Erastian Church Compromise in the EFCA | Ep 20

Cornerstone Church

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And at that meeting, I shared some of these principles and I asked the question of them, is a free church still a free church if it's connected with some government program like PPP, that's the payment protection program by which churches could have money loaned to them by the civil government during COVID to pay their employees.

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And that loan could turn into a grant forgiven by the federal government if the church did certain things, i .e.

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there's a string attached between the civil government and the church telling the church what to do. And welcome to Tearing Down High Places.

01:03

My name is Average Joe and I'm here to you with a lot of guests today. As you see, we've got a big quadrant going on here.

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Pastor Jeff Kluwer, as always, say hi, sir. Hello. And then we've also got two special guests who

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I wanna do a quick introduction to. We've got Pastor Seth Brickley coming to you from Eureka Baptist in St.

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Croix Falls, Wisconsin. He is also the host, he was the host of TruthScript Be Not Conformed Conference where Pastor Jeff was speaking recently.

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And as many of you know, Pastor Jeff has a story about some controversy that some things he said and being accused of a

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Christian as a Christian nationalist. And we have another pastor here, Pastor David Whitney, welcome.

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He is from Cornerstone Free Church in Bowie, Maryland. And today's podcast is mostly gonna be

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Pastor Seth interviewing Pastor David. Pastor Jeff and I are gonna dial out in a couple of minutes here from the screen, but don't worry, we're here if you need us.

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Just text in if we're doing this, if you're on the channels or send an email to podcast at cornerstonesj .org.

02:09

We're always gonna answer your questions. Pastor Jeff, do you wanna say any words before we let

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Pastor Seth do the interview? Yeah, I just wanna say, these are two of the most encouraging brothers in the

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Lord that I know. Both of them have been just a huge encouragement to me to fight the good fight, they are fellow soldiers.

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These are guys that are unafraid, they are not conformed to the world, they're willing to take a stand, even if it means they're gonna take heat.

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And both of them have taken heat from people that don't like their stand, but they're willing to tell the truth even at a cost.

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So these are fellow soldiers here today, brothers. Fantastic, Pastor Seth, you have the mic as they say.

02:49

All right, well, thanks Average Joe. And yeah, as we started here, I just wanna say, many of you who are listening and may be familiar with Pastor Jeff Cleaver's story.

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He wrote the book, Woke Free Church. And in this book, he's detailing the woke drift of the leadership of the free church.

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And it's a very factual book. If you haven't read it, it's an excellent read.

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And because of him writing that book, he was disciplined, his ordination was disciplined first by the

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Board of Ministerial Standing of the Evangelical Free Church. And then he appealed that, went to California where he appealed it to the congregations and they voted against him as well, 93 % against him.

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And you might be wondering why did so many people vote against him? They weren't really given accurate information. And largely speaking, the people who were there were supportive of the leadership.

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So that's kind of the story that some of you, maybe many of you are familiar with. The story that you're less familiar with is the story of Pastor David Whitney.

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And as we start, Pastor David, how many years have you been a pastor in the

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Evangelical Free Church of America? Well, thank you, Seth. And by the way, I love the title, Tearing Down the

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High Places. That's wonderful podcast title. I've been involved about 43 years back after I graduated from high school as a group of people forming a church in New Jersey.

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And they asked me to kind of serve as an interim pastor for them. And during that time, I strongly encouraged them.

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And they were planning to be independent, non -denominational sort of thing. I strongly encouraged them to become a free church, which they did.

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And after I left and went to seminary, they moved across the river from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.

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Subsequently, that has changed its name from, it was originally Bible Fellowship Evangelical Free Church.

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Now it's a Riverstone and large church there in Yardley, Pennsylvania. So first there, and then after graduating from seminary, a church in Florida, Trinity Evangelical Free Church in Eustis, Florida hired me on staff.

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I was with that church for a number of years, then moved up to Maryland. And when we planted our church, Cornerstone, 31 years ago next month, we planted an

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Evangelical Free Church, again, at my encouragement to the steering committee as they were planning to do this.

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So we have been an Evangelical Free Church for 30 plus years, and just last month voted to disaffiliate from them because of the way our congregation and myself as a pastor have been treated by the leadership of the

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Evangelical Free Church, sadly. And I love the Evangelical Free Church, been part of it for 42 years, and it's very painful to depart from it, but it became necessary as I'd like to share.

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Yeah, and I just wanna say too, along with David and Pastor Jeff Kluwer, I share the same concerns that they share, and I too have a long history in the free church.

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I was born, raised, dedicated, baptized, even was an associate pastor in the free church.

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I was licensed in the free church, I think about eight or nine years ago. About seven years ago,

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I started at Eureka Baptist Church, so now I'm a Baptist, but I still very much care about the movement.

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Average Joe mentioned that a month ago, we hosted a conference. Pastor Jeff Kluwer spoke at that conference and told his story, and it was kind of a neat moment.

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He got to meet my parents, and my parents have been in the free church up until recently, their entire life.

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And my great -grandparents and my grandparents were in the movement. My great -grandparents were in fact at Medicine Lake in Plymouth, Minnesota in 1950 during the merger when the

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Swedish church and the Norwegian church merged together. So we're obviously very saddened by the present state of the

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Evangelical Free Church where the leadership has taken the movement. It does not line up with the history of the movement.

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And most importantly, the woke movement, the woke drift is inconsistent with biblical truth, and that's our greatest concern, of course.

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But we do care about the founders, right? And we want...

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So I appreciate guys like Jeff and David, and I know my family does as well, and they were able to meet

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Jeff. So that was really a special moment. Okay, so now that I got that out of the way, we're gonna have

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David tell his story from the very beginning. And this started way back in COVID.

