2022 Equipping Conference with Darrell Harrison and Virgil Walker

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2023 Women's Conference with Lisa Hughes | Special Event

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When I am tempted to despair Though I might fail to trust

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Your promises You never fail to hear my prayer

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And if You judged my sin

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I'd never stand again But I see mercy in Your hands

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So more than watchman for the morning I will wait for You, my

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God And when my fears come with no warning In Your Word I put my trust

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And when the hardest time is over And I still see no proof

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I will wait for You The secret mysteries belong to You We only know what

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You reveal The questions that are unresolved

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Don't change the wisdom of Your will

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In every trial and loss My hope is in the cross

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Where Your compassion's never failed

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So more than watchman for the morning I will wait for You, my

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God And when my fears come with no warning In Your Word I put my trust

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And when the hardest time is over And I still see no proof

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I will wait I will wait for You, my

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God And when my fears come with no warning In Your Word I put my trust

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And when the hardest time is over And I still see no proof

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I will wait I'll wait For You I'll wait for You I'll wait for You, Lord I'll wait for You I will wait for You, Lord I'll wait for You So more than watchman for the morning

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In every trial and loss My hope is in the cross

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Alright everyone, we're gonna start in about three minutes So if you're out in the foyer, please make your way in Take this opportunity to use the restroom

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And grab something to eat or drink If you haven't, find a place We're gonna begin in now two minutes

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Those who build it, labor it Watches over the city

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The watchman stays awake in vain It is in vain that you rise up early

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And go late to rest Eating the bread of anxious toil

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For he gives to his beloved sleep

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Unless the Lord builds the house

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Those who build it, labor in vain

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As the Lord watches over the city

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The watchman stays awake in vain

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Behold, children are A heritage from those in the hand

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Our 2022 equipping conference

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Would you please stand as we sing this morning We're gonna open up with all creatures of our God and King All creatures of our

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God and King Lift up your voice and with us sing

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All praise Him, Alleluia Thou burning sun with golden beam

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Thou silver moon with softer gleam All praise

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Him, Alleluia Alleluia, Alleluia Let all things their

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Creator bless And worship Him in humble ascension

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Alleluia Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son And praise the

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Spirit three in one All praise Him, all praise

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Him Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia All the redeemed watch by His blood

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Come and rejoice in His great love All praise

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Him, Alleluia Christ has defeated every sin

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Cast all your burdens down on Him All praise

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Him, all praise Him Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia He shall return in power to reign

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Heaven and earth will join to sing All praise

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Him, Alleluia Then who shall fall on bended knee

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All creatures of our God and King All praise

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Him, all praise Him Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia All praise

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Him, all praise Him Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia All creation tremble at His voice

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All creation rises to rejoin

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Our God, seated on His throne

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Come, let us adore Him Nothing can compare

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Come, let us adore To the

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Lord Who can question any of His words

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Who can teach the one who knows all things

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Who can fathom all His wondrous deeds

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Our God, seated on His throne Come, let us adore

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Him The Lord, our King Nothing must adore

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Spellbound nails of death's sinful head

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God eternal, humble to the grave

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Jesus, Savior, risen now to reign

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The Lord, our God Seated on His throne

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Come, let us adore Him The Lord, our

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King Nothing can compare Come, let us adore

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Him The Lord, seated on His throne

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Come, let us adore Him The Lord, our

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King Nothing can compare

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Come, let us adore Him Creative announcements about today and tomorrow.

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First, our first Q &A is already prepared. There should be cards on your table that if you have a question that comes up that you would like to have answered in either the question and answer that is at the end of today's sessions or at the end of tomorrow's sessions, then if you could write your question down on that and bring it at some point up to my table, which is right up front here, and leave it there.

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We will catalog them and kind of categorize them over the course of the day, and we'll bring in as many of those as we can in the

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Q &A sessions. And there's been a little bit of a change to the schedule that was posted online, just in case you're curious.

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Daryl asked to combine two of his sessions into one session, so he wanted to speak for like an hour and a half or four hours or something like that on one of his topics today, so we moved things around, and one of his sessions is going to be quite long, and that's the one that's right after lunch, so he has the additional challenge of trying to keep you awake after you're filled up.

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But that's on him. He asked for that. And then dinner tonight is the Messy's Burgers, so if you paid for one of those

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Messy's Burgers tickets, you should have got a meal ticket, a blue meal ticket when you came in, and you need to hold onto that.

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Don't lose that. And before we break for dinner tonight, I'll give some further instructions about what that's going to look like, but if you got here and you regretted not buying a

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Messy's Ticket Burger, which who wouldn't regret that, and you would like to, then you can come up to the table up here and buy one of those tickets.

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My wife, who greeted you at registration, she will gladly take your money in exchange for one of those tickets.

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That is it. I'm going to introduce now Virgil Walker, and then before Daryl's first session this morning, I'll come up and give an introduction of Daryl.

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Virgil Walker serves as the Executive Director of Operations for G3 Ministries, and along with Daryl Harrison, Virgil co -hosts the

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Just Thinking Podcast, which is what Phil Johnson calls the most influential, long -form

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Christian podcast in the world, which is substantial. And I would also add to that the adjective irregular, meaning that they put it out when they have time.

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If you're used to listening to a podcast that comes out once a week or once a month or once a day, that's not these guys.

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When they drop a podcast, it is loaded with content, and once they get done speaking on a subject, you kind of feel like there's really nothing else to say about that subject because their long -form podcasts can be upwards of three hours.

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I think some of them have been three hours long. Virgil has completed his Master of Business Administration and is currently working on a

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Master of Divinity at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He's been involved in jail ministry, sidewalk ministry at abortion clinics, and street evangelism.

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He's co -authored Why Are You Afraid? and Just Thinking About the State, and then a soon -to -be -released Just Thinking About Ethnicity, which we were hoping was going to be available for this conference so we could give that away for free, but it wasn't available.

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Virgil and his wife, Tamika, have been married for 25 years and have three children. Virgil and Daryl have become widely known for their resolute and uncompromising confrontation of the spirit of the age and progressivism in almost every area of our culture.

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Two years ago, when I scheduled it for Daryl to come up here originally, I knew that he was the best guy to deal with some of the issues that we're dealing with in culture, and I wasn't as aware of Virgil at the time.

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I just knew of Daryl. I had met Daryl and Virgil at a Shepherds Conference. So I scheduled this with Daryl. I kind of thought, well, two years from now, is the whole woke

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Christianity and the progressivism and everything is racist, is all of that really going to have blown over in our culture?

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Will it really be timely by the time they show up a couple years from now? And as it turns out, I think that that thread is not going away, and it is as timely now as it was two years ago when

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I originally planned this conference. These men have proven that they do not back down. They boldly confront the lies of our age in their podcasts, their books, their online articles, and social media posts, and they do not shy away from confronting the culture or tackling some of the most explosive subjects in the headlines.

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When George Floyd died, they came out within a month of a podcast on that. So these guys just tackle the things that are relevant and in the news, and I hope that by the time we get done with these fine brothers this weekend that they will serve to equip you to think biblically and respond faithfully to the challenges that are being presented to the church by our culture.

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So please welcome Virgil Walker. Well, good morning.

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It's a joy to be with you this morning, and man, with an introduction like that,

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I feel like I just need to sit down. Darrell and I are extremely honored to be here.

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I have never been to Idaho. I'm sure you're all shocked by that, right? It is an honor to be here.

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I flew in late last night, so it was kind of one of those things where I didn't get to see the beauty of everything, then the sun kind of shows up, and I'm like, oh, there are mountains.

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This is a great place. We are absolutely honored to be here, and I look forward to what we're going to embark upon over the course of the next two days.

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I will tell you it's a good thing you're at tables. It's a good thing that you have booklets that provide opportunity for notes, because if you're familiar with our podcast, you know very well that we come loaded for bear, and we come armed and equipped, and we've done our research and our study, and we want to give everything to you.

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So I promise you before the weekend is out, you will indeed feel like you've been equipped to address the topics that we're intending to share with you.

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I want to thank Pastor Jim for having us, for calling me. I'm glad I got on the ticket.

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I mean, I'm just glad I got to be a part. Darrell does just a fantastic job.

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Because of who he is and where he is, there are a lot of opportunities that come his way, and he never hesitates to pick up the phone as my brother and say, hey, you're coming with me, and here's what we're going to go do together.

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So I appreciate you always doing that for us. I want to also just by way of just opening up, just thank the elders at Kootenay Community Church.

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I know this is some work for you all to do, and I as Executive Director of Operations for G3, I know a little something about putting these things together, and what happens behind the scenes that nobody knows about, and that's how it's supposed to stay.

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But those who take care, those who do the work and takes care of those kinds of things, are the ones who are really doing the heavy lifting.

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So I want to just take a moment and thank you. As I learned about this conference, the Equipping Conference, I was talking with Pastor Jim about the speakers you've had in the past.

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You have Andrew Rappaport, you've had Jason Lyle, Scott Klusendorf, Paul Taylor, Phil Johnson.

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I have so much respect for Phil. He has an encyclopedic mind, and he's just phenomenal.

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So to hear his encouragement, what he has to say about the

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Just Thinking podcast, means a tremendous amount to me. I know it does to Darrell as well. We've got a lot of ground to cover.

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Let me first, before I do that, just bring you greetings from my boss,

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Josh Bice, and G3 Ministries. If you're not familiar with G3 Ministries, shame on you.

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You should be. G3 is one of the largest Reformed conferences in the world this past year.

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We hosted 6 ,400 people in Atlanta from all over the country and parts around the world.

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We had all of the best of the best speakers, leaders, thought leaders, all were there. Of course, Darrell and I were there, so it had to be something going on.

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No, we were honored to be there. Darrell and I daily pinch ourselves from two guys who were in our own little areas of the world, me in Omaha, him in Georgia, sitting on a bed.

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We talked about how to put the podcast together. I'm literally in a closet with a microphone trying to make things happen.

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To go from that to where God has us has been absolutely breathtaking. We're incredibly humbled by it.

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It never gets old for us. We're always humbled by those kinds of opportunities. I also want to bring you greetings from my wife,

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Tamika, who is at home there with my son, Price. Price just graduated from high school.

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I have two adult children who are in Omaha, Nebraska. Princess, my daughter, who's the oldest, and Princeton, who is there taking care of his sister.

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As we moved down to Atlanta, those two decided to stay, and we were hopeful that they'd be able to manage themselves and take care of themselves, and they've done incredibly well, so I couldn't be more proud of them as well.

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Pray for them. Pray for our youngest who's trying to figure out next steps as he transitions from high school to what comes next.

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I think that's all of my greetings. I've got the whole thing marked out here. I'm looking forward to what we're going to talk about today.

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The topic that I was given or the title of the message is a biblical theology of man, racism, and the church.

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A biblical theology of man, racism, and the church. I want to warn you.

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When a speaker brings a bottle of water this size, you're in for it, okay?

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Truth is, I take some medication that drives me out sometimes, so from time to time, I'll take a little sip.

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I wanted you to be aware of that. I don't normally bring that with me, but in this instance, I needed to. As you can imagine, with that kind of a title, biblical theology of man, of racism, and the church,

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I was really excited when Pastor Jim told me that my early session could be about three hours, because that's about what

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I need to take for... No? Not three hours? Okay. Again, with all of that ground to cover, we've got a lot of work to do.

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I'm going to ask you to roll up your sleeves, get your pen, and let's dive in. On May 15th, 2022,

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Rosemary Rabideau received a call from the principal of Kyle Middle School, where her 13 -year -old son,

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Braden, attends. Principal Mike Hendricks called to forewarn

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Miss Rabideau that she would be receiving an email with allegations of sexual harassment, a sexual harassment charge against her son.

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Now, like any concerned parent, Miss Rabideau, upon hearing the term sexual harassment, her mind immediately went to things like rape or inappropriate touching or something of the like.

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Well, Miss Rabideau was shocked to learn that her son and two other boys would be charged with berating a non -binary classmate who screamed abuse at the three students.

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Their crime? They used female pronouns instead of gender -neutral ones.

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The school sees the misgendering of the student as a Title IX violation.

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Now, according to school officials, the administration sees using the wrong pronouns as automatically punishable speech under Title IX.

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Now, Rosemary, Braden's mother, said this. She said, this is middle school.

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These guys are kids. They're learning how to interact with one another. They've been taught all their life to see a girl and use she and her.

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They don't understand using plural pronouns for one student. Well, her thought process absolutely makes sense.

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Well, the family is fighting the long -term damaging impact of this charge against their son's reputation.

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They're fighting this in the courts. Fast forward to New York where there's a new law written governing discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.

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The law, however, does more than provide equal protection for transgender individuals regarding equal employment or hiring practices or housing.

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The New York City Commission on Human Rights Legal Enforcement Guidance states the following can be grounds, listen closely, the following can be grounds for legal or civil action.

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I'm quoting from the current law. Quote, number one, the intentional or repeated refusal to use a person's name, pronoun, or title.

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For example, repeatedly calling a transgender woman him or mister after she has made it clear that she uses she and her and miss.

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Number two, refusal to use a person's name, pronoun, or title because they do not conform to gender stereotypes.

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For example, insisting upon calling a person a non -binary person mister after they've requested to be called mix, mx.

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Number three, prohibiting a person from using a particular program or facility because they do not conform to gender stereotypes.

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For example, a woman's shelter may not turn away a transgender woman because she looks too masculine.

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Often times when these women enter a shelter, they're there because of the protective nature of their circumstance, at times to get away from a violent episode with men.

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Now imagine that same woman being told that there's nothing keeping a transgender woman, a biological male, from entering that space.

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Similarly, men's shelters cannot deny service to a transgender man because she does not look masculine enough.

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Number four, prohibiting a transgender person from using a single gender program or facility most closely aligned to their gender identity.

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For example, a public university cannot prohibit a transgender man from using the men's restroom.

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On the other hand, a transgender woman, a biological man, can also use the same facilities where women usually house.

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Number five, requiring a gender non -conforming person to provide identification or proof of their gender to access the appropriate single gender program or facility.

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Number six, barring a non -binary student from a single gender after school program out of concern that they may make other students uncomfortable.

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So even if you're a woman and you say, this really makes me uncomfortable, there is no protection for you in that space.

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Number seven, and finally, forcing a transgender, I want you to listen to all of what's being said here, all of the categories of people, of persons that we're encountering here.

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Number seven, forcing a transgender, non -binary, gender non -conforming or intersex person to use a single occupancy restroom instead of a shared restroom.

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In other words, they are required to be able to access a restroom where there's a single gender in that particular restroom regardless of how they self -identify.

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Now the punishment for violating any of these codes, they will allow the

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New York City Commission to impose legal ramifications on the one end, but primarily civil penalties as well, and the civil penalties can be anywhere from $125 ,000 for violations and up to $250 ,000 for violations resulting from the willful, wanton, or malicious conduct.

