How to Leave a Record of Ignorance Starring Brannon Howse

Matthew 16 and the Signs of the Times

In Matthew 16, Jesus chastised the Pharisees who could interpret the appearance of the sky but failed to interpret the signs of the time in which they lived. Who are the Pharisees of our day?

This strong hold of sort of whiteness and white identity and pristineness is really part of what keeps us from making progress.

We need to do better. The Church, rich in theological scholarship, has lingered in academic sanctuaries and ivory towers, failing to translate its lofty doctrines into a tangible and practical cultural apologetic.

At the Worldview Youth Academy, we bridge this critical gap. Here, theological depth is not an end in itself but a means to engage with contemporary cultural issues for the glory of God and the expansion of his kingdom.

Our mission is to cultivate thinkers who can articulate and apply Christian truths within contemporary societal challenges. So embrace this call to worship God with all your heart, all your soul and with all your mind.

We will do better as this next generation tears down the idols of our modern culture and works to build a brighter future toward Christendom. 2 .0.

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their.

Courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples, not go into the world and make buddies, not to make brosives, don't go into the world and make homies, disciples.

I got a bit of a jiggle neck.

That's a joke, pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only expressing his opinion. Proverbs 18 .2, y 'all. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is the Gospel Heard Around the World.

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What up?

I'm Jeff the Calm of the Ninja, and that's Zachary Conover.

What's up, guys?

Director of Communications with End Abortion Now. Thankful that you've joined us for this episode. Look, we do a lot of things with Apologia Studios. We've got cultural engagement. You have, like I said, the collision episodes where we'll collide with talking heads like Joe Rogan and Richard Dawkins, and we'll engage with that stuff.

We have, you know, public debate stuff. We do Mormonism. We do Jehovah's Witnesses. We do Roman Catholicism. And, of course, everybody knows we have End Abortion Now as a major ministry of Apologia.

Church.

God has used that ministry to save literally tens of thousands of lives outside of abortion mills, and He's used this ministry through our joint efforts with you, with others across the country, to bring in bills of abolition and equal protection across the country.

There's going to be many bills of abolition and equal protection across the country, and we don't want to have one particular area, necessarily, saying this is the most important one. But this is an important one, and abortion now is an important one.

And I want to just say at the outset, I'm tired of talking about abortion. You've heard me say that a number of times. I'm longing for the day where we never talk about this again, and we never ask for another penny.

We long for the day where the justice is established, we wash our hands of this, and we walk away, and we're done, and we're on to the next thing that God calls us to. And I recognize that it can become burdensome, and at times overwhelming, and we want to just switch the channel when we talk about the abortion issue, because it's a big part.

Of what we do.

And I know that you're listening to this show, and you're like, you know, I want to talk about a lot of things. I want to be a better dad. I want to grow. I want to be able to defend the faith. And you get to another show of Apologia, and here we are talking about the issue of abortion.

I wanted to say the reason why is because the Holocaust is still in effect. It is underway, and we are about to face, I believe, unless these ballot measures and propositions are put down across the country, we're about to face, as I've said over and over again, I'm trying to sound the alarm, the bloodiest and most brutal part of the Holocaust we've experienced thus far.

Right now, there are about 14 states across the nation that have ballot measures, and these are going into propositions to be voted on in the state via democratic vote. And what that will do is it will alter the constitutions of those states.

And what does that mean? Well, in a state like Arizona, what it means is, is you would have abortion enshrined as a constitutional right by state vote. And it would be abortion, not like we've ever seen before, with restrictions.

Not that any of those were good, but this would be worse than ever before because it would essentially enshrine it in constitutional rights from conception or fertilization all.

The way through birth and any and all protections removed.

That's right. And so when I say bloodiest and most brutal part of this Holocaust, I am not being hyperbolic and I keep stressing that I'm not being hyperbolic. I'm not just trying to intensify the conversation.

I'm telling you as it is, it is happening right now. They were able to get the ballot measure passed through as a proposition onto Arizona's next vote. The state of Arizona is going to be voting to kill children from fertilization through birth in just a couple of months.

And so that is happening across the country. That is their strategy. And so when when people will tune in who are friends of our of our ministry, you love us, but you're just worn out by this discussion.

Just know. So are we. We are, too. Yeah.

If you're worn out, trust me, staring this in the face every day, it does great.

Yeah. And total transparency. There's times where my wife and I will will turn something off that is reminding us of the battle itself that we're in. And my wife will even say at times like it's just too much, like it's too much, like you're hurt.

