Dr. James White on Next Week with Jeff Durbin!

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All right, everybody, welcome back, welcome back to Next Week with Jeff Durbin. I'm Jeff Durbin, that is

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Luke the Bear, and that is Dr. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries, aomen .org

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or Alpha Omega Ministries on YouTube. You can check them out there. Welcome. Good to be with you.

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And now actually a pastor at Apologia Church. I thought that's what you were going to say at first.

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Well, yeah, I wanted to make an exciting announcement. So there you go. So pastor at Apologia Church, it's actually an amazing thing that none of us saw coming.

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So praise God and probably means trouble ahead. Hopefully for the world. We're all in agreement here.

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Yeah, that's right, that's right. So you just got back from Holland. London and Holland, and then they don't use the term

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Holland much anymore. They call it the Netherlands. But yeah, a good insight as to what we've got coming here.

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What do you mean by that? The guys that had me in got in big trouble about six months ago because they translated the

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Nashville Statement on Human Sexuality into Dutch and the government is still seriously looking into bringing charges for hate crimes for translating the

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Nashville Statement into Dutch. And the Nashville Statement, what was controversial about it? It's a historic statement of biblical viewpoints on sexuality and marriage.

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Okay. So in Europe, that's not allowed anymore. And so they had actually been contacting me, wanting me to come over and speak for a conference that they do.

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And when I saw that they had gotten in trouble for this, I'm like, those are the type of people I want to be able to be of assistance to.

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And so they had me speak on a number of different things, but one of the four topics that I spoke on, and their conference, they had nearly a thousand people there.

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And you got to understand, the Netherlands have been crippled. Literally, while I was there,

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I was working on, I don't know if I'm going to do it on the dividing line. I don't know if I'll do it at Apologia.

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I was working on a sermon series in my mind against Calvinism.

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And I need to explain that obviously. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, we need to talk. Because what you see in the

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Netherlands is the result of forms of hyper -Calvinism that have created churches where you'll have 200 people sitting in the audience in this church, a historic reformed church.

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And there might be 10 people who will partake of the supper.

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And most of the ministers are not included. Well, I don't understand why not? Because if you partaking of the supper, you are claiming to have assurance of salvation.

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And hyper -Calvinism destroys that because of the fact that to partake of the supper, you have to be a repentant person.

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They have so deeply defined repentance that no one could possibly do it.

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You can't do it perfectly. And so you're not doing it at all. And so you can't partake of the supper.

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So the elements just sit there. That is power. That's interesting. Oh, that's why I was saying

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I was literally... So here, these guys are unusual in that they are reformed.

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They recognize the truth of the doctrines, but they have recognized the soul -destroying aspect of the traditions that have developed.

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I mean, if anything shows you the dangers of reformed theology when turned into a tradition, that's what it was.

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When we lose the evangelistic, when we stop calling our children and assume that...

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And see in Holland, it became genetic. It's passed down. If you're there, that's what you are.

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If you're Dutch, that's what you are. Well, now there is across Holland, there's what's called the Bible Belt where you have these churches, not only that, but some of these churches, you can only wear black or white.

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If I talked to Paul Washer and Paul spoke in a church there, he got into massive trouble for doing two things.

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He called people promiscuously to embrace Christ without looking for evidence of regeneration.

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Classic sign of hyper -Calvinism. Wow. They're very angry with him for doing that. And even though he wore black and white, there were silver threads in his tie.

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You've got to be kidding. And they went after him. These are people that have pretty much come out of that.

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So they've still got the theology, but they have life. They have what we would identify as freedom in Christ.

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But they're a minority and a lot of their families are still involved in this type of stuff. So it was really amazing to see that aspect of it.

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And we need to recognize that very frequently we are castigated as Reformed people because our theology allegedly destroys assurance of salvation.

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Well, in the United States, I had never met anyone who had these types of viewpoints, but they're there in Holland.

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They're there in the Netherlands. And so once you see it and you hear about it, then immediately it's like, well, that really helps in recognizing why we need to have the balance that we need to have.

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But then the other thing was one of the four topics they asked me to speak on was homosexuality.

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And guys, the amount of energy we had to put in to make sure that we were on the exact same page and the obvious concern that they had as to exactly how you say things.

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And part of it is I'm an American coming in and they recognize I'm used to being able to say whatever

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I want to say. They don't have that freedom. They don't have that freedom.

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What I experienced there in the conversations and the being careful about how you say this and how you approach that and so on and so forth, they weren't telling me what to say.

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They're just telling me what could get them in huge, huge trouble. Just in the way you're expressing things.

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This is what's coming for us. Well, that's what we're talking about today. Yeah, this is what is right around the corner for us.

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When you look at, when I look at the people running for president right now on the left, and I think of what it would be like if they were president and they had the

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Senate and the House at the same time. We would be very quickly in the exact same spot that they are there in the

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European Union. Lack of freedom of expression and the constant pressure to be running multiple filters over everything that you say.

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What if someone takes it this way? So what if someone interprets it that way? And that's exactly what the left wants.

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They want us to be silenced in that way because most of us are human beings. It takes us time to run those filters.

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And so many witnessing opportunities, for example, pass by us like that. There's that one moment where you need to speak and start the conversation.

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And if you're running 14 filters as to how you can lose your job and everything else in the process, you'd end up saying you don't speak and the opportunity passes by.

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So that's a big conversation for us right now. We've had conversations about this and it's a big conversation nationally for us right now in terms of what is next year 2020 going to look like in the new political office campaigns across the country, the presidential election?

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Because after the last election here, this isn't about how you feel about Donald Trump or anything at all right now.

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This is just generally speaking, he got elected. And what happened was is that there was a sort of looking down with all the national liberal media.

