he is.

I think he has crippled his ability to critically analyze ultimate claims of authority.

And so I can see how a consistent argument could be presented to him that would lead him into either swimming the

Bosporus or swimming the Tiber, that is becoming Roman Catholic or becoming Eastern Orthodox. I'm not saying he's going to do that, but I'm saying that I think there's a greater possibility of that happening than not happening from my perspective.

So let's listen to these 31 seconds now that we have a good context to it, and let's comment on it.

In fact, if you, he went on to say, a Baptist had been alive in the fourth century, even if you would have found

Nicaea's contents agreeable, you would have had to protest

Nicaea for its conciliar authority. That is simply for being a council.

Oh, sticking that dagger right in there.

Okay, so is that, that's all there is to it. Hi, I'm here twice.

When I see Rich going, I realized that all the little lighted buttons have now become one.

What, yes, all these lights, too many lights. Look, we knew this is where he was going when he was still drawing a paycheck from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And I wasn't the only one going, guys, yo, people in charge, you got a problem here.

You got an issue here. We'd put pictures of the book table in the bookstore, up on the screen.

And, what, you got it? Oh, okay. And we'd go, notice that six out of the 10 books are written by Roman Catholics now.

And that's what's being recommended to the students. You've got an issue here. And recently he talked about the need for ecumenicity and he's saying all this stuff that, again, if he's just pressed to be consistent,

I don't know how he can take a stand and stay where he is. But I want to listen to what he says here.

If a Baptist were alive in the fourth century, and of course they would say there was no such thing, though adult baptism of converts was still the majority practice anyways.

If that were the case, then even if you agreed with the content, well,

I guess the content would be the creed, which didn't quite have the form that we quoted in today, that came from Constantinople in 381.

But even if you agreed with the content of the council, the creed, you would have to protest the council because it's a council.

If what is being assumed here, and it is being assumed here by Matthew Barrett and by those that are listening to him in his audience, it seems that what's being assumed here is that Nicaea has an authority because it is a church council.

Problem is, that's anachronism again. It's anachronism.

The fact that for the next four decades, Nicaea was contradicted, for example, by the council of Ariminum.

And we talked about this. We talked about this at length when

I responded to Joshua Charles and demonstrated his complete collapse into anachronism.

It wasn't ecumenical council. That hadn't been defined yet, that no one knew what that meant.

When Constantine called it an ecumenical meeting, what he meant was it's being drawn from all over the world.

It did not have all the, well, it's an ecumenical council, therefore it's infallible, therefore. That comes later.

And see, they don't care that it comes later. As long as the church says it's later, then you can read that back and you can read history in light of that.

But for those of us who sit here and go, well, hmm, what was meant at the time of the council?

What did the council believe the authority was? And was it not, were there not councils before this?

There were. The East had held councils. The East had condemned various forms of modalism, dynamic monarchianism,

Sabellianism, Patrapassianism. So councils existed before this. What was developing was the idea of a thoroughly non -apostolic, unbiblical ecclesiology, the creation of entire concepts that the apostles, the apostles did not go around ordaining bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, archbishops, et cetera, et cetera.

They ordained elders who were bishops, who were pastors. It was all the same office.

And when Wes Hough dared to point out what is obvious, that that is there are only two offices in the

New Testament, everybody jumped on him. Who are we going to believe you today?

Or people, you know, the lived hundreds of years after the apostles. And it's like, so what the apostles wrote is so unclear.

You have to, you have to layer more and more and more interpretation on top of that.

And that's what clarifies it, doesn't clarify anything. It creates more and more confusion.

So conciliar authority. No one at Nicaea would have understood what later

Roman Catholicism or even Matthew Barrett would define as conciliar authority at that time. If they did, there never would have been the backlash that took place.

They never would have been able to call bishops to a ruminant and contradict

Nicaea because they'd all be going, oh, well, hey, we can't do that. That was an ecumenical council.

They didn't know what that meant. I mean, I've had people say, well, but the Pope didn't approve of that.

Again, pure anachronism. Nobody thought that he had to.

That office didn't exist yet. There was a bishop in Rome, but your idea of what a

Pope is and what was understood in 325 are two very different things.

So he says that as a Baptist, you would have to protest.

I suppose that's being derived maybe from, you know,

Protestant, and we've explained over and over again that's not where the term came from and people keep using it that way and whatever.

But you would have to simply protest the council for being a council.

No, what a Baptist would have to protest is if the council joined with the state to tell the church, which is the pillar and foundation of the truth, which in that text, when

Paul writes to Timothy, is the local church, what to do. And on that level, the canons of Nicaea probably would run afoul of that, definitely.

