WWUTT 1020 Q&A Rainbow Revival?

Romans 1 .16 says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, and very rarely will you find a professing

Christian who will say they are ashamed of the gospel, though you may find a few embracing doctrines contrary to the gospel.

Well, it is that time again when

I must ask for donations. And we're still coming off, this whole year for us has been really tough.

Been a lot of things that have been going on in the life of our church this year that has been difficult, not all just been financial, but I think that the difficulty of things that we've gone through is kind of reflected in our financial need as well.

So it's been a tough summer. We've had a lot of soldiers either deployed or had to move.

The term that we use for that is PCS, which stands for permanent change of station. Which is not permanent.

It's not permanent. I don't even know why they call it that. I don't either. Because I guess you're permanently moving your stuff instead of just leaving it and coming back later.

You can leave it here and you'll come back for it later. Yeah, I guess. Maybe it pertains to your stuff and not you.

Probably, because you're always gone. We enter into these seasons sometimes where things get a little bit tight.

And if you would be so kind as to think of us when you do your giving, we encourage you to give to your own church first.

Oh yeah, definitely. Support as they have need. And then if you've got anything extra beyond that and you're looking for a ministry, whether parachurch or otherwise, to contribute to, then

I hope you'll think of us. Give a gift of $20 or $30 if that's all you can give or $100 or $200 if you can offer that much.

That would be wonderful. And we have had some very generous givers who've even gone beyond that before. And we are truly grateful.

Amen. I see gifts like that when they come to us as a huge responsibility.

I don't take that lightly. So when we have a gift that comes to us and says, hey, love the ministry, thanks for what you do, here's a gift to your church, then

I know, boy, we're going to be responsible with this. Yes, definitely. We don't want to be careless and just kind of sit back and kick back and go, hey, see, people are supporting us, so we're doing fine.

It makes us want to work harder, in fact. So if you think about giving a gift to us, you can go to our website, www .utt

.com, and click on Give, the menu across the top there. Click on the Give tab, and there will be instructions whether to give online through Simple Give, or you can send a check if you want to give that way.

And all of these donations come to our church. It doesn't come to me and Becky. It goes to the church, which is a nonprofit organization.

So again, the website is www .utt .com. Now, typically on Friday, we take questions from the listeners, and you can submit those questions to when we understand the text at gmail .com.

But today, I've got something in particular that's going to take the rest of the program, and this was sent to me by Tom Buck, who is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas.

He had presented. Dr. Buck. Dr. Buck, yes. Yes. He had presented this online.

I believe this was Monday or Tuesday. He presented this question, how soon until a

Southern Baptist Church pastor declares a rainbow revival and leads his church to view homosexuality as acceptable for Christians because their sexual orientation is part of God's creative diversity?

And his answer to that question was, as soon as this past Sunday, and then he posted the sermon from this church in Georgia.

And so, he and I had talked earlier in the week, and we talked about playing that sermon and responding to it.

And so, that's what I'm going to do today. The content of what we're going to be talking about today is a little bit more adult in nature.

So, parents, if you use this podcast to do a family devotional or something like that, and you've got young ears, you may want to listen to this first before we continue.

I mean, the appalling thing about having to preface this sermon with that is this was a sermon he preached.

Yeah, that he preached in front of his entire congregation. Wow. And involves matters that I don't let my children sit and listen to without preemptively having to tell us.

Now, when this man uses this term, here's what he means. But this is what they preached in their church.

Did they have like a children's church available or something? I don't know. No idea. The church that we're talking about is

Townview Baptist in Kennesaw, Georgia, which is just a little bit north of where my parents live.

Okay. They live on the southern end of Georgia. Kennesaw is on the, sorry, southern end of Atlanta. I was going to say.

Yeah. Yeah. And then Kennesaw is on the northern end of Atlanta. Okay. And the pastor is

Jim Conrad. I've kind of clipped the beginning of this sermon for time, for time's sake.

Okay. But he starts by reading John 3, verses 16 through 21. And that really doesn't make any sense because the passage has nothing to do with what he's talking about.

Okay. Nor does he even exegete it. So it's just like he started with John 3, 16 for the sake of reading that, but doesn't ever explain what that passage has to do with the fact that his church is now going to be an

LGBTQ church. So John 3, 16 through 21, for a refresher, says the following, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God.

And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

The irony of Pastor Conrad starting with that particular passage is that he's not coming to the light.

He's actually fellowshipping with the darkness. And so the judgment of God does come against these things.

God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous, as is said in the scriptures.

And we must flee from sexual immorality. But Pastor Conrad is encouraging his church to embrace sexual immorality.

So we're going to be playing this sermon. This is, again, a Southern Baptist church.

I'm a Southern Baptist minister. And this is something that is not very common in the

Southern Baptist denomination right now. But I think one of the things this demonstrates is we're going to be seeing more occasions of this in the future.

And we must be very careful and on guard against the schemes of Satan. The Southern Baptist Convention is in desperate need of another conservative resurgence.

And the conservative resurgence that started in the late 70s, early 80s is dying out.

And we desperately need more than that. We need reformation. We need to go back to God's originally intended purpose for the church.

And if the Southern Baptist Convention does not see occasions like this as being an urgent call, then we're in big trouble.

So here is Pastor Conrad. And as I said, Becky and I will be breaking in periodically to make comment on his comments.

All right. By now some of you are aware that I kicked the proverbial hornet's nest in the

July 21st meeting of our deacons when I shared my personal journey on homosexuality, faith, and the possibility of church membership for gay and lesbian individuals who profess faith in Jesus Christ and have been baptized upon such profession of faith.

And by the way, these are the only criteria for membership contained in our constitution.

So he's already starting this sermon by saying, see, you can be gay as long as you've made a profession of faith in Christ and as long as you've been baptized.

Yeah, that just sounds like they've, from their foundation of basing it off the

Bible, you know, the biblical qualifications. Well, yeah, they don't even have it.

Or a statement of faith or something. Yeah, what they're lacking here is a proper, what's called an ecclesiology.

There we go. Or just an understanding of what that membership means and how it pertains to baptism in a profession of faith.

