Ligon Duncan Fail, Mike Kelsey's Social Justice, Russell Moore on Election 2024

Conversations That Matter

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We are live now on the conversations that matter podcast. It is a Friday night as I am podcasting.

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And many of you are probably out and about and doing things. And that's great. Maybe you'll catch this tomorrow morning.

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But some of you who are home, I can already see people entering the channel. You are welcome to comment, ask questions.

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If you're a patron, I also put a link out there on Patreon. If you wanna be part of the show later and talk about whatever you want.

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I mean, sky's the limit. We can talk about anything. I have some set topics that I wanna get to here, but I'm open for whatever comes our way tonight.

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So I wanted to start off with a retraction. I posted this on a bunch of social media websites, including

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YouTube yesterday. And here's what

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I said. And then I'll show you the clip that I was referring to. Right, well, I have a very important retraction to make a very important retraction.

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And man, it's just hysterical. I keep thinking about it. So 80 Robles pointed this out. Credit where credit's due.

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Sean DeMars, the pastor who works with the Gospel Coalition from the Room for Nuance podcast missed this.

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And so did I when I reviewed Lincoln Duncan's interview with Sean DeMars on the podcast yesterday.

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Lincoln Duncan said that John the Baptist called Herod a fox. And if some of these more,

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I guess, right wing types and evangelicalism were alive back then, they would have told Jesus, he's gotta speak truth to power.

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He should call Herod a fox too. Except Jesus was the one who called Herod a fox in Luke 13.

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And the thing is, I know this. I've used this example many times on the podcast of Jesus getting politically involved.

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Here's the thing though. He's Lincoln Duncan. And I thought, well, he's not gonna be wrong about that.

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I must be wrong in my head. Guys, you're not crazy. Sometimes they're wrong. Okay, so that was my retraction.

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And someone had texted me and said, hey, AD Robles pointed this out on his podcast. And I thought, oh man, that's totally true.

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And this is the clip that AD was referring to and the clip that I went over. And it totally,

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I just, I had the thought there. I had, for a minute, I was like, something's not right about this. But I just kind of brushed it off.

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I was like, well, he's Lincoln Duncan. I mean, he's, surely he got this right. Well, this is the clip. Around, they would have been going, yay,

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John the Baptist, Jesus, you're a weasel. John is preaching truth to power.

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Why don't you come out and say, why don't you go up and say, Herod, you fox? You know, why don't you be like John?

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Okay, so he's talking about like right -wing guys, I guess, and evangelicalism. And if they were around during Jesus's time, they would have said, you should be like John and call

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Herod a fox, right? And it's except that Jesus did do that. Now, the reason I'm harping on this, some people were saying, yeah, everyone makes mistakes, not a big deal.

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No, this is actually central to what Lincoln Duncan was trying to say. It's the clip of the month for me, like him saying that, because this is a guy who's big in the

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PCA, was the head of a seminary for years, and platformed at all the major evangelical reform conferences.

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And I understand, sometimes you make a mistake. But the thing about this mistake was, he intended for this to be kind of the linchpin of his argument that Jesus had a certain way about him that was different than John.

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And Jesus's way was a legitimate way to act before God. And so there's not one way.

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And I think behind that also, this idea that there's a group of people trying to make everyone like John the

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Baptist. So his whole foundation was, Jesus didn't confront the social or the political leaders of his time.

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And so therefore, the people that wanna push for that today in Christianity, they're off.

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Except that Jesus, Jesus is the one who was doing that. So I just think that this, and Kim Murphy's in the channel, she said,

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AD is so good, I agree. God bless AD Robles. Yeah, the AD fan club is here. I'm glad AD pointed it out.

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I was thinking I was crazy for a second too, yeah. AD said it, I was too cautious.

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I was like, wait a minute, I must be wrong. No, some of these guys just get basic Bible things wrong sometimes.

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And I guess we all can at times, but to get it wrong on such an important point, it's just,

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I still can't quite get over it. And maybe I am making too big of a deal of it, but I think it's kind of important.

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And Lincoln Duncan should at least, I think, come out and say something, right? Like, hey, I kinda got that wrong.

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I guess maybe that was a bad example. Come up with another example to try to build this argument that Christians shouldn't be,

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I guess, as politically involved as some people wanna make them be in this election year. So someone else pointed this out too, and I didn't watch,

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I guess this is my assumption. There was a whole podcast that must've been like an hour long or something. And the clip that was posted on YouTube on The Room, I'm not making this up.

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Sean DeMars' podcast is called The Room for Nuance. I'm not making fun of it, that's just the name of it. He had posted,

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Sean DeMars, just this clip, and that's all I talked about, like this five minute clip. But apparently in that podcast, there was more.

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And this is what's been talked about a bunch on X today and social media, I'm assuming, and other places like Facebook.

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Doing it! Yeah, we're gonna do it. The Puritans will be proud. There you go. And so that,

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I think that was the background. I think what's happening now, we've never been further away from that possibility in our culture than we are now.

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And just like the abortion abolition movement, Roe v. Wade gets struck down and suddenly there's an abortion abolition movement.

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And you go, where were you for the last 50 years while all these evangelical pro -life people were out here scraping and clawing and trying to do what they could do to roll back

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Roe v. Wade? Same thing with Reconstructionism. Just like you were saying, friends from other countries look at this, like talk to your

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Chinese friends. How impractical is this? It's utterly impractical in most parts of the world to even think in these ways.

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And so again, you can be really brave and you can have these really strong opinions and you can think you're really pure and you're the one true believer in everyone's midst.

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And there's no possibility of this being implemented in any possible world.

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Okay, so for those who don't know, abortion abolitionism, and forgive me for those who are abortion abolitionists if I'm dumbing this down or boiling it down too much, but it's essentially the idea that incremental approaches to abortion are compromises.

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So if you push for, let's say, a heartbeat bill that outlaws abortion once there's a heartbeat, those are evil laws because they would also, in the minds of abolitionists, allow abortion before the heartbeat.

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I've actually been going back and forth a little bit with Josh Dawes today on X, who is,

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I think he's an abortion abolitionist. I think he'd be comfortable using that term about himself. And we've been going back and forth about framing this.

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And I've been, in a friendly way, trying to understand and also push back on some things.

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And so my intention is not to get too in the weeds about this abolition stuff.

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I have friends who are abolitionists. I have friends who are anti -abortion, but not abolitionists.

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And the thing about Ligon Duncan's quote here, though, that is disturbing is that it's just not true.

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It's so inaccurate. So abortion abolitionists have been around for a while, at least going back,

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I would say, I think to the 80s, but certainly I remember 2011,

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I was at the Shepherds Conference. And one of the things I should say this, there's different abortion abolitionists, just like the pro -life movement, there's different groups that have different concentrations and different tactics.

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And so what I'm about to share with you doesn't apply to all abolitionists necessarily. But there was a group that came to the

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Shepherds Conference, John MacArthur, that conference, and they started protesting it. And I was like, why?

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I thought it was like comical at first. Why are these people who wanna end abortion protesting us?

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I was a seminary student at the time at Master's Seminary. We wanna end abortion too. So like, what's the problem?

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Well, and that was my first introduction to abortion abolitionism. I talked to one of the guys out there and I still don't really agree with them.

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I think, because my first question was, why are you here? Why not like go down the road to Planned Parenthood? And I mean, you're shooting, this is friendly fire.

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And, but his whole thing was that if pastors would do the right thing and really promote abolitionism, that maybe we could make some progress.

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And of course, this is in California. This is, I don't know. I don't see the strategy really there, but that was in 2011.

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So Lincoln Duncan saying that when Roe v. Wade was ended effectively,

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I suppose, during in the Dobbs decision, that that's when they showed up. I'm sorry, that was more than a decade.

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And that was just my experience. I mean, they've been around before that. So this is just slander, or you could say it's ignorant, perhaps, or it's just coupled with everything else he said that I talked about in the podcast yesterday.

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It just seems like it's a demeaning. It's just, we should work together, right?

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And there's no, there doesn't seem to be room for that with some of the guys in Big Eva, Lincoln Duncan being one of them.

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So anyway, I just wanted to point that out as well and just acknowledge that is also going on right now.

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That's a big controversy today online. And it's, I probably beat the dead horse, but I really don't care for Lincoln Duncan.

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Like, there's a lot of guys I like who I'll critique. I kind of like Mike Kelsey, I'm not gonna lie.

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Like, I see him as a likable guy. Yeah, he said he wanted to torch white people and stuff, but I see him as a likable guy.

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It's like, I could probably hang out with him and have a good discussion, I think, I don't know, but based on his preaching and stuff,

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Lincoln Duncan's just not one of those guys. And I just think it's worth noting that some of the people that we have in the highest echelons of our leadership aren't to really be trusted.

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And I don't wanna just break all trust in, we need leaders, we need, we actually need elites. Elites are a good thing.

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Like, when you have, they have character. Natural aristocracy is kind of one of the things I'm writing about for my next book.

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But I just, I think we just don't have quality people in these positions. We have these managerial elites who just don't really, they lack a lot of stuff, but one of the things they seem to lack is an ability to have a larger vision and actually work with people that they might disagree with on some things.

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And the main thing is character. They just don't seem to, the tactics they employ to demean and just go after the people that they're supposed to be representing and caring for are just kind of, frankly, disgusting to me.

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Okay, so that was a retraction. I have one other retraction to make. And that is, I said, now this is going back two podcasts ago, so I guess, was it

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Monday, I guess? I said that the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, which is a state organization in the state of Tennessee, but it's connected with the

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Southern Baptist Convention, I said that they were hiring, they were using diversity metrics to hire.

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And so apparently what it was is they were actually using diversity.

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This is actually worse than my opinion. They were using diversity metrics for board positions. So they favor people for various boards under which

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I guess they have supervision that run the mission board and ministries. They favor minority candidates.

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So I don't know that it makes a big difference, but I did get someone who works for them to reach out to me and just say, hey, you might wanna correct that.

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And I wanna say this about this podcast. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think that there was a difference that we could make.

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And this is one of the areas where it just struck me this morning that, hey, we are making a difference. And sometimes it doesn't look exactly like I would want it to.

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Sometimes it's beyond what I think is possible. But this morning I had someone who's a mayor actually in a town in Tennessee reach out to me, said, hey,

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I listened to your podcast and I'm writing a letter to the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board.

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Would you look at it for me? And it just made me think that there's real people who are in these situations where they actually have maybe some measure of influence and they need to be informed.

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And once they're informed, they can put pressure, they can make changes. And we've seen some, one of the things that I probably in a negative way be moaned is the fact that you don't see a lot of changes in quote unquote

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Big Eva. And that's not just unique to evangelical industries. That's like everything.

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That's the medical establishment. Are the frontline doctors making a huge difference? Yeah. Are they changing the way the medical community runs and stuff?

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No. So there's a lot of stuff like that. A lot of industries that it just seems like they have a guild that's of elites that are gatekeeping anyone who might deviate even slightly from their mission.

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So there are a few things that I do, they were coming to mind as I was thinking about this.

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And I shared earlier this week how Logos was trying to clean up the books, the erotic books that they have for sale.

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And they're at least giving lip service to it. And I'm not saying that it hasn't happened yet, but that's partially because of us.