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So would you take us to how this all started? Thank you, Seth. And let me just preface this by saying that I have forgiven those who have wronged our congregation and myself.

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They're forgiven. I pray for their repentance, that they would not remain in the state that they're in. And so some would wonder, well, why share your story then?

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Well, I wanna share the story because I believe there is a theological heresy afoot in the

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American church. And that heresy is called Erastianism. When I mentioned that to the board of ministerial standing, none of them have heard of that.

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So let me explain it. Thomas Erastus was a pure... Actually, he was one of the

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Calvinists that was part of the Westminster Confession as they were forming and debating issues. He was asserting that the civil government should punish sins that are committed by members of the church.

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So somebody gossips, well, it's the job of the civil government to... That's what his argument was. And that was ultimately rejected by the

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Westminster Confession because they understood properly that when Jesus said, render unto

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Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's, there's a separation of jurisdiction between the church and the state.

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If I could just use two Christmas ornaments to say, okay, these are two separate jurisdictions.

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Well, Erastianism says that the civil government is over the church. The civil government is in charge of the church.

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And so, therefore, if the church is told as it was in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, you cannot have home

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Bible studies. You cannot meet on the street and evangelize in an outdoor evangelist. You cannot do, you cannot do.

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And the founders of the free church movement looked at that and said, wait a minute, where in the scripture do we find that the civil government is somehow over the church and it tells the church what to do and whatnot?

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They said, no, that's wrong. We find the apostles saying to the civil government, we ought to obey God rather than men, the very opposite of that.

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So they recognize that the Lutheran church system, state church in the Scandinavian countries was unbiblical.

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So they separated from the Lutheran state church and they formed the free churches.

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And when they came here to the United States, because they spoke the same language, we would assume they would have joined in the congregations that were

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Swedish speaking or Norwegian or what have you. No, they recognize those evangelical Lutheran churches in America do not recognize this problem of Erastianism, even though obviously in America, we've had no

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Erastian set up. The first amendment guarantees that that's impossible at the federal level. So they would have joined, but they recognize those churches are wrong about this issue of the relationship of the church and the state and therefore they form free churches separate from the evangelical

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Lutheran church in America, evangelical free church in America. The free meaning, free from government control, free from the heresy of Erastianism, even though obviously most people today don't know what that's about.

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Well, you might say, that's an interesting theological problem that doesn't exist today. We have the first amendment and obviously the civil government doesn't control the church.

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Oh, that was until 2020, when all churches were told in all 50

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States, you have to shut your doors. And we did not do so. Cornerstone remained open in the entirety, in spite of the fact that on the

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Friday before the closure of churches was taking place, we were told by the church that we had been renting for 25 years, that we could no longer use a facility at Sunday mornings.

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And so we scrambled and found another place. We did not miss one Sunday of having public worship during all of 2020.

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Now at the close, like in November, there's pastors gathering, they call them clusters. And of course we couldn't meet in person.

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Can't do that during COVID. So we met by Zoom and they went around the circle asking each of the pastors, how's your church doing?

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How are you doing? How have you handled COVID and the shutdown, all this stuff. And when it came to me,

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I simply said two things. Our church did not shut our doors at all. We met continuously.

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And secondly, the reason why we didn't is first of all, Hebrews 10, 24 and 25, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.

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And secondly, the governor of the state of Maryland has no authority vis -a -vis the constitution of the state of Maryland to shut down any church whatsoever.

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In fact, our constitution probably has the strongest freedom of religion statement in the entire 50 states.

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It states in Declaration of Rights, Article 36, that as it is the duty of every man to worship

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God, that's in our constitution. That's pretty shocking that that is still, they've tried to get rid of it repeatedly, but they haven't been able to.

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It's duty. So if it's our duty to worship God, how can the governor prevent us from worshiping

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God? And it goes on, of course, to detail the religious liberty aspects of that in the manner that you, the worshiper, thinks that God demands of you to worship

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Him. Stated that, and that obviously upsets some of the pastors because the entire circle of pastors had all closed their churches as you listen to their stories.

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You know, I'm not judging what they decided to do. They're gonna have to answer to God for what they did, but for our church, we would not and did not close.

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And I believe we were blessed by God for doing that. So three pastors are very upset with me and they began an investigation based on the fact that we hadn't closed the doors of our church.

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And their investigation was to listen to my sermons, which are all online and been online for 10 years or more.

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So you can go back in the archives and listen to all of them, but they began to investigate sermons I preached during 2020 and became as using their words, horrified, horrified.

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And so they demanded a meeting with me be met in February of 2021, Pastor Guy Nebone and Bill Kynes, Pastor Bill Kynes and Pastor Bill Rydell.

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And I asked in advance of the meeting for a list of the questions that they were going to ask me. They gave me no such list, which

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I think is a violation of the biblical standards of justice. But they proceeded to go through my teaching, object to many things that I teach.

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For example, I teach that every parent ought to pull their children out of the public indoctrination system. That system is doing damage to their children.

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They have a responsibility before God, Deuteronomy 6, to educate their children and not to put them into an indoctrination system.

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So that can be done by homeschooling or Christians in many ways. But I always encourage, and they were offended that I did that and offended by a whole list of things talking about the jabs that I advise people against and on and on it went.

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But ultimately they said, nothing that I was preaching was in violation of the doctrinal statement of the evangelical free church.

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I was not preaching heresy, but they were offended by the other things I was saying from the pulpit.

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And they said, David, you are not of the ethos of the evangelical free church. I wondered to myself, what's the ethos of the evangelical?

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Where's that print? Is there a list of... No, it's something that apparently some people have come up with an idea.

