Academic Group Think, Social Justice in the 70s, What God Says About Wealth, and Fan Questions

Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris, and today I want to talk about a question I have. Why are American leftists so united? I mean, really, why is it if you're a Democrat, and you say something insane and lose an election, and all the moderates hate you because of what you said, you are protected, the wagons are circled, and you may even be advanced in the party structure.

Whereas if you're a Republican, and you say something even slightly off, or maybe the New York Times misrepresented something you've said, you're thrown overboard immediately. And if you lose, well, goodbye.

I think there's a microcosm of that going on within the social justice debate. Because on one side, you have a very, very loose coalition of different ministries, and they have different issues with social justice.

It might be mission drift, or it's heresy, or it's just bad ethics, and they disagree with one another sometimes over theological differences within this loose coalition or maybe strategy, and so they don't work together as much.

There's no big conspiracy. On the other side, however, you have a very firm coalition coming from academia on the social justice side. And conferences, and institutions, and academic organizations, and seminaries, and Bible schools, publication houses, so forth and so on, they're all united.

And the reason I know this is because, I mean, just think with me for a moment. I know some insider information, but you don't even need that. Just think about how many professors have signed the Dallas Statement and the Southern Baptist Convention.

Hardly any. I think there's one. And think about all the crazy things that have been said against biblical justice, or I should say for social justice, that have caused a stir on social media, or maybe it's a professor speaking at a seminary.

I mean, there's countless examples of this. They are not thrown overboard at all, but yet there's almost like an unwritten rule that you shouldn't sign the Dallas Statement, because I know a lot of professors who agree with it and would sign it.

Now, why is that? Why does that condition exist in academia? And why is it so similar to what we see in the American left, in Hollywood, in academia, in the Democratic Party? Well, I want to explain that as best as I can, but in order to do that, I wanted to show you this clip.

And if you're a parent, don't worry, there's no violence. There is no profanity in this clip. I watched this movie. It's called The Untouchables with Kevin Costner years and years ago. He plays Elliot Ness.

Robert De Niro plays Al Capone. It's a crime drama. And I'm sure there's probably some objectionable stuff. So this was a long time ago. I do not recommend watching this at all, but there's a little clip, nothing objectionable in the clip, that reminded me about what I'm talking about right now.

So I'm going to show you that particular clip, and then we will talk about it in regards to the social justice.

Movement. So here we go. What am I? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? Baseball. A man. A man stands alone at a plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone.

But in the field, what? Part of a team. Looks, throws, catches, hustles, part of one big team. Bats himself to live long day, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and so on. Team, no field. What is he? Follow me? No one.

Sunny day, stands are full of fans. What does he have to say? I'm going out there for myself. But I get nowhere unless the team wins.

Teamwork. Okay, that's probably a really good place to end that particular clip. So you can tell that the person who was not having some teamwork ended up getting the short end of the stick there. Now, am I suggesting that the academic establishment is a mob?

No, I'm not saying that. But I do think there are some parallels, and I want to explain this as kind of an insider. I've friends with a lot of professors. And in order to be someone who advances in the academic system, you are required, essentially, to not just have a degree and to not just have good research.

You need to be able to obtain money for research. You need grants. You are going to need to, it's kind of like the Pharisees with the chief seats, but you're going to need a chair. Eventually, if you want to really, you know, get yourself out there, there's going to be positions that you're going to want.

You're going to need to be published in different journals. You need to attend conferences and rub shoulders with other people in academia. Endowments. I mean, these are all social capital tools that will elevate your respectability in a field.

Research is important, but these things are also very important that you obtain them. So there is a hierarchy. There is a chain of command. There are unspoken rules of how to gain, get to the next level in that chain.

And that's why it's funny when some of these guys, you know, say something against traditional values, especially when it comes to complementarianism and men and women. They're not against hierarchy because they live in a hierarchy.

It's an artificial hierarchy, but they do live in one. And there is a chain of command, and there is a way to progress. You do not progress in this chain of command by blasting other people in your discipline.

Generally, it just doesn't work. I mean, sometimes you can get to the point where you can kind of blast someone who's beneath you, but you never do that by blasting someone on your level or someone above you, just about.

I mean, there might be some exceptions here or there, but that's really how the system works. And a lot of the times, professors are people, and I want to say this nicely, I'm friends with a lot of wonderful professors who are socially with it and just amazing people that I respect.

