The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel: Background, Exegesis, Application

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is Tuesday, September 4th, 2018, and yeah, if you are a news junkie, you are on a high right now.

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Certainly, it is a fascinating day on many, many levels.

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And I don't have any problems if you keep the Kavanaugh hearings on in the background, or if you, here in Arizona, are maybe keeping an eye on the assignment by the governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, former

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Senator John Kyle, going back to the Senate for about a year and a half or so, in the place of John McCain.

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All sorts of stuff going on today, but obviously we're here at an early point in the day because of the release of the statement on social justice and the gospel.

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And if you are on social media, then you know that's the the big discussion of the day, and for good reason.

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And so what I want to do during our time here on the program today is to talk a little bit about the statement, and then to make some application of the statement, and look at some some scriptural passages and illustrations.

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Because one of the responses that we are seeing to the statement immediately is, well, yeah, everybody agrees with that.

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That's not really saying anything. And obviously it is saying a lot of things.

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I mean, the very first statement, aside from affirming the highest view of scripture, which will immediately separate us from many, you know, from all those who view inspiration and inerrancy as silly

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American doctrines and things like that. But the denial in Section 1, we deny that Christian belief, character, or conduct can be dictated by any other authority, and we deny that the post -modern ideologies derived from intersectionality, radical feminism, and critical race theory are consistent with biblical teaching.

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Well, given the inroads that all of those are having in almost all seminaries in the

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United States and Bible colleges, I learned this week that there are Bible colleges that have walks of shame for white students and seminaries that are taking time out of their study schedule to to do white privilege seminars and things like this.

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I mean, it's all over the place. And the statement very plainly says there is one source of authority for how we as Christians are to be defined as Christians, and it is not the current incarnation of critical race theory, despite how informative those things have become in the

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Bible departments of many formerly conservative and reformed institutions.

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And that's why this statement is important, at least if for no other reason that on a historical basis, someone's gonna be able to look back and say, yeah, there were people that were warning, ringing the bell, giving the warning, standing on the wall.

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Whether that warning will be heeded is difficult to say, because it is very plain to me that the next generation finds it much more consistent with their generation to embrace categories of critical race theory and things like that than to critically analyze, without emotion, the movements that are going on around them, especially within society.

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And so making applications to some specific examples is something

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I would like to do as a part of the program today. Now, what is our involvement with this?

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Well, if you go to statementonsocialjustice .com,

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just spell that out as one word, statementonsocialjustice .com, if you look at the signers under initial signers, you will find my name there, along with John MacArthur, Vody Baucom, Phil Johnson, Tom Buck, David Miller, Michael O 'Fallon,

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Tom Askell, Darrell Harrison, Josh Bice, Justin Peters, and others are listed there under the initial signers.

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And what that means, obviously, is that these are the primary people that have been involved in the discussions that led up to the writing of this document.

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As has already been revealed publicly in various sources, there is a meeting back in June in Dallas, and I had been invited initially, goodness, a number of months earlier.

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The challenge, of course, was to try to arrange a schedule where you can get an entire group of men, a number of whom are international travelers in the same room at the same time.

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And it just so happened that Dr. Baucom was coming to Dallas. I was with Dr.

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Baucom, and we discussed this issue in his home in Lusaka only a few weeks before this meeting took place.

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And so this group of individuals, this group of individuals met.

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We discussed many of the key issues that were relevant to not just issues of social justice, but also the influx of other foreign concepts that were being pushed into the church.

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It seemed to many of us that after the MLK 50 celebration and the

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T4G get -together very shortly after that, that a door had been kicked open.

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And you had the Revoice Conference going on, you had all sorts of material relevant to egalitarianism and changing views of human sexuality.

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And a number of us began communicating with one another and basically saying, who flipped the switch?

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Obviously, I will say that I was guilty of having assumed that especially within the

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Reformed camp, that the necessity of positive exegetical defense of a position that you're putting forward would be sufficient barrier for the incursion of these concepts into the

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Reformed community. And I was obviously naive about that. I don't think

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I was the only one. I think a lot of people had assumed, well, yeah, we see this in this denomination there and that denomination there, and we expect that.

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We expect this amongst the liberal Presbyterians and the liberal Methodists and people like that.

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They don't have a meaningful theology of Scripture. They don't have a high view of Scripture.

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They have a very crippled view, and that's going to lead to this. This is inevitable. But now we were seeing in Southern Baptist institutions and Reformed institutions and Reformed conferences, we were seeing and hearing the very things that we assumed could never be here because of the need to provide a strong exegetical foundation.

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So we got together and we talked through the issues and shared with one another what our concerns were and learned from one another and began work on what will eventually be a fuller response to what has been going on.

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And this statement is just the beginning. There will be more that comes forth.

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I think one of the only reasons that I was involved was the freedom that we have as a small ministry without a lot of political entanglements as far as necessary relationships with certain institutions and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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I think that gave me the freedom, and especially in the nature of this particular program, we're not on a radio network.

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There have been people, for example, and we'll talk about this, you know, there are people who want to sign the document, but they can't.

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Or at least in their mind they cannot. There are people who want to sign this document who have been told they cannot, who have been told their jobs will be lost, who have been told that it's just far too risky, and they've chosen not to.

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And they've let us know, well, you know, we'll pray for you. We agree with what it says, but it's just the cost is too high to take a stand on this this topic.

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It's ironic because other people are saying, well, there's nothing there. I mean, there's, you know, hey, that's just what everybody believes that.

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And yet the reality is many others know that there could be a real cost here.

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And I think the reason that I was invited to be a part of it was that even during the course of the

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MLK 50, because of the nature of the dividing line and because of the fact that either

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Rich and I are just not bright enough to network or we've just always chosen not to do so, maybe we're just both, you know, we're just comfortable, you know, with the way things are.

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This is good, and we don't want to, you know, it becomes uncomfortable when you start trying to network with other people and then you get all the entanglements and what's this person going to say?

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What's that person going to say? And I'm just not the political type. I just, everybody who knows me knows

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I detest politics. I'm just gonna say what I need to say and do what

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I need to do and so I think because of that freedom,

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I was one of the first people to start responding, not because I'm some expert on all the books that have been written on intersectionality or something.

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I didn't even know what it was. But because I saw the danger to the gospel. I saw the fundamental eisegetical nature of what was being said and I jump on stuff like that.

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That's what I've been doing for a long long time. And I'm hearing people making claims that exegetically are simply indefensible and so we had had taken the lead in responding to some of these things and I think that's the primary reason that that I was invited to be there.

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I even, I'll say up front, I even said to a couple of the primary organizers, look, if having me there ever becomes a problem, just let me know and I will not be offended and and stay far far away because I don't want to be a problem.

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I know I'm radioactive, we have offended a lot of folks over the years. It's sort of necessary when you try to present the whole

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Council of God. So what has been my role in this particular document?