That's what I'm trying to get at. Okay, gotcha. It just wasn't. It wasn't even close. Anyway.

So we understand that Romans 6 verses 1 through 4 says, what shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means.

How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Baptism demonstrates I am dead to my sin and I'm alive in Christ. But what this pastor is saying is you can go through the little religious ritual and still continue in your sin.

As long as you've done, of course, he doesn't consider homosexual desire as sin as we're going to see from the sermon as we continue here.

In January of this year, I turned 60 and we marked my 25th anniversary as your pastor.

Such milestones cause one to start thinking about the future. Priscilla and I are considering downsizing.

I would appreciate your prayers there because we have radically different understandings of what to downsize means.

I also started to devote some of my thoughts to how I can finish strong in my ministry here and how the church can be best prepared for the future.

This issue was not on my list. It was not on my list until a man asked me, will my family be welcomed in your church?

It's no longer an issue when it has a name and a face. It was not on my list until I realized that people who feel welcomed by others and who encounter

God in worship will at some point seek out a small group Bible study and the next step in the natural progression of our outreach process is to consider church membership.

It was not on my list until I realized that at some point I and the church could no longer operate on a silence is golden policy.

It was not on my list until I came to the conviction that it would be better for the church to have faced the challenge now rather than kick it further down the road.

It was not on my list until I prayed and read and struggled and studied with what

I had understood the Bible to say for most of my life. This is my journey from the churches of my youth.

The message was clear and simple. All homosexuals were sinners. This was reinforced during college years with the message that the homosexual lifestyle was not appropriate for Christians.

Though I was starting to wonder why this particular sin garnered so much more condemnation than other sins.

So before we continue on and he starts talking about his journey, quote unquote, journey through this subject,

I think this is a good spot to talk about how the scripture does say that homosexuality is sin and a serious one and a very serious sin.

On top of that, yeah, let me read here from Romans chapter one. So in Romans one, the apostle

Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. We're talking about how God is evident and all that has been made.

You can look at creation and you know there is a God who made it, right? And no man has any excuse to say that there is no

God. We go on in verse 21, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to them, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal

God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. Verse 26, for this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchange natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.

Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness. So when Paul is talking about a fallen culture, a fallen civilization, the apex of their sin is unnatural desire.

That's what he's demonstrating because when he goes on here, he'll start talking about other sins, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, gossip, slander, being haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

So indeed he goes on and on into these other sins, but it's after he has spent such a huge bulk of space talking about how the height of human depravity is demonstrated in how people will feed their lustful appetites and God will turn them over to those appetites.

And they will burn with passion for one another and be destroyed in the lust that they have for each other.

And the last verse of Romans 1, 32 says this, though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die.

They not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.

And that's the scary passage, as we consider the rest of this sermon, that this pastor is giving approval to those who practice what

God will judge. So I found it interesting, claiming to be wise, they became fools.

Because he's claiming to... He's claiming to have this new wisdom. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I thought that was an interesting connection between his sermon and that verse.

In this passage. Yeah. Or reading here. Yeah. So he's... That's a little... I mean, that's a lot concerning.

Don't get me wrong. Very concerning. Right. So why is it that homosexuality is such a serious sin?

Because a culture that has been given over to its own depravity will demonstrate this sin. Right.

And people embrace it, and welcome it, and consider it normal and natural. And it is actually an evidence that God has given a culture over to a debased mind.

Right. That's what it's actually showing. It's not that homosexuality is the greatest of sins that no one can therefore repent of.

Right. Of course not. A person certainly can repent, and be washed, and cleansed, and receive the

Holy Spirit of God. Amen. And that's what must happen in a person when they become a

Christian. Not that... You know, when we're asking this question, can a homosexual be a Christian? Well, sure they can. But they repent of their sin and become a

Christian. They don't continue in homosexuality and therefore call themselves a Christian, lest they be like the one that Paul talks about in Romans 6, who is still a slave to unrighteousness, submitting themselves to sin.

They're slaves to their own depravity. In 1 Corinthians 6, starting in verse 9, the

Spirit says, So there's more than just the sin of homosexuality that's mentioned there.

These are all those that will be cast from the presence of God into hell at the final judgment. But then

Paul goes on to say in verse 11, and again, he's talking to the church in Corinth and says to them, such were some of you, but you were washed.

You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the

Spirit of our God. When a person hears the gospel and they repent of their sin, they become a new creation.

The old is passed away and the new has come. In time I met men and women who by no stretch of the imagination could have said to have chosen to be gay or lesbian.

In fact, many of them raised in the church tried to pray the gay away.

Some endured harmful, damaging, reparative or conversion therapy.

Too many would choose acts of self -harm or suicide because no matter how much they loved

God, the only message they heard was that they were an abomination. Over the years,

I began to encounter gay men and lesbians who claimed to be followers of Jesus and who bore evidence of those professions in their lives.

And I was faced with a struggle between what I had always understood to be true and the lived realities of people.

Ethicist David Gushy calls these transformative encounters. So let me make perfectly plain here

Romans 3 23 all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Oh yeah. So as he's talking about people who lived their lives in homosexuality and they were called abominations.

No, we all were that. Oh yeah, definitely. Before you heard the message that God sent his son

Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and he rose again from the grave and whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

Until you heard that message and you turn from your sin and you believed in Christ, you were living in abominations.

You were carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

That's Ephesians 2 3. So we all were this way. It's not that that these people who only do this sin are therefore an abomination.

Right. That's ridiculous. Right. We all were that way. Yes, but he makes this statement in here about I met gays and lesbians who called themselves

Christians and they even demonstrated the fruit of salvation in their life. No, they didn't.

And the fact that he didn't even understand the significance of a confession of faith and baptism at the very start of his sermon.

Yeah. I can't imagine what he's implying when he says I met gay and lesbian people who called themselves

Christians and from what I could tell they were. Maybe they were just nice. I guess.

I don't even know how he's trying to define that. I don't. I don't either. I need more information. Well, he's going to go into some rather cliche arguments.

I'm sure you've heard before. Awesome. That's what's coming up next. Let me step aside for a minute.

My home church taught that women were by God's design subordinate, weaker, inferior to men and could therefore have no role in church leadership.

