Response to Union Seminary and Pastor Ryan King from London on the Social Justice & the Gospel

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is the day after the release of the statement on social justice in the

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Gospel, and so, as I said yesterday, we want to do some follow -up today.

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Why immediately? Because I leave very early in the morning for Florida. We have the debate this coming weekend on the subject of homosexuality.

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Dr. Michael Brown and I are teaming up to debate two individuals, proponents of homosexuality, and so your prayers for that would be appreciated.

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I will tell you, it has been an interesting 24 hours or so. There has – the regressive and aggressive left, and I refer to it more as the sojourner's type of ultra -leftist liberal type, seem to have the collective maturity of the seventh -grade softball team.

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I mean, we really are talking childish behavior on the part of people. Last evening people were putting vile and, they thought, humorous names on the statement as far as signatures were concerned, and this kind of just infantile behavior, and it was being encouraged by people who call themselves ministers.

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It was just – it's truly been an amazing thing, the profanity, the hatred that has been expressed toward anyone who would even begin to seek to bring a standard of God's truth to anything like this at all.

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You're just dehumanizing. I mean, you really, really, really do begin to see the depth of depravity that is present in our society today.

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So that's sort of a given. I guess that should be something that was expected, but I do want to respond to some things, and then if I don't go too long, we'll open up the phones, and I'd like to hear your questions, what you have to say.

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But I'll be honest, I need to respond to these two that I have chosen because I invested the time in looking at them, and they come from very different perspectives.

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The second article I'm going to respond to is from a fellow Reformed Baptist elder.

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Clearly, by his own statement, he doesn't like me. I don't know him. I think

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I've probably met him. He's from London. I've been told he's a great guy. So I do not want to respond to him the way he responded to me.

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I mean, he really just chose to begin with the worst possible assumptions about motivations and everything else.

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I do not want to do that. I want to avoid that. I want to stay focused upon the issues so that my response to his article will be meaningful, at least to those who care about such things.

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To others, I have discovered, especially over the past 24 hours, your motivations are irrelevant to a large number of people.

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They really, really are. But the first one I want to respond to is from way over on the left, and it's

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Union Theological Seminary. Now, once again, as a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, back in the 1980s,

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I was well aware of the fact that Union was way off to our left at that time and has continued that trajectory until now.

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You need a GPS and satellite to find them. They're so far out of the beaten path.

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But you need to understand, and I do want to communicate this to folks, if your primary experience of the

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Christian faith is in a Bible -believing, conservative, evangelical church and you really haven't wandered outside that realm in your reading or your studying, you need to recognize that—well, for example, the statement on social justice in the very first section of Scripture says, we affirm that the

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Bible is God's word, breathed out by him. It is inerrant and fallible in the final authority of determining what is true, what we must believe, and what is right, how we must live.

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All truth, claims, and ethical standards must be tested by God's final word, which is Scripture alone. If you really believe that, you probably represent seriously, in what is called world

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Christianity, about 15%. 85 % of what is called world

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Christianity would never affirm that and would find it to be pure fundamentalism, you are clearly low on the

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IQ scale, you're unworthy of any meaningful interaction, your people have never produced scholarship of any level at all.

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You just need to understand that's their mindset. And you need to understand that you are a minority, if you believe that.

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We're well aware of the fact that we're not seeking some kind of huge following or group in this situation.

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We are speaking primarily for God's people, and for the benefit of the true

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Church of Christ, and not the external Church of Christ.

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And so I want to make sure that that is understood. I just saw a lot of people who are just assuming, trying to get something fixed here.

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And it's not going to allow me to do so. There we go. Sorry about that. I forgot to turn the error on in here, and it's starting to starting to warm up real good.

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And got to fix that error thing, because it just keeps pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and you can't change anything. Sorry about that.

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Anyway, I just saw a lot of conservative people who assume that a belief in the highest level of Scripture, a high view of Scripture that we have, is the default.

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Everybody has it. It's not the case. It is simply not the case.

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You need to keep that in mind. So when I encountered Union Theological's response to the statement,

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I wasn't at all surprised. In fact, let me just read the first couple sentences, and you'll see why.

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Misguided sociological, psychological, and political theories have long fostered biblical misinterpretation.

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We wish to address untruths this document proclaims. That's our document. Any treatise that says social justice is incidental to the gospel badly misunderstands both justice and the gospel.

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Number one, Scripture, while divinely inspired, we deny the Bible is inerrant or infallible.

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It was written by men over centuries and thus reflects both God's truth and human sin and prejudice.

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So you just start off. There is going to be no ground at this point.

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They don't have a divine word from God. Believe me, they'll go, oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, we do.

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But been there, done that, got the t -shirt. Anything that goes against the current social trends, the current theological, you know, this is the big theological thing to do now, is going to be viewed as merely men's reflections upon God.

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Listen to Brian Zond. Listen to the people who try to get around the

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Old Testament's testimony. To God's judgment and justice and meeting out of wrath upon pagan countries.

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And you'll see then, well, this is how the Jews thought about God, but it was just reflections about, it's really not

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God's word. It's not God doing this. And so you don't have a consistent revelation.

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You have a library of ancient books that you can mix and match and put more weight here and more weight there.

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There is no belief in those divine strands of truth that you can trace through Scripture.

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All that's gone when you go to a place like Union, because they don't have a word from God.

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And I don't use the term liberalism anymore. There was a time when liberal and left meant the same thing.

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It's not. This is regressive leftist theology, and it is far, far, far away from Jesus's view of Scripture, and it is far, far away from anything that has historically been orthodox.

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And it's the main reason for the death of the mainline denominations. Episcopalians and people like that, and it's like, what's happening to their denominations?

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And there's a reason for that. Even in the midst of a secularizing society, where you would think that they'd be doing great.

