The Month in Review: CRU, Josh Harris, SBC Seminaries, and Approaching Your Pastor

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris, and three things I'm gonna talk about today.

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Number one, this amazing lime green shirt, which I'm sure you noticed within the first half a second of watching this, and you just thought,

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I just have to have that shirt. Well, I'm gonna talk about that. I'm gonna tell you how you can get one. Most of you probably don't want it, but there's kind of a funny story behind this.

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Number two, I'm gonna give you kind of a shotgun of news items in regard to the evangelical social justice movement.

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I know some of you, you listen to this when you're, in one case, a listener, you're out farming, or you're driving, you're commuting, and you're not reading stuff, and I've been writing a lot lately.

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So I wanna share some of the things I've been writing, and if you have even read it, I'm gonna give you some additional perspective. And then last,

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I wanna just briefly try to touch on something that I get asked a lot, and I may do a whole episode on it someday, but it's in regard to approaching a pastor or a leader about this movement and concerns.

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Because a lot of laymen are getting shut down, and I just wanna encourage you and give you some ideas. So let's start with first thing first, this wonderful shirt.

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Now, this shirt was not first rocked by me, I have to say. It may have been my idea, but it was actually worn best by this gentleman,

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A .D. Robles, I just have to say. He looks amazing in this lime green shade. And he wore this two days ago on his show, and surprisingly, there were some fans of his who thought, man,

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I gotta get one of those shirts, and I was not expecting that. And I'm gonna just tell you the reason that he has the shirt and that I have the shirt.

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I mean no disrespect by having this, by the way.

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I wasn't even gonna wear it, but there is, if you've been following my videos and A .D.

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Robles' videos, you know that both of us have parody videos of interviewing for the

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Gospel Coalition. And one of the things that I wanted to do was a follow -up to that.

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And by the way, I work for the Gospel Coalition, if you remember correctly, my alter ego, A .D. Robles, I think is still, his application's being reviewed.

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But I sent this shirt to him, and I have one, to work on a project, and I just forgot to tell him about it.

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I just sent him the shirt, and I didn't even talk about why we have these shirts. And so he just wore it. And it's fine that he wore it.

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I think it's good that he wore it because he rocks it. And I had no clue anyone else would want this shirt. And I have a suspicion that those who want this shirt want to go to big

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EVA conferences and wear it. And if you do that, I'm not endorsing you doing that, by the way, but if you do it, you may be surrounded by a group of prayer warriors who are going to denounce your lack of winsomeness and pray for your soul.

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So, if you do do that and you have a story, please tell me.

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Anyways, it is a Gospel Coalition, but not really because it is the Social Gospel Coalition.

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And instead of a C, we have a hammer and a sickle here. And yes, there have been some good things that have come out of the

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Gospel Coalition, but they have been one of the main organizations promoting kind of a neo -Marxist idea.

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And NAD Robles has ragged on that. I ragged on it a little bit, but yeah, this is for a future project.

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So stay tuned for that. Here's the big announcement, though. If you want one of these shirts, for the next month until the end of September, if you become a

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Patreon supporter of mine for any price, you can do a dollar if you want.

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I'm not suggesting a dollar. I mean, more than a dollar would be nice. Like five bucks would be nice. But see, I'm becoming a capitalist right now.

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And I don't talk about this much, but when I saw that people wanted it, I thought, well, I can get you a shirt.

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I can get you a shirt if you become a Patreon supporter. So I'll give it to you in your size, the same lime green, the same white emblem, and then you can go to big

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EVA events and cause trouble. Anyway, we're just having some fun on that.

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And I'm gonna talk about some serious things now, but I figured

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I'd mention that. One of the things that I've been writing about, and by the way, you can find these articles at enemieswithinthechurch .com,

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is Cru. And I'm sitting on some information that I'm gonna release probably later in the week or next week that is just amazing, shocking, that Cru is involved in this.

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But I'm gonna give you kind of half a red pill before I release that because this is worth looking at.

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This is happening all over the place. And I think this is a good example. Cru platformed

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Sandra Maria Van Opstel in July for their staff conference. And she's a social justice warrior.

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She, in a speech, says that, hey, we can't raise the banner of Jesus and stay silent while we experience another

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Holocaust. And you might think, well, yeah, abortion. Nope, nope, she wasn't talking about that. She was talking about ICE agents.

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ICE agents are the Gestapo. And she put that, basically, compared them to the Gestapo in a tweet. And here's the concerning thing.

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Here's the concerning thing. It's what's underneath this. Obviously, these are political things she's saying to a group of staff at colleges who are supposed to be promoting

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Christianity. This is an evangelistic conference. That's the theme. But she had this to say.