But there are professors, if you spend two seconds in academia, you know this to be true, that, well, they're nerds. If the narrow field of interest that they have was not something that could employ them, so if their job was taken away and they weren't able to work in academia, they would drown.

There's nowhere for them to go. And I do have a suspicion that a lot of these guys ended up growing up not being popular in high school. They weren't the jocks. They weren't in the band. And now, in the words of an academic who told me this, who would know, it's revenge of the nerds.

It really is. It's a way in which they can gain approval that they've always wanted in an area that they actually are fascinated with and enjoy. And education wasn't always like this. This wasn't academia for the founding generation.

I mean, you went there to become a changed person, not to become a specialist in a narrow field and contribute necessarily, although that could happen. That was a side effect. But you actually came to change as an individual.

And you were someone who could go back to the farm and be successful or to the business world or wherever you were. We didn't have lifetime politicians or people that were just staying within academia because they wanted to stay within academia.

That was viewed as very secondary. And so now we've progressed to the point since the Industrial Revolution and specialization and everything where you get a very, very narrow field and you're supposed to be the expert in that field.

And becoming the expert in this really little window is how you become known by everyone else and honored and you get accolades that you want. And so that's the system. And so those who don't play within that system and who might poke an eye into that system think the term that's often used is the dark web, the intellectual dark web.

They are a threat. They are a competing institution now in a way, even though they're not institutional. They don't like institutions. They are now competing with an institution. And that's why you see a lot of these outspoken conservative guys end up getting talk shows or forming their own platform online where they can teach because if they were going to say the truth or something that they believe that's not politically correct, they would never be able to do it in the academy because there are unspoken rules in the academy and you have to abide by those.

You can't contradict certain narratives and still have a job and still get the accolades that you want. And so it's very much geared towards the approval of man. And that's why I say if you're going to enter the academy, if you want to do that, then I really suggest, first of all, working a few years.

This is my two cents. Getting a trade, having that to fall back on, being with real people. And once you get in this artificial academic environment, be open to jumping to another field if you ever need to.

Don't be chained to an institution. And that's your only source of livelihood. And if you lose it, you're done. I think that's a dangerous place to be. And the Lord will take care of you if you stand up for truth, even if that is the case and that's all you have.

I believe he will. And I know there are stories out there of professors who did do that. They bucked the system and they learned how to drive a truck or something. And man, I respect those guys. It's not a sign that they weren't intelligent.

It's a sign that they probably actually were intelligent. They were more independent thinkers and they went outside the system. And so it is similar to the scribes and Pharisees. There is a unification and it is similar to that clip I just showed you about Capone in a way.

It's unwritten rules, but there are rules. Now I'm going to be presenting at the Stand Against Marxism conference, which is coming up in October. It's on October 18th and 19th in Des Moines, Iowa. And if you want to go to that, you can go to standagainstmarxism .com.

And I don't know all the speakers there, but I will be speaking. And I do know a few of them that I'm actually pretty good friends with. And I'm looking forward to it. It's kind of a, like I said before, this very loose coalition to people coming from all kinds of different backgrounds to try.

It's an attempt to join together and say, you know what, we need to be a little more united against this political movement that is inside Christendom. And so one of the things that I'm going to give you a little teaser if you come that I'm going to be sharing on is the academic culture that we have arrived to in 2019.

Kind of like, how did we get here? And one of the things that I want to start out with is kind of like the scopes trial, maybe even a little before that, the modernist controversy. There was a perception that evangelicals, and at the time really fundamentalists, that they were dumb, they were hayseeds, they didn't know what they were talking about.

And evangelicals kind of wanted to be less separatistic than the fundamentalists. They wanted to still have more of an influence in the world and broader culture, I should say. And so the evangelicals in an interesting way end up, some of them at least, and there's prominent Southern Baptists that were behind some of this, they end up forming a social justice movement in the sixties and the seventies.

I mean, Robert Bellah gets going, and you want to understand the word human flourishing and how that got into evangelical circles. Robert Bellah influenced Tim Keller and Robert Bellah is the one that likes that term, human flourishing.

But anyways, Robert Bellah got going in the sixties and this wasn't like out of a vacuum somewhere that all this stuff popped up. He talked about the idolatrous worship of the state and the link between biblical and political rightism in 1967.

This was before the moral majority, guys, that he was talking about this. In 1973, you had the Chicago Statement, and I'm actually going to read this for you, some of it, because it is absolutely fascinating.