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While this may seem to be a step too far, when you look at these incidents, when you look at the situations and circumstances that are coming down the pike, you begin to scratch your head like, what in the world has gone on?

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How did we get from there to here? This seems to be a step too far. When you begin to wrap your mind around that, think about the fact that when you add the issue from gender and you add the intersection of ethnicity, the stakes are even higher.

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For example, the now -confirmed Supreme Court Justice Katonji Brown Jackson was held as the most highly qualified nominee for the

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Supreme Court in years. From the beginning of his presidency, Joe Biden made it clear that he would nominate a black woman at the first opening on the

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Supreme Court. This was hailed by media, celebrated as a triumph.

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Katonji Brown Jackson would be the first black woman to serve the court in its 232 -year history.

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She would be only the fourth woman to do so on the high court. However, despite this,

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Jackson herself had a difficult time answering, if you remember, a simple question. And that question was, what is a woman?

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How can you define or can you define a woman? Jackson would respond by saying, I'm not a biologist.

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How did we get to this place? I'm old enough to remember simple truths from less than five years ago, right?

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That only women can get pregnant, right? That chest feeding isn't a real thing, right?

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That there's no such thing as a pregnant person, right? It's a pregnant woman, not a pregnant person.

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Men and women have corresponding plumbing that indicates their biological identity. These are simple truths.

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Sex and gender are used interchangeably and are not societal constructs, as some would suggest.

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All these statements are factual statements. Everything that I've said and shared is absolutely true. The way we get here is because someone through the course of history began to develop the flawed idea that these notions weren't true, these presuppositions weren't true, and they began to posit their own ideas.

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After World War II, French feminist Simone de Beauvoir. I'm going to spell that name for you because I want you to know this person.

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I want you to have their information. Simone, S -I -M -O -N -E

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Simone de Beauvoir. B -E -A -U -V -O -I -R

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B -E -A -U -V -O -I -R Let me do that one more time. Simone, S -I -M -O -N -E B -E -A -U -V -O -I -R B -E -A -U -V -O -I -R B -E -A -U -V -O -I -R

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Now, listen, I'm from Omaha, Nebraska, really from Oklahoma, so I had to learn how to say

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Beauvoir. I actually practiced that for a while just to get it correctly. Simone de

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Beauvoir had a different idea. She wanted to look at the issue of gender roles.

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And after World War II, she had a different idea about femininity and those gender roles. In her book,

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The Second Sex, written in 1949, Beauvoir writes this, quote, "'Science and philosophy assumed "'that society's prevailing opinions about men and women "'were grounded in sex so that gender corresponded to sex.'"

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End quote. Pretty benign statement. She's just identifying, articulating the truth that we all know and hold dear, that forever, as far back as we know and understand, whether it was the issue of science or philosophy, sex and gender were interchangeable.

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However, it was Beauvoir who had a different idea. While acknowledging, in the quote, the etymology of the word gender, and that it has always been connected to sex, all of science, all of philosophy presupposed this truth.

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Beauvoir was undeterred. She didn't care that that was true, that that was real. She had a desire to change some things.

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So she would be the first to introduce the ideas that would become known as gender theory, positing the idea that sex should be separate from gender.

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She was the first to do it in 1949 in her book. Beauvoir would advance the idea that gender was something other than sex or biology.

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She distinguished gender in this way. She would say that gender is really the prevailing thoughts of society.

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Gender is really those traditional norms of how we think men and women should be.

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And as a result, if she could reject those, she could change and transform her gender. In her mind, sex or biology was the immutable characteristics of the body that were closely linked to psychological traits.

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So in other words, her thought process was, my body says one thing, but my gender may be something different.

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And in its infancy, she would launch or lay the foundation for what would later become gender theory.

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Beauvoir aimed to deconstruct every traditional role and societal expectation designed for women.

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What she wanted to change and transform were issues around marriage, what marriage looked like. She wanted to change the ideas or thought processes about the need to bear children.

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At the time that she was alive and doing well in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the family structure was intact.

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The idea that a woman would find a husband, would marry, would bear children, and be a homemaker was very embedded, ingrained in the fabric of our culture.

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She had every desire to change that, to transform that, and to thrust upon society the idea that these are things that we need to let go of, we need to walk away from, and she did so in her book.

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In her book, The Second Sex, Beauvoir writes this, quote, and yet we are told that femininity is in danger.

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She began depositing ideas that those who were in the know and who could see what was coming began to say, those ideas are dangerous.

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The idea that you're gonna decouple, A, sex from gender, that's a dangerous thing you're doing.

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The idea that you wanna throw off any constraints that marriage would provide or the protections that marriage would provide, that's dangerous, and so she responds by saying this, and yet we're told that femininity is in danger.

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We are exhorted to be women, to remain women, to become women. It would be apparent then that every female human being is not necessarily a woman.

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To be so considered, she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity.

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Beauvoir then jokingly asks the question, is the attribute of femininity something that is secreted from the ovaries?

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Is this a platonic essence, the product of a philosophic imagination? Is a rustling of the petticoat enough to bring it down to earth?

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She's casting off restraints. You can hear it in the language. Her desire is to no longer embrace the cultural milieu of that day regarding femininity.

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Here, you witness Beauvoir's disdain for traditional gender roles, where she writes this, quote, the truth is that just as biologically, males and females are never victims of one another, but both are victims of the species, so man and wife together undergo the oppression of an institution they did not create.

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Now, you've gotta listen to what's being said in that. Let me walk you back through it. She says, the truth is that just as biologically, males and females are never victims of one another, but both are victims of the species.

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What she's denying is a sovereign God who has ordered the structure of how men and women are to interact, so we're just mammals just trying to figure things out in the culture.

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We operate no different than any monkey or ape. We're just trying to figure out what our senses are, and we're caught up in this trap called marriage.

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We're caught up in this trap as a woman of femininity, of masculinity, but we're actually victims of this idea that we didn't invent that was thrust upon us.

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Later, we'll unpack how it was thrust upon and who did the thrusting. I'll walk back through that here in a bit.

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If the assertion is that men oppress women, then the husband is indignant. He feels that he's the one who's being oppressed, and he is, but the fact is that it is in the masculine code.

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It is society who has developed the male, and in his interest, he has established the woman and her situation.

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Again, what she's saying is that there are all these outward things, there are all these things in culture, in society, in our environment that actually craft who we are, and if that's the case, we can reject those things and recreate our own design.

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That's what she's saying, in essence. The premise of Beauvoir's theories, in turn, are the beginning of what would usher in the whole world of gender confusion, and later, it would give rise to what we're seeing now, which is transgenderism.

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Advancing the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir was the second wave feminist, Shulamith Firestone. I'll spell this for you,

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Shulamith Firestone, S -H -U -L -A -M -I -T -H,

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S -H -U -L -A -M -I -T -H, Shulamith Firestone.

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She would advance the cause. She was a second wave feminist. She would come after Beauvoir, and what she would do is she wrote a book called

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The Dialectic of Sex, The Dialectic of Sex. She wrote this book in 1970, and in her book,

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Firestone would write this, quote, just as the end goal of the socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class and its privilege, but the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of the feminist revolution must be not just the elimination of male privilege, but of the sex distinction itself.

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Genital differences between human beings should no longer matter culturally, end quote. Again, in her writing, what she's trying to do, again, is cast off any restraint.

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She's trying to say that just as a socialist revolution came and did away with economies and broke economies down in an effort to make all of us equal and to kind of blur the lines between the haves and the have -nots so that we can all, what socialism does is it causes us to suffer equally is what it does.

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It's a flatlining of everything. There's no benefit in it. Everything is flatlined. All the money is taken, and when there's no money left, we all suffer equally is what happens in that environment.

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Well, she's wanting to do the exact same thing. In her mind, just as in with regard to the socialist revolution, as that was a flatlining of economies, her thought process is we can actually, as feminists, do the same thing regarding gender.

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If we simply decide that we wanna push the envelope and eliminate the sexual distinctions, we can actually be in a situation where human beings would no longer matter.

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Genital differences won't matter any longer culturally. Firestone's work would be followed by the postmodern third -wave feminist

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Judith Butler, Judith Butler, whose groundbreaking work advanced the cause of gender theory.

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She wrote a book in 1990. The book was called Gender Trouble, Gender Trouble, Feminism and the

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Subversion of Identity. Gender Trouble, Feminism and the

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Subversion of Identity. As I'm reading this content in preparation for our time together,

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I realized, especially with the work of Judith Butler, that everything she would say in her writings sounds exactly like what

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I'm hearing repeated today. If you read her works, you would think that you were watching the latest edition of CNN or the interview with Liam, the swimmer, right?

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You would think that you were listening to that if you read the book in 1990. So here we are, 20 years later, parroting the ideas that came from this work.

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I thought, and this happened, what, five minutes ago? This gender confusion, I mean, when was this, two years ago that we're hearing this?

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No, these seeds have been sown, and now if you go all the way back to 1949, it's been a 70 -year process to the point where we are now.

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We're in academia, and in culture, and even in our churches.

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We're beginning to hear conversations that mimic the writings of these forerunners of gender identity, of gender theory, rather.

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Butler writes in her book this. She says, quote, there's no reason to assume that gender also ought to remain as too.

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The presumption of a binary gender system implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to sex, whereby gender mirrors sex unless we otherwise restrict it.

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She's arguing for the idea that, yeah, we can do this. We can restructure this thing.

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Butler continues, she says this, quote, if the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called sex is culturally constructed as well as gender.

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Indeed, perhaps it is always already gender with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.

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Now, Daryl and I read a lot of academic works. When we hit the

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CRT component, Daryl's gonna flood you with quotes. And the reason for that is we wanna go back to the original source material.

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We never want someone to watch this on video or see it in livestream. You didn't quote that. No, no, no, what I'm giving you is not my opinion.

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What I'm providing to you is what the actual author of the idea said in their own words.

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But more times than not, when we read their works, it's a bunch of gobbledygook that makes no sense.

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They're multi -syllabic words run together in a new formation that no one's ever really heard of, but because they have the name doctor on their last name, they're able to posit it and push it out for consumption.

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I took this one quote and threw it in a Grammarly. I don't know if you guys know the software

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Grammarly. You throw this in a Grammarly, all the bells and whistles go off. They don't know what the subject is, what the verb is, none of that.

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It absolutely makes no sense. And here's the thing, that's the point. That's the point.

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The point is to so confuse your mind that you're off kilter a bit while they move forward with an idea that they have in a direction that they want to go.

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It's never anchored in scripture, it's never anchored in anything historic or orthodox with regard to our faith.

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It's always something crazy. And this is the same here. What Butler's actually arguing in this particular paragraph, sentence, is she's arguing, if we can say that gender is separate from sex, maybe this sex thing is now malleable.

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You see how she's moving the goalpost? We know that if the immutable characteristics of sex is contested, if we push back against this, perhaps this construction called sex is actually as culturally constructed as gender.

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She's saying, we already know the works of Firestone, she's already separated gender and sex, maybe the issue of sex is something we can play around with now.

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We can switch to the biology, is what she's saying. Recalling the works of others,

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Butler writes this, if there's something right in Beauvoir's claim, now, look, she's in 1990, she's pointing back 40 years to Beauvoir.

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She says, if there's something right in Beauvoir's claim that one is born but rather becomes a woman, it then follows that woman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end.

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It's an ongoing discursive practice that is open to intervention and resignification.

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She's trying to restructure a woman. All of what she did in 1990 helps to make sense of what you saw with Katonji Brown Jackson, who is now unable to define what a woman is, why?

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Well, she's imbibed the information from feminists of old. In her mind, she can't put her finger on it, why?

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Because it's ever -changing, it's ever -evolving, it's transforming, it's shifting. Now, why all of this information with regard to a biblical theology of man?

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Well, because it's important to understand where we currently are today and what's actually taking place today and then pull back the pages of Scripture.

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One last thing as I kind of wrap up this section, from Beauvoir in 1949 to Butler in 1990, their ideas intersect and what they've done is they've set the framework for the gender -confused world that we're currently in.

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I wanna read this to you because there was a commentator who had written on Butler's work and he said this.

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He said, for Butler, gender itself is an imposition. It's an act of pseudo -violence integrated in our language and expectations.

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All the way down to language, this is why the gender pronouns are important. All the way down to language, it's imperative that folks who have these ideas and thoughts are affirmed.

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Let me continue reading. There's really no real natural gender for Butler, nor is there any natural or proper expression of sexuality.

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Listen closely to this. Gender and sexuality are performances arising from and constituting common life.

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One's identity is never fully real or fully known until and unless it is endorsed by and through public authorities and recognized by one's fellow citizens.

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That's critical because it's not sufficient for them to get these ideas, fill their minds with the logic or illogic of the writers that they're reading and settle in, right?

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No, it's critical for their well -being that you and I affirm whatever they've decided they're going to be on a given day at a given hour.

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It's critical. That's why the push is on for these kinds of things to be pushed into law, to be codified into law so that when you say something that's not in line with how they think about themselves, you're penalized for it.

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That's why the example that I gave you earlier of the young man who was at school and got called out of school,

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Braden, that's why Miss Radenbough got the call she did.

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Why? Well, she's not, that student wasn't affirmed. You didn't use the proper pronoun.

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And in their world, that makes sense. Why? Because they're reading these kinds of things, these folks who are saying these kinds of things.

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I'm hoping that that's helpful for you to see kind of the direction of what's taking place.

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The truth is this. The confusion being demonstrated within these false ideologies stem from one fact, one fact that you and I as believers in Christ know is true, and that is this, that sinful men and women have desired to suppress the truth that they know of God in unrighteousness,

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Romans 1, 18 through 23. As Simone de Beauvoir bent the ideologies toward surrounding, bent the ideological boundaries, rather, surrounding biology and gender in 1949, the writings of Judith Butler would ensure that these ideas were broken by 1990.

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Now, again, I share the names with you on purpose. I want you not to believe me, but go back and read these authors yourself and be equipped and knowledgeable about these issues so that when you run into this, you can say that what you're saying,

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A, is not new. This is a Judith Butler thing, and she was a wackadoo. I've read her book, and I know what you're going to say and how you're going to say it and where you're going.

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It's important that you're, you know, this is the equipped conference. This is where you come to get equipped. So I'm providing you some nuggets so along the way you can be equipped.

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Now, let's open up the word of God to see what God has to say about these issues.

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While all of this cultural confusion has taken place over the course of the last 70 years, one thing is absolutely true, and that is this, that regardless of all the confusion that's out there,

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God never changed his mind about what he created. As I'm listening to this,

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I can't help but go back to Genesis 3, that what these thought leaders are doing is exactly what

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Eve did, right? When the serpent shows up and says, did God really say?

