What is "Big Eva?"

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Over what is our inheritance to dark ideologies, like when you say,

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Hey, we're not going to get involved. Let's just preach the gospel. And I know as a white pastor, I have blind spots.

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So I am part of the problem. And also I'm to some degree, I'm the product of standing on the shoulders of other people who got that through injustice.

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And my culture is in tension with the claims of Christ on me.

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And I got to work at this. I got to work. So a lot of times the systemic racism can even be seen by church reparations is about imagining is in them because of the blindness of their heart.

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Whiteness has caused blindness of our, um, tell them I'm talking about reparations for black people.

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Yeah. And so, um, homosexuality was not even in the

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Bible until 74 years ago. So just think about that fucking full time that they can actually have a living that's a justice issue.

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That's not a political issue. Those three things are what allows white supremacy to exist.

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Gentlemen, war is upon you, whether you choose to recognize this fact or not, the social justice religion threatens our families, our churches, and our very civilization itself.

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It's destroying the lives of people through canceling them. It's also taking captive the minds of people from empty philosophies that compete directly with the love and the truth of our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Please join me on January 29th for war room.

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We're going to talk about this and we're not afraid to be called names or challenged from the social justice movement.

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It's time for men to have courage to stand up for the truth and to stand against the devil's lies.

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Please join me. This is going to be the most epic intro that we've ever had on this particular podcast.

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That was made by the guys at Reformation Church, Reformation Church of Shelbyville in Kentucky.

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I'm going to be there January 29th for their Reformation War Room. It's an event and a ministry for men specifically.

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So if you're a man and you want to go eat some steak, I think they're having steak, and you want to talk about the issues confronting the church, we're going to talk about social justice.

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We're not going to mince words. I understand that there's going to be a Q &A session and looking forward to it.

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So if you're in that area, check out the church. It is refchurch .com,

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R -E -F, refchurch .com. Maybe you need to put in the www, I'm not sure, www .refchurch

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.com. But there's a contact form there, there's a phone number if you want more information about that.

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But again, January 29th, Shelbyville, Kentucky for the Reformation War Room. You can find out more info there.

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I don't know if you need tickets or I'm assuming you need to register. But I'm excited about it.

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They put in a lot of work, obviously, and I think we're going to have a great time.

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I've actually had a number of people contact me for speaking next year, so it's not all reflected yet on the speaking engagements list on the website.

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But if you go to worldviewconversation .com, you can see where I'll be. I have three places there right now,

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Nampa, Idaho in March, Grand Rapids, Michigan in June, and then of course, Shelbyville, Kentucky in January.

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But I just talked to someone the other day, actually, I need to add this, I'll be in Wisconsin at a few places in June as well, the following week after I'm in Grand Rapids.

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And there's a number of requests that I need to respond to. So if you are interested in having me come talk to your church or your political organization about social justice,

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I'll talk about the new book that came out, Christianity and Social Justice. But I'd be happy to answer questions and tailor whatever presentation

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I have to the needs of your congregation. I would be happy to do it. My goal is just to help.

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And I see this as a temporary thing in my life, something that, this is an issue that I'm sure it's not going to go away, it's going to morph into other things.

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But for right now, at this stage where we are right now, and the dust is still kind of settling, people are still figuring this out.

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I know because they contact me and they say, John, what do I do? We got a pastor who's woke. John, what do we do?

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We're vetting church candidates. What questions do I ask? John, do I leave my church? Do I start a church?

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I can't find a good one. I'm still getting these questions. And that's how I know the dust hasn't settled. And so while we're in this time period, this transitional time period,

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I want to be available to help in any way I can. And I got into this to begin with, really, because I wanted people to be aware of what was going on, especially at the seminary

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I had gone to. But then it broadened into, I don't see the resources being put out there. Even some of the resources from people that are on the quote -unquote conservative side in evangelicalism,

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I don't see that many of them have been all that helpful. Some of them have been, but there really aren't a lot of good quality resources for laymen to try to figure this out, or for pastors for that matter.