This could have been written last year, but what it says is we acknowledge that God requires justice. We haven't demonstrated that in this unjust American society because of social and economic rights of the poor and the oppressed have been taken away.

We're silent. The church has been involved in racism and look, institutional structures that have divided the body of Christ along color lines. It talks about economic exploitation, talks about complementarianism being wrong, essentially.

It just says men had prideful domination of women and women were supposed to be passive and this mutual submission is what we want to advocate. There's this whole thing and it reads like something that could have been signed yesterday by the gospel coalition or something, but this is 1973, guys.

This is 1973. This wasn't yesterday. What I've found as I've been studying some of this is that there actually was a social justice movement that predated the one we're looking at now. Jim Wallace was actually considered an evangelical at first in 1975.

We know he's not, but that's when he started Sojourners. 1978, Ron Snyder writes, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Now, what put a stop to that? We don't remember that. We don't perceive this movement as having a history, but it does.

I think the reason is because the 70s showed a change in evangelical political engagement. Evangelicals, for the most part, were individuals who voted, but they weren't a voting bloc. That wasn't something churches really addressed.

I mean, think about this for a moment. You're coming out of a context in which the nation in general is Christian, quote unquote. Their Christian values are just kind of the accepted norms, and so if you're a Christian and going to church, it's not like your pastor necessarily has to give you a lot of instructions on biblical principles for voting.

That's kind of already baked into you, and that was not the case in the 70s. It really wasn't the case even before that, but I don't think Christians realized it until the 70s that, wait a minute, people are not using biblical principles to approach the scripture with, or the politics with.

They're not using scriptural principles to approach politics. I think this comes out a lot in 1980. Jimmy Carter actually hosted a, it was a breakfast, I believe, with a bunch of evangelical leaders, and they're asking him these questions about him applying his personal faith, which is the reason he got elected by evangelicals, because he was personally this Southern Baptist who was very faithful, but they ask him, where are you applying this?

And Carter basically doesn't have good answers, and they vow afterward on the way back to their, I guess, hotels, something's wrong, and we need to fight this, and so you have in the late 70s and the 80s a sense of, we need to get the America back that we had before.

They're killing babies out there. I mean, think about this. Jerry Falwell, it took him two years. It's 1975 when he started speaking out against abortion, so everyone who wants to say, well, they were on the sidelines during the civil rights movement.

Well, evangelicals weren't, they just weren't, these were tangential issues in their minds that they just, yeah, they vote on a national level perhaps, but they just weren't really that engaged as a voting bloc until the most horrible thing happens, and even then it takes a few years for them to really get organized to say, we're gonna fight this.

Killing babies is wrong, and so you have the moral majority. You have the religious right, and the thing about the religious right is it's a populist movement. You have Francis Schaeffer writing some more academically minded, but they're really popular books.

He's more of an academic, but he's writing popular books, and that is inspiring some of these Christian leaders like Tim LaHaye and Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, but the evangelical social justice movement, which had formed in the 60s and 70s, it never went away.

You know where it went? It went to academia, and thoughtful academics, as one author has put it, were surviving in academic institutions throughout the 80s, and when I think about that, I'm thinking of people like George Marsden, Nathan Hatch, Mark Knoll.

These guys are well read at today's seminaries. I've had to read, and not all their books are bad. Their books actually, a lot of them are very good historical research, but I noticed some of that influence from more of a social justice direction kind of subtly coming into some of their works.

George Marsden, actually, I'll just go on a little tangent. He's kind of, I think, a neo-Kuyperian guy, very much a principled pluralist, which is the buzzword today. When I was at Southeastern, this is like Bruce Ashford's thing, who's the provost there, principled pluralism, and you hear that all over the place.

Tim Keller is very influenced by this as well, and it's this idea that we shouldn't really be trying to take back America, so to speak, but we should be trying to live in this multicultural America as Christians, and it's not going to work, by the way, because every system has a god of the system, and secular humanism is a religion, but that's kind of the direction that George Marsden has been going.

I mean, there is still a political element to that, and Nathan Hatch and Mark Knoll, same thing, but these guys trained up, guys like Tom Kidd and John Fee, I think, would be kind of someone who learned from these guys, and a lot of the modern pastors.

I don't think you'd have a neo-reformed Calvinist movement without these guys. They are kind of like a new Kuyperian, and I'm talking about Abraham Kuyper, theologian, doesn't matter if you don't know what that is, but who he is, but they're more like one kingdom guys in many respects.

