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

Well, 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, and so we did a...

Well, 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... 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, 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. He says, you sort of run down through an Arab neighborhood. Well, that was interesting.

That... I just kept on a 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 shots of Temple Mount and the

Al -Aqsa Mosque and things like that from fairly close range.

If I had 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 Kafarna 'um, 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 at Capernaum, can't beat that.

And then speaking on the reliability of the text of Scripture and 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 NC Scrolls, the THE Isaiah Scroll, was found. I mean, it's just right there.

Pretty cool. And some people, I think, saw that I did climb Masada.

Somebody had sent me a picture that I had 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 talked 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. 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.

I was the fourth person up in our group. Everybody who 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 thing.

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're sort of, 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, the, the, this is Armageddon. Here we are. This is rather interesting to be at.

Hi everybody, I'm at Armageddon. Just, just gives you an idea of just how the language has, has developed.

But here we are in Mount, Mount, what? Oh yeah, of course it took pictures. You want a meme of me on, 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 horrific mishandling of the biblical text.

And he, 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 hope that, that would open up doors in the future.

But anyway, so, you know, First 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, I didn't focus upon, you know, the killing of the false prophets, all that kind of stuff.

I focused on First 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 could see where the altar was, and how big the altar was, 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, 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 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 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.

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, great time. 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. Okay, 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, I imagine. 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.

So 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 gotta do what we gotta 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 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, is the huh?

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 you 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, he's 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? Specific, I mean, going into depth, the relationship with the divine persons, anything like that, it's exceptionally and sadly rare.

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 and 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 difficult 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 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 Vody Balkam. And she clearly, she's

Black, clearly knows who Vody Balkam is. And so it's like, why would Vody Balkam 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 in 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 Vody Balkam. 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 is, 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 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 she said, it's not really that controversial. Well, what was the response from people like the media 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 as 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? Is it? 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 that.

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 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 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.

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.

Does this sound familiar? 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.

Well, 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 do. We really don't have a disagreement largely about justice and social engagement.

That's really a 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 how you try to counteract the statement without actually dealing with the statement.

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 neo -Marxist narrative of oppressor and oppression and all that.

Again, I'm going to play something where all this stuff just comes flowing out, and if you want to sit there and say, ah, no one's really saying that.

Yes, they are. You know it. You're well aware of it. 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. 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.

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.

So about a seventh of them I'm writing. Anyway, so this idea is, let's not worry about the gender and sexuality and homosexuality part, 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, you know, 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 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're providing this ongoing publication of expansions upon things and explaining things.

He won't 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. It's 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 statements 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.

It 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...

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 my first encounter with the name

Russell Moore was intimately associated with Albert Moeller. They were, I don't know what the specific relationship 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. 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 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, that's what this, that's what they're still amongst us.

Here they, here they are. That's there. There they are. Now, the lady's going to catch him on this because you can say, you mean you're saying

Votie Balcom'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's, that is exactly what he does.

It's, 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 or of.

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 is 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 ahead of the

ERLC and he's pushing the woke church, then you cannot respond to it. So let's just ignore them.

You know, 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, this is important.

This, this needs to be said. Um, but at the same time, try looking at the, at the signature list and, 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, this is the, oh, well, you know, they're just, you know, they're, they're, they're the bygone, you know, we're, we're moving past that.

That, can you hear it? I can hear it. It's real clear to me. It's important among, among evangelicals, because most evangelicals understand the

Bible spends a lot of time, uh, talking about, uh, 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 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.

Uh, cause, cause he was just saying evangelicals, it, it, it hasn't gotten, gotten any traction, um, 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.

Uh, straw manning, you know, the, 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 for 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 representing. 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. 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.

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.

No. 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 that 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.

I'm sorry. That's the only way to describe it. Unfortunately, in the politically charged atmosphere today, there is the concept that you can use untruths as long as it promotes the greater good of your entire movement.

And that's the only explanation I can have here. Because to try to paint us as, as Jim Crow slave owners, as he's doing here, um, while misrepresenting the fact that the statement itself says so many of these things in regards to what justice is and, and how the scripture speaks.

I don't even know how you do it. I, you just must assume that your audience is just never even going to check out what

I just must be the thinking. I, I don't know how to get away with it. Artificially divides, uh, what

I do individually, uh, from what I do together with other people.