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Well, I did not write it by any stretch of the imagination, but I was one of those, given the opportunity to be involved in editing, in providing suggestions, concerns, what about this?

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What about that? Could we say this differently? That kind of online collaboration. And obviously, it's extremely difficult to write something like this and to really well,

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I talk, I mean, if you transcribed everything that I've said on this program, on this particular subject over the past number of months, it would be significantly longer than the statement is.

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And so brevity and concise expression and that kind of thing is truly the challenging aspect of putting together a statement like this.

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And of course, there are going to be those who will not sign because, well, you know, I would not have used that verb there.

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Okay, nothing, nothing can be done about that. Obviously, our concern is not that you will be able to say,

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I would have said it exactly like that. There's not a single word I would have, no statement will ever, ever, ever be like that.

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The concern is that a very large portion of the

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Evangelical Church in the United States, whatever you want to call that, Reformed, let's say the

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Conservative, Reformed, even Conservative, Non -Reformed, yet still

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Evangelical Churches. And a lot of men, a lot of women who have been observing this and have sort of felt marginalized.

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I mean, if we want to do the victim mentality thing, we could do that. We could, you know, start doing trauma counseling for our side and claim victim status and stuff like that.

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That seems to be the way, that is the way of today. You've got to be victim intersectionality, all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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We could easily do that. But I think most of us are of the mindset that we're just going, what has changed?

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And the first thing we think about is not my feelings about it. It's, where is this going?

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Where is this going to go for my kids? Where is this going to go for my grandkids? The adult thing,

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I said that purposefully, I don't believe that victimology is the response of a mature person.

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A mature person thinks of the future. A mature adult does not focus upon my own emotions, my own felt needs, and my own traumas, and all the rest of that stuff.

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You are thinking about others, and especially you're thinking about those that God has put in your life that are most precious to you, the people of your fellowship, people in your family, your children, your grandchildren especially.

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What are they going to be facing? What is going to be coming for them? And when we see this movement taking place that so obviously to us imbibes external, non -biblical categories of power, and oppression, and privilege, and all these things that when when this side, the social justice side, tries to come up with biblical categories, it's painful to watch.

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Not only what has to be ignored, but what has to be read into the text. And then when especially someone like myself sees this already deeply planted in our theological institutions, you need to understand everyone who's being trained in ministerial to become ministers to the next generation right now in many schools that you would not expect it to be the case have already been deeply infected by this.

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I've seen this in social media. The kind of response that you get very, very emotional, not biblical at all, but a very, very emotional intersectionality, oppression categories, the whole nine yards, and that's what's coming.

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That's what's going to be in the pulpit. And to be called out for saying, well, this is divisive.

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Well, it is divisive. And it is specifically designed to be divisive.

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And when you see people actually defending the idea, and we're going to be looking at this a little later on, defending the idea of leaving churches solely based upon your racial comfort, people suggest even promoting rebellion against proper authority within local churches based upon the color of the skin of the people who have been chosen by that congregation to be elders.

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This kind of thing is happening. And there is no end game to it. There is no end game to it.

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It's not like, okay, can we all just have one big old reconciliation meeting, say everything is forgiven, and then we'll just go on from there?

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No, that's not what is wanted. That's not going to accomplish anything.

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Instead, there seemingly is this idea of putting permanent divisions in place where one ethnic group will always be in some kind of penitential status toward another ethnic group within the church.

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And if you understand the basis of the unity of the faith, the imputed righteousness of Christ, the equality of every believer, the fact that God has called his elect from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, once you understand that, you see just how desperately dangerous this kind of movement is, no matter how much biblical language you attempt to use to cover it.

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The statement we were actually looking at, I think, at an earlier point in time, but you know how it is trying to get trying to coordinate people, trying to get people to do stuff when they're supposed to get it.

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I mean, honestly, I got my edits in like two hours before the deadline type thing because we're all very, very busy people.

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Everybody's been involved with this. It is interesting that I made mention to a number of the brethren who were involved with this at one point that, you know, we just have to recognize that most of us, this is an important vital issue, but it is not our life.

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We don't get up first thing in the morning thinking about this particular topic.

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You know, I have all sorts of other things that I'm involved with. Some of you know, I'm doing a debate on homosexuality this weekend and I've just got all sorts of textual critical stuff

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I'm supposed to be doing. We cannot dedicate ourselves entirely to any one of these topics.

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For many people on the other side, this is their life. This is what they wake up thinking about and go to bed thinking about, and that certainly gives them an advantage that we need to recognize.

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And so, just because you see names here of signers does not mean that you're not going to be able to find differences of emphasis and so on and so forth amongst the signers.

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Please don't get the idea. Well, you know, there's one sentence, I just wouldn't put it that way.

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The importance in having signatures is the recognition on the part of everyone who signs that we reject the insertion into the life of the

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Church, into the very bloodstream of the Church, of these foreign, incompatible sources of authority that very clearly, in my opinion, have overridden the exegetical realities of Scripture and have given a foundation for some of the other stuff that we're going to be looking at and some of the things that people are saying.

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And so, again, statement on socialjustice .com. I don't believe that it should be right or appropriate for people to be sitting back and just looking at who's signed, who hasn't, and when you get enough signatures or enough big names or whatever else it might be, that now jump on the bandwagon.

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It's not a bandwagon. Let me address the reality of the political situation here.

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It has been reported accurately that there are certain people who otherwise,

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I think, would agree with everything that the statement says, who are not going to sign the statement.

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And this is especially true within the Southern Baptist Convention. And the reason for this, we need to just simply understand, and I can talk about this straightforward because I'm an elder in a

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Church. It's not a Southern Baptist Church. It's a Reformed Baptist Church, but we're not even an ARBCA Church. We are an independent entity.

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We support many other people, but we don't owe fealty to some external organization in that sense.

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There is an 11th commandment in Southern Baptist life that I learned about in 2004 when

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I responded to Mark Seyfried, who at the time was teaching at Southern Seminary, on the subject of justification and found myself a pariah among Southern Baptists because the 11th commandment of Southern Baptist is, thou shalt not speak ill of another

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Southern Baptist publicly. What that means is you have to do it privately, and it happens privately all the time.

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But thou shalt not speak ill of another Southern Baptist. And since clearly, there are

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Southern Baptists who are in the lead in promoting critical race theory and social justice categories within the

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Southern Baptist Convention, then word has gone out among Southern Baptists that in certain institutions, it has been directly stated.

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An early copy of the statement was obtained, and the leadership said, everybody together said, thou shalt not sign.

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You shall not do it. So there are people who would like to sign it, but their very employment is up in the air if they do.

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And the reason? You don't foment division. Well, I would of course argue that the fomenting of division has already been done.

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It was just done slowly and over time through the appointments of certain people, the bringing in of certain theologies that should not be there in the first place.