But this idea of conciliar authority, Nicaea is a step toward what we have today.

No two ways about it. No one doubts that. Constantine's role in calling that council was one of the most important turning points in Christian history.

I can't believe anyone would disagree with it. But that doesn't change the fact that we can argue that the authority of the creed is properly rooted in its consistency with scripture, which is what

Athanasius argued. That's what he argued.

He wasn't overly enamored with the term homoousius, but he defended it as being consistent with scripture.

But Athanasius doesn't go, well, we don't need to worry about what scripture says.

We don't need to argue about this. The church has spoken. Rome has spoken, the case is closed, right?

That's the misquoting of Augustine. That's not what he did. That wasn't his position.

Why did he write against the Arians? Why did he engage in that level of exegetical precision to defend the deity of Christ?

Because that's where the truth is defended. That's how homoousius is defended. It's not defended the way that people are defending it now.

That is, well, you're a Neo -Sassanian if you don't just simply accept the definition on the basis of the consensus of the gathered church and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Athanasius' refusal to accept the condemnation of the gathered church, of him, for decades in a row, demonstrates if you call him

Saint Athanasius, if you try to pretend he's on your side, you're engaging in self -deception, big time, big time.

That's what got Patrick Madrid all hot and bothered back in the 90s when I put that article out in the

CRI Journal because I pointed out if you're condemned by the vast majority of bishops, kicked out of your church, condemned by councils, and you stand firm as Athanasius did, that's what

Luther did. And it's obvious that's what Luther did. But yeah, we're not supposed to do that.

That's terrible, that's horrible. Okay, so when

Matthew Barrett tells us, well, as a Baptist, you would just simply have to protest the calling of a council.

No, you wouldn't. But you would have to protest if the council claims to have an authority not given to it by the apostles themselves.

Isn't that clear? Did he not believe that once when he wrote his book?

You know, that book came out in 2016 on Solus Criteria. So let's say he wrote it in 2015. All right, that makes sense. I wrote the

King James Only Controversy in 1994. It came out in 1995. All right, publishing stuff.

Mine had to go be run by a bunch of lawyers since King James Only person was threatening to sue us.

But anyway, so 2015, so 10 years ago, would

Matthew Barrett have agreed with the assertion that you cannot understand the New Testament without looking at it through the lens of the

Council of Nicaea? Would he have acknowledged the conciliar authority that he now seems to believe is so plainly there?

I doubt that he would have. I doubt that he could have. And so now as we see him, he, let me see here.

He, I'm gonna click on this and see what you all are looking at.

Well, you know, that's one of the, that's sort of one of the things. But my recollection was at some point, and Chris is obviously busy right now and not able to listen to the program, listen to it later and be going, oh man,

I could have been famous. Who deleted it?

Oh, that Credo did? Well, here's, maybe before the next program,

Chris can fill me back in on this stuff. From what

I understand, he has been given a position of a visiting scholar at a

Roman Catholic institution, and that this picture was taken from that.

So it's not that the church he's at has a golden statue of Mary at it, but that this

Roman Catholic institution where he's a visiting scholar at did, and evidently he was involved in the worship.

This is where the comments on ecumenicity and stuff like that came up at. And if I recall correctly,

Chris had the bright idea to see who else had been a visiting scholar at this institution.

He only found one guy back in 2023, and he converted to Catholicism in 2024.

So the previous visiting scholar at this institution converted to Roman Catholicism after being a visiting scholar there, and that's what

Matthew Barrett is doing now. So again, I'm not exactly going to collapse in shock if someday

I go online and, lo, look at that. Why I have embraced the consistent historical

Christian church, whatever terminology they're gonna, converts always use.

And so, I'm not, but this idea of saying about Baptists, well,

I left you because you don't accept conciliar authority. That's in essence what he's arguing.

And the Southern Baptist Convention ran into that problem this past summer, remember?

How quickly we forget. It's all, June seems like it was, you know, five months ago, which it was.

Remember, someone had made a motion that the

Nicene Creed be in essence added to the Baptist faith and message. Now, I know enough about politics and stuff like that that to do something like that takes more than a motion from the floor.

That's gonna get voted down. It's too big a thing to be handled in that fashion.

But I don't see how there could be any objection to it, except that, in my experience, what was it?

10, 12 years ago, something like that, they were gonna have Phillips, Craig, and Dean sing at the pastor's conference before the

Southern Baptist Convention. Phillips, Craig, and Dean, my understanding, I haven't kept up with them.