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They all said, OK, let's look at where we're at, how this happened. And they recognized that the national media, the major media,

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CNN, MSNBC, the major platforms that have been feeding us for decades now did not control the conversation this time.

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I tell the story often that I was in Australia and New Zealand when we were at the tail end of the last election.

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And I remember distinctly when we were together. That's right. When I had free time and could take a break, we would have the

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TV on both in Australia and in New Zealand. Now, I remember distinctly we were on the tail end of our election.

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I'm watching the news in Australia and New Zealand. I'm not watching

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American news. It's all about us. All they were talking about all day, all night.

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Every time I turn it on was our election. Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton. And the thing that was amazing to me was that in both

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Australia and New Zealand, again, not my country, these two nations, all of the media that I saw.

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And I and I remember I even said to my daughter, Imogen, I said, this is incredible. They've already decided our election for us was all

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Hillary Clinton. And she said, no, no chance Donald Trump's going to win. It's Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton.

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So I get now back to United States. The election happens. And then, boom, Donald Trump's president. And that is where I think all media, even internationally, recognized we're not in control of this conversation anymore.

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So what happened was is that all of these major platforms started meeting and discussing. We know for a fact that the major social media platforms all met together.

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Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. They all met together and they had a conversation. And and very shortly after they all got together to have a conversation, they killed major political platform, private social media companies.

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Whether and this isn't about, again, how you feel about the man. But Infowars with Alex Jones and those sorts of guys you had.

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And you have guys today like Milo. You have the you had all the major Republican conservative right wing platforms.

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These platforms just killed them. They just took them off. No explanation except you're dead. And they took them out of the game completely and they're done.

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Now, that was shocking as it was. But now we look at where we're at today and now they're they're they're taking down, you know, the smaller voices even that are conservative voices that have any pull because they recognize that they don't have the power anymore with the major media.

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It's all in social media and these private organizations or people that are actually doing this content. So the big question right now is what's going to happen in 2020?

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Will you and I have a platform next year is the question. Like, I know that's the question we have to start asking.

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So we're backing up our hard drives, making sure we have everything able to put on our own websites. I'm saying buy buy as many jump drives as you can.

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So we'll be we'll be meeting at the local Starbucks and handing out stuff. That's how we're going to be doing the program.

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Seriously, you know, go back and read God Smuggler, you know, Brother Andrew from back in the Iron Curtain days.

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And we we chuckle a little bit about that. But it's it's it it unfortunately is true. I almost wore a t -shirt that has a

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Venn diagram on it that has two circles that meet in the middle and but it make me even fatter than I am.

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But the top one, the top one says 1984. The bottom one says Brave New World where they intersect.

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It says you are here and that's where we are. And it has happened so quickly when

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I was in Brisbane. Right before the election in 2016, there were big jumbotrons out in the city city center and who was on it all the time.

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But Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the people, people in the rest of the world know that ours is the largest economy, our army.

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They may not talk about it, but Europe knows that their economy would collapse if they had to put up armed forces.

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We are their armed forces. And once we stop doing that, they're all going to be deeply impacted by what happens here.

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And that's why they do know how many Americans have a clue who the prime minister of either

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Australia, New Zealand. We might know Theresa May when I might know a few things.

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I might heard something about Brexit. But most of us are completely clueless. But most of them over there know what's going on here because we're the bellwether.

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And when it comes to Christians and the Christian movement, look, look what happened with the

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United Methodist a few weeks ago. The United Methodist actually turned back from embracing the profaning of marriage.

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And why? Because of African Christianity, because of the delegates, the growth in the

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United Methodist Church in Africa. And Africans are conservative. Now, we've seen

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African Christianity struggles horrifically with the word faith movement and stuff like that, massively abused.

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But there are solid people in Africa. And when it comes to cultural issues, Africa tends to be extremely conservative along those lines.

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Men are men, women are women. Let's not get confused about this. And so when you look at what's going on in places like that and the influence they're starting to have in the

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Anglican Church, United Methodist Church, those churches will eventually split because of the fact that you have true believers in those places that are exercising a conservative control.

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So we're in a strange situation because people still look to the United States. But let's face it.

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Yes, there's still a tremendous number of Christians here. But the rest of the world is seeing what we ourselves sense.

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The next generation is not embracing the fundamental truths that gave us the freedoms, which came from a

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Judeo -Christian understanding of mankind, God, law. Those things have been rejected.

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And for me at my age, and I am the elderly elder at Apology NL, it still is extremely jarring for me to hear millennials and Z -gens as they speak, because I see how huge the transition has been, the change has been in that very short period of time.

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People say things today that never would have even been dreamt of when I was their age.

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And I think the rest of the world sees this as well. And that's why there's so much interest as to what's going on here.

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And so the big question, you know, does become Alvin Omega Ministries, Apologia.

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We are dependent upon being able to communicate with people. That's right. And Orwell could not have predicted.

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He tried to as best he could at his time. If you remember, you know, the viewing screens and stuff like that.

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But it would have been in his book if he could have thought of what we have today in China, where you have hundreds of thousands, millions of cameras.

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And the government always knows where you are, where you're going, who you're seeing. And that way they can start assigning these cultural points to you and stuff like that, based upon what your behavior is.

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The ability to track people, the technology, that's what makes me go, wow, what are we getting ourselves into?

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And where should we be looking for the growth in the kingdom? We've always, what prompted

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Augustine to write The City of God? It was the first fall of Rome.

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It was the first time that the barbarians penetrated so deeply into the

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Roman Empire as to sack Rome. They were only there a couple of days, sort of took some pictures and selfies and left.

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Didn't really do all that much damage, but it was the mental recognition that the

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Roman Empire was, might not last forever. And even many Christians had adopted the idea of connecting the future of the kingdom of God to the

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Roman Empire, to the Christianizing of a particular cultural aspect of things.