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But that's the reality. There are people who, because they work with this entity or that entity, whether it's

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Southern Baptist or other denominations, would like to stand with us and read it and go,

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I agree with everything it's saying, yeah, but I dare not say so.

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There are ministries. And look, when you look at your donor list and you got a certain amount of budget, you got to meet each month, it's very easy to say,

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I can tell this person, that person, that person, take a stand on this and it could be the end of that.

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I get it. I understand. And each one of us is going to have to stand before our

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Lord someday and answer for what we did and did not do.

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And I can't stand in anybody else's place. And I can fully understand their situation.

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Obviously for me, the danger going down the road, the danger to what's going to happen to the church in the future is far more important than this ministry or me or anything along those lines.

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If I can use what small influence I might have to explain why we should resist the insertion of these unbiblical categories and these unbiblical movements, these divisions within the body, then

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I just simply have to do that to be consistent. I believe that the exegesis that I have offered and will offer here in a few minutes, it's been pretty consistent over the years on this.

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And when people try to accuse me of inconsistency on that in social media, I normally go after them pretty strongly and demonstrate they don't have a leg to stand on.

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But for others, young person, family, brand new mortgage, brand new job, between you and the

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Lord on that, and I hope at least you'll be praying about it and praying that the

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Lord will heal the divisions because the church does not need to be divided along ethnic lines at this time as the society around us becomes more and more secular and more and more hostile toward the

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Christian faith. Now, what

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I would like to do is, as I normally do, I think that the strength of the document is its biblical character.

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And so, if I can contribute anything toward the promulgation of that document, what

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I can contribute has to do with the biblical foundation and especially an emphasis upon positively what should bring unity to the faith, unity to the church.

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And that is a recognition of what God has done in Christ, in a solid understanding of the gospel.

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This is the basis upon which we must base our understanding of the unity of the body and how people are to relate to one another within that body.

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So, the first thing I did back during the MLK 50 thing was to go to Colossians 3, and I have seen absolutely, absolutely no meaningful exegetical refutation.

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In fact, normally what you get is, oh, well, yeah, yeah, we all agree with that, but... And it's like, no, the but that you're adding shows that you haven't listened to what was actually said, but that's not the only text.

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There is one that is known to a lot of folks. If you want to look in your

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Bibles, in the Revelation, singular,

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Revelation chapter 5, we know at the end of this beautiful heavenly vision, and I think it is important to emphasize the fact that this comes at the end, the emphasis of chapters 4 and 5 is on God upon really the triune

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God, because you have the seven spirits there, and then you have the Lamb standing as a slain, and so there's all sorts of incredibly important things we can derive from looking at that.

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But it comes at the end of this worship, adoration, exaltation, and then even in heaven, this recognition of this

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Lamb standing as a slain, and He is worthy, and there's the uniqueness of what

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He's done, and even that Lamb standing as a slain, Lion of Judah, all this terminology is going to be used throughout the

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Revelation, all meant to provide contrasting statements of truth about the glory of Christ.

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If you've paid attention, for example, to my debates with Muslims over the years, I always emphasize when they're trying to say,

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Jesus is just a prophet, or He's just a man. Jesus is a prophet, and Jesus is a man, but He's not just these things.

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He's so much more than these things. That's where you're missing the boat, is you're trying to limit what the

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New Testament Revelation about Christ is, and the author of the Quran didn't even know what that New Testament Revelation was.

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That's one of the primary issues. And so, when we get to Revelation 5 -9, the focus really isn't taken off of the

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Lamb at all, but the content of their new song is an amazing thing, and it does teach us something that I think is very important in regards to our own situation today.

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And so, it says they sang a new song saying, worthy are you to receive or to take the book and to open its seals because you were slain and purchased for God in your blood from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

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And so, the object is not expressed, but the very term agaradzo, to redeem, to purchase, assumes something or someone that is being redeemed and purchased.

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And so, you will notice the Lamb is worthy to receive the book and to open its seals.

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Why? Because of his redemptive death, you were slain and agaradzo -ed to God, purchased for God with your blood, people, if you want to avoid sexist language, because it's not expressed, so you got to put something in there, people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

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So, you've got phuleis, gloses, lau, and ethnus.

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Poetic? Yes. But what it does is it helps us to see the parameters in which the

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New Testament Revelation places the extent and purpose of the redemptive work of the

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Lamb. And it's men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

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It is not men from one particular ethnos, one particular glosa.

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But at the same time, there's nothing here that says an equal number from any one particular one either.

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That is completely and totally up to God, because this is all

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God's work. There's nothing here about you have made it possible, and therefore these people have done it.

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The whole man -centeredness thing just falls apart in so many of these texts.

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It just doesn't make any sense. And you made them to our

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God, kings and priests, and they will reign upon the earth, verse 10.

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So notice, all of this is something that is done by God, by the

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Lamb, by the power of the Lamb, through his redemptive sacrifice.

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I cannot emphasize too strongly the fact that if you really understand this, if you really have a biblical theology of atonement, specific, definite, substitutionary, redeeming atonement, not the squishy, liberal, look how much

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God loves us, but there really isn't anything about God's wrath, and there really isn't anything about propitiation, and there really isn't anything about God's justice or judgment or anything like that.

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Not that kind of squishy stuff. Have you noticed that all the squishy denominations fall into whatever the society is doing at that time?

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They have to. They have no foundation to not fall into the pit. But if you have a real biblical understanding of what the

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Lamb accomplished, what it means by your blood, what it means to agrazzo, to redeem, to purchase, purchase for God by your blood, this is a specific, powerful action based upon an eternal decree, an eternally chosen path of Father, Son, and Spirit that cannot be thwarted by the creature man.

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All to his honor and glory. When you have that understanding, then you recognize that once you start bringing into the church, this is what got me into so much trouble, but here

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I go again. When you start bringing into the church divisions based upon ethnic experience, ethnic history, you are doing so at the cost of the price that has been paid for the redemption in the first place.

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You are introducing a distinction into a body that God has wiped the distinctions out of by saving that entire body in one way.

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And at the time of the writing of these words, this was a multi -ethnic body filled with many people who otherwise, if what we're seeing today is appropriate, if what we're seeing in people saying, you can go ahead and segregate yourself, if being around too many white people triggers you, then get away from them.

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If that kind of an idea was present in the early church, there would have been during the lifetime of the apostles, so many different ethnically based and ethnically derived churches, you couldn't have kept count of them.

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There were all sorts of reasons for one person in the church to divide from another person in church because of what had happened in the past.

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But that's not what we see. That's not what you see in the worship of those in heaven.

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One of the beautiful things is, are any of the martyrs divided from other martyrs in their worship of God?

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And yet there were Christian martyrs from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. Whole rainbow of skin hues, but they're all united in their worship of God.

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The point being, if they are united in heaven, that is supposed to be represented upon earth.