This is part of the meme. It is a false meme. Um, there is nothing in the statement that divides what

I do individually with what we do as a group. It does insist upon the fact that reconciliation is accomplished by the gospel, not by governmental entities.

It does insist and therefore reject the insertion of extra biblical concepts, such as oppressor oppression, power dynamics, and all the other stuff that is a part of the elites today, but has nothing to do with a scriptural biblical worldview.

So it rejects all that. That is far different than the false allegation being made by Russell Moore in these words.

Way that, uh, the old and new testaments simply do not. My question. Now she sees through this.

She, she lives in a, in a world where she has to deal with people who fill a minute with verbiage without actually saying anything.

So she sees through this. I wonder because Votie Bockham is, is one of the signers.

I mean, he's an African -American and he's a, you know, former like football player and he's a pretty, you know, good speaker around.

So that's why I was confused about the, the race angle of this. Well, I mean, that's, that's primarily what, what we're talking about here is, is there, uh, is there a responsibility for the church, uh, to talk about not just personally an individually and in my heart, do

I have hatred toward other people, but also what's our responsibility, uh, to talk about, uh, those, those unique sorts of pressures and structures that exist, uh, within, uh, within society that we might not even, even think about.

So that's the concept of systemic racism. What does that have to do with Votie Bockham?

You see, to actually answer the question that he was asked would require him to comment upon the consistency of what

Votie has said for years on this subject and how that's reflected in the wording of the statement itself.

But he's not going to go there. He does not want to read a word from the statement because that might get people to actually go read it.

That, that might get people to, to do something more than just accept his Ipsodixit in regards to what it's actually all about.

So she's raised the question, he's not answering the question, and she's going to see that.

You think of what, for instance, uh, James does with the church when he writes in and he talks about personal issues of sin, guard your tongue.

He also talks about, some of you have hired workers in your fields that you are, that you are oppressing.

God hears their cries, which is completely consistent with the Psalms, with the prophets, with Jesus himself.

Right. Now, I totally understand and I think, but that has nothing to do with what I actually asked the question, you know, being an

African American myself, I do understand that some of people of color get in a quagmire when they're talking about race because they've been so mistreated.

They have, their lives have been, um, you know, in almost this, this, this prison because they can never escape from their skin color, cannot escape from that.

And so they've had to deal with the reality that you kind of live in a white world, you know, and then that's hard.

But from the history of my family and the history of other African American families, we also know that that has given us a certain strength that have come out of this and it's okay.

And so that's why I understood Votie Bauckham's inclusion in that list because he says, too many of our young people are starting to use it as an excuse not to succeed, not to study harder, not to, you know, um, you know, not blame anybody else for your, for your downfall and that has helped them succeed.

And, and we kind of feel that sometimes white people don't get that, that if you give them an excuse, they're going to take the excuse.

And, and this is a problem we see in young African Americans. So I don't think it's an either or, uh, to say we have personal.

And now she just made a really good point and it is a point obviously that Votie does make and has made numerous times.

And she's well aware of it. Maybe she saw the 2014 thing where it was him against an entire room full of social justice warriors and, and he, he made these points.

Um, is, is more going to recognize the validity of that point?

Well, he's saying, well, it's not an either or it's a both and what is that supposed to mean?

There is a consistency between the truth that she just enunciated, the truth that Votie has enunciated.

That's the same truth. And the, the essence of the statement that he says he's disagreeing with.

So he, he can't, he can't admit that. So he's got to go, well, yeah, but, and then immediately move on to something else.

To say, well, you have personal responsibility. You also have to address an issue of, of impartiality and justice in the public arena.

It's both of those two things together. And so of course, are you always going to have people who are going to, are going to simply blame the situations around them?

Sure. You'll always have people in any arena that will do that. That doesn't mean that there are not genuine problems.

The same thing. But there are many in the

Black community that are recognizing, I mean, when you have a community that votes 95 % the same direction, then you have groupthink going on.

It's that groupthink that we are the oppressed. They are the oppressors. This divides us from everybody else.

We can't get ahead. We are the only ethnic group that has to, everybody has to get together to help us.

And she's saying, you have to get past that or you're never going to get anywhere. And that's what Votie's been saying.

And that's what all sorts of, of, of Black people are saying who think clearly on this subject, but it goes against the narrative.

