Keller and MacArthur - Two Kinds of Prophets

Hello there, this is AD Robles and you're listening to AD on the Fight Laugh Feast Network.

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Robles r o b l e s. Now, I want to talk about today is a very clear contrast that's being drawn before us right now.

I personally believe that this is the work of God. I think it's the work of the Lord to show us who's who

I think this is a biblical biblical principle, by the way, you know, Paul in the in the

New Testament, Paul talks about how there's some divisions in the church. And some of those are good and right, because we need to see who's genuine.

And so there should be certain divisions and certain lines being drawn between different perspectives and different people because the reality is that perspectives and ideas are not disconnected from people.

So these are going to be represented by people, people that we care about people that we've learned from people that we've loved, there's going to be distinctions drawn.

And I think the Lord is doing a mighty work in our time right now. He's actually doing the church a tremendous favor.

It's he's making it easy for us to see who's who. And if you look at what's going on in the church today, there are some big personalities that are taking certain sides and certain perspectives.

And it's become very clear, you know, at least in my opinion, who's who and what

I want to emphasize, though, is that when I talk about these personalities, please understand that there are legions of men behind each of them that are doing similar things.

And so it's not just that these guys are the only ones acting the only ones that matter. It's not that it's that these are these guys are, yes, they're people, they're individuals, they're before God themselves.

But in many ways, they're almost avatars for a different groups within the church.

And, and it's not inappropriate factions, it's not inappropriate divisions, these are very appropriate, because we definitely need to have unity over the right things, unity over the things that matter.

That's very important. I think it's very good. It's a good thing. And so I want to use the contrast of John MacArthur, Pastor John MacArthur and Timothy Keller.

This is a very, these are these are these are men that have been extremely influential in so many people's lives.

And they're both nearing the end of their lives. There's no question about it. I hope God blesses both of them.

But the reality is that there's a very big difference in how these men are treating the last, you know, years of their lives is a very big difference.

If you know anything about the story, what's going on with John MacArthur's church, he's basically facing down the civil governing authority, the civil governing authority is threatening him with financial fines, even jail to a certain extent, because he's doing the very dangerous, very evil, very horrible thing of having church on the

Lord's Day, he's having in person local assemblies, as as it's commanded by, by God in the book in the

Bible. And so he's being, you know, there's a lot of pressure being put on him from a lot of different sides.

But most importantly, at least, right now is the is the civil governing authority, they're they're claiming authority to be able to shut down the worship of God on Sunday mornings.

And John MacArthur, he started off in compliance, like a lot of people. But he, you know, over time realized that actually, the civil governing authority doesn't have that power, especially so when the pandemic is so obviously overblown, and that kind of thing.

And so John MacArthur decided he's going to defy the civil governing authorities, they say don't meet, he's saying we're going to meet.

And he's lost some, he's lost some judgments and rulings and things like that.

And John MacArthur is going to meet anyway. And here's a meme that somebody created with John MacArthur behind the pulpit.

And he's defiant, this is a he's defying the civil governing authority, because the civil governing authority is overstepping their bounds.

That's what he's saying, according to Scripture. And here's the quotation from Pastor John MacArthur.

He says, quote, if they want to tuck me away in a jail, I'm open for jail ministry.

I've done a lot of other ministries, but I haven't had the opportunity to do that one. So bring it on. That's an amazing quote.

That's an amazing quote. He's basically saying, look, do what you have to do. I'm going to do what I have to do.

And that's that's the exact attitude that that I think, you know, we should be looking to emulate and make no mistake.

As I said, in the beginning of this, there are a lot of shepherds, there are a lot of pastors who have cojones, there are a lot of pastors who would also gladly go to jail in order to obey

Christ. So John MacArthur is by no means the only one, but he is the lightning rod. There's no question about that.

He's what he's the one that everyone's paying attention to. But there are legions of men, legions of men who would gladly go to jail, if that's what the civil governing authority wanted to do, for preaching

Christ for doing what Christ requires that we do for meeting on the Lord's Day, dispensing the sacraments for singing psalms, hymns and spiritual, spiritual songs unto the

Lord. That's worth it to them. They'll go to jail for that. They'll go to jail for that. And that's the exact right attitude.

Do whatever you have to do. I have to listen to God. That's my authority, right? That's where I get my that's where I get my morality, my ethical structure, my, my commands,

I follow one Lord, right? One Lord. And so do what you have to do,

Caesar, but I'm going to do what I have to do. This is absolutely worth emulating. And he's taking tons of heat for this.

