Evangelical Elites Don't Apologize

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I hope that everyone is getting into what we refer to as the holiday spirit, or I like to say the

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Christmas spirit, because that is the holiday that we are actually celebrating. It is the holy day of Christ's birth, when we celebrate it, the advent of God coming into the temporal realm.

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Have you thought about that? That's such an amazing concept. It's just the God of the universe who created this place entered into it.

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There's a line from a very old song. My parents used to play this Michael Card song. He talks anyway about a mother made by her own child in one of his songs.

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It's very profound when you think about it. There is a Christmas spirit that is partially related to advent, but also,

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I think, partially related to the season. Now, I can say that as someone who's in a very cold area right now, and it's getting colder.

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Maybe you don't feel that way if you're living in Florida or the Deep South or Southern California.

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If you are in the North or the Midwest, then you know that there's a big seasonal change.

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With that seasonal change, there's a lot of habits, a lot of things that obviously—I think this actually goes for the

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Deep South now. Obviously, everyone's drinking certain beverages, right? Hot chocolate. People are dressing even a little differently.

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The styles change. Even in warm areas, the styles change. Watching different kinds of movies and listening to different kinds of music and perhaps reading different kinds of books.

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I know one of my favorite books to read, and I've done this now two or three years.

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No, three years, I think at least, is a book by Washington Irving called Old Christmas.

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I've thought, actually, about doing some live readings of it on the podcast just because I think it's so good.

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You can get it on Audible. You don't have to hear me reading it. I just thought—I had this vision in my head of a

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Christmas tree and a blanket and some hot cocoa and a fire going. We're going to read some

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Old Christmas. I don't know if people would be interested in that. Comment if you're interested in some Old Christmas.

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One of my favorite—it is my favorite. Let's just be honest. It is my favorite Christmas book. Then I will make it happen somehow.

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Anyway, there's a lot of things that change just because the season's changing as well. Growing up in that, you associate that with Advent.

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The mixture of those things and how all of society just tends to—and it's less so now, but they still tend to go along with these habits, these traditions of yore.

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They listen to Bing Crosby and Gene Autry and Nat King Cole.

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When else do they listen to those people? They don't even know who those people are, but they're listening to them at Christmastime.

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There's a connection to the past. That's what society is. It's not just a fellowship of people that are presently alive.

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It's a communion with the past and with the future. That's what a society is. I think it's keenly felt more so during this time of year.

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Anyway, that's my little spiel about Christmas and the Christmas spirit. Generosity—obviously, though, the centerpiece of all of it is the fact that Christ came into this world.

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God became man. In order to do what? In order to save mankind, to do the will of his

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Father, which was to save those who would repent and believe in him.

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He went through a great amount of pain. We think about that more on Good Friday, but Christmas was the start of that.

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It got the ball rolling, right? The Advent. It's connected to this larger story of redemption that I cherish, and we all cherish as believers.

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This is a special time. Even in a secularized society—let's just be honest, it's not even secularized as much as it is a pagan society—there's still somewhat of a place, somewhat of an exemption given during this time of year.

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It was interesting. There was something on the television—not live

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TV. I'm trying to think what it was now. It was some

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Marvel thing that was on the screen. Anyway, Hawkeye. I think it was called Hawkeye.

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There's a few times in that, and it's a very brand new Disney channel, and I don't endorse

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Disney. I'm not saying give to Disney Plus. I don't have a subscription to Disney or Disney Plus, and I'm not saying to watch

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Hawkeye, just for everyone who's concerned about that, perhaps. But I happen to see this, that even in this

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Disney show, he's saying Merry Christmas, their main character. I just thought that was interesting.

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So there's still kind of an exemption made, even in the secular world, for Christmas. So we're going to talk about not that, but I wanted to just open with that, because I'm feeling it.

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I'm just getting into that mood. And despite whatever variants are supposed to be freaking us out right now—it's

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Omicron now. Who knows what it'll be next year? There's still a place for joy, for getting together with other people, and when you do get together, it's not just an event.

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It is to affirm relationships, to build trust, to show forth love to each other.

