Thabiti Anyawbile on the Jude 3 Project Panel

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We are gonna talk today about a controversy that might be going on or might not be, depending on when you are listening to this, because I'm releasing it a few days after I recorded it.

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And it's concerning a situation that Thabiti Anabwile, who is a pastor, for those who don't know,

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I think might still be somewhat associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. I'm not sure in what ways.

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I know at one time he definitely was, and he was certainly part of Nine Marks Ministries. I know there's an association between him and David Platt.

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I'm not sure exactly the nature of that, but there is an SBC association there. Maybe his church is still

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SBC, I don't know. But either way, the controversy is happening in SBC circles.

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And even if it's based on previous membership in the SBC, that's where it's happening. And Thabiti Anabwile is a pastor who was certainly very much platformed at Southeastern, where I went to school, when

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I went to school there. And I remember him still telling the audience, you need, if you think that fighting for justice means you're a liberal, then you need to be a liberal, because the

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God would be a liberal in that situation. Very, very eyebrow raising things that he said,

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I remember, in chapel. And he would get invited quite a bit to chapel. So I know who he is.

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Not everyone does, but that's a little bit of context for at least my personal interactions and where I know him from.

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But the controversy currently has to do with whether or not Thabiti Anabwile is an egalitarian when it comes to women pastors.

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Does he think that the role of the pastor can be extended to females, even though Paul instructs against this?

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Now, I'm not bringing this up as a way to give new information to conservatives in the

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SBC so that they can go and really fight this political battle. Although that potentially could happen,

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I don't know. I mean, some of the information I'm gonna go over, I think is useful to that end, but that's not the reason I'm doing this.

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In fact, if I was doing that, I would do it as I'm recording this. I wouldn't be releasing it a few days later.

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The reason I'm releasing it at all is because I think it illustrates something. And it's something that I think there's some lessons in.

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I don't know what they all are. I think I might know what some of them are. And moving forward, I think we need to learn from this possibly.

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So that's one major motivation of mine. I'll explain that in a minute. The other major motivation is showing how far this social justice thinking pushes one.

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What kinds of scenarios, situations, fellowship, circles, you find yourself in when you start going down this path?

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B. N. Abuele is someone that no one 10 years ago would have thought would be going down this path. I mean, he preached in chapel for the master seminary.

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His friends were conservatives, right? And good, solid reform preacher. Why in the world is he going this direction?

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In fact, a lot of people thought, because he had a book on black theology and how compromised it used to be and how we need to recover good, solid doctrine.

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And people are just, I think, stunned that he's gone as far left as he's gone. And this is the nature of the disease.

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Once you start going down this path, there's really not a whole lot of stops along the way.

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The rails start coming off, the wheels start coming off, frankly, and you find yourself in places you never thought you would find yourself 10 years previous, probably.

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So that's another thing I wanted to show you. And then third, perhaps, I wanna expose the

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Jude Three Project a little more. There's been so much exposure on the Jude Three Project, their interview with Walter Strickland, Lisa Fields with Walter Strickland.

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I remember Lisa Fields did that whole thing on that our federal headship in Adam is the same thing as systemic racism in America.

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And I mean, it was just like false teaching, just the way she drew. Anyway, trying to compare original sin with racism and systemic racism.

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And then also there was something else. I think Jude Three had put out something that was like basically saying the gospel is social justice, just total social gospel false teaching.

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And so this has been out there, but the Jude Three Project keeps coming up. And so I thought it would be beneficial to go over the

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Jude Three Project again. And this is from the Jude Three Project. Most of you aren't gonna sit down and watch an hour lecture from the

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Jude Three Project. So I figured I would do it for you. And then this lecture, it's not a lecture, it's a panel really discussion has

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Thabiti Anabwile on the panel. And I've broken it down into about a 16 minute segment. So we'll watch this segment and then we'll walk through it.

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And what I'm about to show you is what, we'll start with the first thing, my first mission here.

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What Tom Buck was concerned about in Thabiti Anabwile's comments at this particular panel.

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In my mind, it pales in comparison to the other things Thabiti Anabwile says. And it illustrates something.

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So what am I talking about? Let's give some context here. So here's how the story goes.

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Tom Buck on January 20th, he's a pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention. I think he's still in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And he is on the more conservative side and he's critical of these comments by Thabiti Anabwile.

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He says, here Thabiti Anabwile says, some people should leave their church because the pastor, that rascal is a white supremacist either explicitly or implicitly.

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And then he says, but he says, you should stay in your church to support your good pastor, which includes women pastors, okay?