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And Augustine had to say, no, there is a city of God and it's not, it's not this.

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It's, you need to have a bigger view. He had really had to literally deal with the issue of history and the Holy Land. I think a lot of American Christians have done the same thing.

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Yeah, absolutely. The future of the kingdom of God is Yankee. It's us. And it strikes a lot of us as a strange thing that it might be

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Brazilian. It might be African. It might be

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Chinese. And if that's what

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God chooses to do in the expanse of his kingdom, what we should learn from that is you can never, when you see

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God blessing a people, you cannot assume that that blessing is going to last forever, especially if those people decide to start taking that blessing for granted.

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And you no longer have that zealous calling for repentance and holiness of life and everything else.

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And that's what we're seeing in Western societies. I mean, I've spent a lot of time now over in,

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I got to spend a lot of time running around London this last trip. And I would send you guys, we've got our

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Apologia Leadership WhatsApp group, where we talk with each other and especially with all the traveling that I'm doing.

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But I'd send you guys a lot of pictures from the runs I was doing. And, you know, there you've got Westminster Abbey and you've got parliaments and you've got all these things that have a deep, rich Christian heritage.

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Yeah, unavoidable. You cannot walk down any street in London without walking by some, you know, where the

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Marian martyrs died and, you know, chiseled on the monuments and the stone of the buildings are names that have deep

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Christian significance in history. And the vast majority of the people walking by there don't even think about it anymore.

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It's not even a part of their recognition because the secularization has become so deep there.

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And is God under some obligation to continue extending his blessings to a people who take his blessings and then spit in his face?

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Right. If history and if scripture and God's dealing with his people tell us anything, no,

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God's not under any obligation to continue the extension of those types of blessings. It's interesting because when you talk about that, it's always so fascinating to me to see that.

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We were in Ireland, Belfast and Dublin, same situation. And my son,

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Sage, is a huge history nut. And especially, particularly for him, it's

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Christian history that is the most meaningful and important. And he's just, he's a fiend about it. And for him, it was so special to be in Ireland to assist with what we were doing because he got to see the monuments to what

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Christians built in history. But one of the things that is important to note about that, whether it's in London, whether it's in Ireland, whether it's in Australia, even,

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I mean, Australia was started by Christians, criminal aspects in many ways. But essentially, the first things they were building were churches in Australia and even the

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United States of America. Not as much in terms of what's hanging around everywhere, but these things are monuments and symbols and names etched into stone and they are portrayals of a past.

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But the important aspect of this is that those were not the things. It was the belief behind it.

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It was the passion and zeal for God and his glory and his gospel and his law that created those monuments and symbols.

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They were expressions of something that was not tangible. And what's amazing is that you look and say, and this is just for our own personal experience, whether you had coming over here, the

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Puritans, the Huguenots, you had all these people coming, building civilization out here, like we're building our town, this is what we believe.

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And they were doing it from the bottom up, like Jesus is Lord here in my home. He's Lord over here in my church.

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He's over here where we're doing a town hall, like we're confessing

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Jesus as Lord. They just understood that as a natural thing, is that we confess Christ as Lord over all this.

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So it's what built the country. It's what laid the foundation of our freedom of speech and the justice that we used to have hanging by a thread in many ways right now.

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But the point is, is that these things, even down to our constitution that you can hold in your hands, like there's something behind that that gave it that, like it exists as a monument because there was a belief system behind it that actually produced it, it spilled it out.

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But what's amazing, and you and I were talking about this before the show, is that the demise of the culture today that we see is specifically because, is specifically because there is a fundamental operating belief system that is being promulgated and has been propagated now for decades, and they're working hard.

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And the educational institutions, it's been going on for a long, long, long time. It's not, it hasn't happened in the last decade or the last 20 years.

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But we have hit a tipping point. A tipping point now is for sure now, and the aggressive nature of it now,

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I think is because it's popularized and accepted and there's sort of like, there's sort of a looking around going, all right, we're at the point now where we can start being a little more violent.

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Where, you know, before and where there was a 60s and 70s, there was sort of a slow, you know, still strong and zealous, but a recognition that you can't all of a sudden start standing out and propagating these things publicly.

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You're going to get in big trouble for it. I think there's been sort of a moment now looking around going, okay, we can do it now.

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We can say it now and it's, there's, it's violent. So for example, you and I again, we're talking before the show and this will lead me into the discussion of Brian Sims, Pennsylvania State Representative.

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So I didn't tell you this. This is so jarring for me last night. I get home from our ministry in Virginia last week.

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I'm super exhausted, but I wanted to spend time with family. That sermon, by the way, brother. What's that? That sermon.

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Oh, is it a blessing? Praise God. I, this sounds weird, but I love hearing you preach, but that was amazing.

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I was praying hard all, I told Pastor Luke, I was praying all day that day, like Lord, please do something.

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And yeah, it was, it was, it was a big deal for me even. So I get back, I'm exhausted, but Candy and I haven't seen each other a lot.

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So I was like, let's, let's watch something. We love to watch together. So we are big Twilight Zone fanatics.

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We love the Twilight Zone. We'll watch it the same episode over and over and over just for fun, just because we enjoy it.

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We enjoy watching it together. The old Twilight Zone, right? The black and white Twilight Zone. I am just.

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They went color at some point, didn't they? Did they? I don't remember. I bought all of them years ago on iTunes.

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I don't remember. I know in the 80s, there was like a movie remake. It was definitely in color for sure. They may have.

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That's, I want to look that up. So I love to watch Twilight Zone. We love to watch it together. And so we were so thrilled when we heard that CBS was doing the reboot of the series and Jordan Peele was doing the, he's producing it or he's the executive producer of it and he's done some good things.