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These things, they happen this time of year or more so, and I think it's a special time, and we can focus on that and not what everyone would like to get us upset about.

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Now, on that note, I'm going to talk about something that I don't want you to be upset about, but I want you to be aware of.

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How about that? We'll make that a little distinction, because there's a righteous anger, but we don't need to be on level 10 of righteous anger all the time.

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In fact, there's times to chill, right? And I think this time is probably as good a time of any to chill.

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We need a break from that to some extent, but we do need to be aware of some things. There's been many things behind the scenes, even in my own personal life this last week, that has just really shown me so clearly how subversive the social justice religion is, and people you think that should be vetted, that should be fine, that should be totally not on that bandwagon because, hey, they're a member of a confessional reform church or something.

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They are, and even friends that you might have had for a long time, and you think, I'm going to reconnect.

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It's Christmas. I'm going to see them at a party, and wait, what happened to her? What happened to him? It's something that behaves as a religion, and it's so subversive, and people don't just, when they convert to a religion, let me give an example of what

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I'm about to say before I get into what I'm about to say. When people convert to Mormonism, I don't know if you've seen this.

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If you know someone in your family who's converted to Mormonism or in your friend group, they start mimicking the patterns laid down by Mormon elders and their church, and there's a way of talking.

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There's a tone. There's certain words that they'll use. There's certain assumptions now they make about their life, certain actions that accompany that.

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There's a whole new paradigm shift going on when someone makes a true conversion to another religion.

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It's the same thing with social justice, and I've seen it over and over. This is kind of weird, and I know some people are going to say, wait,

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John, how in the world? Just trust me on this. I can tell. 90 % of the time,

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I can tell when someone's on that bandwagon. I don't have to talk about politics with them.

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I don't have to talk about theology with them. I just have to talk to them about even the weather, and of course, it's not a minute conversation.

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I mean, if we're talking for probably 25 minutes or more, I can tell if someone a lot of the time.

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Now, there's times that I'm sure I'm wrong, and I'm not thinking through this in every conversation by any means.

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In fact, more often than not, I'm not even thinking about it, but if I really want to bring those features that my brain has now been hardwired into because I've studied these people, these social justice advocates for so long,

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I just know their tendencies. I know the way they talk. I know the words they use. I know the way they try to relate to one another because I was at Southeastern for a while and to some extent at Liberty.

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I know the way the hardcore lefty guys and girls look at you. I don't know.

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There's just so many little things, and when someone converts into it, it just changes so much.

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It could be subtle. It could be over time. People that get sucked into this end up behaving more and more like a social justice warrior would, but there's a specific variety of social justice advocate in evangelicalism that that person,

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I can just spot it. I don't know what else to tell you. When I see it, I know it.

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I can't even fully describe it, but there are some features I can pull out. To some extent, it's tone.

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There's a way of relating, which is just very at arm's length, seeing oneself as transcending categories, usually political, but it doesn't even have to be political.

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They see themselves as observers and very astute observers usually.

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There's a judgmentalism, but they judge against people who they think are judgmental. It's very interesting.

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There's that. There's just a wanting to be the hero when situations don't even call for a hero, necessarily, so microaggressions and things that just aren't even really big issues.

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They'll try to make into bigger issues and then position themselves to be the good guys. I don't know.

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I could just sit here probably all day and just think of facet after facet of this is who

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I'm talking about. This is the kind of person that when they convert, and I've seen it, I've seen people go from political conservatives, theological conservatives to woke, and they just start mimicking these tendencies.

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One of them is this. One of them is they lose oftentimes.

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It's over time. It depends where they're at in this spectrum because there is a spectrum, but they eventually kind of lose the ability to really repent of sin.

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They don't do it really. I want to talk about that a little. Here's what we're going to talk about today.

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Evangelical elites don't apologize. They just don't. I can say social justice advocates and evangelicalism, it's the same thing in my mind.

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They mimic the elites, but the elites are the ones setting the tone here, giving the example.

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They don't apologize. There's so many examples of this. I think of even

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Southeastern where I went when they were called on the carpet for the

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Kern Family Foundation funding the Oikonomia Network and bringing in programs. They literally have a justice and social ethics or something like that program.