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This is what it's about. Could you share what these three pastors who you met with, what is their view on politics?

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Again, that was one of their objections. They're saying, David, you're delving into politics from the pulpit.

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I said, no, if I say abortion is a sin, it's a crime, you're taking an innocent human life, that's not politics.

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The left has made that political. It's really a biblical moral issue. If I say that the schools ought to be shut down and parents ought to make other choices for their...

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They would say that's political. Or if I say that promoting sodomy to little children in kindergarten is a wrong that ought not to be done, they might say that's political.

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So their approach was, these are political issues that you're dragging into the pulpit.

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My argument is, no, no, no. These are moral issues that the word of God speaks and we're to preach the whole counsel of God, everything

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God says about every subject matter. And when it falls on the subject matter of what's happening in the culture, we ought to speak to it.

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We shouldn't hide it under a bushel and pretend it doesn't exist. The interesting thing is Pastor Guy Neibone said to me, because ultimately their argument was,

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David, you're a Christian nationalist. And that was based upon, as Guy Neibone said, that the three of them,

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Guy, Bill, Bill, had been spending extensive time studying critical race theory.

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They gained a lot of understanding and insight and so forth and so on from critical race theories. Really? So not critiquing it.

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Yeah, no. Accepting it and using it as a measuring stick by which to measure me.

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And I'm, you know, of not the ethos of the evangelical free church, I guess, they didn't spell this out, but I'm guessing because I don't adopt critical race theory.

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I preach what I believe the Bible is saying about these issues that they would be calling political. And yeah.

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So Bill Rydell is the chair of the national board of the free church.

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Currently. He wasn't at that time, but he is now, right? Correct? Right. So he gave a message at an

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East district event where he talked about politics, right? What did he say in that message slash presentation?

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He was saying that there should be, you know, Democrats and Republicans in the pew next to each other.

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They get along fine. And that kind of what happens from the pulpit doesn't upset, doesn't touch on the issues that would be hot button issues, you know, for one or the other.

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And that his desire would be, he's right off of Capitol Hill where his church is. His desire would be that he'd have staffers from Senate and house of representatives from both parties in his church without any conflict of, or disagreement.

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And it's like, hmm, that's interesting. I'd love to reach democratic staffers and help persuade them that the word of God says from the moment of conception, a human being is a human being created by God and is deserving of all

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God -given rights that the rest of us have. So that you don't discriminate against the unborn simply because of their size, their location of environment or their decree of dependency.

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They're made in the image of God and to take their life, an innocent human life is a crime, a crime that should.

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And so, but he was like, no, we can't do that. And in fact, in that same presentation, he made the point that he believed that sometimes a woman, and I'm paraphrasing him here.

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I'm not quoting him exactly. Sometimes a woman needs the option of abortion. Therefore abortion should be kept legal because sometimes a woman needs that.

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And to me, that's the exact opposite of what the word of God says. Because the very purpose for which civil government exists is to establish justice.

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And justice would be Romans 13, very clearly, to punish and execute murderers.

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That's what Romans 13 talks about. That's what God's designed for human civil government and all the way back to Genesis chapter nine, verse six, is that God ordained human civil government to punish murderers specifically.

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And he was saying, no, no, no. We ought to legalize murder in this particular category and not punish the murderers at all.

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So this is very interesting. So he's rising the ladder in the free church while you have been pushed down the ladder,

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I guess is one way to say it. Or out. Or out, yeah. And very telling,

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I guess, as onlookers look on and see what's going on here, the direction of the movement.

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Okay, so you had - By the way, that video is still up. That video is still on the EFC website.

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Right, so in other words, there's no renunciation of that teaching as well that was wrong. We need to remove it. It's still available.

19:23

Sure, okay. Okay, so you had that conversation with these three pastors where they were horrified, their words by your passages, and then what happened next?

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Well, at the end of that conversation, they said, basically, we want you to answer us, us three pastors, and tell us if you will leave the evangelical free church.

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And I thought about that. And then later after the conversation was over, I said, what authority do they have to ask that question? They're not in a position at that time at the district level, which would be the level at which, you know, such a question would be posed.

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They were not in any position of authority to do that, even as, you know, on the national board, which Bill Rydell was on the national board at the time, he wasn't the chairman.

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So I didn't answer their question. And that, I think, upset them. And they talked to denominational officials. And it was before my ordination was being reconsidered as it is every so many years by the national board of ministerial standing, that just days before that meeting was taking place in September, 2022, so more than a year after the meeting with those first three pastors,

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John Nesbitt, who's the operations director, which I kind of take as somebody who now handles kind of the backroom things and so forth.

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But anyway, he demanded a meeting with me and he apologized that it had to be so short term because it had to be before the national board of ministerial standing meeting took place in September.

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So he, and I asked him as well, give me a list of questions that you're going to ask me in this meeting.

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He gave me a few general vague questions, but his compatriot, Paulo Freire, who is on the board of ministerial standing, did not give me all the questions he had.

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And he was reading a list of 11 questions he had. He did not submit those to me ahead of time. Which again, if you're going to follow biblical standards of fairness and justice, this has been hammered out for like 1900 years among Christians who study the word of God.

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And they've concluded due process, what we call due process is really the biblical standards of justice.

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And one of those is that if you're going to be questioned and queried, you're given an opportunity to prepare for that questioning with the questions in advance.

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As the first three pastors did not give me a list of questions, John gave me a partial list. Paulo gave me none.

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And in this meeting, it began with John saying, well, we have complaints about you. Oh, complaints of, you know?

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Oh yeah, some people from your congregation. And I asked them, could you tell me the names of these individuals who complained?