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That's the connections that I was able to help me. And that's not me directly. I'm not trying to take credit for it completely or anything, but it's just, the

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Lord's put me in a position where I've been able to connect people because I have a platform of some kind. They'll reach out and say, hey, can you connect me to someone?

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And sure enough, I was able to connect someone who's a patron to Protestia. And so there's been a bunch of stuff like that.

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And I can't remember all of it. I think of like Southern Seminary. And this is kind of, it may not be a full win.

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It may not be everything we want, but this is a win. Southern Seminary, when we started exposing what was going on there with Matt Hall and Jarvis Williams, and now

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I can't even remember the name of the other gentleman there, Curtis Woods, I think it was his name. And the critical race theory that was being taught and all of that, that created, they had to delete things off their website.

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I know from internal sources that this exposure created a lot of pressure and just fractures at the seminary itself.

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And I don't wanna get out ahead of my skis here and say that it caused Matt Hall to leave or anything like that.

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But there were certainly things that happened because of that pressure that changed the way that the seminary was operating.

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Same thing at Southeastern, by the way, where I went. Because of the exposure and the social justice stuff, they had to kind of push some of that stuff underground.

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I'm gonna be talking about some stuff next week from them that is pretty radical in my opinion on the climate change stuff.

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But they had to kind of, they had to change. They had to tell the students they couldn't record anymore.

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I mean, that's kind of a win in a way. That means that they have to at least hide what they're doing.

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It's not as over, it's, and because of that, they can't be quite as effective as they would be otherwise.

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You see with crew, same thing. I mean, how many times have we, and we've been part of with other people making efforts, but I remember 2019 when

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I first saw the clip of Sandra Van Opstel and her speech at Crew 19 and I made a,

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I clipped it, I put it out there on YouTube and it just blew up. And this has been something that, one of the things, not the only thing, but it's one of the things that this podcast exists for.

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And people still send me stuff. John, could you review this? Could you look at this? A bunch of people right now want me to look at The Chosen, which by the way,

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I just got to say this. I don't think I'm going to do it as good as that noble effort is.

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And I think other people, I'm going to leave that to others because I think it's Jonathan Rami or Amy, I forget how you say his name, but the actor who plays

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Jesus in The Chosen, he's asking me like 15 times a day if I would pray on hallow. And I just,

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I know, I know. I just can't look at him for like hours. It's just like, I'm so annoyed.

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It's like, it's just like made this connection in my head where I see him and I'm like, oh, he's going to like,

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I have to wait for this ad. I can't like, I can't skip through it. Anyway, but there are, there's things on my list that I do want to look at.

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There's even next week, there's two things I'm looking at that will hopefully bring some accountability to some other organizations.

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So just wanted to say that if you want to support the work that I'm doing, the best thing that you can do is pray. You can also be part of it on Patreon.

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You can go to johnharrispodcast .com or worldviewconversation .com, go to support, and there's ways you can support there.

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All right, well, let's get into some meat now that we're 17 minutes into the podcast. I agree with his servant.

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I'm so tired of the commercials for hallow. Yeah, thank you. I've never tried, like my apologies if some of the, in the audience think hallow is great.

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I think it's a Roman Catholic thing, right? But I don't know, I don't know. Okay, let's talk about Mike Kelsey.

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This is gonna take a little while, and then we're going to talk about Russell Moore. But Mike Kelsey first, this is a sermon that was given last

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Sunday at McLean Bible Church. That's where David Platt pastors. Now, Mike Kelsey is now, he's the main pastor effectively.

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I mean, he's, David Platt stepped, he hasn't stepped down from his position, but he's not as involved from what

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I understand. And Mike Kelsey is kind of taking over a lot of the preaching responsibilities. And he's the one that I mentioned before,

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I guess, you know, I hate to think that this would be, this is what he's known for, I guess, in my circles. He's the one that said that he wanted to torch white people during the 2020 stuff.

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And I just don't know that he's ever, I've never heard him repent of that specifically publicly. If he has, please let me know.

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But that's how I kind of know him, I guess, because that video kind of went viral. But he's now preaching at McLean Bible Church, and he preached on Nehemiah chapter five.

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And I'm actually, I have my Bible here. I wanna just read for you a little bit of this. Just for those who don't know, 30 seconds here.

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Nehemiah, Nehemiah is about the exile of Judah and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.

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And Nehemiah gets permission from King Artaxerxes to go back to the land, essentially, and be part of this effort.

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Meanwhile, the people who have displaced the Israelites who live there do not want Nehemiah there.

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And so it's this very, I mean, they're plotting on how they're gonna kill him and that kind of thing.

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So, or how they're gonna stop the effort. And so there's kind of like a wartime scenario going on, or at least like a cold war.

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And by the time you get to chapter five, which is what Mike Kelsey is talking about, it says in verse one of chapter five, now there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their

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Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, we, our sons and our daughters are many, therefore let us get grain that we may eat and live.

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So they're starving. There were others who said, we are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our houses so we might get grain because of the famine.

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Also, there were those who said, we have borrowed money for the King's tax on our field and our vineyards. Now our flesh is like the flesh of our brothers, our children, like our children.

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Yet behold, we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves. And some of our daughters are forced into bondage already. And we are helpless because our fields and vineyards belong to others.

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Then I was very angry when I had heard their outcry in these words, I consulted with myself and contended with the nobles and the rulers and said to them, you are exacting usury, each from his brother.

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Therefore, I held a great assembly against them. Okay, so desperate economic times, obviously, and Nehemiah's role in this is to then confront the, it says specifically the nobles and rulers who were tyrannizing their own people.

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And that makes it very clear, these are your brothers, these are your own people. And I said to them, we, according to our ability, have redeemed our

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Jewish brothers who were sold to the nations. Now, would you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us?

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Then they were silent and could not find a word to say. Again, I said, the thing which you are doing is not good.

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Should you not walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the nations, our enemy? So what you find here is they are actually disobeying a direct command of God.

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I'm gonna show you that in a moment. And likewise, I, my brothers, and my servants are lending them money and grain.

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Please let us leave off this usury. Please give back to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money and of the grain, the new wine and the oil that you are exacting from them.

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Then they said, we will give it back and will require nothing from them. We will do exactly as you say. So I called the priests and took an oath from them that they would do according to this promise.

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I also shook out the front of my garment and said, thus may God shake out every man from his house and from his possessions who does not fulfill his promise.

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Even thus may he be shaken out of and emptied. And all the assembly said, amen. And they praised the

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Lord. Then the people did according to his promise. And so we're gonna stop there.

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This is verse 13. And let me just show you what I'm talking about as far as the commands that Israel was breaking.

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So there's several passages throughout the Bible about this. But if you go to Leviticus 25,

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Leviticus 25, it says, do not take any, this is verse 36.

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Do not take any kind of interest from him, but fear your God so that your countrymen may live with you. Now notice that word countrymen may live with you.

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You shall not give him your silver at interest nor food for profit. So this is a specific command to fellow

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Jews. You have in Deuteronomy 23, you are not to charge interest to your countrymen, interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned on interest.

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If Deuteronomy 23 20, the next verse, you may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your countrymen, you shall not charge interest so that the

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Lord your God may bless you and all that you undertake in the land which you are about to possess. So there's an in -group preference here.

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And I pointed this out many times that there is an equality before the law.

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This gets overplayed so much in evangelicalism that applied to the foreigner, the stranger, the person who was living in Israel within the boundaries of it, but was not themselves

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Israeli or Jewish. And the same law was to apply to them.

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In other words, if they stole the same penalty, that kind of thing. But that doesn't mean that there weren't additional in -group things that were specific to the

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Jews, privileges, and that kind of thing that did not apply to these peoples. One of them was slavery, for example.

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You could not hold a Jew in perpetual slavery, but you could do that with foreigners.

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It would take, I think with Edomites, it was like three generations it took for them to be made part of the assembly.

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Like there was a process that you had to go through. They couldn't go into the court of the inner areas of the temple.

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There was the court of the Gentiles, right? Where they stayed. And so there were these things that I guess, you know, if some of these egalitarians were living back then,

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I guess they would say that they were making foreigners second -class citizens and that kind of thing. Well, this is another example of that kind of thing.

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The Jewish people were permitted to charge interest to outside peoples, but not to their own.

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And there are potential applications, I suppose we could make of this today, but that was just the law and they were breaking it because in Nehemiah five, that's exactly what they were doing.

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You had the rulers essentially robbing, or maybe

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I don't want to use that word, but charging interest. So, I mean, that's, they were violating

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God's command of how to loan money to fellow countrymen, okay? So it's a very specific thing that they were doing.

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It's very important for me to point that out. Now, in my Kelsey sermon, which I haven't played for you yet and I'm not going to play the whole thing, you're about to hear the applications that he makes from this.

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He does, it's interesting to me, he kind of reads the text and he goes off on his own thoughts on justice more broadly.

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He doesn't get back to even usury. He doesn't even, he doesn't really talk about why it was against God's law.

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He doesn't talk about what the modern application of this might be today in our banking practices or what does it say about in -group preference?

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Or, I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of directions you could go with this. It's 13 verses, but he decides to say this kind of thing.

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Justice is a broad category that includes several different aspects of justice.

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But the two that typically come to our minds are legal justice, which is the God -given role of the government to protect people's

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God -given rights and to punish those who violate those rights and social justice.

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Now, as soon as I say that phrase, social justice, you could probably feel it in the room, right? There's two reactions.

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One group of people is like, yes, let's talk about it. Let's lean into it.

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There's other people in the room who are like, hold on, sir, you're making me nervous.

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Sounds like we're kind of drifting here. And listen, that tension in the room is because the concept of social justice, which is a uniquely

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Christian concept, has been hijacked and distorted by both sides of our polarized society.

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The far left has distorted social justice by ripping it from its roots and separating it from moral righteousness.

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And so what's left is a kind of catch -all counterfeit that includes all kinds of unbiblical ideas.

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The far right has distorted social justice by using all of that as a smokescreen to evade legitimate justice issues and to advance its own political agenda.

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Now, notice something about this. I think this has changed since 2020, how some of these guys who are more on the woke side of evangelicalism, how they go about this.

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Notice how vague everything he said was. He doesn't give specifics. And he still operates according to the formula, blast the left, blast the right.

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And then the Bible kind of transcends these things and we're Christians. And he doesn't give examples though.

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But he says the far right is not, they're not operating according to social justice.

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And I don't know, he kind of makes out like this is like a present ongoing thing.

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There are actual justice issues that they're ignoring and they're doing it by using the smokescreen of this term.

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So most of what he said there is all wrong, like it's just historically. And I can say that,

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I guess, because I have written two books on social justice and Christianity and social justice. I go into this.

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The term was first used in an American context. And some people try to go back to, no, there's

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Catholic encyclicals and so forth that use this term social justice. But yeah, it wasn't broadly used at all.

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And the way that it was used and made popular was Fabian socialism applied to an

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American context. And it was the social gospel movement. It was people like Walter Rauschenbusch who used this term over and over and over.

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That's where it became popular in the first place, this term social justice. And so it's not, can you try to use the term and reappropriate it for conservative ends or more actual justice ends?

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I know that Heritage Foundation tried to do that. I think it was in 2010. Al Boulder was part of that. He had,

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I remember he had a video interview and so forth and they were trying to say social justice is, let's reclaim this or something like that.

29:51

The problem is that the mountain of history is against you on this. It is, and the left owns the term.