You're not allowed to say that. She's, she's seen it. She hears it. She knows

Votie's saying it. And she's asking him, so where's the, where's the disconnect here? Where's, where's it coming from?

When it comes to say abortion, I, I once heard a. Okay. And he goes off into some thing there.

We've got other things to look at, but there, that was again, why not, why not talk to us about our statement?

I mean, if we were getting, if we had already been given all the opportunity in the world to explain all this stuff, okay, that can understand talking to the opponents or something like that, but it seems like the only people that are getting any air are the opponents rather than, you know,

I, I mean, but that's how, that's how the left works. That's how media works in, in the land today.

Big time. Okay. So earlier today I was linked to a video that came up in a conversation and this is,

I think, one of the best examples of how, you know, some of us have started looking at the book and when you start reading it, it just, you just keep feeling, where is this coming from?

There's, there's, there's a filter, there's sources here that are not being openly stated, but man, they just determine every reading of every text of scripture.

And, and there's just parts of the narrative that, you know, okay, there was a

Bible verse quoted, but also now we're over here, where did this all come from? Um, this illustrates it very clearly.

Uh, it's from reunion 2018. Um, and the young woman is, well, you'll see what she's talking about on the video.

It's a little distracting because evidently she was going over time or something because the band piecemeal, like one person at a time starts getting up.

I guess that's one way of telling speakers you're out of time is when you're standing in the middle of where the band is and pretty soon the entire band is seated right around you, it sort of communicates to you that might be time to wrap up, maybe.

Um, I don't know. But, um, I don't know almost anything about reunion 2018, to be honest with you, but, uh, it evidently was a couple days ago, maybe over the weekend.

And, um, so what you're going to hear here is, is a young black woman, a

Christian, talking about white theology and black theology and all sorts of stuff like this.

Very firmly, there is clearly a, a, a full, um, system in place here.

The question is, is it a biblical system or do we see here a unbiblical system with unbiblical sources of authority making room for biblical passages and biblical terminology, but coming up with something that the apostles themselves never would have recognized?

Uh, I think that's what we end up with, but, um, let's take a look and a listen, um, here.

Because this happens with race all the time, that black people are bad tippers. If I'm a server, this assumption impacts the service that I get.

Thus, when I give bad service under the assumption of a bad tip, I indeed receive the bad tip and confirm my notion that black people are bad tippers.

So when we talk about theology or Christian leadership, a similar idea plays out. Now I'm, I'm a little concerned immediately, um, that,

I mean, I, I've heard stories about all sorts of groups being bad tippers, that, that Christians are bad tippers on Sundays.

And, and now she's saying that the blacks are bad tippers. Wow. I hadn't heard that one. I don't know.

Uh, wouldn't it be possible that there would be blacks who are good tippers and blacks who are bad tippers?

Might it be in certain areas? And when I go to Europe, for example, completely different context as far as tipping.

There are places I go where I tip somebody, they look at me like, what are you trying to do? You know, like they start looking around for the camera. That's trying to capture them doing something wrong or something.

Uh, there's, it's just not done. Um, so could it, could it be geographical?

I'm just concerned that taking something like that and trying to apply it to Christian leadership and theology and stuff like that might not be the best direction to go.

White people can claim that their theology is the supreme truth. And then in having access to spaces to write books on it or have leadership positions to back it up, reify the notions that their theology is the truth because the resources and the legacy of leadership backs it up.

Okay. So I think what she's saying is, uh, first of all, we have white people. I don't know who white people are.

Anglo, uh, I guess all Germans, Italians, Scandinavians, British, French, are

Spanish white, are Spanish Spain white? Because it's Europe. So are they white people too?

I don't know. Because this, uh, this absurd utilization of the term white today, it, it's so irrational that it has no meaning.

I mean, if you, if you try to bring logic to this and ask for definitions of terms, you can't because this, this movement can't answer these questions and it's not even supposed to try.

In fact, I've had people saying that even my insistence upon demanding logic is a white thing.

No, it's a human thing. That's how God made us. We live in his world.

Logic is just thinking his thoughts after him coherently. The way that, you know, come let us reason together.

That's, that's, that's biblical. Uh, anyway. Um, so the idea

I guess is, um, that you've got white people do theology and they call it objective theology, call it objective truth.

And since they can write books about it and they're in leadership positions, then it just becomes true by default.

Now, the big question I'm going to have throughout this is, is there Christian theology?