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No, that's a good way to kill the Church. So they deny the

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Bible is in error. We affirm that biblical scholarship and critical theory help us discern which messages are

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God's. So what's the ultimate authority there? It's our current critical theory.

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Critical theory changes. That's the very nature of leftist scholarship, is to get published, you gotta come up with something new.

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So whatever the new heresy is becomes the ultimate standard. You don't have any clear revelation from God.

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Instead, you have this idea that whatever current biblical scholarship is and critical theory, that's the standard.

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That's the filter that we will run things through. And so you only get that which, well, you know, it's been said many times when you look at the quest for the historical

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Jesus from the same type of people. It's funny that Jesus they end up finding always looks exactly like them.

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Yeah, that's how it works. Under Imago Dei, we also affirm that God created every person in God's own image.

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Accordingly, we deny that vitriol directed towards people because of how God made them, i .e.

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sexual orientation or gender identity, is in any way faithful, biblical, or godly. So despite the

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Bible's teaching that that is something that God identifies as against nature and something that brings

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God's wrath and in fact involves a turning over, we don't need to worry about that because we have a new revelation.

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And the new revelation is gender identity and you are what you feel you are and all this kind of stuff.

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And so places like Union have no connection historically anymore, really, to the

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Christian faith because there's no word any longer that the Scriptures have always—you go back to the earliest centuries of church—the

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Scriptures have always had that central place, thus saith the Lord. They don't have that anymore.

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And so you hear that here. And so you have the

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Imago Dei, but now the Imago Dei gets expanded out to where the drag queen at your local public school is expressing the

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Imago Dei rather than rebellion against God. There's no meaningful definition of sin anymore other than believing

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God has actually spoken. That's what you get out of wild -eyed liberalism such as we have here from Union Theological Seminary.

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Justice. We affirm that justice is central to God's liberative mission. Moreover, we affirm that God enacts that justice through humans, helping us correct millennia -old sins that permeate both church and culture, which would include sexual stuff.

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By the way, one of the criticisms of the document that I'm going to get to from my fellow

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Reformed Baptist elder was he was like, why did they address homosexuality or gender identity?

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Why does this document talk about this? Because, as we saw yesterday, what was one of the major pushbacks we experienced from homosexuals?

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Because they know that if what we're saying throughout the document is true, then they see the connection.

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They recognize the overarching reality of God's law, stuff like that.

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It's funny that someone who actually had the document before it was released yesterday would go, ah, this is irrelevant.

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They're just trying to get people to agree with them because this is just sort of given. No, being on the receiving end of all the nastiness over the past 24 hours,

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I can assure you we saw one of the things that we saw as a group, even in this, this was discussed in Dallas in the genesis of this statement.

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I was there was the fact that right after MLK 50, here comes the choo -choo train that's following after the social justice train is egalitarianism and these soft views on homosexuality and so on and so forth.

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And it's like the door gets kicked open and here it all comes because it's riding on the same track.

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And if you don't see that, well, I'm sorry, but we certainly saw it. And the responses we got yesterday, and this one right here, here's

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Union, demonstrates very, very clearly what it is we are talking about there.

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Moreover, we affirm that God enacts that just, okay, we deny that critical theory is irrelevant to this mission.

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Well, obviously, critical theory becomes their ultimate authority rather than scripture. God's law, we affirm that God's law is summarized in the two great commandments, they skipped the ten commandments, should guide

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Christian morality. However, we deny that wisdom accrued in the centuries since the Bible's inception is irrelevant to understanding what it means to love one's neighbor as oneself.

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Well, it's not irrelevant, but it is not primary. It is relevant insofar as it reflects properly upon the entirety of God's law, but God's law remains primary.

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They don't want any of that God's law stuff because that messes with their transgender, homosexual stuff that they just got done defending.

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Five, sin, we affirm that all people, systems, and institutions are affected by sin. We deny, however, that we are only responsible for our own personal sins.

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God calls us to understand how we benefit or are harmed by structural oppression and break sinful systems down.

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So there you've got your oppressors, the oppressors, neo -Marxism, critical race theory, we affirm all this, and they don't have to come up with the biblical basis for it.

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They don't. They don't even need to. It's irrelevant to them. They don't have to go there because that's their givens already.

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We affirm that the gospel is revealed through Jesus and that liberation was central to Christ's mission.

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In his own life, however, Jesus demonstrated that works, living justly in the world, are every bit as foundational to the gospel as faith.

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They cannot be separated. Let's just allow the next one to sort of cast light backwards upon that.

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Seven, salvation. We deny that salvation is only found through Christianity, that God's salvific grace is exclusive to any single faith or religion.

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So we just deny what Jesus taught, but we're going to keep calling ourselves Christians. We're going to deny what every single apostle of Jesus Christ taught.

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This is leftism. This is Union Theological Seminary. And again, one of the problems is you'll still find people—I don't know why they do it— you'll still find people within sound scholarship talking, oh yeah, you're going to get some great scholars at Union.

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You need to recognize what's going on, folks. There are great scholars at predominantly atheist institutions, but you need to recognize what their worldview is.

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But yeah, so here you go. We deny that salvation is only found through Christianity, and that God's salvific grace is exclusive for any single faith or religion.

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You cannot even begin to make heads or tails—heads or tails—out of the Bible and make that statement.

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So clearly, there is no longer any connection. The Bible is just an ancillary thing. You can pull out a phrase here, but actually what it actually teaches as a whole, these people have completely lost any belief that it as a whole has a coherent message.

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They just don't believe it. And again, I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but if you believe there's a coherent record, you are a coherent revelation in Scripture, you are in the minority.

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You're in a small minority. Just realize that and recognize it. Moreover, in God's eyes, there is no difference in spiritual value or worth between those who are in Christ and those who aren't.

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I'll let that sink in for a moment. There's no salvific grace.