29:58

It's an uphill battle. The biblical Christians did not ever own this term or they weren't the originators of this term.

30:08

So the term does have an etymology. It does have, there is a way that it was used and made popular and it's still popular.

30:17

And it pretty much means the same thing. And it was redistributive justice. That's what it was.

30:23

And it's always really been that way. So when you start saying what you just heard

30:28

Mike Kelsey say, you're just muddying the waters and confusing things. And he said, you better define,

30:33

I don't know if I've gotten to that part yet, but you better define what you mean. He doesn't really define what he means.

30:39

And that's part of the problem. Like we don't really exactly know what he's talking about, but there is this category he calls social justice.

30:46

Now towards the end of this sermon, he gives more of an idea of what he might mean by that.

30:53

And, but what you're gonna see through this is that kind of angry voice demanding tactic.

30:59

It's not there as much. It's more of an encouraging voice, more of a happy voice, but he's saying the same things that were said in 2020 and before that.

31:09

So let's just keep playing it and I'll make comments along the way. But as you read

31:16

Christian theology and Christian history, the idea of social justice is simply the idea that even if the government doesn't do its job, legal justice, we have a social obligation to care for and protect our neighbors, especially the most vulnerable.

31:35

This is not socialism. This is not the same thing as the social gospel that gained prominence in the 20th century.

31:43

This is just plain old biblical Christian theology in history.

31:49

And so listen, if you choose. Name one theologian, Protestant theologian before Walter Rauschenbusch, you know, before let's say before 1880 that used the term social justice for plain old biblical justice, for equality before the law, for treating people with biblical equity so that you're just giving them their due before God.

32:15

You're not gonna be able to find examples of this and it certainly wasn't mainstream, but I submit to you, I don't think you can find one example.

32:22

Not to use the phrase social justice. You need to be careful not to assume what other people mean when they use it.

32:31

And if you're gonna use the phrase, then you should be careful, particularly as a Christian to clearly define what you mean by it.

32:39

This is an interesting thing because, you know, I wonder like what other terms do we have that have a longevity to them of over a century that we've been using in a particular way, but then you're just not supposed to ever assume what people mean by them now.

32:54

Like they're open for interpretation because he just gave you an interpretation. It's plain old biblical justice, but now you can't assume what people mean by it because there's different meanings.

33:03

You could say that about something, I guess, like Christian nationalism. Yeah, there was a group that used it a hundred years ago, but it didn't catch on.

33:09

It wasn't mainstream. And now it's basically, it's like an ethnogenesis for the term, if that's not really a right way to use the word ethnogenesis,

33:18

I guess, but it's a genesis. It's a genesis of a new term in a way. So you could say that,

33:24

I guess, in a developmental phase, what does someone mean by it? I don't know if there's different versions floating around or something, but like,

33:31

I don't know, something like this, I'm trying to think of like an equivalent and I can't right now. Like what are some words that have been around for like a hundred years and everyone knows what they mean, but you're not supposed to assume what they mean anymore.

33:42

Someone in the chat, give me a good example of that. I'll keep thinking about it.

33:49

Whether you use the phrase or not, as Christians, we should all agree that injustice is sin and where we have opportunity, we should do something about it.

34:01

And that's what we see in Nehemiah. There's also what we call systemic injustice. Or if you're uncomfortable with that terminology, institutional or we could say organized injustice.

34:14

And we see that in a variety of different ways that we could all kind of rattle off as we think about how this has played out in our history and how it plays out around the world today.

34:24

And listen, if you've ever traveled abroad or even just paid attention to the news, you know that injustice is not unique to the

34:30

United States. For sure. So let me just say, all right. So I thought of an example, human rights, right?

34:36

So if someone said human rights or new world order, you know, new world order doesn't even have that long of a longevity,

34:41

I don't think. But like, are you supposed to just like assume that that's malleable, that we don't really know what that person's talking about?

34:49

Like the person, there's a responsibility we should have when we use a word that's been defined for decades that people, it draws, people think it means one thing.

35:01

We have a responsibility to define it ourselves. I think if that's the world we're living in, if you use the word human rights and you're not talking, you're talking about plain old biblical,

35:12

I don't know, rights or something like the kinds of responsibilities that God's given man and the rights attached to them.

35:20

And that's what you mean by human rights. Well, you better use a different word or define that word every time you use it because people aren't gonna think that's what you're talking about, right?

35:28

So that's like the weird thing in my opinion that Mike Kelsey is doing here. And then you see him using this other term, systemic injustice.

35:37

And he's just using all these left -wing buzzwords trying to make them really palatable, trying to make them sound like, you know, it reminds me of like rock bands that are really rebellious, right?

35:49

From the 80s and stuff. And how now those same rock bands who are edgy and rebellious, like they're doing car commercials or you see like Snoop Dogg doing a cookbook with like mittens on.

36:03

And like, there's no gangster anything to him anymore. And he's like, you know, as cuddly as a little puppy now to some people.

36:13

I guess he's as harmless as a little puppy. And that's what

36:18

Mike Kelsey is trying to do with the term social justice and systemic injustice is he's making these terms palatable.

36:28

Now these are left -wing terms. These have left -wing meanings, but he's kind of injecting it into this very palatable, like he's taking the edge off of them so that, you know, grandma doesn't need to be upset that the social justice warriors are gonna come and take down the statues she reveres and change what the kids are learning in school and burn her flag and loot her business, right?

36:52

That's not at all what we're talking about here. And we're not talking about a socialist scheme. We're not talking about the government coming and taking the stuff through a process.

37:00

We're just talking about just everything you've known from the Bible apparently is encapsulated in social justice and systemic injustice.

37:08

Now don't buy it for a second. That's my message to you. Don't buy that for a second. These are new innovations.

37:15

These are new terms that the left owns. And Mike Kelsey's doing great disservice to his congregation, in my opinion, by just not, he's not going over what the text actually teaches in Nehemiah 5.

37:27

Instead, he's waxing eloquent about his views on justice.

37:35

All right, let's continue this. Some countries can be more or less unjust in the way their government and culture operates, but every country has institutions, policies, and cultural practices that are unjust.

37:50

And you know why injustice gets embedded into these systems? Because sinful people create, maintain, and benefit from these systems.

37:59

Listen, systems don't sin, people sin. Systems don't sin, people sin.

38:08

And then that sin gets organized, normalized, and sometimes even legalized in ways that multiply the effects of that sin.

38:19

That's what we mean by systemic sin or systemic injustice. Like, okay, so I will give him one kind of kudo for this.

38:30

Like he at least said systems don't sin, people sin. People sin, that's good. That's a good, you know, thumbs up for that.

38:37

But like, why even try to use the term systemic injustice at this point? If all you're talking about is, hey, people sin, and sometimes powerful people sin, and because they're powerful, their decisions affect more people over a longer period of time.

38:52

There's nothing new about that. I mean, it's like, just, it's plain old injustice then.

38:59

Because he's trying to make a separation. Before this, what he was talking about, and I didn't have it in the clip, is, you know, there's this like personal injustice where, you know, you need to treat someone the way you want to be treated and things like that.

39:13

And then there's systemic injustice, and, or institutional, he says, too, which those are actually, the social justice activists,

39:22

I thought separated those two, but that was the word that was used more in the 70s and 80s.

39:28

Either way, in systemic injustice, though, you could have, what's the one that Richard Mao said?

39:35

That you could have a, or he used the word institutional. You could have a whole institution, like a prison system or something, and everyone in that system is like, they could be a

39:49

Christian, right? They could be following God's law, but yet, it could still be like a bad system.

39:56

You could have a police department like this, right? Or you could have a system that is not unjust, and no one in that system is following God's law, and they're a bunch of evil people, right?

40:09

That's kind of like how generally it's used. Mike Kelsey's not saying that, but I'm saying that's how generally it's used.

40:15

Like there's this evil system that just allocates privilege or resources or something to the wrong sorts of people.

40:21

And it was designed, right, you hear it a lot, like it was our founding fathers were these white men, Christian white men who designed the country to function to benefit

40:30

Christian white men, and somehow that's an injustice. That's systemic injustice or institutional injustice, and it's embedded in everything.

40:40

That's how this is often used. But Mike Kelsey's trying to make out like, you don't have to do this big dismantling thing necessarily.

40:48

It's really, it's a person who's enacting this, and these people sin, and they just got to stop sinning.

40:54

And then I guess, so it's not really the system. So it's like the police department in this case, I'm being hypothetical here, but you don't have to dismantle the police department necessarily.

41:04

You just got to get rid of some of the bad cops. I think I'm reading this right, but that's like a toned down kind of like version.

41:13

It's a little ambiguous. So maybe he's leaving the door open for these kind of quote unquote reforms that are very fundamental, but he's focusing more on, hey, there's people that sin.

41:24

And he's saying a lot of good, like biblical sounding things but I think that's the spoonful of sugar. That gets you to say, oh, that's all it is.

41:31

Okay, systemic injustice. That's fine. I can go with that. Meanwhile, like every other person who uses it, they're not focusing on the evil person who's sinning.

41:39

They are focusing on the mechanism itself and they want to go deconstruct the whole thing.

41:47

Let me give you one example. The pornography industry,

41:53

George Whitfield, legendary evangelical preacher. One of the most famous preachers of the 18th century.

42:01

The best equivalent in our modern day would probably be Billy Graham. He challenged the mistreatment of slaves, but when it came down to actually abolishing slavery, he chose the status quo.

42:19

He moved to Georgia to start an orphanage there, but slavery had been recently outlawed in Georgia.

42:25

So Whitfield, listen, used his influence as the most popular preacher, not just in America, but also in parts of Europe to lobby the government to legalize slave labor, which they did.

42:45

When Georgia became a royal colony, they legalized slave labor, even though it had been recently outlawed.

42:53

And when Whitfield died, he owned at least 50 slaves. This is an icon of evangelical faith.

43:10

Here's my point. Whitfield preached some good things. Whitfield did some good things, but when it came down to the issue of slavery, he allowed all kinds of complexity and costs to cloud his judgment and to keep him from seeing what should be abundantly clear.

43:30

African people are human beings. All right, let me just stop there for a second.

43:37

So a few things. They did not make slavery legal when

43:43

Georgia became a royal colony. Georgia was already a royal colony. I don't know what he meant. I don't know why he said that.

43:51

Regarding George Whitfield, there's some things often left out of this. So the reason that George Whitfield went to start an orphanage in Georgia and wanted, and at the time,

44:04

I should probably say, Georgia started as a penal colony and it wasn't very populated at this time.

44:11

It wasn't like the Georgia. We think Georgia, we're thinking Atlanta and all this. He goes into this state that's, there's not a lot of people there.

44:21

And he wants to, in order to build this orphanage, use slave labor from slaves that had essentially been donated to his ministry, that there were people who had taken slaves who had worked for them and said, now they're yours,

44:39

George Whitfield, for ministry purposes. And so what's he going, what are his options?

44:47

Now, I think today everyone would say, you just gotta free him, right? There's no other choice. I don't know what all the decisions that, or all the options that were before him.

44:55

That may not have been a great option for them or for anyone. I don't know.

45:02

I'm ignorant on that, but, and we may not know. There's a lot of things are fuzzy about, a lot of things are speculative about even some people that are famous because it wasn't the focus of their work.