When I was in high school and we were without a minister of music, the lady with a master's degree could sing a solo and conduct a choir, but couldn't turn around and lead the congregation in worship.

It didn't seem quite right to the 18 year old me, but the

Bible was clear about the role of women in the home and the church. Until in my college church,

I worked with Eleanor Ann Harwell, our minister of music and a darn good one.

I realized that women could indeed be called to ministry by God and gifted by God for service to the church.

I had to go back and read my Bible again in light of this new reality. So now he's talking about interpreting scripture based on his experiences rather than truly understanding what scripture says, and then using that to be the lens through which he looks at the world.

Yeah, he's kind of taken his worldview to the Bible to like decipher it through that. Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah. Instead of having his worldview shaped by scripture. Right. So he doesn't, again, he's so mixed up on ecclesiology, he doesn't even understand the role of men and women in the church.

And God does have specific roles for men and specific roles for women. And it might not seem right to an 18 year old or a baby in the faith, if you will.

Right. And because there's a lot to learn from the Bible, and that's where you need to start.

Yes. I will say, though, even my 11 year old understands some of these concepts that he's saying he's having trouble with.

She understands those things better than he does. Just because a woman can't be a pastor doesn't mean she doesn't have a ministry in the church.

This journey into the scripture has taken me at 60 to look again at the Bible. I need to tell you that I am

Christo -centric in my faith. I'm a follower of Jesus. And I'm Christo -centric in how

I read the Bible. I read it through the lens of Jesus. Yeah, he's just said that now his experiences are changing the way that he's reading the

Bible. Yeah. And yet he wants to make this established claim of, now I'm Christ -centric.

Right. And I interpret all things through the lens of Christ. No, you just said you don't. Yeah. You just said, you're now taking your personal experiences and judging the

Bible based on those experiences rather than using scripture to guide your worldview. The Bible has not changed.

It hasn't, right. It has stayed the same. He's going to make that claim, too. Okay. Then why on earth is his stance on everything, like, to and fro, you know, going where the wind blows him?

Because he's saying it, but he doesn't believe it. Yeah, exactly. He doesn't believe in the sufficiency of scripture.

Exactly. As Paul Washer has said, if you don't believe that scripture is sufficient, then whatever else you have to say about scripture doesn't matter.

Yep. Nope. The 1963 Baptist Faith and Message Statement, which serves as our doctrinal statement, says it this way in Article 1 on the scriptures, the criteria through which the

Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ. So he mentions there that they follow the 1963

Baptist Faith and Message, not the updated version, the BFM 2000. Okay.

And in the 1963 version, it does not specify that pastors are to be only men.

But in the BFM 2000, it does say, while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by scripture.

And it was because of the conservative resurgence that that phrase was added to the

BFM 2000. Oh, okay. Clarifying that pastor is supposed to be only a man.

And that, of course, I mean, that's scriptural. That comes out of 1 Timothy chapter 2 and 1 Corinthians chapter 14, as well as being an order of creation.

Yeah. And I imagine back in 63 that that was not even thought of at that time.

As being necessary. Yes. To add that phrase. Probably not. But on the family.

Now, this is the Baptist Faith and Message 1963. This is what it says on the family.

Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is

God's unique gift to provide for the man and the woman in marriage, the framework for intimate companionship, the channel for sexual expression according to biblical standards and the means for procreation of the human race.

So he's quoting from their own statement of faith, but their statement of faith condemns what he's telling his church to embrace.

That's interesting. Last week, last half of the week, we were over in Virginia with Thomas for his graduation from OCS.

And Andrew and I and my friend Howard went into D .C. to play tourist. At the end of the day, we came to the

Jefferson Memorial. And Andrew pointed out this quote to me from Jefferson.

I'm not an advocate for frequent change in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind that becomes more developed and enlightened.

As new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.

We might as well require a man still wear the coat which fitted him as a boy, as a civilized society to remain under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

So what he's advocating for here and using Thomas Jefferson to advocate for it.

OK, Thomas Jefferson, who created the Jefferson Bible, who cut the parts of the Bible out he didn't like.

Oh, OK. OK. I'm following now. I'm tracking. Yeah. So that's that's kind of ironic.

But he's advocating for progressivism, like we're making progress here. So we need to change with progress.

So the Bible is an error or not. Not an error. Yeah. It's errant. Errant. There we go.

That's the word. Basically what he would be arguing for without using that word, because he knows. Oh, that's a trigger word.

Right. He knows exactly what that would mean. He obviously knows his words. Yes. He knows how to journey. Yeah. Christ centric.

Yeah. You know, all these all the buzzwords. Yes. Buzzwords. Yeah. Progressive theology, though, is not progress.

It's just the opposite. As Cornelius Van Til wrote in his systematic theology, he said, creedal revision that tones down the specific and exact teachings of scripture to vague generalities is worse than useless.

It's retrogressive. Oh, wow. So it's not just a word. neutral, it actually is damning.

Okay. So we're going on here as again the cliche kind of arguments he's gonna make will get worse.

Awesome. There have been numerous other times when Christians in the church thought we had a handle on the clear teachings of Scripture.

The divine right of Kings was mandated by Scripture. Slavery was commended by Scripture.

In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention was founded to preserve the rights of slave owners to be appointed as missionaries and still be slave owners.

The Bible was a primary text to support white supremacy and institutional racism in the

South. He's absolutely right in saying that the Southern Baptist Convention as a denomination started so that missionaries could still hold slaves.

Oh. Which I think you can recognize the problem with going to a people in another part of the globe and saying you can be free in Christ and oh by the way

I own slaves. Right. Back in the US. Yeah. Yeah. There was a big problem. Slavery was the reason why the

Southern Baptist denomination came to be. Huh. We've repented of that. Of course it doesn't exist in the denomination anymore.

Right. But then when he when he goes into talking about a critical rate well he borrows terms that come straight out of critical race theory and that's white supremacy and institutional racism.

Those terms did not exist in the 1800s. Right. Not at all. It was racist. It was a people mistreating another people.

