Catching Up Since Travels to Scotland and Israel: Russell Moore, Brandi Miller, & Andy Stanley

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, and here we are back from a little trip overseas. And in fact, just to sort of kick things off, I had the opportunity of speaking at a number of interesting places.

One thing I want to try to arrange in the not-too-distant future. Before I went to Israel, I spent some time in Inverness, Scotland, and went out to the loch. And thankfully, it was a beautiful day when I and Dr. Nick Needham drove out to Loch Ness and just had a good time together at the loch.

It was beautiful, beautiful weather, it was clear, got some beautiful pictures. And I haven't had time to really work through them yet, but I had a great time out there. But before we did that, the very day I arrived in Inverness, Dr. Needham was teaching his church history class.

Dr. Needham said he had never done this before, where he and I just sort of discussed Cyprian between ourselves and then with the folks in the class. And it was sort of a stream of consciousness type thing.

And we just fed off of each other really, really well. And it was really interesting. The students really seemed to enjoy it. And so I may try to talk him into doing that here on the program. I think that would be really interesting for a lot of folks.

Maybe not Cyprian, but maybe Cyprian. Cyprian is a fascinating figure. All sorts of, I mean, just so important in the development of sacramental theology and Augustine having to wrestle with him. And, you know, North Africa was a very, very rich area as far as theological development and thought was concerned.

So I did that, had a really enjoyable time doing that, but then went to Israel and was pretty much with a group from Heritage Grace Church, Emilio Ramos' church there in Dallas. We went to a number of different places.

You know, as I think about it, getting to speak, I had to leave early, so I didn't get to do much in Jerusalem. Though I did, when I saw how close our hotel, the last night I was there in Jerusalem was to Gethsemane and the Temple Mount, I was trying to keep up with at least with my running while I was gone.

And I did a lot of running around the River Ness and Inverness. And then I, one of the reasons I did it was if you GPS that, if you put on Strava, then you'll always have sort of a map of where you were and you'll be able to find stuff.

So I had been running in the mornings by the Sea of Galilee and stuff like that. And so I had seen, you know, well, let's get a run in while we're in Jerusalem. Well, I mentioned to our guide, a really knowledgeable fellow named Donnie, I mentioned to him where I wanted to go.

And sort of just in passing, he said, well, yeah, okay, I know what route you're talking about, is you sort of run down through an Arab neighborhood. Oh, well, that was interesting that I just kept on running.

I was all alone. And you sort of have to wonder if folks had known who was running by, what would have been of that? But yeah, we, I ran down to the entrance to the Garden of Gethsemane. And that's down a hill, up the top of that hill, you could look out and I got at least a couple of shots of Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and things like that from fairly close, close range.

If I'd been able to stay the other days, I would have, you know, gone in there and gotten much better pictures, but I couldn't. So, but anyways, I did that and that was very interesting. Obviously, speaking on John 6, at Khafar Naum, as Donnie pointed out, is the best pronunciation of Capernaum, but no one would understand where in the world that was.

But right there on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, which is 15 feet low right now, there's been four years of drought in Israel and the Sea of Galilee is 15 feet below where it normally would be, which was sort of sad to see, honestly.

But speaking on John 6 at the synagogue Capernaum, can't beat that. And then speaking on the reliability of the transmission of scripture, right at Qumran and literally straight behind me, I took the picture, literally straight behind me was Cave 4, where the Isaiah Scroll, the Edsey Scrolls, the Isaiah Scroll was found.

I mean, it's just right there. It's pretty cool. And some people, I think, saw that I did climb Masada. Somebody had sent me a picture that I looked at and I realized later how this had misled me. And it showed stairs on the side of a cliff, just hanging on the side of a cliff.

And I was concerned that that was what I was going to have to deal with because I am terrified of heights, if I can fall off of something. And I've gotten over a lot of that. I mean, you talk to my dad, just driving out to Roosevelt, I think, when I was a teenager, I was plastered on the floor of the car.