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And he's accurately portraying something Thabiti Anabwile said. The controversy though, ends up becoming about women pastors.

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And I'll show you the clip as we go through this. It's a very small passing comment that he makes. And one of the things that I said,

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I think two weeks ago or so, when I was talking about that, I said there was a window.

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I think we had 2017 -ish and certainly by 2018, when we had T4G and MLK 50, and it was obvious there were false teachers.

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The way so many conservatives reacted was they still kept calling them brothers. And if you read the

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New Testament, it's obvious. You know, this kind of situation where you did ministry with someone and then later on, and it turns out that they are not who you thought them to be, that's a common situation.

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It's not abnormal, but it does take us, it hurts us, it's hard for us. You know, people that we thought really were, we're good brothers.

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And then we find out that they're embracing false teaching. But what happened in this particular scenario with the

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SBC is the conservatives were very reluctant to really go full -fledged against the social justice movement.

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Very reluctant to do anything but give a charitable reading.

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So in my opinion, I think accurate readings started getting massage, like thrown out the door, actually.

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The pursuit wasn't, it seemed like as much accuracy. I think now it more so is, but it wasn't at that time as it was.

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Is there any way we can construe this to be, to give us hope that this person is not as far gone as they appear to be?

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And like I said, the term brother was often used. You didn't have conservatives going hard against this stuff.

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You had conservatives starting to rage against critical race theory, starting in 2019, but it was more abstract.

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It wasn't going after individuals. And there is no disembodied evil. I mean, there's people that are doing this.

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And there's such a reluctance to make it personal or to call out the actual false teachers. And I think because of that, in part, that window closed, that window closed.

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There was a window, and I think the opportunity was there. And I don't know that it's there.

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Now, if you want my full comments on that, go back to the video I did on Josh Bice's church leaving the

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Southern Baptist Convention. That was, I think, the video where I talked about some of that. And so I've been watching this for years, from the seminary on through the, seeing what's happened at the conventions and all.

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And so I have my opinions on this. Still respect some of the guys who are trying to fight in the convention, nothing against them.

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And I will seek to help where I can when there's, because you can't go wrong when you are trying to expose the evil that's happening in the convention.

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Even if that just leads to more people being aware of it and leaving, or whether that's taking back the convention, you know, if God does a miracle,

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God can do a miracle. But I don't see that it's a wise or prudent thing at this point. But I would still certainly help people that wanna bring exposure and are interested in getting those who haven't, who've been asleep on this to wake up.

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So those were in brief, some of my thoughts on this. One of the things I said though, in that,

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I said during this window, where I think there was an opportunity, what happened was the fight, conservatives didn't wanna fight on the ground that the left had chosen.

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The left really chose the BLM stuff in the SBC. They knew that there was a weak spot there.

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There was kind of a guilty conscience and apprehension, especially white pastors who didn't feel secure, didn't wanna be called racist.

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They're just, you know, I mean, think about like what the debates were over. Think about what, I mean, like Founders Ministries did this whole debate on women pastors with Dwight McKissick, right?

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Nothing wrong with that. That's an issue, but it wasn't the pervasive issue in the SBC. And every time it's brought up, it's like, here's a rogue church.

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Here's a church NAM planted. Here's something over here that a seminary professor said about kinder, gentle complementarianism.

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I've even covered some of this stuff. I've been the source of actually some of this stuff. Sometimes people didn't know it, but I have, you know,

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I have focused on that here or there, but it was never, during this window, it was never the main focus.

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And there's a reason for that. The reason for that is that, here, let me turn this off real quick so you can see me.

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The reason was I knew this wasn't the main battle. It was a sideshow.

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It was, it could be the main battle in the future. If things keep going the way they are, then that will be the battle.

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But it wasn't at that time. The seminary still had, you know, the Danvers statement.

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They still, they would always retreat into those statements. And you couldn't find, like, if you want to use a word from the left, systemic level, you know, egalitarianism being cranked out like you could in other denominations.

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It just, it wasn't happening. And I think conservatives really wanted that to be the issue because, look, it's so much easier, especially in the

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SBC. They have a guilty conscience. I'm just from experience being in the SBC and going to an

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SBC school. There's such a guilty conscience over racism. They are so manipulated by what they think of as their past.

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Even the story told about their past is incomplete, but they just buy this story that, you know, they are part of this horrible group.

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It's like being part of the Klan, but we're not racist anymore and we're trying to recover the image of the Klan. That's kind of how some of them feel about the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And they just, that's not the battle they want to fight.