It was evil. It was. And praise God that the Southern Baptist Convention has repented of that. Amen. And we can look back and see how the

Lord has worked in the denomination to bring us to a place where we understand that all are equal and one in Jesus.

Amen. The trouble with this little attempt at a history lesson that he's doing here is he's now gonna use this to say and we're treating homosexuals the same way we were treating slaves 200 years ago.

No. We're being inhumane to them to therefore try to justify the homosexual movement.

How is it inhumane to love someone enough to tell them they're sinning? Right. As Paul said to the Galatians, have

I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? Right. We're not talking about something that's an immutable characteristic like race.

We're talking about somebody who is willfully choosing to sin. The Bible spoke clearly that women were not to be leaders in the church.

In fact, they were to remain silent. The Bible was also clear about the sinfulness of divorce and remarriage and even about drinking alcohol until Baptists started getting divorced and started drinking together.

The Bible never changed, but the context led believers to new understandings of the

Scripture. Now forgive me, but I'm gonna try to do in about a minute what

Jeremy covered in a two -hour presentation with our deacons this past Thursday. The lead story in this whole conversation goes back to Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19.

The problem is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah really isn't about gay sex at all.

It says all the men in the city confronted them. Please tell me really every man in the city was a homosexual?

They demanded that Lot surrender his guests for what was essentially intended to be gang rape to degrade and humiliate these outsiders.

Even conservative scholars today don't see this as a reference, a good starting point for the conversation about homosexuality.

In fact, none of the other references to Sodom and Gomorrah, to Sodom when it's brought up, refer to sexuality at all.

There are other things pointed about, pointed out about Sodom. Yeah. What in the world?

I don't know where he's getting his information. It makes this statement about nowhere else that Sodom and Gomorrah reference is there any other reference to sexual immorality at all.

All the time. Jude 1 7 Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

Hang on. Didn't you say he was reading a different Bible that like cut out a whole bunch of stuff?

Yeah. Maybe that's the problem. His own version of the Bible. Yeah. He's cutting out all these passages.

He just makes this absolutely ignorant statement there. That's the problem with not not reading it in context, not keeping it together.

He just he just doesn't choose. He doesn't know the Bible. He doesn't. How did this man, how did he graduate from seminary?

And he really sad. He did by the way. This is his his bio on the page. Coming to Townview in 1994,

Jim has served as a faithful pastor, mentor, and friend. He has previously pastored at Garden Lakes Baptist Church in Rome, Georgia and Shively Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

Jim is also a graduate of Shorter College and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. How? Wow. Does the guy not even read his

Bible during the week to make statements that ignorant? I don't know. I'm baffled.

Leviticus 18 and 20 are addressing how the Israelites are be distinct, how to be there to be distinctive from their pagan neighbors.

A man having sexual relations with a man as with a woman is degrading because the subordinate participant is being treated as a woman.

Other Levitical prohibitions by the way include planting your field with two different kinds of seed, clothing woven with two kinds of fabric.

I hope nobody's wearing something blended today. Rare steak.

You can't eat meat with blood in it. Cutting your hair at the sides of your head or trimming your beard.

And of course no more shrimp, lobster, catfish, oysters or pork.

All are forbidden. Now if you don't mind I'm not going to address all of that. I've got what videos that have confronted all of that before.

I was gonna say. Yeah he's he is the atheists are applauding right now.

They're going yes! Yeah. That's exactly the same arguments we've been making. The New Testament passages wrote from Romans, 1st

Corinthians and 1st Timothy and a couple of others are notoriously difficult to translate and could be more easily understood against a cultural backdrop of male prostitution, sexual orgies as part of an idol worship, out -of -control sexual desires and exploitive sex with younger males.

So here he's taking passages we've already read to demonstrate how Scripture clearly states that homosexuality is sin.

Uh -huh. And now he's going we can't really understand what those texts mean. Oh. And he thinks that the culture influenced

Paul to write those texts that way but he can't see how the culture is influencing him to interpret the text that way.

Right. All Scripture is God -breathed. Absolutely. How are you gonna say that he was just doing it for the culture?

He doesn't see that the culture our current culture has influenced him to interpret

Scripture a different way than it was written. Yeah. But instead he's blaming the Scripture. Oh yeah. See 2 ,000 years ago they were being influenced by the culture to say that homosexuality is sin but it's not really sin.

Where in the world is his is his basis for truth? That's a good question. What is the standard if it's not going to be

God's Word? 31 ,102 verses in the English Bible and here we are with six brief references.

Who doesn't weigh in on the issue? Jesus. Matthew 19 4.

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother male and female hold fast to his wife male and female and the two male and female shall become one flesh so they are no longer two but one flesh what therefore

God is joined together let man not separate. And folks that's all Jesus needed to say.

Right. If he's gonna make the argument Jesus never talks about homosexuality then you're gonna have to follow it up with okay well then show me where he did talk about it.

Exactly. If you're saying that he's approving of it show me where that passage is. Same argument. Right. The whole

Bible as Becky had referenced 2nd Timothy 3 16 earlier all Scripture is God -breathed. Folks the whole

Bible Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 is the Word of Christ. Yes. The whole thing is the

Word of Christ. Yes. So where Paul explicitly condemns homosexuality in Romans 1 or in 1st

Corinthians 6 or we see it again in Jude or you see it in Genesis wherever it might happen to be or Leviticus a man shall not lie with a man as with a woman all of that is the

Word of Christ. Right. Jesus is not absent in any part of the Bible.

Right. He is present over all of it the Holy Spirit of God guiding men to write what they have written as Peter points out in 2nd

Peter chapter 1. But this ignorance that has been prevalent in secular culture for the last several decades is now making its way into the church.

Yeah. And he's finding it necessary to listen to those cultural criticisms rather than understanding the

Word of God. He doesn't know it and that man has no business calling himself a pastor.

I think that it's more important now than it has been in the past 10 years for Christians to stand firm on the

Word of God and to know what the Bible says and be able to defend it.

Yes. It is your sword. And if I sound angry about this I am. Yes. Because this is a man who has been paid by his congregation to shepherd his flock and he's leading them to hell.

For 25 years. For 25 years he's been. I can't get over that. Yeah. What has he been teaching for those 25 years?