She's invested in her husband having to leave to go to state legislatures, to meet with legislators, to go equip pastors. She has to endure that as a wife and as a family. That's a huge sacrifice. And there's times where, you know, she's already missed her husband for a couple of days that week.

She doesn't want me to come home and keep talking about abortion. So just know like we're human beings, we're creatures. There's only so much all of us can take. And we recognize it's overwhelming. But that being said, as overwhelming as it is, just know that this is vital and that there is clear, clear, clear, crystal clear ignorance within the church walls, even amongst leadership.

There is clear ignorance. And I don't mean that as an insulting term in terms of ignorance, like you fool. I mean, ignorance, you just don't know what's going on. With the pulpit, pastors behind the pulpit, they don't know.

Or what's coming, potentially.

They don't even know that this proposition is happening in the state. They don't know that the pro-life groups, they don't know that the pro-life groups don't hold to the Christian worldview, that they deal impartiality and unequal weights and measures.

They don't know that they are explicitly not Christian in their commitments, that they brag about that. They don't know that the pro-life leaders, national right to life, state right to life organizations have fought against bills of abolition and equal protection.

They don't know. There's ignorance in the pulpit. And there's a lot of ignorance. And I would say ignorance in terms of just not knowing what's going on and ignorance in terms of being a fool, like a gentleman named Brandon House.

You may not have heard of him, but he's fairly well known. And recently he did something on worldviewtube .com that when I saw it, you know, I've seen a few things from Brandon over the years and don't know a whole lot about him personally.

But I was honestly just in dismay when I saw the first clip of, I guess, about two weeks ago or so where he had a couple of guests on. They were talking about abolition and abolitionists. And I thought to myself, this man has no, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.

That's the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this is someone that is willing to leave behind a public record of ignorance. Look, none of us want to do that. We're all going to make mistakes.

I'm going to make mistakes. And when I make mistakes, I want to own them. But this man was willing to speak with authority, pretended authority, on an issue that he knows nothing about clearly. And he even admits so.

I think it's in the next episode after this.

I guess they're talking about it across politics today, too.

Yeah. Just abject ignorance. And the danger here, this is a lesson I want us all to learn here. And again, this is me coming saying, look, I'm a failure, too. I blow it, too. I have gaps. I fall off at times, but I'm going to own those when I do.

And I'm going to avoid this here from the wisdom of God. A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. There are times when you're asked a question, when the best thing to do in that moment is be quiet.

Yeah. Be quiet. I don't know. Pass.

Pass. I'm going to refrain from commenting until I know more.

You can say, you know what, I need to look into that. I don't know the answer to that.

Right. Help me to understand. Or let me look into that a little bit before I speak on it.

So confidently and brazenly.

Yeah. With authority and with confidence and boldness to leave behind a public record of abject ignorance like this is embarrassing. And it ought to be an embarrassment to someone like Brandon House. And so I'm going to play you clips.

I'm going to do two parts here. One, I'm going to play you the initial clip that I had seen. And then our great friend, man that I revere, I just respect this man beyond words. Jason Storms actually connected with Brandon and was like, hey, you know, can I come on and you made some mistakes?

I'd like to correct some of these things is what it was said as far as I know. And then Jason was on the next week. And so we'll play some of both of those things for you. First, the first one and then the next one.

So this this what I title the show today, How to Leave a Record of Ignorance Starring Brandon House. And the hope here is that he'll be corrected and maybe walk a little more humility when he speaks publicly on issues.

But also, this should be, I think, something for all of us to learn from. And that lesson is don't do that. Don't do it. Don't do this. Don't speak with authority on things you don't understand and and don't slander and vilify in these ways and do it with just so much pride and boldness.

And so this will be, hopefully, a lesson on divine wisdom. And to summarize, don't do that. We should have titled the episode that today. Don't do that.

It's just if you're in this position, you're just needing to ask more questions than you're answering. Yeah. Like you need to take a more inquisitive approach to what the subject matter actually is.

Now, just so you know, and I was really happy to hear this today, both Luke and Zach have not seen this first part.

So they're intentionally.

Yeah. So you're going to get their live reaction right now to what's being said here. Now, just again, to frame this right, this is the first clip that I think happened two weeks ago or so. Maybe a week and a half ago.

This was last week.

OK. OK. OK, so it's even more recent than that. And then and then we're going to play some of what Jason had with him afterwards. So we play some long clips today, but I think it'd be very, very helpful.