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This is the concerning thing to me. Now, listen to these words and see if this is true. In the book of Amos, over and over again, he tells us that trampling on the poor through purchasing through companies that exploit workers and harm and endanger human lives and cause war for our luxurious jewels and our electronic batteries is not worship.

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Now then, there's application and there's interpretation. And I think in the context, she's talking more about interpretation, but let's just say it's application.

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She's just applying it, even if it's application. Is that a fair application of the book of Amos? Did you get that reading the book of Amos?

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Talking about corporate greed and the subjection of workers and like, where is that in the book of Amos?

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Now then, here's how she got there. This is the dangerous part.

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She studied the book of Amos for 10 years and then she learned Hebrew and still studied the book of Amos and then she didn't really fully understand it until she went to Statesville prison.

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And then she began to see Amos differently when inmates showed her from an oppressed perspective what they thought the book of Amos was about.

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Think with me a minute about this. You can study a passage and not understand it until you get an oppressed perspective.

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This is dangerous. This destroys the clarity of scripture. This puts a barrier in the way of someone understanding scripture because now you have to go get a perspective, another perspective.

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It destroys objectivity. It's just, it's acid. It's postmodern acid and it is being promoted and championed in a keynote at CRU's 2019 conference.

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I have more to share about CRU, but let's move on to the next item of business. Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary removed the

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Paige Patterson portraits in Patterson Hall, which is named after Paige. For those who don't know, Paige Patterson was a hero to the conservative resurgence.

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Here's a picture, by the way, if you're watching. He basically helped

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Southeastern get out of the pickle and he is, well, he was a hero. And even in 2014, a lot of glowing things said about him on campus from Danny Akin, the president and the provost and the vice president.

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But now where him and his wife had a picture, there is a map, three maps actually of the different floors of Patterson Hall.

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Now I know because I was a student there that you don't need a map to get around Patterson Hall. For years, no one's needed a map that I can tell.

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I never needed a map. I never heard of anyone needing a map. It's very straightforward. It's not a big building. Now they have a map there.

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And this has been what, over a month now? And these pictures had not re -emerged anywhere else on campus, they're gone.

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And they were in a place of prominence before. The only thing that I can conclude is they don't want Page up there because of the hit piece that Washington posted on him.

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And this hit piece was in 2018,

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I believe, in May, yes. And that's when Danny Akin, the president who actually studied under Patterson, emailed the faculty,

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I received this email and said he was gonna take swift action and then

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Safe Space flyers started appearing in the student center. And within about, it was a little over a week, they had a panel on recognizing and responding to abuse in the church.

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And from a student's perspective, this all looked like Page is guilty and we hadn't heard from him.

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He's denying it now, but now actually, currently he's in court, he can't say anything, but he had denied that this happened.

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And the allegation is that he had given advice, I guess, to a rape victim or a victim of molestation and said that, you know, kind of forgive, stay with the person, it was something along those lines and the

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Me Too movement just kind of mistled him. That's the long and short of it. But this wasn't like, there wasn't a fact check on this.

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We don't know what actually happened. We're just believing what this individual said. And it's interesting because you would think that people that are close to him, institutions that have buildings named after him and his portrait hanging there would be loyal to him, at least to the point of, we are going to give you the benefit of the doubt and that doesn't appear to have happened.

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Now he is being deplatformed in a sense, his legacy is. And that's sad to me.

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And the reason it's sad to me is because I think this acid is going to eat everything.

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There's no man that is perfect out there. We don't even know if Page was guilty in this, but there's no man that is, well,

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I shouldn't say we know. I know people that are closer to Page and I've communicated some with them.

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And it does not appear that the story from this young lady was accurate. But even if Page made mistakes, which he has, every man has.

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And his conservative resurgence legacy is still important. Think of King David and what he did.

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And he repented, but which by the way, some of the clips unrelated to the

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Washington Post story that came out where Page Patterson was saying some inappropriate things or they sounded inappropriate, he apologized for it.

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Just like King David, King David did some worse stuff. He murdered, he took a woman who wasn't his wife and he is in the

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Bible. He has a prominent place in scripture and there's a legacy there. Jerusalem's called the city of David.

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I just don't understand. I do understand. That's the scary part, I do understand. But I don't understand men who think that they can salvage the reputations of biblical heroes and heroes of the faith while doing this.

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You can't engage in this and do that. And this acid is going to eat away, it's already eating away

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George Whitefield, anyone who owns slaves. What about MLK? I mean, MLK is not even an Orthodox Christian, but how much more should this eat at his legacy?

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I mean, he's got, I Have a Dream speech is a good legacy. And Southeastern gave three credit points, three credits to those who would go out to the

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MLK conference, MLK 50 and write a paper about it. Didn't seem to be a problem there.