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Right, that's the whisper that you hear in what's being said. The truth of the matter is that the issue of identity, gender, marriage, and mankind has already been decided, and the

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God of the Bible has never wavered on this issue. So important is this issue that he puts it on the first pages of the book.

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You don't have to wait till 1949. In the beginning,

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God created the heavens and the earth. Go down and look at verse 26 of Genesis chapter one.

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And then God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness.

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Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

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So God created man in his own image, in the image of God. He created him male and female.

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He created them. As I mentioned at the beginning of my talk,

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I would love to camp out right here and for the course of the next few hours, really unpack all the truth that's here.

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I'm not going to be able to do that. I only have two hours left. So what

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I wanna do is I wanna hit a couple of highlights in this particular text because you gotta remember, I still have to cover the ground for racism and the church.

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So now you kinda see I was serious about the time frame, but let me, I digress. Let me keep walking. The text begins with, then

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God said. Then God said. I've gotta stop there.

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Like, we've gotta stop there. Like, that's incredibly important because before we can understand anything about who man is, all of theology or the study of God begins with a clear understanding of the sovereign

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God of the universe who has chosen to reveal himself to us through the scriptures.

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Now, the London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter two on the Holy Trinity says this. The Lord our God is but one only living and true

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God whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, who only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach, who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will for his own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long -suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.

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He's the rewarder of them that diligently seek him and with all most just and terrible in his judgments, that's hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

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All of that, as you know, is from scripture. Only thing I needed was some ham and bee right about there.

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You know, start working that out. When we wrap our mind, listen, our human mind cannot wrap itself around the glory and beauty of God.

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We are able, because of the word of God, to understand the nature of God on the basis of how he's revealed himself to us through the scripture.

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And in that alone is sufficient to worship him forever.

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Amen? Why would anyone want to get off of that page apart from a lack of understanding of who they are and their need for this sovereign

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God? That's my wife calling me, by the way, if you were wondering. I'm on the platform,

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I'll be all right. Let me turn this off. All right. The attributes of God are immutable, meaning unchanging.

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However, as we move from what can be known about God through the scriptures, we see that God's desire is to make man his creation in his image.

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Let's read verse 26 again. It says, let us make man, verse 26b, let us make man in our image after our likeness.

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So the question that we have to ask at this point is, what does it mean to be in the image of God? Have you ever thought about that?

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What does it mean to be an image -bearer of God? That question is important.

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The attributes of God actually need to be placed in two main categories. One, the first one is his eternal attributes, right?

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This is what we understand as his omnipotence, his omniscience being everywhere present, his omnipotence being all -powerful, his omniscience being all -knowing, his holiness.

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He is the thrice holy God. He is holy, holy, holy. All of these attributes are non -communicable.

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These are non -communicable attributes. Some use the term incommunicable. All that means is that these are attributes of God that cannot be given to another.

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Number two, the other area, you have his eternal attributes. The second area you have is his personality attributes.

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Now these are communicable attributes. These are attributes that can be passed on to man. However, one of the things that we must realize is that though these are attributes given by God to us, we can never fulfill these attributes to the degree and measure that God demonstrates in and of himself.

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For example, scripture declares that our God is a thrice holy God. He is holy, holy, holiest.

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However, scripture also commands us that we are to be holy even as our heavenly

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Father is holy. You'll find this in Leviticus 11, 44 and 45.

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You'll find this in Leviticus 19, 2, Leviticus 20, 26, and then 1 Peter 1, 16.

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We know that God is spirit. Scripture says that God is spirit. That's John 4, 24.

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And we, his creatures, actually have a spirit. We know that God is all wisdom and all knowledge and that all wisdom and knowledge actually comes from God.

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We're instructed in James 1, verse five that if any of us lacks wisdom, what are we to do?

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We're to ask of God who richly, generously rewards us the wisdom that we need.

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God is love. And we can experience God's love and share love with others, but none of us will demonstrate the perfect love that we need to demonstrate either to God or to one another.

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These are important things to understand about how we are indeed image bearers of God.

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Back in verse 26 of Genesis 1, we see that God gives man dominion over the creatures, over every living thing, and verse 27 reads this way.

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So God created man in his own image, and in the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

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Male and female, he created them. Well, what can we know about male and female from this particular text?

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Well, we can know a few things. Let me walk through those and see if this bears out for what you believe about this particular section of scripture.

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We can know that both male and female were of equal value as created by God, right?

01:00:04

We can know that both male and female were equally in the image and likeness of God.

01:00:10

We can know that from this text. We can know that both male and female are equally given dominion over all that God has created.

01:00:18

However, when we read chapter two, which is actually a more in -depth, more expanded section of scripture to unpack what took place during the days of creation, when we read that, what we begin to see is that there is some difference, that God designed complementary roles for men and women.

01:00:42

To Adam, he would give the work of the garden. See Genesis chapter two, verse 15, it says this, and the

01:00:47

Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to work it and keep it. I love hearing those pages turn.

01:00:53

I love pages turning. That's a good thing. God recognized that Adam needed a helper fit for him.

01:01:04

You see that in verse 18 of chapter two. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone.

01:01:10

I will make a helper fit for him. Then in verses 21 through 23, we read, so the

01:01:16

Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs, closed up the flesh in its place, and the rib that the

01:01:23

Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman. And brought her to the man.

01:01:30

Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of the man.

01:01:39

Therefore, for this reason, in other words, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.

01:01:49

So what do we have in scripture? God creates man and woman in his image.

01:01:55

They are of equal value, dignity, and worth. However, they have complementary roles, as the woman was actually made for the man.

01:02:08

So if this is so simple, if this truth is so simple, you and I get it, it's right there in the pages of scripture. Why are people militating against this particular issue, this standard of God?

01:02:20

We find our answer in chapter three, right? As the serpent deceives Eve, Adam sins, and the world is plunged into chaos.

01:02:29

Genesis three, what else do we find? We find an essential clue that will answer what we are experiencing today.

01:02:36

Look at verse 16 of chapter three. God is addressing the woman, and he says,

01:02:43

I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing, and in pain shall you bring forth children.

01:02:49

And your desire shall be contrary to your husband, and he shall rule over you.

01:02:55

I used to think that when I saw this, your desire will be, I think there's another version that reads your desire will be for your husband.

01:03:03

I thought, oh, that means the woman is gonna love the man, so I'm good. She's gonna desire me, right?

01:03:09

That's a good thing. Well, the Hebrew word, and I apologize, I'll butcher this, is teshukah, right?

01:03:16

Teshukah, T -S -H -U -W -Q -A -H. That's kind of phonetically how you spell it out.

01:03:23

It means, in the original sense, a stretching out after, or a longing, desire for, in an effort to conquer.

01:03:29

The same word is used in the next chapter in the story of Cain and Abel, chapter four, verses four through seven.

01:03:35

Let's take a look at that. So it came about in the course of time,

01:03:41

I'm in verse four, that Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part, also brought an offering from the firstborn of his flock, and from their fatted portions.

01:03:53

And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard.

01:03:58

So Cain became very angry, and his face was gloomy. And the

01:04:04

Lord said to Cain, why are you angry, and why is your face gloomy? If you do well, will your face not be cheerful?

01:04:10

If you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it.

01:04:20

The same word is used there that is used for the woman in chapter three, verse 16.

01:04:26

So we all know what happened to Cain and Abel, right? Cain kills his brother,

01:04:32

Abel. Well, that same desire there, as a result, because the desire was not conquered, it rose up in Cain to the degree that he was ready to kill his brother.

01:04:43

That same desire is lurking in the heart of a woman, and it is imperative, it is important for her to be submitted to Christ, as well as to the husband that God gives her.

01:04:58

In the stories that I provided with you earlier, what we're witnessing is the complete deconstruction of what it means to be a man, and this is important for believers.

01:05:07

Why, because it is only believers who actually hold this worldview any longer.

01:05:14

We're the ones with the lights still on here. So it's imperative that you understand what

01:05:21

Scripture has to say, because what I'm seeing, what we've been seeing as a part of the Just Thinking podcast, as we read article after article after article, is believers are now wavering on this issue.

01:05:34

If I had the time, I would unpack quote after quote from leader after leader after leader, where they're trying to capitulate.

01:05:42

They're using terminology like toxic masculinity. Well, you know where that comes from? Judith Butler, right?

01:05:50

They're using terminology now that comes from these books, whether they realize it, recognize it, or not.

01:05:56

They're pulling from man -made ideologies, and they're bringing that into our churches.

01:06:02

This is why it's so important for believers to advocate for biblical masculinity. Ladies, it's important for you to share with your children these ideas, open up the

01:06:11

Scripture, and unpack the truths that are therein so that we can maintain the standard within the church.

01:06:17

No civilization can withstand the deconstruction of its men. Believers in Christ, male and female, must be ready to embrace biblical roles designed by God for both of us.

01:06:29

You see this now in the egalitarian debate on women pastors, right?

01:06:35

There's a rustling about this. Okay, can she preach? Should she preach? When should she preach?

01:06:40

Should it be on Sunday morning? Can it be during the week? These are issues that all surround this topic.

01:06:47

I had a tweet that went viral about a week ago. I get one for every 10 that Darrell does, so I try to match one for 10.

01:06:58

Okay, he's got 10. I gotta come up with something, so bam, right? I had a tweet.

01:07:06

I think it said something along the lines of, if you have a woman as your pastor, she's not a pastor.

01:07:14

She's a feminist who has ignored the Scriptures. That was a good one, right?

01:07:24

It went haywire. Even to this day, people are on it.

01:07:31

Who was it that got on that tweet, brother? Andy Stanley. Famous pastor, big church.

01:07:41

He's in Georgia. He jumps on the tweet. I will tell you, that did not work out well for him, and I didn't say anything to him.

01:07:52

Darrell's boss, Phil Johnson, jumped in, and Phil, just with a couple sentences, absolutely destroyed him.

01:08:01

What he did was he posited the biblical worldview, and as a result,

01:08:08

Andy Stanley actually deleted the tweet and went away. It's imperative.

01:08:14

I say that tongue -in -cheek with all seriousness. These issues are important. They matter.

01:08:20

It's important that you're equipped to know the direction of culture and society and the push so that when you, in your churches, begin to see well -intentioned people believing that they're doing the right thing come into the doors of your church, espousing ideas,

01:08:36

A, you know where they originate from, and you know scripturally where to point them as a result.

01:08:42

I could spend a whole lot more time here, but as I told you, I have two other topics to discuss, a biblical theology of race and a biblical theology of the church.

01:08:51

I don't know how I'm gonna do that, but we'll give it a shot. As most of our weekend will be connected to addressing the subject of racism or ethnicity,

01:09:02

I won't spend a ton of time here in this section, and I will do my best to try to wrap up here in the next 15 minutes or so, 30 or so.

01:09:13

I'm only kidding. Once we examined male and female, sex and gender, we recognize that these are not made -up societal constructs.

01:09:22

Instead, the teleology of male and female is deeply rooted in Scripture. You just witnessed that as we walked through Genesis chapter one.

01:09:31

Our very makeup was designed in such a way for us to be male and female and to operate from a standpoint of specific gender roles.

01:09:39

That's very clear in the Scripture. So this is not a, well, I think what it means to be female is something we'll figure out in society as we go, and we'll get better at it over time.

01:09:47

That's not how that works. However, when we turn the lens to what society has determined as race or races,

01:09:54

I would argue that this idea is indeed a social construct.

01:10:00

Now, I won't spend a ton of time as we'll discuss it, Darrell will discuss it at great length. During our time together, you're gonna hear us say some things and repeat some things.

01:10:09

You'll hear about the pseudoscience and craniometry of one Samuel Morton. By the end of the time, you're gonna hear about his scientific racism.

01:10:19

You're gonna hear about, we're gonna name numerous anthropologists, numerous biologists who will demonstrate the truth that we are one human race.

01:10:30

Made up of many ethnicities. Of course, if we had time, if anyone had the time to actually open up the

01:10:37

Scriptures, these kinds of things would be self -evident and wouldn't require a degree in science or biology or anthropology.

01:10:45

You just open up the Scriptures. In Acts chapter 17, turn your Bible there, we witness Paul preaching at the

01:10:51

Areopagus. He is in Athens, the city is full of idols and a spirit is provoked within him.

01:10:57

Paul begins preaching to a pagan culture devoid of a worldview. They're devoid of a worldview that actually understands the origins of man, the very origins of man we just covered.

01:11:08

It was the children of Israel who actually had the Scriptures. These pagans did not have access to a knowledge of the

01:11:16

Scriptures. So they didn't know where things came from. So what does Paul do? He says, men of Athens in verse 22 of Acts 17.

01:11:23

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, he says, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious, for as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship,

01:11:32

I found an altar with this inscription, to an unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this

01:11:40

I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

01:11:56

Verse 26 is the key. If you don't have this underlined in your Bible, you need to.

01:12:02

If you're a listener, avid listener of the Just Thinking podcast, this should already be underlined in your Bible.

01:12:08

Verse 26, and he, that is God, made from one man every nation of mankind, and that word nation there is the

01:12:16

Greek word ethnos, which is where we get the term what? Ethnicity, some of you whispered it.

01:12:24

Right, which is where we get the term ethnicity. He made from one man every ethnicity of mankind to live on the face of the earth.

01:12:31

From one man, one race, he makes up all the ethnicities on the face of the earth, having determined the allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek

01:12:44

God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Romans chapter five, don't turn there, write this down.

01:12:50

Romans chapter five, verse 12, Paul explains the sinfulness of sin to believers in Rome, and as he explains the total depravity of man and our need for justification, he writes this in Romans chapter five, verse 12.

01:13:04

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, death through sin, and so death spread to all men, one race, one human race.

01:13:19

Again, we have all of mankind being affected by one man. Why? Because we all came from one man.

01:13:27

Malachi chapter two, verse 10, don't turn there, write it down. Have we not all one father?

01:13:33

Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?

01:13:41

Scripture is clear that we are all one human race. However, within culture, there's this ongoing narrative that desires to reproblematize history of slavery,

01:13:54

Jim Crow, and segregation, and those who promote this idea of victimization believe that America, and particularly white

01:14:01

Americans, to be the only people on the planet to have ever been involved in the institution of slavery.

01:14:09

However, Thomas Sowell, economist and author, he writes this in his book. He's written this quote that I'm gonna provide to you.

01:14:16

He's said this in multiple ways in many books. I'm simply quoting to you from the book that he wrote called The Thomas Sowell Reader, The Thomas Sowell Reader, where he says this, quote, of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an

01:14:32

American today is that although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century.

01:14:44

This wasn't, slavery wasn't a controversy until the 18th century, why? Well, because people of every race and color were enslaved and enslaved others.