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There's no being in Christ. There is no indwelling presence of the

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Holy Spirit. There is no forgiveness of sin, imputed righteousness. Christianity is gone here. It's gone.

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All you're left with is a very ugly shell, and yet this is where Episcopalians are being trained, and so on and so forth.

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So once again, moreover, in God's eyes, there is no difference in spiritual value or worth between those who are in Christ and those who aren't.

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Eight, the church. The primary role of the church is to serve God. I'm not sure which God, but certainly that service includes preaching and administering sacraments.

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Why do that? I mean, even the sacraments, to use that terminology, point to the exclusive nature of the sacrifice of Christ, which was just denied as being the only way of salvation.

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So why bother? I have significantly more respect for atheists than I do for leftists like this, because there's no reason to do what you're doing.

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You're just playing at church, and everybody knows it. That's why your denominations are dying, and deservedly so.

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Serve God, certainly that service includes administering sacraments, but we deny—this is a very small print, sorry—we deny that political or social activism shouldn't be viewed as integral to this work.

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Well, you need to have that, because there's nothing really of essence left in your system.

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Anyways, you know, it'd be a whole lot easier if I was looking over here, because I have to keep looking up and down, up and down, up and down, and this is small print.

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Laws may or may not change sinful hearts, but they save lives. Okay, heresy.

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We affirm that heresy is a denial of God's will. Well, since it's God's will, salvation comes through Jesus Christ only, and you deny that, that makes you

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A. But furthermore affirm that certain heresies have long concealed themselves inside the church, corrupting it from within.

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Heresy ought to be condemned, regardless of whether those espousing it happen to be ministers. Well, agree on that one, and that's why we would say that this is heresy.

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Sexuality and marriage. We affirm science and theory's confirmation that God created humans to live in various sexual orientations and genders.

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It's not science, and I don't know what this theory is, neither one. The spectrum of human sexual experience attests to God's expansive love.

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We deny that any love that does no harm should be rejected. Think about what that might mean.

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Follow that one through. This is the absolute nadir of moral and ethical collapse on the part of faux

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Christianity. It's just... Complimentarianism.

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We affirm that this doctrine has long been used to propagate Christian patriarchy. Summer, we found the patriarchy.

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It's at Union Theological Seminary. They're holding a captive. We affirm that this doctrine has long been used to propagate

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Christian patriarchy. It amounts to separate but equal. Cloaked in religious language, we deny that women are unfit to lead as pastors and know the church desperately needs their leadership.

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Again, these aren't people who believe the Bible, so they're going to come up with whatever they come up with, whatever happens to fit with the current social trends, and that's what they go with.

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That's all liberals have. They don't have revelations, so they're doing the best they can. Poor people.

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Remember, their churches are dying on the vine, and so there's a reason for that. Race and ethnicity.

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We affirm that while race is a social construct, that doesn't lessen the pernicious effects of racism and white supremacy.

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We deny that anyone can be truly committed to undoing racism if they reject any teaching that analyzes how oppression operates.

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That's their code word of saying, you're a racist if you don't accept the current neo -Marxist theory of critical race theory.

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There might be other ways, maybe biblical ways, of recognizing that white supremacy is bad, and black supremacy is bad, and Asian supremacy is bad, and any ethnical supremacy is bad.

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But since critical race theory, which must by definition divide people so that you cannot have a coherent social whole, you have to always have turmoil, that's how you get political power, and break down things.

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That has to be the only way. Totally sold out. But again, why should this surprise us?

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If you don't have the Bible anymore, you're going to be totally sold out. You're bothering me in there. What are you doing?

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Oh, I can always tell when he's sitting over there, you're doing this thing, and then this thing, and this is like, what are you doing?

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Normally, you're just sitting there listening, but now you're just anything else.

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Anyways, culture. We affirm that any document which states, we affirm that some cultures operate on assumptions that are inherently better, really believe that divisions between people don't belong within Christianity.

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You can't denigrate cultures without disparaging people. What the document said, of course, this was something that these folks just, wow, if you want to make a leftist head explode, make the simple biblical statement that some societies, because they incorporate more of God's truth into these presuppositions upon which their society operates, will be better off, will actually be better societies than those that incorporate less of God's truth.

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What a shocking thing to say. No, you can't say that. You cannot. That's hateful.

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No, it's irrational to say that it's hateful, but one thing I've discovered over the past 24 hours, rationality is in very short supply, very, very short supply, especially on the left.

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Really, really is. Wow. We affirm that racism is a sin, which has long badly corrupted

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Christians and caused people to justify some of history's worst atrocities in Christ's name. Moreover, we affirm that white evangelicalism has done much to elevate one ethnic group and subjugate another.

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Is that? Okay. All right.

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The columns here are weird because it looks like it ends there, but anyways, no, it's only white evangelicalism.

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There's no racism anywhere else. I mean, I'm sending me stuff.

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It's being televised in South Africa. You want to see racism? Wow. Black racism.

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And if I could understand half the language, we could go over to Asia and we could find

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Asian racism and you can go anywhere and find lots of racism, but there's only one group that gets pointed out because that helps with the political stuff.

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Now, okay.

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I guess that was the end. Okay. All right. The columns here are all really weird on the web.

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I thought it continued on to the next one, but anyways, so there is what

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I would call a blatant, unbelieving response. That's the leftist response.

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And where does it start? It starts off with a denial that God has spoken.

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And what I would point out to people is that if we had wanted just a bunch of numbers, then we would have de -theologicalized and changed.

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We wouldn't have started off with an affirmation of the inerrancy of scripture because here's automatically changing stuff right there.

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We wouldn't have gone there, but I'm so thankful that we did because we did this out of love for Christ's church and love for the gospel, period, end of discussion.

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I know that 95 % of the criticism has begun with the assumption that we have other nefarious intentions and that's not the case.

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It's just not the case. If you want to break the ninth commandment repeatedly as it was broken 20 ,000 times on Twitter yesterday and Facebook and every place else, then fine.