Again, you don't have to know all the theology I'm throwing out there, but there's something that unites them, is my point, and social justice is part of that, in a way, and I think we're reaping that today.

We're looking at these thoughtful evangelicals who, from academia, oppose the populist religious right, which was a conservative move, trying to reverse the clock and go back to a time when there was more religious freedom, when you could pray in school, when babies weren't murdered, etc., etc., and those guys who thought that the religious right was out of bounds, and it was too American, and it was too patriotic, and so forth and so on, they have influenced the current crop of pastors a lot, and I'm not here to take, I mean, I'd be more in line with, probably, politically, at least, the moral majority, but I recognize there were some problems there, and like everything in humanity, there's always a problem somewhere.

There's no perfection, and so I can, as someone who recognizes that, it doesn't bother me, but there is a thread that we can trace historically, and I'm going to be sharing some of that, explaining how we got to where we are, and I think that will be beneficial, because it will give us context for understanding it, and I think help us know how better to fight this, and so I'm going to leave that there.

One of the things that I wanted to talk about briefly, too, in regards to this, because this has been brought up by a few people, but Judd Saul, who's the one, he's the director of Enemies Within the Church, he had told me a story a few months ago.

He was talking to a room full of Roman Catholics about this issue, and if you know anything about the Roman Catholic Church, they were torn up by the social justice movement before evangelicals were. They didn't really, I mean, there was some Roman Catholic co-belligerents during the religious right, but not as much.

In fact, well, I'm not going to go there, but so Judd's in this room, and these Roman Catholics are sitting there, these, you know, laymen, and they're like, okay, our church, our institution is corrupted by social justice.

Now, we can say, I would say, there's been a lot of corruption before that, and the gospel has been essentially lost in Roman Catholic doctrine, but they're concerned with the social justice aspect, and Judd, at the end of his presentation, basically gets up in front of all of them, and he points to an evangelical Protestant pastor in the room and says, if you want to go to a church that does not follow the social justice movement, this is the man to talk to, and shared the gospel with them, and this is, I think, the heart of Judd, and I just, I wanted to throw that out there, because a few people have said, you know, how can, how can you have a Roman Catholic at your conference, you know, to Judd, and how can you have such a big, kind of, tent?

Well, you understand, this is a political conference. It's a political movement inside Christendom, so the Protestants and Catholics, and I don't know about Eastern Orthodox, I don't think there's anyone like that coming, and I don't know enough about whether that's made inroads into that tradition yet or not.

If it hasn't, it will, but, you know, Judd is very, he is a gospel-centered guy, and he knows what he has on his hands is a political movement. Conservative, engaged political guys are starting to wake up and see what's happening to the evangelical vote and the Roman Catholic vote, and they're concerned, and I think Judd sees this as a gospel opportunity.

He wants to go in and share, yeah, this is a false gospel that you guys are concerned about, and you know what? Some of you don't even have the true gospel, so let's, let's talk about that, and I know the gospel is going to be provided.

So, I wanted to just let you know that. This is not, I know Judd, I know Kerry, and they're not ecumenical in the sense that they think, you know, Roman Catholics are our brothers in Christ, or, you know, we're not, they're not inviting cults to come or anything like that.

They are, they are concerned for the gospel, but they realize what they have on their hands is a political movement, and so, not saying I would have planned everything the way they've planned it, and I'm not the one planning it.

I was invited to speak, but I wanted to throw that out there because that really helped me be able to say yes to coming and speaking and sharing what I'm going to be sharing. Last thing, well, second to last thing for this particular podcast, I wanted to share with you guys, this is, I think, probably the most helpful thing in this podcast for you as a layman, if you're a layman listening.

There's been a lot of talk, I'm not going to give examples, there's so many of them, about wealth and material riches being bad, the demonization of those things, and it goes right along with the social justice stuff.

I wanted to share with you a few verses, and just talk through these with you. Let's start with Job. Job chapter 42, the Lord blessed the later days of Job more than his beginning, and he had 14 ,000 sheep, and it goes on and says what he had.

The Lord blessed Job with material goods. Material goods are not bad. Material blessing is not bad. Privilege is not bad, necessarily. It's actually something to be thankful for, to God, because he's the one that gives those things.

The demonization of the rich is disgusting. Before God, it's disgusting, guys. Proverbs 3, 9 through 10, honor the Lord from your wealth. What are you supposed to do with wealth, rich guys? Honor the Lord from your wealth, and from the first of all your produce, so that your barns may be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine.