45:14

But that's why Georgia opened itself up to slavery. Now, do

45:19

I like that? No. Does anyone like that? Probably not. But if you look at George Whitfield's life and his track record on this, he was someone that, when he traveled, he observed some slaves being mistreated and he would preach very hard against that kind of thing.

45:36

So when he looked in scripture, when he opened his Bible and he saw the instructions to masters in the New Testament, he took those instructions very seriously.

45:46

He said that he was one of the ones that during the first great awakening, got masters to believe that they actually had a spirit, not because many did believe this, but many did not.

46:00

So the masters who did not believe this, that were under his influence, he preached at them hard, that they had a responsibility to Christianize, to teach the gospel and the

46:13

Bible to their slaves. And this is all well -known. Now, does that somehow justify, was it a good decision for Georgia to adopt slavery or allow slave labor and that kind of thing?

46:29

I suppose you can say that's somewhat separate, but if you're gonna attack George Whitfield, I just think you should at least look at the wholeness of the guy.

46:37

And he was at least attempting to be biblical and scriptural as much as he possibly could in this regard, from what

46:44

I know. And yeah, I mean, I have read about him. I'm not an expert on him. Maybe there's a Whitfield scholar listening who can bring more on this.

46:53

I did a podcast, I think this was like, I don't know, three, four years ago.

46:58

I did a podcast when it was more fresh in my mind, Whitfield's views on these things. And I did one on him and I did one on Jonathan Edwards.

47:06

And you can go back and look at those, Whitfield and Edwards. Because people were, in evangelicalism, were trying to claim that they weren't

47:12

Christians, which I'm glad that Mike Kelsey is not doing. But they were saying, these people were probably not even saved.

47:20

And it's because, hey, they own slaves. And so I think the linchpin of this whole thing is what Mike Kelsey said at the end though, that African -Americans are human beings.

47:31

I'm sure George Whitfield thought African -Americans were human beings. Why would he tell slaveholders that they had a responsibility to treat their slaves well and to Christianize their slaves if they weren't human beings?

47:42

George Whitfield believed they were human beings. So that was never, that's actually a smear on the part of Mike Kelsey.

47:47

He's insinuating that because George Whitfield owned slaves at the end of his life, that he believed they must not be human.

47:54

And that's just wrong. And he shouldn't say that. I don't know what else there is to say about that.

47:59

Maybe I'll get some flack for this. But you have a long record in scripture of people involved at certain points in slavery who did not question whether or not the slaves that were under their care and laboring for them were humans.

48:18

So the next example he brings up is abortion.

48:28

We have to start with first principles. That's what's clear. And then we work out how to apply those first principles in the nuance and complexity of the situation.

48:40

So fast forward, let me give you a modern day example. Before we get into abortion, someone actually just said,

48:45

Christian news junkie said slavery was very complex. Some who owned slaves actually continued their slavery to protect the slaves. Some churches held slaves who were

48:51

Christians and treated them as free men. I think that would be my main question with someone like Whitfield. How did he treat his slaves?

48:57

That's actually a way more important question. Was he just? So we're in Nehemiah 5, and he's still not talking about the actual subject of Nehemiah 5, but it's about usury.

49:09

And so if you wanna do a parallel, I guess, they were disobeying God's law. So the question is, in what ways did

49:16

George Whitfield specifically disobey God's law? That was the evil that they did. And if he was treating his slaves well, if he was obeying the commandments that God has about the subject, then, which

49:29

Mike Kelsey doesn't get into, then where was the sin exactly? I think we can look at decisions that maybe he made that later on veered, let's say the state of Georgia into territory that was bad.

49:43

But the question is, what did he do specifically that went against scripture?

49:49

And I'm not talking about the whole like, well, you love your neighbor. And I'm not talking about gender. I'm talking about like specifically like, yes, love your neighbor.

49:56

But the Bible actually has instructions on master -slave relationships. So that's the question that I would have for someone.

50:04

And then again, a man who lived at a time when slavery was pretty universal. So, all right, enough about that.

50:12

Let's keep talking about examining Mike Kelsey's sermon here. I think the same thing is true with abortion.

50:21

We should be compassionate toward women. We should be sensitive to the social, economic, and medical complexities involved in birthing and raising a child.

50:32

But we shouldn't let those complexities cause us to lose sight of what should be abundantly clear.

50:38

Babies in the womb are human beings with inalienable rights that deserve to be protected.

50:53

Now, it does often get brought up, the comparison of slavery and abortion. I do want to point out one thing though, like chapter verse, there's a number of them on murder, right?

51:02

So it's a very clear cut issue. In fact, Leah just said, there's no nuance in abortion, yeah. When you look at the topic, like especially like American slave labor and slave master relationships, it's such a wide topic.

51:17

You're talking about the slave trade itself. You're talking about then the slave labor.

51:25

You're talking about the way that slaves were treated, the laws that governed slave master relationships.

51:33

You're talking about the ways to end slavery and whether it should be gradual emancipation or whether it should be a colonization effort or whether there should be some kind of compensation or whether they should like Thomas Jefferson's whole thought about letting slaves go into the

51:53

Western territories, the diffusion theory to try to end the practice or whether it should be immediate and with a war or like I haven't even touched the surface and I'm already into very complex moral questions that you don't have with abortion because abortion is like by definition murder.

52:13

So with slavery, you're looking at like a labor system that had many problems and there were, as Dabney even said himself, who is known as the defender of quote unquote slavery by many people.

52:25

I mean, he called it an iniquitous traffic, the slave trade. So he recognized that there was sinful elements in various parts of this whole enchilada, but it doesn't mean that you couldn't have a slave master relationship where the master is in a context in which it's legal using scripture in an appropriate manner, the way that scripture was intended to be used and obeying it when it comes to that relationship.

52:49

So you see how this is a much more complicated thing and it's just kind of like, it's like a lot of other topics today too though.

52:56

It's like, we can't abide like kings and queens, like we like the royal family, but like because they have no power, like if they did, we would think that there's like tyrannical things going on there or the divine right of kings.

53:11

We don't like that. We don't like arranged marriages. We don't like, there's a lot of like archaic things we don't like. We like the thought that there was ever a society that existed where women did not have political mobility and they didn't have the right to vote and that kind of thing.

53:23

Like that just horrifies us today. But that was most of human history until about five seconds ago.

53:28

So there's a lot of things like that. Abortion, murder, it's not the same kind of thing.

53:35

We're not talking about social arrangements and labor relationships and the way to navigate going from single to married or the way that we construct our legal hierarchies.

53:48

It's more of a, like there is no situation, there's no time, there's no place where this is not an evil in the sight of God.

53:57

So just need to say that as we go on. Now, if you remember, everyone just clapped for Mike Kelsey when he called out abortion and good for him.

54:05

I mean, what he said was absolutely true. But here's, listen to what he says next. Now, I'll be honest with us.

54:10

Just a pastoral like love tap. It's easier for some of us to clap when we talk about abortion than when we talk about issues of racial justice like slavery.

54:24

I'm not saying that you don't care about that. I'm just making that pastoral observation because I know some people here watching other locations feel that.

54:34

Or maybe, just maybe the people are clapping because that is a very clear cut moral issue that's actually affecting us right now.

54:42

And we don't have shadow slavery going on. We have, I guess, sweatshop labor. If you go to Target and Walmart and you're shopping, so you could say indirectly or you have an iPhone, right?

54:53

There's maybe some slave labor goes into some of that stuff. But like we don't, we have sex slavery in this country.

54:59

I mean, there's actually a whole bunch of things we have that are really horrific that even people who lived under a shadow slavery system would look at and say, that's pretty bad.

55:07

Like we didn't have that, we didn't have those evils in our society, but prison system, like that you just life in prison and there's no hope for ever getting out and that kind of thing.

55:20

I mean, we have things that are, I would say pretty against like biblical law.

55:26

And so Mike Kelsey, or at least they don't fall, I'm not saying it's evil to have a prison system in and of itself, but it's certainly, it's a bad system.

55:34

And so you could even say that there's slave labor in that. So Mike Kelsey, he chides them for like, like he's saying these things are morally equivalent and they must be racist.

55:48

I mean, that's the insinuation here, I think. He's like, hey, you clap for this thing, but when it comes to racial justice stuff, why don't you, you're not clapping for that.

55:55

I'm just observing here. I'm just saying, making a pastoral observation, right? That you guys are a bunch of racists,

56:00

I guess. Well, how about you just mentioned a problem from hundreds of years ago, and you're comparing that to a modern problem.

56:09

You're also mentioning a problem that had many complexities to it and comparing it to something that's very clear cut murder. I mean, there's probably people in that audience who've been directly affected in their own lives by abortion or people who have had an abortion or abortions in their family.

56:26

So it's not a very good pastoral observation because he's thinking the explanation must be some kind of,

56:32

I guess, a hidden racism of some kind, a racial animus of some kind. Why does it have to be that?

56:38

Why can't it be the fact that you're bringing up a modern issue that's actually a current debate versus something that's not a debate right now, or at least it shouldn't be.

56:49

It's just a debate in the minds of social justice activists. Even recently, prominent preachers have tried to dismiss

56:54

Dr. King as not being a Christian. King wrote this in his letter. So he's gonna quote

57:00

Martin Luther King Jr., because Martin Luther King Jr., of course, I guess, knows how to do justice. We're not even talking about Nehemiah anymore.

57:07

Nehemiah is not the guy to learn justice from as much as Martin Luther King Jr.

57:12

is, if you listen to this sermon. It's just crazy to me. I mean, he's supposed to be preaching on Nehemiah 5, but he's talking about John MacArthur.

57:20

I mean, John MacArthur was the one who said Martin Luther King Jr. is not a Christian, not in the Orthodox sense, at least.

57:25

Yeah, he had some cultural Christian things going on, but he didn't even follow some of that stuff.

57:31

So this should be beyond debate at this point. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., even taking his moral life aside and his running around and his plagiarism and that kind of stuff, just look at the beliefs that he held about Christianity and about the narrow way to God.

57:53

He believed that Hindus were spiritual and we could learn from them that they had this closeness to God.

58:00

He believed that Jews and Catholics marching with him was a second great awakening in this country.

58:07

And he was ecumenical to the point that he broadened the narrow way.

58:13

He had Trinitarian issues, issues with, or at least I should say, issues with the divinity of Christ.

58:22

There's really not a lot of good evidence to point to the fact that he was a, he's a pastor, but when did he preach the actual gospel?

58:30

He preached a social gospel and he even used the term gospel and applied it to social justice initiatives.

58:35

If you look at his social, if you read the Radical King by Cornel West, he was basically a forerunner of today's

58:43

BLM and CRT. He wasn't this conservative, he wasn't the one line in the

58:52

I Have a Dream speech that everyone quotes. I mean, he was much more than that. But so Mike Kelsey takes this jab at MacArthur without saying

59:00

MacArthur's name and then wants to somehow elevate Dr.

59:06

Martin Luther King Jr. as the guy that we should go to for justice instead of Nehemiah, which is the text he's supposed to be in.

59:12

And he's supposed to be talking about usury. He doesn't even talk about it. He said, there are naturally several grammatical and stylistic corrections which

59:20

I'll have to make. He says, but I'm deeply concerned about having the content in line with straight or sound theological and philosophical thinking.

59:32

One of King's main concerns was that he wanted to make sure his thinking was in line with sound

59:38

Christian theology, particularly later in his life. And that's exactly what George Kelsey emphasized in his response to Dr.

