I am not going to be there, I was supposed to be there and I had to pretty much out of the gate as soon as it was announced, say I'm sorry I can't go because I have a memorial service myself this Sunday for an uncle who passed away this year and I'm going to be gone actually, I'm going to be in California this week and into next week, pretty much all of next week, my grandfather's 100th birthday is next week and so that's going to be a big deal and so there's a lot going on with me, but anyway, it's going to be good, even though I can't make it, it's in Harrisville, Pennsylvania, yeah Harrisville too, man I bet my relative set up, I know my line goes through Harrisburg, so Harrisville, I'm wondering, but if you're in the area, please check it out, go to this conference, there's Scott David Allen is going to be there who's written a good book on social justice, Jesse Gistan Stand is going to be there, pastor of Grace Bible Church in California, I'm not as familiar with him but I think it'll be a good time for you all and a time of encouragement, we need these times to get together and to just realize we're not alone, there are others who think the same way and are concerned about the same things and even just for that, I think it's important, but bring a friend if you can, especially a friend who might not be convinced about this or doesn't know about this and needs that information, so let's start with some news stories here, the SBC disfellowships church over alleged racism, so this was broken by the Evangelical Dark Web, that's Ray Fava's website, he does a great job, I actually met him earlier this year, great guy, and really there's not a lot of details here, but I figured I'd at least mention it because of situations in the past, not with the credentials committee necessarily, the credentials committee actually has a reputation for being very slow and not really acting when they should, it was the chairman of the credentials committee who said well, we've got to figure out what a pastor is basically at the meeting last summer because I'm summarizing here obviously, but maybe there's a place for women to serve under the title of pastor without holding the office or something like that, and there are churches, very liberal churches, I remember earlier this year I was looking for something totally unrelated and stumbled upon this SBC church that was gay affirming or had female pastors, it was just totally not what you would have expected and lo and behold it's on the list of SBC churches, so there's still churches like that out there that may probably have a historic tie to the SBC and they've changed, and so the credentials committee has that reputation, but also in the SBC there's been these fake or false assumptions, accusations of racism, FBC Naples being a prime example, and so now you have the credentials committee, to their credit it looks like they kicked out a homosexual affirming church, and then they recommended to the executive committee to kick out a church that, this is what their language says, that showed a lack of cooperation demonstrated by the church to resolve concerns regarding alleged discriminatory behavior, so you have alleged discriminatory behavior, so we don't even know if there's discrimination, but there's a lack of cooperation, it's vague so we don't know exactly what this means, but there's a number of people who have noticed this and have brought it to my attention and just asked me what is this, do you think this is a big nothing burger, and I think that alone says there's a problem in the SBC when there's just an assumption immediately like was this really discrimination, the mistrust, the onus is on the credentials committee to try to basically prove it, so I don't know anything about this church, I'd be curious if anyone listening knows about this church, the church is Amazing Grace Community Church in Franklinville, New Jersey, I would love to find out maybe what the issue here is because I have the same suspicion, I'm not gonna lie, but we don't know, so I can't really comment more on it, but is this a precedent for what could be coming, could churches be disfellowshipped or could they be kicked out of the convention because maybe they're not quite woke enough, that's the fear out there among some conservatives in the evangelical world, let's talk about these tweets, these illustrate a point that was made yesterday on the podcast, William Wolfe gave a speech at National Conservative Conference, talked about this effort to try to prevent Christians from, well, first of all obtaining, but then exercising political power, and that is true, here's actually two examples of it, one from Mike Kelsey, who I believe is still a pastor at McLean Bible Church in Virginia where David Platt is, and then we're gonna look at an example from David French, the interesting thing in this, and the thing to keep in mind, I've said this before, is that oftentimes social justice advocates in Christianity want to categorize concerns from the left or from social justice directions as somehow related to Christianity, they sanctify them, really, they sanctify them as justice concerns, as discipleship issues, as gospel issues, if it's an idea though from the right, even ideas that really were rooted in a Christian understanding of how a society should function, oftentimes what happens is those ideas get categorized according to bad motivations, so even loving your family too much now, that should be, we should suspect that of possibly having an idolatry somewhere, so sanctify politically left ideas and then categorize politically right ideas as idolatrous, or somehow an unhealthy pursuit of power, or breaking from what Jesus would teach or something, so there's kind of an unequal weights and measures thing going on here, where especially people who are very politically active in 2020 and doing podcasts like Mike Kelsey did where he talked, he shared his feelings on white people, let's say, and they weren't too great in 2020, and now this is what he has to say, and I'll read it for you, Christians, if your political ideology is your measure of Christian orthodoxy, your ideology has become idolatry, and then he quotes John 8, 36, where Jesus says my kingdom is not of this world, because if it was, my servants would be fighting, and then he says Jesus may not be as passionate about your politics as you are, hold your convictions with humility and grace, and so this is a message to all those Christians out there, and I mean, I mean, this is in a political context, we just had that piece from NBC on Doug Wilson, and we just had the National Conservative Conference, and it's during the Biden administration when things are getting crazy, and there's an effort now, or at least people want there to be an effort to push back, different circumstances than 2020 when it was Donald Trump in office, and it was all against the man, right, and Mike Kelsey was singing a different tune then, well now, Christians need to tone it down a few notches, Jesus isn't as concerned about politics as you are, it shouldn't be our concern, when things are crazier right now, against God's law than they've ever been, as far as, I mean, sexual ethics and the breakdown of our national identity, our family identity, we're really under attack, and there's some silver linings, Roe v. Wade being overturned, but there's, even with that though, there's, the left is really making an aggressive pro -abortion push, I'm in a state where it's happening actively, I mean, I saw an advertisement at the airport for abortion, it was just, I was like, wow, I haven't seen that before, but there's a real good verse evil thing going on, and yet this is the context in which Mike Kelsey is like, well, you know, don't be as concerned, Jesus wasn't, and of course the verse is taken out of context, Jesus is saying my kingdom doesn't spread through fighting, that's not the way that this is done, and it's, the kingdom of God, as his parables taught, was spread through conversion, it was organic more so, it was the way that plants grow, it was the way leaven leavens a loaf, it's not something that you can just force conversion, you can't, you can force people to respect an authority, I suppose, that is advocating Christian law, but you can't force people into being Christians, and it also, I wonder about his first part here, you know, if your political ideology is the measure of your Christian orthodoxy, who says that?