Is there an objective divine truth? Let's ask, is there an objective divine truth about the Trinity? About the, uh, the hypostatic union?

About the incarnation? Is, is there an objective truth about justification? About the atonement?

Um, are there objective truths about these things? Is scripture perspicuous?

Can it be interpreted, uh, consistently, uh, so as to communicate the same truths across linguistic barriers?

I get the feeling that in, for many individuals, whether they realize it or not, that for many individuals today, they're, they're accepting unknowingly the idea that no, scripture is not perspicuous and no, it cannot communicate an objective reality.

I mean, I hope y 'all realize how absolutely devastating this is to Christian apologetics.

It's one of the reasons I address this. I mean, there's, there's no way to engage in Christian apologetics if you've already given away the store and basically said, well, you know, we, we don't, we don't know.

We can't say, my arguments might be valid in this society, but it might be valid in another society.

It's perfectly proper to recognize that there are forms of argumentation that are considered to be more convincing in different sociological situations.

But the reality is that what we should do is to call those sociological situations to the bar of logic and rationality.

And that comes from the higher bar of scripture itself, rather than sacrificing the idea that there, there really isn't any objective

Christian truth. It is a dangerous thing, my friend, my friends, to accept the idea that there is such thing as white theology.

I reject wholeheartedly the assertion that when you apply consistent rules of hermeneutics to the original languages of the scripture, that the result is white theology or black theology or tan theology or whatever you want to call it.

It's God's revelation. To call that white theology is a grave error.

And I'll call it what it is. It's a grave error. It needs to be pointed out. No such thing as white theology.

Anybody who tries to create a theology in defense of white supremacy or black supremacy or Chinese supremacy or Brazilian supremacy or South or Antarctic supremacy is abusing the scriptures and sinning in the process.

Okay. So I reject the idea of white theology, period.

End of discussion. I demand, if you're going to use a term, back it up. Don't just simply assume it.

Prove it. Prove it. Anyway.

Wow. This gets sticky, right? Because it actively marginalizes all other people, groups, theology as optional or elected rather than the core of who

God is. Okay. Now catch that. Is there something I need to know? Oh.

Okay. Well, I can't read Twitter and do this same time. I got to go back. I'm sorry. I got interrupted there.

Reify the notions that their theology is the truth because the resource and the legacy of leadership backs it up. Wow. This gets sticky, right?

Because it actively marginalizes all other people, groups, theology as optional or elected.

Now, did you catch that? All other people's groups, theology. Do you see how this is going from ethnicity upward to theology rather than theology being revealed by God and then all ethnicities made the image of God then have the responsibility to respond to the revelation that comes from God?

It's backwards. Dangerously backwards. Non -functionally backwards.

This cannot work. The only thing this can create is abject division, atomization, breaking up, breaking up of the

Christian church. And we've been saying this is divisive. Yeah, it's divisive. And here you see exactly why.

But we're actually listening to them announcing it for themselves. You hear all these people, oh yeah.

And not all these, most of these people aren't black. They're all, oh yeah, that's great.

Okay. Rather than the core of who God is, because if we are all made in the image of God, then every image of God has to contribute to the creative experience of theology.

Now, did you catch that? We're all made in the image of God, and so our images add up together to something.

Again, it's coming from down here and trying to move upwards. You can't do that. There is an objective revelation from God. That's a reality.

That's reality. That's the biblical teaching. I mean, this sounds, you know, it's done in such a cadence as to sound like you need to believe this, but if you, what we have to do, and this is not popular to do.

I'm going to get picked on for this. I'm going to get attacked for this. How dare you attack a black woman? Why?

Because I'm saying, let's stop it. Let's start it. Let's listen to it, and let's analyze it biblically, historically, rationally, logically.

See if it's actually a sound argument. You can't do that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're of the wrong color to do that.

Well, if you say that, you're demonstrating you don't have a clue what the Bible says about the church. Nothing.

You don't know. You've already drunk the poison. This is particularly dangerous in contextual, in this case, white theology when it's mixed with power.

White theology when mixed with power. Okay. Do you remember anything biblical about theology based on skin tone or culture?

Do you remember anything about power dynamics and oppressor oppression dynamics and all the rest of this kind of stuff?

I don't either. I mean, people try to read it into things, but it's not any kind of meaningful narrative.