01:14:55

Everyone has been guilty of this. He said white people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the

01:15:01

Ottoman Empire decades after American blacks were free. That's not something to talk about on CNN.

01:15:11

However, again, this fact is lost on those who desire to maintain a victim narrative, men like Ibram X.

01:15:17

Kendi in his book, How to Be an Anti -Racist, he writes this, quote, the opposite of racist isn't a non -racist, it's an anti -racist.

01:15:25

What's the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist or racial equality or as an anti -racist.

01:15:35

Now say that 10 times fast. One either believes problems to be rooted in groups of people as a racist, either you're a racist, or locates the root of the problem in power and policies as an anti -racist.

01:15:50

So in Kendi's world, everyone is divided up as either a racist, so you're either a racist or an anti -racist, meaning that you're working and fighting to provide for the racial equity, not equality, and again, they use these words.

01:16:06

You're gonna hear Daryl and I unpack these. They use these words interchangeably. Equality is what we see to a degree in Genesis chapter one, verse 26.

01:16:14

He made man, right, man and woman, male and female, they were equal, right? But what he's after is equity, which is the idea of outcomes.

01:16:24

But know this, they will flip those words on you. They will use equality when they actually mean outcome and use equity as a standard.

01:16:34

So you have to listen. Is outcome attached to what's being said? And if it is, then you recognize this is garbage.

01:16:43

Because everyone in this, of all the people that are in this room, none of us are equal. We all don't have the same background.

01:16:53

We all don't have the same money in the bank, and if you have more and would like to donate to me, I'm happy to receive that.

01:17:00

Some of us have more, some of us have less. Some of us are blessed with more melanin. Some of us are short, some of us are bald and beautiful.

01:17:10

There's my brother in the back, the sound guy. At the same time, we are all image bearers of God.

01:17:19

And in that regard, we have commonality. Let me continue so that I don't press past the time. If you disagree with Kenny's position, well, he has something for you.

01:17:27

He writes this, quote, the most threatening racist movement is not the alt -right. Unlike the drive for a white ethnostate, but the regular

01:17:37

American, let me read that again. The most threatening racist movement is not the alt -right's unlikely drive for a white ethnostate.

01:17:45

So he's got the alt -right on one hand, and they're not the problem, but the regular

01:17:51

American drive for a race -neutral one. So if you desire for race not to matter, remember

01:17:57

Martin Luther King said that we should be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin?

01:18:04

Well, if you believe that, well, then you're a racist. He would label King as a racist. Color of skin, that's it?

01:18:11

You want things to be neutral? No way. We got stuff to go get. At the end of the day, that's what it's about.

01:18:21

Unfortunately, evangelical circles have not gone unstained by this kind of thinking. Self -professing

01:18:27

Christians have not been immune to CRT, social justice, and intersectionality.

01:18:33

There was a key thought leader a while back in reformed circles, Thabiti Anwubwili.

01:18:40

He was writing for the Gospel Coalition in 2019. He took issue with the fact that there were so many of us saying that there is a social justice movement and that that social justice movement is a problem, and here is what he wrote.

01:18:53

He said, quote, it is my opinion demonstrating that, in my opinion, rather, demonstrating that a social justice movement exists has utterly failed.

01:19:03

That's not surprising to me. No movement has ever existed, to my knowledge. No organization or steering committee guides anything to various persons that are criticized as being social justicians, while at times they're my friends and my acquaintances, have not worked together to produce a joint statement, to specify any goals, or to take any action, all things necessary for a movement.

01:19:23

What is he doing? It's denial. Social, what's wrong with you guys?

01:19:29

You people are looking for a problem. There's no social justice movement. He said that in 2019. Fast forward a few months later, not even a full year during the anniversary, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of MLK, and see if he doesn't sound much like a social justice warrior, as he writes this.

01:19:47

He says, quote, my white neighbors and Christian brethren, well, they can start by at least saying that their parents and grandparents in this country are complicit in the murdering of a man, and he's talking about King, who only preached love and justice.

01:20:04

You're guilty. You didn't pull the trigger. You didn't, but you're guilty of the slaying of MLK, nonetheless, or at least your grandparents and parents are.

01:20:14

And he says, I'm continuing to quote from him, quote, and if we're serious, then we can go on to commit ourselves to the laying down of our lives for others, as King did.

01:20:27

What is he getting you to do? He's wanting you to be involved with the social justice movement.

01:20:35

He's charging you with that, and if not, you're to feel guilty. Why? Because he's gonna pull from Kendi and say, well, either you're a racist, or you agree with me, and you're working to be an anti -racist.

01:20:47

I could cite numerous articles and speeches where white evangelicals are being asked to repent of whiteness, listen to voices of color, to remain silent on issues where a person's identity in an incident is black, brown, or some other shade of not white.

01:21:05

So as I close, let me say something a little bit about the church. For the sake of time, I'll condense my thoughts here.

01:21:12

I'll simply say this, four things. One, Christ has purchased the church. Christ has redeemed the church with his blood.

01:21:22

The church is the bride of Christ. The church belongs to Christ. And as long as Darrell and I have been doing

01:21:29

Just Thinking, the Just Thinking podcast, we've witnessed the errors in belief of those who believe that the church is not

01:21:37

Christ's, but it's theirs, that the church belongs to them.

01:21:43

And they demonstrate this when they say things like, you know, I can tell you what this church needs. And then they go on to describe some social program or focus that has nothing to do with the scriptures, or what the scriptures actually call the church to be.

01:21:57

Darrell and I have witnessed this idea that the church needs to look like you. It needs to look like you.

01:22:03

And what is meant by that somehow is that every local assembly should have this multi -ethnic picture of a perfect number of white people, black people, brown people sprinkled throughout the church.

01:22:15

And Darrell has rightly said time and time again, and you may hear him say this this weekend, that what they're after is not a multi -ethnic church.

01:22:23

What they're after is actually a multi -colored church. That's what they're thinking. Because even though the vast majority of you have white skin, if we took the time to walk and have conversations with you, you come from different parts of the country and the world even when we go back and look at your ancestry.

01:22:42

So though a congregation may be all one shade of melanin, there may be multiple ethnicities within that congregation.

01:22:51

But that's not what social justicians are after. You never hear, however, a black pastor, a predominantly black congregation, wringing his hands in an effort to figure out how to get more white people on the platform.

01:23:08

They're not trying to figure out, well, how can we change the music and the preaching so that white folks will like it?

01:23:16

This charge is only leveled in one direction, and it's obvious why it's happening. It's happening because there are those who want to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness.

01:23:27

There's so much more to say, but I'll leave you with a verse of scripture and then we'll close with prayer. And that is this.

01:23:32

This is Christ's church. It doesn't belong to you or me. We get the benefit of being a part of it, being grafted in, and we could spend a whole nother hour talking about the beauty of the fact that you and I have been called out, the ecclesia.

01:23:49

We've been called out into this beautiful thing called the church. And as a result, though I flew in last night from Atlanta, you and I are family.

01:24:00

We are connected, not simply temporally. Do you understand that? You ain't getting rid of me.

01:24:09

We're connected eternally through Christ. And the idea that there's some programmatic approach that needs to take place in order for us to come together is absolutely foolish.

01:24:20

Scripture's clear about that. In Revelation chapter seven, verses nine through 12, it reads this way.

01:24:26

After this, I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the

01:24:36

Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our

01:24:44

God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. And all the angels standing around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped

01:24:53

God, saying amen. Blessings and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our

01:25:02

God forever, amen. Let's pray. Father God, I thank you for the truth of your word.

01:25:09

I thank you that you've made clear to us your plan, your purpose in creating male and female, your purpose in developing the ethnicities and the ethnic groups and the unique beauty that that represents.

01:25:24

We're grateful for the clarity of understanding that you've called us out. We're the called out ones.

01:25:30

We are indeed your church. We're grateful for the fact that we have the opportunity to embrace one another as brother and sister and the

01:25:38

Lord, we're grateful for that. I thank you that what these, your people heard were your words, not mine, that we would be equipped to stand for truth and to defend it until you return.

01:25:50

In Christ's name, amen. Thank you. And we have about a 10 minute, no.

01:26:03

Yeah, 10 .30, 10 minute break. So if you have stuff to go get, now's the time to go get that and be back here in 10 minutes for our

01:26:11

Q &A. ♪ I've made him a little more sweet ♪ ♪

01:29:39

Majestic is your name ♪ ♪

01:30:19

Blessed is the one who sins

01:30:26

I overcome ♪ ♪ God has sheltered deep within his grace ♪ ♪

01:30:49

Who trusts in God the Son ♪ ♪

01:30:54

His steadfast love the sinner's hiding place ♪ ♪

01:31:06

Jesus your blood covers all my sin ♪ ♪

01:31:19

Jesus your love draws my heart to sing ♪ ♪

01:31:28

Word of Savior Lord Jesus ♪ ♪

01:31:41

I will always hide at my

01:31:48

Savior's side ♪ ♪ I find my refuge in his sovereign care ♪ ♪

01:32:01

When the waters rise

01:32:08

God will hear my cries ♪ ♪

01:32:16

His steadfast love will hold me safely there ♪ ♪

01:32:27

Jesus your blood covers all my sin ♪ ♪

01:32:39

Jesus your love draws my heart to sing ♪ ♪

01:32:50

Word of Savior Lord Jesus ♪ ♪

01:32:57

Oh Jesus you are my

01:33:08

Savior you are my Redeemer ♪ ♪ You're all

01:33:14

I need you're everything ♪ ♪

01:33:20

Jesus you've covered all my sins ♪ ♪

01:33:33

Jesus your love draws my heart to sing ♪ ♪

01:33:42

I will sing Jesus your blood covers all my sin ♪ ♪

01:33:57

Jesus your love draws my heart to sing ♪ ♪

01:34:06

Word of Savior Lord Jesus ♪ ♪

01:34:29

Oh Jesus as a deer pants for flowing streams ♪ ♪

01:35:00

So pants my soul for you oh God ♪ ♪

01:35:06

My soul thirsts for God for the living God ♪ ♪

01:35:20

My tears have been my food day and night ♪ ♪

01:35:26

While they say to me continually where is your

01:35:32

God ♪ ♪ These things I'll remember as I pour out my soul ♪ ♪

01:36:02

I shall sing songs of praise I'm all to keep in festival ♪ ♪

01:36:12

While you cast down all my soul and while you ♪ ♪

01:36:30

My salvation and my soul is cast down within me ♪ ♪

01:36:46

Therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan ♪ ♪ From the land of hells to deep ♪ ♪

01:36:56

With the roar of your waterfalls ♪ ♪ All your breakers and your waves have gone over me ♪ ♪

01:37:05

To step fast in love ♪ ♪

01:37:13

And your night is all the same to me ♪

01:38:13

All right, everyone, come in and find your seat again. We're gonna get started with our next session, the question and answer. All right, so as you're finding your seat, somebody left their meal ticket on the registration table.

01:38:36

They walked away without it. So if you were supposed to receive a meal ticket and you haven't, this one might be yours.

01:38:43

You just need to tell me the six digits at the bottom of that meal ticket, and you can claim it.

01:38:51

All right. Okay, I get two burgers today instead of one. All right, this is a question and answer, sort of an opportunity to meet our speakers.

01:39:02

Just looking at you guys right now, I realize we probably look like an Oreo cookie sitting up here, don't we? That's a good look for you.

01:39:10

All right, we don't have audio for either of these guys yet. Testing, test, test, test. There we go.

01:39:17

All right, Darrell, first question. Your biography says that you are a, quote, 2013 fellow of the

01:39:24

Black Theology and Leadership Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary. What is a fellow?

01:39:29

We don't even have fellows at Kootenai Community Church. Yeah, so a fellow, I have to give some background on what that program is.

01:39:37

In 2013, Princeton Theological Seminary launched what they call the Black Theology and Leadership Institute, or BTLI for short.

01:39:44

The institute exists to teach, promote, and propagate the black liberation theology of James Cone.

01:39:53

I don't know how many of you are familiar with James Cone or black liberation theology. But when that program was launched in 2013,

01:40:02

Princeton was offering only 50 fellowships, basically 50 grants, if you will, 50 full ride, fully paid for opportunities to come up to Princeton and study black theology.

01:40:18

So this was global. So it was a global application process. You had to submit an essay basically stating why you deserve to be awarded one of the fellowships.

01:40:29

So by God's grace, I applied for a fellowship. The motivation for me applying for that fellowship was because I knew enough about black liberation theology to know that I did not concur with that teaching.

01:40:43

So as my wife, who's here, she's not at the table right now, as my wife

01:40:48

Melissa would explain it to you, she would say, well, I just went up there to cause trouble. Which is not totally untrue.

01:40:57

I can see you doing that, bro, for real. You got a guy, at the time

01:41:05

I was enrolled, I was doing my undergrad online at Liberty University.

01:41:10

I was majoring in Christian counseling with a minor in psychology. But when

01:41:16

I had an opportunity to apply for the fellowship, I de -enrolled from Liberty. When you get a chance to go to Princeton to study, you take it.

01:41:22

That's right. Especially if they're paying for it. Especially if they're paying for it. And so I'm surrounded by people who have multiple letters after their name.

01:41:36

These were theologians from Yale, Harvard, Duke Divinity School, Chicago Theological Seminary.

01:41:42

But the worst of it was the folks who came from Union Theological Seminary in New York. I don't even know why they call themselves a seminary anymore.

01:41:49

Because Union is universalist, they're ecumenical. You can be Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist.

01:41:56

You don't even have to denounce your religious affiliation to go to Union. So that's what the fellowship was.

01:42:05

It was an opportunity to come and be amongst, in their words, I'm not saying this about myself, a distinguished group of theologians and scholars discussing and debating the

01:42:16

Black Liberation Theology of James Cone. So that's how that happened. Are you the only person with your worldview, your perspective, that's amongst those fellows?

01:42:25

Yes, literally, I was. Matter of fact, by the time I graduated, they had penned this nickname to me.

01:42:32

They were calling me Doctrine Daryl. Because I was always taking them back to what the Scripture says. All the time, this is what the

01:42:39

Scripture says. I don't care what James Cone says, this is what the Scripture says. So for me personally, something that motivates me quite a bit is the truth.

01:42:50

I really don't care who you are. I don't care how many degrees you have after your name. The truth is the truth.

01:42:57

And I don't back down from that. So I'm in a room full of, I mean, incredibly learned theologians.

01:43:06

Most of them were female, ironically, because the cohort was led by a female, a black female.

01:43:14

All the speakers that came in were black female theologians, with the exception of one.

01:43:21

There was one black male that came in. And it was through that program that I learned the distinction between feminism and womanism.

01:43:30

So what I found is that, and you'll find this as well as you're engaging in cultural debates and dialogue, as frequently as Virgil and I are, is that feminism is for white women.