I could not even handle being that close on turns. I've ridden my bike at high speed down that now. So I'm not nearly as bad as I once was, but I was a little nervous. And I mentioned this on Facebook, about two minutes into the climb, my heart went into an odd rhythm, which is called supra-atrial tachycardia.

But I've learned the good rhythms and the bad rhythms and the in-between rhythms. And so I just kept going. And I was the fourth person up in our group. Everybody got up before me were much younger than me.

But if I hadn't had that rhythm, I think I could have beat all of them. I really do. If anyone here in the Valley is wondering, it's almost identical as far as climb and distance to Squaw Peak, but not nearly as tough as Squaw Peak.

It's pretty much stairs. I mean, if you're not on a flat, even surface, you're on stairs, and the stairs are all the same height. Squaw Peak, it's, you know, you could have this step, and then you got to climb up rocks to, you know, the next day.

It's not, it's technically much more difficult. But we did Masada, and Masada is incredible. If you haven't seen the 1980s miniseries, Masada, you got to watch it. It's five and a half hours long, but it's well worth it.

If you don't know what happened at Masada, it's an incredible story. Look it up in Josephus if you want to read something about it. But it was just incredible there. But one of the interesting spots that I didn't expect to be as interesting as it was, was I spoke on Mount Carmel.

And everybody that speaks up there, you sort of have to speak out of First Kings Chapter 18, because Elijah, and the false prophets, and fire, and kill false prophets, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

You know, the day before, we had been at Megiddo, at Armageddon. Armageddon. I mean, right at the, this is Armageddon. Here we are. This is rather interesting to be at. Hi everybody, I'm at Armageddon.

Just gives you an idea of just how the language has developed. But here we are on Mount, what? Oh yeah, of course it took picture. You want a meme of me on, well, I didn't take pictures of myself, I just took pictures of what it looked like.

But yeah, it was, I learned a lot about archaeology and stuff. Again, our guide was very, very good. Very, very good. Not a Christian man, and you can certainly pray for him. He, sadly, has listened, has guided so many Christians over the years, and listened to the horrific mishandling of the biblical text.

And he knows it, because he knows the text really well. He said we were different, and I could tell he was listening. He said, you guys are different, and I appreciated that, and hoped that that would open up doors in the future.

But anyway, so, you know, 1 Kings chapter 18, this is what I focused upon for my group, as we gathered for, you know, I tried to keep it to 15 -20 minutes at these locations, because we only had so much time.

But I didn't focus upon, you know, the killing of the false prophets, all that kind of stuff. I focused on 1 Kings 18 .28, Elijah came near to all the people and said, how long will you hesitate between two opinions?

If Yahweh is God, follow him, but if Baal, follow him, but the people did not answer him a word. And so, what I focused upon was the exclusivity of the worship of the one true God, and how he was speaking to covenant people who had covenanted to worship the one true God, and yet they were engaging in syncretism.

They were trying to join together other things in their worship. We're still worshiping Yahweh, but does it really hurt to worship the Baals? You know, we did one walk, we did a lot of walking, a lot of walking.

We did one walk where we, in the city of Dan, the ancient city of Dan, saw gates there that were built 3 ,800 years ago. And we visited one of the high places built by Jeroboam. And, you know, you can see where the altar was, and how big the altar was, and this is one of the high places that are specifically mentioned in the Tanakh, in the Old Testament text.

And you just think of the reality that these people were dividing their worship. They were sort of covering their bases, you know, what if the Canaanites have got some, you know, we need our crops to be good, to have a good year, so let's worship Yahweh, but hey, let's worship the Baals too.

And Elijah is saying, this is not possible. And then I made application to our situation today. It's very easy to contextualize it to the ancient context and go, well, you know, sure, sure is good. We don't have high places today, right?

And the reality is we have lots of high places. We have lots of high places. I would suggest that very often, not only the university, but in some senses, even the seminary can become a high place, where you divide your worship, you divide your loyalties, you forget what 1 Corinthians chapter 1 says, that the wisdom of the cross is foolishness to the world, the message of the cross is foolishness.