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It's a social justice program. They have courses on racism in the environment, etc.

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They just took the Kern Family Foundation logo and name off of their

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Intersect project, which is where one of the things Kern was funding through Oikonomia.

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They took out a number of the Kingdom Diversity videos, lectures, blogs, when the spotlight was shined on them without any explanation.

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Al Moore just did this recently. Just boom, poof. Where's all Jarvis Williams lectures at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary?

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They're gone. Where did they go? This is a problem that I've seen over and over.

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Those are just two examples that I have some more, I guess, knowledge of, but there are many others.

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I'm going to give you just a few within the last few days, within the last few days, well, the last few weeks that illustrate this point.

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I'm going to draw a few points from it. This is one of the characteristics. When someone starts to go woke, they lose this capacity to do true repentance, true apologies.

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They apologize all right for all kinds of things which they are not responsible for. Isn't that convenient?

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The sin that they apologize for in their minds, sometimes it's not even sin. It's just something they call a sin.

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It's the sin of the crowd. It's the sin of others. It's the sin of their ancestors. It's the sin of God, if they were born with a certain pigmentation in their skin or something.

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They apologize for everyone else's problems that are manifested within them, but it's not really their fault.

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In fact, they are separating themselves from the sins that they condemn.

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That's actually the purpose of their apology. The apology's purpose, which this goes into the virtue signal, it's not about actually making a wrong right.

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It's not about getting right with your brother or sister. It's not about true reconciliation. It's not about expiation.

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It's not about trying to actually figure out what you owe someone because you've done them wrong and then pay it.

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It's about fundamentally transforming the country, the church, whatever institution they're a part of, and blaming others.

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It's a mirror. It's a defense mechanism that they use.

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It's actually more than that. It's an attack mechanism they use that when the social justice train comes to their house and says, how have you been fighting racism or sexism?

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They put up the mirror and they reflect it back onto someone else. It's my culture. It's my skin.

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It's my parents. It's all these other things, but they apologize for it anyway. I'm sorry for my white privilege.

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I'm sorry for it. Well, that's not something you don't have any say in where you were born or who you are.

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These are things you can't change. These are things normally that they're just part of your culture.

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They're not sinful things in your culture. They're things that you've inherited even sometimes, whether that's genetically or that's traditions.

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You've inherited these things and you're apologizing for things that you've been given. You're not thankful for even those things.

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You don't see those things as the things that God has put in your life in his providence to steward.

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Instead, you see them as curses, which you must distance yourself from. So there's no personal responsibility taken in a leftist apology.

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So I want to show you some examples, at least within the past few weeks of evangelical institutions, not apologizing, not repenting, but changing their actions so as to avoid the ire of those on the right theologically and politically.

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To avoid pressure coming from the right, they change a little bit of what they do.

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Now, when the left puts pressure, it's like you have to come crawling to them and you have to show this position of humility and you have to apologize.

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Again, it's not a real apology. Even that's not a real apology. I've just been describing what that is. It's a virtue signal.

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But when the right puts pressure on you and you're a social justice advocate and it's too much pressure, it's just you know you have to do something about this.

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You save your pride because in order to apologize, you'd have to admit that the conservatives are correct.

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So back up a step. If you apologize to the left, you do a virtue signal.

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If you're a social justice advocate, what you're doing is you're admitting that the left is correct in their assessment of society and you were complicit in whatever crime they say you're complicit in.

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But you don't ever take personal responsibility. You say you are, but it's the guilt of the crowd, of your ancestors.

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That's what you do and you join the revolution. When the right comes to you and says, we're going to defund you or we're going to put pressure on you to fire someone that you've hired who's woke or something like that, then what you do if you're a social justice advocate and you are forced into a position of having to get rid of someone or to retract something, you don't admit you're wrong.

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You don't apologize because that would force you to admit that the conservatives were always correct and it would force you in a position of personal responsibility, that you can't pass it off to anyone else.

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You were wrong. You made a mistake and the conservatives don't let you get away with that because they're not after that.