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And so that's been my goal, is to try to put out those resources. And there are more resources I do want to put out, but I'd be happy to help explain this and answer this objection from social justice to Christianity at your church, or political event, or even, hey,

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I'll come to your house. If you get a bunch of people in your living room, we'll talk about it. You can go to worldviewconversation .com,

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that's worldviewconversation .com, and then Book John upper right -hand corner, and there's a form you can fill out if that would be helpful to you.

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So, I don't ask for much, I usually just ask if there's a willingness to pay for gas, even just an offering would be fine, if you can just put the word out there,

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I'm not even expecting that that would necessarily be fulfilled, but just the attempt,

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I usually ask for that, and then a place to put my books on a table, and that's it, that's all I want from, anything else is extra.

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So, I'm more than happy to, even at my own expense at times, go and talk to people about this, because I do think it is important.

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So that being said, I wanted to talk today about something, this is a stream of consciousness episode, this is very much off the top of my head, but they are things that I have thought about to some extent, and I think at this point

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I can probably say that I would be at least somewhat of an authority on, I think, because I've been doing this podcast,

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I do have a couple books out on social justice, but that is the question of the definition of Big Eva, what is

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Big Eva? And I've gotten this question before, a lot of people use it in modern parlance and evangelicalism,

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Big Eva refers to evangelical elites, or the evangelical industrial complex, both terms

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I use quite a bit more, especially evangelical elite, that is my term of choice, but Big Eva is the term that is probably most often used, and I think it was either coined or made popular by Phil Johnson in,

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I think it was 2018, at the Shepherds Conference in California, they had a question and answer period, and this was the infamous question and answer period where Al Mohler was squirming, and Mark Dever was kind of acting a little bit obtuse, he was kind of acting almost like he didn't understand

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Phil Johnson's questions, and Lincoln Duncan was just very awkward, and Sinclair Ferguson was very silent, and John MacArthur had to kind of jump in when

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Phil Johnson and Al Mohler, things between them started getting a little zesty, and so I remember at one point

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Phil Johnson had said something about Big Eva, I think the context was that Jim Wallace and Sojourners, which

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I write about, Jim Wallace and Sojourners in one of my books, I don't know if I have a copy sitting here, but it's called

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Social Justice Goes to Church, and they are one of the quintessential evangelical leftists group, if you want to call them evangelicals, but they're a leftist group that wants to promote social justice, and the attempt is to try to remain orthodox in their theology while at the same time progressive in their politics, and they've been around since,

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I'm trying to think when they started, they didn't, the name wasn't Sojourners at first, it switched to Sojourners I think when they moved to Washington DC, it was, now

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I can't remember, I can't remember the name off the top of my head, this should be right there, I had to study them so much and read so much of their literature, but anyway, it was, and still is, very much a leftist group that's rejected by mainstream evangelicalism, but now not so much,

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I mean you've had Jim Artispe and Ed Stetzer and Karen Swallow Pryor write for Sojourners, and much of what's said in mainstream evangelicalism just parrots what

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Sojourners has been saying for years, and so Phil Johnson kind of pointed that out at this Q &A, and he said that there's this thing called

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Big Eva, and some of the people in our circles are starting to sound a lot like Jim Wallace sounded in the 70s, and he was 100 % right, and so Big Eva has since then,

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I've just seen it everywhere, and so some people don't quite understand or know what that term means, so I'm going to explain it, and then for those who have heard it,

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I want to maybe broaden our conception of it. What is Big Eva?

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What is this thing? And I want to point out, I think, the threatening thing about it, the problem with it.

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So I like to think about it this way. Think of a hierarchy that exists in your church currently.

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If you go to a church or just imagine a church, you have your deacons, you have your elders, you have the different functions, the

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Sunday school teachers, the janitor, the sound guy. If it's a smaller church, maybe one person takes up all those roles, and so if it's a medium -sized church, though, you're going to have different people fulfilling these different roles, and there is a kind of a chain of command, and there's a hierarchy involved.