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And how can that be? It's not just simply, oh, we just really hope to get everybody to like everybody else and stuff like that.

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No. The reason is found in the nature of the gospel itself and in the all powerful work of that shed blood, which is intentionally given for a specific people in perfect harmony with the father's decree of salvation, the spirit's work of application, the triune work.

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And so keeping that in mind, we find a parallel that I think is very, very important that I want to bring to your attention as well.

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Before I'm done, I'll make some application from there. In Ephesians chapter two, most of us know that we have there the discussion of the breaking down of the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile.

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And we know that Jew and Gentile does not map directly onto any type of possible ethnic division within the church.

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However, let me point something out. What is very clear, what is very plain in the scriptures is that the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile was considered significantly more important than any possible ethnic based division.

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So in other words, the distinction that was introduced by the old covenant, the nature of that covenant, the formation of the covenant people, and then in the fulfillment in the new covenant now going out to Jew and Gentile, very plainly for the

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New Testament apostles, recognizing what has happened there and the making of one man, one body, and the overcoming of that barrier wall was far more important than any perception of division based upon fill in the blank, white versus black,

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Asian versus African or Russian or Chinese or whatever.

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Any ethnic type of division pales into insignificance in comparison to Jew -Gentile situation.

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If the Jew -Gentile situation has been dealt with by God, what does that mean? So in Ephesians 2, we have, but now in Christ Jesus, you, the ones who were formerly

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Makran, far away, have been brought near in the blood of Christ.

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Blood of Christ, Revelation chapter 5, blood of Christ, by your blood, you have redeemed them.

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Hmm, seems to be a common element in the discussion.

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So there was once a division. If you're familiar with the terms

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Makran and Angus, then you know you who were formerly far have been brought near by what?

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By the blood of Christ. It is the exclusivity of the atoning work of Christ.

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Only way to be brought near. We're not, you know, all forms of religion that call themselves

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Christianity that have become pluralistic. Oh, we're just one way amongst any of us. It's not

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Christianity. Can't be. Because if, to be brought near, is to be brought near in the blood of Christ.

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Not by the blood of any other martyr, not by the blood of anyone else, but by the blood of Christ. And so this division, this standing outside, has been ended because God saves in one way.

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And whether you're black or white or green or pink or orange or teal, it doesn't matter.

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If you're going to be brought near, if you're gonna have peace with God, there's only one way it's gonna happen. And that is through the blood of Jesus Christ.

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The new Adam that makes a new humanity. For he himself is our

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Irene, our peace. He is our peace. Not you're dealing with hurts.

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You've been taught that you're supposed to be feeling from stuff that happened 50 to 150 to 300 years ago.

46:46

You don't get peace from that. He is our peace. You wanna know why we can have peace in the body of Christ?

46:55

Why we don't even have to bring up what happened in the past and relive it over and over and over and over and over and over again in a constant set of penitential acts?

47:07

Because our focus isn't upon that. It's upon him who is our peace. Our Irene.

47:15

He is our peace. Who made, and it's interesting, it uses a participle there, the maker, the one making, the two one.

47:38

And how does he make the two into one? By breaking down the barrier, the middle wall that is acting as a barrier between the two.

47:52

He breaks that down. He destroys that. How? Verse 15. And this is interesting formulation, but he does so by abolishing in his flesh, and this would be a reference to his self -giving on the cross, the enmity, the enmity.

48:25

It's been abolished. May I suggest to anyone who brings enmity into the church, you are doing so against the very nature of the gospel of Christ itself.

48:44

That's what I was trying to say with that meme that got me into so much trouble. When you come to the Lord's supper, come to the

48:50

Lord's table, stop talking about white spaces and black spaces.

48:56

Most of us don't even think along those lines. Don't even have the categories for thinking along those lines and wonder where you got them from.

49:06

But you bring those to the Lord's table and you don't understand this text. You don't believe it.

49:12

You're rebelling against it. One man destroyed the dividing wall and he does so in his flesh, in his sacrifice.

49:25

The enmity is gone. Now, what is that enmity?

49:34

Well, it's the law of commandments in dogma sin that is contained in ordinances.

49:43

He has destroyed those. In order that, he might make the two into one and you've got creation here, might create out of the two, the one in him, a new man having made peace, making, actually, literally making peace.

50:15

So this is a real peace. It's not just, well, we should be striving for peace.

50:21

No, it's a real peace. Thus establishing or making peace because there is one new man and new man, where'd we hear that before?

50:31

Oh, that's Colossians 3, isn't it? That renewal in which there is no distinction. In all those different things, which included ethnicity, politics, everything else.

50:42

One new man establishing peace. There will not be peace in a social justice dominated church because you've lost the means by which true divine peace is made.

50:57

Because even if you can enforce some kind of peace based upon the current version of social justice, this society is changing so fast.

51:09

Next week, you're going to have to modify what you did last week. You need to have an objective, solid foundation that's only found.

51:18

The only peace that's going to be meaningful is that which is found and made by Christ and might reconcile them both in henni somati, one body to God through the cross by it having put to death the enmity, the ekran.

51:46

Please listen to what that says. I was having a conversation with a dear brother in the

51:55

Lord, a brilliant man, said just in passing to me, and I did not pick it up and debate it at that point in time.

52:02

You don't have to debate everything someone says at every time someone says it. You learn that.

52:10

My day, you learn that at about 16. Now you learn it at about 56. The comment was made to me,

52:19

I don't know how anyone can argue against racial reconciliation. I argue against that phrase, and I'll argue against it right now.

52:34

If what you mean by racial reconciliation is that the blood of Christ reconciles men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, well, duh.

52:43

That's a given. That's just sort of a tautology. That's not what racial reconciliation means when it's being used within the church today.

52:58

What you see with racial reconciliation today is this penitential demand.

53:08

When you have a walk of shame for white students at a Bible college. Now, look, if you have a walk of shame for racists at a

53:17

Bible college, that's different. But you see, if racism is a sin, and one of the things that is said in those statements is racism is a sin.

53:25

If racism is a sin, then what color skin you have has nothing to do whether you can or cannot commit it.

53:34

And so if everybody, white, Black, Asian, Russian, whatever, can walk that as a public confession of having had racist animus in their hearts, great.

53:52

But you and I both know that's not why it's there. It's about you're guilty for what your ancestors did.

54:01

And you've got this privilege and that privilege. And so you need to do this and that.

54:07

And that is not what we're talking about in Ephesians chapter two. If you mean racial, as in merely ethnic groups, okay.

54:18

But let's not forget there is only one human race. And by reconciliation, that is a deeply theological term.

54:30

It's right here. Might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross.

54:37

Jew and Gentile. And the Gentiles are all thrown in here. There is no room for even recognizing ethnicity here.

54:46

If you're a Gentile, you're reconciled on the exact same basis as the Jew and every other

54:52

Gentile. One body to God through the cross.