And this is Brandon House and his guests talking about abolitionists and the abolition movement. Here we go. You guys tell me to stop at any point.

You guys, Tom, you've been following. You're kind of our reporter on religious Trojan horse. I basically have said, hey, that's the type of my book from 2011. I want you, Tom, to try to track all these people inside the religious Trojan horse movement that are being brought into the camp to undermine evangelicalism, undermine the gospel, confuse the living daylights out of people.

And sure enough, you have found something quite shocking. Folks, we could go for hours on this. We're going to try to do the cliff note version. We can have them back for a further discussion. Set the table for us, Tom, and then we'll have a conversation with Chris and Dr. Woods about it.

OK. And actually, in recent months, you and I have been talking about the problem with the Christian nationalist narrative that that's part of the what I would say. Let me use my visual aid here. That's the big sticky trap that is being set for Christian.

So if you live in the woods like I do, you can't be without these things. And, you know, it's just a big panel full of very sticky goo and baited with something that will attract the rodents and trap them.

But actually what they're trying to do is trap Christians in a narrative, an identity like Christian nationalism that will portray us as villainous, as seeking to take over the country, establish as a Christian country and persecute people who are not Christians.

So this narrative is building. We've looked at people like Doug Wilson, who is part of that. We've seen that some of the mainstream reformed Baptist leaders are becoming a big part of that. A lot of young pastors are buying into that identity.

Also within that identity is a group called Abortion Abolitionist, and they are a movement who want to outlaw abortion and enforce what are really unenforceable laws to basically make out women as murderers.

And send them to prison.

OK, wait a minute, because because obviously we're all pro-life here and want pro-life laws. Dr. Woods, like the rapture happened and Dr. Woods is gone. Oh, there he is. All right. About the rapture.

It happened for a minute. We're all host. All right. The abortion abolitionist people are wanting. I mean, we're all pro-life here. But what you're seeing is their particular emphasis is to not only outlaw it, but didn't throw the women who had abortions or one or two, whatever, into prison.

But we notice how as he addresses the claim that the abortion abolitionists are trying to have this classified as murder and seeing women as murderers. Everybody involved is a murderer, according to abolitionists.

Equal protection means that. But notice that he has to frame it with like, well, let me address the issue of calling it murder. But make sure you understand that I am pro-life, but I am pro-life because do you notice that how you have to walk between two positions there is you want to say as a Christian from the Christian worldview because it is undeniable and incontrovertible that it is murder.

But then you're going to speak against the idea of seeing women being classified as murderers and punishable under law. You're going to speak on the other side like, well, I wouldn't want that. Also, the abject ignorance here is that's not even legal to have retroactive punishment.

So women who have had one or two or three or whatever abortions, you want to throw them into jail. No, retroactive punishment is not legal in this country. And no bill of abolition and equal protection is retroactive.

What it would be doing is classifying a crime. It wouldn't be talking about a class or a gender. It would it would actually call abortion the unjustified taking of human life and would offer equal protection to the child in the womb.

So anybody involved in the murder of the child, whether it's the abortion doctor, whether it's the boyfriend through coercion or whether it's the woman herself, anybody involved would be seen as culpable.

And they would no longer have immunity and be able to do with impunity as the pro-life establishment codifies in their legislation that the woman must be a protected class of killer. She must be able to do this with impunity and immunity.

So I just find it always interesting that as people who are sort of part of the old guard of the pro-life establishments, always if they hold to a Christian worldview, as Brannon House does in terms of that's the image of God from fertilization.

If they hold to that position, they have to put one foot in one worldview and one in the other. And I just want to say, as we have this discussion, the book of Proverbs is the book of divine wisdom, wisdom from God.

How do we live in this world? Right. And in that divine wisdom, it says that the one who acquits the guilty and the one who condemns the righteous are equally alike an abomination to God. And so if we hold to a position that says, well, no, she's not guilty.

She's not guilty. Well, then that's an abomination in God's eyes. And if you say she is guilty, I'm not saying she's not guilty. I'm saying she is guilty. Then pray tell. How come she is afforded legal protection under law?

How come she can do it with impunity? Do you see the problem? Brannon House clearly doesn't. And the problem is that kind of ignorance is how we got to where we are at today in this nation when it comes to Christians actually speaking prophetically in this area and establishing legislation that is just and pleasing in God's eyes.

And by the way, is consistent.