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Obviously, elders would be at the top of that hierarchy in a local church. Now, if you're in a Presbyterian church or a church with a polity that includes a denominational authority of some kind, then you might have bishops, you might have other regional directors of some kind that hold a position of authority over your local church as well.

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Big Eva is beyond that, and this is the best way I can explain it.

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Big Eva is an organized, but loosely, and that's really the thing

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I need to stress. It's very loosely organized. It's an organized, but loosely organized group of organizations, ministries, publishing houses, conferences, and then, of course, the people that are platformed in these various avenues that are interdenominational or cross -denominational, and they tend to defend each other, look out for each other.

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Their investments within the guild are all tied up together.

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In other words, it functions almost like a union would function in some ways. You can't really say anything about people that are in the guild.

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You might have to be at the same conference with them. There's unspoken rules associated with membership in this club.

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It's an elitist club. It's beyond the local church level, and it's beyond even, in some ways, the denominational level.

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Now, what would be a Big Eva organization? Well, the Gospel Coalition is probably one of your biggest examples of this.

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It's interdenominational. It's supposed to be orthodox in theology.

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It's a very broad, big tent, but at the same time, they can be rigid on political things or social things, and that's why they have the reputation of being more on the left.

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Christianity Today, I think, would be very much part of Big Eva. Nine Marks Ministries often gets lumped into there.

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Desiring God can get lumped into there. T4G Conference. The college ministries like Crew and Navigators and InterVarsity and the presses associated, like InterVarsity Press, NavPress, can be part of this to some extent.

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You have certain universities like Wheaton being, I think, one of the big ones that would be part of Big Eva, and the

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Southern Baptist schools. Liberty University has been a little more independent, but I definitely see that you can't get away from that influence, and so I do see some influence even there.

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It's a little bit hard to define, especially on the edges, but it's something that it's kind of like you know it when you see it, because there are certain things that just accompany it.

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There's a loyalty to the guild. They tend to sound very similar, even if they're from different denominations and regions of the country.

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They have a certain way of talking. They use certain words, and a lot of these words we've heard. We hear phrases a lot like cultural engagement, gospel issue.

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I'm trying to think what else. There's a lot, and again, it's something that I know when

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I see, but it's hard off the top of my head to come up with all the various phrases that they'll use, but they have a certain way of talking.

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There was actually someone not too long ago. I was in a church and heard them speaking, and I couldn't even put my finger on what it was, but I just knew listening to them.

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I'm like, oh, they're influenced by this certain range of evangelical speakers that tend to listen to each other, and quote each other, and have relationships with each other.

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Again, it is cross -denominational, so how do you categorize it? This is something that hasn't always been the case in Christendom, and so what has brought this about?

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Now, I want to start by giving you a little bit of history, because I think this is just an extension of what's called neo -evangelicalism, but then, so we're going to do that from bird's eye view, kind of look at this, but then

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I want to look at it from your local church view as well, and answer the question, well, how do I know if my pastor, or myself maybe, how do

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I know if we're influenced by this too much? How do we know, how do I know if there's a danger in our involvement, if there is any, in quote -unquote beyevah?

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I think this is a legitimate question. I know it sounds almost kooky and silly to, you know, how could this be a threat of any kind, and in and of itself, it may not be.

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It's the assumptions, the assumptions that we are not usually aware of, hidden assumptions that are the problem, and so that's what

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I want to try to investigate with you. So, we'll start with bird's eye view. Let's go back to neo -evangelicalism.

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Neo -evangelicalism is a term that most often is applied to Harold Ockinga, Carl Henry, and what they were endeavoring, and others like them, to do in the late 40s, early 50s, with Fuller Theological Seminary, Christianity Today, and Gordon Conwell, and Wheaton College, I think, to some extent.