Is this health, wealth, prosperity? No, I mean, I don't believe in the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, but this is what Proverbs 3 says. You practice godly principles. You honor the Lord with your wealth.

You know what? You're going to be blessed. That's a general truth. Does it happen in every circumstance? No, it doesn't, and you're not promised that it will in every circumstance, but in general, proverbial sayings or general truths, that's how it works, and that's a good thing.

So to desire nice things like wine is a comfort, and it's a symbol of the Old Testament of richness and so forth. Enjoy the things that God has given you. Let's go to Proverbs chapter 30. These are words of Augur, and he says, two things I ask of you before I die.

One of them is found in verse eight. He says, give me neither riches nor poverty, nor riches. Feed me with the food that is my portion. Well, why does he say that? Why is he saying I don't want to be poor, and I don't want to be rich?

He says, so that I not be full and deny you, and say who is the Lord, and that I not be in want and steal and profane the name of the Lord my God. Now, this is something that I relate to. I don't think I can handle being rich because I probably would idolize my riches, and Augur is wise enough to see his own limitations, but that doesn't mean there's not people who can't handle that, and that's the point I want to make.

It's dangerous because you tend to rely on your riches instead of God, but you know what? It's not wrong to have them, and I don't think Augur's saying that here because he'd also be saying it's wrong to be poor, and we know that's not wrong.

So, this is more, again, it's in Proverbs. This is wisdom. Matthew chapter 19. Jesus is talking to the rich young ruler here. He comes. He says, what must I do to enter the kingdom of heaven and gain eternal life?

And Jesus says, keep the commandments. He says, I've already done that. Jesus says, go sell all you have. Give to the poor, and he's sad. He walks away, and Jesus says to his disciples, I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and they're astonished, and he says that with people, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible, and so I wanted to point out that, yeah, the rich young ruler, his problem was idolatry.

He wasn't willing to give it up, and that's the question you need to ask yourself. If you're a rich person, are you willing to give it up? You should not necessarily feel guilty for wanting riches. It's not a bad thing to want that, to bless others with, to bless the Lord with, and yes, to have pleasure for yourself, so you can enjoy the blessings of God.

Not wrong at all, but if you can't give it up, yeah, it's an idol, and that's the rich young ruler's problem. He couldn't give it up. So, rather than demonizing riches or the rich, how about we demonize what Scripture demonizes?

Scripture demonizes the unwillingness to give up riches, the idolatry of riches. Matthew chapter, I believe this is 27. This is when Jesus is buried. It just says that there's a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, and of course, he took care of Christ's body.

This is one of Christ's disciples. He's a rich man. He's a rich man, and we don't see an example of Christ beating him over the head for it. Here's a passage. This is Paul instructing Timothy. He talks about false teachers coming in, and he says that, you know, basically, a lot of them are in it for riches and so forth, and he's teaching Timothy.

He says, for we have brought nothing into this world, verse 7, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering with these, we shall be content. So, you shouldn't need riches to be content, guys.

That's another aspect of this. If you need them to be content, that's wrong. It doesn't mean you can't enjoy them or pursue them or be blessed by them, but you shouldn't need them. And he says, but those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.

So, does that contradict what I just said? Well, no, because there's a context here. Those who want to get rich as a means, as an end in and of itself, if that's their main pursuit, if they're pursuing riches for the sake of contentment, that's what he's talking about.

That's the context. And then he says this, for the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. Money's not wrong, guys.

It's not even wrong to make money, pursue getting money, obtaining it. What's wrong is loving it, sacrificing yourself for it, making it a god. Now, if you scroll down, this is in the same chapter. He says in verse 17, instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.

Instruct them to do good and to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.

Here's the deal. If you're rich, you should be pursuing the kingdom of God. There are two kingdoms. Pursue the eternal reality that store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, as Jesus said, where moth and rust do not destroy.

But it doesn't mean you can't have riches on earth. He's talking, he's saying instruct those who are rich, those who have gained riches, instruct them this way. Doesn't mean that they have to give up all their riches.

Just don't fix your hope on it. Realize that's not where you hope because it can be taken away from you any day and you need to be willing to lose it. Now, why do I say all this? Because there is a tendency today to demonize those who have riches and to, it's a class warfare thing, but to demonize the systems that allocate riches, so capitalism, which helps everyone really because these rich people invest their money.