We know where this narrative comes from, and it doesn't come from scripture. It comes from a critical theory that has as its fundamental goal, the division and breaking up of society and societal institutions.

And so, the intention is to bring division within the church, and that's exactly what it's accomplishing.

My mentor uses this metaphor. White Christians often see their theology and central questions like a

Christmas tree that is a complete structure of central importance and of sound theology on which marginalized people's identities, including people of color's theologies, are ornamental or decorative.

To hear that, again, I reject. No argument has been presented.

There are so many unfounded assumptions in this young lady's speech that it's what makes it very difficult to communicate.

As if black marginalized people's theologies, what is that?

You don't get to have a theology, and I don't either. God gets to determine theology, not me.

There ain't no white theology, black theology, or any of the rest of this stuff, so you're in an echo chamber.

Have you ever taken this outside the echo chamber to really see if it works, or is this only just something where everyone who's already bought into this stuff just talks to each other back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and just amplifies it?

I mean, that analogy, I don't know who your mentor is, but you need a different mentor, whoever it is, because that's just, where does any of this come from?

It certainly doesn't come from Scripture. However, that is not the case. For me, theology is a lot more like food.

Each people group takes ingredients and makes something of them that reflects who they are as people, that nourishes the body, and serves to tell the stories and experiences of our people.

Now, I wish the sound didn't keep breaking up, because there are some important words that are getting lost there, but I think she said it's like food, and we all get to contribute our own ingredients to nourish the body.

Well, if that's the case, then why didn't Paul utilize that? He said that God places the

Spirit, as He wills, through the gifting, but places people in the body to serve as He wishes.

It has nothing to do with their ethnicity. Nothing! You're introducing something that, if you're right,

Paul missed it, and Scripture is not sufficient, because you're adding something in.

You needed to add something in. But that's not the case. You don't get your own ingredients based upon your ethnicity or anything else.

You don't get to do that. Simply, again, it's in a

Christian context, using Christian terms without deriving the substance and meaning of the words from Christian theology.

It's coming from other sources. This is what we are warning about. This is the danger that we are talking about.

And here's an example that it happens, and it's getting very popular. White supremacy in theology functions like a person who comes into another culture, tries their food, and because they don't like it or agree with it and didn't make it, claims that it is not food at all, while trying to replace other people's food with their own in the name of true health.

They see how everybody, ha ha ha, white, then now it's called white supremacy. So evidently, the idea is that your group gets to determine your theology for your group that might be different from other groups.

So there is no one divine truth.

Does this mean some groups get to believe in the trinity and other people don't get to believe in the trinity, and it's true for some people and not true for other groups?

How else does this work? I mean, is it white supremacy theology if you encounter false teaching that you seek to bring correction and refutation and that you're somehow saying that's not food?

Because that's not food. Unitarianism will not feed the soul. Unitarianism kills anything it touches.

Is that white supremacy theology? You see what happens when you allow these lenses to be just glued in place that just you see everything as race?

Everything's white and black. Everything's the oppressed and oppressor. It twists everything.

You're just left non -functional. It's dangerous. There's no basis for it.

The reality is that all experience in theology is contextual, and it contributes something to greater experience of understanding

God. All theology is contextual. All theology is the tautology that every person that encounters

God's revelation has a context in which they encounter that revelation. That's a tautology.

No one's questioning that. The question is, is the revelation itself sufficiently clear to allow us to know the truth and hence to correct our own context and the lenses that we might use to try to distort that?

Liberal theology, leftist theology does not have a high enough view of scripture to allow that to happen. This movement fundamentally will result in a degradation of the view of scripture amongst those people that accept it, and that includes every church that today is getting woke.

You're turning onto a path that, not immediately, but will fundamentally over time lead you to a position of denying the perspicuity and consistency of scripture, because its parameters have been forged within a different worldview, because they're not coming from scripture itself.

The problem is that white theology inherently sees itself and places itself and its concerns the center of religious life.

White theology puts itself at the center. If you believe that God has revealed the

Trinity, that, by definition, demands to be central in everything else.

Is that white theology? See, you can use these terms, but since there's no meaningful definition of it, then you can get away with logical murder in making this kind of statement.

It sounds like you're saying something. You're not saying anything at all. There's no substance to it.

What is white theology? How do you define it? I mean, when

Augustine wrote on the Trinity, Augustine wasn't white, but is that white theology? Who knows?