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And he complained he had two or three he couldn't quite remember and so on and so forth.

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But both he and Paulo refused to give me the names of those who were making accusations against me as an elder.

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It's like, wow, that's curious. You don't believe it's appropriate that I know the names of those who are making an accusation.

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This is against the biblical standards of justice. You get to face who your accusers are. Deuteronomy 19, by the way, puts a very severe penalty on those who make false accusations.

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And clearly Matthew 18 and clearly 1 Timothy 5 talk about the great care that has to be taken when an elder is being accused.

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And, you know, but they said, no, no, no, we're not gonna tell you the names of these. And I, at that point, I might've just said, okay, well, the meeting's over.

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If you're not gonna follow biblical standards of justice, there's no point in continuing. But I did and answered all their questions.

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Their lengthy dialogue, about two and a half hours, questions about this, that, and the other.

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And the complaints were, at least the complaints they revealed to me, I'm not sure they didn't have additional accusations they did not reveal to me.

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And let me share a little bit why I believe that might be the case. But the complaints were too, you don't have elders.

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Really? Wow. According to your constitution, you don't have elders. Like, I'm sorry, my constitution, our church constitution clearly states that the pastor is an elder.

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He's an elder among the other elders. And it's true at this point in time, I am the only elder.

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And that has been a process where some people have moved and left and during COVID, so on, that's taken place.

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But it's not that we don't have an elder. It's just that we have one elder. And John said, that's unacceptable.

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Well, wait a minute. And you used to have multiple elders, right? Yes, we did. And our constitution does not require multiple elders.

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It's a good idea. I agree with it. And when we have people properly prepared, excuse me, people properly prepared, we will have those elevated to that position to serve in the body.

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So that was one accusation, which is a false accusation. The second accusation is that we did not have a congregational meeting in 2021.

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Now our congregational meeting, yes, it's required by our constitution. We did have meetings, but we did not have a quorum.

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So we were not able to conduct any business officially during that year. So I'm thinking about, wait a minute, you're on me for not having a congregational meeting when there's a whole spate of other churches in this district, out of the hundred some churches in this district, 90 plus percent of them, probably 95 % of them or more closed their doors to public worship in violation of Hebrews 10, in my view.

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And there's no discipline, but you didn't have a congregational meeting. So we're gonna bust your chops over this. It's like, well, this is really strange.

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I'm living in a bizarre land where obviously there was difficulty having a quorum, given the times that we were going through.

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So, you know, John finished his questions and he turned it over to Paulo, who asked a series of questions.

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And here it comes back to the Christian nationalism. Basically, these questions were to determine, David, are you a

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Christian nationalist? And I asked Paulo, can you define the term Christian nationalist for me?

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And he's, no, we don't have a fixed definition. In fact, he said that there's so many different definitions out there, it's kind of lost its value.

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But that didn't stop him from going through the 11 questions, are you a Christian nationalist? And I objected in these questions to be labeled a

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Christian nationalist because I view it as a pejorative used to smear Christians that are not liked by non -Christians or other

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Christians. Yep, it was the same charge made against Pastor Jeff Kluwer.

25:34

Correct. And many more. Yes. Out, you know, in different denominations that it's,

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I mean, that's a red flag. If they call you a Christian nationalist, what do you mean by that? I guess that needs to be the next question.

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What's the definition of that? If this is so horrible, can you tell us what makes it so horrible?

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Right, and how can you identify a Christian nationalist if you don't have a definition of it? So we went through the 11 questions.

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At the end of the 11 questions, Paul has said to me, David, I know you say you are not a

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Christian nationalist. I reject that term. I would call myself a biblicist. I follow what the

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Bible teaches in everything. I'm not perfect, but as best I can, I follow it in everything, including what the

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Bible teaches about the separate jurisdictional authority of church and state. And that the state is not over the church.

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No, they're separate. Neither is the church over the state. As Roman Catholicism through most of the middle ages, the church was above the state.

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That's not right either. Both of those are wrong. This is the correct biblical understanding. And so he said,

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I know you reject the term Christian nationalist. You claim you are not a Christian nationalist, but David, I believe you are a

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Christian nationalist. You can't define this term, but you've just labeled me with this term.

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I don't get this. It does not compute. I would - Pastor David, real quick here.

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So what you explained, this irrastinarianism, is that how you say it? Irrastinarianism, yeah.

27:05

Yeah. It, this is actually presented on John MacArthur's documentary,

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The Essential Church, where this was one of their justifications of reopening.

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They came to the realization, we haven't been taught well, and the government is not over the church.

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These are two separate bodies, as you have well showed with those two ornaments.

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So, yeah, it's interesting that if anybody thinks this is such a radical thing that Pastor Whitney did, well,

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John MacArthur did this. So if you like John MacArthur, I mean, this is, I mean, John MacArthur will probably go down as one of the greatest

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Christian leaders in the history of the church. I mean, he's like Charles Spurgeon. So this is not some radical position that he's holding to.

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So I just wanted to make that point here, but I'll let you continue. Oh, thank you. Because, you know, that was the surprise to me that this was even being addressed.

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Yeah. When, if you were going to say, we need to discipline churches, or at least instruct churches, this would have been the thing to be instructing churches during 2020 about the separation of powers.

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Civil government does not have the power to shut the doors of the church of Jesus Christ. In fact, it never had that in any time in the history of the world.

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Why did the Christians meet in the catacombs? Well, the civil government was going to persecute them if they discovered them. So the underground church existed, but they didn't stop worshiping simply because Caesar said no.

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It continued. So at the end of this conversation, John complimented me.

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He said, you've been honest, you've been open. You've responded to all our questions. You've responded very well.