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And yet this is a man who not only is not Orthodox, but engaged in affairs and so forth. There seems to be a contradiction, but I just don't think that contradiction can last for long.

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I think MLK eventually probably will be mistled if this thinking keeps going. And everyone's gonna be mistled.

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On some level for some kind of flaw. And so do we wanna go down that path? That is the question. And so I just bring this up, not because this is like the biggest deal in the world, but these painting is removed, but the ideas behind it, the thinking that led to this, that's what concerns me.

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Moving on, Josh Harris, I gotta talk about this. Josh Harris and Marty Sampson.

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Now, Josh Harris is an author in case you didn't know, he wrote

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I Kissed Dating Goodbye, but he wrote a bunch of other books, Boy Meets Girl and Stop Dating the Church. And there's a bunch of books

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I've read by him. And I found some of them helpful. Sex Is Not the Problem, Lust Is. I thought it was a very helpful book.

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Very formulaic, but a lot of biblical formulas in there. Now, Josh Harris, I'm gonna give you as brief as I can kind of the trajectory.

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Two years ago or so, a little over a year and a half ago, Josh Harris did a TED Talk in which he said, yeah,

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I Kissed Dating Goodbye, that book that I wrote, not a good idea. It's ruined some people's lives and I'm gonna be humble enough to say

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I'm wrong. And it seemed extremely arrogant. I watched the TED Talk. He's saying he's humble the whole time and tooting that horn.

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And he's crediting himself with destroying all these lives of people who took his information seriously, his principles in the book.

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And they applied them and it didn't work out. So he's to blame. Then you have last year a documentary that he puts out called

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I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye. And in the documentary, it's very interesting to me, he talks about the main problem that he had was, you know what, he, along with purity culture, idolized marriage and that was wrong.

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We shouldn't idolize marriage because we assume that in order to be fulfilled, you have to have sex. And in order to have sex, you have to be married if you're a

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Christian. So everything was about marriage. And he says, we gotta stop idolizing marriage. These victims, these poor single people who are victims and these poor people that didn't have ideal circumstances, because like one of the principles in Josh Harris's book is fathers should be involved in protecting their daughters, right?

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So the boy who wants to date a girl, he needs to go and talk to the father and he needs to protect her.

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Well, what about the girls who don't have fathers? And this is brought up as, oh, my book didn't apply to them.

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Well, it's like, yeah, of course there's circumstances that are not ideal. Doesn't mean that there is not an ideal circumstance though.

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But Josh Harris thinks, yeah, that destroys the book. So there's a very pragmatic way of looking at things. But he says, yeah, I idolize marriage.

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And that just wasn't good because it left out people that couldn't get married. And there's a lot of other interesting things he says.

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You can read my article if you wanna know more. But then what happens later this year is he comes out with an

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Instagram post where he says, yeah, my wife and I are splitting up. And then he comes out with a post where he says,

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I've left the faith. I'm deconstructing my worldview essentially. He used the word deconstructing. That's very key.

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And then he is marching in an LGBT parade and he posts it. Now people have speculated, is he homosexual?

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You know, what led to this? I want to suggest something. And this isn't like a theory.

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I'm actually, well, it sort of is, but I'm actually using his words. I'm not like finding something that isn't there.

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Josh Harris said he was very much at peace with his decision. He never felt more at peace. Marty Sampson, who is an author for Hillsong Music says the same thing.

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I'm so at peace. And both of them left the faith under circumstances in which they use postmodern language to justify their exit.

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Marty Sampson said basically, Christianity doesn't work for everyone.

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Joshua Harris is saying, yeah, my principles, my biblical principles, they didn't work for everyone. We're leaving now.

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There's other ways to live. And we feel at peace. We feel at peace.

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At peace with who? At peace with what? Both of them, I'd like, this is maybe where I'm getting into theory, but I think it's,

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I'm gonna say that this is accurate. They have to be at peace with the world.

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They're not at peace with God. They're rejecting God. Josh Harris is talking about he's on a journey now.

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He's just trying to listen and figure out, he's trying to listen yet, and he's trying to privately figure things out, but yet he's publicly posting this stuff and he's telling people he knows, it's not

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Christianity, guys. It's not the faith I was growing. So it's hypocritical. But all that to say that he is at peace now with the prevailing culture, the pro -LGBTQ, the anti -Christian culture, he's at peace with them and so is

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Marty Sampson. That's why they're at peace. They're at war with God, but they're rejecting God. So they're suppressing that truth while being at peace with the world.

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That's the only way I know how to explain that statement that both of them made. Postmodernism plays a part in this.

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And one thing I didn't hear anyone else talk about in regards to Josh Harris is the use of the term purity culture. Yes, Joshua Harris used the term deconstruction.