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He's very talented. He's, you know, done Key and Peele. There were some inappropriate stuff, but there are some good skits that tell a good story and they're funny and then he does

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Us and the other film he did. So he's very talented, very skilled director and good at what he does, but I've been noticing that everything that he puts out, he has this very strong liberal radical agenda that he's, you can see if you know his worldview and what he's trying to do, you can see it and it's obvious.

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So it makes me uncomfortable. Like, well, as talented as he is, I can't support this. I don't like it. So he's doing

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Twilight Zone and we're just flip, like flipping our lids. I can't wait. So we've been watching him and we're not very impressed because it doesn't feel like the old

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Twilight Zone. It's not very impressive. They haven't been very great, but you can notice in all the episodes, there's, you see the agenda and it's this radical leftist liberal ideology and you can just feel it, sense it, see it.

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So I get home last night. We're watching it and halfway through the episode. We're not impressed with it. It's not very entertaining, but halfway through it.

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There's a scene where there's two teenage boys are supposed to be friends. At least that's what you think initially and now they're in a room together and they start making out.

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Two boys making out and it's disgusting. Yeah, and so what we do, our response was immediately turn it off.

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And so we go from turning it off. Now, we're bummed. We're like, now we can't watch this series. This is, this is so frustrating.

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So I said, let's just, let's just watch the old Twilight Zone. She's like, okay, so we go back to the old black and white 1950s, early 60s, and I pull up just a random episode.

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We just hadn't clicked on yet. I click it. Now. I just watched the one from 2019. This is one of the most famous ones.

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Yeah, and so I click, I click on it and it's just a random pick. I hadn't seen it yet. And it's the one with Michael Goldmill.

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He was Mick in Rocky. Do you have the title on that? Because I don't have, I didn't get the title of that. I was looking for that.

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Because I know, I know which one it is. So the contrast is we just turn off French kissing between two 15 year old boys.

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I now pull up, which is a generation ago, the Twilight Zone black and white. I pick a random episode, just click on it.

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And as soon as it starts, the whole premise is the state actually thinks it's

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God and it's mocking the, that's for this episode. That's what's so treacherous and evil.

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The state thinks it's God. Like people in the 50s were like, ew, like how gross is that?

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And like, it's like Demas, like, like, oh, bow to the state. And so Michael Goldmill has the scene in it.

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And Candy and I just look at each other. We're just in awe of the contrast of one generation, the same show.

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One is just force -feeding you this leftist, radical, liberal ideology. Here's two young boys

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French kissing. And now you go to Mick from Rocky. Yeah, there's like three minutes in the middle where it's him reading the

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Psalms. It's just him reading the Psalms. And he's the good guy. He's the good guy. The state's trying to persecute while he's reading the word of God.

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And the whole premise as the guy ends the show is like, wouldn't this be horrible? Oh, yeah. Like if we ever had this in our future where the government thinks this.

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There's like one plain man or something like that. I forget what the title was, but yeah, it's well known. We would just had a, Candy and I had like a 20 -minute conversation afterwards of how unbelievable it is that we are now here.

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In the twilight zone. In the twilight zone. It feels that way. Amazingly. And that's just a generation apart.

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And I can't now I can't even watch the twilight zone with my children because here's the thing the theology and the ideology the ethical system that undergirded even that even those episodes in some respects is not now in the new and I can't even allow my family to watch these episodes.

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And so you're losing even these beautiful expressions of art and film and acting and we can't even have that anymore.

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And I just it just it's so shocking to me. Well, it's because the heart and soul that gave rise to the monuments that your son saw in Ireland that meant so much to him and that gives rise to the beauty of artistry and things like that that has been purposefully maliciously replaced with something that has no capacity in of itself to create that beauty because of its disconnection with the

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Creator because it cannot promote life. It cannot push us toward the expression of our

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God -given talents. It can't produce those things. So it has to it has to find its excitement someplace else in blatant acts of sexual deviancy or whatever else it might be.

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And that's what we are trading. What's the term in Romans chapter 1?

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They exchanged. Yes, they exchanged and that's what our society is doing.

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It has done. I mean, we've been saying it's ongoing but in many ways for many people, it's a completed act.

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We've already made that exchange and the exchange was a bad one.

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We've exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for that which is corrupted and can only produce more corruption.

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I like how you said that that's actually really that's Romans 1. I like how you applied that in terms of even thinking about like art and film like in terms of you can't your worldview can't create something really beautiful and entertaining and interesting and thought -provoking truly deeply from an image bearer of God perspective thought -provoking.

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So what do you have to do is you have to make something that that appeals merely to the flesh.

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It's just the nakedness and the sexual access. Yeah, look at some of the greatest literature written by non -christians that we've enjoyed reading the themes were not derived from an anti -christian worldview.

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They're derived from a Christian world. They may have been borrowed stolen may not even been something the person intended to do but because of when they were written and what their background was they were still drawing from that.

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They had to borrow capital. They borrowed capital. So once you don't have that anymore, we don't have

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Bach's and Beethoven's anymore. There's there's a reason for this you when you have people creating music based upon discord and disharmony.

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It's coming from a and I'm just going back to Schaeffer man. I mean, this is just a you know, this wasn't all that long ago that he was pointing out these these very very things and I sort of cut my teeth on that in seminary but it we are seeing it and now it's just getting to a gross level when you when you have to turn off a

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TV show 15 minutes in because they're throwing this in your face. But as we most of us heard have heard over the past few days,

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California has every state on either of the coast is producing educational guidelines that are just straight up introducing down to the point of kindergarten the rejoicing in and celebration of every form of human depravity and rejection of God's law that you can have especially in regards to your sexuality.

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So introducing teaching kindergartners to be confused as to who is little boy and who is little girl.

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This is what is now considered to be good in our society and this is not the first time we've seen this in history, but if we know anything about history, we know that every culture that has ever done this are the cultures that we go visit the ruins of when we go on holiday.