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I can't stop you. You will be judged for that. I'll just tell you now, God takes his commandments seriously.

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You make false accusations in public, even as a

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Christian, get to answer for that. Just letting you know ahead of time.

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Now, changing directions, thank you, because I have this article over here.

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Fairly early yesterday, an article began circulating and was retweeted and reposted and all sorts of stuff a number of times by Pastor King in London entitled,

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Why I Cannot and Will Not Sign the Social Justice and the Gospel Statement. I believe that I specifically, you know, this is

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Pastor Ryan King, I believe I specifically tweeted out that I was going to respond to this just a little while ago.

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I think it was about, I think it was about half an hour ago. Well, okay, maybe it was a little more than that.

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But I tweeted out to the pastor that we were going to be responding to this and so that he would have the opportunity to listen in and I'm not going to do anything behind his back or anything like that.

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I need to say, yeah, there it is. Ryan Burton King, greetings Brother King. I will be commenting on your article live in the dividing line, okay, in about half an hour, actually, and I gave the address.

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I don't know if I've met Pastor King. I've been to London many times.

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I've spoken in London in many, many different locations. I've been involved in debates in London with Muslims, really good debates.

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I mean, you know, the debate we had at Kensington Temple with Adnan Rashid, incredibly well attended, just done a lot.

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London's a beautiful place and there's a lot of room for ministry in London, to be sure. And so maybe we've met.

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I don't know. But I want to get the personal stuff out of the

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If the pastor would sit back and just look,

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I mean, I just marked things up here, just look at what is said and how it is said, he would see that, goodness, this is, this was a response that assumes the absolute worst about all of us.

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It never gives the benefit of the doubt to us. Purporting to address,

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I would like to believe our well -meaning. That is at best, at worst, it represents a toxic agenda to discredit, undermine godly men and women crying out for biblical social justice, national ecclesiastical repentance and meaningful reconciliation.

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The statement remains, in my view, a cynical, misguided document that has been pitched by the wrong people at the wrong time in the wrong way and with the wrong ideas and understandings in the background.

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So, and over and over again, it would be, yeah, that's right, but, well, that's true, but we'll see that over and over again.

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It is, it's just extremely biased and unfair and I don't know why. I mean,

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I really wonder how you can hold the 1689 and then allow into the purity of the gospel that that confession demands some of this external stuff that you seem to think is okay to bring in and allow that to have such a really strong impact upon the reading of this.

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I mean, I understand why Union Theological Seminary is not going to read our statement fairly and I understand why

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Dwight McKissick and others are not going to read our statement fairly, but it's not even like you've got the excuse that, well,

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I only had a few minutes. You had a draft version weeks beforehand and then waited for it to come out to post this.

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So, you had plenty of time to work through this and so I don't understand the obvious clear bias and an utter unwillingness to go, well, you know,

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I guess I could read it this way or I could understand that there is a proper Christian motivation here.

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I would expect that's what you would do for at least folks in your own tribe unless you really don't believe that we are and I got that feeling in a couple of things that were said.

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Now, on the personal side, let me get these two personal things out of the way so I can get to the specific critique.

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Now, I am mentioned once by name and again, it's one of those instead of quoting me directly or dealing with what

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I said directly, it's people who are followers of James White have said.

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Now, I'll just be directly honest with you, Pastor King, I would never do that to you. I just wouldn't.

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I would not hold you accountable. I would not say followers of Pastor King have told me.

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No, I'm going to talk about what they have said and if you're going to criticize me, please quote what

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I've said. It's not that I've hidden anything here. In fact, you criticize me for saying too much and here's the criticism specifically.

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Well, let me give you the context. Then I read the initial and early signatories. Some of them I know. Some of them

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I consider friends. One of them I have known since I was three years old, went to the same church with, and was shaped in my approach to preaching in ways

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I probably do not fully appreciate or realize. A reminder to me, little children, keep yourselves from idols. I'm not really sure what the application of 1

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John 5 21 is there. I have a feeling I know what it is, but others I am not as fond of.

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Initial signatories include the man who recently disparaged what he called the angry civil rights movement in the 1960s.

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That's a misrepresentation of Phil Johnson. He was talking about segments of it.

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He wasn't talking about the entirety of it. He has corrected that. If you do not allow for the correction, you are being unfair. You're being biased.

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You're being prejudiced. Stop it. All of you that have been doing that to Phil, stop it.

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Be honest. Just try to be honest. You're dealing with Christians here. You've got to. You're under moral obligation.

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Then here's me, the apologist who has spent absurd amounts of time critiquing what he perceives to be mission drift by social justice advocates, not at all seeing the irony in his own mission drift.

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Now, that's not a term I use. I've heard people use that in regards to the

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VD on your wheelie. I haven't. Absurd amount of time. Well, I had, was it 2010,

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I think, is when I had VotE on. Then there really wasn't anything for about five, six years.

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Then it's become more regular. But on the last program, what did

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I say right at the end of the program? This is not going to become all that we talked about. I will not allow that to happen.

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And isn't it ironic that we're sneaking this program in to respond to this while I need to rush home right afterwards, finish getting packed so I can go on an early flight tomorrow morning to get to Florida to do what?

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To speak on this subject? Not even addressing it once. I'm doing a debate on homosexuality.

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Ongoing research into CBGM. It is not an absurd amount of time.

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I just wish that if you're gonna make the accusation that there's an absurd amount of time that maybe you'd listen more carefully to what

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I actually said. Because I see no response whatsoever anywhere in here at all to my actual argumentation.

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In fact, I'll just be perfectly honest with you. This is an exegetically barren response.

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It's barren. There's nothing there. And at least

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I can say, and I'm sure the other men would say this in their own context, but I can say if you're going to respond to what

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I've said on this stuff, you're going to have to be in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 2 and Revelation 5.