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Carl Henry wrote a book in 1947 called The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, and in the book, he argues that we need to essentially train up these global, kind of metropolitan -type leaders who are going to be respected in this world because they are going to be involved in social engagement.

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They have a concern for social issues, and so we call that today,

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I think, cultural engagement. That's the term that's often used by gospel coalition types, but back then, it was social concern was the term you'd most often hear, and so Carl Henry makes this argument, and he's saying that there's a deficiency in fundamentalism, that fundamentalists, they start

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Bible colleges, they train people in the Bible, they get into their bunker, but they don't influence culture, and that Christians ought to do that.

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Christians should influence culture, and so he's helped start Fuller Theological Seminary, and their intention was to train these kinds of leaders.

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Now, at the time, the Industrial Revolution is and has taken place. Modernity is, we're in the midst of it.

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There's secularization, and pastors and churches are not being listened to. They don't have the authority in society that they used to have, and so that's part of what's going on, is

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Carl Henry is seeing this, and the fundamentalists just, they don't really care. They're fine to secede, in Carl Henry's mind, from society, and to just focus on biblical training and church, and so he wants to amend that, or he wants to keep the good theology that the fundamentalists may have, the

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Orthodox theology, but he wants to supplement it by creating institutions that will train pastors in modern psychology, and honestly, in social justice, and things that would be more palatable to the world, and maybe give them more respect, and they'd be able to train, or able to influence people, because they would be more respected, and they would be shown to be not so heavenly minded.

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They weren't no earthly good, that they would be earthly good, and so in the experiment, which was

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Fuller Theological Seminary, this probably lasted like, what, 15 years or so before they went off the rails.

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It wasn't long. Fuller Theological Seminary's course catalog started adding psychology.

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They were the first Christian seminary to be, I think Christian university period, or college, to be accredited by the

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American Psychological Association. They get on the social justice bandwagon, and now you can see where Fuller is, and it's just totally compromised, but that wasn't the intention originally.

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In fact, that's where Bill Bright went to Fuller Theological Seminary. John Piper went to Fuller Theological Seminary.

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A number of people did. So Fuller Theological Seminary goes in this direction, but so do many other schools, and this zeitgeist of New Evangelicalism really does start to influence formerly fundamentalist churches, and it becomes popular, and it kind of, it's so, because it's so bare bones orthodox in a way, and it's so, the whole orientation of it is more towards man, and the needs, the current needs of man, and what man wants, instead of theology itself.

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It was able to very much take bits and pieces of all kinds of other things. So the Jesus People movement kind of influences it, and the

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Religious Right even, because, I mean, it's a popular movement. It kind of influences it, so there's, even before the

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Religious Right, you had kind of a leftist current in it, but then the Religious Right comes along, and so in this pop

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Christian level, mainstream evangelicalism is kind of influenced by that, but overall, most of the intellectuals that would have been part of this movement, if you could say there were intellectuals, which there were, they end up being more on the left, and fast forward to today, the group that we think of as Big Eva, most of these people and organizations are rooted in that neo -evangelical, or influenced by that neo -evangelical movement.

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That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to engage the culture. They're trying to gain a hearing with the world.

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They're trying to be winsome, right? That's another buzzword that they use a lot. It's a mission shift, kind of, from what had been before.

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It's this new way of keeping Orthodox theology, but while all being, quote -unquote, relevant.

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So that's Big Eva. It's an extension of what the neo -evangelicals were trying to build, and now,

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I would suggest, it's starting to crumble in ways, and so you have a Big Eva, and then I've heard this before, you have a

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Little Eva, and so Big Eva, some of the organizations I just mentioned, Little Eva, perhaps being the

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G3 Conference to some extent, and Founders Ministries to some extent, and I don't know, maybe certain aspects of Ligonier, or Grace to You, and some of these organizations have been around for a while, so it's not like they're anything new, but there's a new energy in some of these organizations, and it's because of the split that's happening, because people are, conservatives, especially political conservatives, but also theological conservatives that understand the threat of social justice, are starting to realize how these

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Big Eva groups have sold out on this issue, and how it compromises theology, and so they've ended up starting to associate in a different place, in a different area, in different conferences, and new publishing houses are getting started.

