Twisting Words, Two Examples

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is, I think it's Tuesday, is the day of the week.

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We're not going to have too many more Dividing Lines before an extended time away from me, anyways.

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We'll try to have some programs during that time, I suppose, but I am going to be headed for London and the big debate on Monday on the

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Marian dogmas. I was actually listening to the debate from the

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University of Utah with Jerry Madetix. The thought crossed my mind, if I ever had time to do it, playing that thing as an example of cheesy, cheap debating tricks would be really good.

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I mean, as I was listening to Jerry, I was just like, I mean, he starts off going, and I'm hoping that the

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James White will behave differently than he has in the past. And of course, you know,

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Jerry's just got this long, long history of misbehavior in debates, but you know, never mentions what it was, but he's just so good at throwing in insinuations and innuendos and dodging stuff and changing, you know, spinning stuff.

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Debating him is extremely challenging, extremely challenging because he's just, wow, he's tough.

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No two ways about it, because you're just dodging thrown knives all the time, and it's fascinating.

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Anyway, I was, I listened to that because I'm just sort of reviewing some of the debates that I've had with Roman Catholics on the

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Marian topics, and of course,

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I'm not sure I'm going to re -listen to the Bobson -Jennas debate we had, because that was just basically, well,

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Acts 15 means we're the church, so we get to do what we want to do. That's not really going to help me much, but go back to the first debate with Jerry on,

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I'm not sure the audio quality is going to be good enough to allow me to do that while writing. But anyway, just trying to get my mind into that particular subject for next week, and then going from there to Germany and to Wittenberg for the

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Shepherds Conference there, speaking on the Atonement and the

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Mass. I think that's a fairly important subject, similar to what I did at G3, if you caught that, but probably more in depth.

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And then from there, more teaching elsewhere. As I said, don't get back until June 4th, so it's going to be a very lengthy trip overseas.

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Your prayers and support very much appreciated for that.

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So we'll have other folks sitting in at some point, if we can get the internet to work right anyways, and hopefully get things fixed up, because we're not able to do this one live as we normally do, thanks to the fact that it just ain't working.

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It rained, so I guess in Phoenix it rains, Cox Communications doesn't work anymore.

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So here I thought we were in the digital age, but so much for that. Anyway, over the past few days,

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I think maybe a week ago or so, it was announced by Hank Hanegraaff that he has received a diagnosis of a very serious cancer condition, and that he's going to have to have very aggressive chemotherapy.

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It's not a good kind of cancer, and evidently it's fairly advanced.

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And so obviously we pray for Hank and pray that the Lord will have mercy in that situation, as we likewise continue to pray for Nabeel Qureshi.

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He announced last week that the radiation didn't really seem to have the needed effect for him, that very much limits the choices in light of the kind of cancer that he has.

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And I'm at that age where I'm pretty convinced that we all have cancer.

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It's just whether or when it's going to manifest itself, I really wonder about that.

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But, be it as it may, we pray for those that are afflicted in this fashion.

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And, but despite that, Hank has been doing the Bible Answer Man broadcast, and you will recall that in the week after his conversion,

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I played portions of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, pointed out where he was, in fact, giving answers that are no longer consistent with evangelicalism, where he has clearly adopted an

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Eastern Orthodox perspective, but also pointed out that there are places, you know, where he was, for example, claiming that his position had been codified over 30 -some -odd books and so on and so forth.

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And, just sort of like, that doesn't really work.

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Eastern Orthodoxy has its own theology, it, you can't just simply join up and say, oh, this is what

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I've always believed, when terms like Eucharist and Theosis were never a part of your vocabulary until about three years ago.

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You can't go back 30 years, when in reality, these definitional things are only a few years old.

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And what's more, it's very plain to me that though Hank is now answering questions, especially about the relationship of justification and sanctification in a very non -evangelical fashion, and I would say non -biblical fashion, he's not fully made the jump, or he's reinterpreting what he's hearing in light of what he already believed, which is,

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I've tried to explain to people, even on this program since his conversion, that very few people in the

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West really understand Eastern Orthodoxy. I don't claim to be any expert on it, but I actually know enough about it to try to avoid,

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I've tried to avoid for years, really fighting through the hassle of trying to get folks into a position where they might have some idea of what it's all about.

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It is, it's such a different way of thought that, you know, trying to communicate it is extremely difficult to do.

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And it just seems to me that the answers to questions that are being asked on The Bible Answering Broadcast are not thoroughly

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Orthodox and are no longer evangelical either. It's sort of a transitionary mixture type thing.

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And more and more of the questions are, you know, well, what's the difference between, and this was happening initially, what's the difference between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy?

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Oh, the bodily assumption of Mary. The idea of the

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Pope's the head of all Christians. When those are the things you focus on, and then you say, we do venerate

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Mary. I heard him say more than once, we venerate Mary. Well, there's a specific meaning for veneration.

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And many people in the audience, I don't think, would have any idea what that means. And connecting theosis, you know, someone asked, what's the thing you really got?

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Well, theosis. Okay, that, I'm sorry, that does not, not only does that not fit into any type of evangelical parameters, but it doesn't fit into the mere

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Christianity parameter either. That is a very specific Eastern Orthodox concept.

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It has fundamental issues in regards to the relationship of things like justification, sanctification.

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It really does involve a fundamental subordination of the entire discussion of justification to other considerations.

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And you just can't throw that term out there and then go, but hey, you know,

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I've written all these books, nothing's changed. No, something clearly has.

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So what happened was, the only reason I'm talking about this is over the weekend,

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I was informed that last week, initially I was told it was Friday. It wasn't on Friday.

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I listened to that whole program and said, well, it wasn't Friday. Let's try Thursday. And about halfway through, I found it, that I was mentioned by name.

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And what you're going to hear is Hank had mentioned that he was going to take

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Facebook questions and callers. Now, I don't know if that's just because they're on so few stations now that you have to mix them up to fill the time or just what it is.

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I don't know. But about halfway through the program, it was about 30, 31 minutes in, he took a

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Facebook question. And as soon as I heard it, I knew what it was. Sometime shortly after I did the programs on Eastern Orthodoxy, there was a guy on Facebook that we interpreted as threatening because he was asking when

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I was going to go back to Ukraine again, because he has a house there and he wants to have it out. And we, you know, this is a hothead, a real, real hothead.

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And he's written in to CRI via Facebook.

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And for some reason, I get the feeling

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Hank would rather not have done this, but he started reading the question before you sort of hear him chuckle like, oh, no.

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I actually think I know who maybe in the background was behind this. I don't know.

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But the resultant, let's say there's three minutes and 13 seconds. It's all I'm going to play.

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The resultant conversation and accusation really struck me as very odd because the guy was asking about Eastern Orthodoxy.

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For some reason, Hank accuses me of twisting, putting words in people's mouths they never said.

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And then as his illustration, nothing about Orthodoxy at all. He goes way back about 10 years to an open letter about Living Stream Ministry that I was a signatory to.

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I had nothing to do with writing it at all. I didn't edit it, didn't have any input, nothing.

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And it was this situation where CRI changed their perspective on the followers of Witness Lee and decided to proclaim them to be

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Orthodox and took the lead in trying to get everybody else to do the same thing.

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And so somehow I'm guilty because I signed this letter.

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Problem is, well, let me give you some examples before I play it so you have some idea.

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These are some of the quotations that were part of the letter. And these are lengthy quotations. The Son is called the

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Father, so the Son must be the Father. We must realize this fact. There are some who say that He is called the

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Father, but He is not really the Father. But how can He be called the Father and yet not be the Father?

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In the place where no man can approach Him, 1 Timothy 6 .16, God is the Father. When He comes forth to manifest

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Himself, He is the Son. So a Son is given, yet His name is called the Everlasting Father.

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This very Son who has been given to us is the very Father. Now, if I had a student turn something like this in,

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I would realize I have a non -Trinitarian student, or at least I have a student who's extremely confused on the subject of the

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Trinity. The traditional explanation of the Trinity is grossly inadequate and borders on tritheism.

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When the Spirit of God is joined with us, God is not left behind, nor does Christ remain on the throne. This is the impression

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Christianity gives. They think of the Father as one person sending the Son, another person, to accomplish redemption, after which the

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Son sends the Spirit, yet another person. That's actually orthodoxy right there. The Spirit, in traditional thinking, comes into the believers while the

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Father and Son are left on the throne. Well, that's not what it means. John 14 says. But anyways, when believers pray, they are taught to bow before the

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Father and pray in the name of the Son. To split the Godhead into three separate persons is not the revelation of the Bible.

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The Son is the Father, and the Son is also the Spirit, and the Lord Jesus, who is the Son, is also the Eternal Father.

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Our Lord is the Son. He is also the Father. Hallelujah. Therefore, it is clear the

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Lord Jesus is the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and He is the very God. He is also the Lord. He is the Father, the Son, the Spirit, the

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Mighty God, and the Lord, so on and so forth. Well, my position remains and has always been, if you cannot, with clarity, affirm the ancient creedal statements,

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Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, and you're using verbiage like this and have to write lengthy books to try to explain what it is you're saying, you're probably not a

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Trinitarian. This is extremely troubling. Let's just be clear about what the doctrine of Trinity is.

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So, in warning folks about this, I signed this letter.

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And what we're going to hear, you'd think I was the only one that did. Could I mention some of the other people that signed this letter?

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Let me provide you with some names. Danny Akin from Southeastern.

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Guess what? David Allen. Yeah, that David Allen. Yeah, David Allen. Bill Alnor, well known in regards to apologetics.

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E. Calvin Beisner. Heard of him before, haven't you? I hope so. James Jornstad. Darrell Bach, Dallas Seminary.

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Chad Brand, Southern Baptist Seminary. Jerry Buckner. Paul Carden.

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Ron Enroth. Again, if you know anything about the apologetic community, these names have been around a while.

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Norman Geisler. Heard of him somewhere before.

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Alan Gomes from Talbot School of Theology. Craig Hawkins. William Hansberger.

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H. Wayne House. Thomas Howe from Southern Evangelical Seminary. Jerry Johnson.

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And there's actually two Jerry Johnsons that signed it, but you know, well, you might know one or the other. Gordon Lewis, Professor Emeritus, Denver Seminary.

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Paul Martin. Don Matzat. These are names, again, they're fairly well known.

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John Warwick Montgomery. Heard of him before somewhere. Maybe a few people have heard of him.

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Eric Pemmett. Again, well known in the apologetic community. Earl Rodmacher.

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Ron Rhodes. Heard of these folks before. Let's see a few others here.

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Kenneth Talbot. Don Vino. James Walker, Watchman Fellowship.

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And you have myself in there as well. So if you're going to go back to the subject of this open letter and basically say that everybody was wrong and you're the only right ones, what does that have to do?

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Since I didn't write the letter, what does that have to do with what the writer was actually talking about in regards to orthodoxy?

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I don't think Hank wants to say that I've misrepresented orthodoxy because I don't think he's confident enough in his knowledge of orthodoxy to do that.

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So why go there? I don't know. But here is the commentary and here is what was said, and I'm not going to speed it up.

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It's only three minutes, 13 seconds. If I sped it up, it really wouldn't give us much of an advantage now, would it?

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Dr. James White has been very critical of you. I got into it with him on the Facebook page because he was condemning orthodox

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Christianity in Ukraine. I have a home and a family there and know many devout people who would shame me in their simple faith.

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I really don't want to get into a discussion on James White. I would pray for his ministry.

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Unfortunately, I have found all too often that he takes a person and makes a person say precisely the opposite of what that person is saying.

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Now, I just stopped. That's a very serious accusation. That requires substantiation.

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I repudiate it because no substantiation was given whatsoever. And it's a falsehood.

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And I find it personally offensive on the one hand to say I wouldn't pray for his ministry. However, he's lying to you because that's what he's saying.

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If you're going to make this accusation, then do what we do. Play what someone says and document it.

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I'm not going to accuse somebody of putting words and literally making them say the opposite of what they said if I can't back that up.

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And that's what we do here. If we're going to do that, then we back it up. Now, listen to what's given as the backup.

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Perhaps the classic example of that has to do with a group that we investigated for over six years.

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The progeny of Watchman Nee, who died in his prison camp, his protege,

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Witness Lee, was taken out of context in an open letter distributed at least to millions,

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I would think, in which he is made to say precisely the opposite of what he is saying.

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And the way you can know that is his statement is cut off and then the statement by which he qualifies what he is saying is completely neglected.

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It's not just the following paragraphs or pages, but in the immediate context.

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And this is one of the things, I don't want to point this directly at James White.

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But I want to say this to everyone.

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This is not the way to conduct Christian dialogue. And James White wasn't the only one who did that.

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There are many people that signed this open letter where, whether you like him or not,

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Witness Lee, that's not the issue. He was taken out of context. And that is beyond the perventure of a doubt.

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In fact, I pointed this out directly to James White. But the point I want to make, a larger point, is let's not do that to one another.

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We must face in a unified way illiberal liberalism,

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Islam, and many other threats that seek to undo

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Christian civilization or civilization in general. So rather than divide in this manner, let's talk to one another in collegial fashion.

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I think we would get a whole lot farther in this way. If I'd have known that was the next

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Facebook question coming up, I probably wouldn't have addressed it. But I did. We'll be right back in just a few moments with the quote of the day and more answers right here on the

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Bible Answer Man broadcast. Well, you could tell. I mean, once you start reading it, if you don't want to address it, move on to the next one.

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Look, the fact of the matter is that when we did those two, we did that actually two programs the week after Hank's conversion, and we actually reviewed carefully.

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There's no way to use ellipses and dot dot dot when you're playing someone's entire commentary.

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When you're playing what they're saying, you can't dodge that. That's what we did.

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And a lot of people heard those programs, and that had a lot of impact on what ended up happening with BAM being pulled from the majority of the stations it was on.

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And so, I have a feeling that's where the question came from, and it was addressed, and you can say, well,

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I wish I hadn't said that, but you did on your program. Let's just review the facts again.

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I didn't write the letter. I was one of dozens of signers which represented pretty much a who's who list of apologetics ministries in the

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United States. So when you're going to say you make people say the opposite of what they're actually saying, no documentation of that was given.

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He can assert, well, I'm looking at some of these quotes right now. They're entire paragraphs. There aren't any ellipses in them.

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Some have ellipses. Some do not. You'd have to come up with some really wildly strange context to be able to make sense out of any of those statements in an orthodox

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Trinitarian fashion. You really would. But bad as it may, I didn't write the letter, and it had nothing to do with what the

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Facebook person, the hothead on Facebook, the angry guy, the threatening guy on Facebook, had actually said.

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I think what was behind this was, let's take a shot at James White, because James White dared to address the subject of conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.

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Now, those of you who listen to those programs know we didn't focus on Hank. We focused on Eastern Orthodoxy.

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We focused on the difficulty in having meaningful conversations about Eastern Orthodoxy in the

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West because of the very different ways of thought. Hank cannot escape the fact that he has become the

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Eastern Orthodox answer man, and that he is trying to answer as best he can and seems to understand from an

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Eastern Orthodox perspective. And that's not what CRI was built upon.

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I don't think Walter Martin would appreciate that by any stretch of the imagination. But since we dared to address that by allowing

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Hank to speak for himself, by another words, doing the exact opposite of what he just accused me of doing, I think that's where that particular

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Facebook thing came from. And again, I think I know internally the origin of that particular question.

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And there probably was some discussion of that after the episode was over, I have a feeling.

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So we point this out simply, you know, it's a serious accusation, but no documentation was provided for it.

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And it is a shame to see what we're seeing going on at CRI, but we certainly would hope and pray that the diagnosis given ends up being something better than what it is and that the radiation treatment will be of use in that particular situation.

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Changing gears here, some of you saw that an article came out last week.

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I was, where was I? Oh, I was going down to Tucson.

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And so when I saw it, I said, I have an idea who might be the best person to address this particular issue.

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And so I dropped a note to my daughter, Summer. And Summer has a webcast called

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Sheologians, and well, she's half of the Sheologians. And I let her know about Jonathan Merritt's article titled, this is

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May 2nd, Why I'll Take Courageous Jen Hatmaker Over Her Cowardly Critics Any Day.

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Now, I knew that Summer, one of her first videos that sort of went viral was her rather off the cuff video response to Jen Hatmaker.

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When Jen Hatmaker, now I will confess, Summer and I inhabit different corners of the cultural landscape.

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I'm in the quiet backwaters. And, you know,

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I'm not, no, no, I don't, not really. You know, I'm not quite that conservative.

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But anyway, I had, I had never heard of Jen Hatmaker. Just not, just not a part of my realm.

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And I do know who Jonathan Merritt is. And this is on Religion News, by the way.

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And so I started reading through this article. And I said, I, I would love to respond to this, but I'm traveling.

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And let's, let's send it, let's send it

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Summer's direction. And, oh, I know who that was, but I knew that would happen.

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I was on the air. And unfortunately, it's a private number. I have no way of returning the phone call.

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But oh, well, that's, that's how it works. So she wrote a, just a wonderful response.

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In fact, it was so good that Jonathan Merritt was directed to it.

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And he tweeted to her and said, I disagree with so much of what you said, but I must confess you're an awesome writer.

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So that's nice. But it doesn't change the fact that, once again, it points to the tremendous division that exists in what was once called evangelicalism.

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Jonathan Merritt wrote, does someone somewhere have a list of the nastiest character assassination attempts committed since the advent of the internet?

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And if so, how many of the top spots are occupied by evangelical Christians? I think of evangelical pastor,

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John Piper, actually believing that he had the authority to excommunicate then pastor Rob Bell via Twitter, because Bell questioned traditional notions of hell.

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I think of the backlash against World Vision's Richard Stearns when his organization announced it would hire gay

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Christians. I think of Jerry Falwell Jr. insinuating Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore was a closet liberal because Moore refused to support

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Donald Trump. Now, I stop for a moment and just go, there are so many category conflicts in what was just stated there that it almost makes me stutter.

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The theological altitude between John Piper and Rob Bell is astounding, and that's a different issue than World Vision redefining the term

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Christians so you can have such a thing as gay Christians, which evidently already

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Jonathan Merritt has jumped that particular shark a long time ago. And then the idea throwing in politics with someone like Jerry Falwell Jr.

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If you can't see a difference between John Piper recognizing the theological problem with Rob Bell and Jerry Falwell going after Russell Moore in a political sphere.

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Mixing these together is to someone like me who seeks to work with appropriate category distinctions and logic and things like that.

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Again, I talk about dragging fingernails across chalkboards, but that analogy unfortunately only dates you and just doesn't work for anybody anymore unless you're very old as I am.

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So anyway, Jonathan Merritt just drove me nuts there.

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And now I think of the way countless evangelicals have dragged author Jen Hatmaker to the stocks.

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I wonder if there'd be any way to warn people.

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You know, if you really believe that a collapse on marriage and human sexuality is a surrender of the lordship of Jesus Christ to be able to define what is important in this world and what is true and what is false, then how else?

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If we respond at all, what would be acceptable, I wonder, to Jonathan Merritt?

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What would be acceptable? That's the question I would like. What would not be interpreted as taking someone to the stocks?

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Or are we just not allowed to believe that anymore? We're just not allowed to believe that Jesus actually addressed these issues and this is a gospel issue, it's an authority issue, it's a definitional issue of the faith.

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Does that just simply have to be abandoned now? That's what I'm wondering because it seemed to me that what

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John Piper did with Rob Bell was in the definitional area. What Jerry Falwell was doing was in the area where I would have to be considered a liberal.

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Ha ha ha. Anybody considers me a liberal, well, anyway. Hatmaker's original sin is that she broke ranks with evangelical powers that be on same -sex relationships.

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No, it wasn't a matter of evangelical powers that be, it's a matter with the entire history of the

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Christian church up until 30 years ago. Why not,

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Mr. Merritt, why not put it that way? Because that's the historical fact. That's the reality.

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You have to, to take the position you're taking, you have to buy into the idea that the church has been wrong about this from the start.

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You have to buy into the stuff and basically say, you know what, everything's up for grabs.

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But the reality is she broke ranks with the position of the

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Christian church and I've been very open in debating anybody, well, not anybody, but anybody with some type of credentials on this very issue and we haven't lost the debate.

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You say, well, you know, that's all subjective. Okay, you go watch the debate with Barry Lynn, you go watch the debate with John Shelby Spong, Graham Codrington.

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It's pretty straightforward. It's not a matter of arrogance to say we haven't lost any of those debates and I am absolutely confident that we wouldn't as long as we're properly prepared.

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The foundational, Jesus's view of law, Jesus's view of morality, the role of Leviticus 18 and 20 in the entire law of God, Romans 1, 1

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Corinthians 6, anybody who could defend the

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Trinity in all the contexts that I've defended the Trinity and against everyone from the

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Muslims and the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons all the way to, you know, whoever,

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INC now, black Hebrews are like, don't worry, I'm not trying to go for how many different weird groups can you debate.

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That's not, no, I don't want to go there. It has been funny to see all the Unitarians running through the internet now that the

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INC debate is taking place. Well, I want my shot again too. I want to get a chance to do this. I think of one older Unitarian who's already had his shot and a couple times actually, and he's back out there again and let's do this again.

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Anyway, anyone who has used meaningful exegetical interpretation of the

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Bible to defend the Trinity that would apply the same exegesis to this subject would come to the same conclusions.

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I'm not having to come up with some new way. It's just simply doing meaningful exegesis.

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And so, if you do that, you're going to come to the same conclusion. Is that allowed anymore? What happens when the consistent exegesis of the text of the

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Bible leads you to the conclusion that homosexuality is opposed to God's sovereign decree?

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That it is not life -affirming, it is life -denying, it is a part of the culture of death, it's destructive of the individual, it is a perversion of God's good gift of sexuality.

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If that is the consistent interpretation of the scripture, and I believe that it is, then this is a definitional issue.

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It's not something we can go, whatever. In an interview with me last

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October, Hatmaker stated that if she found out one of her children were gay, she would love that child just the same.

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If an LGBT friend of Hatmaker's got married, she said she would attend the wedding, and Hatmaker said she believed LGBT relationships could be holy.

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Okay, we love our children even when they're sinners. I would not attend a wedding that profanes marriage as Jesus himself defined it.

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That's a choice between following Jesus and following culture. That's what it is.

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Jesus said that God blesses one kind of union, and that's the union he blesses.

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And Hatmaker said she believed LGBT relationships could be holy. The only thing, the only way I can define holy is in light of God's revelation, and God's revelation does not define relationships that are specifically opposed to his will, to his design, that are rebellious relationships as holy.

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You have to accept an entire pile of presuppositions that were not derived from scripture, but are derived from other sources, and then overthrow the central aspects of biblical morality to come up with that conclusion.

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In the interview, Hatmaker did not deny a line in the Apostles' Creed. If you do not believe that Jesus' teaching on the family and sexual morality and the centrality of God's law is normative for all

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Christians at all times, do you really believe that he is Lord of all things? He's true God of true God? If your argument here is that this is secondary, my response is, hey,

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I get it that a lot of Christians get focused on secondary issues and add them to the gospel.

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I get it. I've got a long history now, and it's lost me a lot of friends of sitting behind this microphone and pointing out how often conservative believing

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Christians are guilty of expanding the definition of the gospel, bringing a lot of adiaphora in, and defining the gospel on the basis of those things.

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Is this the same thing? No, it is not. No, it's not.

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Why is it the same thing? Because it is a gospel issue. It's not just a, well, if they're consistent, then this, if they're consistent, then this, and pushing it back.

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You have direct, specific, not only law, unquestionable law that goes all the way through the

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Old Testament. There is no possible way for someone to say that a first -century

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Jewish believer had any ideas whatsoever that homosexuality was just fine when it comes to the

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Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketuvim. There is a consistent testimony all the way through.

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I've dealt with the text in Leviticus, Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, done so rather in depth.

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Go to Sermon Audio, go to PRBC, the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, look up the sermon series on God's law.

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We didn't skip anything. We didn't dodge anything. We didn't duck anything. We know what the

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Old Testament says. And when you come to the New Testament, there is a, you end up destroying the foundations to do what pro -homosexual people are doing in trying to get around the

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New Testament teaching. It's so obvious that Paul can upbraid the

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Corinthians for allowing an incestuous relationship to exist in their midst because it's right there in the scriptures.

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What scriptures? The same scriptures in Leviticus within a few verses. It's plain.

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It's clear. Don't sit there and tell me Jesus didn't say anything about homosexuality because he did.

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He said, anyone that teaches you to abandon even the least letter of this law is least in the kingdom of heaven.

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His was not a destruction of the law, but a fulfillment of the law, which does not change the holy character of the law.

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So, this is a very, very important issue. This issue takes us right back to we have

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Jesus's specific teaching, Matthew chapter 19, about what marriage is and what male -female relationships are about.

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We have the apostles teaching in Romans chapter 1. And just look at the dozens, dozens of excuses that have been come up with for Romans chapter 1, none of which make a lick of sense.

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And many homosexual writers offering two or three of them in the same book, which are contradictory to one another. It's great.

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It is definitional. So, I go on. In the interview, Hattmer did not deny a single line in the Apostles' Creed. She did not promote a historical heresy unless the recontextualization of Jesus's teaching into some new context would include that.

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She merely claimed that after a careful study of the scriptures, well, forgive me for pointing out that I have yet to encounter someone on the other side who, in that careful study of the scriptures, did so without a bias that would lead them to anti -Trinitarian heresies or anti -Resurrection heresies or false soteriological heresies, whatever else it might be.

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In fact, interestingly enough, when you look at the people who collapsed on that issue, they end up doing all those other ones eventually, too.

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She had arrived at a different understanding of same -sex relationships. Well, I'm sorry, I've probably read at least as many books as you have, maybe more, from the other side on this subject.

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I really do. I don't like reading them, but I read them. I have yet to find anyone who gave me even a moment of going, oh, wow, that does seem consistent.

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No, I haven't had it. But this was enough to outrage some conservative Christians. Lifeway Christian Stories even banned her books from their shelves.

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Well, once the conservative Christian mafia, blacklisted hat maker and evangelical blogosphere got done slapping her wrists red, the controversy died down for a while, but then last month, hat maker penned a moving article on her website titled

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My Saddest Good Friday in Memory When Treasured Things Are Dead. In it, she explained the soul crushing journey she was forced to take from being on the wrong side of religion.

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And then we have, you know, it's not the first time we've seen this.

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Those who are seeking to convince us to abandon biblical standards of ethics, morality,

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God's law, what's right, what's wrong, have recognized what works in our culture, and it is victim mentality.

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Everybody wants to feel badly for the victim. We all want to empathize with the victim.

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And so now Jen Hatmaker is the victim. I suffered the rejection, the fury, the distancing, the punishment, and sometimes worst of all, the silence.

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I experienced betrayal from people I thought loved us. I felt the cold winds of disapproval and a devastating sting of gossip.

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I received mocking group texts about me accidentally sent to me. Oh, we were just laughing with you, they said upon discovery, an empty, fake, cowardly response.

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It was a tsunami of terror. 100 things died. Some of them are still dead.

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Some are struggling for life, but I don't know if they will make it. This turned out to be a fatal mistake for Hatmaker.

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The evangelical aristocracy had sent her away after all, and she was daring to stick around and not just stick around, but actually call out the institutional machine that has become remarkably efficient at pulverizing its uncompliant members.

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Well, a couple things. There is no question that people who call themselves

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Christians of every stripe can be absolutely some of the most mean -spirited people you will ever meet.

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It's my experience. I'm experiencing it right now, especially over the past couple years.

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Them Calvinists, I'm not sure I want to be around too many of them, but I've come to understand that if you primarily allow your emotions to be your main mechanism of thought, you can be a very unhappy person in this world, and you're not going to last in ministry for any period of time at all, and it's not consistent for a

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Christian to take that perspective. If we believe that God has spoken, if we believe that God has spoken in His Son, if we believe

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God has spoken in His Word, then we are called to be faithful to what He has revealed to us, and it doesn't matter if we live in a day where there is a still a large formal external church that does not in and of itself truly represent the body of Christ, and that means that we will encounter and join with that we live in a day of judgment so that a strong discerning church,

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I've been saying this for decades, a strong discerning church is a blessing upon any culture or nation.

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If this nation is under God's judgment, then you're going to have a church that is not going to be strong and discerning.

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So what in the world are we doing here trying to encourage people to stand fast and to discern?

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Because that's what we're called to do. It doesn't matter whether popular or not, you do what you're called to do.

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You call people to be faithful even if you live in a day where it is not God's intention to bless your efforts with tremendous success.

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You're still called to be faithful to what you've been called to be faithful to. Many people in other cultures who have lived under the attack of secularism, communism, whatever else it might be, they already know this.

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They've been living with that for a long time. We're just descending into that, and that's why we're just now starting to struggle with these issues.

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So I fully understand betrayal by friends and just the political nastiness that can take place and all that kind of stuff.

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If you're in the ministry for any period of time at all, yeah, you're going to run into that stuff.

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None of that changes the fact that if you decide to join with the revolution against God's ordained structure of the family, the goodness of being male, the goodness of being female, the goodness of being a husband, and that's for men only by the way, the goodness of being a wife, that's for women only by the way, the goodness of being a mother, that's that woman only thing again, father, men only thing.

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If you join the revolution in deprecating those things and fundamentally attacking those things, don't get surprised if those of us who continue to recognize that those are things defined by the very lordship of Christ don't really want to have anything to do with you anymore.

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This is not an issue where it's like, well, it's one of the adiaphora.

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It's a it's take or leave a type thing. No, we're talking about absolutely fundamental things here.

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Absolutely fundamental things here. Definitional things and being able to distinguish between adiaphora, the things that are non -definitional, the things that do not define what the faith is, they may be important, but they're not definitional and things that are, that seems to be one of the skills that is lacking amongst many today, lacking amongst many, no two ways about it.

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So what I hear here in these words, would anyone need to be furious with Jen Hatmaker?

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Well, I suppose if someone had invested in her and invested in her work, thinking that she would never compromise in this way, so much so that they end up losing a great deal of what they had invested and hoped for in the future from her,

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I suppose I could see a basis for some kind of anger. But this idea that Jonathan Merritt is putting forward here, that there is this evangelical cabal out there.

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I'm not sure what night they meet on, but maybe it's all by Skype or something.

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I don't know. But there's this great evangelical cabal that just acts as this,

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I'm sorry, there isn't any such thing. And in fact,

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Jen Hatmaker could find herself a lot of corners, a lot of niches out there where people would just love her and embrace her.

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Now, I realize those nominations that do that all tend to die over time. But there are lots of places like that still.

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They're out there. And we only have a few minutes left, but evangelical

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Twitter pushed back, evangelical Facebook cried out, and then Christianity Today, America's leading evangelical publication, jumped into the ring.

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An article titled, Who's in Charge of the Christian Blogosphere? Tish Harrison Warren sounded the alarm about a crisis of women bloggers who freely share their ideas online without reporting to an institutional authority.

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The horror. And who did Warren submit to the Court of Public Opinion as Exhibit A?

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You guessed it, Jen Hatmaker. Well, isn't it interesting? I mentioned that Summer responded and the theologians webcast has an authority over it.

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And Joy and Summer do not claim to be ministers of the gospel.

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They don't claim to be preachers, have the authority of elders, anything like that.

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And if they go flying off the rails, there's their elders.

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And of course, I might have something to say, too. But I don't understand why that would be a problem.

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It seems that Jonathan Merritt is into the individual Christian thing, rather than the, well, it seems like a

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New Testament thing about elders and having authority structures and things like that.

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So you don't just run off on your own someplace, you know? Anyway, he says, speaking of Warren's argument, in practice, it lacked legs.

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I can barely think of a healthy model of an evangelical institution on the internet today. Well, everybody on the internet is supposed to be in a church, aren't they?

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I mean, the church isn't on the internet, but I would think that would be something.

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And then check this out. If this doesn't tell you where Mr. Merritt's coming from, consider the Gospel Coalition for a moment.

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They're a massive blogging network that has a formal institutional structure that purports to provide oversight and accountability, and they have been to put, frankly, a raging dumpster fire online.

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Oh, and then this one, I saw that Doug Wilson responded to this. They allow unhinged racists like Doug Wilson to have access to their community.

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They allowed a post on their site calling Christians to develop a stronger gag reflex when talking about gay people.

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Remember what that was? I think that was Thabiti Anyabwili. I think that's

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Thabiti. And he was, what he was actually talking about was the appropriateness of there being a natural revulsion to the perversion of the gift of sex.

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And he was right about that. He was right about that. It wasn't when talking about gay people, it was talking about the reality that the perversion of God -ordained sexual activity that is found in homosexuality should not be something we go, to each his own.

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Anyway, it goes on and on and on.

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And I didn't have time to write up a response because it would have gone 14 ,000 different directions.

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But thankfully, Summer did a great job. You can look up her blog article on Sheologians in responding to this entire article.

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But this is the kind of thing that we are going to be facing if we knowingly and graciously stand firm.

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Unfortunately, there are many people who stand against homosexuality, who stand against the redefinition of marriage, but they do so not because they have thought through why these things are so important or what the biblical basis is.

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It's out of just a unthinking revulsion or bigotry.

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And hence, it can never be gracious. Finding that line, this is where people are struggling.

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This is where people are struggling. Finding that line between compromise and standing firm.

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Not everyone's going to draw that line the exact same place, but there are some things that simply cannot be abandoned.

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And there are going to be some people on this side of the line that are going to be more willing to have conversations with a wider spectrum of people than people over on this side.

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I get that. But we can all tell difference between there being variations and a full -scale capitulation.

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Yeah, it's a day when we as Christians must think we must have a clear

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Christian worldview. We must have a clear understanding of God's law, how to interpret scripture, how to be able to recognize errors in interpretation of scripture.

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It is not our great grandparents' era any longer, any stretch to imagine. It's just, it's changed.

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A lot of thinking to do, a lot of serious work to do. And hopefully, we try to help people along those lines.

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So with that, we will wrap up today's program. Lord willing, have one more before I head overseas for a lengthy period of time.

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And who knows what we'll be needing to tackle by then. But thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. You're on the