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And you're going to have to get into the text. None of that here. Nothing.

38:06

It's just barren. But then right after this is a paragraph that is an attack upon someone that I know and that Pastor King knows, who has contacted

38:18

Pastor King. And in the past, they've had conversations, goes to London a lot.

38:25

And it's a personal attack upon him, trying to turn him into a a person who only speaks of certain things.

38:37

And I'm sorry. He says, while he was busy writing these things to me,

38:43

I was busy actually doing real evangelism on the street and met a Muslim refugee who has since trusted

38:49

Christ, been baptized and is a faithful member of the church. Well, that's, that's, that's wonderful, but that's a really cheap use of the grace of God.

38:58

I'll be honest with you. That's just, that's reprehensible. That's reprehensible. One of the things that needs to be understood is this individual who you are misrepresenting, who's open to talking to you about it, but you don't seem to be able to talk to him about it.

39:15

This individual has been key in making much of the ministry that we've done in London amongst

39:25

Muslims, which has resulted in the salvation of Muslims in London, many of whom have talked to me, a possibility.

39:33

Hmm. So he's put his money on the line and his life on the line to allow things like that to happen.

39:39

And then you do something like that. Totally unfair. I honestly believe Pastor King, if you just step back, take a few deep breaths, that you need to write an apology and withdraw that.

39:49

I think that's just obvious. I think it's obvious. So there's personal stuff. Let's get that out of the way.

39:56

Secondly, like I said, any attempt to engage this exegetically is impossible because there's no exegesis.

40:08

There is no, there's no argumentation here. And the statement is rather rich in scriptural citation, but that's just simply looked over.

40:20

As I said, I read some of these lines purporting to address an alleged shift. So that's the second paragraph.

40:29

So from the beginning, for some reason that I do not know, Pastor King has a bias against Phil Johnson, myself, others who are initial signers of this document.

40:46

And so he's allowed that to completely color his reading of the document.

40:54

And that's, I can't stop that, but it's a shame. It doesn't help anybody.

41:04

I would like to believe are well -meaning, but frankly, not at all getting what those whom it primarily addresses are saying.

41:11

Well, we were attempting to address a very wide movement. You assume just certain people, but we are addressing a rather wide movement with our statement.

41:24

That is at best, at worst, I read this before, it represents a toxic agenda to discredit and undermine godly men and women crying out for biblical social justice.

41:32

I don't get the feeling he feels there's any godly men behind this or any godly women behind this, which is sad.

41:44

Okay. He mentions a bunch of people that he thinks are on the other side because you see

41:50

Eric Mason in there and the BDN of Wheelie and Matt Chandler, so on and so forth. In their number are the very people the statement erroneously has in view as in some way, abandoning the gospel for social gospel.

42:03

And let's stop right there. Obviously, a gracious or brotherly reading would recognize that we see a spectrum on the other side in regards to, well, it's sort of like the

42:20

BDN of Wheelie reads it yesterday morning and says, I'm not sure there's anything in there I disagree with. Now, by today that's changed, but I think that's because of other issues.

42:32

But we see gradation.

42:37

We see people having different levels of commitment and, yes, different levels of contamination by external sociological or political impacts that they may or may not even recognize.

42:59

That's a brotherly reading of the document, but that's not one that Pastor King offered.

43:06

An examination of their ministries, their sermons, writings, music, and so forth should decisively demonstrate their

43:12

Christocentric gospel ministries and serve as the context within which the backdrop against which the lens through which there, in my estimation, very helpful and necessary contribution should be understood.

43:23

Why not extend that to us? Is that not a true statement of the people who have signed the document?

43:37

There seems to be no willingness to do that. Ours is a warning against a drift, against the incursion of troubling external sources of authority.

43:53

So our ministries cease being Christocentric and fruitful because we would go, hey, have you noticed that this could lead to this kind of division and that kind of division?

44:07

The gospel says this, but this seems to indicate this, and if we do that, all of a sudden, we're the bad people.

44:14

How did that happen? It is strange. The state remains, in my view, a cynical misguided document that has been pitched by the wrong people at the wrong time, in the wrong way, with the wrong ideas and understandings in the background.

44:30

Quotation, we deny that the postmodern ideologies derived from intersectionality, radical feminism, and critical race theory are consistent with biblical teaching.

44:38

That's a quotation from the document. That cannot be underestimated as to how important it is.

44:46

Can anyone look me in the eye, read my Twitter feed, and say, there's no influx of intersectionality or critical race theory going on in evangelical churches.

45:03

It's all over the place. I had no idea how deeply ensconced it already was.

45:10

We are so far behind the eight ball, it's not even funny. So that's a statement that is self -evidently true, but notice the response.

45:22

True enough, but these terms have been weaponized against godly men and women who are simply seeking justice and reconciliation.

45:35

Now stop. Here is an example where we must learn to think critically, even when analyzed.

45:48

Apply this to me. Apply this to anyone that you're going to be listening to.

45:54

That is not a meaningful response to what was said. How many times over the past 30 years, 35 years of ministry, 35 years, wow, we did it again.

46:13

We skipped our 35th anniversary of the founding of ministry. Didn't even think about it.

46:19

We are just so good at marketing. I mean, other people would have just, you know, give $35 for the 35th anniversary, you know, $350, $3 ,500, blah, blah, blah.

46:31

We didn't even, we're like, oh yeah, that was, yeah.

46:36

Actually, I think it technically might still be October. I'm not going to be here. Anyway, 35 years,

46:44

I've been saying the same thing over and over again. The misuse of truth is not an argument against the truth.

46:54

There are people who say that believing in the Trinity is, what's the terminology?

47:05

Believing in the Trinity is Christianity's self -inflicted wound.