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To some extent, I mean, you could say, I know the Moscow, Idaho crowd with Doug Wilson and his church isn't really, they're their own thing, they're not really completely with G3, perhaps, but there's been, like Rachel, I think it's

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Rachel Jankovich, you know, has spoken at G3, and I think the cross -politic guys have been there, and I know

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Founders Ministries has done a lot of work with some of those guys, and so there's new alliances kind of forming, and again, to me, this is also, to some extent, possibly, very possibly, an extension of that neo -evangelical movement as well, in a way, because what you're seeing is people across denominational barriers that have, actually, you know, a lot of differences in some ways, but they're still very much so cooperating, and they kind of have their own guild now, so there's kind of a new guild, in my mind, forming, and so you have an older guild that's still

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Big Eva, right, the big publishing houses, and the big conferences, and all that, but it's kind of, it's dying a little bit because of the compromise that they've been pushing, and now there's another kind of loose coalition forming as well, which is also very rooted in basic Orthodox beliefs.

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Now, some of them, like, for instance, like Founders Ministries would be 1689 Baptist, but then again, they'll work with people from Moscow.

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You have, you know, G3, which is also, I think, a 1689 more Baptist group, but they'll platform people that are outside of that, to some extent.

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So, to some extent, what I'm talking about has been going on for years.

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I mean, the Shepherds Conference is, you know, there's people from a wide range of theological positions, but they're all

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Reformed -ish, and they're usually not charismatic. I think Piper's been there a few times, but other than him, perhaps, and maybe,

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I don't know if C. J. Mahaney's ever been there. I think he was at their youth version. They have a youth conference. It's not

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Shepherds. I forget what it's called, but they tend to stay in that Reformed and also cessationist kind of, you know, that's kind of their group.

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So, there's unique things to every conference and every organization, but the big picture, broadly speaking, you see kind of two groups breaking off and cooperating together.

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Now, then there's people like the podcasters, smaller congregations, and pastors who have now, because of technology, they have their own ministries that they're able to get out there.

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I think of like Right Response Ministries with Joel Webbin, and I think of like A .D.

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Robles and what he's doing, right? Just a guy with a camera. That's really what I'm doing. I'm a guy with a camera, and now we've both written books about the social justice issue, and there's many others that have, through their church or through just their own selves, they've decided to put out information on certain things, and that's, you know,

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I hope what I do is helpful. I think of what I do is kind of like a vitamin. You know, hopefully, if things are working correctly, you can go to church and get your multivitamin, but I realize that most churches are not fighting this issue.

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Many pastors, if they are aware of it, they're afraid to say much, to be specific, and to take a stand, but many are not aware of it, and so my goal is to maybe supplement, to not give you the multivitamin.

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I'm trying to give you just here's one thing that is affecting the church very greatly right now in this temporary period of time, and it'll probably get worse and take different forms, but right now, the dust hasn't settled yet, and while this is happening,

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I want to do my best, since I seem to understand the issue. I think, to some extent, at least, I want to help those who don't understand it, understand it, and understand how to respond to it, and so I'm doing something very specific, and so this is kind of the evangelical landscape.

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You have Big Eva, you have Little Eva, you have, for lack of better terms, and then you have all these local voices and ministries and stuff, and many of us, we're not going to ever be platformed in any of those groups, and we're not necessarily even looking for that.

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We're doing something very narrow and unique that we feel needs to be done, and we're helping people do that, and to some extent, someone like myself or an 80 -year -old, we probably will never actually get that kind of platforming from those big organizations anyway, unless bigger organizations that have unique interest in really going after these compromisers hard arise somehow, so that's the landscape.