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They don't want to be called those. I mean, being called a racist is the career ender. It's the thing that they're afraid of probably the most.

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They'd much rather fight things that they think also are more clear cut in the Bible that are not quite as murky.

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And so the Paul statements on women pastors, LGBT issues, those are, they'd much prefer to fight that.

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And I think the egalitarian, complementarian thing was the ground chosen. Now, complementarianism is kind of a weak middle ground.

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I've really come to understand this over time. I think Zach Garris' book,

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Masculine Christianity does a great job with this, explaining the differences. But it's, the conservatives were already sort of pursuing this from a weak position.

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And it wasn't the biggest rallying cry. I'll be honest with you guys, patriarchy is a bigger rallying cry, if you use that word and what that describes, that there's a created order and rising from that created order is differences between men and women that even make their way into the church and special revelation, giving directions because it's based on this created order thing.

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That's more of a rallying cry. But the conservatives didn't, in the SBC especially, they're not gonna use those words really, at least at that point they weren't, and during that window from whatever, 2018 to 2020.

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And so they had a weak position and then it looked like it was nitpicky or like it was a bully tactic.

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Here's a church over here that's not operating according to the Baptist Faith Message 2000. And then you'd get a statement from Kevin Eazell or someone saying, we do not agree with that.

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Paul Chitwood, whatever, you'd say, we don't agree with that. And then it looked like you're making a big deal about something that you shouldn't be and you didn't go through the proper channels and you're just trying to embarrass someone who didn't even know.

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That's how it was always made to look when people would go after Beth Moore for that. And there was a million things people went over after Beth Moore for, but when they would go after her for specifically the complementarian, egalitarian thing, like she's guest speaking here and it looks like it's preaching and that now she is preaching.

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It always kind of like, look like you're hitting a girl. Like, and that's how they would treat it. Not saying any of it's wrong, but it wasn't probably the right ground to pick.

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The ground that has energized the base, and I'm not talking about just Southern Baptist, I'm talking about like conservative people in the

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United States. The ground that's energizing them right now, where the main attack is, is against Western civilization through BLM.

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Through everything's white supremacy if it's connected to Western civilization and Christian civilization somehow. And that was,

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I think that was the ground. And that's primarily what we focused on probably during that window. That's the main thing.

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We focused on other things too because I knew those things were in the peripheral and those things were going to come to the forefront at some point, but that was the major battle.

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That was the thing that would have characterized the institutions in the SBC. Egalitarianism didn't characterize them.

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That yes, they're getting softer, but what characterized them at that time was this BLM type push, this egalitarian racial push that all these disparities that exist in crime and incarceration and all the other different things, healthcare, these are the things that need to be fought against and diversity on your elder board and diversity in your library.

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And this is where I think conservatives did not make a very, the clearest stand. And we did have some, we did have some things.

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We had the Dallas statement. There were things, I'm not saying there weren't, but I think conservatives much preferred to go the egalitarian complementarian route.

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And that's a strategy that has been tried over and over. And I just don't see that it's done a lot.

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And so this was no exception in my mind and I'm not condemning at all Tom Book for bringing this out, by the way. I think it's good that this is brought out, but if you read some of the comments and stuff, which by Twitter is kind of a leftist echo chamber.

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So I don't really consider it to be an accurate depiction of what people are actually thinking, but I mean, it's

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Twitter. So it's a slaughter for the right, usually. And Thabitian Abouile definitely comes out, at least according to the

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Twitter mob as looking a lot better. And broadly speaking, and I don't know,

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I don't know what to say. When I watched the entire video, I just thought this is the thing we're focusing on.

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Because I want to show you some really crazy things that happen in this video that Thabitian Abouile is part of and then kind of endorses in a way.

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So Tom Book says, hey, he's calling attention to the fact that there could be some women pastors.

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Denny Burke, then a professor at Southern Seminary, says,

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I didn't know he had become a full blown egalitarian. And then Denny Burke says, I've been away from Twitter since posting this.

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I just saw that he posted this clarification, which denies being an egalitarian.

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So Denny Burke is now, he's backpedaling on what he said before, not backpedaling, but he's clarifying that he was wrong.

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That actually, no, Thabitian Abouile is not an egalitarian. And then you have this guy, Trainway U, hey, he says his church constitution still states only men may serve as pastors.

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Let's not assume that he's changed his view. He's on a panel here. He might just be trying to be sensitive to egalitarians in his audience.