47:13

So we would do so much better with the Muslims if we would become

47:19

Unitarians. Well, that's a very pragmatic argument, but it has nothing to do with whether the doctrine of the

47:28

Trinity represents God's self -revelation. And the statement that postmodern ideologies derived from intersectionality, radical feminism, and critical race theory are consistent with the

47:47

Could someone take that and weaponize that? I suppose. But how is that relevant to the truthfulness of the statement?

47:56

It's not. It's not. And if, in fact, someone is inadvertently, because it's how they've been taught, they don't know better, there's nobody in their life that can point it out to them.

48:17

If they are bringing in categories of intersectionality that are not derived from scripture, that the idea of intersectionality ignores

48:31

God's providence and God's decree in making men as they are, placing them where they are in society and holding them accountable for the gifts that he has given to them.

48:42

There's no place in neo -Marxist critical race theory or intersectionality for the idea that God makes men to differ.

48:51

There's no place for that. There is no place for the judgment of men and women based upon the gifts that God gives them and that he gives some people.

49:01

He places some people in high places of authority and others he does not, and he's going to judge not on some mid, you know, equality of results type thing.

49:13

He's going to judge you, hmm, let's put it this way, five talents, two talents, one talent.

49:24

Was there something wrong that the master of the house would give more talents to one person than to another?

49:31

That's not equality of outcome, is it? So, God must have been unjust.

49:38

You see, it's not a biblical concept, and so we have to fight against it. We cannot allow that into our thinking.

49:47

Well, what if somebody is doing that? Shouldn't we, in a brotherly fashion, say, well, here's the biblical truth, and why then are you putting it this way and challenge them on it?

50:01

Not in nastiness, but challenge them on it. I think that's what we should do.

50:08

Quote number three, we affirm that societies at times must establish laws that correct injustices that have been imposed through cultural prejudice.

50:15

I'm glad to hear it, but, there it is, I'm glad to hear it, you know, I agree with what it says, but, it's just really a non -brotherly reading.

50:27

Unfortunately, some of the people involved in this statement have indicated their beliefs.

50:32

See, he has, very clearly, this response has in mind a particular mindset about us as a group, and it seems like it's based primarily on secondhand information and inaccurate information, and the result is that you read everything in a negative fashion.

50:56

Unfortunately, some of the people involved in the statement have indicated that their belief that America's systemic racism problem ended in 1968 as though the mere introduction of a law is enough to undo centuries of white against black racial prejudice.

51:08

Now, that sounds like, and again, I don't know what this gentleman's background is, but if he's a racist, that's it,

51:14

I'm sorry, what you've been told about the

51:20

United States by the BBC is really bad and unreliable, and you shouldn't believe almost anything he's said, but what's behind this is enough to undo centuries of white against black racial prejudice.

51:36

So, what are you saying? What is your, is this, is this an argument for reparations, maybe?

51:43

Do you not, have not noticed that there are blacks serving in government, and I think that by far the richest sports figures in everything, certainly football and basketball, are, are black?

52:02

Multi, multi, multi, multi, hundred million dollar contracts? Hmm, how could that happen?

52:09

I mean, there are still places on earth where a minority group wouldn't, that would never happen.

52:15

It happens in the United States. Hmm, that's strange. Anyway, but I guess there's this prejudice.

52:28

Then there's quotation about justice being culturally defined from the statement. I agree.

52:33

The problem, again, is in how practice some people who are here saying we should not impose or operate on merely socially constructed standards of justice have spoken against biblically derived efforts to reform justices at a social level.

52:48

Well, we don't know what's being referred to there. What, what, what does that mean? We're not told.

52:59

Then they are finally being noticed leading especially, leading especially months of unfair critique of the

53:09

MLK50 conference and a couple of messages at T4G. Unfortunately, nothing is listed as to what the critique was or how it was unfair.

53:19

It's just a given it was unfair. Now, I played sections and then interacted with them.

53:24

Was that unfair? It seems that you can just put that out there. Oh, it was unfair. If I'm going to say it's unfair,

53:31

I'm going to document it. I'm going to provide a basis for it. How about at the

53:40

MLK50 where one of the speakers referred to black people that opposed their perspectives as black on the outside and Anglo on the inside?

53:49

Was it unfair to point out that that's racist? Maybe? I wonder.

53:55

We're not told. They had not presented merely socially constructed standards of justice but stood on the basis, oh this is the people speaking there, but stood on the basis of the authority of scripture and the lordship of Christ.

54:08

They were written off and decried again by some of the very people involved in this statement. So in other words, if you didn't agree with what was done at MLK50, then it doesn't matter how accurate your reviews were.

54:25

It doesn't matter how painstaking they were or how careful they were. You're written off as writing them off.

54:32

You're written off as having decried them. And since people like myself and others were involved in going, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.

54:44

Let's back up here and listen to what's being said and let's go the word of God.

54:51

Well, this whole statement is just out the window. Where is this prejudice coming from? It's really strong.

54:57

I'm not sure that Pastor King sees or can hear just how prejudicial and biased his own words are, but wow, it comes through really, really strongly.

55:10

And there would have to be some more basis than he's given. Oh, good grief.

55:19

I just looked at the time. Oh, well. I've got a little bit more, but I marked certain things

55:31

I wanted to try to get to. Then there's a quotation about God's law and the definition of sin and the first comment, yes, but, yes, but, yeah, that's right.

55:45

But I want to go beyond that. Jesus expounded the law exposing the injustice run riot in the power structures and people of the

55:58

Jewish nation. I don't ever remember Jesus talking about power structures. I remember Matthew chapter 23, he said, you actually should obey the scribes of Pharisees and sit in Moses' seat.

56:07

But I don't remember him criticizing power structures. That sounds suspiciously like a sociological political category being imposed upon the ancient texts at that point.

56:20

But historically and doubtless still in present, racists, especially of the white supremacist or nationalist variety, have taken comfort that there is no thou shalt not enslave, segregate, hate, mistreat, needlessly offend black people in the 10 commandments.