There are a lot of ways in which Christians are tempted to a form of syncretism. And, and of course, almost everywhere you go, almost any site that we visited, there is a church built on that location.

And sometimes it was Orthodox, most of the time it was Roman Catholic, going back to Byzantine, the Byzantine period. And there was all sorts of idolatry all around us, but it was specifically Christianized idolatry, if you can do such a thing.

And so it was fascinating to recognize that as well. But just pressed home this idea that you cannot hesitate between two opinions. If Yahweh is God, follow him. If Baal is, follow him. But you can't pretend to do both.

It's not possible. And that remains true to this day. So yeah, it was a fascinating time. It was warm. It was warm. I was soaked to the skin by the time I got to the top of Masada. Half of that was the heart rate, but it was still really, really warm there.

The rainy season's coming, but it hasn't come yet. And they need a good raining season. It's, like I said, dry as a bone in Israel right now. But yeah, it was a great time. Yes, someone just noticed it must be cooling off in Phoenix because I broke out the Coogees today.

I looked at a temperature map of the United States and there's a dip of really cold air into the East and New England. And then there's this weird circle around Arizona. Yeah, we've had the wettest and hence one of the coolest Octobers.

And I missed all that rain, but part of it was a hurricane. That does happen. We do get hurricanes. They come up the Gulf of Mexico and spin into Arizona. And hey, we're happy to have the rain. But hey, it helped the reservoirs.

No question about it. We're very, very happy about that. But yeah, it's actually only supposed to get up to 70 today, so it's gonna be in the 60s most of that. That's actually cool enough that I can wear a Coogee for the dividing line.

So we broke them out. Some people are going, oh no. But we only have a few months we can do it. We only have a few months we can do it. So we got to do what we got to do. I don't know if you saw, Ligonier has a site called the State of Theology.

It's literally thestateoftheology .com. And I don't know who the evangelicals are. I don't know how you even define that. But they, every two years, starting in 2016, so this is the second one, they do a poll on their own.

I know Barna and Pew and all those people do all sorts of this kind of stuff. But they're doing it. And what it demonstrates to me is that when we say America is filled with Christians, we aren't using terminology in the appropriate fashion.

America is filled with people who think they're Christians, but aren't even close to being Christians. Some of the questions that they asked, statement number 11, everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.

And 52 of evangelicals polled agreed with that. 53 disagreed and 3 were like, huh? That's the not sure category. God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

51 agree, 42 disagree. Okay. Now this is interesting. God counts a person as righteous, not because of one's works, but only because of one's faith in Jesus Christ. 91 agree. I guess that's what marks an evangelical.

Doesn't know anything about the Trinity, but at least know justification by faith. There you go. Now this is interesting. There is one true God in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

97%. But do they understand what that means? Do they have any functional understanding of that? No, because check this out. Statement number six, Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.

Now, by the way, who teaches that specifically? I mean, this is the exact doctrinal statement of a particular false religion called the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. This is what Jehovah's Witnesses believe.

That Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. That's Jehovah's Witnesses, Michael the Archangel. 18 disagreed with the statement. 78 agreed. 78 of evangelicals agreed that Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.

Does that not tell you what's missing in the teaching and preaching of the church? You know, I said back in, when did I write that? 96, 97, somewhere around there. 20 years ago, I wrote in the Forgotten Trinity, when was the last time you heard a sermon on the doctrine of the Trinity?

And I mean, going into depth, the relationship with the persons, anything like that, it's exceptionally and sadly rare. And so, as a result, you can see what happens there. It's ugly. Switching gears, it is very, very interesting to note that both secular and religious media, in responding to and analyzing the statement on social justice in the gospel, have, they've approached it in the exact same way that they approach most other things, and that is with a huge bias.

And so, they're more than happy to talk to the critics of the statement, not so happy to talk to the actual people who maybe wrote it, were involved in editing it, that kind of thing. Has it been difficult for you to be fending off all the people trying to get hold of me to comment on this?