My friends what he's saying is not loving because he is encouraging people in sin that will send them to hell.

Yeah. This is not love. Yeah. As Paul says in Ephesians 4 we are to speak the truth in love.

Right. And he is not doing that. He is bowing to the Prince of the power of the air not to the

King of Kings. So listen closely I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm about to say.

As I read the Bible as I understand the mission of Jesus and encounter the reality of people's lives

I've reached an understanding that for me at least we need to at least consider the possibility that for me at least in God's creative diversity about three and a half to five percent of the general population is not straight.

Non -heterosexual. And these children of God bear the same image of God that all the rest of us do.

Which is why we should love them enough to share the gospel with them not approve of their sinful behaviors that God has promised he will judge but out of love for them knowing that they have been made in the image of God.

We warn them about the destruction that is to come and call them to repentance. Right. And that's that's not what this pastor is offering.

No. And it's interesting to me that he's saying that it's something that he's just come to the conclusion of like he's he's still pondering over it and yet he's impressing it on his congregation to accept it.

He hasn't even come to terms with it yet from the sounds of things. Yeah he's still right he's still kind of muddled on even what it is he's talking about.

Right. And then try look guys I don't know what I'm saying but I need you to follow me. Yep. I mean that's exactly what it sounds like to me.

Right. Pardon me for pressing on your job description so you can correct me if I'm if I'm overstepping my bounds.

My wife is stepping into pastoral territory here. However aren't you supposed to be firm in your decision and before you take the church that way?

Sure. Okay so I'm not just throwing this out there in left field or anything. Right. So or taking it out of left field.

Yeah I mean before I step into the pulpit on Sunday I'm spending all week in the scriptures praying and meditating over what it is that I'm about to preach on.

And I mean not just it's not like I've been reading it just this week and like wow I've never read this before. I've been studying the

Bible for years. Your whole life basically. Practically my whole life. Yeah. And so I'm taking what

I know that I'm gonna be preaching on top of everything else that I've read letting scripture interpret scripture and all of this is kind of marinating in my soul and it's convicting my own heart and then

I take what the Lord has convicted me with and I bring it into the pulpit on Sunday. But I'm not bringing any wild or fanciful ideas.

One of the qualifications of a pastor which we which you find in 1st Timothy 3 and in Titus 1 is that he must be sober -minded.

Yes. Another word for this is temperate and it means that he's not given over to wild fanciful ideas.

Yeah. He is holding fast and firm to the Word of God. As Paul said to Timothy guard the good deposit that has been entrusted to you.

Right. The scriptures the gospel has already been proclaimed. Yeah. There's nothing new to add to this.

Right. Now as far as our sanctification is concerned yes there's gonna be new ways in which we see ah okay that's how this applies and I've never seen in my life and in my experience how this scripture applies to this situation yet until now.

Right. But that didn't that doesn't mean the scripture changed. Right. No new truth was revealed to you.

And you you don't sway from one direction to the other you just further in the same direction. Yeah it's just growing in sanctification.

Right. It's a maturity and an understanding of the scripture that you didn't have yesterday but it didn't change the scripture.

Right. What this guy is doing is he's changing the meaning of text and he's even outright said that.

Yeah. He's even said now my my experiences and now I'm going back to the Bible I'm going oh well okay I guess that means something different than I thought it meant before.

Because Jesus didn't say it. Yeah Jesus never talked about. Okay so back on that where he mentioned there you know 30 something thousand verses in the

Bible but only six of them talk about homosexuality. Yeah. That is a lie from the pit of hell and that is a that is a common secular argument.

Again he's bringing secular arguments into the pulpit and claiming them to be legitimate arguments.

Every time the Bible talks about marriage it is talking about God's intention his design for men and women.

So every one of those passages are making a statement contrary to homosexuality.

I believe that John 3 16 is God's promised good news for all people and that the invitation of whosoever calls upon the name of the

Lord shall be saved is offered to straight people lesbians and gay men.

Now I believe that but he doesn't because I believe that the gospel has the power to change a person.

Right. Changes even their thoughts. Yep. To be oriented toward God instead of oriented toward the flesh but he doesn't believe in the power of the gospel.

Isaiah 55 6 & 7 seek the Lord while he may be found call upon him while he is near let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts even his thoughts let him return to the

Lord that he may have compassion on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon.

Romans 1 16 I am NOT ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

Amen. And and it that is not just some profession of faith that you make with your mouth as though you've said magic words and now boom

I can get into heaven. Right. Definitely not. We're talking about a message and something that was accomplished by Christ on the cross and his resurrection from the grave that whoever believes in it is no longer a child of this world but they are a child of God.

He made a comment earlier about all all men and women being children of God. No that's not true.

Jesus made that plain in John chapter 8. Those who are not followers of Jesus are children of Satan.

Only those who are followers of Christ have been adopted into the family of God and are now his children.

Right. And that's why they need the gospel lest they perish under the wrath of God because they were children of Satan.

And it's through the power of the gospel of the person is changed from having a satanic mind.

That's really every person before they come to Christ. Right. To now having a mind that is pursuing godliness and is being changed into the image of the

Son. Yes. That's the power of the gospel that does that. So again I believe that but this man doesn't believe that.

Accordingly at our September deacons meeting I'll make the following recommendation. Recognizing that there are within our church family a variety of understandings on the issue of human sexuality.

It's the sense of Town View Baptist Church that all who profess faith in Jesus Christ and have been baptized upon that profession of faith regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity will be welcomed into the membership of this church.

If our deacons in their role as our membership committee approve this recommendation times will be scheduled and promoted for church discussion where all members will be invited and all members will have the opportunity to participate and then the congregation will vote.

Reaction to my presentation to our deacons has been as expected varied. Many have been supportive.

Many have expressed their opposition. Our pastors have been threatened with action by the personnel committee if we don't put a stop to it.

There was even a secret telephone campaign last week while I was out of town. Now over my tenure here

I've been criticized for people not knowing where I stand on issues and for avoiding conflict.

Well this is where I stand and while not seeking conflict in a church that I dearly love

I'm resolute in my conviction that I'm faithfully following the Spirit's leadership.