59:46

King on April 4th, 1958. He wrote back and he said this. This was so encouraging to me and challenging to me.

59:55

He said, the main thrust of my suggestions is directed toward the sharpening of the fact.

01:00:01

In other words, he's saying, I think you need to sharpen the fact that the movement which you so nobly led was

01:00:07

Christian in motivation and substance. Christian love remained the ground floor.

01:00:14

Gandhi furnished the techniques. This raises the question about. Gandhi, yeah.

01:00:25

The nonviolence thing, that's Gandhi. Gandhi gave us the techniques, but it's all Christianity. It's just a weird thing to me to use that in your sermon in Nehemiah.

01:00:36

And you're elevating a flawed example. Well, you're elevating an example that's at least, like you could pick any example you want.

01:00:45

He could have picked William Wilberforce or something if you really wanted to like talk about slavery. And certainly the slave trade did not reflect a biblical understanding of how even in the

01:01:00

Old Testament, slaves were supposed to be... I don't even know what word to use.

01:01:08

The process of slaves going from a state of freedom to a state of slavery. There were certainly huge issues with the slave trade and William Wilberforce recognized them.

01:01:18

And he could have used that and he doesn't use that. And I'm not saying he has to use Wilberforce, but he could have used so many other examples.

01:01:25

Why in the world does he decide to use Martin Luther King Jr. who's borrowing from Gandhi to then say, but it's biblical.

01:01:34

Like it seems like it's just a defensive MLK going on here. And it's just, yeah, not the...

01:01:40

Quoted Gandhi, not the Apostle Paul, someone said. Oh, Bento Blaster also said, he said 360 ,000 union deaths to 258 ,000

01:01:48

Confederate deaths over slavery. Well, I guess that's somewhat debatable whether they thought that they were fighting, the soldiers thought they were fighting for that.

01:01:58

But even if that's true, the social justice warriors today don't count it because the union, maybe they weren't as bad as the

01:02:05

Confederacy, but the union was also, they were pretty racist. They, in the minds of modern

01:02:11

SJWs. And I would say not just in their minds, like if you actually look at like the early

01:02:17

Republican party platforms and so forth, a lot of it's like for free white labor and that they don't want slaves in the territories because they don't want black people in the territories and this kind of thing.

01:02:25

So they don't, doesn't count, doesn't count. That's how it's treated today.

01:02:31

But anyway, back to Mike Kelsey. Yeah, it's just a weird sermon.

01:02:38

And I don't understand like the people who sit under this every Sunday, it's like a big church in DC. Like, I don't know, what are the people?

01:02:46

I'd like to go in there kind of just be like, who goes to a church like this? Where I just imagine there's a lot of starving sheep who need meat and they're getting quotes.

01:02:55

And then this guy just launches off into his opinions about stuff and doesn't actually really explain what scripture teaches, which is sad.

01:03:02

How we're supposed to apply this today. I know what some of y 'all are thinking, especially in light of the modern debates here in our country about reparations for slavery.

01:03:14

And thankfully I'm out of time. I am. But let me just say this.

01:03:21

Let me say this. All right, he's about to talk about reparations for slavery. What does he have to say about it? Certainly the principle of restitution is here in scripture that justice requires not just stopping injustice but repairing or rectifying that injustice in appropriate ways.

01:03:40

This is why in the New Testament when a tax franchise owner, Zacchaeus, becomes a follower of Jesus, he commits to actually repaying everyone he defrauded fourfold.

01:03:51

At the same time though, you can't draw a straight line between passages like this and any specific form of reparations today.

01:04:00

That conversation requires a whole host of moral, legal, economic, and practical considerations that honestly are above my pay grade.

01:04:09

It's a worthy conversation. You just can't jump immediately from scripture to this is what that should look like today.

01:04:19

But I hope it's clear as we've studied this passage and as we study the broader teaching of scripture that God calls us to make personal sacrifices for the sake of justice.

01:04:31

Not to just agree with the idea, but at some point. Okay, so this whole thing was leading up to this.

01:04:39

This was, he used Nehemiah 5 and usury, which was against God's law directly, of people who lived contemporary to each other and the people who stole money or disobeyed

01:04:53

God's law, took money that they should not have taken. They returned that money or that land.

01:04:58

Really, actually, what does it say? Actually, is it money? It says, give them back their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves, and their houses.

01:05:05

And also 100th part of the money, end of the grain. So yes, so they're giving back what they should never have taken.

01:05:14

And so I guess he wants to draw the parallel that we should consider reparations. And he can't give us specific plans on that, what it would look like, but just that it's a worthy discussion that this is a right moral thing, apparently, according to Nehemiah 5.

01:05:30

I've done shows on reparations. I've talked about reparations. I'm not gonna wax long about reparations here, except to say this.

01:05:42

When you start bringing up what he talks about as a complex issue, and just kind of like leaving your congregation there at the end, you're leading them towards something.

01:05:56

There's a method to this. He's got a manuscript there. He's not just making this stuff up. He's leading them on the path towards social justice is legitimate, systemic injustice is a legitimate category.

01:06:11

And hey, what do you know? We should do reparations for, I guess, presumably here it's slavery.

01:06:18

So because people were enslaved hundreds of years ago, and some of their descendants are here today, those people, they deserve some kind of a compensation.

01:06:29

And I mean, I've asked the practical questions about this. And no one has a good plan of how this would actually work.

01:06:35

Some people have put together basically spreadsheets and stuff to show that actually, if you look at like welfare, and if you look at, what do you call it?

01:06:49

Affirmative action, and some of these things that actually this has been paid for over and over, but it depends on what's the metric you wanna use.

01:06:58

This is something that comes up every now and then, and some actually municipalities like Asheville, North Carolina, for example, they do have like a reparations tax.

01:07:08

So this thing comes up over and over, and it never goes away. And that's one of the,

01:07:14

I think, things that might Kelsey has to do. All the people who bring this up, it seems like that's what they eventually have to do is like, there's really not a price tag on it.

01:07:23

Because if there was, I think that the people who are sick of hearing about how they owe reparations would just pay it and be done with it.

01:07:31

But there is no, it's just something that goes on and on and on. And it becomes like an ideological black people, this white people, this white people owe black people.

01:07:40

So, and obviously I've pointed out many, many times that if you start at the source, if you start where this whole thing started, it was

01:07:46

African tribes selling their own to Europeans. And then Europeans taking them to the new world, only 5 % of them coming to the

01:07:55

United States. And we're only talking about the transatlantic slave trade. And then once they're here, they have families.

01:08:02

They actually, many of them end up eventually prospering in ways. I mean, look around America today, that their relatives in Africa are not prospering.

01:08:14

And that's when Eric Mason, Eric Mason was the one who said, you should, the reparations are putting someone back in the place they would have been if you had not stolen from them or stolen them.

01:08:25

And I'm thinking, well, that means if you're, what African country do you want to compare economically to the

01:08:32

United States, right? So it's, it ends up becoming kind of a fool's errand, the whole thing.

01:08:38

It's a ridiculous conversation. And the only reason for the conversation is to agitate, is to try to promote this kind of strife.

01:08:47

That's, I believe that. It doesn't, there were some, there were black slave owners. There were a whole bunch of white people, the vast majority of white people who never owned slaves, didn't own slaves.

01:08:58

So, you know, how would you figure this out exactly? There is no way to figure it out. And it's, all it does is promote in today's world, more strife, more division.

01:09:10

And that's what will come of Mike Kelsey's sermon. Honestly, that's what will come to that.

01:09:15

It's already been at that church, but it's just promotes more division. So yeah,

01:09:21

I know everyone's chiming in on, this is a controversial thing. So I'll show you a few of the comments and then we'll keep going.

01:09:29

I'm all for ending usury, let's abolish fractional reserve banking, prohibit lending money at interest, abolish the federal reserve. You'd think that would have been

01:09:36

Mike Kelsey's, if he's talking about Nehemiah 5, that's what Nehemiah 5 is talking about is usury. You'd think if he wanted to make an application, he would talk about that, but he doesn't.

01:09:44

I mean, that's actually still with us. That's something that we live in every day, right? It's something that can be changed politically, possibly some of those things, or at least we can make alterations in our lives.

01:09:56

So anyway, Jews and Italians, reparations too. Yeah, I mean, I've made this point. My ancestors came as indentured servants.

01:10:03

We didn't have, the Harris family, as far as I know, they were poor as dirt going back about us.

01:10:10

We weren't exactly, I mean, I had like uncles and things like that I guess there were some presidents here and there, but it's like distant.

01:10:17

Like the Harris's were pretty poor and Scotch -Irish people mostly. And they, you know, where's our reparations?

01:10:24

I mean, Sherman came and burned the farms and they weren't fighting for slavery.

01:10:30

They didn't have slaves. They didn't try to defend themselves. They lost everything. I mean, it's like, where are my reparations? The federal government owes me, right?

01:10:37

But that never is part of the discussion and it never will be. Oh yeah, the

01:10:43

Bible also says that sons should not pay for the sins of their fathers. Yep, very true.

01:10:50

So when you start jumping across generations like this too, and, you know, let's grant that this was all sinful.

01:10:56

Anyone who don't own slaves is a sinner. Okay, you know, that was a long time ago.

01:11:01

And if that was my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, then that's not me, right? So why am

01:11:06

I paying for his stuff, for what he did? There's so many things and I don't have the time to get into all of it, but everyone's, this is really, for some reason, this topic in particular is really making the chat a lot of people are commenting on this one.

01:11:22

So let's finish this up because we've been going on about an hour and 11 minutes and I really wanna finish it and talk about Russell more briefly.

01:11:29

If we're gonna follow Jesus, if we're gonna obey the whole counsel of God and become a people who reflect

01:11:35

God's just character, it's gonna require something of us. It's gonna require that we give some things up.

01:11:43

It's gonna require. Okay, here we go. He talks about reparations and then the next thing is we have to give things up.

01:11:50

So he's motivating the people in his church to action. What's the action? That we make some sacrifices in order to get involved and to reflect the character and kingdom of God in caring for the vulnerable, the poor, the oppressed.

01:12:10

In some ways, I want that to challenge us. I want the weight of that, the weight of this passage to sit on our hearts as the authoritative word of God and to allow all of us to just allow and be open to how this

01:12:23

Holy Spirit might be wanting to grow us and shape us and lead us. I want this to challenge us.

01:12:31

People's God, people's - Oh man, I just went to the beginning. I did not mean to do that. The whole point of this passage though is they sinned against God.

01:12:42

They did not. And if you wanna get into the specifics, yes, usury but they weren't treating their brothers, their kinsmen according to the flesh, the way that God said that they should be treated.

01:12:53

Now, this might be like an uncomfortable thing to try to make application about. Like what are your responsibilities to your people, right?

01:13:01

That like, he's not going there at all though. He's not even trying to like talk about the passage.

01:13:06

It's just simply his ideas about the things that stick in his craw today.

01:13:12

And usury apparently isn't one of them. Richard, he said this,

01:13:18

I wrote it down when he said it. He said, listen, we can't be everything to everybody but we can be a lot to Montgomery County.

01:13:26

Okay, I'm gonna skip ahead a little bit here. So I wanna get to some of the specifics that he said. Everybody, but we can be a lot.