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Yep, he went to a liberal seminary that would have meant something. It would have meant the destabilization of Western culture and understandings of reading the

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Bible in reality and trying to reinterpret through a new lens and so forth. But here's the thing, in postmodernism, social lenses, in the modern form at least, social lenses are what determine truth.

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Josh Harris used the term purity culture. Now, that term may have been used back in the late 90s, early 2000s,

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I don't remember it. I just remember the abstinence movement. I remember, yeah, there's some guys saying, yeah, we shouldn't have a sexual relationship before marriage.

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That's a biblical principle. And a lot of different various cultures came together to support that. Culture, that is a word that is just thrown around a lot, but culture used to mean a dialect and a heritage of some kind.

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And there's art that's associated, there's a legacy of something. There's a lot more that goes into culture than just a principle of we're gonna have abstinence.

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So he's calling this purity culture. And in postmodernism, culture, your culture, your race, your culture, these things determine reality for you.

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So I think it's very interesting he's using the word purity culture. I don't wanna read a lot into that, but I haven't heard anyone else mention that.

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I think it is significant because Joshua Harris is trading one culture for another. He's saying purity culture didn't work.

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Marty Sampson is saying the Hillsong stuff I was in, man, it didn't answer the questions that I really have that Christians really are struggling with.

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You know, why don't we see miracles? Why is there so much pain and suffering? Why would God send people to hell? Basic questions that probably an average apologist could have been able to answer, but he's saying what

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I was in, the Hillsong tradition, which by the way is more, it's not very intellectual, I'll put it that way, didn't have answers to that.

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I'm rejecting that culture. I'm rejecting it. And they're trading one culture for another.

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And because in the postmodern scheme, trading a culture for another culture means trading a truth, an understanding of truth.

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So we're trading one understanding of truth for another understanding of truth, and we're gonna find something that works for us. It's postmodernism.

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That's what it is. And yes, Jesus said there will be apostates, and Paul said it, and John said it. They went out from us because they were not of us.

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Jesus will say, I never knew you depart from me, you workers of iniquity.

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But in this circumstance, and I can think of personal people I know that fit this story.

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I mean, this is happening all over the place. Millennials and those younger are rejecting Christianity, and they're doing it for these reasons, for postmodern reasons.

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And we need to take inventory of that. I think they're rejecting formulas, and they're rejecting an understanding of Christianity, which is not perhaps altogether biblical.

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And it's just a wake -up call that we need to get back to an understanding of Christianity that is biblical. And passion does not necessarily equate with leadership.

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And the ability to lead. And I mean, there are qualifications for being an elder. And just because someone is talented in a certain area, it does not mean that they should be platformed.

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They may still be needing to work through some things. And so hopefully this causes us to stand back, reflect, and move forward in a way that is more biblical.

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And that's all I wanted to really say about that. But Josh Harris, Marty Sampson's sad cases.

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And I know a lot of folks have talked about both of these men. We need to pray for them.

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I'm a little late in commenting on it, but I did wanna comment on it. So the other thing I wanted to focus on is, and I'll spend the rest of my time, most of the rest of my time on this, before I get to the commonly asked question

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I get, is this article I wrote last night. And it's called,

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Why Faith Statements Won't Save Us. And there's a picture there that's Al Mohler, and he's bending over and he's examining

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Matthew Hall, the provost at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who's signing a faith statement. Now, I'm gonna give you some background here in case you don't know, but here's what's going on.

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Matthew Hall is a provost at Southeastern. He's a professor there. And he was caught essentially, there were some videos and articles of him that were exposed where he says that,

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I'm a white supremacist, I'll always struggle with that. If you live in America, you're by definition affected by racism and you need to re -educate yourself and all these critical race theory ideas coming out of his mouth.

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And these videos and article is, by the way, not exhausted. There's more information out there on Hall, but these were two really terrible looking ones.

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They surfaced. And the reaction from Albert Moeller, who's the president of the

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was less than what we would have hoped.

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Let's just put it that way. And I'm gonna get into that. But a parallel situation is happening at the same time.

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Danny Akin, who's the president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, which I believe is the second biggest after Southern. One of his professors,

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Walter Strickland, who also is on the resolutions committee for the Southern Baptist Convention, which gave us resolution nine on critical race theory.

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Walter Strickland had a video of him from 2016, which was kind of surfaced.

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And it shows him endorsing some heretical books on liberation theology. And he's saying some of them are his favorite book.

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You need to read this book. It'll bless you. It's James Cone, it's J .T. Otis Roberts. And I actually went through and I looked at these books and they're bad.

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They are just bad. You know, I'm not gonna beat that dead horse because I've already talked about that in a previous video for those who regularly watch me, but it's not good.