What spirit? Yeah which spirit is he following exactly?

Yeah. 1st John 4 1. Do not believe every spirit but test the spirits for there are many false prophets that have gone out into the world.

And how do you test the spirits? With the Word of God which he said that apparently is not sufficient for him to be able to test every spirit.

My goodness you know the thing where he said there about people have criticized me over not knowing where I stand on certain issues.

Why? Does he have trouble giving straight answers on things? Yeah. And I've said to my congregation you don't know where I stand on something come ask.

Yep. But I I'm pretty I'm pretty much an open book. Yes. And there's now what 1 ,020 podcast episodes that you can go back and find out where I'm at on some of these things.

You type in WWUTT in YouTube and then any topic you want. Right. And you'll find out where Gabe stands on that issue.

So it's absurd that he's been there for two dozen years and there are people criticizing him because they don't know where he stands on issues.

That's his fault. Yeah. That's not his congregations fault. He's saying that as though he's lambasting his own congregation.

No. If he's not made clear where he stood on certain positions and apparently this is the first one that he's ever made clear.

Because he says he says well here I stand. Yeah. Yeah. Glad you could be clear about something.

And you you can't be offended whenever it goes against the Bible. You can't be offended that people are gonna start talking and you know doing the whole tree behind his back when he's out of town or whatever.

I mean you got to expect it. Not. He sounded like he was he was pretty upset about that.

Yeah. Yeah. Honestly if I was a congregant I'd have been doing the same thing. If I knew the pastor was about to stand in the pulpit on Sunday and embrace some sort of rainbow revival which is what he's calling this.

Oh. Then I would be like guys we got to do something about this. Yeah. And if the majority of the congregation was not behind it well then we're leaving.

Yeah. Well he said it goes to a congregational vote so at least they have that. Well I I don't know we might get all the way through this.

I'm gonna go ahead and we're gonna go long today folks. Okay. But at the end it sounds like the whole congregation is applauding.

Oh. It's really I know that there's about a hundred because he mentions the numbers about a hundred and seventy -five members or something like that.

It's a pretty sizable applause at the conclusion of all of this. And I was I was curious about that myself.

When I got to the end of this sermon what was it gonna sound like? Was it just gonna be like dead silent pin drop?

Right. And then you would be wondering well I wonder where the church is gonna go with this and nope it's pretty clear. No they've been under his his teaching for for a long time now.

I can't imagine that they would disagree at this point because if his whole preaching career has been like this.

Yeah. It's just slowly been. I mean you would hope that you would hope that there would be some members that would still be firm on God's Word but if he has been teaching like this for two dozen years he's got a bunch of ignorant people in his congregation.

Yeah. So of course they're gonna go along with with whatever he's saying here. Yeah. As much as I cherish the 25 years of ministry here the next 25 are even more crucial for this church.

I could be wrong but if I'm wrong I'll be wrong on the side of grace.

I'd rather let somebody in that God sorts out then keep someone out that God wanted in.

What does that mean? Like that God sorts out? So what is he implying?

I don't know. That that God's gonna bring them around? He's basically saying

I don't ever want to have to tell anybody that they can't be a member at this church for any reason whatsoever.

Yeah well he he even admitted that he doesn't like conflict. Right. So that would include telling someone that they can't be a member.

But all you need to do is go to 1st Corinthians 5 and 6 and you can see that there are definitely times when a person will have to be removed from the congregation.

Yes. And there are those that we can say are not in the faith. The church can do that.

I mean that's the the instruction that Jesus gives in Matthew chapter 18. The entire body together can listen to a person's profession of faith and determine whether or not that's an

Orthodox profession of faith. Mm -hmm. And can therefore say yes you are a Christian so you're part of our membership.

Right. And those who are not Christians are not part of the body of Christ. Right. They might be in the building but they are not part of Christ's Church.

As we read in Romans chapter 8 starting in verse 7 the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

It does not submit to God's law. Indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please

God. You however are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. If in fact the

Spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

There's been some consternation that Townview Baptist Church is listed on the gay church dot org website.

Our listing is in their church finder tab that could help someone find a church that might be welcoming to LGBT persons.

Townview fits their designation as a welcoming church which seems to me to be consistent with our long -standing welcoming posture towards a wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities and viewpoints.

But we're not what they would consider an affirming church by their definition. But by the way even if we consider homosexuality to be sinful, don't we want sinners in church?

Well let me make clear that everyone who is in a church is guilty of sin. We just want repentant sinners.

Right. Do they have a heart for repentance? Turning from sin and to God? Right.

Rather than trying to negotiate, now how can I have God and also still have my sin?

It's like you're trying to keep one foot in the door but the door keeps slamming on your foot.

I mean it's... Yeah, which doesn't work. You can't have one foot in Heaven's gate and one foot in Hell's gate.

Can't I do both? Right. So we do have people in church who are sinners.

Everybody there is a sinner. Everyone is in need of Christ. But those who are in Christ are putting off the old self with its ways and practices and we're putting on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of our

Creator as Paul says in Colossians 3 .10. Renewed in knowledge. So we're no longer oriented toward our sin.

We're oriented toward Christ. We're no longer after the ways of our flesh. We are after the ways of the

Spirit. So those who are in Christ are pursuing God. Right. Those who are not in Christ are still in love with their sin.

They're still clinging to worldly things instead of living as kingdom people. So making that clear of course.

But one of the things that this this pastor doesn't understand is that the evangelism effort doesn't happen in church.

Evangelism happens outside the church. Right. Of course we've got the gospel in the church. They should hear it there as well but the evangelism effort doesn't happen there.

Right. It happens out in your community. Right. He's talking as if well the only evangelism we're doing is here in church so don't we want sinners here?

I hope that when an unbeliever comes in your church that they're gonna hear the gospel preached. Amen. But if an unbeliever comes in your church they're not part of the body of Christ.

Right. Just because they're in the building does not mean they are in Christ. Right. But you could also say of an entire church just because they've got

Christ on the sign out front doesn't mean that they are in Christ.

As we see in Titus chapter 2 Jesus gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

The church of God is supposed to be holy set apart from the world purified in Christ Jesus.