55:01

Just one. Because there's only one way. There's only one righteousness. There's only one sacrifice. And so the reconciliation is accomplished by God, not by us.

55:15

Well, but you know, there can be reconciliation in the body. If two brothers fall out and you know, we talk about reconciliation.

55:23

Okay. What does that have to do with ethnic reconciliation? Because everything that I hear when people say, well, we need to pursue racial reconciliation in the church.

55:36

What do you mean by that? Well, what that means is, and then immediately, you will leave the categories of Ephesians 2,

55:46

Colossians 3, Romans 5 or anything else. And all of a sudden, you've got intersectionality and oppression.

55:52

And let's just be honest, Neo -Marxism. You get critical race theory stuff. Well, you know, that person's ancestors did this out of the other thing, and they haven't shown sufficient repentance for what their ancestors did.

56:07

Type of an argument. And as soon as you bring that stuff into the relationship of the church, you have pushed the gospel's solution out of the way.

56:24

And this ain't going to work because it doesn't accomplish anything.

56:30

It can't change hearts. It does not focus people upon the one thing that does unify us, and that is our common devotion to Jesus Christ.

56:38

It focuses upon ourselves, our own perceived hurts. It creates fundamental division.

56:47

It is a disaster. It is a disaster. So the purpose of what the son has done, abolishing his fleshly enmity, he's established peace so that he might reconcile them both in one body.

57:11

That's, to God, that's the son's job. Don't try to do what only

57:17

Jesus is supposed to do. Oh, well, he uses us. Not here, because this is done by the cross.

57:25

Don't add to the cross. Don't try to say, well, it got us close, but now we need to, we need to, you know, the cross got us this far, but now we need to do

57:36

X, Y, or Z. No. Not going to work. By it having put to death the enmity.

57:49

Well, did he or didn't he? Did he or did he not? I'm going to turn this thing off.

57:56

Hear that or start witnessing to a telemarketer. Did he or didn't he? Did he or did, did it happen or not?

58:04

Has the enmity been put to death? Then let's not ever be found trying to resurrect it in the name of anything.

58:12

In the name of anything. By it having put to death the enmity.

58:24

These are beautiful truths that I see lived out around the world.

58:31

In many ways, what we are seeing here is not uniquely

58:38

American. It's sort of American, Euro -American. As I've expressed before, one of my greatest concerns is the exportation of this poison in the bloodstream into the fellowship of churches outside the

58:57

American -European context. It could deeply damage the work of Christ in places where you have

59:09

Christians in a small minority in the first place. Once you start dividing small minorities, you can kill the church.

59:17

This has been one of my concerns from the very beginning and remains one of my concerns to this point and one of the main reasons why

59:26

I've been involved in the production of this statement and letting you know about it and recommending it to your prayerful consideration and especially for pastors to be able to see this stuff through the back door.

59:44

The potential for division that it certainly creates. So, I hope that that is useful to you.

59:58

Now, I want to make some application. And we do this on the program fairly regularly.

01:00:12

It looks like so many of you is hopping along out there big time.

01:00:17

I haven't had an opportunity to be really looking at it, but we just want to do our part to try to help people out.

01:00:28

I wanted to, I was going to do this earlier and I didn't, but I'm going to do it now and then transition.

01:00:40

As some of you know, the last program that we did, you can only listen to audio.

01:00:48

You cannot watch because of a ridiculously unfair, absurd, cowardly

01:00:55

DCMA complaint for copyright violation, which

01:01:01

I will tell you just honestly, I believe it was concerning the refutation that I provided to a man by the name of Polite who is exceptionally ignorant of the

01:01:15

Bible, its history, its background. And then he goes around lecturing as if he knows all this stuff.

01:01:22

And he made comments about the prophecy of the virgin birth and Greek and Hebrew that he knows nothing about.

01:01:28

And so I refuted that. And I think what my theory is,

01:01:34

I cannot prove it, but my theory is, because he was interviewed by somebody else, that he contacted them and said, get them to take that down.

01:01:44

And they have a certain amount of time. We've already responded and said, nope, totally fair use.

01:01:49

And everybody knows it is. There is nobody, nobody with a functioning brain cell that does not recognize what we did was the very definition of fair use.

01:02:00

We only played a certain portion and we responded specifically to what was claimed.

01:02:06

We interacted with it in depth, going into the original languages and everything. So it'll be up eventually.

01:02:13

But the whole idea is you suppress it for a while so it becomes old news. This is the behavior of cowards.

01:02:22

This is behavior of people who cannot defend themselves. They know they would get crushed if they attempted to do so.

01:02:28

So they have to use this kind of thing. It's sadly a part of what we're facing in the modern situation.

01:02:37

And so the last program isn't up. We're not playing anything on this one. So good luck doing that to us on this one.

01:02:49

But in the previous programs, I had interacted with the gentleman who, the very title we put on the

01:03:06

YouTube was Church History Without Racial Quotas. And I was responding to that blog article attacking the

01:03:17

Master's Seminary by a graduate for not having enough about Black people in the church history class.

01:03:31

And the rage this person felt and the tears that they expressed and so on and so forth. And I just simply sat down and said, let's talk about how you teach church history.

01:03:43

This is something I can talk about. First class I was ever hired and paid money to teach was church history.

01:03:53

And I've taught it many times. I just, right now I'm having a blast, to be honest with you. Teaching church history at church, we're almost done.

01:04:01

And this last Sunday, I started the story of Munster. I've never seen a class more enthralled with a story.

01:04:14

Just no way. You're kidding me. And one of the sisters, has nothing to do with this,

01:04:25

Black sister. One of the sisters comes up to me Sunday night. It's like, what was the name of that book?

01:04:33

Do you mention? Because I gave them the name, the Taylor King. I gave them the name of the book if they just can't wait till the next section to find out what in the world happens.

01:04:42

Because I left them, it was sort of the who shot JR moment. Left them hanging, wondering what in the world is going on.

01:04:50

What was the name of that book? Because I got to find out what happened because I'm not teaching next week. I'm going to be in Florida. Lord willing.

01:04:58

And so it's like, I can't wait weeks to find out what happened. What's the name of the book? I got to check it out.

01:05:04

And that was exciting. It was exciting to see the interest that everybody had.

01:05:10

And I do work at trying to make church history really exciting. That first time I taught it, I could just tell by the attitudes of the students coming in.

01:05:20

I wasn't all that much older than them. I'm fulfilling a requirement here, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:05:28

And by the end of that class, I had them weeping, watching the radicals, the death of Michael Sadler.

01:05:38

And a repeated comment was, I didn't think church history could be interesting like this. And I do that because my church history professor was so good that he instilled that in me.

01:05:50

And so this is a subject that is sort of important to me. I lament the fact that church history is no longer being taught, or when it is, it's been turned into a mechanism of communicating some type of liberal perspectives or something along those lines.