01:43:45

Womanism is for black women. Never call a black feminist a feminist.

01:43:52

They are womanists. What is a woman? Well, yeah, what is a woman?

01:43:58

And then what is a womanist? So now you see how we get into this cyclical deconstructionism of just asking questions after questions after questions and never getting anywhere.

01:44:08

So yeah, so I literally was the only one who held to an Orthodox biblical worldview in that cohort.

01:44:15

And the thing that struck me is on the campus of Princeton, when you walk that campus, you find plaques and markers throughout the campus of just the stalwart theologians who had passed through that institution over the decades and centuries.

01:44:33

B .B. Warfield, Gerhardus Voss, A .A. Hodge, Charles Hodge, J. Gresham Machen, all these great theologians.

01:44:42

And you wouldn't believe it today. Princeton existed. It was a Reformed theological institution that existed primarily to train men to go out into the world and share the gospel as missionaries.

01:44:58

They have plaques all over the campus dedicated to those individuals, but now Princeton is about as woke as you can get.

01:45:05

It is not B .B. Warfield's Princeton Theological Seminary anymore. And Jonathan Edwards is one of them.

01:45:10

And Jonathan Edwards. You would not recognize it today. It's unbelievable how that institution has sold out to wokeism.

01:45:17

So both of you gentlemen have been called white supremacists by some of your instructors, right? Yes. You sounded very white.

01:45:23

What's up, Whitey? What's that? What up, Whitey? My man. You think it bothers

01:45:29

Princeton to have a white supremacist as a fellow of black theology and leadership? No, it doesn't, because here's the thing.

01:45:36

Virgil, I'm sure, has something to add to this. See, Virgil and I aren't black. See, we're not black.

01:45:42

If we were black, it would bother Princeton. Let me explain what I mean by that. See, Virgil and I, we're ethnically black.

01:45:50

But see, to be black in wokeism, in wokeness, you must also be ideologically black.

01:45:58

You must be culturally black. You must be politically black. You must be socially black. So because Virgil and I don't ideologically or politically or socially align with the woke worldview that Princeton now espouses, they're not ashamed of us because we're not black to begin with.

01:46:16

Right. You see? You understand? Are you following me? So that's the distinction between black and blackness.

01:46:27

Yes, that's good. Well, I could have pinned that because Joe Biden said if you don't vote for him, you ain't black. That's exactly right. Yeah. And I'm guessing neither of you.

01:46:34

Don't get me started on that. Neither of us did. So you're not black. No, I'm not black. No. No.

01:46:40

I'm not Joe Biden black. Right. He's not Biden black. Joe Biden black's a whole other black.

01:46:46

He's not Biden black. All right. This is all becoming very clear now. See, Virgil, you just need to build black better.

01:46:54

That's what you need to do. Oh, that's excellent. Don't get us started.

01:47:00

You got to go regret inviting us here by the time we leave. All right.

01:47:07

Let's move over to you. How did the Lord save you? Give me your salvation testimony. You're not a fellow, so you can't talk about what it was like to be a distinguished non -black fellow.

01:47:18

White supremacist. The Princeton black. No, I cannot. No, he can't. Can you just tell us how the Lord saved you there? Yeah. Come here.

01:47:28

I came to knowledge of Christ in my high school, which was really about five or six years ago.

01:47:34

So a dear friend of mine by the name of John Lindsay.

01:47:41

In fact, John Lindsay and I are still still connected to this day. Came back. We were best friends in kind of middle school.

01:47:47

Then we went to high school and he was a he was a couple years older than me. I remember between his junior and senior year, he'd gone away for the summer.

01:47:57

And I was like, man, my best friend, I can't see him. He comes back. And this guy is on fire for the

01:48:03

Lord. I mean, he is. And I'm like, bro, what happened to you? I mean, we were, you know, this was when the timeframe was when

01:48:10

Billie Jean and beat it was all happening. And, you know, that was about the timeframe of my growing up. And he was like, man,

01:48:15

I'm not listening to that. I'm focused. I'm like, yes, but it's Michael Jackson, man. I mean, it's like, nope, not doing it.

01:48:22

He brought his Bible to school. And I thought, man, this is a phase, right? This is a phase.

01:48:27

It'll last for just a little bit. And then he'll get back to being the same way that he was. He would bring his

01:48:33

Bible to school. High school, we would sit at the table at lunch. He'd have his Bible there. People would come up and ask him

01:48:39

Bible questions. And the more they asked him different things, the more, I guess, knowledgeable he got.

01:48:45

I didn't even know it was called apologetics. I just watched this guy grow in his faith before my eyes.

01:48:50

And I knew who he was six months ago, eight months ago, before the Lord changed and transformed his life.

01:48:56

And I knew who he was now, and I was really intrigued by that. And I had a – I don't know if we'll end up talking about our religious background and kind of where we – where both

01:49:06

Darrell and I kind of grew up in the church. But from a standpoint of salvation, this was the first time that anybody explained the gospel to me.

01:49:15

And I got a chance to walk with my brother for about three months and just watch, A, his life transform and change, and then the opportunity to be with young people and hear them – listen to men who could share with them the message of the gospel.

01:49:29

So after – as a result, over the course of time, I just recognized that I was a sinner who needed salvation and needed a

01:49:38

Savior. And it would be not long. There was a – later in the year, I want to say like October, November timeframe, there was a fall kind of retreat thing.

01:49:47

We went to a church event, and they were – they had done the whole gospel presentation, the altar call.

01:49:57

Here was the crazy part. All the kids were like at the altar crying, and I'm there like happy, right?

01:50:05

I'm like, my sins are going to be forgiven, and I'm going to be – man, this is – like, why are y 'all crying?

01:50:11

Like, do you know what this means? I mean, that was kind of my whole demeanor, and the pastor was smart enough to say, hey,

01:50:20

I want you to go home and think about your sins, think about this commitment, what it means and how real it is.

01:50:29

And as a result, you know, I would go home and got on my knees, and I really believe that that's the point at which the

01:50:35

Lord saved me and transformed my heart, changed me. Shortly thereafter,

01:50:40

I'd be baptized, and early on had fruits of repentance actually taking place in my life, even in high school.

01:50:50

Again, I would love to say that it was a straight shot upward, but, you know, I had some slips and fallbacks and setbacks, but, man, the

01:50:55

Lord's been gracious, good, and kind, so that's my salvation story. How'd you get saved? How'd I get saved?

01:51:04

I'm assuming you are saved. That shouldn't matter. Yeah, see, that's an assumption you should never make.

01:51:12

That's actually a great point. That's a great point. Am I saved? Oh, no, I'm just kidding. I don't know the question.

01:51:19

Let me push back a little bit. I don't know the question is how I got saved because I know how I got saved. You know, was

01:51:24

God monogistically, you know, working in my heart, in the heart of this miserable wretch of a sinner, and by his grace and his mercy, had pity on me to say, yeah,

01:51:35

I'm going to save him. So he worked in my heart unexpectedly. I don't have a story to tell, to be honest with you about that.

01:51:43

I can't pin a date or a day down as to when I first believed in Jesus Christ.

01:51:49

I mean, I think Virgil and I, Virgil mentioned just a second ago, he and I have our lives, and, bro, we didn't even know each other until, what, five years ago.

01:51:58

Right. But our lives, life stories really mirror one another. It's like a hand -in -glove kind of fit.

01:52:05

We both have similar ecclesiastical backgrounds, you know, growing up in the black church, which is really sort of very charismatic, very

01:52:11

Pentecostal, very sort of emotional, very Arminian. When you talk about soteriology and salvation, it's very, it's like a partnership with God where, you know,

01:52:21

God does his part, and then you do your part to make the decision to ultimately believe or not to believe.

01:52:27

But then it was when I was exposed to Reformed theology where I first understood that that wasn't true. You know, where God monogistically and sovereignly and providentially works in the heart of a sinner to first regenerate that heart so that they can believe, so that they can come to faith.

01:52:42

So, Jim, if I'm considering your question in the context of how I understand biblical soteriology right now, how salvation happens with respect to how

01:52:51

God independently, apart from me, works in my heart, I've probably only been saved for about 15 years.

01:52:59

Now, prior to that, I thought I was saved. Because, and Virg, that actually brings up something

01:53:05

I want to bring up to you. We need to do an episode on Christian moralism. Because my understanding of salvation prior to that point was moralism is what it was.

01:53:14

Especially as it relates to sin. Don't curse, don't lie, don't this, don't that.

01:53:22

So it's still a very self -oriented, self -centered, self -structured idea of salvation.

01:53:29

Well, if I call myself saved, I can't do anything wrong.

01:53:35

What that causes is what would take place in black churches, especially in Pentecostal settings, where every

01:53:42

Sunday you were getting saved all over again. Right. Every Sunday you were showing up, because you messed up during the week, so on Sunday you made up for it and you got saved all over again.

01:53:52

It's sort of a weird, sort of ethno -ecclesiastical working out of Roman Catholicism is what it was.

01:54:03

And believe it or not... Say that again. Yeah, yeah. Because those were all English words, but it was much like the Ibram X.

01:54:08

Kendi phrase you were using. Yeah, yeah. That's what Princeton will do for you. Yeah, yeah. That's what black religious theology will do for you.

01:54:17

Let me put it this way, Jim. I am not lying. As I sit here, I'm not exaggerating this at all, but the first church

01:54:24

I grew up in was a hybrid black Pentecostal charismatic reform,

01:54:33

I'm sorry, Roman Catholic church. So you had a female pastor.

01:54:40

I can't even see this, man. You have a female pastor and two

01:54:45

Catholic priests. The female pastor was a black female, two white

01:54:51

Catholic priests. I can see it in my head right now. I was probably six years old. Two Catholic priests off to the left.

01:54:58

You're singing Shirley Caesar. You're singing James Cleveland. You're singing all these black, or what they called then

01:55:04

Negro spirituals. You're singing all this gospel music. And at the end of the service, I promise I'm not lying to you, it was a small house, literally it was a house that they converted into a church.

01:55:13

It was on a very narrow road. It was Rankin Street, Southeast Atlanta.

01:55:19

I could take you there to this day. But at the end of every church service, you had to leave the pew, walk up to the pulpit, and kiss the ring on the pastor's hand.

01:55:32

Just like they do in Roman Catholicism. So that was my first exposure to church.

01:55:38

Later on, I graduate high school. I go into the military. I did six years in the U .S. Army. I come out, go back to the same church that my parents were attending.

01:55:48

But the Lord struck me one Sunday and said, why are you here? You're not learning anything. And he was right.

01:55:53

So I left that church, ended up at Dr. Charles Stanley's church, first Baptist Atlanta, downtown

01:55:59

Atlanta. Ended up being there for 23 years. Was serving there in Sunday school, singing in the choir, men's

01:56:05

Bible study. That was the first church I ever attended where they didn't use the King James translation.

01:56:11

And with all due respect to you who prefer the King James translation, when I saw

01:56:16

Dr. Stanley use a wry, New American standard, that was the first time

01:56:21

I actually understood the Bible. So it was during those years that I sort of matured from a reader of the scriptures to a student of it.

01:56:31

There's a difference. There's a difference. But stayed at First Baptist Atlanta for 23 years.

01:56:39

Left there because I bought a house and the distance to drive was almost an hour and a half.

01:56:45

So I found a Southern Baptist church near where my new house was. The pastor there was

01:56:52

Reformed. So that was my first exposure to Reformed theology. This is about 2005, 2003, 2004, 2005.

01:57:02

So I started reading R .C. Sproul. What is Reformed theology? So I get that book.

01:57:07

But then I get exposed to John MacArthur. First time hearing an expository sermon.

01:57:15

I can tell you the sermon. It's a sermon titled Hacking Agate to Pieces. It's one of my favorites.

01:57:23

It's absolutely my absolute favorite sermon that John MacArthur's ever preached. I probably have the sermon memorized. But that was the first time

01:57:30

I heard anyone preach an expository sermon from one text. As you know from John MacArthur, he doesn't just preach verse by verse.

01:57:38

He preaches word by word if the case calls for it. But that's why you're so blessed to have

01:57:44

Jim here. He's an expository preacher. The Just Thinking Podcast is his expository podcast.

01:57:51

So you put those two together. You put R .C. Sproul, and again, God in his providence introducing me to Reformed theology through R .C.

01:57:57

Sproul, expository preaching through John MacArthur. You can't have either of those.

01:58:04

You can't have expository preaching and Reformed theology. You cannot have either of those together and not become a voracious reader.

01:58:14

You will become a voracious reader. As my wife will tell you, growing up,

01:58:20

I say this in all humility. I say this to establish something else. I was a very good student at school, but I hated to read.

01:58:27

I didn't like reading. I thought reading was boring. Maybe it's because I caught stuff so easily,

01:58:32

I just didn't need to read. But when I became exposed to expository preaching and Reformed theology, my personal library exploded.

01:58:42

If you listen to Virgil and I often enough, we cite so many sources that you need to set aside a book budget if you're going to listen to us.

01:58:51

Because we're going to send you and say, hell no, you need to get this book, you need to read this, you need to read this Puritan, read this theologian, read this systematic theology.

01:59:00

You cannot listen to us. Because once you listen to us, we're going to challenge you to go out and prepare yourself just like we prepare.

01:59:09

All that to say, Jim, I don't know when exactly

01:59:16

I was saved. However, my understanding of salvation has matured from an

01:59:22

Arminian view to what is referred to now as a Reformed view, where the

01:59:27

Arminian believes in salvation, you cooperate with God. Reformed theology, you do not cooperate with God.

01:59:33

You have nothing to do with your own salvation. Now, sanctification, that's another matter, so don't confuse the two.

01:59:39

I'm not talking about two different things. But my understanding of salvation has matured, and as I understand salvation now, yes,

01:59:48

I can confess here today before all of you that I am a true, regenerate believer in Jesus Christ because what other kind of believer is there?

01:59:59

All right, so you mentioned the names of your kids, Penelope, Philip, Paul. Yeah, yeah.

02:00:05

Who were they? All Ps, you have a fascination? All Ps, yes. Does that come from your Southern Baptist background? You've got alliteration and everything?

02:00:11

Absolutely, yeah. Alliteration, homiletics, all of that. Okay, so what are the kids' names again?

02:00:16

Princess is my daughter. Princess Asia is actually her first name. Mom wanted Asia.

02:00:22

I said she'll always be my princess, and so while Mom was coming off of the medication and the delivery, why are y 'all laughing?

02:00:35

I wrote on her birth certificate, I hyphenated her first name, Princess Asia. My thought was that's a dad thing.

02:00:42

I just did that, no big deal. She'll be my princess as kindergarten, first grade, second grade.

02:00:49

She'll grow out of that. She'll be Asia. Never happened. She was always princess. She's princess to this day, and all of her friends call her princess.