When when the church looks just like the world it's no longer the church.

Right. I do not know how we became listed on this site.

I became aware of it the first time three years ago when a husband and a wife and their high school son visited with us in worship.

Later the mom would call me and ask if we could talk. She told me that she had found our church on this site because their college -age son had come out as gay and they were no longer welcomed at the church where they had been members.

I was just glad that I was able to offer her a listening ear and prayer. Didn't really think any more about that website.

In May I received a worship response on our website from someone identifying as a gay man asking would my family be welcome at your church.

I've never been asked that question before. Would my family be welcome at your church?

Maybe I should have just replied no not here not now.

Let me see if I can help you find a church but I couldn't tell him that and I wouldn't tell him that and I won't tell anyone no you're not welcome in our church.

Now if we had more time and this was the focus of our conversation there is definitely a place to be talking about how you would counsel a family who has a teenager who's now saying that he's gay.

What if you have a teenager in your youth group who's saying that he's gay? How do you handle those kinds of things?

There are there certainly a discussion for that and how we as a church would handle a situation that might come up that's like that.

But for now for the time being not talking about the specifics of those things but he's saying I would never tell anybody that they're not welcome in my church.

How would he understand a passage like Matthew chapter 7 where Jesus says not everyone who says to me

Lord Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven on that day many will say to me

Lord Lord did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name and then

I will declare to them I never knew you depart from me you workers of lawlessness

I think he would go for the whole worldly thing of you you don't judge others you know don't judge we are identifying what is sin that's not judging

I know but the world sees it as judging so by taking everything else into account here of what he has said it has been very worldly of course and so I would assume that that would just go under that category as well right what saying what

I just said I wasn't necessarily saying that to you but just as a matter of clarification yes when you are calling sin sin it's like calling blue blue or saying something that is red is red we're not making a judgment we're we're simply stating what is fact right what

God has said in the Bible is sin is not making a judgment or a condemnation of another person it is saying you're in sin right this is sin

God's Word says it's sin he says to repent of sin and follow Jesus the very beginning of the gospel of his declaration of the gospel according to Mark chapter 1 he said repent and believe the gospel and so we in the same manner of preaching as Christ are saying to you repent and believe the good news that God saves sinners for those who believe in his son

Jesus Christ and what he accomplished on the cross for us even in Revelation 22 starting in verse 14

Jesus says blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life and they may enter the city by the gates outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood

I Jesus have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches

I am the root and the descendant of David the bright morning star the spirit and the bride say come and let the one who hears say come and let the one who is thirsty come let the one who desires to take the water of life without price let the one who desires to take the water of life without price if a person comes in the church and does not want to take hold of that which

God is offering through his son they're not part of the church and it's out of love for the church that we make that distinction we warn those who are still in the flesh to repent of their sin and we likewise protect the sheep from the wolves this was the beginning of what

I'm calling our rainbow revival over the summer through that website

I had opportunity to meet with the minister who had lost his job because he had been outed

I could listen and comfort and pray with him a young man came to me coming to grips with his sexuality struggling with his love for Jesus and the only message that he'd ever heard from the

Bible in her from his church and even from his family was that God hates now there's a word

I'm cutting out there because I don't know if our podcast provider searches for those kinds of things ah and we didn't put like a foul language label on us uh -huh and so I don't want to do that so I'm cutting a certain word out you might have known what word he was going to say there

I offered words he had never heard before and that quite honestly I had never said before God made you the way you are and God loves you the way you are as Sinclair Ferguson has said it is misleading to say

God accepts us just the way we are rather he accepts us despite the way we are he receives us only in Christ and for Christ's sake nor does he mean to leave us the way he found us but to transform us into the likeness of his son a partnered couple for whom one would say my life has changed and I can measure my life in two stages life before town view and life after I experienced town view after my talk with our deacon someone asked me if we say yes do you think we'll be overrun by gays and lesbians

I could only respond given the fact that the LGBT community is only three and a half to five percent of the population

I sort of doubt it a better response came from another one of our deacons who said

I sure as heck hope so it seems like a great deal of angst has developed over six seven maybe eight men who have worshipped with us recently out of a hundred to 170 to 175 in attendance and by the way

I'm sort of referring to this as the rainbow revival because after four years or I don't know at least four years or so on the website we've had an accumulation a cumulative total of six to eight

LGBT persons to worship with us but yet somehow this summer our summer attendance has been the best in several years now notice the way he's framing this he's saying see it's really only six seven or eight people were talking about yeah why is this such a big deal guys you don't need to be making this such a big deal yeah

I hear that a lot yeah so he's trying to make it to make those who would criticize this move is like you're making a big deal over just six seven or eight people yeah but what but the big deal is the fact that the whole church itself is embracing as good what

God has called evil so their entire homology or the study of sin all of that has changed right they are looking at that which is going to be judged by God and saying no see

Jesus loves you right even even and they're not even calling it sin there's a Jesus loves you just the way you are yeah you can do this made you that exactly they're falling into the very thing that Paul says in Romans 132 they are giving approval to those who practice them even though they know that those who do such things deserve to die furthermore you've got the just the irony of him calling this a rainbow revival yeah what's up with that when the rainbow is the sign of the covenant that God has made with men that he is not going to destroy the world again in a flood after he judged all of wicked mankind wiping out the entire world's population save for eight people on an ark with animals yeah and then his sign of his covenant in the sky was going to be the rainbow but as I read just yesterday on the podcast from 2nd

Peter chapter 3 there is a judgment that is still coming up but it is a judgment of fire the heavens are being stored up with fire for that day of judgment and those who will be judged include the sexually immoral exactly the people that this church is embracing and saying their sin is good so it's ironic that he is using the rainbow as you know here welcome in it's a rainbow revival whenever it was judgment yeah when it had to do with judgment yeah a couple of years ago not long after moving into this building someone asked me why does it seem like all the new people visiting and joining us recently have been black

I was reminded of that last week when someone said to me

I don't want my church to be a dumping ground for those people at first I was offended by my church and I could only reply yes it's your church and about 200 other people call it their church