01:06:11

That's a shame. It shouldn't be. So I responded to this complaint by pointing out the professor has to do it a certain way.

01:06:27

He has to be able to communicate the material a certain way. There's far more information than you can ever, ever, ever cover any amount of time that you're given.

01:06:38

You're almost always given a very, very, very limited amount of time. And interestingly enough, a graduate from around the same time period on Twitter just yesterday posted a part of his notes from the church history class at TMS saying, if you'd like to do further reading in Asian Christianity, African Christianity, blah, blah, blah, here's a list of resources provided by the professor.

01:07:07

It's exactly what you got to do. It's exactly what you got to do. And it was done. And there was the proof.

01:07:13

And I retweeted it if you want to see it. Well, one of the responses to my program was posted by Seiko Woods.

01:07:25

And Seiko is a great guy. He sort of does this a lot.

01:07:33

He's either up or down or this way or that way. Excitable fellow. But he responded on August 30th to that program and says, just watch the last segment of your webcast and would like to ask you the following questions.

01:07:51

Who are the individuals demanding racial quotas? Please cite their names in a statement adjacent to them. That's real easy.

01:07:57

The guy who wrote the article against TMS that I was discussing. That was so obvious.

01:08:04

He was saying, how come I don't see anything about my color in church history?

01:08:09

So what does that mean? What that means is that there should have been more discussion of one race and then another race and another race.

01:08:21

I even brought this whole thing up. I said, what is the professor supposed to do? Are you supposed to sit there and at the beginning of the class, the first day go, okay, we're not gonna be able to do anything much today because I need to take the racial profile of the class and then

01:08:41

I need to alter my notes because I see that we have four African -Americans, we have five

01:08:47

Asians, and then we have a mixture of whites. And so I need to go in and I need to quotatize my notes so that I have enough for each racial group.

01:09:04

So I meet the quotas. I pointed this out in the program. I don't know how you can miss it.

01:09:12

That's what I was talking about. So my question for you, Seiko, is why didn't you hear me?

01:09:20

What's keeping you from hearing? You've heard me in the past. What has changed to where you're not hearing me now?

01:09:27

That is the question. Since my statement was mentioned on your broadcast, but not my name, why does my question regarding and Lemuel Haynes bother you as it relates to church history?

01:09:42

Let me remind people what that was. The statement basically was, why are we celebrating

01:09:47

Martin Luther, but not Lemuel Haynes? And my answer, which I thought, again, was fairly clear, was that Luther's life in God's providence has impacted hundreds of millions of people, not just hundreds of years after him, but during his lifetime and in every generation thereafter, all around the world.

01:10:17

And yet, the vast majority of humanity has never heard of Lemuel Haynes and their life has not been impacted by Lemuel Haynes.

01:10:28

Now, what I thought was a given. That is a result of God's divine decree, not any political action on my part or anybody else.

01:10:44

God chose to do that. I've said over and over again, I wouldn't have picked Luther. I like Wycliffe, but it wasn't his time.

01:10:53

It's up to God. It's not up to me. And trying to change church history, to try to, it almost sounds like someone's saying, well, you know,

01:11:05

God didn't do it right, so we need to fix it. No. If you want to go read everything that Lemuel Haynes ever said or wrote in every sermon, great, go for it.

01:11:19

No problem. But if you're teaching a church history class and you've got, well, it depends on what,

01:11:28

I always taught from the primitive church through the Reformation. And then you'd have continental, then you've got

01:11:36

American church history. And a lot of seminaries say, don't even offer all that anymore. They just cram it all into one.

01:11:43

So let's say you've got 2 ,000 years to fit into 14 weeks.

01:11:51

And let's say you, well, in a lot of seminaries anymore, you're only talking once a week, maybe twice a week, depends on the type of seminary, full -time students, campus, whatever it might be.

01:12:01

You've got to chart all of the major influences that can make sense out of why we have

01:12:10

Lutherans today and Anglicans today and Baptists and Presbyterians and all the non -dominationals and all the stuff that's influenced that and all the great creeds.

01:12:23

It's like you're going to cram that in, but you need to get Lemuel Haynes in there. Thank God for all of the people down through church history whose names are not in the books that God used, they are going to be closer to the throne than many of the big names that we study.

01:12:42

But none of that changes the reality that if I want to understand what's going on in my world right now, then

01:12:48

I need to have the right proper foundation. I need to have the right and proper foundation.

01:12:55

And so I don't know what, how

01:13:02

I could make it any clearer. I made it clear then, I've now made it clear again. And I stand by it.

01:13:09

There's, it seems to me to be inarguable. Absolutely inarguable.

01:13:15

That if you're going to teach church history, then you need to give people what is most important in church history.

01:13:23

Well, what's the most important is... No, no, no, no, no, no. Be careful. Because once you start saying, well, what's most important is my ethnicity or people who look like me, that's racist.

01:13:39

Okay? That's racist. Martin Luther was a German. Okay? But he was up against an

01:13:47

Italian Pope. And there's all sorts of really important stuff that happened due to Frenchmen and Scotsmen and people from North Africa that didn't look like me.

01:14:01

And that is a given. It's not even arguable. Not even arguable.

01:14:08

So I cannot sit around and say, well, I just want to, I just think you should emphasize this, the

01:14:15

Scottish contributions to church history. There's a fair amount. Ain't much going on right now there.

01:14:21

It's a mess, but there's a fair amount. But that's not how you do church history.

01:14:27

And I'm not going to push my ethnicity upon everybody else. If you don't like the class, take another class.

01:14:35

But if you're going to prepare people right, then you give them what they really need. And you don't go off on rabbit trails because of certain current social trends.

01:14:46

That will be the end of any meaningful education. Yesterday at 4 .07

01:14:55

PM, Kyle J. Howard wrote the following.

01:15:02

Finally, to my people of color, decolonizing your faith means decolonizing your faith.

01:15:09

That means breaking away from enculturated elements of American evangelicalism and rejecting

01:15:15

German liberalism. Here's the key. Liberalism and fundamentalism is a beef largely between white

01:15:22

Christians. I was appreciative of the fact that Mr.

01:15:35

Howard had a long thread yesterday about the importance of the resurrection.

01:15:43

You're not a Christian if you don't believe the resurrection. Right on. Can't argue that one.

01:15:50

That's certainly something I would say. But this is the danger.

01:15:57

Kyle Howard mentioned that he's been invited to deliver a lecture, not a lecture series, not a professorship, but a lecture at Boyce College on developing a healthy ethnicity.

01:16:10

Okay, developing a healthy ethnicity. PhD student at Southern Seminary here. And my concern is this, that doors are open for him because of, and many others like him, because of an appropriate emphasis upon doctrinal orthodoxy at certain times.

01:16:40

But then things get weird. And, for example, liberalism and fundamentalism is a beef largely between white

01:16:48

Christians. That's just absurd. The issues... Now, if all you're saying is the primary people that wrote historically on this subject were white, duh, again.

01:17:03

But the issues of liberalism and fundamentalism are relevant to every

01:17:11

Christian everywhere today. And if you can't see that, you've missed the boat.

01:17:19

The boat sailed without you. You just fell off the dock because it's sort of like what happened with old

01:17:28

Dave Hunt. James, I don't have any traditions. Yes, you do, Dave, but they're so deep, you can't see them.

01:17:35

They're so much the lens through which you look, you can't even identify them anymore. If you think that your black church is not impacted fundamentally, theologically, ecclesiastically by the issues of liberalism and fundamentalism, how in the world are you going to interact with people like Cone and things like that if you don't understand how deeply the very categories of discussion have been influenced by stuff like that?

01:18:10

But then there was a thread, and this was what was really concerning to me. Well, before I get

01:18:20

I'll walk through the thread in a moment, but this morning, clearly in my mind, since this was 7 .03

01:18:28

a .m., this was after the statement went live.

01:18:38

Theoretically, I believe this is in response to the statement.

01:18:46

Kyle J. Howard, a black Christian doesn't submit to powerful, influential white men telling him to shut up about racism and its impact within communities of color.

01:18:57

They respond by saying, you social justice warrior, y 'all do know, that's what he put, y 'all, y 'all do know that the heart and spirit behind that is shut up n -word, right?

01:19:14

Question mark. Y 'all do know.

01:19:23

So if powerful, influential white men say something about social justice and push back against the social justice warrior, then somehow

01:19:37

Kyle J. Howard has the ability to all of a sudden read the hearts and minds of others.

01:19:46

Y 'all do know that the heart and spirit behind that is shut up n -word.

01:19:53

He only took out one letter. You can look it up on his feed if you're not blocked like I am.

01:19:59

I have to use other means. Y 'all do know that the heart and spirit behind that is shut up n -word, right?

01:20:10

I'm going to be straightforward with you. The heart and mind that thinks that is deeply biased by racism, deeply biased by racism.

01:20:22

If you can take an entire racial group, white men, and attribute evil to their hearts and their spirits as a

01:20:34

Christian in this way, you are guilty of the sin of racism and must be called out to repent of it.

01:20:45

That's all there is to it. This isn't rocket science. That's a racist tweet.

01:20:53

It doesn't matter what color he is. It's a racist tweet, period.

01:21:00

Identify it for what it is. And that does come out in this thread.

01:21:10

This is from, I think this one here is from August 31st.

01:21:16

Why does the Black church last so long? And this is talking about the service. Because it was the only place Black people could go and not only have their full humanity affirmed, but behold

01:21:25

Black leadership. When the church is a sanctuary and the world doesn't think your life matters, you don't mind staying a while.

01:21:34

All right. I could see that in the past.

01:21:43

I know, however, that trying to extrapolate that reality from the past into the present creates distortions.

01:21:55

Tremendous distortions. Every single person of whatever color in the congregation of Jesus Christ that meets at my church on a

01:22:08

Sunday morning is affirmed in their full humanity and worth before God. How so?

01:22:15

By the ministering of the word of God to every single one of them in full equality.

01:22:22

And the expectation that the spirit of God will move in the hearts and minds of every person in that room.

01:22:30

Black, white, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, Hispanic.

01:22:36

Doesn't matter. Spirit of God, we trust, we pray. I lead the pastoral prayers.

01:22:45

I'll be honest with you. I can't think in my experience of having been in a congregation.

01:22:59

It's nothing's coming up at my age. It doesn't mean a whole lot. But where the pastoral prayer in the

01:23:06

Sunday morning service is longer. I pray for a long time.

01:23:14

In fact, we start off by saying a few moments of silent prayer.

01:23:21

Have you ever measured the moments? What we should say is a few seconds. Not for me.

01:23:27

I make sure there's minimally a full minute. And that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, especially young people.

01:23:35

Who are not. They don't know what to do in silence for 60 seconds.

01:23:41

Because they never experience it. They've always got something stuffed in their ears. But minimum, one minute before I start praying.

01:23:53

But I will pray for 10 minutes. And anybody at that church will tell you that one of the common elements that prayer is we can do nothing apart from the

01:24:04

Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit must come in grace to minister to us. And we beg of you to perform that tremendous miracle where you take the word.

01:24:14

And by the power of the Spirit, you apply it to each person here to meet the needs that they bring into this place to your honor and glory.

01:24:24

And we do not exclude anybody. Every person, white, black, or any other nationality or ethnicity is absolutely confirmed in their full humanity and standing before God as a member of that congregation.

01:24:40

And that's how it should be. That's how it should be. So the thread.

01:24:52

This was actually September. This one's September 2nd. Dear Christian of color, if you've left an evangelical church due to ethnic insensitivity and are recovering from the trauma of the experience, it is completely okay for you to intentionally visit churches with non -Anglo leadership.

01:25:17

Don't let anyone tell you self -care is racist. Now, if what was being discussed was a clear example of white supremacist

01:25:41

Ku Klux Klan style behavior, great.

01:25:49

But the number of churches like that are small indeed. Small indeed.

01:25:56

And unfortunately, Kyle J. Howard doesn't make that kind of distinction. I wish he did. He goes on to say, healing begins with first coming to terms with reality that you have truly been traumatized.

01:26:11

And that, check this out, evangelical spaces are a trigger.

01:26:19

Evangelical spaces. From there, you must find a space slash community where you can thrive as yourself, ready for this folks, without the white gaze.

01:26:34

That's in scare quotes. The white gaze. Heal. Guard your heart of developing racist ideas.

01:26:47

May I suggest the idea there is a white gaze is a racist idea.

01:26:53

Is there a black gaze? Chinese gaze? General Asian gaze?

01:26:59

Is there a Hispanic gaze? The whole idea is so absurd that it makes my head spin.

01:27:10

The white gaze. But oh, you can get followers You can get followers.

01:27:18

Do you see Twitter right now? I happened to look over right then and I was like, there's no way that Garrett got that up there that fast.

01:27:27

Because you don't see what Garrett O 'Hara has up. It's the believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything meme that everyone's doing about the

01:27:37

Colin Kaepernick stuff and just how absurd epistemologically and everything else that line is.

01:27:44

But he's got it on this big white face. This guy's big old bulging eyes.

01:27:50

And I look over right as I'm talking about the white gaze. I'm like, wow, he's fast, man. But it wasn't.

01:27:56

I can't give him. I can't give him credit for that because it was actually something else.

01:28:02

But anyway, what is the white gaze? That is such a racist comment.

01:28:09

Can you imagine? Turn everything in the statement around and change the colors.

01:28:15

And you'd be thinking you were listening to the grand wizard of the KKK. But as long as you're the minority, you can get away with that.