Yeah, Rich says no. It's not like it's to track us down. It wouldn't be difficult at all. So, you go and you talk to Thabiti Anubili, you go and you talk to Russell Moore. We already know what Russell Moore and Thabiti think about the statement.

Russell Moore has liked a tweet that identified the statement as stupid. So, what do you expect? What are you really looking for? But a really sharp lady from Fox News, I had not heard of her before, but she's with Fox News.

She has a blog or a webcast or something under the Fox News banner, and she was interviewing Russell Moore on some book he's done on the family or something. And then toward the end, she turned to the issue of social justice, the social justice statement, specifically our statement.

And it was fascinating because she brought up the fact that one of the original signatories of the book, the statement, I'm sorry, was Votie Balcombe. And she clearly, she's Black, clearly knows who Votie Balcombe is.

And so it's like, why would Votie Balcombe sign this in light of what you said? And you can just tell, you know, Russell Moore was a Democratic Party operative for many, many years. He was in politics primarily for the Democratic Party.

And I don't know if he just saw the light or just what, but he still utilizes those skills and how he answers a lot of questions. And you might say, well, being the head of the RLC, you've got to be, got to be skilled at how to respond to media types or whatever, whatever.

But she saw through what he was saying and the deflections that he offered. He didn't even want to talk about Votie Balcombe, and he certainly didn't want to talk about the substance of the statement either.

So let's take a listen to what he had to say. It's just a couple of minutes long. It was fascinating, and I'd like to, I'd like to respond to it. And so here we go.

Too much of a detour here, but I do want to talk about this. This is recent anti-social justice statement. This is something created by Pastor John MacArthur, I think, out of.

Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. Dr. MacArthur is a signatory. There are many people who were involved in the writing of it, and Dr. MacArthur is a signatory to it. But he was, he didn't write it, and it's not just a, you know, something that he put together and said, here, you guys go do something with this.

That's not what happened, but that's sort of how.

It's being represented at times. I mean, I don't think it's that controversial, but I just want to read a part of it. It says, we are deeply concerned that values borrowed from secular culture are currently undermining scripture.

We're going to see a really good example of that.

In just a few minutes. I'm going to be playing a video from Reunion 2018, and if you want to see exactly how that works, how that is happening, how that is prevalent in the church's experience today, you're going to see it.

And notice he said, it's not really that controversial. Well, what was the response from people like the BD on the first day? There's nothing to this. No one disagrees with this. Well, if no one disagrees with it, then why not support it?

Well, it's because, well, we do disagree with it, because it's not so much what it says is what it doesn't say, or it doesn't follow along with the narrative that we're trying to promote. And, you know, it's not using the buzzwords, and in reality, we don't really agree when it says that the final norm has to be scripture.

Because, you know, we're obviously not functioning that way. We are bringing in all sorts of concepts of power and oppression, and it's all from politics, and we know what kind of politics it's from. And so since we're using this stuff, and we're promoting this stuff, and you're not, then that's really where the issue is.

But we don't want to get into an argument with you about the Bible stuff, because I think they realize there's no way to really argue that. People have.

Tried. It didn't go very well. In the area of race and ethnicity, manhood and womanhood, and human sexuality, that's just the beginning. You can go online to figure out the rest. Did your reaction to this statement, I mean, is it a good thing?

Is it not? What do you think? Well, I disagree.

With the statement because of, I mean, the crafters of the statement have said what it is.

They're intending to do with it. We really don't have... Okay, now what does that mean? The crafters of the statement, I disagree with the statement because of what the crafters have said they want to do with it.

What have we said we want to do with it? I think that's just an open way of saying, well, I don't like it because it disagrees with my narrative, but I can't criticize it. It's like Keller. It's the speech act thing.

It's not what it says. It's just that since you're not buying into all the systemic racism stuff and discussions of racial reconciliation and all the other stuff that's flowing in with all the egalitarianism and fundamental realignments as to the supremacy of biblical exegesis over...