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And here's the way that both men handled it. First, they covered it up. And Al Mueller, he was asked about this and he said that it was scrubbed, the video and the article of Hall, because he did not think it was helpful.

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He didn't say because he thought it was, he didn't come out against it strong, like, oh, he was so wrong and there's gonna be an apology and there was none of that.

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It was just, yeah, it wasn't helpful. And he says, if I thought Hall was a danger to the church, he would not be the provost at a

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. So he's saying, trust me, nothing to see here, it's scrubbed. You can't look at the evidence anymore.

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Strickland, the same thing, except the video of him saying, endorsing these books was on the

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Jude Three Project, which is not under the purview of the Southern Baptist Convention or Southeastern. So that video in itself, you can still go find it.

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But before this happened, Kingdom Diversity's website scrubbed about 90 % of the material that incriminated

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Walter Strickland, William Branch, Matt Mullins, these professors that were pushing critical race theory, intersectionality, liberation theology, this kind of stuff.

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And some of that stuff was saved and you can go find it, but there's a coverup at Southeastern as well, just scrubbing stuff from the websites.

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So that's the first reaction here. The second reaction is there's no admission or apology, no admission of guilt, no apology for these things being said that directly contradict biblical principles.

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And this is what we get. Both Al Mohler and Danny Akin point to the

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Baptist faith and message and say, well, as long as, in a Federalist article, they say this, no, it wasn't

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Federalist, this was Baptist Press, I believe. They say, well, as long as we all can gather around the

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Baptist faith and message, we can discuss any of these challenges and we can do it with trust and respect and eager cooperation, is what

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Mohler said. And Akin said that we can trust, he said, the men who lead our national

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SBC entities are unapologetically committed to the Baptist faith and message, so we can trust them. Here's the interesting part.

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I'm gonna show you this. Here's what was on Twitter last week. Walter Strickland reposts

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Southeastern, and what he says is, I'm grateful to be elected to faculty. It's kind of like tenure. So after this whole situation erupts and he's endorsing liberation theology and there's no apology, he doesn't renounce it, he is then elected to faculty.

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Okay, and then what happens? Well, Southeastern puts this out. As Dr. Scott Pace and Dr.

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Walter Strickland sign our confessional documents, they agree to teach in accordance with and not contrary to each of them. And we gladly celebrate their election to SCBTS faculty.

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So they're highlighting that Walter Strickland will not teach contrary to the Baptist faith and message.

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Well, he's already promoted things that are contrary. I mean, that's just a fact. And I've gone over it in other videos, but he's done this and it's an undermining.

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The things he's taught undermine indirectly. It's not like he's directly saying, I refute the Baptist faith and message, but they're postmodern ideas and liberation theology ideas that actually tinker with the

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DNA of the gospel. And so I guess there's a lack of discernment because,

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I mean, that's one option, or there's, I mean, I don't wanna consider the other option, but let's just say a lack of discernment. They don't see that these things contradict.

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And so this is the way of handling it. Look at me, I'm signing this,

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I'm okay. I'm not gonna teach contrary. Same thing happened yesterday. Matthew Hall signs the abstract of principles and he posts a picture of it.

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And look at these pictures, they're parallel. There's Walter Strickland, Danny Akin, the president is very serious look.

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He's looking over the shoulder of Walter and he said, okay, yeah, he's signing it. Same thing with Al Mohler, looking over Matthew Hall's shoulder, okay, he's signing it.

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And here's the picture for you again. There's Al Mohler, there's

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Danny Akin. And this seems to be the reaction.

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Look, I'm signing this, I'm okay. I'm doctrinally sound.

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Now we might, some of us might think, well, that's great. Some of that information that was bad is gone and now we can move on because yeah, they're signing the statement of faith.

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Everything's good. No, no, no, no, no, no, don't make that mistake. And here's why I'm saying that. On August 5th, there's an article entitled

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The Evangelical Reconcilers, How Evangelicalism Reconciles Itself with Modern Liberalism by Stephen Wolfe.

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I did a whole interview with Stephen Wolfe. And Stephen talks about three groups. He talks about warriors, capitulators, and then reconcilers.

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And it's a fascinating article. You can watch my interview with him if you want. But long story short, the warriors are those willing to directly and openly oppose the ruling class, the liberal elites.

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Capitulators are those who abandon orthodoxy and they conform to the norms of the ruling class. So in their first category, let's put like a

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Doug Wilson. He's like, I'm gonna fight. Christianity is gonna win. And then the capitulators are the ones like sojourners.

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They're like, yeah, we're gonna just go along with, we're gonna make conform Christianity, massage it, and we're not even gonna be orthodox anymore.