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The left is only after you being part of the revolution. They don't want a real apology. Conservatives want an actual apology.

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They're under this naive and old -fashioned belief that you can actually get right with people. You can change your mind.

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You can change your direction. You can actually make things right, whether that's financial or emotional or whatever it is.

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You can actually start on a path of building trust. That's what they're after. That's where social justice advocates and elites and evangelical institutions can't go because they're not interested in actual apologies.

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Let's talk about the examples that I keep mentioning here. First one is

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Dottie Lewis. Now, this is a little more tenuous as far as, you know, was

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Dottie Lewis, was he taken out because of pressure put on the SEND network?

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And the answer to that question is I'm not a hundred percent sure on this, but I do know a lot of people closer to this situation have told me, yes, that's exactly what's going on.

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Dottie was in trouble, especially with enemies within the church coming out. There's even a bigger spotlight put on Dottie Lewis because Dottie Lewis corrupted the gospel and he brought in a false teaching and he brought in what he called the great requirement.

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You can go on YouTube, look at woke preacher clips where Dottie Lewis is talking about the great requirement. And that's part of the gospel somehow.

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So he mixes law and grace and social justice law at that, man's law.

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Now, this statement was put out there, I think a few weeks ago now, what, November, well, maybe not.

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It was November 15th. So yeah, I guess it's, yeah, it is two weeks ago. Okay. So Dottie Lewis, at the end of this year,

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Dottie Lewis, president of the North American mission boards, church planning arms, SEND network will transition from his position to vote himself to launching

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Boulevard, an initiative to empower disciple -makers. So here's the thing. He's not actually, they're presenting this as a good thing, that his work is done at SEND network and he's going to Boulevard.

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And, you know, this looks like a demotion, but they're not portraying it that way. Boulevard is also apparently connected to NAM somehow, or at least to the

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SBC. I asked that question to some folks who knew more about this and they said, yes, it is.

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And there's another organization that Lewis is affiliated with, which is also linked to NAM. So it's not like he's out at NAM.

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It's not like they've kicked him to the curb. It's not like they fired him. It's that he's transitioning, right?

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Listen to these words as you hear them, he's transitioning. Now in the movie enemies within the church, there's a section three quarters of the way through it.

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And I should mention, if you want to see enemies within the church, you can go to the enemieswithinthechurch .com and type in the code.

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Oh, I was about to say the code. If you are a patron, you can type in a certain code. So patrons can, if you sign up to support what

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I'm doing on Patreon, there's a code you can type in. And it'll be right there in the updates when you sign into Patreon.

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So five bucks a month, you can get 20 % off enemies within the church. Anyway, in enemies within the church, there's a section at three quarters of the way through where it talks about,

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I think they call it like something like the social justice shuffle or something. Anyway, what they're describing is people like Dottie Lewis, who get fired or let go, but they're not really fired or let go.

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That's not what it's, that may be what's happening, but that's not how it's portrayed. They're, and they're not really fired.

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Like they're not on bad terms. They just, because of political pressure from the right, they have to get rid of the

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Marxist in their midst and they just shuffle them around. They put them in another organization in their network. So they have buddies at the

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Billy Graham center or, you know, some other evangelical institution, and that's where they go to work. So it doesn't change a lot for them.

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And I actually, now I'm flooding. My mind is flooding with examples of this, of people who have done this.

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Think of like even like David Nasser, you know, and just, there's just so many people that they're transitioning out.

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Well, yeah, either they, they were the ones who were kicked out or they decided to resign and it had something to do with political pressure or something, but they always put this smiley face on it.

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Like, well, our work is done here and we're moving on to something else. And that's what you see here.

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But this is the thing I want you to notice. There's no acknowledgement of all the pressure that's been put on NAM and the

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SEND network because of Dottie Lewis, from conservatives who are concerned that they have gone Marxist because Dottie Lewis is advocating

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Marxist ideology. Yes, it's not classical Marxism. Yes, I understand for all the nerds out there, the critical race junk.

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They, they're not going to acknowledge that. They're not going to apologize for it. They're not going to repent for it. They're going to celebrate this transition.

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They're going to act like this is the best thing since sliced bread. And that's how they operate. When they get caught with their cans in the cookie jar, they'll never admit their hand was ever in the cookie jar.

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Okay. James Merritt, same thing. We talked about this last week. Danny Akin says, today, my dear friend,

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James Merritt asked me to allow him to decline serving as a visiting professor at Southeastern, not wanting to be a distraction to the school.

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I have honored his request. His integrity, character, and love for the gospel is a model for us all, a great man and friend.

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And Rod Martin says, so Danny, let's, just for those who don't know, before I get into Rod Martin, Southeastern is a big

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Southern Baptist seminary. Danny Akin's the president and he was hiring this individual who used to be a president of the

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SBC, James Merritt, to, to visit, uh, be a visiting professor. But there was pressure put on, uh,

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Danny Akin and Southeastern because Dr. Merritt had in just recently endorsed his sons, who was an open, open homosexual sermon.

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That was terrible sermon. They didn't even have the true gospel. Uh, he, he endorsed one of his son's sermons and said how great it was, how great he is at preaching.

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And then all sorts of other things started coming out about James Merritt from people even who knew him a long time. And Danny Akin has to come out and say this.

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And so, you know, this is how they operate though. There is no, in fact, there's a doubling down.

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There's no apology. It's, he has a love for the gospel. He's a model for us all. He's a great man. He has integrity and character.

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And this is a reflection. It's just putting a mirror up and saying, you know, you're going to criticize us.

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Boom. We're going to put the criticism right back on you. You're the ones, and he doesn't say this explicitly, but what conclusion are you to draw?

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James Merritt's not the problem. It's all those who criticized James Merritt and it would become a distraction to the school.

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So that's the problem. We're still the problem. That's the issue. And so there's no repentance.

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There's no actual apology here. It's just, we're going to put him away secretly, kind of.

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It's not secret. I mean, he's posting about it on Twitter, but it's, it's, it's kind of like, we're not going to tell you the real reasons here, other than it's a distraction to the school.

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Rod Martin says, so Danny, let's, let's Merritt resign, just like Al Mohler let David Sills resign.

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What would it take to actually get fired? Murder? And this is a good question. There's people working at Southern Baptist institutions right now who have been very pro -critical race theory and liberation theology.

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Why are they still working there? What does it take to get fired? Murder? That's what

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Rod Martin asks. What do you have to do? And he goes, oh wait, I bet Bobby Lopez and Russell Fuller could answer that.

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And it's true. Bobby Lopez and Russell Fuller were fired. For what? Because they were too conservative, right?

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They, and, and the thing is they all, they, they're so dishonest about how they portray this.

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Well, we were, we had to budget cut and get rid of Fuller. We had to, and a number of other professors, by the way, who apparently voted conservatively.

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And then some of them turned around and kind of even threw Fuller under the bus. But at Southwestern, we have the recordings of them explicitly saying why they were upset at Bobby Lopez.

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And, you know, you can't just go share your testimony about how you were saved from homosexuality. That's offending people at the

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ERLC. You got to get approval before you go and talk to people about, you know, homosexuality and your conversion and how you got out of that lifestyle.

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All right, now we have Salvation Army. Now this is the one that's probably gotten the most press, right? Because it's a big organization.

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Just recently on November 27th, they retweeted Hugh Hewitt. Now Hugh Hewitt has been a major disappointment to me.

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Hugh Hewitt is supposed to be a conservative talk show radio host. This is not the first time I've seen Hugh Hewitt just carry water for leftist stuff.

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It's so disappointing. And I just wanted to include this because it bothers me that Hugh Hewitt, we should not listen to Hugh Hewitt.

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He defends Salvation Army. Hey, they're not woke unless Christianity is woke, serving everyone in need, most especially the least and the lost, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other measure of human being is a core mission of army.

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Some critics of woke ideology are trying again to broaden their attacks to include everyone and including Salvation Army. It's absurd.

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Rather than grinding teeth, go ring a bell or contribute to a kettle online or on the street. The army serves the most desperate people.

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Yeah, so it's not really, really? That's the criticism. They're getting criticized because they're feeding people.

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No, they're not getting criticized because they put out a document that explicitly endorsed

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Kendi, explicitly endorsed D 'Angelo, critical race theory. We went over this already and Hugh Hewitt, no, they're not woke.

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Okay. All right. They even made a statement on the 25th before Hugh Hewitt wrote this and Salvation Army retweeted

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Hugh Hewitt's comment. They made a statement doubling down and defending themselves and saying they're not woke and people are just making false claims about them.

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Well, guess what? Guess what just happened? Update. Elements of the recently issued let's talk about racism guide led some to believe we think they should apologize for the color of their skin or that Salvation Army has been abandoned, has abandoned its biblical beliefs for another philosophy or ideology.

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That was never our intention. So the guide has been removed for appropriate review. So they're losing money.

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Let me translate. They're losing money. And so they have to pull this. They have to get rid of the thing that everyone's talking about.

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The thing that they were fine with a few days ago, but now there's consequences. So what do they do?

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They bring it up for appropriate review. They don't apologize.

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They don't repent. There's no admission of guilt. It's just poof.

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Never happened. It's not there. You can't find it. In fact, I noticed some other stuff on their website that seemed to be missing.

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They used to have a tab just a few days ago where you could go on their website and you could look and there was like how they were supporting equality or something like that.

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They had some social justice tab right on their website. It's gone. I can't find it now. And I was like, thinking to myself, well, that's just like the first thought

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I had. I was like, that's what Southeastern did. These people seem to operate in the same way.

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And here's the thing. I want to say this to everyone. It's not wrong to get rid of something that you posted.

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In fact, it's the right thing to do. In fact, that's what I think we want Salvation Army to do. Get rid of this stuff.

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But after so many people have seen it, look, it'd be one thing if a few, let's say 10 people, 20 people had seen this document and one of them said, say, you know, you shouldn't put this up there.

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Oh yeah, let's delete it. And they're not going to issue a big apology that would draw more attention to something.

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But at this point, right, they've been caught with the hand in the cookie jar. And instead of admitting there's a problem, they're doubling down.

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And just like Southeastern, just like other organizations, they've decided to kind of blame everyone else for it.

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It's not their fault. And it took consequences. It took financial hit, them financially getting hit in the pocket to do this.

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So what are the takeaways from this? One is these people are driven by finances to some extent, you can actually bring about change by hitting the pocketbook.

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So that's one thing. The second thing is that the people running these organizations need to be fired.

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These are not people who are honest. And they have pride that's just through the window because they're not able to actually admit wrongdoing or apologize for anything.

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It's just, it's sick to me that this is kind of where we're headed, that they have to be manipulated. In their minds,

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I guess, they're manipulated by people on the right through the pocketbook, instead of just the motivation to do the right thing.

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So that's what's going on out there. Now, I wanted to bring, let's bring some Bible into this, shall we?

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Because it reminds me of a particular verse in Scripture, or passage, 2

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Corinthians 7. We'll start in verse 8. For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, he's talking about his first letter,

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I do not regret it, though I did regret it, for I see that the letter caused you sorrow though only for a while. So Paul corrected the

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Corinthians and now he's saying, hey, it caused you sorrow. I now rejoice though, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance.

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For you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.

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For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.

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For behold, what earnestness, this very thing, this godly sorrow has produced in you, what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment of wrong, in everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter.

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So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the offender, nor for the sake of the one offended, but that your earnestness on our behalf might be made known to you in the sight of God.

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Because of this, we have been comforted." Paul's comforted because they were sorry for their sin and they repented.

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But there's another kind of sorrow he talks about here, and it's not the sorrow, that's godly sorrow.

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That's what we want, and it produces a boldness, a vindication, a lack of guilt.

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You don't have fear anymore. There's a zeal, right? You're not going to be punished.

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But there is a kind of sorrow. There's a kind of worldly sorrow. So sorrow of the world is what we're seeing from the evangelical elites.

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Here's a commentary. Dr. Bob Utley, I don't agree with everything he says about theology, but he has some pretty good, in my opinion, user -friendly commentaries on the

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New Testament and the Old Testament. And here is some background info on the text

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I just read. The Apostle Paul uses the word sorrow, regret, and repentance, and Bob Utley says there are three very significant

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Greek terms in this passage to describe sorrow and repentance. The first, lapel, is the general term for grief or distress.

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It is a theologically neutral term found twice in 2 Corinthians 7, three times in 7 -9.

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So it's found in all these verses, all over them. The term regret, metamelomae, is found twice.

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And anyway, it's also found, and this seems to mean sorrow over the consequences of past acts.

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And then the last term, metanoia, is extremely significant theologically.

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Literally, it means aftermind. It not only involves a change of attitude, but a change of action.

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Examples of this type of repentance can be found in the King David and the Apostle Peter. So Paul is referring to this painful letter he had written to the church at Corinth.

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He fully and truly expressed himself, but worried that the letter might cause overwhelming sorrow instead of a healthy repentance. So then he found out, no, it actually did the work it was supposed to do.

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He was very happy about this. But the sorrow of the world produces death, and this sentence has three key words that must be understood in context.

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Sorrow. This verse contains all three Greek words for sorrow, regret, repentance. In this phrase, sorrow is lupeto, which means grief.

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Humans are sorry for past actions, but for selfish reasons. The world.

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This is a reference to human society organized and functioning apart from God. This is fallen humanity. And then death. The use of this term is possibly purposefully ambiguous.

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It refers to spiritual death and physical death. So here's what I'm taking from this, why I read this to you. You can be very sorrowful in the sense that you can have a lot of grief.

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You can have emotions. You got tears pouring out, and it may not be legitimate.

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Doesn't mean it's not legitimate. It could be, but it may not be. And you could be sorry for selfish reasons. Sorry that you were caught.

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I mean, the evangelical elites can't even quite even approach this. But there is some kind of a sorrow in the sense that they probably regret making the statement they did at Salvation Army or Danny Aiken hiring

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James Merritt. They probably regret that, but it's regretting it because of the consequences, not because they actually believe it was wrong.

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And that's the problem that we have. There needs to be lupeto, metamelomi, and metanoia.

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And there needs to be a change in action, metanoia, change in action.

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So this is what we're not seeing. And this is what we need to look for and require and notice.

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That's not a legitimate apology. This isn't, I don't, I mean, I want you to be happy in a sense that, hey, look, some things, some good positive things happened, but not for the right reasons.

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And that's what I'm concerned about. And I've seen these institutions just go underground with the same things, pushing the same agendas.

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And it's just that they're not as public anymore. So in my opinion, it's game over.

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I wouldn't give to these institutions. I wouldn't go to these institutions. Look, if I'm a young seminarian, I want to go to seminary.

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I wouldn't go to Southeastern. I wouldn't do that over. Yeah, I went there at the time, but it wasn't the way it is now.

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I'd check out some other schools and, you know, maybe, maybe Mid -America would be a good place if you're a

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Southern Baptist. Check into Mid -America Baptist Theological Seminary, maybe Southern Evangelical Seminary.

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I noticed last time I said that some people got upset at me and, and I wrote them back because they, some people thought that they were more on this

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Catholic bandwagon. And I don't know, I'm not there. All I do know is the people I do know who are there, who are very reformed and very solid seem to, to be able to operate their fine.

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And they say that they're taking a stand against the woke stuff. But here's the thing, there's no perfect seminary. Wherever you go, you're going to have issues.

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But it really, the question is, what issues do you want? What issues do you want? And so there's, there's other places that I would just look into and see if there are options.

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And if there's other places that I would give my money, other than Salvation Army, you can give it to Samaritan's Purse.

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I mean, I might even, I haven't looked into them, but I might even give it to Habitat for Humanity first. Now I'm afraid if I go to their website,

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I'll find the same junk. I hope not. Anyway, that's just my encouragement to you as you're giving during this

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Christmas season. A lot of us do give more charitably. Just consider where, where that money's going and, and take note of the organizations that have decided to double down on this stuff and they don't have true sorrow leading to repentance.