Who knows? White theology, disguised as simply an overarchingly

Christian theology, centers itself as the only true theology in the face of marginalized people's lived experiences.

In the face of marginalized people's lived experiences. Do you see the direction here?

Lived experiences are now the source of Christian theology. Not divine revelation!

It doesn't come down from the top. It's now in the face of the lived experience.

What is that? What about my lived experience? What about the lived experience of white people?

I don't view my lived experience as determinative of Christian theology, and I hope you don't think otherwise, but it sounds like you do.

And that's dangerous. Incredibly dangerous. Can we even imagine, as long as these assumptions go unchallenged, can there be any unification, any harmony, any peace?

No. By definition, there cannot be.

It can only divide. It cannot unify. It does not have the power to, because there's no one

Christian truth. All while calling their work contextual. Hmm.

So if you are not, if you don't have any sense of what other consciously contextualized theologies there are, please look up Black theology,

Liberation theology, Oneness theology, Feminist theology, Hadista theology. There's a ton out there that are going to change your life,

I promise. Now, let's just stop right there. So you've got Liberation theology,

Black theology, we know Cone, Oneness theology? Now you get an idea where this is coming from.

Now you get an idea where this is coming from. This is the end of Christian theology. That's a fundamental denial of, well, everything.

I don't know. All interchangeable? Now please look up Black theology,

Liberation theology, Oneness theology, Feminist theology, Hadista theology. There's a ton out there that are going to change your life,

I promise. It's a danger, though. Now, something I promise, and I almost sound like she said

Barista theology. I don't even know what that was. I can imagine a few folks at Starbucks that have come up with their own theology over the years.

I don't know. But the incoherence of that statement is where we'll end.

There was more. We could go to more. But I need to get to some other things.

But wow. That was stunning.

But that's what's out there. And this was getting promoted and getting amens. Wow. Okay.

Two more things. I know I've already gone long, and I've still got some work to do here. But I'm trying.

I have not been in studio for two weeks. I'll tell you what.

I'll hold the Dr. Rachel McKinnon story for the next program.

That is the guy who identifies the female who just won a

UCI gold medal world championship in the women's division in cycling on track.

And I will do this. Let's see if you can pull this up.

Yeah, I can't. Yeah, there we go. Can you?

Yeah, there you go. He's the guy in the middle. And that's supposed to be a gal.

And the picture says a thousand words.

But that's, yeah, that's a guy. And now, as we'll see, man, the guy's really good at making excuses and citing this study and that study and everything else about testosterone.

And the fact of the matter is, he may have low testosterone today, but he didn't when he was growing up.

And his bone structure and his muscle structure and the connective tissues and everything else was determined at that time.

So that's a guy standing between two girls. And he won. This is the end of women's sports.

It's the end. Okay, it's done. There is no reason, ladies, there is no reason for you to try to achieve anything in any realm of women's sports once this absolute insanity takes hold.

No reason to. Just sorry. Sorry. There are many of us who would love to see women competing against women.

But now that we live in a world where people go, I don't really care about the biology, you know, just how

I feel today. Anyway. Okay, now

I was really surprised in my final thing here. I mentioned I was gonna say this, so I need to get to it.

Andy Stanley has put out a book called Irresistible, reclaiming the new that Jesus unleashed for the world.

And I've looked at a number of interviews with him, and he is doubling down and moving farther and farther away from any meaningful form of orthodoxy in regards to the canon of scripture.

And the more he gets pushback and correction from the likes of Al Mohler or the likes of Michael Kruger, the more he just simply not only digs in his heels, but moves away from the light that is being provided to him.

And he's bringing many other people with him. And he's successful. He's going to be successful in this for an obvious reason.

I've said it for a long, long time. We live in an age of canonically challenged people.

Evangelicals are canonically challenged. They don't understand the canon of scripture. They don't understand the authority of the

Old Testament scripture. They functionally view the Old Testament scripture as lesser than the

New Testament. There is all sorts of stuff that demonstrates that they would see red letters as more inspired than black letters.

And so there's a lot of confusion out there. And so he is tapping into that confusion, and there are a lot of people who will give in to that.

And that is just the day in which we live. Just turn the thing down there.

