CRITICAL YouTube Comments DEBUNKED! | Ep. 10

Fight For Truth

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Hey guys, Colin here, and welcome back to Fight For Truth, the channel where we bring you Christian commentary about the things that matter.

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This video is episode 10 of our series where we read unedited comments from this channel that disagree with us, and then we respond to them.

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The identities of the commenters will be hidden for their sake. And with that, let's read some comments.

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The first of these comes from our video that we made a while back on seeker -sensitive megachurch pastor

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Craig Groeschel of Life .Church. In that video, one of our concerns about his teaching was that his wife,

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Amy, has been listed on their website as a pastor at their church. And it seems as though she has preached sermons, albeit infrequently, to a congregation of men and women.

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Here's a screenshot from the official Life .Church leader's YouTube channel where Amy Groeschel is referred to as, quote,

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Pastor Amy. And here is a screenshot from a video title in which she is clearly preaching in church before a mixed audience on Sunday.

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In the description of this video, Amy is again referred to as, quote, Pastor Amy, as she preaches on Palm Sunday of this year, 2022.

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So just to be clear, Amy is a woman. That's fairly obvious. Amy is also a so -called pastor.

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And most importantly, she carries out the functions that are associated with pastorship in the

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Bible, including preaching to the entire congregation on the Lord's Day, Sunday.

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In our video, we simply noted that according to passages like 1 Timothy 2 .12, women are not supposed to carry out the office of a pastor or elder.

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This view is very out of favor in today's hyper -feminist world, but nonetheless, it's what the

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Bible says. In response to the deplorable views I expressed in our video, one commenter said this, quote,

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Dude, study your Bible again. Women are allowed to preach the Gospel. God is not a sexist.

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End quote. Now there are two elements here that need to be dealt with. Number one, no one suggested that women are not allowed to, quote, preach the

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Gospel. This is simply a false equivalence. This commenter is mistakenly suggesting that people who are not allowed to be pastors are also not allowed to preach the

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Gospel to anyone at all. There is no sound Christian teacher that I am aware of who holds this position, and we certainly do not hold it on this channel, either.

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First Peter 3 .15 says this about the Church, quote, But in your hearts honor Christ the

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Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.

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End quote. So you see, Christians are told to be prepared to tell anyone about our ultimate hope, that is, the

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Gospel of Jesus Christ. By contrast, regarding the office of pastor, for one example, 1

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Timothy chapter 3 offers a list of pastoral qualifications. This includes being a man, or, quote, the husband of one wife, being self -controlled, being hospitable, being sober -minded, etc.

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So we can see that pastorship comes with a list of qualifications, and therefore by definition it is assumed that not everyone will meet those qualifications.

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Otherwise everyone would be a pastor. So to sum it all up, no, we do not believe that women can be pastors, but yes, we wholeheartedly believe that they can spread the

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Gospel. In fact, the Bible seems to say that they ought to do just that. But the second part of the comment also needs to be dealt with here.

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They said, quote, But when they say this, I think they're showing us their worldview cards, so to speak.

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The commenter is proverbially letting us peek under the hood of their worldview, and as it turns out, there's no engine in there.

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You see, there is a worldly assumption baked into this comment that needs to be recognized. The assumption is that if a woman is not allowed to do everything a man can do and in the exact same way, then there must be some sort of sexism involved.

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In other words, if God actually did say that women cannot be pastors, then that would make God an immoral, cosmic sexist.

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And as you can see, this is quite a dangerous and potentially blasphemous implication. But my response would be to simply reject these worldly categories entirely.

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We must take care, as Christians, to not have an ethical standard that is above Scripture. Yet unfortunately, many modern

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Christians have done exactly this when it comes to feminism. God's Word clearly says that pastorship and eldership are male offices, but feminism calls that sexist.

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And therefore, of course, we must change God's Word to fit with the culture in which we now live.

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Or, at least, that seems to be what's happening here. But Psalm 1830 says this,

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You see, God is under no obligation ethically when it comes to your culture's man -made rules and sensibilities.

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God's standard is perfectly just and perfectly true all by itself. You can slap the label of sexist on it as much as you like, but that doesn't change the

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Biblical truth. We must design our worldview based on God's Word, not on the words of modern feminists.

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And with that, let's move on to the next comment, one which is very similar in that it too takes issue with our channel's position on female pastors.

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But this particular comment comes from a different video. The one we made about Judah Smith's wife,

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Pastor Chelsea Smith. If you haven't seen this one, go ahead and watch it using the link in the description.

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The commenter said the following, Please, stop using that same 1 Timothy verse to prove that God does not allow women pastors.

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God puts His anointing on whomever He chooses. He's proven it time and time again. My prayer is for God to show

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Himself to you in a powerful way through a woman in a leadership position." And similarly, here we have two claims again being made that should be investigated.

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Claim number one. The passage used in 1 Timothy is being taken out of context when in reality it does not say that women cannot be pastors.

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And claim number two. Women can be pastors because, well, God can put His anointing on whoever

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He wants. Let's go over this. The first claim, the one about 1 Timothy 2 .12, is rather hard to deal with.

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Not because it's a good argument, but rather because, quite simply, the commenter does not actually offer any evidence for their position.

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They just say it. So perhaps it would be helpful to make a compelling argument from my perspective as to why

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I think the use of that text is valid in this situation. For starters, let's read the passage, 1

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Timothy 2 .12, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.