01:28:24

No, not in the church. You can't. It'll get called out. It needs to get called out. Beloved, it may take time to heal.

01:28:32

That's okay. Don't allow people to tell you self -care and being in a place of healing is racism or a spirit of segregation.

01:28:41

Develop relationships with leaders of color. You can trust who can hold you accountable for healing and avoiding bitterness.

01:28:47

This is all get away from whitey. So you can heal.

01:28:56

This is in the church. People have said, we need to worry about division.

01:29:05

You're not obligated to submit to white authority. If going to a predominantly white church or sitting under a white pastor has become a traumatic trigger, it's not your fault, and there is no shame.

01:29:21

Don't leave the church. Find one that will truly treasure your culture and ethnicity.

01:29:26

Folks, this is counseling rebellion against the God -ordained structure of the local church.

01:29:33

God puts those elders there. And you say, well, I need to go to a predominantly black church.

01:29:39

You're 10 % of the population, my friend. So you're talking segregationism here.

01:29:47

Hello? On the one side, you're supposed to have ethnically mixed churches, but we don't have to.

01:29:55

Where's the consistency here? I mean, if God puts a church that's primarily black in a particular place and raises up leadership there, fine, great, wonderful.

01:30:10

But don't go telling me that you should purposely segregate yourselves and not call it racism.

01:30:17

It is. You are not obligated to submit to white authority.

01:30:24

Well, of course not, because there ain't no such thing. But there is divine authority in the local church, and you better be able to tell the difference between the two.

01:30:38

What if you reverse this? What if someone was sitting there saying, well, now you know you don't have to submit to black authority.

01:30:44

What if you had somebody saying, oh, this church over here just ordained a black elder. Y 'all just feel free to leave because we don't want you to be triggered now.

01:30:55

And this doesn't cause division. Wow, allow yourself room to heal.

01:31:03

You cannot remain in a place where white crowds trigger you. May I say something?

01:31:09

The Holy Spirit of God leads us to maturity as Christians. All this garbage about triggers and spaces is non -Christian, psychological gobbledygook that needs to be repented of and driven out the back door of the church.

01:31:28

It is absurd. You cannot remain in a place where white crowds trigger you, but it is not racist to be triggered when you have experienced profound pain and trauma due to white

01:31:43

Christian spaces and soured relationships. It is natural for your mind to develop defenses, white

01:31:52

Christian spaces. This is what I was speaking against months ago when

01:31:59

I said, don't bring this to the Lord's table. You have ought against your brother. Don't do it.

01:32:06

Someone wanted an ecumenical council to have me defined as a heretic. Wow, white gaze, white spaces.

01:32:21

This is the application, folks. This is what we're trying to say. Hey, you've got people in seminaries and Bible colleges now that instead of teaching how to exegete the text, the word of God and make application, have sound theology and really respond to a secularizing nation around us, be able to explain why we believe about marriage and sexuality and the home and the relationship of men, male and female and all that.

01:32:53

Instead of doing that, you're spending time with this kind of psychobabble and triggering and spaces and trauma.

01:33:05

Grow up in the truth. Grow up in the truth.

01:33:14

This stuff will destroy fellowships. And that's why, thankfully, like I said, when

01:33:21

I came back to South Africa, when I talked with brothers and sisters in Africa, they're like, what are you people talking about there?

01:33:29

What do you mean? But what? And you would think they'd have more reason to understand. It is not a biblical issue.

01:33:38

It is the importation of these external categories, although always be slathered over with biblical language.

01:33:47

But the core of this kind of stuff is from outside the faith.

01:33:53

It would have resulted in absolute anarchy in the early church under the apostles, since it didn't, then we can very safely say we don't want it either.

01:34:05

We don't want it either. So there's the application.

01:34:12

There is the, this is what's happening. This is what's being taught.

01:34:18

Folks, parents, if you send your kids someplace and you're paying through the nose to send them someplace and they come home and this is the kind of stuff they're getting, intersectionality and privilege and all this kind of stuff, you are wasting your money.

01:34:39

You are wasting your money. Keep your eyes open for this.

01:34:47

I'm sad to say there are major seminaries that are just collapsing on this right and left.

01:34:57

Part of the reason, I'll be honest with you, part of the reason is federal money. It's federal money.

01:35:06

They accept Pell Grants. They accept federal money. And as a result, if you let

01:35:13

Caesar pay your bills, then Caesar gets to tell you what to do. And so if you want that accreditation from that governmental agency or quasi -governmental agency, then you've got to start doing what you got to do.

01:35:30

And a lot of it is just trying to hold them off so we'll do this and now we'll have this kind of seminar and all the rest of that stuff.

01:35:40

And meanwhile, the education level goes down and down and down and down, inevitably, the reality we face in a secularizing nation.

01:35:53

So with all of that said, it is, as I said earlier in the program, it is not my intention for myself or this ministry to become a single issue ministry by any stretch of the imagination.

01:36:15

We've never been that way. I mean, I guess in the first few months, we were pretty much just focused on Mormonism, but that was a long time ago.

01:36:25

And I'm thankful that we have had a broad spectrum of issues to deal with because it helps to provide balance.

01:36:36

So we have to find that balance that balance. It's real easy to say, well, we're not going to address something.

01:36:45

I'm not going to talk about that because we have to decide that's outside of our realm.

01:36:50

Okay, there are things outside of the realm. You've heard me say, I've tried to avoid a whole lot on Eastern Orthodoxy because you just have to draw a line someplace, but I've talked about it some.

01:37:05

But you've not heard me lecturing on Buddhism or Hinduism and things like that. And I'm not going to be getting into a bunch of political stuff.

01:37:12

This issue directly speaks to the unity of the church and the grounds upon which we stand and therefore to the gospel itself, to the gospel itself.

01:37:26

And that's why we've addressed it. And my participation in the production and promulgation of this statement is simply reflective of a commitment to the gospel and the defense of that gospel.

01:37:46

And so will we need to respond as responses are given?

01:37:53

Yes, I will. Will that keep me from addressing all sorts of other issues, whether it be an

01:38:01

Andy Stanley degradation of the view of the Old Testament?

01:38:06

Will we continue looking at CBGM and textual critical stuff? Yes, all those things.

01:38:14

Like I said, the other side has an advantage. They tend to be one topic. They can focus all their energy on that.

01:38:22

We don't have that freedom because the scripture doesn't allow us to have that freedom.

01:38:28

And there's a lot of other things to be dealing with. But today, in light of the release of the statement, we needed to be focused upon this particular subject for this particular time.

01:38:41

So I'm actually I forgot to ask you about this, but I'm flying to Florida on Thursday.

01:38:51

So I'm actually going to try to get in tomorrow. Were you planning on coming in tomorrow? Okay. So we might be able to maybe open the phones.

01:39:01

And if you'd like to talk about this subject, maybe we can do it tomorrow. We'll try to let you know when we'll be able to arrange that.