01:13:33

And so listen, there are so many of us in this church family, so many of you who are living this out already.

01:13:41

You're living it out already and I don't have time. Listen to the encouragement by the way. I just wanna contrast this.

01:13:46

Cause it used to be a lot of the social justice type sermons were like chiding the congregation. He's got such a positive tone.

01:13:52

That is a sea change, but it's like the same message with the positive tone. It's like family -friendly social justice.

01:13:59

But like names and faces are not just in my mind but on this paper, I just don't have time to go through it. But there are so many of you and not just in the ways that we do this as a church family.

01:14:08

Certainly we are doing this as a church family. The ministry that we do to help care for and protect those with disabilities.

01:14:15

The ministries, various ministries across our locations to minister and to serve the poor. Yes, and listen, your giving, your faithful, regular giving to your local church family.

01:14:26

If it's not McLean Bible Church, whatever church family you're a part of, Lord willing, that giving is a part of the work of justice of reflecting

01:14:33

God's character and kingdom to a watching world when it comes to the poor and the vulnerable.

01:14:39

Okay, so it's a bunch of charity stuff, give to your church and that's now the work of justice.

01:14:46

So no one's stolen from anything, anyone in this. There's no restorative justice or there's, the passage is about people who violated

01:14:57

God's law that are then rectifying it. There's nothing about that here. This is just like give more money to us,

01:15:05

I guess, because making people's lives better, that's now justice. Okay. Through our church, but also in many of your personal and professional lives.

01:15:22

Some of you are lawyers, for some of you, God has called you to be involved in policy.

01:15:29

Some of you even literally in our buildings right now are serving as police officers and law enforcement officials, social workers.

01:15:37

Some of you are trying to proactively address issues of injustice in education or in medicine or in the entertainment or wherever it is.

01:15:47

Like so many of you are already living this out. And this - I have to say for the guy who wanted to torch white people and who was very angry in 2020.

01:15:57

And he talks about like, not that specifically, but just his anger. And he had to work through that earlier in the sermon.

01:16:04

He said, is this family friendly stuff? I mean, even like says you're working for justice if you're a police officer and you're in these various industries trying to work for justice in them.

01:16:13

And so this is all working for justice. I mean, he's saying things that wouldn't really offend people.

01:16:18

Like he's not getting specific and saying, hey, the police have a problem here. This is an invitation from the

01:16:24

Lord for us to continue to grow in these ways as a church and as individuals.

01:16:29

Why? But ultimately not because culture says it's important and because justice is a buzzword right now, because it's a biblical issue and a biblical virtue that reflects

01:16:39

God's character. And it's so perfectly and beautifully reflected in the life of Jesus and in the gospel.

01:16:47

This is ultimately why we as Christians have been historically, despite what many people say, and should continue to be at the forefront of justice efforts.

01:16:59

Why? Because it reflects the justice of the gospel that Jesus, the son of God, came.

01:17:07

Whoa, whoa, hold on. It reflects the justice of the gospel.

01:17:13

So we just talked about all these charitable things, all these rectifying, I guess, disparities in organizations, being lawyers and police officers and giving to the church.

01:17:22

And so now that's justice. Reparations apparently is also justice.

01:17:28

And that's the reason we do it though is because it reflects the justice of the gospel.

01:17:33

But the justice of the gospel, I mean, first of all, the gospel is good news. So I don't even, that sentence doesn't exactly make sense.

01:17:42

But the justice that must be understood for the gospel to make sense is that we've all sinned against God.

01:17:52

And he goes into this, gives kind of an altar call thing. But it's like, it's the wrath of God that was poured out on Jesus.

01:18:01

Like that's, like he was right the first time that we do justice because it reflects God's character. But the justice of the

01:18:09

God, like that's not really a good thing. Like that's not good news. Like the fact that we've sinned and God is gonna be just, he's gonna come after us.

01:18:15

That's like not the reason we do justice is because we are in violation of God's justice.

01:18:22

So it's, I don't know, to me it's an odd transition to get into an altar call moment there. The whole thing though is just so foreign from like Nehemiah 5.

01:18:32

It's like, why even bother to, like he could have given this sermon and literally just read the verses without ever studying anything about Nehemiah.

01:18:39

Like you wouldn't have to because he doesn't actually talk about it. He doesn't even talk about bankers.

01:18:45

He talks about police officers and social workers. But what about bankers who like lend money out at usury?

01:18:51

Like that never gets brought up even though that's the issue in Nehemiah. So at the very least you have a guy here who's claiming to be a

01:18:59

Bible teacher or at least people think he is and he's not teaching the Bible. He's teaching his own opinions about what ought to happen as far as social arrangements and social progress in his mind and that kind of thing.

01:19:13

So if you're in McLean Bible Church, I mean, I happen to know some people that still are members there.

01:19:19

And I would just, I know that some are trying to hold on, but I'd say, I don't think there's really a lot of hope here, guys.

01:19:24

I really don't. I think you probably need to find another church. I hate to say that. But this is David Platt's church.

01:19:30

That's right. Shauna, Shauna's exactly right.

01:19:35

This is how I feel. I would not be able to sit under this nonsense. This so -called pastor is not preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is not lifting up the name of Jesus to draw men to Christ.

01:19:42

Now I do have to say, I didn't play at Shauna. He does at the end give a gospel presentation.

01:19:48

And, but the transition is just odd to me. And most of it, yes, is not centered on, it's an awkward transition.

01:19:54

It's not centered on Christ and it's not centered on even Nehemiah. It's centered on his own social views. And I think really deliberately trying his best to get

01:20:03

Christians who have been shell -shocked by 2020 to start kind of give that spoonful of sugar so they can kind of gradually adopt that left -wing framing.

01:20:14

That's what I think is going on here. That is my opinion. So any more comments or questions, put them in the chat.

01:20:21

I wanna get to the Russell Moore stuff before we are an hour and a half into this podcast.

01:20:30

And actually this is one good comment. So Christian News Junkie says, justice is actually, you should probably do drum roll here.

01:20:37

Justice is actually the law. Where's the grace? Where's the grace?

01:20:45

We have, let's see. His servant says, fleecing the sheep and all of America with notion of justice.

01:20:53

So yeah. Maybe David Platt should give Mike Kelsey his house. I think that's a good idea.

01:21:00

David Platt's got a nice house. He should just give it to Mike Kelsey as a reparations. Yeah. Yeah, this is, the whole thing's a mess.

01:21:13

All right. Someone says, I've been hearing people bringing up usury a lot lately. Would love to hear someone talk about a biblically morally centered economic view.

01:21:20

That's a good, you know, I actually agree with that. I haven't really heard like a good biblical take on this.

01:21:25

I know they exist. I'm sure that, I'm sure some of the like theonomic guys probably have talked a lot about this.

01:21:32

I don't like, it was something given to the Jews for them, like to, as a command for them not to practice it amongst themselves.

01:21:42

And I guess the way that I've, so can I just tell you personally how I've applied this? Maybe this will be more of an application than anything

01:21:48

Mike Kelsey said of Nehemiah's five. This is the way that I apply it. And part of it is also the example of my own dad, because he applied it this way.

01:21:56

When it comes to friends and family, we do not ever give things with interest.

01:22:05

We don't charge interest. Now in a fractional reserve banking system where we have inflation,

01:22:12

I think, you know, when you're operating outside of that, you know, perhaps I'm just telling you how

01:22:18

I deal with this, but you know, perhaps that's something to consider. Like, you know, cause buying power changes over time.

01:22:25

It's not like if we were dealing with gold, perhaps, you know, even gold changes, I guess buying power of gold, but it's more, it's not the same as like paper currency that's not backed up.

01:22:37

And so if I give a loan to someone, if I give someone, you know, a hundred bucks, or if I give someone, you know, here's a,

01:22:44

I don't know, here's a guitar or here's like, I'm thinking of things I've actually given away. Here's my cowboy boots or whatever.

01:22:49

Like I don't ask for them back. Like I don't ask for, if they're borrowing them,

01:22:56

I don't say like, you know, you have to give them back with an additional charge because you had it for this long or something.

01:23:02

Like if I let someone borrow my truck, they just borrow my truck. I give it to you with a tank full. You give it back to me with a tank full and you don't have to give me anything else.

01:23:12

So that's how I practice it personally in my life towards personal things with friends and family. And I have that,

01:23:17

I guess you could call it an in -group preference, but I have that, that proximity that order Amaris with them.

01:23:23

So, but I wish that someone, yeah, would, would talk about, maybe someone can link me to something. I'd love to think of it, think in deeper terms about that issue.

01:23:33

Okay. All right. Can we do Russell more now, please? Now that everyone who's, I might get some hate mail for this.

01:23:40

We'll see. I don't know. Cause I had to get back into dicey territory. I didn't say anything I've never said before, but people get real antsy with issues of reparations and MLK and slavery and that kind of stuff.

01:23:55

But that's what Mike Kelsey, he wanted to bring up from the EMI of five. All right. Let's talk about, talk about, no, not that, not this, this, yes.

01:24:09

Why character doesn't matter anymore. Why character doesn't matter anymore.

01:24:14

Hmm. And it's a picture of Donald Trump. This came out today.

01:24:20

This is fresh off the press. Subtitle is the cheerful prudery of Ned Flanders has given way to vulgarity, misogyny and partisanship.

01:24:32

What does this mean for our witness? You heard Mike Kelsey say before a watching world, right?

01:24:38

That's so like, they're constantly thinking about their witness. And it's like, you know, you wonder like, do they actually go out and witness?

01:24:44

I don't know. But they're constantly thinking about like their political positions and their social views and like how they look to the world.

01:24:54

And there is a place for that by the way, but it's like an obsession with some of these guys. So here's Russell Moore. I guess

01:24:59

Ned Flanders going to strip clubs. You know, this is a reference. I'm sorry, guys. I don't watch the Simpsons.

01:25:05

I don't know. I have no concept of this.

01:25:13

So I guess Ned Flanders goes to strip clubs now. He says until this week, I hadn't thought about the character born, again,

01:25:19

Christian neighbor in the animated series of Simpsons in a long time. The New York Times religion reporter, Ruth Graham, mentioned him and his cheerful prudery as examples, along with Billy Graham and George Bush of what were once the best known evangelical

01:25:30

Christian figures in the country. A 2001 Christianity Today cover story dubbed the character St.

01:25:36

Flanders. Evangelical Christians knew that Ned moral demeanor was meant to lampoon us and that his traditional family values were out of step with an

01:25:44

American culture. This side of the sexual revolution. But Ned was no Elmer Gantry.

01:25:50

He actually aspired to the sort of personal devotion to prayer, Bible reading, moral chastity and neighbor love evangelicals were supposed to want.

01:25:57

Okay, so it's just going through like, I guess Ned, this character, Ned Flanders was like an evangelical

01:26:03

Christian and I guess he's a good example. He got mocked for his views.

01:26:09

And then you got Donald Trump, who is a raunchy boobs and booze ethos that has elbowed its way into the conservative power class.

01:26:17

Okay, so Donald Trump is terrible. And this is nothing we haven't heard before. Graham's analysis is important for American Christians precisely because the shift she describes is not something out there in the culture, but is instead driven specifically by white evangelical subculture that once.

01:26:30

Okay, so this is driven by, so, okay, that's a key term. So this is driven by white evangelicals apparently.