56:36

I just have to stop and go, can you reverse the colors and say the same thing? Because there are nations in the world where white people are the minority and majority people, whether they be

56:52

Asian or black or whatever, mistreat them. So you see that it goes both ways, right?

56:58

I mean, this is a human thing, right? It's not just the white supremacy stuff, right?

57:06

I hope, maybe, can't tell. Can't tell from this. They have also distorted

57:12

Jesus' command to love your neighbor. As one Southern Sunday school teacher was recently quoted in the press as saying, he meant love your

57:19

American neighbor. Yeah, that's exactly what we had in mind. That's how all these ministers...

57:29

Have you looked at the signature list? That's, yeah, there's a lot of people that aren't

57:36

American. If the summaries were sufficient, we wouldn't have all of the writings around them.

57:41

We wouldn't need to preach expositions of them. I'm sorry this is irrelevant to what we said. It has no connection, but it allows a few swipes to be taken.

57:52

Then the quotation from the statement, we deny that any obligation that does not arise from God's commandments can be legitimately imposed on Christians as a prescription for righteous living.

58:02

We further deny the legitimacy of any charge of sin or necessity of repentance that does not arise from a violation of God's commandments.

58:09

In other words, scripture is sufficient to define how we are to live before God and we cannot allow political, sociological, psychological authorities to come in and add things to what scripture gives to us.

58:24

His response, I fear slaveholders, segregationists, white supremacists, and white nationalists of today could say exactly the same.

58:31

Okay, this is invalid argumentation. It is grossly invalid argumentation. Well, that could be misused.

58:38

Any part of God's truth could be misused. I haven't heard any of Pastor King's sermons, and I'm sure they're fine sermons, but I can guarantee you

58:47

I could grab one, just one. I'll go online, grab one, and I could find statements that I could misuse.

58:55

I could twist out of their context. I could apply to something he didn't mean to apply it to, and voila, he's, I'm sorry, voila,

59:01

I like to play with the French, and voila, he is a whatever

59:06

I'd want to make him. That's easy to do, but it's invalid argumentation. It's completely invalid, and what

59:14

I don't understand is I don't think he would use this in any other area. I would imagine we'd be right on the exact same page in so many other areas, but you wouldn't use this type of argumentation at all, so why now?

59:30

What's different? That's what a lot of us are asking, and again, the last sentence sounds good, but it is a sentiment that has been weaponized against brothers biblically seeking justice and reconciliation in our society, so since criticism has been made of my side, then that's weaponization, and therefore that's an argument against it.

59:50

No, it's not an argument against it, not if it's biblically grounded. It's not an argument against it. Misuse the truth is not an argument against the truth, period.

59:59

That's established. Interestingly enough, I did not see any of the many people that were retweeting this.

01:00:07

It was retweeted by everybody. Calvinist Batman retweeted it a half an hour before the program started. This is great, you know, and all these pointing down to it.

01:00:14

This is awesome. How come nobody caught any of this and said, well, yeah, some good points, but, yeah, there seems to be some real bias here, and there's some flaws in the argumentation, and why not?

01:00:31

I don't know. I really wanted to try to keep this to an hour.

01:00:41

Tell you what, man, I'm going to be pushing it. No, I can't.

01:00:46

I was going to say, let's try opening the phones, but I've got about three more sentences I want to try to get to, and I've just got a flight to catch in the morning.

01:00:54

I've got stuff to do, so I apologize for that. I will try to prioritize this as best

01:01:02

I can. Quotation from the document, all human relationships, systems, and institutions have been affected by sin.

01:01:12

I am pleased to hear they believe this. The language of many of the critics of the racial reconciliation movement and social justice has sometimes denied this.

01:01:24

Indeed, I have heard people say individuals are sinful racists, not systems. They make such assertions based on soundbites from the ministries of some of the signatories of this document.

01:01:33

He's talking about me, and we live in a fallen world.

01:01:39

Therefore, everything in this world has been affected by sin. What I have said, and what

01:01:45

I will say again, and what I say is absolutely consistent with the 1689 London Bapst Confession, and denial of it would be a denial of the 1689, is that in the body of Christ, you do not introduce divisions inside the body based upon the ethnicity of individuals and the actions of their forebearers against others in the body.

01:02:11

Period. I will defend that. That's the gospel. I've said it a thousand times, but I'm going to have to keep saying it.

01:02:22

One righteousness, one Savior, one standing before God, what happened 500 years ago or 100 years ago between your group and my group is wiped out when we kneel at the cross.

01:02:34

Period. End of discussion. You want to argue against that? You want to try to say something against that?

01:02:42

It's not going to work. Not biblically. Not going to happen. Not going to happen. Here's a follow -up on that.

01:02:51

Quotation from the document, although families, groups, and nations can collectively sin and cultures can be predisposed to particular sins, it's a partial sentence.

01:03:01

I am pleased they admit this. I have been told by devotees of James White that there is no collective sin, only individual sin.

01:03:09

It beggars belief as it is so contrary to scripture. Pastor, that's just irresponsible.

01:03:16

That's just irresponsible. On the one hand, you criticize me for having spent too much time talking about this, and then you won't recognize what

01:03:25

I've actually said or even represent it properly. Where is this animus coming from?

01:03:30

What have I done to you? Can you tell me? Because it's plain, it's obvious. I'm taking the time to read your words to my audience.

01:03:39

Who's being fair here? Who's being open here? I'll just do two more.

01:03:51

We further deny that one's ethnicity establishes any necessary connection to any particular sin. Yes, so long as such a thing as collective guilt is granted.

01:04:00

Again, it has been denied quite forcefully to me, and the insidious subtle ways in which people approve, embrace, and attempt to justify those sins are recognized.

01:04:06

Again, collective guilt in the sense that God brings judgment against a people.