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We're pleased with this and so forth and so on. And we closed the meeting. And he said, I'm going to contact you about a request

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I will have. And that request that followed this made no sense to me at all because he wanted a list of all of our attendees and all of their contact information, phone number, email, et cetera.

29:10

Wow. Address, all their contact information. It's like, why would you want the contact? And I responded to that request saying, we make a promise to the people in our congregation that whenever they share any information with us of their contact information, whether phone number or email or anything at all, we will not share that with a soul.

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It will never be shared with anyone unless they give us explicit permission to do so.

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So I responded to John's request. We do not have permission from anybody in our congregation to share that information with you.

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The second request he had was information about all of our, I think, past five years of congregational meetings.

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He wanted all the minutes to that. And would have been fine, probably under normal circumstances, but our church secretary, knowing of the content of the conversation, because I shared with not the whole congregation, but a segment of the congregation, what this conversation with Paulo Freire and John Nesbitt was like and what questions they were asking, and the fact that it wasn't following biblical standards of justice.

30:12

And the church secretary said, no, this is inappropriate. Unless they're willing to follow biblical standards of justice, there's no point in giving them any additional information.

30:23

Certainly not the contact information of our congregation, nor our minutes and the budget and all the rest of it.

30:30

The other request had to do with all the financial information. They wanted all the budgets for the past.

30:36

They wanted all the financial records and they wanted all the bank statements and all that information as well. And our stewardship deacon, likewise knowing that already an unjust process was taking place, an unbiblical process was taking place.

30:48

Wait a minute, is there some accusation we don't know about here? Are they making some accusation that they haven't revealed?

30:54

Because the only two they revealed is that you don't have elders, that was false, and that you didn't have a congregational meeting in 2021, which given, okay, we could not form a quorum, so forth.

31:04

It's like, what exactly to do with all this information they're demanding right now? Yeah, in the political realm, you see this.

31:12

I mean, we've seen this recently, right? With President Trump, it's like, what is the crime?

31:18

What are they trying to find here? Right, and what someone said is that they're trying to find a crime.

31:27

Yes, and that obviously violates the standards of biblical justice, right? Biblical justice doesn't say we wanna find where this guy is wrong.

31:39

We're only gonna address this if this comes up, right? Innocent until proven guilty.

31:44

Exactly, and a just civil government and a just church government doesn't go on a fishing expedition trying to find, oh yeah, you tore the tag off your pillow and the pillow tag police are gonna come and find you because it's illegal to tear the pillow tag off, crazy things like that.

32:02

No, a just civil government does not go doing these kind of fishing expeditions.

32:07

So our treasurer said, our stewardship deacon said, no, this is not appropriate. They're not following biblical standards of justice to begin with.

32:15

So we responded to John Nesbitt that neither of the five documents they were requesting or the five sets of documents they were requesting were going to be available to them and be glad to deal with whatever else really relates to charges.

32:31

If there are some charges, and John admitted, he said, well, David, this is not a court. It's like, oh, what do you mean this is not?

32:38

And he repeated that several times in emails and I realized, oh, oh, I get it. He's saying, you don't have due process here in the evangelical free church.

32:47

If you're accused of something, you get no due process. We're not gonna follow due process. And I'm scratching my head thinking, wait a minute.

32:53

I know enough about the history of the church that for century after century, these issues were hammered out.

33:00

St. Patrick is the first one who wrote Legae Ex Moesius, the laws of Moses, where he was dealing with the pagan

33:06

Irish. No offense, Seth, but the Irish, before they came to Christ, were very deep into their paganism.

33:12

He not only led them to Christ and when he established the church, gave them a Bible, he also gave them this book.

33:18

It was basically God's law expounded in practical everyday life. And this book spread way beyond Ireland.

33:25

It spread to Scotland, it spread to the mainland and it spread to England, where a tutor of a young fellow by the name of Alfred taught him

33:34

God's law from St. Patrick's book. And that Alfred became King Alfred the Great, who established

33:40

English common law by taking St. Patrick's book. And the only thing he did, he added an exposition of his own of the

33:46

Beatitudes at the beginning of that book. And that became the foundation of English common law, which is the foundation of American common law that's actually referenced in our

33:56

United States constitution, referenced in the Maryland constitution and many other state constitutions as the law of the land.

34:04

God's word, God's law. So due process is based upon Christians studying

34:10

God's word, studying God's law and expounding what this means and what this look like. And the evangelical free church leaders didn't care at all about following anything in my case or in Pastor Jeff's case of a form of due process.

34:25

So fast forward from that to the next meeting or there's interchange.

34:31

And of course my ordination was being questioned as to whether it was going to be renewed. First time in my 40, well,

34:38

I wasn't ordained for 40 years, but anyways, 30 years, whatever it's been that I was ordained. First time when I submitted a response, here's my response to the questions asked every so many years.

34:49

First time it was like, well, with some questions about renewing your ordination. And light of that, my deacon,

34:57

Joseph and myself traveled and it's a long drive all the way to Minneapolis, Minnesota. We're grateful to be able to have breakfast with you,

35:03

Seth, before the meeting. And at that meeting, I shared some of these principles and I asked the question of them, is a free church still a free church if it's connected with some government program like PPP, that's the payment protection program by which churches could have money loaned to them by the civil government during COVID to pay their employees.

35:29

And that loan could turn into a grant forgiven by the federal government if the church did certain things, i .e.

35:37

there's a string attached between the civil government and the church telling the church what to do, how long to keep its doors closed, maybe if it opens, what it must do.

35:47

I mean, I know some states said churches could not have communion if they opened and everybody got to wear a face mask and on and on it goes, social distance and slather your hands up with a poisonous material.