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Now, from a bottom -up look, so I've given you, hopefully, what would be the bird's -eye view of here's

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Big Eva, here's Little Eva, and then here's all the kind of local people that have some kind of a voice.

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From a local perspective, like in your local church, if you're wondering, okay, what's the problem with all this,

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John? What are you trying to say, and why even tell us all this? The reason I say this is because there's a connotation to Big Eva that is hierarchical, that there is a guild, a hierarchy that is outside of your elders and your local church and your denomination to which, and this is the important part, to which allegiance is sworn, whether unknowingly or knowingly, so you could have a pastor or leaders in your church, and I've seen this, by the way, who have a sense of wanting to please, wanting to defend, wanting to gain attention from leaders in the

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Big Eva group more so than they do from those in their own church and community and family, perhaps, and I have seen this, where the organization that they might be on the board for, that's the

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Gospel Coalition or some seminary, this guild becomes part of their identity as people, their sense of belonging is fulfilled in it, what they would normally, naturally get from their family and their church and their local area, they're instead finding a lot of those things in a membership, or they aspire to be a member to this guild, and that's where the problem arises, that's why when people talk about Big Eva, they usually do so negatively, it's because there's an interest that should not be there, an interest in gaining the favor of those in the elite circles rather than doing one's job and loving one's congregation, so that's why in many places, and I have seen this, the pastor or the church may be very reluctant to take a firm position on social justice or the

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COVID situation or more reluctant, perhaps, now it's becoming more popular to say something about social justice, some bare bones kind of, yeah, of course, we're against that, but to actually name names, like to say the name

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Al Mohler or Ligon Duncan, or Tim Keller, these are names you're not supposed to say, depending on whether or not you want membership and the accolades of being one day part of the

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Big Eva guild, and so people don't want to hurt their chances, maybe they'll become popular, maybe they could, they don't want to offend these people,

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I've heard this many times, 100 % know that this is the case, when you hear that though, what you're seeing is pastors who are willing to look the other way, or they're unwilling to perhaps research into what their members of their church, their sheep may be listening to, that may be harmful to them, because it might hurt their position or their chances, or it may impact the way that they relate to this

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Big Eva guild, and so their relationship to the guild becomes sometimes more important than their relationship to their own elders and their own flock, and that's where the danger comes in, there's a celebrity worship, there's an infatuation, look, you don't even know me,

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I'm not part of the Big Eva guild, but you can do the same thing with me, it's possible to think of me as someone who is really great or whatever, you like my commentary, but you only see me when

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I'm putting a camera on, you don't know what I'm like, the rest of the day, and that's something you just have to realize, you have to stop yourself and realize, okay, most of my time and my effort and my love and my sense of allegiance, and all of that needs to be more rooted in the local people that I actually know who they are, they're the ones that know, that can keep me accountable, and obviously first and foremost, our allegiance is to the

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Lord, right, our identity is wrapped up in Him, but He has given us these tools and these people and responsibilities, and when we put those on the shelf to be part of, to listen to, to spend our time with, to love this artificial world of Big Eva, then it's a problem, and some pastors coming fresh out of seminary think that's what ministry is, that's what theology is, and that's the danger, and that's the danger, and so that's what

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I wanted to share with you, this is my heart on the matter, it is something that's concerned me, it's always concerned me since seminary, since I remember in preaching class, the question, you know, who's, literally this happened in preaching class at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, the professor said, who are your favorite preachers, and people would give names, right, and I think at the time it was

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Mark Dever was the big name, and I think Tulian Tavidian was another big name that was given there,

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I'm trying to think who else was given, David Platt, we, so these are the big names, and you know, we can see how that's worked out for all three of those figures, but these are the people that people aspire to be like, pastors wanted to be like, aspiring pastors, and our professor said, well you want to copy them then, you want to go and try to copy their style, and you know, the more you listen to them, the more you'll be able to copy them, that was literally advice