I wish I had reminded this person that it was really Christ's church but I've been stewing on this dumping ground idea it hurt it angered me it left a sour taste in my mouth and a knot in my gut now if he's got somebody that racist in his church that absolutely does need to be dealt with yeah he should be brought up for church discipline for making a comment like that absolutely be told you either need to repent of this or you're gonna be disciplined but the unfortunate thing here is he's gonna use that comment to therefore say see we're doing the same thing to homosexuals when they say that they can't be part of this church because they're gay whereas race is an immutable characteristic a person can't change their race nope but homosexual sin is a choice that a person makes right and so he's taking that which the

Bible explicitly calls sinful and he's trying to equate it with a person's race that it's something that they can't help yeah

I hear again the words of Jesus when questioned by the teacher of the law teacher what is the greatest commandment in the law and Jesus replied love the

Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind this is the first and greatest commandment and the second one is like it love your neighbor as yourself all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments and again as we've stated earlier he's gonna be reading those two commandments in light of pressures right rather than in light of what

God has actually said in his word so he's gonna be he's gonna believe that our rainbow revival is loving your neighbor rather than seeing it as something that would actually condemn our neighbor to hell because we're not telling them to repent of their sin and follow

Christ Proverbs 27 6 says faithful are the wounds of a friend profuse are the kisses of an enemy

Psalm 141 5 let a righteous man strike me it is a kindness let him rebuke me it is oil for my head let my head not refuse it yet my prayer is continually against their evil deeds in Colossians 316 the

Apostle Paul instructs that we must be encouraging and admonishing one another admonishing means to correct with goodwill yeah so we're talking about kindly because we love others telling them of their sin so that they will repent of it showing them according to the law of God see you've broken

God's law right and what you deserve for breaking his law is judgment but God has shown his love for us in that while we were still sinners

Christ died for us since therefore we have now been justified by his blood much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God Romans 5 8 and 9 and throwing in verse 1 there since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God a dumping ground you know what

I won't mind it if I'm the pastor of a church that's a stumping ground for gay and lesbian people

I'll consider it an honor to be pastor of a church that becomes a dumping ground for the parents and grandparents and siblings and aunts and uncles of gay and lesbian youth

I can live with people under 30 calling us a lumping ground for loving and welcoming their friends

I'll be proud to be known as a dumping ground for straight people looking for a welcoming church

I would count it a privilege to be a dumping ground for straight people with their own brokenness their own questions their own stuff in fact a church where men and women black and white young and old

American and immigrant conservative and liberal new believers and lifelong churchgoers and yes straight and gay and lesbian some may call that a dumping ground but friends for me this is holy ground may we pray so there's the applause that I was talking about yeah that was quite a big big applause yeah unfortunately the the whole congregation of that church is is receiving that now

I want to make clear that though we've mentioned the pastor's name we've mentioned the church that is involved here

I want to strongly encourage you not to send them hate mail oh definitely not if you send them an email just lovingly tell them look you need to repent you need to repent of this you are you are heading toward judgment but we must not send hate mail

I don't flood them with insults and things of that nature and I've only cited this church as an example because they're not alone they're not the only church doing this that's true they're not the only church to have done this but it's just to say this has easily come into the

Southern Baptist Convention and it's not the last time we're gonna see it and we must patiently endure evil as the

Apostle Paul told his servant Timothy in 2nd Timothy chapter 2 the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone able to teach patiently enduring evil correcting his opponents with gentleness

God may perhaps grant repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth and they may escape from a snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will the people in this church still have breath in their lungs still on this side of heaven they do have the call upon them to turn from their sin and believe in Christ and we must pray that they would so let us conclude with prayer and and also pray that they're not continually leading people astray but that the people in that church who are standing on the side of righteousness and may try to push back and bring their church back to an understanding of the truth of God's Word that God will bless them in that endeavor and indeed the

Holy Spirit will bring revival into that church not a revival according to what this pastor is talking about yeah but a true spiritual revival that would be wonderful Heavenly Father we thank you for our time together and I pray that that on our parts we're not filled with any sort of pride or hubris we're not trying to demonstrate ourselves as being better than anyone else for all of us had sinned and fallen short of God's glory and all of us are deserving of the judgment of God there's no man or woman there's no race or group of people no matter where they live on planet earth who can say that they are more deserving of God's love than anyone else all of us deserve judgment but it's because you are kind and good and gracious and merciful that we have been given the gospel and called to repentance and it's because of the

Holy Spirit that was poured into our hearts that we understood what was being said when we heard the gospel and we understood our sin and we turn from it and in grief came before God repenting and in your love and mercy you granted us grace and love and have lifted us up and you have forgiven us our sins and you have given us entrance into the eternal kingdom of God we are now fellow heirs with Christ because of your grace and mercy and I pray that same grace and mercy would be upon this church they would come to understand the true gospel once again they would embrace it they would repent of their sin they would cry out to God in revival saying we have sinned we have done wickedness we have not understood your word we've put our word above your word and that they would that they would be grieved over this sin and that revival would indeed sweep over this church they would become a testimony to the people that are within their congregation that are outside in their community that are that are even watching them from around the world and seeing some of the things that have been happening in this particular congregation may they be a testimony of the transforming power of Christ may you bless the people that are in that congregation that still love truth and are speaking the truth in love and may they be able to make an impact but if it be your will that this church not change their hearts that you would give them a that they can go another congregation that loves the

Word of God where they can be and and can grow in sanctification according to your truth there are many other churches that are going through this same sort of a thing and I pray for those

Christians those believers who are steadfast on the Word of God that they would meet they would be unmoving in the day of trouble and would be able to say with the

Apostle and with all those who love the gospel I am NOT ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe and we pray this in Jesus name amen amen okay ready is that just you're okay from now on sure are you ready tacos you you are ready to go if you got some tacos yes okay whenever you're ready this is when we understand the text a daily study in the

Word of God that we may take hold of what of that that oh okay sorry turn my computer yeah when we are being all selfish over here today it's when we understand the tacos the tacos this is when we understand the text a daily study in the

Word of God that we may take hold of that which truly is truly life with that which is truly life the gospel of Jesus Christ tell all your friends about our ministry at wwt tacos calm here it's again as pastor