Look, almost everybody on the other side is now buying into this narrative that there's really no such thing as an objective Christian theology. It's all contextual. It's all your group has their theology and there's white theology and black theology and all the rest of this stuff, and we don't believe there's white and black theology.

We believe that God has made a revelation and that is an objective reality. And yes, if you're in a particular culture, you need to be very, very careful about cultural lenses that will twist things, and that's why you need to do serious exegesis.

But that cultural experience is not enough to say that there is not a true and sound theology. Again, we're going to hear someone saying, that's all, they're just going to throw all that out, and we're saying, hey, we're standing firm on where we were.

Again, 20 years ago, this wouldn't have been even slightly controversial, and the people on the other side who have now gotten woke will admit that 20 years ago it wouldn't have been slightly controversial, and they'll admit they're the ones that have been changed because they woke.

They got woke. And what that means is a fundamental foundational shift in how you understand scripture, the foundations of interpretation, how this applies to everything. They're the ones that have changed, not us.

We're still back here going, excuse me, but there's a reason, there are lots of good foundational reasons not to be changing, and to recognize that most of this is very, very, very associated with a western situation, and especially an American situation.

A lot of us travel overseas and recognize that much of this wokeness is absurdness when transported out of America into other places. You know, all that kind of stuff flows into this, but I disagree with the statement.

Doesn't ever say, doesn't ever cite it, it's wrong biblically here, nothing. And does this start to sound familiar? It almost sounds like maybe some people have gotten together and talked about how to do this.

If Tim Keller's taking shots at it, and Russell Moore's taking shots at it, but they do not dare to come out exegetically and criticize the actual wording, maybe there's some discussion going on on their side as to how to do this, and instead to try to shift the narrative.

And well, you know, it's what they want to do with it. What do you mean, what do we want to do with it? We want to warn the church about incoming sources of exegetical authority that are utterly invalid and that are very, very, very dangerous.

You want to defend that? I'm not really sure what you're meaning by, I disagree, but it's because they've said what they want to do, and that's what we want to do. That's what we've said we want to.

We really don't have a disagreement largely about justice and social engagement. That's really sort of substitute words in here because many of the people who signed the statement are hyperactive when it comes to all kinds of social issues.

What we're really talking about is race.

No, we're not. No, we're not. This is Moore's, this is his meme. This is his, you know, this is how you try to counteract the statement without actually dealing with the statement, is you say, these people just want to go back to Jim Crow.

They just want to say we shouldn't talk about this stuff, even though we talked about this stuff. We're talking about this stuff. We're just not buying the narrative of the neo-Marxist narrative of oppression and all that.

And again, I'm going to play something where all this stuff just comes flowing out, and if you want to sit there and say, oh, no one's really saying that. Yes, they are. And you know it. You're well aware of it.

But this also would mean that all the stuff about homosexuality, they didn't, they threw that in there for nefarious purposes. No, we didn't. I have an article due, I think, today or tomorrow on that, which I've got to get to, on that section of, there's a whole series being written by the people who wrote the statement itself, expanding upon certain aspects, well, every statement, every one of the sections of the statement.

And I've already written one of those. I'm writing another one. So I've written two of the, I'm not, 14 or something like that. About a seventh of them I'm writing. Anyway, so this idea is, let's not worry about the gender and sexuality and homosexuality apart, because who's really going to disagree with that?

Well, maybe the people at Revoice, maybe, possibly. And the people that are pushing egalitarianism, maybe. But it's just all about race and all these people want to do, they're just a bunch of Jim Crow people, which of course is absurd on its face.

But that's the narrative that's being thrown out there. And it's in very, very, and I'm not sure what it means to be hyperactive on social issues. But basically, a statement, instead of engaging with what social justice should mean, the concepts of biblical justice versus social justice, what social justice has come to mean.