32:52

That's right. And we think that can never happen to us. But again for Christians my can

33:00

I just I just find many Christians ago. It can't happen to us. This is America. And the very idea that God could say, you know what

33:09

I'm going to center the growth of my kingdom someplace else and I'm going to allow you to become a mission field because your people love darkness.

33:23

Yeah, they love rebellion. If you love darkness and rebellion, you're going to reap what you're going to what you're what you're selling.

33:32

That's just it doesn't history shows us doesn't it show it to us over and over and over again, but who studies history anymore right who learns anything from his and when you think about it, it's only the

33:43

Christian view of history from which you could learn anything because if there isn't any purpose if there is no decree of God, there's nothing to learn from history.

33:49

Anyways, just a bunch of random acts. Any can you talk about that for just a second in terms of because I think that would hopefully bolster some excitement in terms of like maybe

33:58

I should get into this and start studying like what God has done in history. When you talk about like the meaning of Christian history and studying that because it actually is meaningful and purposeful.

34:07

Like what do you what do you what are you getting at when you say that? Well, you have to realize we we have imbibed an understanding of history that was very much created by a biblical narrative in Scripture.

34:22

God has a people he that those people have a history that history becomes the narrative out of which the exhortation of the prophets, you know, look at what

34:30

God has done the past look at the blessings of God in the past and the punishment that upon the people for their sins. That means these things were purposefully get in the

34:37

New Testament. What does Paul say in Romans chapter 15? These things were written what for our benefit for our example that we might learn from those who came before us so on and so forth.

34:46

And so there is purpose in history because God's unfolding his purposes. He has he's going to wrap all things up in Christ Jesus Ephesians chapter 1.

34:54

So when you when you consider all of that that's very different than the pagan understandings of history were histories cyclical.

35:04

For example, it's just always going around around a circle and so you can't get out of it millions and millions and millions of people have lived and died on this planet thinking that the future is going to be like the past in the past would like the future because we're all in cycle.

35:19

That's right. There's there's nothing the the specific idea of history moving toward a conclusion and a purpose is very much a biblical

35:27

Christian concept that then went out from the faith to the entire society.

35:33

And so for Christians, especially I've always thought that one of them. I appreciate certain elements of fundamentalism, but one of the worst impacts of fundamentalism is that the vast majority of fundamentalists have no interest whatsoever in church history at all.

35:54

And that's there is an arrogance to that that is really stunning when you sit back and think about it. The Spirit of God's been active for 2 ,000 years, but there's nothing

36:04

I can learn from that. Right? When you really sit back and think about it, it's just like wow.

36:10

That is that is shocking. But but many people really view church history as a if I've got some room a bunch of extra time sometime, maybe

36:20

I'll look into it. But when you really think about it, if God has been building his church all this time, don't you think we could learn from those who've come before us now what the fundamentalist says is bad.

36:33

Just a bunch of Roman Catholics. I can't learn any book from which shows they don't study church history.

36:38

Well, yeah, and and I understand. I mean, I'm dealing with some stuff right now where there are people in reform circles.

36:46

There is a history of people even with a solid reform theology becoming enamored, losing the balance on the other side, where scripture then becomes subjugated to the interpretations of people in the past.

37:01

So there's always a way to become imbalanced. Yes, one thing I've learned in Christian life is doesn't matter what new truth you discover, you can become imbalanced about that one too.

37:11

That's right. I mean Christian maturity is learning to be balanced in your life and none of us ever fully arrive in this experience we have here.

37:22

So, but the point is that when you do discover church history, you start realizing, wow, you know, the church has been persecuted from the start.

37:34

Why don't we look at the ways that they've responded and figure out what was good, figure out what was bad, because we might be facing it ourselves before long.

37:47

It seems like in the West, we're bumbling and stumbling into what is clearly going to be a period of persecution without ever stopping to go, huh,

37:58

I wonder if we can get some wisdom from the people who came before us. And part of the reason the fundamentalist doesn't do that is because they looked differently than we do, or maybe their liturgy was different than ours was or something like that, instead of recognizing that there is much you can learn even from people who do look differently than you.

38:18

And so to me, there's all sorts of stories I could tell you here and I'm going to try to avoid doing so, but when

38:26

I think of what got the rich, every one of us, every single one of us has been so deeply influenced by those who've come before us, whether we know it or not, if we don't know it, the depth of that influence and the richness of it is diminished the more we learn about it than the deeper and the more rich it can be, but all of our theological language has been handed to us and you may have never read a single book,

38:58

Mueller's Dictionary of Theological Terms or whatever else it might be, you may have never read any of those, but as long as you walk into a church, start listening to sermons, within a month, you've developed the theological vocabulary, right?

39:11

It's good to know where it came from because you owe it to somebody and in many instances, the words that you're now using were fought over and defined over a millennium ago, millennium and a half or more ago, especially if you're talking about issues like the

39:27

Trinity, the deity of Christ, relationship with divine persons. That's right. That goes way, way, way, way, way back. Don't you think it'd be wise to know something about that?

39:34

Know something a little bit about where they were coming from? What the context was? If we don't know these things, then we are stuck only with what has been given to us in our narrow tradition.

39:47

And the problem is, then we think this is where all the truth is.

39:53

Now, I'm not talking about becoming a wide, you know, the ecumenical, there is no truth. Let's just all hold hands and sing kumbaya, but at the same time, we often get criticized because of the range of people with whom we will work, as long as we have that core commitment to what the gospel is, the supremacy of scripture, things like that obviously limits who we can deal with.

40:17

Right, it does. But it also leaves us able to have fellowship with people who have differences than us.

40:27

You know, I was just listening to an episode of CrossPolitik that Summer was on just recently.

40:33

I love that one. And of course, immediately, Chocolate Knox is asking Summer whether her kids are baptized.