I loved their music for a while until I found out they weren't Trinitarians. They're modalists, oneness.

One of them, son of a oneness minister, I think may be a minister in a oneness church today.

And so they could sign a statement that said they didn't disagree with the

Baptist faith and message because the Baptist faith and message is not specific enough to preclude a modalist from saying they agree with it.

We talked about it at the time. We bemoaned the reality of the fact that the

Baptist faith and message is not specific enough. And leaves the loophole open for a oneness person to say, oh yeah,

I can agree with that because it's not specific. Now, interestingly enough, it wasn't the intention of the

Council of Nicaea to address that issue. In fact, one of the great, one of the reasons that Nicaea struggled with the term homoousius is because that type of terminology had been used by modalists in the previous century in the

East. And that's why the Eastern churches were divided over this stuff. We can't go back and tell them we agreed to this because 70 years ago we did this and said that's not right.

And so that was part of the problem. But there was all this chatter that the

Southern Baptists are so far out of it and so far removed from the core of the

Christian church that they can't even say at the Council of Nicaea, the creed of Nicaea, sorry, the

Nicene Creed should be made a part of the Baptist faith and message. I would imagine the vast majority of Southern Baptists, if they understood what

Nicene Creed was even about. And of course, there's stuff toward the end that you have to explain and you have to deal with what it's actually referring to and how those beliefs and theology had changed over time.

But the vast majority of Southern Baptist churches are Orthodox Trinitarian churches. And many of them may indeed quote the

Nicene Creed as a part of their liturgy or their worship. Great, fine, wonderful. It wasn't like the convention was saying that's too much for us, we can't affirm that much.

I think most of it was the way it was introduced. I have a feeling there may be more coming in the future, but being done in a way that's more amenable to how

Southern Baptists do things, which is slowly. Slowly, you don't do stuff really fast.

But I could see it passing in a particular fashion in the future,

I would hope so anyways. But it did raise the issue of, well, those

Baptists, they think they exist outside the realm of the church and therefore can pass judgment on what should not be judged by anyone today at all, and that is the

Nicene Creed. Is that where we are? Is that, is it you either have conciliar authority or you just have individuals running around with their hair on fire?

And it is incredibly frustrating to look at digital media, look at social media, and see these memes where that's how it's presented.

You know, the unified church of history and then Kenneth Copeland. You know, if you have to use

Copeland, that probably means your argument against the group that you're arguing against stinks, okay?

Copeland is, Copeland represents Copeland. Copeland represents he and Gloria and Papa Hagen and, you know, people like that.

And that's about it. He, he, he's there for the money and everybody knows it.

And Peter Popoff and all these people, it's all the same thing. You throw them into a meme and use them as an argument against like solo scriptura.

Let me explain something to our Roman Catholic. If you understood what solo scriptura means, you could not honestly make that kind of an argument because these men don't believe in solo scriptura.

They don't. Well, what do you mean they don't? They would say they did. No, I doubt most of them have ever even heard of it.

I doubt Kenneth Copeland's ever heard of it. He's too busy flying his multimillion dollar plane and stuff like that.

He doesn't read church history, but he doesn't believe in solo scriptura. He gets a word from the

Lord constantly. He believes in continuing revelation.

You can't believe in continuing revelation and believe in solo scriptura at the same time. It doesn't work. That's why when you all do the, well, look at the hundred thousand denominations and the number just keeps expanding and growing.

A hundred thousand denominations due to solo scriptura. And then you start listing them out. Then they've got modern day

Gnostics. They've got all the different sects of Mormons. It's like, yeah, they believe in solo scriptura.

Right, uh -huh, sure. They actually denied as much as possible. It really destroys the value of your argument.

You're not doing your homework. You're being incredibly biased. And these groups don't believe in that.

They don't believe in solo scriptura. They don't function in that way. So anyway, sort of went off the beaten track there for a moment.

It's just so angering to see that kind of dishonesty.

And I see it all the time. So last thing, and I wanted to keep this brief.

I'm not going to play it. And about Matthew Barrett, God bless his soul, but I think he's going to have a lot to answer for something for his students primarily.

He knew he believed these things when he stayed at Midwestern. It was a fertile field.

You don't do that. You don't do that. Switching to the last thing here.

Evidently, there's some documentary I found out about last night where, let me see here.

Yeah, let me see if this is still here. Check the audio here. I'm not going to pull it up, but let's see if this is, this may just 404.

What do you see as the greatest threat to Christian nationalism as it's trying to make its roots?

Christians? How so? Christians are gay, fake and gay, to be more precise.

Christianity is a feminized religion. What do you see? So this is the interviewer, whoever this guy is.