35:57

All that stuff had to happen. The church was being told by the civil government how to conduct its ministry.

36:04

And if it conducted its ministry the way the government said, then the church got money. Is that a free church?

36:11

I doubt it. But that Joe said to me as he watched the reaction of the board of ministerial standing sitting around the table, like I was talking some foreign language.

36:21

And it's not surprising, right? Because they were already doing whatever the government told them, right? They were shutting their churches down or if they didn't meet, they were spacing.

36:30

They were wearing masks. They were - I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how many evangelical free churches across America took money from the government.

36:41

They had that string attached where they were taking money from the government because there was over 8 billion.

36:48

That's with a B. $8 billion given out to churches and Christian organizations.

36:54

Seven particular organizations that received more than $10 billion. 10 million, excuse me, with an

37:00

M. 10 million. Wow. Billions of dollars was given to churches. And why would a civil government give money to a church?

37:09

To control it, of course. To control it. So the Erastian heresy is alive and well in America.

37:16

And I tried to point that out. Yeah. And I mentioned earlier that in the documentary,

37:22

The Essential Church, Martin Lloyd -Jones actually talks about this in Romans 13, in his commentary.

37:32

So there's... We need to be connected, not only to what the Bible says, but to what great leaders of the past have said on these issues.

37:41

And there's just a misunderstanding in the modern day. Because we've been so influenced by what the secular world thinks.

37:51

And people don't even realize how much they've been influenced. Yeah. So, okay. So you came to Minneapolis.

37:57

You explained this. That, and then there was a series of questions from the board members themselves.

38:04

One fella, I don't remember his name, from Georgia, had this question. He said, David, if a young girl just graduated from high school, she got hired by a pharmacy, and she was trained to give the jab, and she comes into your church, and hears that the jab is very bad, and people should not be taking the jab, and so forth, isn't she gonna be offended, and walk out of your church, and never hear the gospel of Jesus Christ?

38:29

And that might not be a very good illustration, but let me use another illustration. What if an abortionist, one who murders babies as a living, walks into your church, and he hears from the pulpit, abortion is against God's law, is the taking of innocent human life.

38:44

It's a crime. It shouldn't be rewarded. And he's offended, because he's an abortionist, or simplify it down to say, a woman who's had an abortion, or a man who's had his wife or girlfriend have an abortion.

38:56

They hear that message, and they get offended, and they leave the church, and don't hear the gospel, and they're lost forever.

39:02

It's like, well, that's an interesting, compassionate thing, but you have to ask, what is the gospel? Mark 1, verse 15,

39:09

Jesus, the very first word of the gospel, the very first command of the gospel, is repent, right?

39:16

Well, how can you repent if you don't know what sin is? You think abortion's fine.

39:22

It's just a choice a woman makes. She's got the right to her body, all those, you know. And you don't know the biblical worldview that says, no, no, no, that innocent baby is created in God's image, and it's the innocent taking of human life, and it's murder of a type.

39:36

And you don't hear that you need to repent of that sin. And how are you ever going to come to saving faith in Christ? So this member of the board of ministerial standing was basically telling me,

39:45

I was turning people away from the gospel of Jesus Christ, because I was pointing out sin. I was like, wow, that's strange.

39:53

I was really astonished by that, but there was a whole series of other people asking questions and so forth, critiquing, again, my preaching, not that I preached anything heretical, but also claiming that I was really insubordinate, because I was not obedient to John Nesbitt in delivering over the documents that he demanded.

40:11

It's like, wow, wait a minute. I tried to bring up the issue of, you know, due process and justice here that, you know, not revealing the names of people who've made accusations again, all this.

40:21

No, no, no, that was, you just didn't do what we told you to do. Of course, in the midst of all that, the question about Christian nationalism came up.

40:29

And, you know, I explained that I reject the term Christian nationalist, but I know that Paulo Freire, who was just around the table from me, one of the members of the

40:40

Board of Ministerial Standards, that Paulo Freire had said that I was a Christian nationalist. And Paulo said, no,

40:45

I didn't. I didn't say that. I said, well, excuse me, Paulo, I've got a recording of that meeting.

40:52

And I will say, and after, I didn't take it any further there, because basically he's accused me of lying, but after the meeting was done,

40:58

I went over and Paulo was sitting. I put my hand on his shoulders and said, Paulo, I'd love to have a conversation with you later, but I will send you the link to that conversation we had, where you clearly said,

41:10

David, I know you reject that term Christian nationalist, but I believe you are a

41:15

Christian nationalist. You said that. Sure. And he was silent. He really didn't respond at all to that.

41:20

Yeah, but that's why you record, right? Yeah, which by the way, I asked to record the meeting there with the

41:26

Board of Ministerial Standards and they refused. Yeah. They would not allow me to record the meeting, but all of them were sitting around with laptops and tablets, typing away.

41:34

They were making the record. What was the reason they gave? Well, they just agreed that they didn't want it recorded.

41:43

Did they give you a reason of why they didn't want to record it though? Dave Lindy, who was the chairman at that time of the

41:49

Board of Ministerial Standing, looked around the table and said, what do you guys think? Would that be a good idea? No, that wouldn't be a good idea.

41:55

No, no real reason why, but they were obviously making a record for themselves, taking notes themselves.

42:01

So they had something by which they were going to debate about me, but when you're on the hot seat, you have no opportunity to write notes and make a record yourself.

42:13

Yeah, so Pastor Jeff Klawer, he had a number of guys in leadership come to his church and he asked, may

42:22

I have my associate pastor present with me? And the answer was no. And then he asked, may it be recorded?

42:27

And the answer was no. And of course, if you have nothing to hide, if this is above board, yeah, let's go ahead and record it because, but a trial is taking place here, right?