40:39

You know, it's coming. And he does better than to do that with us. I'm going to be on next week.

40:45

And so, and you're ready. You're ready with your response. Got the t -shirt on that one.

40:52

So yeah, we're ready to go. But the point is, we can love those guys and work with those guys.

40:58

There's a lot of people who might otherwise be with us in many other areas, just go, how can you do that?

41:06

They're different than you. We hear that all the time. Oh, you get it. You get it constantly. And part of that is why, likewise, people look at church history and they see a different dress.

41:18

They see a different liturgy. They see a different context. Like, I can't learn anything from that. And we become really, we really lose a lot because of that.

41:26

Yeah, we really, really do. And so, the first class I taught at a seminary was church history.

41:32

And what was interesting was it was a required subject. So you'd have people coming in there thinking they're going to sleep through this baby and just try to survive it because they need to get the credit.

41:42

And I sort of made it my goal to interrupt their sleeping and to make them really fall in love with this subject.

41:52

And I had a lot of them saying, man, I did not expect this class to be like this. But when you really start looking into it, you just, you see how many parallels there are to what is happening in our experience right now.

42:08

And it's like, wow, we can learn wisdom from those who came before us. There are things we need to avoid big time.

42:14

And man, look what happened to this guy. This guy was so brilliant, but then he lost his balance. And man, we don't want to do that.

42:20

I don't want to, you know, there are so many examples for us that can be so beneficial to us.

42:25

But at the same time, there's tremendous wisdom. We moderns have such a horrific arrogance about the people of the past because they didn't have an iPad or a cell phone or something like that.

42:37

And yet when you actually look at people like Edwards and Calvin, the volumes of material they produced with a quill and a piece of paper, their ability to concentrate for hours on end, we cannot do that.

42:54

We don't have the kind of mental discipline those men had, right? And that means there's that the depth to which they could analyze questions.

43:03

Now, we may have access to much more data in a certain field than they did.

43:10

But all that means is we can be dumber about more. Yeah, I mean, seriously,

43:18

I mean they could go so, you know, let's say we have this much information.

43:23

They only had that much information, but they went all the way in and we just sort of sit here and scratch the surface. And but we're very proud of how much stuff we have access to even though we could never actually analyze it.

43:35

There are just, there's incredible brilliance that you can find. That does not mean that if you read

43:41

Every Early Church Father, you'd be sitting there going, oh, this is incredible. Sometimes you read stuff is like, really?

43:47

Yeah. What? What? Yeah. Because, and part of it's because they didn't have the same giants to be standing on their backs that we do.

43:55

That's right. And so, but you can never ever then become arrogant about that.

44:02

So I probably went a little bit too long on that, but it's okay. Excellent. No, but I think funny, funny story.

44:07

And I get it. You're going to do, you're going to do your thing. Sure. Okay. So in terms of just what you were talking about, there are the unity and the necessary commitment to the essentials with one another and to labor together and work together.

44:18

We're going to need a strong unity around the gospel and the essential elements of our faith for the days ahead.

44:27

And we had better learn to start getting along together around those essentials, strong on them, and be willing to fight together with them.

44:35

But defining them is going to be the issue because what happened today, now I'm not sure when this is dropping, but as we're recording this, what happened today that illustrates one of the biggest problems that I see coming was the pro -life thing in Philadelphia.

44:50

Yes. Involving who? As one of the primary people, Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh. Now, who is

44:55

Matt Walsh? Matt Walsh is a bright guy. Matt Walsh is obviously a great commentator on things happening in our society.

45:02

But Matt Walsh is a deeply committed Roman Catholic. That's right. And Matt Walsh holds to a false gospel, a glaringly

45:09

Galatians 1 level false gospel. And I am astonished at the entree being given to Matt Walsh.

45:20

In theological circles that were once strongly committed to the centrality of the gospel. That's right.

45:26

And the reason being that the connection because we're being pushed by the society closer and closer, the connection is considered to be more important than what divides.

45:39

That's where we're going to have to, when we talk about what joins us together, man, we've got to think through what that is.

45:46

And the problem is in a day where you have mere Christianity -ism, which basically defines

45:53

Christianity as the Trinity, the resurrection, the death, burial, resurrection of Christ without the gospel.

45:59

So the historical reality of death, resurrection, resurrection, but what that means, you can't ask those questions.

46:05

So the gospel is put off to the side. Right. Once you have that as the definition of Christianity, then that's the basis of ecumenism because Rome could say we believe all those things.

46:16

And so now we've got that. So we can all get together. And from my perspective, it's the gospel itself, the message itself that is the whole issue.

46:25

How is all that applied? How is all that? And so if you don't have that, what are you supposed to do? So you're right.

46:31

We're going to be pushed into a smaller and smaller and smaller portion of real estate. We're going to be getting closer and closer and closer with one another.

46:39

And so massive wisdom is going to be necessary. There's going to be tremendous pressure placed upon us to compromise on the issue of the gospel for the sake of a greater good, whatever that greater good would be.

46:57

If you believe that the gospel is the very power of God, then you can't go there.

47:04

But we don't want to be over with the King James only fundamentalists that are going, well, you can't be around any nasty papists because they're the

47:12

Antichrist. Well, do they know what they're even talking about? Do they have any clue what

47:17

Rome actually teaches? Is this just not another tradition on their part? Our response to, for example,

47:25

Roman Catholicism, for most of us, we imbibed it from somebody else. We've not done any reading on our own.

47:33

We've never done any thinking through. Why is it that the mass is so absolutely a denial of the gospel of Jesus Christ?

47:43

Especially when you can go online right now and listen to former Presbyterians who can use our language and they're intelligent and they're graduates of Gordon -Conwell and Westminster Theological Seminary and they will give you the most awesome rendition of what the mass is supposed to represent and its beauty and all the rest of this stuff.