I saw some loser on Twitter, Alan, Alan Cross, Alan L. Cross. He got on he got on Twitter, and he was saying,

I just got off the phone with a with a with a with a civil governing authority, one of the senators in California, and John MacArthur is making it so much more difficult for people like us to get by.

And it's just like, you know, grow a pair. How about that? grow a pair, be a man, get your big boy pants on and grow a pair.

Okay, because the reality is, yeah, maybe he is making it a little bit tougher on churches. But the reality is that we have one

Lord, we have to obey our master, regardless of what the civil governing authority does. We've got some commandments that we need to follow.

This is this is the side of the church in the United States right now that is absolutely doing what's required.

And I think it's worth commending. I think it's worth emulating. And we ought to pray for people like this, because, listen, it's not out of the realm of possibility that John MacArthur would go to jail.

Now, I think that Governor Newsom probably understands that that that would be a big mistake to do that.

But who knows, because these people are crazy. The civil governing authority in California is loony tune.

So you know that they might not care about making a big mistake like this, it would be a strategic error, but he might not care.

He might just want to make a point. And so John MacArthur may end up in jail. And the reality is that if he ends up in jail, he's resolved in his heart, that what he's going to do is he's going to preach the gospel in jail.

And this is something that Christians have done for a very long time. And, and John MacArthur is standing in a long line of men who are willing to, you know, take whatever punishment comes their way in order to obey

Christ. This is something that a man does, this is something that a pastor is required to do, because sometimes the thing that God requires is not the most pleasant thing for you to do.

God's commands are simple, but they're not always like easy to follow because they hurt sometimes they hurt.

It's easy to understand what God requires, but it's not always easy to accomplish it sometimes. And John MacArthur understands that and he stands in a long line of, of good men who, who, who also understood this.

But in contrast, of course, we have prophets who want to tell you that everything's okay, just the way it is.

People who want to soothe your conscience, if you will, to, to, to do all kinds of disobedience.

People who would like to pretend that Christian liberty gives you enough leeway to do things and to believe things that are obviously sinful about God.

And unfortunately, Timothy Keller is one of those prophets. He's one of those prophets that would say that would, that would tell you what you want to hear, not necessarily what

God said, but tell you what you wish God would say, right? He was one of those prophets that would preach, uh, that would, that would prophesy peace, peace, but there was no peace.

They didn't get that message from God. There was no peace coming, but they wanted everyone to feel like it was going to be okay.

They wanted to, uh, they wanted a prophet who would tell them what they wanted to hear.

And so there was all too many false prophets who are very willing to tell you what you wanted to hear.

And the same is true today. So it's been true since Bible times, and it's true today. There are, if you, if you want to, um, to justify some kind of sin in your life, or you want to justify some kind of false belief in your life, all you have to do these days is go to the

Oracle, which is Google, go to the Oracle and type in whatever your query is, and you will find

PhDs, you will find pastors, you will find people with big platforms and followings that tell you exactly what you want to hear.

It doesn't matter what the topic is. If you put it into the Oracle, you give them, you give it enough time, you will find out exactly what you want to find out.

This is, it's not hard to do that anymore. It's not hard to do that. It was never hard back in the day either. But now we've got

Google, you know, we've got all the information at our fingertips that we could ever want. And so, um,

Timothy Keller is, is, is, is, is, is really a, a stark contrast with John MacArthur.

John MacArthur is willing to go to jail for it. Tim, Tim Keller is willing to bend what the scripture says for it.

Let's read this thread. Let's read this thread. This is in the vein of Jonathan Lehman. If you, if you were with us last week, we did a number of videos about Jonathan Lehman's political theory and views on politics.

And it was, it was horrendous. You know, Jonathan Lehman's positions were horrendous.

Um, but if you can believe it, Timothy Keller's position is actually worse because he makes it more explicit. Now I'm just going to read this and we'll, we'll take it from there.

Timothy Keller tweeted this out last night. He said, Christians and the freedom of conscience and politics.

The Bible binds my conscience to care for the poor, but it does not tell me the best practical way to do it.

Any particular strategy, high taxes and governmental services versus low taxes and private charity may be good and wise, and may even be somewhat inferred from other things the

Bible teaches, but they are not directly commanded. And therefore we cannot insist that all Christians as a matter of conscience follow one or the other.