02:00:59

She's loved it. So when you start that way, you can't name the second child

02:01:09

Bob. Right, you've got to see it through. Yeah, you've got to see something through. Don't want to be a quitter.

02:01:14

Right, don't want to be a quitter. So now I had to create some things, and Tamika wanted, my wife Tamika, she wanted a son named after me,

02:01:21

Virgil Lamont Walker. I said don't harm the kid like that. Let the kid have his own identity.

02:01:31

We're like princess and Virgil. That's kind of whacked out. That's not going to work. I was a big fan back in the day.

02:01:38

We're both fans of Prince back in the day. I was like I don't want to have a princess and a prince.

02:01:44

Speaking of which, just to give the folks a little bit of a teaser.

02:01:50

We're both fans of Prince. Yes. You don't want to miss Sunday school. You're not going to come in purple, are you?

02:01:58

Yeah. Virg, don't be.

02:02:08

Don't be giving stuff up. Bro, come on, man. Okay, Doc. Don't miss

02:02:14

Sunday school. Seriously. So we appended T .O .N. So Princeton, Princeton Virgil, middle name

02:02:21

Lamont Walker. So I've got Princess Asia Amaya Walker.

02:02:26

I have a Princeton Virgil Lamont Walker. Poor guy. He goes by Princeton.

02:02:32

And my youngest, I was reading Proverbs voraciously during the time of his birth.

02:02:38

So I thought Solomon is such a great biblical name. It'd be great. And my wife was like, really?

02:02:45

And I said, yeah. And so she's like, no, I don't think so. And so I thought about price, you know, and my thought was just, you know, he's valuable to us.

02:02:57

He's our last child. So price Solomon, Samuel, he's the one that just graduated. So princess,

02:03:03

Princeton and price. Any grandkids? No, I'm not that old yet.

02:03:09

Hey. I didn't say anything about my age. He was asking me.

02:03:15

Yeah. If you had hair, I'd be able to tell whether it was gray or not. And that's the point.

02:03:21

I don't know. And that's the point. All right. Your kids. Yeah. So Melissa and I have three children, three adult children.

02:03:29

Colin. Colin Edward is my oldest, our oldest. Naomi Michelle is the middle.

02:03:35

And then Yasmin Nicole is our youngest. And they're all back in Georgia.

02:03:42

How did you meet your wives? Mine was, I mean, it was a church. I met her at church.

02:03:49

I mean, she came in. Man, this is not good to tell this story without her here.

02:03:56

Then don't tell it. I'll just, I'll say it this way.

02:04:02

Met her in church. We were at a charismatic kind of word of faith Pentecostal church. We were in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

02:04:08

If you know anything about Tulsa, it's the home of Oral Roberts University. It is ground zero for the word of faith movement.

02:04:15

Justin Peters could tell you all about that. I was at a church by a man by the name of Carlton Pearson.

02:04:21

He was my pastor. There's a Netflix documentary called Come Sunday. It's about his life, his story, where he went from a kind of a

02:04:32

Baptocostal kind of preacher to an absolute apostate and a heretic who really denied justification by grace through faith.

02:04:43

He became a universalist and wrote about it. Well, I was there at the church watching the entire transformation take place.

02:04:50

I could tell you more about his life and what I encountered there than the movie did.

02:04:56

But everything you see in the movie was accurate and true. Needless to say, met my wife there. She was a student at Oral Roberts University.

02:05:04

So again, I haven't shared this with Jim, but I have shared this with Justin.

02:05:10

It was the ministry of one Justin Peters that helped us get out of all of the baggage that came with Prosperity Gospel and its theology.

02:05:23

We literally spent two or three years unpacking, my wife and I, unpacking the scriptures from what we were taught to what's actually biblical, orthodox, and theological.

02:05:34

So when I finally got a chance to meet Justin, it was almost in tears. I was just so grateful for his ministry and what that has meant in our lives.

02:05:44

But long story short, met my wife there. We were friends for two years, dated for a year, engaged for a year, and then we got married.

02:05:53

All right. Well, my wife is here, and my wife Melissa is here.

02:05:58

She's sitting right up front with the branded Justin T -shirt on, so appreciate that. But I'm going to tell the story the way my wife would tell the story.

02:06:06

My wife stalked me on Facebook. That's how we met.

02:06:14

That's a better story, man. I like that. That's literally how she begins the story. So what's one of the most famous introductions to us?

02:06:24

It was a dark and stormy night. Yes. I stalked him on Facebook. When she was writing a book about this,

02:06:31

I stalked him on Facebook. That's good. Yeah, so when we met, I was more active on Facebook than I am now, and I was writing some political commentary.

02:06:38

Melissa and I were very politically active around this time. We were both conservatives.

02:06:43

We were in this sort of same Facebook groups and whatnot. So at the time,

02:06:51

I had come out of a very abusive marriage where my wife was the abuser. Unrepentant in the sin and whatnot, so we ended up getting divorced.

02:06:59

So I was a single father with two kids. Matter of fact, God used that situation to put me on the track of biblical counseling.

02:07:07

So Melissa and I both did biblical counseling back out in L .A. But that's a side note.

02:07:14

She noticed that I posted some pictures on Facebook with just me and my kids. So Melissa was like, well, where's the wife?

02:07:20

Does this guy have a wife around? I thought, well, this guy, he's too cool, he's too handsome.

02:07:27

I don't have a wife. It's the humility, right? Absolutely, brother. It's a growing factor.

02:07:34

I'll tell you, man, I'm growing more humble about the minute here. So she sends me a

02:07:41

DM, not on Facebook, she sends me a DM on Twitter. I think we were live -tweeting a president. I was live -tweeting the president debate between Obama and Romney.

02:07:49

Yeah, the loser. In more ways than one. In more ways than one. So she

02:07:54

DMs me her phone number and says, hey, give me a call sometime.

02:08:00

So eventually I did, I did call her. So that's how we met. We met via social media.

02:08:07

Where I was living in Georgia, she lived just a little bit southeast of me, about a little over an hour, hour and 15 minutes from me.

02:08:15

So that's how we met. But we have a crazy, crazy backstory to our relationship that we don't have time to share here, but would really make for a great movie.

02:08:30

When you talk about the providence and sovereignty of God. When you say he was humble, you meant it. Absolutely, brother.

02:08:37

You're getting a little more humble than me, bro. All right, now you are the dean of social media, for grace to you, the radio ministry of John MacArthur, which means that your job is to sit and scroll through Twitter all day long, basically.

02:08:49

Well, that's not my job, job, job. But, yeah, so my job in that role as dean of social media, for grace to you, my job is to execute on the social media strategy for grace to you, which is to leverage the social media platforms where we have a presence on to make

02:09:06

John's materials available to everyone around the world through those platforms. So that's pretty much my job in a nutshell.

02:09:13

Just last week, just this last week, I saw on Twitter, somebody posted the top 20 most active users on Twitter.

02:09:23

This is worldwide across all of Twitter, the 20 most active people in terms of number of posts and likes and retweets, et cetera, per day.

02:09:31

This is number 14 in the world. And that's just his account.

02:09:38

That's not grace to you, John MacArthur, or anything to deal with. Yeah, because if I posted what I post on Twitter through the grace to you account,

02:09:44

I'd get fired. Those are two totally separate accounts. I never post personal stuff through grace to you.

02:09:52

I have my own Twitter account. But I don't know if being number 14, is that something to be proud of or ashamed of?

02:09:59

I don't know. I think it's good. Given the way you use that platform, that's a fantastic thing.

02:10:06

So this is obviously somebody who uses the platform well and prolifically, and therefore, you were able to do that job.

02:10:15

Now, they didn't have a post, Dean of Social Media, at grace to you, when

02:10:20

Phil asked you to come and work for grace to you. So Phil made up a job and a job description to get you to come to grace to you.

02:10:28

Explain how it is that you ended up living in Atlanta. Explain how it is that you ended up at grace to you. Yeah. So the way

02:10:34

Melissa would like to tell this story, Melissa is the best storyteller. She says it this way.

02:10:40

I'm just going to interview Melissa. Next time. Next time. Next time. Every answer is, I'm going to tell the story the way

02:10:45

Melissa would tell the story. But the way Melissa would tell the story, she and I were in Atlanta. We were just minding our own business, and we really were.

02:10:53

We were just minding our own business. We were cool. I was a project manager at the DMV in Georgia.

02:10:59

She was an assistant manager at a local Lifeway store. We were doing our thing. Everything was great.

02:11:04

We weren't looking for relocation. We weren't looking for new jobs or anything like that. How many of you are familiar with Todd Friel, Wretched Radio?

02:11:13

So May of 2018, we're in Atlanta, minding our own business. I get an email from Todd Friel out of nowhere.

02:11:20

I had a blog that I'd been writing for for years. He says, hey, you don't know me? I'm Todd Friel, Wretched Radio.

02:11:26

My studio's up in Alpharetta, Georgia, which was about an hour and a half north of where we were living. He says, hey, in August, I'm putting on this

02:11:34

Q &A panel together to talk about social justice. He said, I've been reading your stuff on your blog.

02:11:40

Love what you're writing. He said, I'd love for you to be a part of the Q &A panel. We're going to be doing it live at my studio in front of a live audience.

02:11:47

He says, by the way, if you agree to do it, with one caveat, Phil Johnson, the executive director of Grey's News, says he's agreed to do it, but only on the condition that you agree to do it.

02:11:58

So I turned Todd down. I said, no, not doing it. Don't know how many of you have ever been to Atlanta.

02:12:03

Somebody should have called me, because I'm used to hearing that. Yeah, right. I'd just be like, no, you're going to do it.

02:12:08

We'll figure it out. I'll massage you. Make sure you get through. If you've ever been to Atlanta, Atlanta's just a very sprawling metropolis.

02:12:16

I mean, you have to drive. You need a car in Atlanta. Let me just say that. So I turned

02:12:21

Todd down because he's going to do it on a weeknight. I would have had to go to work the next day.

02:12:26

It was just too far to drive. I would have spent three hours round -tripping traffic. Didn't want to deal with that. But as God would have it,

02:12:33

I rethought it, reconsidered it, consulted with Melissa about it, so I agreed to do it. August rolls around.

02:12:39

We're at Todd's studio for the night of the event. This is where I meet Phil Johnson for the first time ever. Never talked to him before then.

02:12:45

Meeting for the first time. Meet Josh Bice for the first time. Meet Tom Buck for the first time. Other panelists, I meet them for the first time.

02:12:51

Well, unbeknownst to us, or to me anyway, Todd Frill had arranged to take us out to dinner at a local restaurant near his studio.

02:13:01

Everybody's carpooling with one another, and Phil Johnson asked Melissa and me if he could ride with us.

02:13:08

So us being, just trying to be nice, good southern hosts and showing some southern hospitality, he said, sure, absolutely.

02:13:14

So I don't know if we ever got over being starstruck with the fact that the voice of grace to you is now in the backseat of our car.

02:13:22

Did you hear that voice in the backseat of your car? It's the voice you hear on grace to you all the time. And here he is in the backseat of our car.

02:13:29

Well, we're trying to follow the caravan that's ahead of us to try to find out, so we don't get lost going to the restaurant, but we get stopped at a traffic light.

02:13:38

That quick. At that red light. Phil says,

02:13:44

Darryl, we want you to strongly consider coming to work for us at grace to you. At a red light.

02:13:49

This is Phil Johnson. Asking you, Darryl, will you alter your entire life, pack up your family, and move from Georgia to California?

02:13:58

Melissa and I looked at each other like, is he serious? He was serious. Two weeks later, I get a job application with the grace to you logo on it via email.

02:14:07

Call Melissa and I said, look at this. I fill it out, send it back. About a month later, I'm flying to Washington, D .C.

02:14:13

to meet with my direct boss, Jay Flowers, who's the COO at grace to you, meeting him at a restaurant in D .C.

02:14:19

for a four and a half hour dinner. November 2018, they're flying us out to L .A.

02:14:26

for a formal interview, which was really an informal thing. We fly back to Atlanta.

02:14:32

A deacon friend of ours from our church meets us at the airport. First thing they ask us after, they say, hey, glad to see you guys, hope you had a great flight.

02:14:40

They ask us, so are you guys going to be leaving us? We look them in the eye and we say, yeah. We've been in this small reformed

02:14:48

Baptist church for almost six years, about 150 people. They loved on us, we loved them. We were doing biblical counseling there.

02:14:55

I was teaching Sunday school. We were very active there. The hardest thing for us to do was to leave that church. It was easier for us to say goodbye to our blood and flesh family than it was to say goodbye to those brothers and sisters we had at that church.

02:15:07

So that's how it happened. That's how I got from Atlanta to L .A., grace to you. So I've been out of grace to you since, what,

02:15:13

January 2019. We booked a one -way flight from Atlanta to L .A. and we've been serving the

02:15:19

Lord out there ever since. What is G3 Ministries? How did you land there? G3 Ministries is the ministry of Dr.

02:15:27

Josh Bice, who is the founder and president. He did the same thing that you're doing here,

02:15:33

Jim, which was he wanted to have a locally church -based theological conference.

02:15:39

And so that's what he did. In 2013, as the pastor there, he started a theology conference, opened the doors of the church.

02:15:50

700 people showed up the first deal, first day, the first conference. 2014, it's packed again.

02:15:57

They can't fit any more people in the building. They continue that every year with a waiting list, and they're trying to figure out how to put people in different spaces and places.

02:16:06

By 2017, I had been in Omaha, Nebraska, watching video of the

02:16:12

G3 conference from afar in 2017. I'm a bright -eyed kid just trying to figure out what this

02:16:17

Reformed Theology thing was. Loving what I was learning. Darrell said about 2012 you ran into Reformed Theology.

02:16:25

About 2013, yeah. Yep. For me, it was about 2014. About the end of 2013, 2014, I get into Reformed Theology.

02:16:32

And so I'm drinking it down everywhere I can find it, and G3 was one of those places and spaces.

02:16:37

By 2017, I get to show up to my first G3 when they have it at a convention center, conference center.

02:16:43

It opens up. There are 2 ,300 people at the Georgia GICC, the

02:16:51

Georgia International Conference Center there at the airport. That was 2017.

02:16:58

They had plans after that to go back to the church with 700. They usually open up early bird registration during the first day of the conference.

02:17:09

And after the first day of the conference, early bird registration had filled up the auditorium back at the church, and they had a decision to make.

02:17:16

Because now they had to either shut the conference down because they couldn't offer it for an entire year until the next conference, or they had to make a commitment to be at the

02:17:24

Georgia Congress Center. So they made a decision to stay, and it went from 2 ,317 to 3 ,518 to 4 ,500.

02:17:37

In 2020, there were close to 5 ,000 people, about 4 ,800 to 5 ,000 people there.