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We're just gonna give that up and we're gonna join the leftists. And then you have the reconcilers.

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And the reconcilers conform to the norms of the ruling class and assume a negative posture toward the warriors.

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So they hate the Doug Wilsons. Those guys who are just fighting, the guys who wanna get involved politically.

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Oh man, no, we are the nice evangelicals. And they try to make evangelicalism not necessarily acceptable or even respectable, but safe for toleration.

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So they're showing, this is principle pluralism, which is secularism. They're saying, look, we are not a threat to the regime.

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We are going to just keep doing our thing and kind of let us alone. And we'll take care of those warriors for you.

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So he identifies Danny Akin as a reconciler in this article. And this article came out in August 5th.

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So it's before some of the statements and stuff. But one of the things that he talks about, because Danny Akin has a pattern of this, is pointing to a statement of faith as, okay, we're okay because of the statement of faith.

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And he points out that's what a reconciler does. Oh, a reconciler would look at the place in which

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Christianity contradicts the liberal establishment because Christianity contradicts liberation theology.

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Christianity contradicts critical race theory. And they are going to try to make peace somehow. We can have orthodoxy and we can have that.

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And that, I mean, it's kind of like the synthesis in a Hegelian dialectic, if you know what that is. And here's the chilling stuff.

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History, I believe, is repeating itself. I think Al Mohler, Danny Akin seem to fit this reconciliation mold.

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But the guys that they are platforming, let me read you this. 1923,

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J. Gresham Akin writes a book. Christianity, or he puts it out, Christianity and Liberalism.

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And it's about the modernist controversy, different than what we're dealing with, the post -modernist controversy, but there's some similarities. And he says, there's a quote from him.

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He says, he complained about liberal theologians trying to obtain the religious advantage of an affirmation of sinlessness in Jesus while at the same time, also obtaining the supposed scientific advantages of its denial.

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So we want to religiously affirm Jesus and his sinlessness, but at the same time, science is important and we need to affirm higher criticism.

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And both of these things are important and they contradict one another, but we're gonna affirm both. And J.

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Gresham Akin goes on, he says, yeah, there's professors who immediately after declaring the

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Westminster Confession contains the system of doctrine taught in an infallible scripture, many ministers of the Presbyterian Church will proceed to decry that same confession and that doctrine of the infallibility of scripture to which they have just solemnly subscribed.

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So he's saying, they're signing the documents, they're signing them, they're signing the faith statement and then they're contradicting it indirectly.

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Guys, we're seeing the same thing. And Machen's conclusion was that despite the liberal use of traditional phraseology, modern liberalism not only is different religion from Christianity, but belongs in a totally different class of religions.

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Guys, here's the point, critical theory, intersectionality, postmodernism, this soup that we're swimming in, it's a different religion.

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It's what the world believes right now. It's the religion of Hollywood and of the entertainment and media business.

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It's the religion of academia. It's the religion of left -wing politics. This is the religion we're looking at.

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It's got its own way of determining truth and looking at reality, testing things, got its own moral code.

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It parallels Christianity. Even the social justice concept parallels gospel ideas about penance and original sin and so forth.

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So here's the thing, we have a parallel religion and it's being promoted in Southern Baptist seminaries and by the way, other evangelical seminaries.

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But because those who are promoting it either don't realize it or they're being subversive, they are able to sign these statements of faith.

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The institutions that went down the modernist controversy hole and decided they were gonna affirm evolution,

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Darwinism, they're gonna affirm higher criticism from Germany and so forth, like the

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Wellhausen theory and the documentary hypothesis and so forth. These organizations, a lot of them, they left orthodoxy.

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I should say all of them, they completely left. They had to eventually compromise. Something had to give.

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We're watching the same thing. We're watching the beginning of the same exact kind of move and that should be concerning for us.

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It really should. And so here's my final statement here.

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The faith statements are necessary. We have to sign them. We have to have professors sign them but they're not sufficient in protecting

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Christian institutions from postmodern heresies like critical theory. They can also function as shields against legitimate criticism.

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They're supposed to be shields against false teaching but they can function as, hey, that guy signed the statement.

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You can't criticize him because he signed the statement. Yeah, but he could also be promoting on the left hand, signing it with the right hand, signing the statement but then on the left hand, he could be promoting ideas that undermine what the right hand is signing.

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And so we need men in the words of Titus 1, 9 who are not just able to exhort and sound doctrine but are able to refute those who contradict and it takes discernment.

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If you can't see how there's a contradiction here in these theologies, because they are theologies, they have theological elements to them, critical race theory and so forth, then leading a seminary might not be the thing for you.

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And it's a scary world that we're living in that this is not caught. So these men are allowing these ideas to take root in their own backyards to some level.