The Bible binds my conscience to love the immigrant, but doesn't tell me how many legal immigrants to admit into the United States every year.

It does not exactly prescribe immigration policy. The current political parties offer potpourri of different positions on these and many other topics.

Most of which as just noted, the Bible does not speak up to directly. This means when it comes to talk, taking political positions, voting and determining alliances and political involvement, the

Christian has liberty of conscience. Christians cannot say to other Christians, no Christian can vote for, or every

Christian must vote for, unless you can find a biblical command to that effect. Now that's all he said at first.

And people, you know, were rightly teeing off on this, because they noticed instantly that he omitted two very critical things.

He omitted abortion, and he omitted LGBT, fake marriage, and that kind of thing.

So people were teeing off and saying, how do you apply this logic to abortion, and stuff like that.

And I didn't take that approach, because I knew exactly how he would apply this to abortion.

And so he actually did something that was a little bit out of character. You see, normally, Tim Keller treats

Twitter like a fortune cookie. And so he, you know, it's just a form of like wisdom signaling, you know, where you try to appear wise by not speaking to an issue directly, by not actually clearing anything up by not actually saying anything of any substance whatsoever.

That's wisdom signaling, you want to appear wise by saying nothing. Tim Keller is an expert at wisdom signaling.

But he did something out of character, he actually does apply this to abortion as well. After getting all the pushback, he says this, he says, this is like three hours later.

Some folks are missing the point of this thread. The Bible tells me that abortion is a sin and a great evil.

But it doesn't tell me the best way to decrease or end abortion in this country, nor which policies are the most effective.

Now. I mean, it doesn't really need comment. This is this entire thread is attempting to soothe your conscience.

If you want to vote for baby butchers, right? There's nothing in this thread that could not likewise be applied to the

Nazi Party in Germany in the 30s, nothing. And so people have been teeing off on this and saying,

Well, how could you? How does this apply? How does this consistent? How is this make any sense?

And people have been providing like counter examples? Well, the Bible tells me that murder is wrong, but it doesn't tell me what policies

I should use to end murder and stuff like that. It's like, I mean, the thing is, like, like, all of this stuff is accurate.

Like, of course, he, you know, this, this would be he would be one of the, the German priests or pastors who went along with the

Nazi Party, because, you know, after all, the Bible doesn't really tell us what to do with the Jews and stuff like that. Like, like, it all applies.

It's all true. But, but I think what we're missing is like, is like, this is, this is unbelief.

Like, like Timothy Keller is promoting unbelief, at least in the realm of politics.

You see, politics is really nothing but an outworking of a nation's morality, right?

A nation's morality and ethics, and things of that nature. You I said it on Twitter, you show me your politics or political theory,

I'll show you what your religion is. It's just that simple. It's very easy to do. And to see that. But to Timothy Keller, the

Bible doesn't actually directly speak to this kind of stuff, doesn't tell us how to deal with sin in the public square.

It doesn't tell us how exactly what to do here. I mean, it's it's just it's really up to us.

We've got the Christian liberty for this kind of thing. And he, he cites the Westminster Confession, which I find interesting, because the

Westminster Confession, I believe it's chapter 23, or 20 something anyway, on Christian liberty, it actually specifically calls out what

Timothy Keller is doing here. This is a pretense of liberty, saying that you have liberty where you do not because the

Bible does actually speak to all of these issues. The Bible does actually speak to all of these issues.

You see, yes, we must care for the poor. But the Bible also says you shall not steal. And so therefore, there's at least some policies that are off the table completely.

Now, does the Bible tell you exactly the form of the charity that you should you should form in order to take care of the poor?

No, it does not. So there's an element of truth there. Yeah, it doesn't tell me that I have to do a certain form of charity.

But it does say you shall not steal. And so the reality is that this is this is false.

Everything he said in this, in this thread is actually not correct. Yes. Like, like, like, like,

I'm almost at a loss, it's almost embarrassing to, to confront this because the error is so basic.

Because if somebody said, you know, the Bible says I should care for the poor, and one way to do it is to kill the poor, so that there's not as many poor and then that thus we can eliminate poverty, you'd be like, well, ad that's really stupid, because the

Bible also says you shall not kill. And that's exactly the point. You see, the policies and the government strategies that that are allowable are the ones that don't break the other commandments of God.

