Social Justice Fruit, Platt Stepping Down?, Acts 29, Pro-Life Industry Fails, Huntington Beach

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LoveIsNotSilent

it's pronounced, woosta. great content!

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00:01

We're live now on the Conversations That Matter podcast.

00:04

It is Friday afternoon.

00:05

It is a hot Friday afternoon.

00:07

We got like a heat wave coming through.

00:10

I don't know what it is.

00:11

We're in New York, but what you think, it starts to get a little cold this time of year.

00:16

In fact, I think I said that like a week or two ago and nope, nope, it's decided to go back to some of the hottest days of the year, which is great if you wanna go to a waterfall, which I did the other day.

00:27

There's a waterfall about an hour from my house.

00:29

I drove there.

00:30

I got wet.

00:32

I went underneath it and I just stayed there for a while.

00:35

It felt so good.

00:36

There's nothing like that.

00:37

That might be the best feeling.

00:39

I'm not sure.

00:39

That might be the best feeling though that God created when there's a hot day and you have a nice waterfall.

00:47

But anyway, enough about my appreciation for waterfalls.

00:50

We got some conversations that matter, some serious things to talk about today.

00:55

And there's so many things to be honest with you.

00:57

I had a little bit of a difficult time even thinking through right before I decided to do this today, what I was gonna talk about.

01:03

So I have a whole list.

01:04

It's gonna be a news roundup.

01:07

One of the things I just wanna update everyone on personally well, it's not just personal.

01:12

It's bigger than that, I suppose.

01:15

I've been doing a lot of research this week on classical liberalism.

01:19

And part of it is for, I've been in the process of writing a book now for a while.

01:24

And it's, I don't wanna say I have writer's block.

01:26

It's just that it's not coming quite as easily to me.

01:31

It's been harder work for me.

01:32

And I think I know why, because I wanna write on a positive vision.

01:37

It's easy to criticize, right? Well, easier to criticize, to look at, for example, social justice and say, well, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong, right? And of course, we've talked about on this podcast, alternatives, what the Bible teaches on justice.

01:51

We've talked about American history a little bit and some of the assumptions that I think were formed through the biblical law being distilled through British common law.

02:02

And so we have some of this stuff, but I have to organize all of that and figure out what is it I really wanna say about a positive vision? We know 2020 was bad.

02:11

We know social justice was bad.

02:13

And really what's happening right now are a lot of guys are writing their books on what's the alternative.

02:21

And it needs to happen.

02:22

This is a conversation that needs to take place.

02:25

The fear I have, I suppose, is that in the Christian world, in the reformed Christian world in particular, there are some very firm lines you're not supposed to cross, to write outside of, so to draw outside of.

02:39

And it's really clicked in my mind this week more than at any other time.

02:43

I've always known this.

02:44

Since before even the social justice thing started, I've known this about Christianity as far as the upper levels of evangelicalism, that it's not just that there was a woke thing.

02:55

Like before the woke thing, there was like something else going on.

02:59

And what I see sometimes is people will, they'll try to like figure out what's wrong with evangelicalism, right? What's wrong with Christianity? Well, it's we're not post-millennial or we're not pre-millennial or we're not baptizing babies or we are baptizing babies or it's that pietism or it's right, right.

03:13

All these things get thrown around there.

03:16

I've never been satisfied with any of that.

03:18

I've always thought, yeah, that there's something else in the water.

03:21

And I think I'm closer now to understanding what I was sensing.

03:26

So I've been studying classical liberalism and boy, you start reading some books on classical liberalism and you just start recognizing the assumptions you grew up with.

03:37

You just start thinking, oh yeah, this is, but once you like are able to transcend a little bit, your own upbringing and it's not, I'm not saying my parents did this, but it's just everyone.

03:51

Everyone was kind of raised in this classical liberal mindset that valued individual autonomy.

03:57

To some extent, free markets were the mechanism for alleviation of poverty, right? Some of this stuff isn't actually all that bad, but behind all of it was this belief that individual liberty equals autonomy.

04:12

And it was a shift actually from the belief before that liberty was something that was inculcated into people, conditioned into people so that, by tradition, so that they could be good citizens, they could take responsibility.

04:28

And now it's more of just license to do what you want.

04:32

And from that, we've really created a whole mechanism of that's grown the government, that's, it does actually a lot of the things social justice claims that it does, like promotes peace, promotes democracy, promotes diversity, promotes equality.

04:54

All of this stuff is part of classical liberalism too.

04:58

There are differences between that and social justice in that mostly social justice is about trying to bring about equality of outcome, whereas classical liberalism wants equality of opportunity, but both are actually flawed if you really think about it.

05:13

And I used to even say, I probably said on this podcast before, well, equality of opportunity is not bad.

05:18

And a few years ago, actually, I stopped saying that.

05:21

I don't know if I said it on the podcast or not, but I stopped saying that.

05:23

I knew there was something wrong with that, and now I'm understanding it more.

05:27

But there's differences, like inequality is probably one of the most fundamentally human things.

05:34

Like we all have differences between us, and those differences mean something.

05:39

So you can't create a system to adjust for all of those and get us back into a state of nature where we don't have these chains from society and from other things keeping us down.

05:50

And so anyway, anyway, there's so much I could say and I'm rambling, but it's fascinating.

05:54

And I will have a lot more to share with you.

05:57

I don't know if you noticed, but American Reformer published the piece that I did on, I think it's called Conservative Nazi Hunters.

06:04

If you wanna look it up, American Reformer.

06:06

And someone asked me earlier this week, John, where's the article you talked about on the podcast, but where's the article? That's where it is, it's at American Reformer.

06:13

So you can go check that out.

06:14

Created a little bit of a stir yesterday, I suppose.

06:17

So anyway, hello, everyone.

06:19

Hello, everyone.

06:19

Violet's with us.

06:20

Hey, Violet, how you doing? Abigail's with us.

06:24

We got Mark the Craftsman with us.

06:27

Mark is posting a lot of videos on Twitter about his craftsmanship.

06:31

Very interesting.

06:33

Anyway, it's good to see all of you here streaming.

06:36

Jonathan Grant.

06:38

And then we have for 199 on Von Breyhoff off GoHard.

06:43

I hope I'm saying that right.

06:44

It's a nice rainy day here in Northern Indiana.

06:47

Indiana, okay.

06:48

So we have people streaming from all over the place.

06:50

Corny Wall is here, or Connie, did I say corny? Sorry, it's a little bitty font on the right side of my screen before I blow it up.

06:59

So anyway, Connie, hello, good to see you.

07:03

So anyway, let's get into some of this stuff because there's just a lot of stuff to talk about.

07:06

And I'm not gonna talk about classical liberalism.

07:08

I just wanna give you some news items, but I just wanna let everyone know who supports me, who gives on Patreon, who prays for me.

07:14

Whatever you do, people donate.

07:17

All of that I appreciate, and that's part of what I've been doing with my time.

07:22

So let's see, where do we wanna start? Let's start, it's hard, it's hard to know.

07:29

Let's start maybe with Acts 29, is that good? We'll start with Acts 29, okay.

07:34

Acts 29 is a ministry, I think Mark Driscoll founded it.

07:37

Now, Matt Chandler, I think, I don't know if he's still the president, but he was or is involved.

07:43

And we've talked about it before.

07:45

It's a fairly, sorry, I'm distracted.

07:49

Connie says, I've been called corny before.

07:51

Yeah, sorry about that.

07:53

I've been called a lot of things too.

07:55

Anyway, Acts 29 is this church planning ministry.

08:00

And they pretty much, I'll say they've gone somewhat woke.

08:03

And if you go to their website right now, there is this talk from August 21st, 2023, so not long ago, walking with Jesus among our LGBTQIA plus friends.

08:13

I mean, they even put the IA plus on there.

08:16

It's just, you know, full inclusion here.

08:19

And there's like a six minute video.

08:21

And the guy who wrote this, I guess, is Mike Sullivan, who is a pastor in Worchester, is that how you say it, Worchester? Worchester, I don't know, Worchester.

08:33

All right.

08:34

I don't live in Massachusetts.

08:35

I don't know if I've been to Worchester, but anyway, Worchester, Massachusetts.

08:39

And he is the pastor at Emmaus City Church.

08:44

And so this is on the Acts 29 website though.

08:47

This isn't his church website.

08:49

And I want to give you woke preacher clips.

08:51

I don't know if it was woke preacher clips.

08:53

Someone did an edit.

08:58

They just gave like a short clip.

08:59

I want to just show this short clip to you.

09:01

This is what Acts 29 is putting out there right now, if you can believe it.

09:06

That phrase of walking with Jesus among our beloved LGBTQ friends, family, and neighbors.

09:14

So you were just saying that there's often a sense of like, either we're going to separate ourselves or we're going to take Jesus to them.

09:23

How is it different at a practical level to consider walking with Jesus among them? Yeah, I think a key thing is, is there's so many beautiful ways in which God already knows their story, but we don't.

09:34

And so some of them are going to have a lot of chert in terms of the ways that sadly they've been confronted or marginalized or ostracized.

09:46

And so being among them means, do they see where we mourn with those who mourn? And in a way, are we trusting that the Holy Spirit will not only know how to listen well and be slow to speak, as James tells us, and quick to listen, but also in the moments we may have the privilege to speak the gospel, we'll be able to connect to those areas where maybe they don't see Jesus, but he's still trying to intersect and bring healing in ways that only he can.

10:12

I got to say, snazzy style, right? That's like the Acts 29 uniform.

10:19

That is the sort of young hip reformed uniform right there.

10:23

You got the man bun, you got the beard, you got the shirt sleeves rolled up to show the tattoos with the print on the T-shirt.

10:32

It's just, it's a beautiful thing.

10:34

But the content here is, man, it seems perhaps innocuous because it's, he's not saying homosexuality is good or bad or right, what he's saying is though that we have, there has to be this posture of empathy to start off with, that they've been through some stuff.

10:58

If you're on this spectrum, and by the way, this isn't just homosexual.

11:03

Remember this is, they included all the letters, right? If you are on one of those, in one of those lifestyles, behaviors, you are to be treated in a sense differently because you've been through some different set of experiences that people need to have compassion on, right? And someone pointed out, I think Fortestia put it out there.

11:26

They did an edit video where they just substituted.

11:30

I don't think I have the clip that, I don't think I played the clip.

11:33

It was from later on in the video, but wherever he's talking about homosexual or LGBT, neighbors, friends, family, they decided to put in white supremacy instead just to see if it worked.

11:47

It was kind of funny because you hear this guy just tripping all over himself to normalize white supremacy, to say that, hey Christians, don't just ostracize these people.

12:00

You wanna really understand where they're coming from and take things slow and realize they might be turned off by the church.

12:06

And you need to show them basically that you're different than those other churches that they've heard about or been in and that kind of thing.

12:14

So this is just further illustration that Acts 29 is compromised.

12:20

And we saw this, what, a week ago, we were looking at the Church of the Nazarene and how that was the first step.

12:27

That was the initial thing for them to start going off the deep end to the point now that they're even questioning, hey, can we perform gay marriages in this church? I mean, a church, a pastor is disciplined for that in California, but there's a lot of backlash over it.

12:40

How did they get there? Well, it started with this kind of stuff.

12:42

It started with the normalization of that sin and carving out a category for these sins, this range of sins, and saying that that's different than these other sins.

12:54

So you have like a hierarchy of sin.

12:56

There's like acceptable and unacceptable sins.

12:59

And this becomes more of an accepted.

13:01

They would say, oh, we don't accept it.

13:02

But the thing is they're catering to it.

13:05

They're viewing it as a normal kind of thing.

13:11

And those lifestyles, those choices, those identities, those sin patterns, whatever you want to call them, they are all deserving of compassion somehow.

13:25

Like you wouldn't say that about other sins.

13:27

You wouldn't do that because you know that sin is not deserving of compassion.

13:32

You might look at some of the consequences of sin maybe, but you wouldn't say that, well, that person's homosexual.

13:37

Therefore, we must have compassion on them because they're going through a lot or they deserve something from the church or they were turned off by the church and we have to rescue them from that or some kind of bending over for them too in ways you wouldn't for a liar, let's say, or a thief or an adulterer.

13:58

Now, would you do that? That's another one, I think a good one to test it on.

14:01

Would you do that with adulterers? Because that's a sexual sin, right? And it's less unnatural than homosexuality and some of these other things.

14:11

So adultery, would you say, you know what? These adulterers, they've been through a lot and they've been turned off from the church and they've, you know, that sounds ridiculous.

14:19

No, they need to repent, right? So that's what's going on at Acts 29.

14:23

So it's the slow death, I would say, but it could pick up pretty quick if they start allowing this stuff in.

14:30

Now, I wanted to show you all also another clip, but before I do, this is from Thabiti Anabwile, who some of you might remember Thabiti Anabwile.

14:42

I suppose we talked about him more a few years ago, but he's the guy that when I was at Southeastern came from, he was a Nine Marks guy.

14:51

I don't think he's with Nine Marks anymore, but he was.

14:53

And he came to my seminary and basically said that, look, if caring about social justice makes you a liberal, then God himself is a liberal and he wants you to be a liberal.

15:03

That was my first introduction to Thabiti Anabwile.

15:05

I thought, who is this guy telling young pastors to be liberals? Well, if you go to this, this is for, I don't know if I can say this guy's name.

15:16

I'm gonna try, Thierry Kenko, Thierry Kenko.

15:22

He is running for U.S.

15:24

Senate in Texas, okay? And I don't know that he has a lot of support yet.

15:29

Maybe he will get some, but he's running against Ted Cruz, right? And so he puts this advertisement out there and this is what caught my attention.

15:37

It says, look, if we want to change how Washington works, we have to change the people we send here.

15:42

Join me in making the U.S.

15:43

Senate younger, less wealthy, and more diverse.

15:45

Okay, so that's a good thing.

15:46

Like if you're younger, I guess.

15:47

And to me, I'm like, why is that? I mean, I guess if you have politicians falling asleep, like Joe Biden, that could be appealing.

15:55

But yeah, younger in and of itself, though, is not a trait that is desirable necessarily, other than if you're too old, you get senile and you can't do your job.

16:05

Less wealthy, I mean, I don't know.

16:08

I mean, I guess that could be an advantage.

16:10

You're less likely to be part of the elite class if you're less wealthy.

16:13

But more diverse, there you have the DEI stuff that, well, we're gonna have better perspectives, better opinions if we have more diverse people, which is, of course, not true.

16:22

So we've talked about that before, that's social justice stuff.

16:25

Well, I looked at the retweets on this, and I thought, I saw Thabiti Anabwile, who reposted this, said, "'Amen, I'd say there are much needed changes.

16:38

"'We will never have better policy ideas "'if we don't have men and women "'with better character and ideas.'" So I guess better character, more diversity means better character somehow, which is, that's fairly new thinking.

16:49

But then I just was curious.

16:51

I went to the Facebook page for the aspiring candidate for the Senate, Kenko, and this is what he had.

17:02

He said, thankful for my church.

17:04

So I didn't realize how close the connection was.

17:06

Thankful for my church, Anacostia River Church, and my pastor, Thabiti Anabwile, for his willingness and ability to speak on the issues of our time from a biblical perspective.

17:15

Today's sermon is a great example of this.

17:17

This was in 2020 in June.

17:20

And so then you see him, this is later in 2020.

17:23

Here he is with a mask at a Biden-Harris event.

17:27

And he says, and he's pictured here between Joe Biden, and yeah, I guess it's Biden-Harris, but it's Joe Biden and Jill Biden, right? So he's between both of them getting his picture taken.

17:37

He says, proud to have been part of this historic campaign.

17:40

So he campaigned for them, guys.

17:41

He campaigned for Joe Biden.

17:43

It's been a long road since photo one was taken in Columbia, South Carolina.

17:47

So he had been with them for a while.

17:49

While he was attending Thabiti Anabwile's church, he was on the campaign, working for the campaign for Joe Biden.

17:54

And you have the endorsement of Thabiti Anabwile that this is the guy who's got wisdom.

17:59

Think about this.

18:01

He says, I'm honored to have participated tonight as a president-elect, closed his chapter in Wilmington, Delaware, hashtag Biden-Harris 2020.

18:09

Okay, so many of us warned about the political ramifications of the social justice movement.

18:14

I warned in what, 2019, that I think what I had heard, and it was 2018 with Thabiti Anabwile, was going to happen, that what he was doing was creating activists.

18:24

He was telling pastors to go out there and be political activists.

18:27

And I'll tell you what, at the time, I was called all kinds of names.

18:31

I was, not that I'm playing the victim, but it was doubted.

18:35

It was very much in doubt that what I was saying was true.

18:38

And even if I had the quotes, people wouldn't believe me that this was happening at places like Southeastern.

18:43

And that's one of the things that I said at the time was, this is going to produce in the pulpits activists.

18:49

Well, it didn't just produce them in the pulpits.

18:51

You have someone running, challenging Ted Cruz's Senate seat, who was raised up to think politically in Thabiti Anabwile's church.

18:59

That's part of his influence.

19:00

He was on the campaign for Joe Biden at Thabiti Anabwile's church.

19:05

Joe Biden, the radical pro-abortion president, the radical pro-LGBTQIA plus president.

19:13

And he's in good standing.

19:15

He's a wise young man, apparently.

19:19

That's not wisdom.

19:20

That's not wisdom at all.

19:22

And this is the someone that was platformed by Nine Marks, by Southeastern, by the Gospel Coalition, right? So this is where we are.

19:32

And I think it's good to show you, this is the clip that the candidate for Senate, Thierry Tchenko, this is the clip that he, or a clip from the sermon, I should say, that he recommended from Thabiti Anabwile.

19:52

All right, ready? Here it is.

19:54

It's greater than I can bear.

19:57

Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground and from your face, I shall be hidden.

20:04

I shall be a fugitive and wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me.

20:11

Ain't that something? Did you get that? He just murdered his brother.

20:17

And God now has given his judgment and he's whining about his judgment.

20:24

He's complaining the punishment is too much.

20:27

He wants a light sentence.

20:29

He's whining that he's been driven from the face of God, but he wasn't living Coram Deo before the face of God.

20:36

He's worried that someone might do to him what he has just finished doing to Abram.

20:40

He's not repentant, he's self-pitying.

20:44

Listen to me.

20:45

If you listen to the conversations around racial injustice today, you will hear the voice of Cain.

20:53

You will hear people who oppose racial injustice saying, the remedy is way greater than I can bear.

21:00

How many times you hear that in a conversation about reparations? Oh, that's gonna cost too much.

21:06

You'll hear people say, we can't fix this problem or that problem because it's too impractical.

21:14

On and on it goes.

21:17

Beloved, it's just the echo of Cain's voice.

21:20

It's just the echo of a brother refusing to care for the murdered in the streets, pitying himself, worried about his losses when he's standing knee-deep in blood-soaked ground.

21:39

See, beloved, we cannot have the perpetrators of injustice centering themselves in conversations about the redress of injustice.

21:50

We can't have the ones who perpetrate the crime sort of saying, oh, no, that's too much.

21:56

How about this? That's too much.

21:57

No, no, no, they don't get to set those terms.

22:01

We don't want anything in our heart that looks like a response like Cain's.

22:06

So people in the chat are saying that he's got a nice beard.

22:09

Well, he might have a nice beard.

22:13

That's terrible, guys.

22:14

That's terrible.

22:15

That's, and that's what we got used to listening to in 2020, right? This is from 2020 and that's the sermon.

22:23

But I don't even know if I need to critique it.

22:25

I mean, I think everyone who's listening to this podcast knows why that's wrong and understands that it's wrong.

22:30

I mean, yeah, we're knee-deep in the blood-soaked ground of murder and we're just Cain.

22:36

We're just repeating the voice of Cain.

22:37

If we say, you know what, we can't pay for reparations because it's impractical.

22:41

We don't have the money.

22:42

Oh, the voice of Cain, right.

22:45

This is the kind of thing influencing people running as Christians, mind you, for public office from the social justice side, the quote-unquote evangelical social justice side.

22:57

This is the direct product of it.

23:00

This is what the Gospel Coalition has produced is this kind of thing.

23:03

There's examples of it.

23:05

This was, I thought, just a good one to share with you.

23:07

I forego a lot of examples, but this is one time I thought, you know what, I'm gonna show you, this is what's going on.

23:13

Just one specific little example.

23:15

All right, last but not least, I wanna share with you, this is a video from David Platt from McLean Bible Church, and he has an announcement that he's making, and I don't wanna speculate and say, like, I know he's stepping down or anything like that, and I'm wondering if I'd now put that in the title.

23:34

I might've.

23:35

If I did, I probably shouldn't have.

23:37

Hopefully, I put a question mark there because I don't know, but someone sent this to me, and I figured it is part of the news roundup.

23:44

I'll just share with you what David Platt is saying about someone that he's raising up, and this person that he's raising up and putting in a position of pastoral authority, I guess, more authority in the church, is Mike Kelsey.

23:57

Mike Kelsey was the one, if you remember, who was on video, I could've played it, but we don't have time, who basically said that he, it was something to the effect, again, 2020, that he had a problem, like, not thinking of wanting to kill white people, right? Not torch them, I think is the word he used, that he wanted to torch white people.

24:15

So, you know, gray guy, gray guy.

24:17

So here's, and to my knowledge, here's one of the issues with it.

24:21

I don't think he's, I haven't seen any public apologies, so it was a public video, and there's no public apology that I'm aware of.

24:27

Someone let me know if I haven't seen it, and there was an apology, but that guy is the one that David Platt wants to put into a position of leadership.

24:34

Here is David Platt on the subject.

24:38

Lead pastor in our church.

24:41

I am so excited about this for so many reasons.

24:44

Most of all, because our elders and I believe this step will help our church grow in biblical health as we cultivate what we want to be a biblical plurality of leadership among us, and as we grow in our efforts to reach people who are far from the church with the gospel.

25:05

Mike has led on staff at NBC for 16 years, his wife, Ashley, for 18 years.

25:10

They weren't even married when they started serving here, and over all these years, they have shown a deep love for and commitment to this church.

25:21

I don't think we need to play anymore.

25:23

So the main thing I wanted to just say is that lead pastor, that's the lead pastor, that's the prominent role in the church.

25:32

So if Mike Kelsey's stepping into that position, what does that mean for David Platt? That's the question.

25:37

I don't know, but oftentimes when people set up their successor, they make an announcement like this, and then they end up leaving or stepping down or doing something else.

25:46

So that's what's going on at McLean.

25:51

Okay, so we have a couple other things.

25:55

I'm trying to remember.

25:56

I don't even know if I wrote it down.

25:57

I'm trying to remember what I wanted to talk about here.

26:00

Let's talk about, I'll save this for the end because I have something positive to share with you.

26:06

First though, let's talk about this article.

26:09

This is from the New York Times, the New York Times.

26:20

And the title is Abortions Rose in Most States This Year, New Data Shows.

26:25

Now, a lot of people are talking about this.

26:28

I don't want to get into analyzing the data.

26:30

We'll just accept it at face value.

26:33

And I don't want to accept it without caution.

26:35

I mean, it's the New York Times, so I'm always gonna have some caution, but I don't think they have a reason to lie about this necessarily.

26:41

In fact, if overturning Roe had diminished abortions, they would be screaming to high heaven that women's rights are being violated, right? They don't really have an incentive to tell you that, oh, there's more abortions since Roe v.

26:55

Wade being overturned.

26:56

So here's, I don't even know exactly what to attribute this to, but I did have a thought about it.

27:01

And my thought was, at the time, I might've even shared it on here, that the issue with overturning Roe v.

27:13

Wade, and the, or I should say the test from overturning Roe v.

27:19

Wade was going to be whether or not with this new, with the chains off, with the states able to regulate abortion once again, if it was going to make a difference.

27:32

Now, in some states, I'm sure it did make a difference, but it's overall, if you look at the entire country, it did not.

27:42

Apparently abortions went up.

27:44

That's kind of crazy, right? Because the law generally, if you make something illegal, it will, I mean, even prohibition's an example of this.

27:53

People often say, oh, it didn't work.

27:54

Actually, it did.

27:55

We focused on Chicago where there was a lot of violence, and maybe you could look at that and say, well, it didn't work there.

28:00

But overall, alcohol consumption decreased.

28:03

And it's like anything you make illegal, it will decrease.

28:07

Smoking, I've lived in that in my own lifetime.

28:09

Not wearing your seatbelt, right? I mean, there's a lot of things like that.

28:12

In this case, though, there was still many states in which it was legal, and in just about every state, there was, I think, some kind of provision for at least at some stage with some, I think like Oklahoma, if I'm not mistaken, it's at a pretty early stage.

28:29

And of course, in all states, you can order online abortifacients, so that hasn't been really made illegal or taken care of, and they're not even taking that into account, though, in this New York Times article.

28:43

But I'm talking about what we traditionally think of as abortion.

28:47

The states had the freedom to do something about this, and either not, I guess not enough of them did.

28:53

And the ones, I live in one that went further in the other direction.

28:57

They loosened whatever regulations were there, and they became, they poured money into trying to get people to come to New York to get their abortions.

29:05

So they'd be like, come to New York and get away from home, if you live in Indiana or Wisconsin or somewhere where it's harder to get one, Texas, and you can come to New York, and there's federal funding to do it even, and you get your abortion, and it's like a vacation.

29:22

And that's, I mean, I remember being in the airport, was it last year? And I saw an advertisement in the airport on the luggage retrieval belt, right on there, they had advertisements, and there was one for get your abortion in New York.

29:37

So they're trying to advertise to people flying to New York who travel to New York frequently and saying, here's a place you can come.

29:43

So, oh, by the way, I should probably mention, Hannah Smith says that Mike Kelsey publicly apologized, but it wasn't a real apologize.

29:52

I'm sorry if that sounded bad kind of apology.

29:54

Okay, so we won't count that.

29:56

So back to the abortion thing though, I just, I figured I needed to mention that because I didn't wanna leave it out of the video in case he did apologize, and I wasn't reporting on that accurately, or at least giving you that information.

30:08

So this is a test, and the question I have is have we failed the test? Have we failed the test? I don't mean you and me personally, I mean though, as a country, have we shown ourselves overall to be more evil than we thought? Because for years, that was the big excuse, maybe, for some states.

30:31

I always thought just, you know, be a man, right? If you're in a political position, nullify it, say no abortions here, the federal government wants to come in, then they come in, but, you know, take a stand.

30:44

I've always thought that, and maybe it's easier said than done, right? Maybe it's easier for you to say, John, you're not in that position, I get it.

30:50

But now, the federal government can't come in and do any of that because it's totally up to the states, and we still haven't reduced the number of abortions, even after overturning Roe v.

31:07

Wade.

31:07

You have to ask why that is, and I'm sure there's a lot of more analysis that needs to be done, and I'm sure some people are doing it, but that concerns me, that shows that the spiritual health, the moral health of the country as a whole is not good.

31:21

Something is very wrong, and it means we're just as pro-abortion, I suppose, as we've ever been.

31:27

We just happen to have this hiccup, this anomaly, where we had a president for four years who appointed Supreme Court justices, and enough of them that they were able to tip the scales just a little bit.

31:40

But man, if that hadn't have happened, we wouldn't even have Roe v.

31:44

Wade being overturned.

31:45

So I wanted to share that with you, and then I wanted to use that as a springboard for this.

31:50

This is just, I guess, speaking from the heart a little bit.

31:53

I thought about doing a show on this, maybe someday I will, but I just need to mention it now because it bothered me a little.

31:59

So I saw a film the other night at my church, and by the way, overall, I'd say it's a good film, and I really absolutely love the people who worked on this.

32:09

I've met Ray Comfort before, I've met Mark Spence before, multiple times Mark Spence, and they're so nice, they have hearts for the Lord, and I love their stuff for the most part.

32:21

This particular documentary, it was a documentary on abortion, and their documentaries are more interview style and then a gospel presentation, and this wasn't really an exception, it was kind of the same thing.

32:33

But they'll give you some facts along the way and some little presentation and visuals and graphics and things like that.

32:38

And this one, they've done a few on abortion, I think.

32:41

This particular one was, I think it's called, What Is It? And Mark Spence basically goes around, and some of it's pretty creative.

32:47

I mean, he goes to a college campus and tries to get them to sign a petition for afterbirth abortions, and a lot of these students are signing it.

32:54

But he gives basically the argument of, what is it? If you don't know what it is, then you shouldn't kill it, right? And it goes through SLED, size, level of development, environment, degree of dependency.

33:04

These are the differences between, I think Scott Kusendorf came up with that, the differences between who you are now and who you were as an embryo, as a fertilized embryo.

33:14

And so anyway, it was overall good.

33:18

I'd say like 95% of the documentary was really good, and I think it was basic, but it was good for people who don't understand this issue very well.

33:28

But there is this 5% I wanna talk about, and it's not to pick on Living Waters at all.

33:35

It's, because I love those guys again, and I even debated whether I should say this, because there's so few good ministries out there, and they are one of the ones that I can unequivocally endorse and say they're a good ministry.

33:47

But I think what it is, is they have accepted some of the assumptions of the broader pro-life movement, and it pretty much everyone has.

33:56

I'm sure most of us listening right now to the podcast probably have accepted some of these things.

34:01

And what I mean by that is, just think about it this way.

34:05

We have had a problem in Christianity with people like Karen Swallow Pryor, for example, trying to take abortion, the killing of human life, murdering of human life, and put that on the same plane as, or say that it's a pro-life issue along with other issues like racism, right? Ron Sider tried to say smoking, nuclear proliferation, environmental concerns.

34:31

There's all these other pro-life.

34:33

There's about 27 pro-life issues, right? And we have criticized that.

34:36

I have argued against that.

34:38

I've said, look, it's not murder.

34:40

These are quality of life issues, not murdering someone.

34:44

The pro-life movement has been about opposing murder.

34:49

At least that's what I thought.

34:53

One of the things that I truly believe has softened people to accepting this sort of womb to tomb holistic pro-life approach that says murdering children is only one aspect of it is the attempt to tie the pro-life movement to civil rights somehow.

35:15

I understand the temptation to do this.

35:18

I do.

35:19

But what ends up happening is what I saw in this Living Waters documentary.

35:23

You end up bringing up segregation.

35:27

You end up, and also, well, I'm not gonna go there.

35:32

Anyway, well, I'll just keep it on focus here because some of what was said, I don't think was 100% accurate, but you end up going to things like segregation and slavery, which they went to both of them.

35:43

And you make a moral comparison and say, just like, right? And everyone's heard this.

35:48

Just like black people used to not be people in the minds of white people, so the infants today, they're not people in the minds of the general population that's alive and not infants, not in the womb.

36:04

And the issue with that, there are many, but I think the main one that gets under my skin is that what we're talking about when we talk about segregation and slavery are social arrangements.

36:16

We're talking about labor relationships.

36:18

Sure, there's things attached to that that you could say.

36:21

You could say that there was people murdered on the Middle Passage, right? Coming from Africa to the United, you could say that, but slavery itself, segregation itself, we're talking about social arrangements, we're talking about labor relationships.

36:33

And it's fair game to talk about those things, right? And to bring in biblical morality and to have a good discussion about that whole topic.

36:45

But my contention is that is not the same thing as killing, murdering an innocent human life.

36:54

It's not the same thing, okay? It's much worse to directly violate the command to not murder.

37:02

And I've seen a shift in the pro-life arena where materials used to talk a little bit more about Nazi Germany.

37:12

I wish there were more references to like Holodomor or other Soviet atrocities and so forth, but taking examples of actual murder, right? Actual murder.

37:24

And using those examples to parallel and say, you think that's bad? Well, abortion is doing the same thing.

37:29

We're killing innocent life.

37:30

That's good.

37:31

That does awaken the conscience, okay? When you start saying, well, there was an unequal social arrangement here that didn't allow access to certain things and the quality of life wasn't as good for a certain community.

37:45

That's just like abortion.

37:47

What you're doing is you're subverting your own message because you're dumbing it down.

37:52

You're watering it down and you're saying, well, it's like this thing over here that's not as bad.

37:58

I'm sorry.

37:58

It's just not.

37:59

It's not a direct violation.

38:00

It's not murdering.

38:01

If you compared it with euthanasia, if you said euthanasia is a pro-life issue, I would say absolutely.

38:06

Why? Because you're killing an innocent human, right? It doesn't matter what stage.

38:11

In fact, I heard that in Canada that's becoming more and more prevalent.

38:14

And if that's true, it proves that it's not just a matter of what is it.

38:20

It's not just about...

38:21

Now, for some people, that's compelling because they haven't thought through it.

38:24

They're ignorant.

38:25

But I think that we're hardening.

38:27

And maybe this increase in abortions is showing us after Roe being overturned.

38:33

That people are...

38:37

We've had ultrasounds for how many years? We know it's a baby.

38:40

How many people? I don't know what the percentages are, but how many actually know it is a child? It is a human.

38:45

And they say, I'm gonna kill that human anyway, or pay for someone to kill that human.

38:52

That's, I think, what we're dealing with.

38:53

We're staring in the face of evil.

38:55

And I think it's still profitable to ask what is it, right? I think we should still do that to awaken the conscience of people who are ignorant.

39:02

But I think that we are either approaching or we're there in a very different paradigm in which, yeah, it's a human, but okay.

39:12

My convenience, my aspirations, what I wanna do outweighs the life of that child.

39:20

That is moral monstrosity, if you think about it.

39:24

That's the kind of stuff that did lead to dictators wiping out populations.

39:30

Armenian genocide, right? You don't hear that one brought up a lot, do you? The Armenian genocide, and that was horrific.

39:36

Horrific.

39:39

So anyway, I just wanted to, maybe I needed to get that off my chest, but I just wanted to say, look, for those listening, I'm not telling you never to draw any parallels or never to talk about segregation and abortion in this.

39:52

Be careful with it, though.

39:53

Be very careful with it, please, because you don't want to start dumbing down the monstrosity of abortion.

40:00

And it's easy to do this because our society today thinks that was the most evil thing ever.

40:05

Segregation was the most evil thing that America's ever done, maybe other than slavery, right? And not allowing women to vote or something, right? These are the most evil things.

40:14

And much more evil than abortion.

40:16

And so to appeal to people who think that already, I think we want to say, hey, ours is just as bad as that.

40:26

And no, our issue, the issue we're concerned about is not even on the same, it's not fit to be, I think in most, I wouldn't personally, I will put it this way, I wouldn't personally discuss them in the same setting because they just don't fit.

40:40

I understand the whole, they weren't people or whatever.

40:43

Yeah, there were scientific racists and stuff, but that was not, the argument even for slavery wasn't that they weren't people, that they weren't, there was arguments about they didn't have phrenology and so forth, they didn't have the same capacities and so forth.

40:59

And yeah, Darwinism stuff eventually got in there, but most of this stuff was more about culture.

41:06

It wasn't, you didn't see prominent people explicitly making statements like, black people are not people, they are animals.

41:14

I'm sure there are people who believe that, or whatever group you wanna talk about.

41:19

That wasn't like a common thing, at least, and I've studied this stuff, I haven't come across a lot of that.

41:24

You're always told it's there, but if it is, it's in some more obscure passages.

41:30

And certainly the outcome was not, well, let's just murder them, and that's it.

41:39

So yeah, I'll probably get some flack for this, but anyway, I figured I would say, let me just see what people are saying, because I haven't been reading the comments.

41:48

So, hmm, we got a bunch of people weighing in.

41:53

Robert Sparkman says, federal funding for abortion should be illegal.

41:56

I wholeheartedly agree.

41:57

That's one of the problems, is we are continuing to fund it, even overseas.

42:02

Very, very sad.

42:05

Someone asks, what about the term abolition for doing away with abortion? Yeah, I mean, it's okay.

42:11

I mean, it's, I haven't, I guess I'm not in that movement.

42:17

I have friends though, that are, I mean, they're very staunch on, they don't even want me to say pro-life, like that's bad, pro-life, bad.

42:24

And sometimes I'll concede and just say, can we say anti-abortion, is that okay? Because they don't want the incremental approach, they want the immediate abolition approach, and there's no other alternative to that.

42:36

I think I agree with Doug Wilson's takes.

42:39

I think he calls it smash mouth incrementalism, which is basically, you throw everything at this problem.

42:44

If you can get a bill that's incremental, and it's all you can get, you pass it, but you immediately pressure, pressure, pressure.

42:51

This is how the left works.

42:52

We need an abolition bill.

42:54

So I tend to, at least at this point, I tend to agree with that.

43:00

I do think that, yes, they are, the abolitionists, the abortion abolitionists, at least the movement, is trying to play on sympathies from slavery.

43:09

They are trying to make a parallel there and saying, we're just like the abolitionists against slavery.

43:13

And I think I've already given my opinion on that.

43:15

I don't think that's a good road to go down.

43:17

I mean, what we're opposing is so much more evil than that.

43:20

So, and I'm not saying that slavery had a great many iniquities and evils and horrible things attached to it, but American slavery.

43:28

But I do think abortion is far worse, and it's far more directly worse.

43:34

Like it literally is by definition, killing a human.

43:40

Okay, abortion is 100% murder, regardless of how you may try to frame.

43:45

I don't know who this is.

43:47

Confederate Dixie Darling is the name there.

43:50

An abortion leaves an emotional scars and sometimes physical scars.

43:53

There are many people who want to have children to love and cherish, that is true.

43:56

And you know what? It's about $30,000 to adopt a child in this country, which is, that's what we need to be talking about too, is why in the world is it that expensive and how do we get it, how do we get it down? So someone disagrees.

44:09

Gerard Perry, I think slavery is a good analogy though.

44:11

It's not perfect, but no analogy is.

44:14

I think there are perfect analogies.

44:16

I think the Armenian genocide, I think euthanasia, medically assisted suicide, I mean, just plain old murder.

44:23

I mean, I think there's plenty of good analogies that are exactly parallel.

44:26

They're talking about murdering humans, which is what we're talking about here.

44:31

Read some of William Kalper's.

44:33

I think I have read William Kalper.

44:35

I think I've recognized that name, but if I did, it was a while ago.

44:37

So I don't remember anything right this second.

44:42

Okay, and yeah, well, I'll just show this one too, because Violet China, she says she disagrees with the incremental tactics.

44:49

I understand that.

44:51

I understand, because I think too, we've been, the pro-life industry, and it is somewhat of an industry, they have been telling us for years they're gonna ban it.

45:01

And if we just had that Roe v.

45:03

Wade out of the way, we're gonna ban it.

45:04

And it's like, you wonder whether they have any intention, some of them at least, of actually banning it.

45:11

So I think that does persuade.

45:12

There are the days where I get disgusted by that stuff.

45:15

And I'm just like, let's just go in there.

45:18

And of course, we want an abolition bill.

45:21

That's the goal.

45:23

The question is how many steps, or do we have to take steps in order to get to that point? And then a counterbalance to that, Dustin says, careful not to let the perfect get in the way of the better.

45:35

So there's your counter.

45:36

This wasn't meant to be an abolitionist versus incrementalist argument, but it's turning out to be.

45:43

All right, well, I hope that was helpful for some of you.

45:45

Well, at least maybe spurred you to think about it, and hopefully it doesn't make any, if anyone walks away from this and says, well, John was really soft on slavery and segregation, then they haven't listened to what I'm saying, because that's not what I'm saying.

45:57

And that's a misrepresentation.

46:00

I am so hard on abortion that I don't want anyone to get confused and to think that there's a range of pro-life issues out there that don't include murder.

46:10

Okay, that's what I'm trying to say.

46:13

All right, well, on that note, I have one more positive thing, hopefully, to share with you.

46:18

And this is a little encouraging, I suppose.

46:21

Huntington Beach, California, ironically, where Ray Comfort actually is, Daily Pilot, so this is the LA Times, I guess, an outlet of the LA Times, they report that Huntington Beach City Council changes human dignity policy, censors council member.

46:36

I'll read the story.

46:37

It says, a Huntington Beach City Council has remained fiercely divided, introducing a new policy on human dignity on Tuesday night.

46:44

The amended policy was approved by a four to three vote with Mayor Tony Strickland, Mayor Pro Tem Gracie Vandermark, and Councilman Casey McKeon and Pat Burns voting in favor.

46:55

Councilman Dan Kalmick and Councilman Natalie Moser and Rhonda Bolton voted against.

47:01

The policy came from an ad hoc committee that consisted of Vandermark, McKeon, and Burns.

47:07

At six paragraphs, it is much shorter than the original policy on human dignity, which was first adopted in 1996 and last amended in 2021 by previous council.

47:16

The new document no longer states that the city condemns hate incidences and hate crimes.

47:21

Good, because a crime is a crime.

47:24

When you start putting in this hate crime stuff, that's not, you don't see that in biblical law, first of all, but it's trying to get you to weigh things differently.

47:34

Like, well, it must be a worse crime if it was done for, if it was just plain old murder and wanting to kill someone, that's not as bad as wanting to kill someone because they happen to be black, right? Or they happen to be white or something.

47:44

Well, white doesn't really make the cut, but anyway.

47:48

One paragraph of the new document states that the city will recognize from birth the genetic differences between male and female and respect the strength and differences of each.

47:55

Each sex carries disadvantages and disadvantages and advantages that warrants separation during certain activities like sports.

48:02

Most residents who spoke during public comments Tuesday night were unhappy about the change.

48:06

Some called the paragraph of the new document insensitive to trans people, here you go.

48:12

So let me see if it talks about anything else here, because I think there's a few things going on there.

48:17

Basically, this is my understanding.

48:20

So let me just read this.

48:23

Councilman Natalie Moser was censored by a four to zero vote.

48:28

Let's see, she left in protest.

48:31

She had questioned Vandermark's ability to be on the policy on human dignity ad hoc committee, given that she had been called a Holocaust denier in the past and identified as associating with far right Proud Boys group.

48:41

So she tried the identity politics thing.

48:44

And apparently, it was like, hey, we saw you looking at Holocaust denial stuff on your YouTube, and I think it was for research purposes or something, but whatever it was, she tried this smear tactic and it didn't work.

48:56

She was censored and she was kicked out.

48:59

So this is a city council.

49:02

This is a city council with a conservative majority now, and they're in there to clean up and take care of business.

49:09

This is in California, right? Huntington Beach, I'm pretty sure this is California.

49:13

LA Times, yeah.

49:16

This is close to Los Angeles, and it's a city council.

49:20

And this is what I wanna encourage people, get involved on a local level, run for school board, run for city council.

49:25

That's where you can affect more change.

49:27

It's more important.

49:28

If we lost the presidency, let's say in 2024, but we won all the city councils, I would say it was more of a victory by far.

49:37

I really would.

49:38

That's the school of government where people rise in the ranks and understand how it works, but you can also affect more change on the local level.

49:47

You really can.

49:48

So there you go.

49:50

People ask about Christian nationalism and where is there anything being done? Where is anyone? It's stuff like this.

49:57

It's stuff like, and I'm not saying those people are even claiming to be Christian nationalists.

50:00

I don't know where they're at exactly, but I mean, their agenda, what they're doing would be in line with people who wanna see Christianity honored and Christian values honored in the public square, et cetera.

50:13

So this is where it's done.

50:15

It's done on that local level.

50:17

All right.

50:19

I think that's it for the podcast.

50:21

Any questions, any final questions? Get them in now, and I'll try to interact with them.

50:27

Someone asked, did I miss Huntington Beach? I just talked about it.

50:30

So hopefully you heard me.

50:34

And yep, our laws, Michael Falsia says, already recognized motive and order punishment.

50:42

Accordingly, hate crime is a non-sensual term.

50:44

I couldn't agree more.

50:47

Meg Huffton says, we love Ray Comfort's ministry.

50:49

Our church and my boys' school is very connected, his family especially.

50:52

He's one of the nicest men I think I've ever met.

50:54

I really believe that.

50:56

I mean, he really lives what he believes.

51:01

I don't even think he owns a car.

51:02

I mean, he's just incredibly gracious.

51:06

That's what I didn't wanna, but I don't know.

51:09

I wanna be honest and say like, yeah, it was this documentary that I just had the thought.

51:12

I'm not blaming them for co-opting the pro-life movement or anything like that.

51:17

But Living Waters primarily does evangelism.

51:22

And I think they've honestly, this might sound crazy to some of you.

51:28

I think Living Waters has done more good and more for in that young reform dish movement, right? Which you think of like Gospel Coalition was in that, T4G was in that, Nine Marks, I guess to some extent and Grace To You and older ministries like Ligonier were kind of part of that.

51:46

John Piper's ministry was part of that.

51:48

I think of all the ministries that you survey, I'm comfortable saying, and I don't even know if Ray Comfort, they probably don't even identify as reformed.

51:55

He probably has people that aren't even reformed, but it was, I just know it was definitely picked up by some that wave 20 years ago of like the young reformed guys.

52:04

They were saying, we got to get back to the law.

52:06

I think that did more good and had more of an impact than any of the other ministries.

52:12

I really think that.

52:14

That's just what I believe.

52:15

I have, I probably don't have, you know, I can't say enough about the respect I have from them.

52:22

So Brian Babe says the law of God determines when life begins.

52:25

We can't compromise.

52:27

That's right, we can't, I totally agree.

52:34

Oh, I guess this is more of the abolitionist incrementalist debate here.

52:39

Yeah, the debate seems to be centered on, from the abolitionist point of view, is that like any law that would still allow for any kinds of abortions, that's how they frame it.

52:50

You know, this law, even if you made a law, let's say and say, well, we're going to ban all abortions after three weeks, right? Then they would say, well, that's an evil law because you're still allowing up to three weeks.

53:01

You know, you're endorsing that.

53:03

And I think the incrementals would say, we're not endorsing that, we're using this as a stepping stone on the ladder to get to the abolition, the complete abolition of abortion.

53:12

But I think it's a debate that needs to be had.

53:15

Well, I guess that's it, guys.

53:17

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

53:19

God bless, I got a lot to do, so I'm gonna have to run.

53:22

But more coming, probably, it's probably gonna be like, probably Tuesday, guys.

53:28

I hope I can get something before that, but realistically, it's probably gonna be Tuesday.

53:32

So appreciate your prayers.

53:35

I can't give details, but just right this second, I would appreciate your prayer.

53:39

So thank you for everyone who does pray and God bless, have a wonderful weekend.