Okay. So the timing for his books and stuff and to do this is good, but it doesn't change the fact that he is hearkening back to the days of Martian and to the division of scripture in a destructive, destructive fashion.

The apostles would never have understood the categories that he is introducing.

Well, imagine my surprise when Ed Stetzer tweeted an interview he does one -on -one with Annie Stanley on Irresistible, promoting the book.

So it's not that there's a lot of stuff new here, because all the interviews he's saying the same thing.

But when you really listen, you realize how, again, totally destructive to any type of meaningful, consistent, full -blown apologetic

Stanley's position is. And it doesn't seem like any of the people who are interviewing him have a sufficiently grounded theology to recognize it and to challenge him properly.

Stetzer says, in your book, you talk about change in the way you talk about what you believe, not what you believe.

Tell more about what you mean. Well, I'm trying to put the words of Jesus, Paul, James, and all the

New Testament authors back in their mouths. Pastors have been saying the

Bible says the Bible teaches for generations. Actually, the

New Testament writers do that. What is gegrepti?

It has been written. What is the scriptures say? So it's not generations,

Pastor Stanley. That's actual biblical terminology that you seem to dislike. Pastors have been saying the

Bible says the Bible teaches for generations. But of course, the Bible itself has never uttered a word. I don't know how to respond to that.

It's called the word. And when

New Testament writers quote the Old Testament, for example, David spoke by the Holy Spirit. Are you saying those words that David spoke had never uttered a word because they're written?

Consequently, most Bible -believing Christians think the Bible is the foundation of our faith, that somehow the Bible created Christianity.

It didn't. Now, as we pointed out before, this is the

Roman Catholic position, that the Church creates the Bible. And the position of the

Reformation had always been the other way around, that the Church is subservient to Scripture because the Church obediently hears the voice of her

Lord, which she finds objectively found in the scriptures themselves. So Andy Stanley is opposing the

Reformation and is supportive of a Roman understanding at this particular point.

The Church fully assembled the Bible in the fourth century. Again, that's a Roman Catholic argument. I highly recommend the works of Michael Kruger on the subject.

Michael Kruger has likewise refuted Andy Stanley's material. I have not seen any place where Andy Stanley has even begun to attempt to undo the damage to his claims that have been presented by people like Kruger and others, because I don't believe he's capable of doing so.

He's borrowing this from others and piecemealing it together, and I don't think he's up to doing that. There were tens of thousands of Jesus followers long before the assembly of the

Bible as we know it. That is not a question, but it is also irrelevant. The early

Church, even the writers of the New Testament themselves, are clearly

Bible people. They are scripture people. They are quoting from the scriptures. Even Jesus doesn't simply sit there and say, believe me, because I'm God in human flesh.

He says, have you not read what the scriptures say? So, in Irresistible, I encourage writers, teachers, and preachers to quote the inspired human authors rather than the

Bible. So, he wants to atomize the scriptures, and again, go against apostolic example.

There are times when you have the prophet Isaiah, but sometimes just simply the prophets or the scriptures say.

What do you accomplish by saying, well, Paul said? Well, what you accomplish is you certainly open the door for all the people who try to say, well,

Paul contradicted Paul, and then Paul and Peter wrote a contradiction. This is the modernist idea that you have all these contradictions, and I believe

Stanley thinks that those contradictions are real. That's why he's become the massive minimalist.

It doesn't matter about inerrancy. It doesn't matter about that stuff. If Jesus rose from the dead, then that's it.

Now, for Bible -believing people, this makes little to no difference, but for those who don't yet believe, this approach can make a big difference.

Now, here's where theology matters, because Andy Stanley has never believed in the sovereignty of God.

He is an anti -lordship proponent, and so your methodology and approach is everything.

It's everything. Besides, the authors of the Bible were moved by the Holy Spirit, so it's better and actually more accurate to say

James said, Peter writes, Jesus taught, Solomon says, etc. Stetzer says, so if we are seeking the

Bible differently, what does that really mean? Can you impact this further? Well, let me back up. I want to help people think sequentially.

That's my goal in this. In other words, I want to help people see that our faith was launched by something that happened, not something that was written.

My whole point is this, that Christianity began on Easter and everything went forward from there. Okay, we've already been through this a thousand times.

This is abjectly unworkable.

Now, when Jesus meets with the disciples, when he meets with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, what does he do?

He directs them to scripture. He did not direct them to Isaiah.