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And if they're not, if they're opposing it, then we need to know. This stuff is publicly promoted, publicly come out against it.

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Publicly discipline those who promoted it or at least say they've changed their mind and they're gonna make a statement, they're gonna sign the Dallas statement.

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And that doesn't even completely protect us because statements don't, like I just, my whole argument is statements don't protect us, especially if you're postmodern, you can just redefine words.

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That's what the modernists did and postmodernists will have a better time doing it. But yeah, sign the

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Dallas statement and then let's have a period where you're, I'm being as nice as I possibly can be and it's charitable.

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Probably what needs to happen is some people need to be fired, but in the spirit of charity, everyone has ignorance, everyone has contradictions.

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So let's put the best possible face on this. Man, you're gonna have a period where you're gonna have to be watched a little bit and we're gonna make sure that that happens.

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And we're not gonna put you in classes where you're teaching those kinds of things or can promote those kinds of things.

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And it takes, do some measure, but no measures are taken. So that's the reaction to this and I wanna expose that.

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Al Mohler and Danny Akin are covering up the evidence, not admitting or apologizing for what happened and then pointing to a statement of faith as that's the thing that is gonna protect us.

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It's not. Last but not least, I wanted to, I'm just doing this kind of off the top of my head.

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I'm acknowledging some of the people that have sent me this, but there are many of you, and it breaks my heart, who have gone to your pastor or a

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Christian leader and you've talked about the social justice movement with them and your concerns about it.

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And many of you have got the door slammed shut in your face or more likely you've received an affirmation that, yeah, that's not good.

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We don't want that. But you know what? That's not actually happening here. Or so -and -so who promoted it, he's a good guy.

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And that's been the reaction. And the that's a good guy reaction.

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Well, he's a good guy. That's very common, especially if you're in the Southern Baptist Circle because they have this kind of good old boys network and this fits in with the 11th commandment and all that.

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There's just the culture of personality. It's interesting because in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, I noticed this. I was new to the Southern Baptist Convention when I went to seminary, but you are not allowed to criticize someone in public.

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You must criticize them in private, even if the error that they promoted was in public. It's not a biblical standard, but it is a cultural thing in the

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SBC for some reason. And so if something crazy happens, then you're supposed to go behind closed doors, make it right with the person.

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And that crazy thing that happened could still be up on the website. It could be leading other people into error, but you should be fine because you had a good time talking to them.

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Even if you disagreed, your feelings were, I don't know. I actually went through this to some extent.

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And so it's a weird culture for those outside of the SBC. You might not even know what I'm talking about, but this is the way it is.

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And so here's what I wanted to say regarding that.

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Be as innocent as a dove, but be as wise as a serpent.

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And I hate to say it this way, but you have got to approach these guys, even if it's a pastor that you love, you have got to approach it with the idea that possibly there's some

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Pharisaism going on, wanting the chief seats, protecting positions. There's an elitism.

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And your pastor may not even be aware of it, but if you're in that world, that just may be part of it.

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And he may be affected by it. So you need to approach it. If you love your pastor and you're trying to do this over, like be as convincing as possible, depending on your situation, you may want to approach this.

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I'm not saying not to approach it. You do need to approach it. You have that responsibility. You really do. But you may need to do it progressively.

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And that will give you an idea of where your pastor's at. But hey, pastor, did you see this? What do you think? Did you see, just to give an example of what

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I just saw, hey, our church promotes a crew group or we're involved in crew. Did you see what crew just did at their national convention?

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What do you think about that? And your pastor may not be aware. Listen to what he says.

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Listen to his reaction. And that's gonna give you an indication. You might wanna start off a little slow.

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Now, if things are happening in your church that are just crazy, yeah, you need to go and have a heart to heart.

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You need to say, pastor, I trust you to watch over my soul because you're my shepherd and watch over the souls of my wife and my kids.

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By the way, nothing against a woman approaching their pastor about this or even someone who's concerned that might be a minor.

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But I think husbands really do need to step up and do this if possible. So I'll go to your pastor and express your concern directly.

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I don't agree with this. And we're gonna have a problem. If you think this is okay, we will have to figure something out and it may mean me leaving.

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And that breaks our heart. We wanna avoid that. But I think upfront, if something's happening in your church, your pastor needs to know you're serious about it.

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If it's happening outside, I would approach it slowly and try to work with your pastor. He should have some discernment, but he's not perfect.

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Give him a little bit of time. But if he doesn't come around, if his immediate reaction is defensiveness, and let's say you take someone else with you who also shares the concern and still defensiveness, then you know where he's at and you really probably should find another place to worship.

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I don't say that casually. I'm saying, get other elders involved.