It's very easy to see it when I give you a very bombastic example like that. But all of a sudden, when it becomes the difference between high taxes and low taxes and becomes the difference between making criminalizing abortion or not criminalizing abortion, like, in other words, when it becomes the actual issues that we face today, all of a sudden,

Tim Keller wants to pretend like he's confused. And the Bible is actually not sufficient to address these issues.

But of course, it absolutely is. Of course, the Bible is absolutely sufficient. You see, somebody asked me, he said, does the

Bible tell you the best strategy for ending abortion in our country? And I said, actually, no, it doesn't tell you the best strategy for ending it.

But what it does tell you is how to justly handle it. So in other words, if an abortion happens, and you can prove it on the evidence of two or more witnesses, the person who acquired the abortion, and the person who did the abortion should both be swiftly executed.

No mercy, because that's it's life for life. The Bible if, if if the Bible is not clear on capital punishment for murderers, then the

Bible is not clear on anything. It's one of the most clear principles that I can imagine, from the book of Genesis all the way to the end to Revelation.

It's one of the most clear principles that I can imagine the Bible teaching. But somehow, Tim Keller, when it's applied to today's issues, today's politics, the fight that we're currently in, somehow, he's confused.

He's confused. And all of a sudden, the Bible is not sufficient. You see, the Westminster Confession multiple times refutes what

Tim Keller says here. And he's pretending like he's quoting the Westminster Confession. But the very sections he's quoting actually refute him.

Not only that, but the civil governing authority has a role and the governing and the civil governing authority, according to the

Westminster Confession, and more importantly, according to Scripture, identifies that role as punishing evildoers.

They have the sword, they can punish evildoers. Charity belongs to the church. Charity belongs to the church and that kind of thing.

And so, so the reality is that Timothy Keller is pretending like the Bible is not clear.

And let me just say how it actually is. Timothy Keller is pretending that God has not spoken in areas where he has definitively spoken.

Timothy Keller is trying to get you to feel okay, voting for evil. And it's and it's not just abortion, like, like, we need to be clear about this.

Abortion is just the easiest question on the test. So if you get that one wrong, as Timothy Keller does here, there is a definitive version of what justice looks like in the case of abortion that comes directly from the

Scripture in a very straightforward way, not a very confusing way. But it's not just abortion.

It's the easiest question, but it's not the only question. You see, the Democratic Party in the United States, I'm not saying you have to vote

Republican. But what I am saying is, the Democratic Party in the United States is turning upside down every single one of the 10 commandments.

Every single one, it rejects them and turns them upside down to the commandment.

Every single one. There is not one of the 10 that they respect. There is not one of the 10 that their policies seek to uphold.

They're upside down on everything. But somehow Timothy Keller is confused.

He's confused as to the freedom of conscience. The Bible doesn't specifically address the specific policy decisions of our time, and so therefore anything goes.

We have to allow room for that in the church. He's been saying this over the last few weeks. We need to allow more room for political disagreement.

No, less room for political disagreement, especially when there's really no contest here.

Listen, you might disagree with the Republicans on immigration policy. We can talk about that kind of thing.

But there is no question that the stated goals of the parties, when it comes to Democrats and Republicans, the stated goals, there is no comparison.

The Democrats break every single command. Not only do they break them, but they break them in a bombastic, exact opposite kind of way, calling evil good and good evil, calling left, right, up, down, that kind of thing.

It's the exact opposite. And so there's only one really good way to explain what the

Democratic Party stands for. It's antichrist. It's antichrist. They are against Christ, his rule and his law.

And so any person who's attempting to ease your conscience in supporting that does not have your best interest in mind.

This is an evil take, abjectly evil take. And so you have a comparison here, you have a comparison here.

You've got a man who is telling you that everything's okay, where it clearly isn't. You have a man who's telling you that God hasn't spoken where he definitively has.

You have a man who's telling you that if you if you want to throw your support behind a party who is against every single thing that Christ stood for, that's okay as a

Christian. And then you have a man who's telling you, if you have to put me in jail for preaching

Christ, go ahead and do it. I'll preach Christ in jail. Now you tell me which one of these men looks like the prophets that are revered in Scripture?

Which one of these men and the way that their lives and their trajectory has gone reminds you more of John the

Baptist, reminds you more of the prophet Isaiah, reminds you more of Jeremiah and Amos and all of these men. You tell me which one reminds you more of those men.

And I'll show you who the person you should emulate is. Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful.