American Family Radio Kicks Alistair Begg off the Air After He Doubles Down on LGBT Wedding Remarks

1 view

Alistair Begg has finally responded to his remarks that Christians should attend "gay & trans Weddings" and even buy the couple a gift! Representatives for the pastor said he is sticking to his guns. After reaching out and discovering he refuses to repent / recant American Family Radio has kicked him off the air.

0 comments

00:00
Hello. In this video I have some bad news. Alistair Begg has responded to his gay wedding remarks and he's refusing to back down.
00:09
Here's the headline from the dissenter. Alistair Begg doubles down on gay wedding remarks and he gets the boot from American Family Radio.
00:18
So American Family Radio has now kicked Alistair Begg off the air. And I'm going to play the comments from American Family Radio in a moment, but let's just read the article.
00:30
It says, last week the dissenter reported that Alistair Begg, a prominent pastor associated with the
00:35
Gospel Coalition, he urged Christians to not only attend quote -unquote homosexual weddings but also to buy the couple a gift.
00:45
And by the way, it was a trans wedding. This position starkly contradicts the biblical view of marriage as a sacred union exclusively between a man and a woman.
00:58
This alarming advice from Begg, a respected figure in evangelical circles, it goes on to say how much of a shock it was.
01:08
And just the video that I did originally, which as of today, January 25th, 2024, my original video has something like 80 ,000 views and the comment section is pretty much unanimous.
01:21
People are shocked. They can't believe Alistair Begg said this. And most people are calling upon Alistair Begg to repent, recant.
01:30
And now Alistair Begg has responded and said, no, I'm not going to do it.
01:36
And he's going to continue to give this advice. So because of that, he has been kicked off of Christian Radio, at least this major Christian radio network,
01:46
American Family Radio. Let's listen to what they have to say. You're normally, this is the introductory part for Pastor Alistair Begg's Bible teaching program,
01:55
Truth for Life, which we've had on the air here at American Family Radio for, I don't know, 10 or 12 years maybe. In this particular time slot, we've had a great relationship with Pastor Begg and his whole team, you know, at their ministry.
02:09
He serves a church in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Anyway, something has happened recently, which has forced our hand here at American Family Radio to make a decision on continuing the
02:22
Truth for Life program on AFR or not. And we're going to talk about it. We wanted to explain to you, our listeners, what happened and what went into the thinking of our decision.
02:34
So joining me in studio, Wesley Wellman's with me, but Ed Battagliano and Walker Wellman, and I just heard about it last week and a few days ago, whatever.
02:44
And so people heard that answer and people began to call us, hey, what are you going to do?
02:50
You hear what Alistair Begg said? What's your opinion, American Family Radio, of what he said? So that's what
02:56
I mean by forced us to take a hard look at this and make a decision on what, if anything, we were going to do about it.
03:04
So, Ed, you and Walker had a phone conversation with not Alistair Begg himself, but his team.
03:11
Is that fair? Yes. Yesterday? Yes. We wanted to give him an opportunity to say,
03:17
I messed up right there. Right. And I think it's the wrong, I said the wrong thing and I'd like to recant.
03:23
Sure. And in any case, we want to do the Christian thing and in as much as we can, sometimes with public statements, you can't get in touch with the person who made them, but because they're public, you can comment publicly.
03:35
But we have had such a long and fruitful relationship with Truth For Life and Alistair Begg.
03:40
We wanted to have some sort of interaction. Now, let me just say from the outset, and then
03:45
I'm going to get Walker to join in here too, that the two individuals that we talked with, it was
03:52
Walker and I with two individuals from Alistair Begg's ministry. They made it clear that Alistair Begg believes that homosexuality is wrong.
04:00
He hasn't changed his views on that. He does not believe that homosexual marriage is valid and that the practice of homosexual activity is, as the
04:09
Bible says, an abomination. So all four of us were in agreement with that. But Walker, what we could not get them to change, and they said that Alistair Begg is not going to change his mind, was on the issue of whether Christians should attend, because that is what
04:24
Alistair Begg was saying. He was saying Christians should attend and bring a gift. Yes, that's right. And the goal of the call, and the goal of all
04:31
Christians when approaching these issues, should be reconciliation, but reconciliation and truth. And so that was our goal with the call with Alistair Begg's team, and unfortunately we didn't get there, but we did press the issue multiple times, and we even asked point -blank, so are you guys stating that Pastor Alistair Begg is standing by his original comment?
04:51
He has no regrets, he didn't misspeak, he doesn't want to further clarify nothing, and they said yes, he's standing by his original comment.
04:57
So very disappointing, and you know, I even told Ed this, and the gentleman and lady that we were on the call with, with Truth for Life, that Pastor Alistair Begg has such a long, decades -long track record of biblical fidelity, and truthfully teaching the
05:14
Word of God, that this is extremely disappointing. This isn't something that we saw coming. This isn't like some of the other evangelical leaders that have drifted, this is not one that was on the list that we would have seen this coming.
05:27
So a couple things. So the question is, if a Christian goes to a homosexual wedding, are they approving of it?
05:32
And our answer here is absolutely, and here's the example I used, and I gave this to Pastor Begg's team.
05:39
I said, if my best friend cheats on his wife and starts to have an illicit relationship with his secretary, and then wants to divorce his wife and marry that other woman, and comes to me and asks me to come, maybe be his best man, what would
05:58
I say? I would say, brother, no I'm not coming to your marriage, I'm not going to participate, but I'm not even going to attend.
06:06
What you need to do is to repent of this sexual sin and reconcile with your wife.
06:12
I think most Christians understand that. If you go to the wedding, you are approving of the new relationship this man has embarked on, and you are approving of what he has done to his wife, and you are going to celebrate the marriage.
06:28
When you show up at a wedding, I mean, let's face it, you show up at a wedding, and you go to the reception, you are going to...
06:35
And you bring a gift. And you bring a gift, you're going to walk up to that couple and say, congratulations. You're going to shake their hands, these two men.
06:41
You're going to shake their hands and say, congratulations. That is a sinful act.
06:47
You are approving of what they're doing. In my personal opinion, you could be culpable in God's eyes if those people go to hell, because you would not preach the gospel to them and preach the gospel of repentance and faith.
06:59
Yeah, and for those who did tune in, you know, 15 -20 minutes ago, our team did talk to the
07:05
Truth for Life team yesterday on the phone with an attempt to have
07:11
Pastor Begg admit that he gave bad advice, and he shouldn't have, but they...
07:17
They doubled down. They doubled down. So it is what it is. All right, so this is a really bad situation.
07:23
Let's just read the final statement of the article. Let's be clear, the dissenter says, Begg has embraced an extremely dangerous teaching that, if worked out to its logical conclusion, is a damnable heresy.
07:36
Hopefully, he will see the error of his ways and repent. But for whatever reason,
07:42
Alistair Begg says he will not do that. He's sticking to his guns. We need to pray for him. And just as a pastor, my advice, if you listen to Alistair Begg...
07:52
I wouldn't listen to him anymore. I could no longer recommend that a person listen to Alistair Begg. Someone will say, yeah, but he has decades of faithful ministry.
07:59
That doesn't make it better. It actually makes it worse, because he should know better. And if he's willing to compromise on this, what's next?
08:09
This doesn't happen in a vacuum. Something has led him to this position.
08:15
I'm not going to speculate what it is, but yeah, this is really, really bad. And the fact that he's kicked off of Christian radio,
08:22
I mean, it just, yeah, it highlights that. Thanks for watching. And until next time, may the