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And then Thabitian Abouile weighs in and says, yeah, I'm trying to be sensitive to egalitarians in the audience, especially as a guest there myself.

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So the more and more this conversation goes on, the more and more it looks like, man, like what are you doing? A passing comment by Thabitian Abouile, where he's talking to an audience that includes egalitarians.

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And he's mentioning the fact that, you know, they may have female pastors and you're making such a big deal about this.

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And that's kind of how it comes across. Now I agree. And I think other Orthodox conservatives agree. This is not good.

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What he did, well, he should not have said what he said, but it doesn't look like anything to earth shattering, especially for the other things

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Thabitian Abouile has said. And that's what I wanna talk about. So we're gonna go through what I would think the main conversation should be about this, about Thabitian Abouile and that whole panel.

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If conservatives are going to talk about this and really make this an issue, make a stink about Thabitian Abouile's activities and how far he's gone to the left.

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I think the whole video has so many other opportunities for doing this that make a whole lot more sense in my mind.

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And I'm sure that Tom Buck and some of the others that are talking about this probably have not seen the whole video, but I went ahead and watched the whole video.

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It's about an hour long. And so I made a montage of sorts and it's like 16 minutes long.

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So we'll just go through it and we'll talk about it. And this is the Jude Three Project hosting this. These are the panelists that they invited.

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And this is, and I want you to pay attention to Thabitian Abouile's reaction. And it's very telling.

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And in my opinion, much worse than a passing comment about female pastors. So here we go.

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A variety of topics that are political in nature, but that have implications for the life of the church.

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Where does one stand, for instance, on the issue of women's reproductive rights? That's a political as well as a theological question.

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What is one going to say about voting rights and access to the ballot box? What about climate change?

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All of these and many, many more are matters that one could say, oh, that's political and they ought not be brought up in the church.

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I would say no. Okay, so that first guy that you saw there, his name is

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Marvin Mikkel. And I looked up some of his other writings and definitely pro -LGBT, all that stuff.

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He's a president of a seminary that even has an LGBT scholarship. He is as far to the left.

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I mean, you don't get farther. I don't know what else. I mean, he's on the environmental train. He's on the legal immigration train.

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He's on all of it. And he's here on the panel for Jude Three. So that's the first thing. And so here he's talking about reproductive rights.

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He's talking about abortion, okay? Let's just be honest what he's talking about. You have a guy for an evangelical organization, supposedly, on some level endorsing abortion as something the church should be somehow,

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I guess, they should be involved in politics to secure women's reproductive rights. I don't know if you remember,

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I did that podcast on the book by Thaddeus Williams, Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth, where he has this laundry list of sins

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Christians have been involved in. And I said, there's a lot of churches out there, even now, that claim to be

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Christians, and in the name of Christ, they support abortion. Here's an example of that. So it is out there.

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And here it is in a supposed evangelical organization. I mean, this is an organization that has been endorsed by a number of people.

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I remember Sean McDowell endorsed this organization, and I put a comment. This was like maybe a year and a half ago, or two years ago.

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I commented, and we had some private messages going back and forth.

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And then I think it was kind of like he wasn't gonna do that anymore. But I'm just illustrating that as, this is kind of where this stuff goes.

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I mean, it's not just like fringy stuff. This has made its way into the heart of evangelicalism.

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And here they're platforming this guy, Marvin McMickle. So there's a lot more we're gonna go over, but he's not the only one that thinks this on the panel.

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Political, and they ought not be brought up in the church. I would say no. To say the only way to be a

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Christian is to hold the political views I do is antithetical to the gospel teaching, which is that we are all part of one body.

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And so it calls for great love and great compassion and humility for us to say, this is biblical teaching.

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And here is how I understand the point of wrestling with what that biblical teaching looks like when manifested in the world.

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And the fact that so many Christians then end up being a single issue voter.

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I will only vote for someone who is pro -life. That rascal.

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So you can see here, that's the conservative, by the way, I should mention.

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That's the conservative in the group, if there is one. She's really not. All these people are on the left, but Jacqueline Rivers.

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She's the more, because she's against abortion. She's against the same -sex marriage and stuff.

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But even she's saying like, well, you know, the Mark Dever line right there, you know, single issue voting.

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Just, you know, you kind of have to be open to voting for people who might not be pro -life. So again, this is a panel of Thabiti Anabwile is on.

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That doesn't mean he endorses all these views, right? Sometimes you're invited places and you're respectful and you know, you can't talk all the time.

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You're not correcting everything. But this is an organization we'll see later that he actually kind of endorses what's happening here as a very good thing.