Samuel Say wrote an excellent article that unpacked what this social justice stuff is, and how it is political, it is equality of outcome. There's no question about how social justice is being used. And these religious folks are cooperating, evidently purposefully, in trying to make it sound like social justice is just simply biblical justice being lived out in society, when that's not what social justice is in our society today, and that's not the direction these things are going at all.

I'd like to be able to give the benefit of the doubt on that, but it's pretty tough when they will not even honestly interact with what you've written. It's sort of hard to go, well, you know...

And so I think we have a long, long-lasting issue within evangelicalism of people saying, let's not talk about issues of racial reconciliation and unity and justice,.

That would be a distraction from the gospel. Okay, so that's the idea of what is going on, is let's not talk about these things because that's a distraction from the gospel. What the statement states is that adding concepts such as the social justice emphasis upon equality of outcomes, teaching groups that they are oppressed by other groups and dividing both society and church on the basis of that, this kind of stuff, adding that to the gospel is extremely dangerous.

We're talking about race, and we're talking about ethnicity, and we're saying there is no such thing as race, there are ethnic groups, but we're all of one father, we're all of Adam. And I've provided extensive discussion, biblical discussion, that I would challenge Russell Moore to interact with exegetically in regards to that highly problematic phrase, racial reconciliation, from a biblical perspective.

Reconciliation is a Bible term, and it's not being used by Russell Moore in a biblical way. He is allowing other sources to deeply influence his utilization of this terminology. That's a fact. He won't interact with what we've said, he won't interact with the, he seems to know that we've provided, we're providing this ongoing publication of expansions upon things and explaining things, they want to interact with it because it doesn't fit the narrative.

And I just have to sit back and go, that's how the left works in politics, too. And we're getting the exact same thing here. Is it a coincidence? Just simply coincidence, maybe? Nah, it's not coincidence.

Not coincidence at all. That's exactly what was happening in the 19th century as it related to human slavery. So that's exactly. So what's he doing now? Has he even attempted to honestly look at those of us who wrote the statement and say, see, they're all a bunch of Jim Crow, white supremacists, and that's what they want.

And that's what this is all about. No, he doesn't even try. He knows, and again, this is how the left operates. He knows, he's been asked a question, he's now answering a question that hasn't been asked as if he is answering that question.

And so he's got plausible deniability. Oh, I know that the folks involved with that aren't into all that kind of, you know, no, no, no. Then why is he saying what he's saying? He's saying we're doing the exact same thing that's been done in the past.

And we're not. What's been done in the past did not involve entire statements on the subject of ethnicity, everyone having the Imago Dei. Point me, Dr. Moore, point me to the people back at that time or any of these time periods you're talking about that put together statements like this.

Could you do that for me? Because you know you can't. You're not even going to try. This was really disappointing because, you know, my first encounter with the name Russell Moore was intimately associated with Albert Moeller.

They were, I don't know what the specific relation was, but they were peas in a pod. I think this was before ERLC. And so to hear this kind of stuff, and to just see the political rather than biblical interaction is really troubling.

It's sad to watch.

Exactly what was happening in the 1920s and 1950s as it related to Jim Crow, and it persists among.

Us. And it persists among us, evidently in this statement. Now that is an amazing accusation. And just as the left loves to give amazing accusations without a scintilla of reasoned evidence, you just throw it out there, you slander somebody, and then if you're challenged, well, I wasn't, I didn't mean to say that.

That's exactly what you've got going on here. Not even an attempt to say, to even begin to reasonably defend the assertion that, well, they're still amongst us. Here they are. Now the lady's going to catch him on this because she's going to say, you mean you're saying Votie Balcombe's doing that?

And just watch him pull a Neo from the Matrix, dodging the bullets thing. You know what I mean? That type of thing, that is exactly what he does. Listen.

It's where most evangelicals are. I think it's one of the reasons why the statement itself.

Really didn't have that broad of a reach. That broad of a reach, he well knows, believe me, because he's behind a lot of it. Here is the man behind so much of this saying, well, there's only 10 ,000 odd people.