48:02

And most of our people are not, this wasn't back in these guys' days people knew, but now most of our people, especially in churches where once a quarter, if you stumble in on a

48:17

Sunday night, they might pass some little pieces of bread around and a cup of grape juice without ever saying anything more about it.

48:27

If that's all you have of the Lord's Supper and then you see this stuff, I fully understand why you either end up people swimming the

48:35

Tiber and becoming Roman Catholics or the only thing they've got is just, I better hold this tradition and say, this is the

48:41

Antichrist and so on and so forth. We've got to get beyond that. We've got to get back to, these guys knew why,

48:48

I'm pointing to the heads down here. Calvin's on my end over here.

48:55

He knew why the Roman Catholic Mass compromised the gospel.

49:03

We need to have the same knowledge or we're going to end up in an ecumenical mess, foisted upon us by the pressure placed upon us by this secular society and the damage would be irreparable.

49:18

So we were in the parking lot the night before I came home and I was in the parking lot with Marcus and Cy.

49:25

Marcus is Presbyterian, member of a Baptist church. He's Presbyterian convictions. He's a member of our church.

49:31

Cy is Presbyterian. We are very, very close. We love each other. We labor together and just a deep relationship.

49:39

So we're in the parking lot and actually this conversation came up about how oftentimes you'll have men, young men, very zealous men who will essentially think that they have a really strong commitment to essential doctrine, but then all of a sudden the external areas of their life, their own personal private convictions become essential issues, whether how you dress or you have to do this like me, you have to look like this or don't do that.

50:02

I mean, you can name any issue in there, throw it in natural birth versus hospital birth vaccines versus no vaccines that went and the people are already going.

50:10

Yeah. You said vaccines like there's a fight. So but people, people, and they call these

50:17

Christian convictions and say, no, you have to see it like me, believe it like me because that's Christian. And if you don't see all these issues like me, then you're you, there's no fellowship and you're not my brother.

50:26

And so we were talking about how, you know, one really well -known Christian had someone like that come in front of him and he was like, the guy was harping on this and the person got in his face and said,

50:36

I'm wrong on issues, brother. You understand? We all have areas we're wrong.

50:41

We have to be gracious and we have to be humble. We're all wrong somewhere. And so we were all in agreement.

50:47

Marcus is their size there. I'm there. I'm like, yeah, we have to just recognize we all have errors. So you're agreeing that both of them are wrong. Yeah, so we're saying we're all wrong.

50:54

We're all admitting we're all wrong somewhere. We have to be humble with each other. We have to labor together, serve the Lord together and let's hash those issues out together in fellowship and in community as we're laboring for these big things, important things together.

51:05

And so, you know, we're talking together about Reformed Baptist Presbyterians. One's a member of our church. And then

51:11

Cy jokingly goes, yeah, like I know where you're wrong. I know exactly where you're wrong.

51:16

Like, you know, but the point is, is like the attitude of we laughed about it. It wasn't a fight between us.

51:22

Like for us, it was an enjoyable, you know, jab at each other, but we're not dividing over these things.

51:27

So we recognize that the issues that you need to hash out together as brothers in the Lord and the issues where you need to live and die together.

51:34

And I think that that's important for us to recognize now as we're facing what we are right now in 2019, we had better learn to actually stay committed to the things that are essential that are important and be willing to live and die for those things.

51:48

We have to. So there's like, there's that commitment that has to be made to, but do you really believe it? And is it worth your life?

51:54

Are you willing to be wrapped in pitch and let on fire at a mistake like our forebears were at times?

52:01

Are you, are you willing to have your head cut off or to be flayed for these truths?

52:07

Or do we really believe them? Are we really committed to them? Because my, and everyone knows what

52:12

I believe about the future. I believe Christ's Lordship and I believe in victory and a strong gospel. And I have hope for the future in that sense for this world.

52:20

But it doesn't mean like you're saying, it doesn't mean America is the center point of history. It doesn't mean that we're going to make it. It doesn't mean that there's anything special right now, but our moment in terms of, of, of it all hinges on us.

52:32

It might hinge, like you said, on Brazil or Africa or China or you know,

52:37

New Zealand or, you know, something happening in New Zealand and you know, God, God may do it, may be doing a work for his kingdom through his gospel with faithful Christians somewhere else.

52:47

And, and I think that, you know, that's, there's a terrifying aspect to me in that,

52:53

I don't mean terrifying, like in the sense of like any fearfulness, like God's not in control, but in terms of what, what may be very, very close to us on the horizon, because I have a grandchild and now another one on the way, you have grandchildren, you have daughters, we have, we have people we're putting into this next generation.

53:12

And I'm looking at it now as a father and as a grandfather thinking, this isn't just, it's not merely about me and my walk with Jesus, like I, I have,

53:22

I have fed children into this world and I'm giving them to this world. I have some responsibility here to fight for the future of my, my children and my descendants.

53:32

Like I'm, I'm, I'm pointing them to Christ and give, and giving them a solid foundation to stand on, but they're facing a culture and a society that wants to eat it up and eat them up.

53:42

And it matters to me greatly that I actually lay my life down because I love them, you know, love, love for neighbor requires of me to have concern for my neighbor, which means concern for my unbelieving neighbors, but also especially for my believing neighbors and my, my children and grandchildren.

53:58

I mean, this really, really matters. And this takes me to, maybe we can end on this point and you, I'm going to give you a chance to say something here.

54:05

Um, Luke likes to sit and just, yeah, so, um, so prepared.

54:11

So, um, well then they're good. I'll, I'll, I'll end on that. Cause it'll take me to a whole new discussion. You, you go ahead and, and I was just thinking as we're having this discussion, going back to Ireland and Dublin specifically.