01:04:12

But my argument is, within the church, I thought that once you are brought into Christ, according to Colossians chapter 2, all of those dogmas sin that were written against you, those decrees against you, were nailed to the cross, right?

01:04:35

So, where's the guilt coming from? Are you saying, oh, your personal sin is forgiven, but not your cultural or ethnic sins?

01:04:45

Is that what you're saying? Do you realize the destruction this would bring to multi -ethnic churches if the theology of this really grabbed hold?

01:04:55

That's my concern. That's what I'm worried about. I've been in so many churches in London where it's completely multi -ethnic, and nobody's talking about any of this.

01:05:06

They're not bringing any of this up. And once you do, it results in division. That's my concern.

01:05:19

This is funny. I'll wrap up with this. Quotation from the document, this also means that implications and applications of the gospel, such as the obligation to live justly in the world, though legitimate and important in their own right, are not definitional components of the gospel.

01:05:36

Pastor King says, I get what is being said here, but, but, it's all through this,

01:05:44

Jesus is the good news, and in Jesus is righteousness, purity, faithfulness, love, and so forth.

01:05:49

A critical part of the gospel missing from their brief explanation is union with Christ and the work of the

01:05:57

Spirit to make us like Christ. If these things are not present, then we are not saved and we do not possess good news. What was the first response

01:06:07

I gave to MLK 50, which I think was identified as an unfair thing early on? What was the first response

01:06:12

I gave? It was about the renewal in union with Christ, work by the Holy Spirit of God, from Colossians chapter 3.

01:06:20

That was its whole focus. Pastor, could you understand why it could be just,

01:06:25

I don't know, a little bit frustrating to be criticized so inconsistently, with such bias, without knowing why?

01:06:38

I mean, I understand, I get when

01:06:44

Union Theological Seminary does not even have the background or the willingness to even think about what we're saying.

01:06:56

I know the liberals, I get them, but you, I don't understand. You have all the background in the world to provide a fair, brotherly reading, give us the benefit of the doubt, go, yes,

01:07:11

I affirm this, this is true. Here's my concern over here, and maybe you haven't thought about this, or maybe you have, and you take a different perspective, but, you know, one of my concerns is that why not that?

01:07:25

Why this type of presentation? I don't understand it.

01:07:31

I don't understand it. There's more, but as I said, I should have known, setting up the program, that there was no way

01:07:42

I was going to have time to get through that in a meaningful fashion, just simply from the amount of material that I had to read.

01:07:51

But I want you to hear we fully expected the nastiness, the childish behavior on the part of the sojourners type people, and we,

01:08:08

I did expect the homosexual response that we did get to the, and I didn't get down to the part,

01:08:15

I'm sorry. Oh, drat. Yeah, he talked about colorblindness down below, that again would be me too, and I've addressed that a thousand times.

01:08:32

Yeah, 10 through 11 are sexuality, marriage, and complementarianism. I agree with the points made, but this is a bizarre conflation of racial reconciliation and biblical pursuit of social justice being promoted in Christian circles with a wholly separate and quite dangerous cultural shift on matters of human sexuality.

01:08:48

It is not wholly separate. We do not see it as wholly separate. It's coming through the door on the exact same railway.

01:08:57

You may not see it, but maybe you're blind to that. Maybe you're blind to it.

01:09:04

I don't know. But matters of skin and sin are totally separate.

01:09:10

Well, first of all, it's never a matter of skin. Never has been, never can be.

01:09:15

Not in the church. Can't be. Are totally separate, and the insertion of an important but bit of a pet theme for conservative evangelicals into a document critiquing the social justice and racial reconciliation movement in the church shows that the point has been completely missed.

01:09:31

Yes, sir. By you. By you. Not by us. We see the connection.

01:09:38

We see the connection. It says, what hath MLK50 to do with revoice? Think about that, and you'll start to see how critical race theory and neo -Marxism are all in bed, and they're coming to the theological seminary near you.

01:09:53

In fact, unfortunately, they're already deeply ensconced there. They're already deeply ensconced there. So anyways,

01:10:00

I forgot to get to that, and I wanted to add that in. So there you go.

01:10:09

This will be the last program for this week. I leave tomorrow for Florida.

01:10:16

We have some presentations on Friday, the debate on Saturday. Please pray for the weather. I don't think that tropical depression thing, or it might be a hurricane by the time it hits, it's going the other direction, but the weather says it's still going to be raining cats and dogs most of the time there anyway, so that'll be an unusual experience for me, given that we had a few thunderstorms this monsoon that lasted about 45 seconds, you know, something like that.

01:10:43

Hey, we got rain! Yeah, 45 seconds. That's what desert people are. But we have the debate, and I certainly want that to go well.

01:10:53

It's a challenge. I mean, Mike and I obviously work very well together, but it also means you have half the time, and, you know, prayer really would be very, very useful, and I will be speaking on Sunday morning as well, and then flying home.

01:11:12

And so, Lord willing, next week's schedule should be regular, and I don't know, we might have something to talk about.

01:11:19

Maybe, you know, I don't know. Yeah, I think, yeah. I'm looking forward, though, to be honest with you.

01:11:31

I'm just not going to have access for long flights tomorrow, and it's not a direct flight, so not going to have much access to social media, and I'll be perfectly honest with you.

01:11:43

I went to bed last night, I was wondering whether I wanted to ever have access to social media again anyways. Some people think, well, you know, you love this stuff.

01:11:54

No, I don't. No one likes to be hated. No one likes to be vilified, lied about, cussed out.

01:12:00

It's one thing, unbelievers, you expect, but man, some of the responses from believers has just been, wow,

01:12:10

I just wouldn't want to do that to somebody else in that way, but hey, that's how things go.

01:12:16

So anyway, Lord willing, be back again next week, and like I said, probably have a little something to do when we get there.