They're not just keeping it in a lockbox somewhere. They're helping invest it in things that help middle class and poor people. They pay taxes as well. Most people don't think through that, but this is a problem among people that are my age and a little younger and maybe some that are older, but in the millennial generation, there's an issue here.

They tend to look at a yacht and think that is bad, but they are willing to spend tons of money on experiences like vacations, traveling, food. I mean, these are the kinds of things they spend their money on.

They have a different value system. There's the minimalist thing and they look at the white picket fence and the boat as a nice car, as bad things. And so I wanted to just address this and say, that's wrong.

That is just so wrong. The demonization of wealth and of riches and these are God's blessings and we should be demonizing what scripture demonizes. We should be talking against that. The things that scripture says are sinful and warning against that, not against riches in and of themselves.

And this is one of the aspects of the social justice movement. There is just a knee-jerk reaction some of these guys have to pointing the finger at someone who's against, let's say reparations or really unjust tax levels.

And they will point the finger and say, you just care about your riches and you're idolatrous and this and that. And it's like, no, we don't. And I'm saying this as a guy who probably would, I mean, at best I'm lower middle class at best.

I'm an impoverished student really is what I am. But I do not think it is right to demonize wealth. I think that's dangerous actually. We want to live in a country where that is possible, where the blessings of God are there for those who want to work hard and you're rewarded for working hard and the Lord rewards you like it says in Proverbs for practicing wise business practice.

So these aren't bad things. And I think, yeah, I just want to take you through those verses. Hopefully that will help if you notice that objection ever in the future. Last but not least, I wanted to address a few questions that I got.

I had asked for some of my Patreon supporters and if you are not a Patreon supporter, you can go to the link below in my sidebar there and you can become a supporter and I'll send you a shirt if you want it in your size.

But you also have more access to me. And one of the things that gives you more access to me, there's a couple things that you get. I mean, if I ever make a slideshow, I will give you that. I put my material on Patreon for those who are there to download it.

But if you want to just ask me questions, you can do that. And so I have two Patreon supporters who have asked me some questions. And I was going to do an episode just about these, but instead, because there's so many other things coming up and I only got, there's only two people that have asked me these questions.

I decided to just kind of tag it at the end of this, tack it on. But the first one is from one of my supporters and she asks, she says, discuss the term enemies within the church. And she's got enemies in quotation marks.

If someone is a believer and caught up in social justice theology, are they enemies or are we warring against ideas? There are levels of wolves in the church. It seems some people are honestly just wanting to be kind to other races and have no idea of the theology heresy they're getting into.

This is what makes it so difficult to discuss. Some on the other hand are more nefarious and wanting to fundamentally change seminary's doctrine. And I completely understand. And I actually, I have a first, I can't talk about it right now, but I have an example of an evangelical institution that is unofficially changing a doctrinal stance.

That is a core belief and enemies within the church hopefully will be revealing this at some point. But yeah, I mean, there's a problem there. And I think this individual is spot on. There are those who are just innocently, that's probably the majority of people.

They're, they're not the leaders advancing this, but those who are just kind of following, they just really care about people's wellbeing and they have been duped into thinking that these liberal cures for sometimes diseases that don't even exist and other times actual problems, that these are legitimate and they're part of being nice.

And so one of the dangers is, I think it's sort of an antinomian thing, anti-law, is if you don't know the law of God well, if you're not well-versed in scripture, especially your Old Testament, it is very easy to get taken in by these broad principles of niceness, love, being kind.

These just, and you can kind of fill in the blank. You can just, I mean, justice is one of those catch-all words now that we're just going to put every social program into this umbrella of justice and call it that and say it's biblical because it's justice.

And I think guys who just, you know, they're doing their best to provide for their families and they just want to see justice happen and people to live together well, they're going to be taken in by that.

That vagueness is going to be a cover for getting them to adopt socialistic ideas. And I recognize that. That's why I want to create clear distinctions. I tend to, and I'm not the only one, A .D. Robles does this too, we tend to talk about those who are leading the movement and generally those are false teachers or they are covering for false teachers.

And we don't always focus on those who are duped and there's a lot who are. And so, I don't know, I'm agreeing with the statement that was made. The question was, discuss the term enemies within the church and okay, so who are the enemies?

Here's the thing about enemies within the church. Jud made a movie called The Enemies Within and it was about Marxists in Congress. And this is a sequel to that, it's enemies within the church, so it's about Marxists.