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This really seems self -explanatory. But many feminist scholars would respond to this, saying that it was only meant for Timothy's Church in his day, not for the modern

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Church in general. But this is a hard position to maintain in light of what the next verse says.

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For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

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So here's the deal. If Paul was only talking to early Church women in Timothy's Church specifically, why does he root his theological position in Adam and Eve?

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Are Christian women of modern times not descended from Eve? Of course they are. And therefore, there's a great argument to be made that this command from Paul to Timothy is rooted in a creational truth, not a cultural preference.

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And now for the second claim, that women can be pastors because, in fact, God can put His anointing on anyone

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He wants. This is true as a general statement. But here we have yet another categorical error.

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Yes, God can put His anointing on anyone He wants. Psalm 115 verse 3 says,

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Our God is in the heavens. He does all that He pleases. So yes, God is entirely sovereign.

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He can make decisions as He pleases. Yet why would God use His sovereignty for purposes that are contrary to His Word?

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In other words, why would God anoint a woman to be a pastor and then command in His Word that only men can be pastors?

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From what I can tell, the real issue here is that there are many professing Christians, mostly hypercharismatic ones, who believe that you can use vague, catch -all terms like anointing to effectively ignore any command in Scripture that you disagree with or don't like.

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Of course, there are many charismatic Christians, it should be noted, who think deeply about these things and who try to maintain a biblically consistent position, and those people should be encouraged in that.

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Yet, comments like this one, the one we just read, demonstrate a disturbing trend among professing

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Christians to put emotional preference above the standard of God's Word. And with that, let's move forward to another comment.

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This one comes from our video on T .D. Jakes. Again, link in description. Bear with me here, because this one is a bit lengthy.

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It says this, quote, Me, I am thirsty and tired. Fight for truth. It is not biblical to say that you are thirsty or tired, because the

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Bible says you shall not thirst, nor go weary. So the writer here just showed contradiction with what the

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Bible teaches, as we are told that we should never thirst. The writer here is New Age teaching, a prosperity gospel teacher who wants to promote people to give him money because he said that he's thirsty.

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So here he is, trying to encourage the congregation to give him money to support his drinking problem.

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This guy must rest, end quote. For starters, as you can see, that comment was such a stretch,

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I'm surprised I didn't pull a muscle while I was reading it. But all joking aside, there's an argument being made here, and one which really should be grappled with.

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It goes something like this. Fight for truth is a legalistic and pharisaical channel.

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They are taking small statements out of context, and then comparing these statements to a few

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Scriptures which have also been taken out of context and interpreted in an extremely literal way.

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And then, they use this hyper -literalist perspective on Scripture to attack any preacher who makes a slight analogy or metaphor in their sermon.

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That's the argument we're dealing with here. And first, let me just say that making up a fictitious meme -like example in the

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YouTube comments section does not actually qualify as a refutation. The commenter is grappling with their own hypothetical example, not with any concrete argument

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I made in the video. And second, there is no real evidence offered by the commenter as to how

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I actually interpreted any Scripture in the video incorrectly or in a way that was too literal.

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And third, let's look at what T .D. Jakes actually said in the video that we posted about him, and see if this comment has any validity.

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T .D. Jakes quoted a passage from 1 Samuel chapter 30 in which God tells David to pursue and overtake a band of raiders who burned his town and stole his family away.

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Jakes interprets this in his own way, saying that God has given you personal permission to pursue and overtake anything you want in life.

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For definitive video evidence of this, feel free to again go watch that video. Link in description. In any case, we took issue with Jakes' interpretation, suggesting that it was out of order.

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In fact, we noted that just because God told David to pursue people who burned his camp to the ground does not mean that God has guaranteed success in anything we want to do in life.

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And we quoted several Scriptures in favor of this position in the video. But now let's compare the actual example from the video to the hypothetical example in the comment.

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The example I refuted in the video was taking the Bible out of context to preach guaranteed health and wealth.

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The example the commenter gave was a person asking for a drink of water. Yes, just let that sink in.

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See if that sounds compelling to you. If the comparison of these two things sounds ridiculous to you, that's because it is ridiculous.

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The idea that these two things are comparable in any way is frankly absurd. The implication here is that a prosperity teacher preaching guaranteed health and wealth has essentially the same level of error as someone who says they are thirsty and need a drink of water.

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I would say that this is a strawman argument, but that really might be giving it too much credit. This comparison makes a strawman argument look like an aircraft carrier.

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But I digress. With all that said, I hope this video has busted some popular myths perpetuated in the comment section of this channel.

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I pray that this has been a blessing to you, and please know that this video isn't meant as a sinful attack, but rather as a biblical critique.

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Please, pray for this channel and for anyone discussed in the video. And if you're looking for teaching resources or trying to find a new church, check out the teaching ministries and church networks we've linked in the description.

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And by God's grace, let's move forward joyfully, holding to the truth of God's Word. Thank you so much for watching that video.

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Please like, subscribe, hit the bell, and subscribe to our Rumble channel, link in description. And before you go, take a look at this list here.

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These are the people who make all the free content you see on this channel possible with their monthly support.

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Today's highlighted channel supporter is Elijah J. If you also want to support this channel, hit the link in the description.

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Your support keeps us independent and helps us immensely here. So I hope you'll consider joining the

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Truth Army today, and until next time, fight for truth. Thank you, and God bless.