02:17:43

That was the 2020 was the first time Darrell and I got to actually be on the main platform there delivering a

02:17:50

Just Thinking podcast live. He and I are floored, are shocked by, A, the success of Just Thinking.

02:17:56

I think at this time you had made the move to LA and were there at GTY, and he was already putting in, like he always does, hey, y 'all need to hire

02:18:13

Virgil. Hey, y 'all need to hire Virgil. We tried to get you. I know. See, I wouldn't go into all that.

02:18:19

Well, I'll do it. So Phil Johnson had reached out and was trying to just make connections, and then

02:18:26

COVID hits, right? COVID hits and things begin to shut down. Grace To You is having to deal, or Grace Community Church, is having to deal with all of what is happening out in California, and I called

02:18:39

Phil. I was honored. I was humbled that anybody from John MacArthur's ministry or Grace Community Church thought that I was worth coming that direction for.

02:18:52

That was sufficient for me. I called him, and he said, listen, we've got issues we're dealing with with the state of California.

02:19:00

If you'll sit tight, I promise you when this all is over, I'll come and get you, and I said, absolutely.

02:19:07

So Josh Bice did not know this, but he had started reaching out to me because of the podcast, because of our relationship.

02:19:15

He had been watching me from afar, kind of like what Phil was doing. I wasn't writing. My exposure in reform circles was directly tied to the podcast.

02:19:26

So he reached out. Josh Bice reached out and said, hey, we're trying to expand. He said, I want to get back to pastoring a church rather than being a conference pastor or a person providing oversight.

02:19:37

We need to hire an executive director of operations to run the conference component, but in the meantime, he said, what we're doing is we're transitioning from a conference -based ministry that provides resources to a resource -based ministry that has awesome conferences.

02:19:51

We want to provide curriculum, and we want to write books. His initial phone call to me was, based upon you and Daryl's connection, he said,

02:20:00

I'm going to reach out to Daryl as well. I would love for you guys to just write a column for G3, and I was honored by that.

02:20:08

I was like, absolutely. You got the call as well to write for G3. Then he asked me, he said, what are you going to be doing over the course of the next five years?

02:20:18

My trajectory at the time was I was at a mega church, 1 ,700 people there at the church.

02:20:25

I was the associate pastor there of discipleship, provided oversight there. The folks that were there, they were gracious to me, loved on me.

02:20:31

It was a traditional SPC, so though it wasn't reformed, the lead pastor knew that I was.

02:20:38

So long as I didn't stir things up too much there. So as long as you didn't go attacking 95 theses.

02:20:45

Right, right, right. I was OK. And let me tell you something. The church was so kind.

02:20:51

They were gracious enough to, anytime I needed to go speak somewhere, got asked. I mean, again, same story that you have with your church.

02:20:59

Folks who loved us well, cared for us well, all of that. So long story short, long story long, when

02:21:05

Josh Bice reached out to me again, he said, well, if you're not making plans to be a lead pastor, either there at that church or something like that,

02:21:13

I would love for you to consider applying for this position and role. What he did not know is that I had served as a manager for a pharmaceutical company before coming into ministry.

02:21:24

And prior to that, I'd done logistics work in the military. I'd worked at the Pentagon in the past, a number of different things that God has orchestrated in my life to absolutely prepare me as a hand -in -glove fit for the role as executive director of operations for G3.

02:21:42

Tell the people what the 3G stands for. The 3G stands for gospel, grace, and glory.

02:21:48

And so that's G3. And so I've been there now for, coming up on a year, about 18 months, did the national conference, have done two other conferences, and again, had no idea what

02:21:59

I was getting into with the overwhelming nature of putting on a 6 ,400 -person conference.

02:22:05

But God has blessed, and the family's doing well. You attend Grace Community Church? Yes. Do you serve in the church in a way that's not connected to Grace to you or not connected to Just Thinking?

02:22:15

Do you have a role there that you serve in? No, no role at Grace Community Church right now, at least not that I know of.

02:22:21

And I attend Praise Mill, which is the church that's connected with G3.

02:22:28

And what's phenomenal to me is to watch a church of about 180, 200 people, 100 volunteers, put on a conference that is impacting the world from that little bitty local church.

02:22:39

It's breathtaking to see what they're able to accomplish in that space. When I think about the resources that I had at the other church, at Westside, compared to the resources that are there, it's just phenomenal how

02:22:50

God sees fit to use certain people. I barely passed membership class, so at Praise Mill.

02:23:02

How do you fail a membership class? I didn't fail, but I'm on a trial run.

02:23:10

They want to try me out. Now, Tamika, my wife, they gave her full membership immediately with all the rights there hitherto.

02:23:18

For me, it was like, we're going to put you on probationary period to see if you're going to work out.

02:23:24

And you're like, I'm black. I've been on probation before. Absolutely. We're on lifetime probation.

02:23:31

There's no doubt about that. No, I don't fulfill any role there in an official capacity, though this coming

02:23:42

Sunday, I think Pastor Josh did ask me to preach for him, so I've got to put my message.

02:23:47

While I'm here this weekend, I've got to figure out some time to put a message together. Can I leverage what you said about Praise Mill?

02:23:54

I want to encourage the people here at Kootenai community church as well. Vernon just mentioned, it's really amazing how a church of probably less than 200 people can put on this massive conference where you have thousands of people coming from all over the world, and they do this every year.

02:24:13

And I think the reason God blesses the efforts of that small church is because of the faithfulness of, first of all,

02:24:22

Josh Bice in preaching the word of God, preaching the gospel faithfully and accurately. And everyone at Praise Mill, they just stay in their lane.

02:24:29

And what I mean by that, you stay, you work within your local body as God has gifted you individually to serve that local body.

02:24:37

So I want to encourage those of you who are in attendance here today who are members of Kootenai community church to not strive to be the next

02:24:45

Praise Mill. Don't strive to have this conference become thousands of attendees.

02:24:53

Don't make that your mission. Just be faithful doing what you're doing right now.

02:25:00

I think Josh would echo the same sentiment regarding what God did in that space. He never set out to plan to do a conference that size, nor did you or I, not to compare.

02:25:12

With a podcast. With a podcast. I mean, it was just, hey, I love this guy's writing, let's do this, and what God has done with it as we've been faithful, it's been amazing.

02:25:18

You got a guy here in Jim who's faithful to the text.

02:25:23

He's faithful to what the scriptures say. And I would just encourage you guys to just stay that course right here in Kootenai.

02:25:35

Stay that course right here where you are and just look at God do amazing things through all of you.

02:25:44

Thank you. How did you guys meet? Wow. He stalked me on Facebook.

02:25:49

I stalked him on Facebook. You want to let him tell the story as Melissa would tell it?

02:25:56

Yeah. Some of that's true. In that, he had an interview.

02:26:04

We have a mutual friend named Dwayne Atkinson. Dwayne is the executive producer, the producer of our podcast.

02:26:11

And he had a podcast of his own. He had a network of podcasts. Gosh, now

02:26:16

I don't know how many there are. Probably more than a dozen. Probably 20 or more that he's put together in this group to provide oversight, gives them information, tells them how to best deliver their podcast.

02:26:27

He and I were friends. Both of us have a very similar background with regard to prosperity gospel stuff.

02:26:33

I helped him on a page called Be Not Deceived. That page is actually still on Facebook. But I used to run a thing called

02:26:39

False Teacher Fridays. You talk about K -State's Calvinism. I was K -State's coming out of prosperity gospel.

02:26:46

I was angry. I was mad that I'd been lied to. And so every Friday, I had False Teacher Friday. And I would throw up a false teacher and go off.

02:26:55

And the thing about it was, I was still connected to all the people who attended those churches. And so they would jump on my

02:27:02

Facebook page and it would be crazy. And so I think he saw fit to try to help me calm down, put me behind the wall of this

02:27:12

Be Not Deceived so that people didn't know it was me, but we could push and promote the page. We did that. That was our relationship.

02:27:18

I knew that Dwayne had a podcast. He saw Daryl's writing, loved it, and wanted to interview him.

02:27:24

He was interviewing all kinds of folks that, different folks within evangelicalism, names that you would recognize as well.

02:27:33

And so he had Daryl on. As soon as he got off with Daryl, he called me and said, V. He just calls me V. V, you're not gonna believe this, man.

02:27:39

I talked to this brother. His name is Daryl Harrison. Man, you guys think alike. There's a lot of similarities.

02:27:44

You need to listen to the interview. And I said, okay, cool. So who is he? And so I started looking.

02:27:50

I started reading what Daryl was writing. And I was, like Phil Johnson and others who encountered

02:27:55

Daryl's writing, I was blown away by his turn of phrase, the way that he put ideas together.

02:28:03

I'm not a writer by nature. I've become a better writer hanging out with this guy because you have to.

02:28:09

Your A game had better be there. So I've become a better writer as a result of hanging out with this guy.

02:28:15

But I saw his writing, and after I heard the interview that Dwayne did, I thought there were about a half dozen questions

02:28:21

I would have asked Daryl that Dwayne didn't. Dwayne has a very specific set format. So I asked him if he would have any problem letting me get back on his podcast and doing another interview with Daryl.

02:28:34

Well, when Daryl got on, we talked for a little bit, some niceties, and we hit the button, we pressed record, and it was on.

02:28:42

I mean, you would have thought, my experience was, and I didn't know if he felt this way, I feel like I've A, known this brother all my life, and B, it's just natural.

02:28:52

It was not put on fake. I mean, it was just two brothers who loved theology, talking, and I think what was supposed to be about 30 minutes in length ended up being an hour and some change.

02:29:02

And so that was kind of the first beginnings of what might be the podcast. After we wrapped up our conversation,

02:29:08

I told Daryl, I said, Daryl, I love your writing, and if you ever wanted to do something out there in a platform with a podcast,

02:29:18

I'd be happy to help you. I have a little bit of a background in radio that I did for some years off and on, and I'd be happy to help you out in that way and to push you forward.

02:29:28

I'm not trying to be lead guy. In fact, I can't be lead guy. I was at a traditional

02:29:33

SBC, and I had to be very careful about what I shared with regard to Reformed theology, specifically in the area of soteriology.

02:29:41

I wanted to be careful. I wanted to respect the place and space where I was, but also do some things around culture.

02:29:47

So I let him do kind of the heavy lifting, and I would come alongside. And so I told him that. I was excited about that.

02:29:53

I got ready to get off the phone, and you told me what? No. I said no.

02:30:00

I said not doing it. I'm a big believer in believers operating in how

02:30:08

God has gifted them. And as it relates to the invitation that Virgil posed to me about doing a podcast,

02:30:13

I didn't think I was gifted as a speaker to get behind a microphone and articulate my thoughts verbally.

02:30:19

I just didn't think I was that good at it. I was a writer. My gift is getting behind a keyboard and putting words on a page.

02:30:25

That's how I operate. But again, as God would have it,

02:30:33

God had other plans. So we ended up partnering together. We dropped our first episode of the

02:30:40

Just Thinking podcast. I remember using Microsoft Publisher to create the logo and everything, just that sort of clip art stuff.

02:30:47

And that's essentially still the logo today. I mean, we're not trying to impress anybody. So we dropped our first episode

02:30:54

December 2017. Here we are a little over four years later. We're probably going to surpass, by the end of the summer, probably surpass our five millionth episode played, five million plays.

02:31:08

We have listeners in over 80 countries around the world. As, again,

02:31:14

Jim mentioned, Phil Johnson has called us the most influential long -form Christian podcast in the world.

02:31:21

And to see what God has done with a platform that was never our goal to grow the podcast.

02:31:28

We were just trying to be the best we could be at it, at what we do. So, and I just want to say,

02:31:37

Virg, I don't mean to embarrass you, but what you guys hear as he and I interact with one another on the podcast, we get complimented all the time about how well we just get along together and how we flow well together.

02:31:51

Well, it's because we love each other. You know, I didn't even know this brother existed four years ago. Didn't even meet him in person until we'd been doing the podcast for two years already.

02:32:02

So we do the podcast, he's on one coast, I'm on another coast. But I love this brother as if he were my own flesh and blood brother.

02:32:10

So that's what you hear first and foremost when you press play on one of our episodes. We love one another.

02:32:16

And we love the Lord and we love putting in the effort and the work that it takes for us to produce the episodes that hopefully you all are being equipped through.

02:32:26

Amen. What has shaped your theological, political worldview positions?

02:32:32

You guys politically do not represent the Biden Black community at all.

02:32:37

Theologically, politically, your worldview. Were you part of the Biden Black community at some point and you came out of that?

02:32:44

Or have you always had the ethnic, theological worldview stance that you have today? Has it always been part of where you've been at?

02:32:51

Yeah, for me, it's always been. I think the first president I voted for was the first Bush.

02:32:59

I've never voted for a Democrat, ever. So I say that simply to say that I was always politically conservative.

02:33:09

I identified, before I even understood why or even understood what a biblical worldview was,

02:33:15

I knew as I looked at what the parties offered that one was not for the well -being and benefit of black folks in particular and the rest of America in general.

02:33:28

And so I knew that, understood that, and grew in that. In fact, when I mentioned my foray into radio, it had everything to do with being black and conservative in my view politically.

02:33:40

It wouldn't be until later, after doing things on radio for a while, that I actually developed a rich understanding of how theologically my worldview needed to be shaped to inform my politics and not the other way around.

02:33:56

And so that, for me, was the shift. If there's any shift or transition or transformation that's taken place, it's that I'm now informed by and armed by a biblical worldview first as primary, not simply a defense of conservatism.

02:34:12

Being conservative, you kind of stumbled into a biblical worldview, not necessarily the perfect mirrors of one another, but now your biblical worldview informs your political positions, and at least you can see the foundation upon which your political convictions are to be built.

02:34:26

Absolutely, absolutely. And you? I think I speak for verse to verse. You can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but when people ask me that question,

02:34:33

Jim, I tell them I have to go back to my parents. My parents shaped my worldview.

02:34:39

Absolutely. My parents did that. That's good. My father did that. I grew up inner -city

02:34:45

Atlanta, some of the most poor neighborhoods, even today, that you can go to on the west side of Atlanta.

02:34:54

We didn't have much of anything. I mean, seriously, we had almost nothing growing up in poverty, public housing.

02:35:02

But for those of you who have read our books, Bert and I, we have similar dedications to our parents in just thinking about the state, our first book.

02:35:11

But my dedication in that book reads to my parents, Barbara and Samuel, who taught me never to make excuses.

02:35:20

That's right. Never. The work ethic that I saw my parents display in trying to put food on the table for their three children,

02:35:30

I don't have very many memories of my father growing up because he was working two or three jobs trying to put food on the table.