It just hasn't had that broad of a reach. And he knows, he knows intimately well, because he's a part of doing it. That if you are a Southern Baptist and you work for a Southern Baptist entity, you know that if you sign that statement, you are putting yourself in danger, in danger of your funding, in danger of your job.

Why would that happen? Well, we know the 11th commandment in the Southern Baptist Convention, thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Southern Baptist. And since Russell Moore is a Southern Baptist, he's the head of the ERLC and he's pushing the woke church, then you cannot respond to it.

So let's just ignore them. There's only been 10 ,000 odd people. There are so many more that want to sign it, that want to do this, to want to say, yes, this is important, this needs to be said. But at the same time, try looking at the signature list and pretend that that actually doesn't have reach, and it doesn't have some rather important people that have signed that document.

This is the, oh, well, you know, they're just, you know, they're the bygone, you know, we're moving past that. Can you hear it? I can hear it. It's real clear to me. ...port among evangelicals,.

Because most evangelicals understand the Bible spends a lot of time talking about.

God's impartiality about... Okay. Now, these are arguments that are supposed to be against us. In the context of this answer, these are arguments that are supposed to be against us. Anyone who has read the document knows that once again, you are getting pure straw man politics from Russell Moore.

Pure straw man politics. Because he was just saying evangelicals, it hasn't gotten any traction, which it has, but it hasn't gotten any traction because evangelicals realize these things, which logically and rationally, if this was meant to be a logical, rational presentation, would be the assertion that these people don't.

And anyone who's read the document knows that this is straw manning. Okay. You know, here, oh, you about got hung up there. Straw manning, you know, I didn't, didn't bring it, bring it in, but the there's, there's straw man.

And that's what you're getting is we're going to misrepresent it. And it's, it's like, I'm listening to Tucker Carlson talk to, you know, he brings these wild eyed leftists on. He had one last night, uh, or the night before last, when I was listening, I forget which one it was, but it was, he was talking something about Russia or something.

And it was hilarious. You just knew what he was going to say. He, he just, he could not get out of the box he was in. You know, uh, you just, you just, after a while you start figuring out this is what the left is all about.

Well, this is what Russell Moore is doing. It's the exact same thing. It's just straw man, straw men are us. As long as my lips are moving, I'm saying something important here. Well, no, not if you're not accurately represented.

And of course, let's take the, take it out of the political realm. This is not how you're supposed to handle your fellow Christian believers, people who are ministers in churches, people who have extensive experience in teaching in seminaries, including Southern Baptist seminaries.

Uh, this is not how you're supposed to do it. If you disagree with what they're saying, take apart their arguments, address their arguments. Don't do the word, you know, speech act stuff and, and all the rest of this stuff deal with what they've actually said and done.

But that's not the narrative in.

Western culture today. About the church being a, a, a, a reconciled community.

Um, who started long before the document ever saw the light of day talking about the nature of Christian unity, providing half an hour long exegetical discussions from Colossians three or Ephesians four.

Hmm. Have you heard anything? I've listened to Russell Moore's webcasts and I'm just going to be perfectly straight up front. There is nothing in those webcasts that come, that comes to a 10th of the level of exegesis that has been offered against this, this movement that he is helping to spearhead.

Not a 10th, not a 10th. There's been all sorts of, well, let's look at some old Testament stories and make applications, not let's dig into the syntax and grammar of the Greek in Pauline texts that are specifically on the subject.

No, no, no, no, no. We don't get that. Not from Russell Moore. Uh, it's, it's just,.

Reconciled community, uh, across races and ethnicities and about God's concern for justice in the public arena. And the, the church has a responsibility to speak to the.

Conscience. And so the sort of mentality, uh, here. So the mentality here is the opposite of all that. That's a lie. Okay. I want to be straightforward here. That's an untruth. And given the Dr. Moore is an intelligent man and he has access to all the information to misrepresent the intentions and words of someone else is to engage in a lie.