He did not direct them to Moses. He directed them to what they knew was the revelation that God had given,

Hey, Graphae, Hi, Graphae, if you want to refer to these scriptures in the plural, the writings.

They knew what they were and he ends up abrading the apostles when he meets with them for their unbelief in what the scriptures had testified.

The point is Jesus identifies and explains his assertion regarding the resurrection and the meaning of the resurrection based upon the scriptures, prophecy, revelation, not the individual authority of Isaiah or of David or anything else.

It was a body of revelation and he abraded them for not having believed it. So, Christianity began on Easter and everything went forward from there.

Well, but why? What's the meaning of the cross?

What's the meaning of the resurrection? What's the meaning of justification? All these things are explained to us in something called scripture.

That's what it's all about. He goes on to say, even

Luke tells us that Jesus walked around with those disciples explaining, re -explaining and opening their minds to the scriptures. So, the epicenter of our faith is the resurrection.

There's no connection between those two sentences. The challenge is now that how we as individuals received our

Bibles is not the same way that the world originally received and assembled the Bible. Well, there's development, but what is that supposed to mean?

Most people reading my book and most Christians in our country became Christians as children. So, in essence, the whole thing was handed to us, but historically

Gentiles didn't become all that interested in the Jewish texts until after they became interested in one particular Jew, Jesus Christ.

Okay. It was only after coming to know Jesus, they then got interested in reading, experiencing these

Jewish texts for themselves. So, the way that scripture came together historically is much different than how we receive it personally.

I think that this can often distract us from the extraordinary event that initially launched our faith.

I don't even know what to try to dig out of that. The man sounds so confused to me. I don't even know what it's saying.

I mean, I realize that each generation, you know, that we have a great blessing in having the entire scripture available to us and so widely available that almost no generation before us has had that kind of availability, but how does that mean we should unhook the

Old Testament and all the rest of that kind of stuff he's saying? Stetzer. So, I'm with you on focusing on the centrality of the resurrection, living word,

Jesus dying on a cross, raising from the dead, etc., but how do we know about the living word without the written word that describes these things?

There's the question. The way I often get that question is something like, but Andy, the only way we know about the resurrection is the

Bible. That's how the layperson asks the question, and not just a layperson, to which

I reply, that's not true. So, you know about the historicity of the resurrection and you know about the meaning of the resurrection from something other than the

Bible. To be precise, we do not know about the resurrection from the

Bible. We know about the resurrection from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, James, and the Apostle Paul, whose documents were later seen as so valuable by the first century church, they were protected at all cost.

Distinction without a difference? So, it's almost like it was not

God's intention from the beginning to do it this way. Is that what he's saying?

People died to see these texts preserved and eventually they were assembled to become part of our New Testament and later the collection itself was given a title.

I'm clearly not in any way diminishing the authority of any of those texts. Well, if you don't believe that there is a meaningful way to speak of the entirety of God's revelation, are these revealed texts?

Are they men speaking from God as they're carried along by the Holy Spirit? So, you don't think the Holy Spirit had this as his intention all along?

The Bible is simply the title given to these documents that were already inspired long before they were collected and assembled. For most Christians, this seems like much ado about nothing, but when we present the gospel to people outside the faith who left the faith who feel the

Bible that the Bible is all or nothing, it can make a big difference. I guess what he's trying to do is to leave room for you to reject parts of scripture and still accept others.

So, there can't be a unified revelation, all or nothing. You just get to have parts.

So, you can accept that part. Again, here's free will, autonomy. You get to judge what parts of the

Bible you're going to accept. And again, if you reject the sovereignty of God and salvation, the ability of the

Holy Spirit of God to bring people unto himself. Yeah.

Anyway, part two comes later on. Yeah, that's exciting.

But there you go. I don't even know what to say.

Don't even. Well, I guess I just got done saying a bunch of stuff about that, but popularity of it.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So, anyhow, well, we went a little long, but that's okay.

I hope you don't mind. Important stuff to talk about. Talked about a lot of stuff today. A lot of different topics that I'm certain are going to get all sorts of pushback.

I hope they're at least focused upon what was actually said rather than just the fact that I don't buy into the acceptance of current paradigms that I find to be grossly unbiblical.

So, thanks for watching The Dividing Line today. I don't know if it'll be cool enough on Thursday to wear a coogie, but we'll see.