I have lots of things, so I'll just go. I made the first sound.

Yeah, your sound is first.

In regards to the point you just made, the people that started that is the pro-life industry. It's not coming from the pro-aborts claiming that we're trying to retroactively throw women in jail. That that came from the pro-life industry, just for the record.

Yeah, that's that's very important. That's not a leftist argument.

It's completely untrue. It's completely untrue and against the law in this nation to have retroactive punishment. So no equal protection bill says that. Equal protection just says it should be illegal for anyone to murder anyone in this nation.

That's it.

That's all it is.

Equal protection says that the baby in the womb, the human being in the womb, has the same rights and protections as the human being outside of the womb. That's all it says. No class is defined. No gender is defined.

Nothing said about the woman. It just criminalizes conduct. Now, what's interesting here, and I've always said this, the fatal flaw, is that when you propose the bill that the establishment says they believe.

Human from fertilization, all human life is sacred and protected and all those different things. When you propose the bill, say, great, let's do that. Let's put that in legislation and let's abolish this thing.

And then people like Brannon House and others in the pro-life establishment go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That would mean that she'd be seen as guilty and punishable. It reveals the heart of a doctrinal or creedal position.

And that position is that the woman, though it is murder and unjustified taking of human life, she must be afforded immunity under law and be able to do it with impunity. That is to say, no punishment.

This reveals a core doctrinal commitment, is what it reveals. And it's inconsistent and it cannot be defended from a Christian perspective. It cannot be defended. That's why people like this will never come out on stage and do a public debate on this issue and defend it in the way that they are.

Because if they hold to a Christian position, they say it's human from fertilization and all human life needs to be protected. It's the image of God. Then it'll be immediately seen in the first 30 breaths that you're inconsistent when you say, but she must be able to do it with legal protection.

What I say in that case is for all of the emotionalism attached to this and all the rest, we are not supposed to do that. Your eye shall not pity is what God says in justice. When it comes to justice, your eye shall not pity.

And all the emotionalism that's attached to this issue, when we talk about this, what I say is great. Now do rape. Now do theft. Right. All this emotionalism, like, well, these people, like these people that do this, like many of them come to Christ.

Yeah, so do thieves in jail and so do robbers and rapists in jail. But what do we say as Christians? Though we're praising God that God has saved you and you're in Christ now, you still committed a crime and that needs to be punished.

And it doesn't matter who it is. Woman, man, doctor doesn't make a difference. How do we get these loose standards with the murder of the pre-born? You see, Brandon House, I imagine, and I'll kick it over to you, Zach, I imagine, and I use this illustration a lot.

If there was a guy running down the street, covered in sweat, clearly trying to escape something. And Brandon House is doing a Bible study at a coffee shop. And this guy runs up and it turns out the guy has just robbed somebody.

He just robbed and beat somebody. And Brandon and all the rest of the guys preach the gospel to this guy. The guy has a radical conversion on the spot. He turns to Jesus. He legitimately comes to faith in Jesus.

And then the police roll up 30 seconds after the conversion. I don't think Brandon House and the rest of the crew there at the Bible study would say to the officers, Officer, officer, you don't understand.

This man has just come to Christ. Right? He's just come to Jesus. He's a believer now and he's experienced forgiveness in Jesus. No, I think that Brandon and everybody else at that Bible study would recognize, though we're grateful to God that you've come to Christ.

We want all thieves to come to Jesus. You still have to face justice. Why are we removing the element of justice from the most innocent and defenseless among us? The only reason is not because of God's law is not because of consistency.

It's because of emotionalism. Right. That's the issue.

Hold on. Sorry, because I wasn't. It's all right. Yeah. So I think I might be wrong in this, but I'm pretty sure the first we really saw that come out was when we had our bill in Louisiana and then the pro-life industry put their letter.

Everyone signed. And that's when we first started seeing that that claim being made. And we've we have refuted that time and time again. The author of the bill, Bradley Pierce, has refuted that time and time again.

So. But the other thing I was going to say was just going back to the beginning of that. I agree. I don't know who that guy is. I agree that the the left is trying to paint. We've talked about this. The pain that's all is extreme white Christian nationalists.

I agree with that point. You know, then he goes into Doug. The problem is then he tried kind of broad brushes everyone and it says everyone is in this category, which is Doug, which Doug would claim that we would not claim that title.

We've said that multiple times. We don't claim that title and may not be speaking directly about us. But the point is that this is where we're like, hey, you should be careful. You shouldn't just broad brush everyone because not everyone falls into this category.

And we would have, you know, some significant disagreements with that title.

Yeah, for sure. We've done shows.

Yeah, exactly. So that was that was.

And within the abolitionist community, it's a broad community. Yeah. And many at least to say the least, many within the abolitionist community would not would not take the title of Christian nationalist.

So on par with Luke, that was going to be my comment is that my initial reaction to this just seems like it's not a careful critique. It is a broad brush. And the remark that Christian nationalism or as they defined it, the idea that the USA was founded as a Christian nation and ought to return to its Christian foundations and heritage in order to experience blessing.

That's not a Trojan horse. Like, that's not a foreign idea. That's something that made the United States what it is. It's abandoned that heritage, and that's why it's quickly disintegrating, nationally speaking, alongside this idea that abortion is a crime.

It's a sin, and it ought to be legal for everyone. And anyone that commits it is a sinner in need of the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, but also the justice of God's good law. That, again, is not a Trojan horse.

It's not some psyop by the left to send in this foreign idea that we've never spoken of before in order to disintegrate the right's effort to win an election or something. If you look at the early church fathers, for example, they had the historic Christian position correct when it came to the murder of the unborn.

They believed it was a crime and a sin for everyone involved, including the woman. And so this is not a foreign idea. It's not a novel idea, and it's certainly not a Trojan horse. What is the Trojan horse, to your point, Jeff, is this novel idea that somehow whoever commits the sin of baby murder is not accountable to God's law, and therefore not a sinner, and therefore not in need of a savior.

That is the novel idea because of the Trojan horses of secular humanism, feminism, and all these aberrant ideologies that give us an unbiblical anthropology of the woman and everyone else.

Yeah, so the judicial novum here is them. It's your position that is not historically Christian and is the novelty, the position that there should be a protected class of killers in the context of the unjustified taking of human life in the womb.

What we are saying and what the bills all say is that it criminalizes conduct. Anybody involved, anybody involved in the taking of human life has to go through the court system and face justice. Doesn't matter who you are.

What we're saying is there's no protected class. Show no partiality is a command of God that runs as a thread through the Torah and on into the New Testament. Just read the epistle of James. Show no partiality.

And what this is, is partiality on stilts is what it is. It's murder. We're pro-life. It's murder. But goodness gracious, we've got to have a protected class of killers here. The mother must be able to take the life of her own child willfully with immunity and impunity.

Now more.

Wait a minute.

What about the men? What about throwing the men in prison?

Just what we just said again.

Again, the title of the episode today, How to Leave a Record of Ignorance, starring Brannon House. Brannon, brother, I know you don't think I'm a brother because you think that James White is a false teacher.

And if I'm hooked up with him, we're pretty much the same. You say that in a moment here. You need to do better. You need to do better. You're obviously a sharp guy, good at what you do in terms of sitting behind that camera and high quality stuff.

Good stuff. I mean, I mean, I mean that it's it's impressive and good. But you need to do better. You spoke on an issue that you knew nothing about. And even after your episode with Jason, I don't see any repentance or I really made a mistake there.

I apologize for that. No, no self-correction here. You didn't do it. Just abject ignorance on public display and with a smile on your face. If you even spent 20 minutes looking into these abolition bills, these bills of equal protection, not only would you see that they are completely consistent with what you say about abortion yourself as a Christian, but you would see that all of them would criminalize the conduct of anybody who's involved in the unjustified taking of human life.

And so very simply, the bills of equal protection say that murdering anyone should be illegal for everyone. And that has been something that has just been put over this whole discussion as a banner for years and years and years.

Murdering anyone should be illegal for everyone. If you agree with that, that banner over this discussion, then welcome to the abolitionist community. Welcome to those who seek equal protection.

Yeah.

And if you don't, then you don't believe that the child in the womb is actually human. And by extension, you're not truly pro-life.

Right.

And there you go.

Well, are they just going to go and target the poor ladies? I mean, again, some of these women regret what they've done. They've been deceived. Many of them live with it the rest of their life. They're repentant.

Some of them become believers and become some of the biggest pro-life advocates we have on the planet.

Repentant of what? Is it murder? What are they coming to Jesus for, Brandon? Do we want to rob these women of the gospel, which is precisely what we'd be doing if we say the party line of the establishment, that they are equally victims like their babies, which, by the way, is the party line of the pro-life establishment and industry.