I guess he's making this video. All the usual suspects, okay?

And some that I am truly stunned they included because they've made no original contribution whatsoever to their wee little group anyways.

But this guy is sitting there. And of course, Joel Webben, as he always likes to do is sitting back in his big chair and looking all erudite and serious and Chestertonian in a sense.

Masterpiece theater, yes. And crossing his legs, what's the greatest opposition, the greatest enemy to Christian nationalism?

Christian, why is that? Because Christians are gay. Christians are fake and gay.

Christianity in the West is a feminized religion. I told you last year,

I told you right around this time last year, you can go back and prove it.

By April, when they had their conference, there would be a lot of development and clarity of positions.

And by the end of 2025, so they're proving me right before the end of 2025.

This man knew in 2023 that that kind of statement, first of all, fake and gay.

I'm sorry. You think that's impressive to someone? This is, it's infantile, immature, childish, fake and gay, really.

You know, there are certain phrases you can overuse that make people go sort of obsessed with that term, aren't you?

But the man that I met a number of years ago now, two years ago, would have understood, would have recognized that to make these kind of blanket statements about Christianity as a whole was utterly invalid.

Are there expressions of what calls itself Christianity in the West that have become feminized?

Every single mainline denomination that has women bishops, women priests, and their rainbow stoles, duh.

What does that have to do with the price of butter in Russia? Nothing. He would have known that then.

He would have recognized the category error. Now he's wedded to it. Now it's part of the entire shtick.

Now it's, this is the only way we can't differentiate ourselves sufficiently by the depth of our position and our thought.

So what we'll do is we'll do it this way. We'll inflame emotions. We'll make accusations.

And that's how we stand out from the crowd is we're not faking gay.

They're faking gay. Wow, that's deep. The trailers for this,

I guess it's coming in January. And it's just like most of us,

I mean, at one point in the same interview, Joel goes, the will to power, the will to power.

Where'd that come from? Where'd he get it from? I know who made that phrase famous.

Most people don't. Most people don't. And there's nothing ashamed, there's nothing to be ashamed of if you don't know why that's a famous phrase.

But it is a famous phrase. You know where it came from? It is central to the themes and writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, the rabidly anti -Christian nihilist, the will to power.

And here's Joel Webben, seriously, looking at the camera, almost like that,

I don't always, hmm, but when I do, it's what he's trying to do. That's the vibe he's trying to get.

Quoting one of the most vile anti -Christian philosophers in the past couple of hundred years, the will to power.

He's talking about how it's a small group of people who are willing to stand up and will to power.

Okay, if this documentary is as bad as the trailers, let me just put it this way, this could end the whole movement.

Just dead in the water, self -inflicted, boom.

You know, sort of like a old World War II destroyer going along and dropping depth charges on a submarine and the depth charges go the wrong way, land on the deck and boom, the whole thing goes up in flames.

It looks like it's gonna be that bad. The trailers certainly are. So I can't imagine what the actual substance of it's gonna be like.

But it's the usual suspects, at least we'll have a real nice, there they are. There's, see though, they're self -identifying for us.

Just mark and watch as they spin off into who knows what.

Because when they're sitting there going, the will to power. Okay, all right, well, we went over time there.

Sorry about that. Oh yeah, someone just posted something

I did. Yeah, I did, January 1st, 2024. Just making sure the board members at MBTS know what 2024 is bringing their direction.

And the Credo Magazine Book Awards and all the rest of that fun stuff. Reconfiguring to Mystic Crystology.

Yeah, we've been on this for a while. We've tried to sound the warning and now we're seeing what's going on.

Okay, all righty. Thanks for listening to the program today. And I'm thinking that, you got something going on Thursday?

I heard you talking to somebody. Oh, I'm thinking we have not done open

Zoom calls for a long time. So I'm thinking maybe on Thursday we, it used to be called open phones back when people used telephones for making phone calls.

How antiquated is that? We used to have a phone number.

And what was that thing that I had in here? The Gettner?

Gettner, yeah, Gettner unit. Now it's all done via Zoom, I think.

Not Signal, but Zoom, right? Okay. So maybe you'll, do you have instructions someplace you can repost on X or something?

Okay, all right. Rich will repost the instructions on X, how you can join the Zoom room and get on the air.

Look, the quality of the sound is, I mean, we used to have, excuse me, could you turn up, what?

Hey, what? You know, it's just, it was ugly. It's a lot better now, it really is.

But yeah, let's think about Thursday, opening the phones to use the old terminology and taking your phone calls and talking about what's going on.