54:23

Uh, I feel like Dublin is really a picture of our culture and that you, you know, and you've been in Dublin too.

54:31

Yeah. I know you have like the word Trinity is everywhere. Oh yeah. Bars, restaurants, symbols of the

54:38

Trinity everywhere engraving on every stone you look at. And so like the most Christian thing in Dublin is the

54:44

Trinity library. Oh, right. But what is it? Wonder of the world. But what is it now? It's a museum.

54:50

Yeah. It's a relic. And that's basically where our culture is. Christianity is a relic.

54:55

You know, it's a museum. It doesn't matter anymore. It's not relevant. Yeah. Um, so the things being taught at Trinity College in Dublin are not even slightly determined by Christian truth any longer.

55:07

Exactly. Yeah. Um, anyways, I just was thinking. So, so with that, maybe we should end on a positive strong note of, okay, what's the way forward.

55:16

And, and I'll just, I'll just mention in passing because I wanted to say something about it. We have a guy like Brian Sims, Pennsylvania State Representative.

55:23

Oh, we're finally getting around to that. Yeah, I know. We have Brian Sims, Pennsylvania State Representative. Go look it up. The video of him taking his phone out and filming himself harassing a woman on the street who was trying to save lives at an abortion clinic in Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood in Philly.

55:37

Um, and just aggressive, nasty. But, but the language you heard, if you, if you know what's happening in our culture, what's coming out of the colleges, the book, the colleges, the books that are being written, what they're saying, what they're trying to propagate.

55:49

You can hear like the identification. You are racist. This is racism. You're trying to save children. So you're racist.

55:57

In front of an organization that started with a truly racist head who is really legitimately trying to kill the blacks.

56:06

But he was, he was just violent and so strong against this woman and he's, he's a homosexual himself.

56:17

And he's, the crazy thing about it is he's a state representative. Yep. He, he's a politician.

56:22

He was voted into office, but he had the courage. He had the courage to actually turn his phone on and to advocate for abortion and to, and to, and to fight against the woman trying to save lives and to do all of this stuff.

56:37

So forcefully, he had the courage because it's the context where he's allowed, he's allowed to say these things. That's the context of the election in 2020.

56:44

That's because that's pop culture right now. That's pop culture is that that's cool. That's good.

56:49

That's righteous. That's just the Christian perspective is evil in our culture.

56:56

It's wrong. It's old. It's archaic. You ought not do it. And so with that, I think that again,

57:02

I think people have looked around now and realized all the labor that we've done over these decades with trying to build a platform and foundation for Marxism, for socialism, for leftist ideology, for atheistic ethical systems.

57:15

People can look around now and go, okay, we're good. The team's on the line, we're ready to fight.

57:21

Like we can do it now. We've got the crowd. And so I think that Christians have got to recognize that Jesus says a lot of things to us in terms of being his followers, what it means to actually trust in Jesus and have him as Lord about being ashamed of his words, whoever is ashamed of his words in this generation, the son of man will be ashamed of, you know, in this wicked generation.

57:41

So Jesus says things to people saying, if you're ashamed of my words, I'll be ashamed of you.

57:47

And if you don't come to die, then don't come at all. And you know, and that's,

57:53

I think, a very important essential element of like what's wrong with us today in terms of an evangelical proclamation to the

57:59

West is we don't have that anymore. We don't have a Jesus that would say to you, I'll be ashamed of you if you're ashamed of me, or say come die or don't come.

58:08

Or the vision in Revelation where he rules the nations with a rod of iron.

58:13

That's right. Yes. What? Where's that Jesus? Wrath of the Lamb? The wrath of the what? He's not allowed to have any wrath.

58:18

No, not wrath at all. And there are popular Christian teachers that balk at the idea of saying he has wrath for nations. Of course they do.

58:24

So what we're seeing and I'll finish with this. It's, I've preached on it.

58:30

I'll preach on it again because it is stunning to me. Revelation of Psalm 12, 8, the wicked strut about on every side when that which is vile is exalted among the sons of men.

58:45

So think about that. When vileness is exalted among sons of men, when the sons of men will say that which is wicked is actually good, then the wicked strut about on every side.

58:57

Is that not what he was doing? Oh, yes. He was using his cell phone to document that he is a wicked man, will strut about in his wickedness.

59:07

Why? Because he knows vileness is now exalted among the sons of men in this country. Yes. And we cannot at all be surprised.

59:16

Scriptures. This was, this was written long, long ago. Man, I love the Bible. Psalm 12, 8.

59:22

I love God's word. Nothing new under the sun. No. For sure. Well, thank you, Dr. White, for being on with us today.

59:28

I'm sure there'll be much, much more. AOMEN .org. If you don't already know, by the way, I, it was so awesome being in Virginia and how many people walked up, pastors, people that were like,

59:40

I was watching Dr. White and then I got to know you and God used your ministry to raise up this thing. And then it was reversed.

59:46

It was, I got to know you and then I got into Dr. White. I'm listening to all those dividing lines. And I'm like, well, have, have, that's going to take you a long time.

59:55

They're doing that since the 1980s. That's right. And that's exactly what happens to me wherever I go.

01:00:00

I was in, I had people in Holland and in London coming up and, and again, for some reason, we've, we've been joined at the hip for a while now.

01:00:12

And so it's sort of natural that that's. And now we're pastors in the same church? Now we're pastors in the same church. Hey, isn't that amazing?

01:00:18

With a guy named Bear. With a guy named Bear in the middle. Yes. So if you guys would go to endabortionnow .com.

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So you go there. That's the idea. So, so the idea here is to, is to essentially build a foundation for our culture today in terms of how to oppose what's happening around us, but also for Christian culture, how are we supposed to be thinking about these things and ultimately to focus in upon one issue together and that is endabortionnow .com.

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