01:26:37

They're driving this trend towards sexual degeneracy and alcohol,

01:26:44

I guess. And all, wait, did she actually say boobs and booze? Donald Trump doesn't even drink.

01:26:51

He doesn't even drink. He's a teetotaler. I feel like this is kind of like the whole

01:26:58

Lincoln Duncan mixing up John and Jesus's quote. Like you're, yeah, like just do like five minutes of research about Trump.

01:27:08

Okay, she talks about all these other figures, Joe Rogan, Kid Rock. Okay, I don't, this is weird.

01:27:20

Member of Congress joked at a prayer breakfast that she, okay, that she turned her fiance down for sex.

01:27:27

I remember critiquing that, okay. We've got the let's go Brandon chat.

01:27:32

So it's like all the things that are just like conservatives are doing that. I would say like, this is, here's the thing.

01:27:40

Like I've looked at all this stuff because I know some of the things she's talking about. And like, it's an example of the secularization or the paganization of the

01:27:47

United States. The fact that we're okay more with profanity, that we're okay, it's a coarsening. And it's also for evangelicals to kind of like still vote for Trump, even though in 2006 maybe they wouldn't have voted for Trump.

01:28:02

I think is more of a reflection of the fact that we're in a different situation where a lot of those character barriers have already been ripped down mostly by the left.

01:28:12

And so it's like, we're at a more fundamental, like we're fighting battles that are so much more fundamental now.

01:28:19

And we're just wanting someone who's willing to take a stand. And it's very hard to find those people that haven't betrayed us.

01:28:24

Like to me, it really tells us, it says more about the situation we're in, but they wanna make out like evangelicals are driving this.

01:28:33

Like we're really about immorality now. And like, it's just the disdain they have for us is just sick to me.

01:28:41

Pastor and aspiring theocrat, Douglas Wilson. Okay, that's not biased. Publicly used a slur against women that, okay, he won't repeat, right.

01:28:49

Wilson's creepily coarse novel about a sex robot. I've never, I don't even, I don't have a concept of that, sorry.

01:28:56

Wilson of course cultivates a cartoonish, are we naughty vibe? Okay, so Wilson's always been this way. This isn't anything new.

01:29:02

Like Wilson was this way in the early 2000s. This isn't like a Ned Flanders moment where Wilson's changing to push more profanity.

01:29:10

Like Wilson's always been kind of edgy with the way he writes. So this isn't really anything new.

01:29:15

What's worse is that evangelical Christians, including some I listened to, pontificate endlessly about Bill Clinton's sexual immorality, are doing what they condemned

01:29:24

Clinton defenders for doing, waiting policy agreement over personal character. Yeah, I mean, is there some hypocrisy there?

01:29:32

There very well could be, but again, we're in a very different situation right now. It's with Trump, with the

01:29:39

Trump's situation, you have like all these moral failures that despite these moral failures, evangelicals will vote for him because of much bigger moral concerns that affect their lives directly that Trump is willing to fight on.

01:29:55

And compared to the Biden family, there's really no comparison anyway, it's like the immorality and stuff, especially as you get into Hunter Biden stuff.

01:30:01

So it's a calculated, is it pragmatic?

01:30:09

Yeah, sure, it's pragmatic. Is it pragmatism? Not necessarily, it doesn't have to be because you have evangelicals who admit that these are wrong things, that maybe

01:30:16

Trump isn't even, it shouldn't be in that position, that if there was someone who was better that they would prefer that person in that position, but this is like, this is the best outcome they can think of for their family in a moment when the border's wide open and that kind of thing.

01:30:31

All right, this is just so like more of the same from Russell Moore, it's not interesting.

01:30:38

This article is not interesting at all. I'm just gonna skip ahead here. Our situation would be understandable in a world in which words that come out of a person don't represent what's present in their hearts or in a world in which external conduct can't be severed from internal character.

01:30:54

The problem is that such an imagined world is one in which there is no word of God, Jesus after, okay, all right.

01:31:00

I'm sorry, guys, I'm looking for something that's meat that I can actually critique. This is mostly just like puff posturing.

01:31:08

Some of the very people who advanced the myth of a Christian America, so now it's a myth, okay, in which the American founders are retrofitted as conservative evangelicals now embrace a view that both the

01:31:17

Orthodox Christians and the deist Unitarians of the founding era would in full agreement denounce from the

01:31:22

Federalist Papers to the dates around the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, virtually every founding father, even with all their differences, would argue that constitutional procedure and policies alone were not enough to conserve a republic, moral norms and expectations of some level of personal character were necessary.

01:31:38

Do these norm, okay, I'll go with that. Like, I do believe that there should be moral character.

01:31:44

So show me who the guy is, right? And put into this, it's not just like evangelicals had tend to have this view that like moral character is just, it's like Mike Pence, right?

01:31:53

Like you stayed with your wife, you have the Mike Pence rule, like we like that. But then you have no backbone when it comes to your actual job.

01:32:01

We hired you for, you know, making political decisions and you won't challenge a very suspicious,

01:32:09

I'm on YouTube, how do I say this? Procedure on January 6th, wink, wink.

01:32:18

Like, that's like really bad moral character. That's like literally, like you had one job kind of thing and you didn't do it.

01:32:26

And so evangelicals tend to look at like, just like a narrow range of things that in my opinion, evangelical leaders that constitute moral integrity.

01:32:37

And, you know, going back to even like Mike Kelsey's thing, like all his examples, like if you're gonna stand up against injustice, like why isn't it like, why isn't it election integrity on that list?

01:32:47

Like, why is, you know, how come like the fact that only 6 % of the Fortune 500 companies now like of their hires are white people?

01:32:55

Like, why isn't that now an issue? Or the suicide, the disparity in the suicide rates with white men and other demographic groups, they'll never like look at those things.

01:33:03

They're never going to look at problems for communities that they don't care about and view those issues as quote unquote justice issues or issues that you should care about or moral issues that make the cut.

01:33:16

And you see that with Russell Moore here, like it's the things that he cares about are reflected in this.

01:33:23

I don't know that election integrity is like big on his, like he would think that if he said election integrity, he's talking about the securing our democracy from those evil

01:33:33

Trump supporters, right? So like, he's coming at this from like a completely different angle than most of the people that supposedly he's,

01:33:42

I guess, supposed to represent, evangelical Christians. You know, what about COVID?

01:33:48

Has anyone been arrested in the higher echelons for that? I mean, there was like, where's the justice?

01:33:54

Where's the care for that? All right, so he says, you might hire an accountant to do your taxes only later to find that he's a tax fraud and embezzler.

01:34:05

That's quite different from hiring an open fraud because you concluded that only Trump's obey the tax laws. We're post -constitutional though.

01:34:13

Like if you're applying this to the constitution of the United States, then it's,

01:34:19

I'm not saying that no parts of it are followed but it's been so violated so many times that I think we're in a situation now where if you have a president, like the

01:34:34

Democrats all do this, right? They just violate it. But if you have a president on the Republican side, who's like, you know what? I'm not gonna fight with my hand tied behind my back.

01:34:41

I'm gonna do things the way they are and I'm gonna try to get power. I'm gonna try for people who elected me and I'm gonna play by the same rules that these other

01:34:51

Democrats are playing by. Then I think we're for it at this point because we're just like the constitution really, it's not the words on the document.

01:34:58

So much as, like as far as, I'm not saying there's a living constitution by the way.

01:35:04

I'm not saying that the words change meanings. I'm saying that the law that we live under is what's actually enforced, what people actually abide by, the convention that exists.

01:35:17

And it may violate the constitution itself, but that's like the new constitution.

01:35:25

So there's a good book on this about the civil rights legislation and how kind of we got here. Now I can't remember the name of it.

01:35:33

Someone put it in the chat if you know what I'm talking about, it'll come to me. Anyway, no leader of any community association or nation is an abstract collection of policies.

01:35:43

We select leaders to make decisions about matters that haven't happened yet, or that might not be contemplated. A dentist who screams profanities, built around revenge and retribution and tearing down all the norms of modern dentistry is not someone who should trust with a drill.

01:35:55

So he's saying that Trump is just this evil that's so beyond anything else. Christians once knew that what is demoralized in a culture becomes an expected part of that culture.

01:36:09

Defending a president using his power to have sex with his intern by saying every... So he just keeps, it's a circular article.

01:36:15

He just keeps going back to like, we had a problem with Clinton, why not Trump? Well, we do, a lot of us do have a problem with Trump's actions in that regard, but we know that that's the situation we're in is a lot different than the one that Clinton was in.

01:36:30

And in Trump's not, it is also different that Trump's not doing it in the White House so far as we know.

01:36:38

All right, so he brings in the Nazis and Ku Klux Klan. The words pro -life

01:36:44

Nazi, like the words pro -life sexual abuse as you're changing the meaning of pro -life in the mind of an entire generation. I don't even know what he's talking about here.

01:36:52

People in Louisiana defending their support for Nazi propagandists and former Grand Wizard of the KK. I have no clue what he's talking about.

01:36:58

All right, let's just skip ahead to the end here because this is not interesting. The Bible warns about character degradation and Ned Flanders isn't the

01:37:08

Christian ideal, but he had personal piety. And what has changed?

01:37:14

This is like the Jeremiah sermons of the Puritans, like, oh, what has changed? Let us go back to the good old days of the 90s.

01:37:22

Well, it'd be nice if we could go back there, but we have a side that's been on destroying our entire way of life and killing innocent babies and replacing us with foreigners who are coming in.

01:37:37

I mean, I know the great replacement theory is a conspiracy, but I'm watching with my own two eyes, the demographics change drastically in many areas.

01:37:47

So there's just so many things that are happening right now, economically, the hardships that many are encountering in this kind of downturn.

01:37:55

It's just, I don't know. It's just like, Russell Moore is out of touch. Russell Moore is out of touch.

01:38:02

If you have someone trying to kill you and there's someone else who's willing to stand up to defend you against the person who wants to kill you, who's very strong, right?

01:38:12

And can overpower you. There's someone who's stronger, who's willing to defend you. You're not asking questions about like, what their personal life was like in some regard.

01:38:23

You're just wanting them to do a job. So whoever's willing and strong enough to do it is gonna be the guy who's gonna do it.

01:38:30

Would that change because the secular world has grown more hostile to Christians perhaps, or would it be because, or would it be because when the secular world looks at the public face of Christianity, they wouldn't dream to think how

01:38:42

Ned Flanders, what became of Ned Flanders, but only of one more leering face at the strip club.

01:38:50

All right, so he's just blaming Christians. It's not really, it's not just that the world's gone bad. It's that Christians are, they don't care about character anymore.

01:38:59

So nothing new from Russell Moore. That really wasn't that, that was a cold reading. I hadn't read it before, but there's nothing new, literally nothing.

01:39:05

Russell Moore is saying the same stuff. He's just screaming it louder. And I was gonna say, no one's listening, but apparently

01:39:10

I just gave him a platform and Christianity Today is listening. All right, well, in closing,

01:39:15

I'll take a few comments and questions and so forth. But in closing, before I do that,

01:39:21

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01:40:29

for more information. That's bradfordchristiancollege .com. All right, well, we have a few comments that I wanna highlight here.

01:40:41

Bento Blaster says, a Manhattan grand jury has indicted Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who tried to protect people.