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I was given in seminary, wasn't the only advice, but it was advice that we were given, and I mean, it's inevitable if you like a preacher, you're going to start sounding more like them, but the danger is that if you idolize a preacher, or a public figure of some kind in this big eva guild that you don't even know, they could be someone like a

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Mark Dever, or a Tulian Tavidian, or a David Platt, there may be problems there you're just not aware of, and you're copying something that's artificial, or maybe their sermons are being written by some group, right, like Ed Litton's sermons, you know, they're not even his sermons, so it's better to stick with what's real and authentic than what's potentially artificial, and so even with this podcast that you're listening to right now, hopefully

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I'm giving you good information, I'm helping you think, that's my whole goal, but my goal is not that you would say,

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I just want to be like John, and I want my life to be more increasingly identified with John, and wrapped up in what

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John says, and I just have to always think of my allegiance to John over even my responsibilities, and the people

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I should be listening to that actually know who I am and can pour into my life, so as long as you're not doing that, then it's fine to listen to sermons, to podcasts, any of that stuff, but you don't want your identity to start to be really wrapped up in that too tightly, at least to where it forms a hierarchy, and there's not much of a danger of probably me doing that as much, but with the big eva, when they have all the resources they have, and the conferences they have, and the sermon series, and the radio connections, and the publishing house, and all of that, it can become a hierarchy beyond the local church or the denomination, and that's what you got to be careful of, that's the danger, that's the threat, because when they compromise, they take a lot with them, and I've certainly seen that happen, and there's an incentive not to tell the truth to your congregation about some of these guys when you think it might hurt your chances of being accepted in the guild, and that explains why even among many conservatives that will say things against critical race theory, and maybe edge out and say something against Russell Moore that might, you know, the test thing in the

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Southern Baptist Convention in my mind is, will they come out against Al Mohler, will they say what needs to be said about Al Mohler, if they don't see compromise there, and I write about it, by the way, for those who are new to this, christianityandsocialjustice .com,

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you can get the book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, I have a whole section on Al Mohler, and there's a number of problems, and if you're unwilling to say the name

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Al Mohler and associate them with the problems, and just be honest about it, then there's a compromise, there's a problem there, and I don't care how conservative you are against Russell Moore and what he's doing, if you're unwilling to look at that, then there's an issue, and it could be a lack of knowledge sometimes, that's legitimate, there could be a lack of knowledge, you don't know who he is really, but I'm saying for people who do know, people who really do know who he is, and they do know the facts that are outlined in that book, and they're still willing to defend, and they're still willing, they don't want to tell the sheep, you know, how this man is compromised,

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I'm just using him as one example, there could be a lot of others I use, then that's a sign of what

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I'm talking about to some extent, so I'm not trying to be too hard on anyone in particular,

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I'm just, and I don't even have anyone in mind right now, I'm just giving you, here are the principles, here are the categories, and the way

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I think about this whole issue of Big Eva, so that's what Big Eva is, hierarchy, outside the church, a guild, it's associated with a lot of big organizations that have lots of money, and there's a lot of people that listen to them, and there's sort of a sense of they shall not be touched, because of who they are, and the status that they have achieved, but again, artificial platforms in many ways, and you don't exactly know who they are, so that is, that's the podcast today,

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I hope you'll check out the January 29th Shelbyville, Kentucky War Room, if you're in that area,

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Louisville, Kentucky area, pretty close to there, you can go to refchurch .com, and again, go to bookjohn at worldviewconversation .com,

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and you can, if you want to have me come to your church and talk about Christianity and social justice, be more than happy to do it, to help the congregation think through these issues theologically, rationally, and to be able to withstand them when they come, because they will come, and if they haven't already, so that's my encouragement to you, the

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Lord will build church, gates of hell won't prevail against it, big evil can't stop it, but we need to be aware of the threats, just like the apostles were aware of the threats of their times, we need to just, we need to check these things, and to make sure that we're using discernment, and not giving too much undue allegiance to things that don't deserve that kind of allegiance, so anyway,

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God bless you all, and I hope that was helpful, and have a good rest of your day, and more coming later this week, bye now.