02:35:38

But they never made excuses. They never made, and I will confess that maybe this, Jim, maybe you can lay hands on me later on, but even to this day,

02:35:48

I have a low tolerance for people who are lazy and who make excuses. So my conservatism, for lack of a better word, began there.

02:35:59

You work for what, it's like Frederick Douglass said. Frederick Douglass said, you may never get everything you work for in this life, but you're gonna have to work for everything you get.

02:36:13

And that's what I saw my parents exhibit. That's what I've tried to exhibit in my own life.

02:36:20

My parents just never made excuses. This is why to this day, when

02:36:25

Verda talks about having a biblical worldview, we're gonna talk about this this weekend, I'm gonna try to explain to you the distinction between equality and equity.

02:36:34

Verda's already touched on it in his opening message. But what you see, the culture trying to advance today as equality and equity is not biblical equality and equity.

02:36:51

Growing up the way I did, there were things you were able to have, and there were things you weren't able to have.

02:37:00

It just was a matter of could you afford it, or could you not? There was nothing discriminatory about it, nothing racist about it.

02:37:09

I remember now, as a boy, the one gift I wanted so bad was a yellow and black

02:37:15

Tonka dump truck. Was never able to get it. Do I blame

02:37:22

Jim? No. I had one. I did.

02:37:29

I had more trucks than I had friends. But see, social justice would say, Jim, you owe me that truck.

02:37:37

It was racist that you had a truck, Jim, and I didn't have a Tonka truck. I didn't get the

02:37:44

Tonka truck. I'm sorry, I didn't. I just didn't get it. I would echo that. My parents had a heavy influence on that.

02:37:53

My dad had all of a sixth grade education. He worked on a farm to take care of his younger brothers and sisters who were able to go to school.

02:38:04

My dad was functionally illiterate, meaning that if he had memorized something, he could remember it to read it, but he couldn't sound out words or anything like that and read on his own.

02:38:18

I remember sitting with my father. He had a business.

02:38:24

Besides the full -time job he had, he had a business where he did janitorial work for different companies, corporations.

02:38:35

We would go in. There was a restaurant that he had a contract for. When we were mixing up the stuff to put in cleaners, he would have me read to him what the formulas were so that we could make it all work and wouldn't blow something up or tear up a floor with wax or what have you.

02:38:54

That was kind of my upbringing. My dad never complained because he couldn't read. We figured it out, and again, it never stopped him from working.

02:39:04

We heard the stories, okay, you're black, you're gonna have it rough, but here's what you need to do at the end of the day.

02:39:11

You need to work harder, work smarter, work better, and blame no one for what you do or don't have.

02:39:16

The only person you need to look at is yourself. That was the foundation. When I hear, as a young man, young adult, when

02:39:25

I hear what sounds like what my parents were saying, I resonated with that.

02:39:32

Politically speaking, that's how it is. The irony of what your father told you, in that you're gonna have to work harder, you're gonna have to be smarter, you're gonna have to do everything better, the irony of that is that the reality of that, to whatever degree it has become a reality for both of us, is that we have had to do those things up and against the resistance of other black people.

02:39:53

That's true. I've never had my path, to my knowledge, I've never had my path obstructed, prohibited, inhibited by anyone who is white.

02:40:05

Some of you have heard me share this with you, on the podcast you've heard me say this, I've been held up at gunpoint twice in my life.

02:40:14

Each time it was a young, black teenager. The epithets that Virgil and I experience, especially on social media, we've been called every racial or ethnic epithet in the book.

02:40:32

You know what we should do? Every time I use the word race, racial, racism, any of those words, we should have to put $5 in a jar or something like that.

02:40:45

We'll call it the racist jar. But every ethnic epithet that we've had thrown at us has been somebody who looks like us.

02:40:57

I've never had a white person call me coon. I've never had a white person call me nigger. I've never had a white person call me

02:41:02

Uncle Tom. So your dad was right. But the irony is that we've had to face those obstructions through other people like us.

02:41:12

I wrote a blog article. By the way, you can get to my blog at DeaconDarrell .com. Darrell is spelled with two

02:41:18

R's and two L's. DeaconDarrell .com. I wrote an article titled The Myth of Black Community.

02:41:25

Black community is a myth. I bet that went over well. Like everything else we do, it goes over well.

02:41:34

But we don't care that it doesn't go over well. We don't care. We really do not care. But in that article,

02:41:40

I explain to you why the idea of black community is based on melanin.

02:41:46

But when you come into those communities, communities in air quotes, when you come into those communities with a different worldview, boom.

02:41:55

You get the boot. You're ostracized, you're demeanored, you're totally discounted, which is why now we're considered, by many people, to be white conservative.

02:42:07

We carry the white man's water. We're just... We're providing cover for the white man.

02:42:13

We're providing cover for the white man. I was telling Jim last night at dinner at his house,

02:42:19

I was sharing with him and the others we were fellowshipping with that my favorite epithet is being called

02:42:32

Uncle Tom. That's my favorite one. It's my favorite one because usually folks who throw that epithet out at us haven't read

02:42:40

Harriet Beecher Stowe's book to find out where the origin of that was, that that term came from.

02:42:48

So you read Harriet Beecher Stowe's book, and I was telling Jim, I said, there's two books that every American needs to have in their library. There's Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and there's

02:42:57

Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. Add those two books to your library if you don't have them.

02:43:04

But in Uncle Tom's Cabin, spoiler alert for those of you who haven't read it, the entire story is a story of the gospel.

02:43:12

It's a gospel narrative where Tom is the Christlike figure in that story. Because the way the story ends, and many historians credit

02:43:21

Uncle Tom's Cabin with launching the abolitionist movement to end slavery in America. But at the end of the story,

02:43:28

Tom is literally being beaten to death with a whip by his master. Why?

02:43:34

Because Tom won't tell him where these two young escaped black female slaves, these two young slave girls, have run off.

02:43:41

And Tom refuses to give them up. He refuses to tell his master where they've gone. So his master is literally whipping him to death, whipping him to death, but as Tom is being whipped to death, he's dying, being beaten to death by his master, he is preaching the gospel to his master as he's dying.

02:44:00

He is entreating his master, begging his master to repent, to come to faith in the

02:44:07

Lord. And so Tom is a Christlike figure in that he sacrifices his life for the sake of those two slave girls who were able to get away and save their lives.

02:44:19

So someone who calls me Uncle Tom, unbeknownst to them in their ignorance, they don't realize they're paying me a compliment actually.

02:44:24

But you don't know that if you haven't read the book. So I would just urge anyone who's feeling sort of inspired to refer to either of us as Uncle Tom.

02:44:39

If you can read, read the book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and I think you'll thank me later for it.

02:44:46

So my next question was, what is the response that you get from the black community, the

02:44:51

Biden black community? It's something. Something else.

02:44:58

I'll answer that question in two parts. One is, you know, it's everything you can imagine that Darrell has talked about, vitriol.

02:45:08

It's crazy. I mean, you know, folks doing really incredible things. There was something that one of the

02:45:16

Black Lives Matter ladies did about, you know, five things that I wish the white community would do or six things that white people need to do for me or something like that.

02:45:27

And I took those six things and said these are six things that the black community need to do for themselves.

02:45:34

And I wrote those out, and I posted that. Yeah, that was a problem. Yeah, that was a problem.

02:45:43

So that thing got about, I don't know, 40 ,000 shares. It went crazy. And because of that, all of their people,

02:45:50

A, saw it, and B, you know, started flooding my inbox, and there were threats and all kinds of stuff, pictures of my wife and family and done up in different ways and all that kind of stuff.

02:46:02

I don't think my wife, I don't even think I told my wife about it. I don't usually. Most keyboard warriors are actually not very brave.

02:46:13

And so I really don't sweat that. So does it come? Yes. Do we care?

02:46:20

No. We have a mug that says that. But in addition to that,

02:46:26

I always want to, in audiences like this, or anywhere we go, I want to dial back any glamorization of that that might be in your eyes.

02:46:38

Wow, they get the arrows thrown at them. Wow, they're in the front lines. I mean, I could, the stories of the martyrs, right, burned at the, that's front line.

02:46:48

Right? Nobody's pulled my arm apart with horses in all directions. Nobody's tied me to a stake and lit me on fire.

02:46:57

Do you know what I mean? So do we receive pushback? Absolutely. It's to the degree that it comes nowadays with stuff that people put in social media.

02:47:08

Can we handle it? Yes, we were born for that. You were born for that, right?

02:47:13

All of us are apologists. All of us are defenders of our faith. 1 Peter 3, verses 15 and 16.

02:47:20

You're to give an answer for the hope that is in you, right? And you're told to do so with gentleness and respect, right?

02:47:27

Why? Because even though you operate in that regard, there will still be people who will say evil things and create falsehoods and maliciously align you, right?

02:47:37

But they won't be doing well in that regard. So yes, we are. Yes, it's a lot at times.

02:47:44

It doesn't bother us. It really exposes where the person is, that their arguments have run out. And we don't care.

02:47:51

So none of it bothers us or hurts us or hurts our feelings. But I also don't want to glamorize any aspect of what we get for the purposes of people going, oh, wow, you guys get so much.

02:48:03

I mean, sure. And we know that. But when you examine it again against the backdrop of church history, there are people that you should really look at and go, wow, that was a price paid for standing on that tree.

02:48:18

Go ahead, Jim. I was going to say, on the other side of that, you obviously have people who come to you and say, you changed my mind on this subject.

02:48:23

I listened to your podcast. I never saw racism and race in this biblical perspective. It's not going to be a one -to -one.

02:48:30

You're going to have far more haters. The ratio of haters versus those who have been convinced to change their worldview is incredibly disproportionate.

02:48:41

But does the word you just used, Jim, that I want to sort of plant a flag on real quick.

02:48:48

There are people who come up to us and say, yeah, you guys changed my mind on this. But our goal is not to change anyone's mind.

02:48:54

That's not our goal. Here's what I mean by that. What Virgil and I do on the Just Thinking podcast, and even when we're out speaking opportunities like this, occasions like this here in Kootenai, is we are motivated by presenting the truth of the gospel.

02:49:14

Since the early days of the church, you read the book of Acts and how thousands of people were saved simply by hearing the gospel preached.

02:49:24

No smoke, no strobe lights, no pizza, no nothing. See, that's how

02:49:32

God still works today. He still works through his Holy Spirit that same way. What we do is we present the gospel.

02:49:39

Every word of the gospel has always operated through the

02:49:45

Holy Spirit in penetrating a person's heart. We can't do that. That's why you will never see us have a guest on the

02:49:55

Just Thinking podcast. The Just Thinking podcast is not a debate platform. You will never hear anyone's voice on that podcast other than Virgil Walker and Darrell Harris.

02:50:04

We are presenting you what this book says. This book says what it says.

02:50:11

You can do with that whatever you want. We trust

02:50:16

God that he will make his word effectual in the hearts of those whom he chooses to make it effectual.

02:50:25

We're not trying to change it. When we did the episode on George Floyd, we're not trying to change their mind.

02:50:34

Now, we pray that your heart will be changed so that, as we said in that episode, my concern about what happened to George Floyd begins and ends with the fact that he was a fellow image bearer of God.

02:50:48

I couldn't care less that the police officers were white and George Floyd was black. What I'm most proud of in that episode is that we raised the question that no one, even to this day, is still not raising the question.

02:51:01

I said this in the episode. The question we all should be asking about George Floyd was, was he safe?

02:51:06

Yes. Come on, man. Because he's dead now. Where is his soul?

02:51:13

Nobody's asked that question. Nobody. As it relates to,

02:51:20

I think Virgil made a great point. We're not martyrs for the pushback and the vitriol that we take.

02:51:27

We should expect that. That's the Sermon on the Mount. That's Matthew 5. We should expect that.

02:51:33

What's sad about that, what's sad about the pushback that we do get is that it comes from a place where people have a tribalist worldview as opposed to a biblical worldview whereby they think it's more virtuous to represent a tribalist collectivist worldview as opposed to an

02:51:55

Imago Dei worldview where Genesis 1 .27 says that each of us individually is created in the image of God.

02:52:02

And part of that, part of being created in the image of God is that you get to use your own mind.

02:52:11

You get to make your own decisions. Your own choices. As an individual.

02:52:18

As an individual. Not as a tribalist collective. And that's what's so sad about what happens to me and Virgin.

02:52:26

Listen, Virgin and I have been through a lot in our lives. I've been held up at gunpoint twice.

02:52:31

We both have experienced an older brother dying from complications of HIV AIDS.

02:52:37

We both have watched our respective older brother die right in front of us. We don't go around bragging about that experience.

02:52:51

But it's like we say all the time. We expect sinners to sin. We were talking about this last night.

02:52:56

I just really don't get it. What happened with George Floyd? What happened to Breonna Taylor?

02:53:02

Why is it that it only makes news when the melanin is of a certain shade?

02:53:09

We should have a biblical worldview as Virgil said. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 8 that all of creation has been subject to corruption because of what happened in Genesis 3.

02:53:21

2 Peter 3 .13 though says that for believers we are awaiting a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells.

02:53:28

A lot of the social gospel, a lot of social justice, a lot of liberation theology is that you can create that heaven right here.

02:53:35

It's up to us to do it. We can do that. But we should never be surprised.

02:53:41

Never. It's like we said in the George Floyd episode. A man or woman who wears a badge.

02:53:47

See that badge is not regenerative. Every police officer is a sinner.

02:53:54

Every sheriff is a sinner. Every fire person is a sinner. Every politician is a sinner.

02:54:03

Ecclesiastes 5 .8 says when you see a politician basically cutting deals with other politicians, don't be surprised.

02:54:15

Don't be surprised when sinners sin. That's how we can take it all in stride.

02:54:22

Sinners are going to sin. When a sinner is demonstrating towards us what a sinner is innately designed to do, why should we care about that?

02:54:34

It rolls right off of us. We brush it right off. We keep moving. Well that is the end of our

02:54:44

Q &A time for the first one. Wow. I better get ready for the next one. Yeah. This was the easy one, right?

02:54:52

Yeah, this was the easy one. We're going to break for lunch. This is not the one that you will need your lunch ticket for.

02:54:59

That is for dinner tonight. We will start. I'm going to pray. I ask that you let these two gentlemen go through first so that they can get their meal.

02:55:08

Come up here and get started eating and then prepare for the next session after lunch. Maybe start on this side of the room.

02:55:16

Kind of work your way down both sides of the table and back to your place. With that, let's pray.

02:55:24

Father, we are grateful for this time that we can have here that you have brought both of these brothers here to instruct us and equip us.

02:55:30

We're very grateful for the fellowship that we enjoy in your son and as we gather around this meal we thank you that we can enjoy the abundance of your provision, your goodness to us in every way.

02:55:39

We ask your blessing upon this time and the rest of our day and upon our minds as we focus our thoughts upon you and upon what your word says.