42:41

We're trying to find out, is this person worthy of having his ordination censored?

42:48

And so that's very much, this should be open to the public if there is an injustice that takes place here.

42:58

So, okay, well - And that's part of the reason for sharing my story, that an injustice is taking place, even though we're no longer part of the

43:06

Evangelical Free Church. I hope there will be repentance. I hope there will be change and I pray for that. And when it comes to the documentation, they're saying you're being insubordinate, but of course, if you're truly committing a crime, then of course, you should do what they ask.

43:24

But of course, if you go back to the very beginning of what happened, why are you involved in this in the first place?

43:30

Why are they questioning you? Why are you under scrutiny? And it goes back to that meeting with the three pastors.

43:38

And their statement that you're not of the ethos of the Evangelical Free Church, you're a Christian nationalist and you need to leave.

43:43

They didn't say you need to leave, but they said, we want you to answer the question, will you leave and take your church with you?

43:50

So that was their goal from the beginning. So when they're saying you're not of the ethos, how would you answer that in as simple terms as possible?

44:01

If I understand what the whole history of the Evangelical Free Church was from the beginning was that this is wrong, civil government over the church.

44:10

This is correct, this is biblical. Civil government has its jurisdiction, church has its jurisdiction and they are separate from each other.

44:16

Obviously the church is gonna have a huge influence on a proper relationship with the civil government, but never is a civil government over the church.

44:25

And that to me is what a free church is all about. Why use the term free at all to say you're an

44:30

Evangelical church? If you're focusing on free, you're saying that relationship between church and state is clearly delineated in the word of God and you reject the

44:40

Erastian heresy to say that it's not that way. So you're in agreement with the history in understanding the church's relationship to the government.

44:52

And of course they don't like how you are conservative politically and you make that known from the pulpit as they listen to your sermons.

45:05

And I mean, clearly they're not as nearly as conservative as you are.

45:11

So when they're talking about the ethos of the free church, it's not like you said, you have some disagreement with their statement of faith, which is why you were ordained in the first place.

45:23

They're examining you to see, are you consistent with the free church statement of faith?

45:31

And of course they said in their own words, we have no problem with a doctrinal issue here.

45:38

In other words, they've established some additional set of criteria that remain hidden. I don't know what they are.

45:44

That say, this is what the ethos is and you're not it. Whatever it is that ethos is, they really haven't defined it.

45:51

Although perhaps their new document, denials and affirmations, maybe that's there. And the interesting thing is, let me just finish the story with Paulo.

45:59

So after the meeting, I emailed Paulo and then from then gave

46:05

Paulo five weeks to respond. I think plenty of time to have time to listen to the and get back to me and he did not.

46:11

So I contacted him by email and he responded in a very circuitous way to say, what

46:17

I said back in Minneapolis stands. Like, wait a minute, what you said in Minneapolis was that you had never said that I was a

46:25

Christian nationalist when the recording clearly says you did. I mean, so his response was a non -response.

46:33

And to me again, another example of injustice being done by those who are supposed to be all about justice for pastors as a member of the board of ministerial standing.

46:45

So because my congregation was aware of this, Joe and I came back and we had a congregational meeting, shared what took place and so on.

46:51

And the congregation was, wait a minute, he says one thing, you say another, can we listen to the recording?

46:59

I said, yeah, let's do that. And so we posted online at the EFCA and social justice website as a footnote, not the majority of the article, but as a footnote, the audio recording that shows him saying exactly those words, as well as posting my response to the

47:16

EFCA East as to why those five documents and so on, basically trying to give the congregation as much information so they could look at it to make a decision for themselves.

47:26

Of course they did and said, obviously he said that. How could he be denying it? He said, it's right there, it's recorded.

47:32

So the fact that I published those two as footnotes on the EFCA and it was your article on who's telling the truth in the

47:41

EFCA controversy. So if people wanna go check that article out on EFCA and social justice, the footnotes there reveal the truth.

47:50

So when that took place and they became aware that that took place, it is at that point, they put my ordination under discipline.

47:58

They said, you've basically broken the rules. What rules? If I'm following Matthew 18,

48:04

I confronted Paulo one -to -one. Confronted him in the presence of others with my deacon

48:10

Joseph and then got his response email that no, we're not. And so the Matthew 18 process then says, tell it to the church.

48:19

Well, telling it to the church is revealing what this controversy has involved and what I stated, what he stated.

48:25

And so I was following, but because I did that, they put my ordination under discipline and then began to demand the congregation respond as well.

48:33

They asked the leadership of our congregation to respond whether they were in agreement with them put in board of ministerial standing, putting my ordination under discipline.

48:43

Were they in basically in submission? Were they in agreement with me or were they in agreement with the board of ministerial standing?

48:49

Of course, our leadership responded, no, we're in agreement with the pastor. You guys have done wrong.

48:55

You need to repent. They actually said in the letter, you need to repent. And so that wasn't enough. Then they wanted to approach the whole congregation and ask the congregation, are you with pastor

49:05

Whitney or are you with us? And again, congregation unanimously said, no, no, no, we're with pastor

49:10

Whitney. And at that point, our congregation said, we are choosing to disaffiliate from the evangelical free church.

49:17

So they've achieved the goal that they had. Those three pastors at the beginning of it all to have me and our congregation out of the evangelical free church.

49:27

Okay, so you guys have left as of this month, right?

49:36

And you did not have a choice to stay. I mean, it was pretty much resign or be fired.

49:43

Is that one way to say it? Well, yeah, basically they said if by May 15th, you don't answer us at all, we're gonna take the advice of the

49:49

EFCA East that has been longstanding advice to remove this church from the evangelical preacher.