38:55

Okay, okay, wait, I've never done this before, but there's a point that I totally forgot,

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I pressed the stop button on the recording, and I thought, you know what, I forgot to say something, all right, all right, last thing, real quick, one of the objections to what

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I just said, of creating these lines between Big Eva, there's Big Eva, right, and then there's the common people, there's the layman, the sheep, and the

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Big Eva is this kind of bad, or at least that relationship, that guild is kind of negative in some way, or there's negativity attached to it, one of the pushbacks that I've gotten, and I had to mention this, because someone inevitably is probably going to say this in the comments, and I've been challenged with this myself, is that aren't you doing what the

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Marxists are doing, aren't you saying that there's this like, this group of people who are privileged, and it's a problem that they're in this privileged position, and then there's all the common people, and they're being,

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Big Eva's kind of stomping all over them, and putting out articles, attacking them, and attacking the

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Bible Belt, attacking the very people that pay their salaries, isn't, aren't you doing what the Marxists do, by drumming up kind of like a class conflict, and here's my answer to that, because I think this is,

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I understand why someone would say this, but I think this is even a Big Eva move, to say this, no, actually, the problem with Marx, and what

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Marx did was, he used ideology, he flattened the world into these categories, and people who have come since him have maybe changed the categories a little bit, but they still do the same basic thing, they flatten everything into oppressors oppressed, or so there's this, this group of like horrible sinners, evil people, oppressors, and then there's a group of that, that almost gets like a virtue that doesn't deserve, that they don't deserve, like pure is the driven snow people, who don't deserve the kind of abuse they're getting from the oppressors of some kind, and the oppressors, the way you can tell an oppressor is by the social class they're part of, how much money they make, or where they like line up on their tax bracket, or the color of their skin, and their heritage, so if they're white or European, right, that would be something that you would take into account to figure out whether they're an oppressor or not, and so these are very arbitrary characteristics in a way, because they, there's, all they are is these external features that you get categorized by, but it doesn't reflect necessarily a good or a bad thing, or an evil thing in your own heart, so that's much different than what people are saying when they complain about Big Eva, if they're saying that Big Eva is a problem, they're saying, they're not saying that, oh, just because, you know, you have a big ministry, or you had an article once in the gospel coalition, that you're somehow, that you're part of the guild, and therefore you're bad, that's, now if that's what they were doing, if they were saying that anyone who reaches this certain level is just evil, then, then yeah, maybe you'd start to have a valid point, but that's not what the objection is, the objection is, is that there's a group of people who actually, from their own hearts, are defending themselves, not, they're willfully ignoring evil that's taking place, they won't name names, they won't point out those who are the the rabble rousers in their own group, because there's an allegiance to the guild, and that's what the issue is, is the allegiance to the guild, it's not some external feature you just happen to get categorized into, because of some just arbitrary characteristic that you can't even usually change in today's day and age, you can't change whether you're, you're a male or female, or you're, you know, the color of your skin, or that kind of thing, so, so that's the big difference,

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I think, between those two things, so I just thought of that objection, I thought, you know, that might come up, and, and, and the other thing

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I'll add to it is just that Marx and Marxists, when they start creating these lines, they're doing so for the purpose of some kind of a redistribution scheme, in order to bring about justice or fairness, you have to take from this one group that's unfairly doing things because of this arbitrary characteristic that they happen to share, that allocates benefits to them, and they have to now, they have to themselves reallocate, or we have to force them to allocate those benefits back to, to the common people, or the people who are being oppressed, and, and that's obviously not the intention of people who are complaining about Big Eva, they're not saying, well,

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Big Eva's got to give all their money and their resources back to the, no, no one's saying that, so, no, that's, that's a failure of a point, and I do,

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I remember the first person who told me this, and I, I would consider them to be part of the

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Big Eva guild when they told me this, but I figure I might as well pass that on to you, and in case you get that objection.