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Hopefully it's a church that has biblical elders. Get other people involved. Go through the steps that you need to in Matthew 18, but you do need to be open to that possibility of leaving.

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Don't close yourself to that. I know too many people that have written to me questions about, and basically what they want is,

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I just want my pastor to agree with me. I want my pastor to see what I'm seeing. And he doesn't. And I wanna stay at this church.

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Unfortunately, that's not always gonna work out. We would hope it would, but it may not always. Send your pastor resources too.

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If you know you're gonna approach your pastor on something, you could even send him some of the videos from the

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Social Justice and the Gospel Conference. Hey, did you look at this Bodie Bauckham video? What do you think about that? That may be a good way to open it up so your pastor is now thinking along those lines.

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Because they don't train you in this in seminary necessarily. You're not learning, even in apologetics courses, we are so late in the game.

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There's like no books written on this yet. Hardly any. I have a hard time recommending anything because people, we're so slow in responding to this.

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So most pastors are ignorant. But there are obvious things, and I'm not gonna go through all of them now, but there are obvious contradictions that exist between Christianity and social justice.

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So if you've presented those clearly, and it's clear that your pastor has heard you and they disagree, that's a red flag.

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So I guess what I'm saying is there is not a one -size -fits -all way to approach this. But I think far too many of us are not willing to leave.

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And at some point, that shouldn't be your first reaction. You leave with sorrow. You leave, hopefully not in the best terms you possibly can, but make it clear the reason.

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And then when you go to another church, you want to, before maybe getting involved, you want to talk to the elders or the pastor at that church and find out where they're at on this.

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And that's one of the reasons our project, I think, is so important. We're gonna try to get a map together of safe churches. And that would be after the movie is out, probably, that we'd have that.

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But it's vital that we have places to go where we can worship with like -minded believers.

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So my encouragement is, I guess that wasn't very encouraging. My encouragement is that God is in control and my sheep hear my voice, is what

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Jesus said. And so there is a great shepherd beyond the shepherd in your church, beyond the pastor who's there or the pastor's, there's

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Christ. And Christ will build his church and there will always be a remnant.

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His church will not be destroyed. And so there is a place for you. And you may not know where right now.

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You may feel lost. You may feel like you've tried every church in the community. There is a place though for you. And I do believe that if you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,

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God's gonna provide. He's gonna show you a place where you can use your spiritual gifts. And you may feel completely unfulfilled, like you're gonna have broken friendships.

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And yeah, it may feel that way, but there will be a dawn after the darkness. I do believe that.

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And I'm not just believing that because of wishful thinking. I just believe God is sovereign and he has sheep everywhere. And so you may be the one that needs to start the new church or something.

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I don't know. But anyway, all that to say, I commend those of you who have been brave in this.

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Thank you for taking a stand because as we just saw, people that are sometimes leading big ministries are not taking a stand.

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And those who have taken a stand, you know, you mean a lot to me. You're an encouragement to me when I hear stories. Last but not least,

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I think I've said that phrase like three times now. This truly is the last thing though. I forgot to announce it. Those of you who have stories, so many of you reach out to me with stories.

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You were in Acts 29 Network. You were in, you know, some parachurch ministry. You were in a denomination and you have a crazy story of like, wow,

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I watched the social justice movement just take it over and I watched crazy stuff happen. I think we're at a point now where we need to start showing some of these and the movie's gonna show it.

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The enemies within the church movie is gonna show some of this. But I think some of you who have contacted me need to, if you haven't, you need to consider writing down your story, cleaning it up so it's not just a text message, but an actual article.

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Go through, this is what happened. If you need to make it anonymous or whatever, try to do that.

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But we need to start putting some of these stories out there because I'm hearing them all the time. And I think a lot of pastors don't realize there's something going on because in their little world, they don't see it, but it's all around them.

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The storm is all around them. So I think that is something that could help us get the word out there. Yeah, we can look at these big organizations and what they're doing, but we wanna look at from the trenches.

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What kind of effects are these things having on the ground level? And they are having an effect.

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So please reach out to me. You can email me or if you're watching this on YouTube, you can reach out to me through YouTube and leave a comment.

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And I'd appreciate it. I will look through those testimonials. And if they're good, we'll find a place to platform them.

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And I may even talk about them on the show. So if you want one of these cool shirts, then become a

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Patreon supporter. You can go to the info section and there's a link to Patreon.

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And get set up there with your lime green shirt. Let's look at AD Robles one more time.

46:33

I mean, look at this guy. I mean, isn't this, this is just, guys, this is the new thing.

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This is the new thing. Anyway, my wife thinks it's the ugliest color. But hey, the

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Gospel Coalition chose the color. I didn't choose it. All right, I've said enough. God bless and until next time.