49:55

So they were saying they were gonna do it anyway. So it all goes back to the very beginning, that meeting with those three pastors,

50:04

Bill Rydell, and who are the two other ones again? Bill Kynes, who has since retired. He was in Virginia and then

50:09

Guy Newbone in Maryland saying that I was a Christian nationalist, not of the ethos of the evangelical free church and therefore needed to part ways with the evangelical free church.

50:19

So here's a question that I've had. We've seen stuff happen in the

50:25

Southern Baptist Convention. We just hosted a conference one month ago. We had Dr. Russell Fuller here.

50:31

Russell Fuller was a Old Testament professor for 22 years at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

50:40

And he really took a stand when they were pushing the woke stuff at Southern Seminary. They have guys on staff there like Jarvis Williams.

50:49

They had Curtis Woods who was responsible for Resolution 9, which happened in 2019.

50:56

So of course, what is a shepherd supposed to do in this situation? A shepherd is supposed to take a stand and say, this is wrong.

51:02

We need to stand on the word of God. And Russell Fuller did that, and guess what? Him and one or two or three others,

51:11

I can't remember the exact number, the ones who were most vocal were the ones who were removed from their positions around the time of COVID.

51:21

So you see these faithful shepherds, but here's my question. Has to this extent,

51:28

I mean, not even the Southern Baptist Convention, as far as I know, is doing this to their pastors, censoring their pastors.

51:36

You know, so I think if you're watching this and you're in the broader evangelical movement, you should really pay attention to what's happening in the evangelical free church of America, because I think in my judgment, what's happened here is probably more aggressive than possibly any other movement.

51:54

Now, there was a story recently in the Missouri Senate Lutheran Church where a gentleman,

52:00

Ryan Turnespeed, was received the major ban, which means he wasn't allowed to be a member of Missouri Senate Lutheran Church.

52:11

But thankfully, another Lutheran church that has integrity, that's standing on the word of God has received him.

52:17

But this is happening all over the place. So whether it's

52:22

Jeff, whether it's David Whitney, and I know I've heard stories from other pastors within the free church where this is a similar story has happened to them, one in particular in the

52:30

Twin Cities. So it's just interesting to think about, this is where we are.

52:40

And it's a sad reality. We do pray for repentance, as you said. We do pray for justice.

52:47

And so is there anything further you would like to say in closing?

52:54

America would never have formed as a nation if it were not for the pastors actually criticizing the government, saying

53:02

King George III is an error. King George III is in violation of his oath that he swore before Almighty God.

53:09

All historians that are honest about the American War for Independence, that never would have happened if it weren't for preachers taking the word of God and applying the principles of God's word to what the civil government was failing to do and the violations of God's law that the civil government was involved in doing.

53:24

The church has a prophetic role. And that prophetic role, all the Old Testament prophets spoke to the civil government.

53:30

And the New Testament, John the Baptist, how did he get his head cut off? He spoke to the civil government. Jesus, he spoke to the leaders who were the political leaders, not just the religious leaders of his day.

53:39

And the apostles, how'd they all get in prison? How'd they get martyred? They spoke clearly what God's standard says.

53:45

And therefore, it's full in the tradition of the true church of Jesus Christ to speak to power what the word of God says to those who are in power when they're violating

53:55

God's law, which is why we need to speak out against abortion, against the promotion of sodomy, and a whole bunch of other issues going on in our day.

54:03

We need to preach the whole counsel of God as it applies to every area of life.

54:08

And that's simply what I'm doing. And those are objections to that kind of preaching.

54:14

I stand with all of the Old and New Testament. Yeah, the church has a responsibility, and Jeff's joining us here, and I know

54:23

Jeff will agree with this. Yeah, the church has a responsibility to the family, to the local church, and also to the public square.

54:33

And so pastors who are trying to bring the

54:38

Bible to bear on the public square are often called Christian nationalists, which, as David Whitney said, is a pejorative.

54:47

They're just doing what John the Baptist, Jesus, the prophets of the Old Testament. We're going after the idols of our day that are tearing down the high places, that are pushed forward by the federal government, right?

55:02

And really been protected. These idols have been protected by the federal government. And so we have to hold them account to bless our neighbor.

55:12

So yeah, so thank you, David, for the conversation. Thank you for having me on. Yeah. I just wanna share that I was praying that whole time.

55:23

And before we met, my prayer was that the Lord would bring into the light things that have been done in secret.

55:29

And I believe the Lord just used you to do that, brother. Thank you for being willing to speak that way. There were things that I haven't shared about our controversy about being labeled a

55:38

Christian nationalist, and emails asking people to clarify that. And the same treatment was given to me by some of the people that you named,

55:47

David. So I appreciate that. I've trusted the Lord to bring those things into the light. And the

55:52

Lord used you to do that. Yeah, amen. You're muted.

56:05

Average Joe, there he is. Being average. David, I wanna thank you for the excellent history

56:14

I can't wait to read the Maryland Constitution. I was reading it a little bit, as you might've saw a little snippet come up there from it.

56:23

And also, you took me back to King Alfred. I usually point people back to the 1000, but he's like 800.

56:35

So I can't wait to get back into some of that history. And as Seth and I were talking about before the program, if Genesis through Revelation is

56:46

God's history, why aren't we studying everything that's happened since the cross in the public square?

56:52

Because average Joes like me need you guys to be talking about how we're supposed to walk in the public square, and how we're supposed to speak and what we gotta do.

57:03

So thank you so much. Really great. You're welcome. My privilege. All right, guys.

57:10

Well, you know what we gotta do now? If you see a brother down, you see it on my face, tear it down.