01:40:46

Where's his justice? Yeah, no one's saying his name. No one's saying the name of Daniel Penny. And of course, yeah, anyone who's killed by an illegal immigrant doesn't get that same treatment either.

01:41:01

Trying to guilt Christians into not voting for Trump so Biden is okay with him. He doesn't, yeah, that's the thing.

01:41:06

He only punches right, it seems like. So it's just like he doesn't go after Biden in those ways. He should.

01:41:13

Love you and your work that you do, John, God bless. Thank you, thank you, appreciate that. You know, more people probably are voting for Biden.

01:41:23

I don't know if this is true. I think it probably is, who read Christianity today. So if he's gonna be a moral, he's gonna speak prophetically.

01:41:29

He should probably talk to them and question their judgment. Any comment on the recent fine that was levied against LU for so -called campus safety issues?

01:41:42

You know, I have to say I'm pretty connected to LU but I haven't heard about that one yet. So I'm gonna have to look into that.

01:41:49

If that's true, well, maybe I could just pull it up now. Let me just get to a few more comments and we'll take a quick look.

01:41:55

If I remember, Christian News Junkie says, Russell Moore was a big admirer of Hillary Clinton in his earlier life and wanted to marry a woman like her.

01:42:02

I can't imagine harboring those thoughts personally. Yeah, he wrote that publicly, that he wanted to marry a woman like Hillary Clinton, which is kind of crazy to me.

01:42:11

Yeah, so let me just say three things here in closing, just briefly. And the first one

01:42:16

I wasn't expecting to talk about, let me see if there's a new story on it. So Liberty University fine.

01:42:22

Let me just see if there's a, oh, wow. Wow, this came up right away.

01:42:29

All right, how did I not see this? This is March 5th, so this has been going on for a while. I do not know,

01:42:34

I really don't know. Let me just show this to all of you, sorry. Let me pull it up so you can see what

01:42:41

I'm looking at here. All right, so here's the news story. And it says,

01:42:46

Liberty University fined 14 million for federal crime reporting violations. The U .S.

01:42:52

Department of Education is fining them the largest penalty on record, wow, for failing to comply with a reporting law.

01:42:59

Department officials announced the settlement Tuesday. It came after a lengthy investigation that found numerous violations of the Clery Act, a federal law that requires colleges to record and warn their communities about campus crimes and dangerous situations.

01:43:11

Wait, seriously? The department's findings are detailed in a 100 -page report, which describes from 2016 to 2023, there were serious, persistent, and systemic violations.

01:43:21

The report says the college discouraged students from reporting crimes, did not adequately respond to incidents of sexual violence, failed to tell the campus about criminal activities or dangerous situations, such as gas leaks, and did not maintain an accurate or complete list of crimes.

01:43:35

I don't know anything about this, I'm gonna be honest. I mean, what's the suspicion we all probably have?

01:43:41

Like, why is Liberty University paying the largest bill or the largest fine on this?

01:43:46

Is there an anti -Christian animus? I mean, look, yes, the powers that be will weaponize against Christians.

01:43:56

I don't know if that's what's going on here. I will say this just from my personal experience at LU during that time period. It was,

01:44:03

I saw security officers and RAs, and like, they were on top of, especially the sexual abuse thing.

01:44:13

Like, they were pretty on top. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but they were on top of that kind of stuff. From what

01:44:19

I remember, they had good lighting on the campus. There were patrols. They were like, if it happened, it's because it slipped through the cracks.

01:44:29

But I know there were some accusations a few years ago about this kind of thing, but I just,

01:44:34

I do have my suspicions. I definitely have my suspicions. Yeah, Ed Sanders says, appears to be like a punitive fine.

01:44:44

So, I don't know. All right, so the other thing I wanted to just briefly mention to you guys, and pray for this, please,

01:44:50

Samuel Say. Samuel Say. Now, Samuel Say has been a huge kind of like critic lately of quote unquote

01:44:59

Christian nationalists and so forth. And I'm not sure, I might've even, on this podcast,

01:45:05

I might've even critiqued some of the things he said. So, you know, he's a Christian brother though.

01:45:10

And, you know, I just, what's happening is terrible.

01:45:16

So, he wrote on Twitter that he had to discipline his son. And his son is, I guess, a five -month -old.

01:45:22

And this created quite a stir. He lives in Canada and there were at least like three separate complaints to the government there.

01:45:30

And then like thousands of atheists and progressive Christians on social media accusing him of hurting and abusing his five -month -old son.

01:45:38

And I guess he was talking about disciplining him in terms of bedtime. So he wasn't even like, he wasn't hitting his son or anything.

01:45:45

Sleep training was, I don't know what sleep training is, but then again, you know, my wife's having a baby in three months and that's her first.

01:45:52

So maybe I'll know what it is soon. But this is just, this is terrible.

01:45:58

Like his tweet was read in the worst possible light. And I don't know what's gonna happen.

01:46:04

But I don't know what the equivalent of CPS is in Canada, but I think they're gonna, like there's people trying to get the government to come after him.

01:46:12

And so pray for our brother, Sam, you'll say, that's just terrible. And that's not in the United States, that's in Canada, but this is in the

01:46:17

United States. So Jack Hibbs had given a prayer to Congress.

01:46:23

This was actually back, when was this? I think back in February maybe, or maybe early

01:46:28

March. No, it was, okay, so it was January 30th. It was a while ago. I'm just hearing about this today, but you know what?

01:46:36

This stinks, I'm sorry, guys. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna delete, I'm gonna read it myself because I just noticed there was a inappropriate ad.

01:46:46

I hate that, I hate that. What website is this,

01:46:52

MSN? It was a Fox News, yeah, Fox News. Fox News is one of the worst for that, like the blazing, like what is, what's up with that?

01:46:58

It's like women's underwear ads and stuff. All right, now it's a good one.

01:47:04

Now it's Regent University, so I can show it to you. I'm afraid it'll come back up, all right. So Hibbs called for humility and repentance of national sins in a time of great need.

01:47:16

And apparently this had, the Democrat congressman,

01:47:21

I think, wrote a letter to Speaker Johnson saying he's following a Christian national agenda, he's not qualified, he's a hate preacher.

01:47:33

And it really wasn't anything controversial in the prayer, there shouldn't have been, at least. He called

01:47:39

Jesus, well, did he say Jesus? He says, Lord, our heavenly father, high and mighty king of kings and Lord of lords who does from my throne, wait, what is this?

01:47:51

Okay, so he's saying he incorporated this prayer from Reverend Jacob Duche, director of the

01:47:57

Church of Philadelphia. So basically his prayer was, which I don't have here, but it took some early

01:48:06

American prayers and kind of used them as a template. And he's in trouble for it, basically, or at least

01:48:15

Democrats are trying to make something of it. I don't think they'll be able to do much. Someone told me today, and I don't see this in the news story, so I'm gonna doubt it, that he was on a no -fly list because of this, which

01:48:25

I'm not seeing that, so I'm just gonna doubt that. But it's just kind of crazy to me that like very general kind of language that would be seen as innocuous not very long ago, because he calls for humility and repentance of national sins.

01:48:41

Like this is now, that's controversial now, which is kind of crazy. And the, let's see, this,

01:48:50

I had loaded this. Let's see if I can, I guess there's a paywall on this. The IRS must take action against Pastor Jack Kibb's electioneering from the pulpit.

01:48:58

So there's a possibility that the IRS might go after Jack Kibb's, okay. So you can pray for both those situations.

01:49:05

I just wanted to say like in closing that the persecution element, like we have persecution in this country, in the

01:49:14

Western world, we have persecution. It's the kind of thing though, it like gradually kind of presses us in where we can't, we're disqualified from even working in certain fields.

01:49:29

And yeah, there are the people like the guy in Arizona not long ago who just gets shot while he's evangelizing, that happens.

01:49:34

But more often than not, it's like, it's the cancel culture stuff.

01:49:42

It's what, you know, both those incidences were that. And in a time like this,

01:49:49

I think people really do want a leader or leaders who have backbone. And yeah, they want leaders with moral character in their personal lives.

01:49:57

But the most important thing for them is will the leader fight on my behalf, for my interest so I can keep doing, so like my way of life is not threatened by these people who wanna threaten our way of life.

01:50:08

Discipline your kids, pray basic prayers in an hour controversial.

01:50:14

We want that stuff to be normal and to continue. And so anyone who's gonna fight for that.

01:50:20

And I think that kind of gets into why there's a disconnect with Russell Moore. He just doesn't see that.

01:50:25

But someone says, David Edgington, this is an advertisement, I guess. David Edgington's book is on Audible now.

01:50:31

David Edgington's book. I recognize the name, I'm not sure why. Why? Okay, Chris Caldwell, The Age of Entitlement is the book you were looking for.

01:50:40

Yes, that is the book I was looking for. I don't know what David Edgington's book is.

01:50:45

Maybe that has something to do with usury. But yes, Chris Caldwell, The Age of Entitlement is a good book that shows that basically we're not living under the original constitution anymore.

01:50:55

And then moral of the story, yes. Samuel say, do not put your life on the internet. Yeah, you could think, why would he do that?

01:51:02

But like a few years ago, or maybe more than a few, five, six years ago, especially like, would that be a big deal?

01:51:08

I didn't think so. Someone says he lives in Ohio, not Canada. I thought he lived in Canada.

01:51:16

He must've just moved to Ohio. Okay, I'm thankful that Linda Keller, I don't know if you're related to Tim Keller, but thank you,

01:51:24

Linda. Thank you for pointing that out. And okay, so that was in the United States.

01:51:31

All right. And then all the Trump supporters.

01:51:37

I'm voting for Trump, especially if it picks Ben Carson. I have no problem voting for Trump, someone says. Oh yes, yes,

01:51:43

I interviewed. Okay, I know who you're talking, David Edgington, yes. Yeah, that was actually a great interview.

01:51:49

He wrote a book on reviling. So the abuse of wife, I guess is the title of the book, but it's all about like what reviling actually is biblically.

01:52:00

And I actually just used that with someone yesterday because they were asking about a counseling class where they're using these terms.

01:52:06

And I said, why don't you just use biblical terms like reviling? Why do you have to use, you know, abused or abused and, or oppressed or oppressed,

01:52:13

I guess was what they were using, so. All right, so yeah, Samuel Say moved after his marriage, Leah confirmed.

01:52:19

Okay, got it, thank you, thank you. And Leah also tells me that sleep training is teaching them to sleep in their own beds.

01:52:25

All right, I guess I'll know about that very soon. So if you wanna support this podcast and help me raise my baby, you can go to johnharrispodcast .com,

01:52:36

worldviewconversation .com, take you to the same place. And there's a support tab there. And there's also a last thing

01:52:43

I'm gonna say, there's also speaking engagements. So if you go to the speaking tab, then you'll see where I'm gonna be.

01:52:50

And I actually have a bunch of other places to add to this. But for right now, April, well, if anyone lives in New York, April 7th, you can come see me.

01:52:58

I'll be preaching local, but April 27th, I'll be in Boise, Idaho, and then May 4th in St.

01:53:04

Croix, Wisconsin. And then sign up for the retreat, the men's retreat, September 27th, you can go to fundamentalsconference .com,

01:53:11

check that out. And more coming, God bless. Have a good weekend, have a good Palm Sunday.

01:53:16

I know I will. I'm actually, I'm leading praise and worship music, and I'm also gonna be smoking some brisket tomorrow.