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And it's not an organization that is like, it's not like he went to an NPR thing or a PBS thing.

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This is an organization that says we're evangelical. We're apologists for Christianity, which is explicitly a

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Christian group. That's important. It's pro -life.

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If that rascal's in the pulpit espousing explicitly or in a veiled way, white supremacy, you don't need to sit under that, right?

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You're not obligated to sit under that. Sometimes leaving is healthy. But some of you are in churches with good pastors who are swimming in the eddies and the undertoes and the flood of this present moment, doing the best they can, fumbling sometimes, sometimes getting stuff a little bit right that didn't go as far as you wanted them to.

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And so you mad, you probably need to stay and support that pastor. Because that pastor right now, if he needs anything or she needs anything, is courage.

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My church is phenomenally African -American. We got a smattering of some diversity there. Over the last couple of years, we've seen a rise in.

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I should probably stop it right there. That's the comment that Tom Buck was talking about that many latched onto, where he talks about you need to encourage he or she.

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He used a feminine pronoun and so attributed that to the office of pastor. And that's what's got a lot of conservatives rallying.

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But as we're gonna see as we keep going through this video, that seems like small potatoes compared to a lot of the other things that you're gonna hear.

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Racism. Well, I didn't think, our pastors didn't think we needed to sort of just let that go because that's not our issue.

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We've got maybe three or four Asian -American brothers and sisters who are part of our church. It's like, no, actually we need to speak into this because guess what?

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Black folk got some problematic and sinful attitudes toward Asian people too. So this was interesting because he's, the way that supposedly whites today treat

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African -Americans and to beat in Willie's mind is the same way black people, I guess, are also treating

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Asians. And so they need to preach against anti -Asian racism in the church so that the people in his congregation are getting that message as if that's a problem in the church or something.

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Anyway, he's buying a narrative that, I write about this in Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

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It's not a fair narrative. It's an artificial narrative that was developed during the

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COVID stuff because Trump started saying China flu and that kind of thing.

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Kung flu, some people said, right? And that kind of, and that created this whole really overreaction that, and this whole narrative that there was attacks going on all over the place and they were anti -Asian.

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I don't remember the spa shooting. And that individual had some white victims, but many of them were

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Asian because those were the people that worked in the spa. And there's no evidence that this was an anti -Asian thing, but that's how it was construed by the media.

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And so it's a media narrative. That's just, I mean, it's, in a way it's bearing false witness to be honest with you.

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And the thing though, and this is the escape hatch I want to give, I mean, I probably shouldn't, but I do want to give him this escape hatch.

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Maybe his congregation is dealing with that. Maybe he's got a bunch of racists in his congregation that really don't like Asian people.

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I'm skeptical of that, but maybe that's the case. And if that's the case, okay, sure. You know, I know that there are, you know, in New York City and in San Francisco, there have been some incidences where it's been primarily young black men who have attacked primarily

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Asian women. And, but is this something that's systemic? Is this something that's like pervasive?

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Is this, you know, part of, this is what black people do. I mean, listen to the way he sounds.

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It's just interesting that it doesn't end, this narrative gets applied to all kinds of different things.

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All right, this isn't like the worst of it or anything, but I felt the need to stop and comment. I probably should hold myself back a little bit and just let this play.

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I think many pastors have to outgrow who they were as they were being formed in their early years, the

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Sunday school lessons they heard, the sermons they heard, the values they heard in their early years, and move into a new liberty.

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And what Paul, I think, was rebuking Peter for was having, was lacking the courage to do that.

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You're here, you're with them, I've seen you. Suddenly, because the old has come back, you find yourself withdrawing.

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And I find a lot of my clergy colleagues over the decades have struggled with moving into liberation theology, moving into justice -based ministries, moving into women in ministry, moving into the affirmation of the

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LGBTQ community. Because while they want to go out into the new, there's somebody, there's some

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James back there that they are afraid to disappoint.

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Welcoming the LGBT. I just wanna make sure everyone caught that. That's pretty radical stuff.

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Now, Thabiti and Abuele didn't say that, but he's on a panel that invites someone like that to share their positive opinion so people can learn from it.

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It's not presented as we're just getting people from different perspectives. These are the people that are the experts that we need to learn from, that are brothers in Christ.

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And listen to what you just heard. You need to be on the forefront of the LGBT movement if you're gonna be a consistent

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Christian. Now, there's some pushback on this a little bit. I want you to hear that. Unity into the church.

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We absolutely should. We're Christians, we are called to love everyone. Should we accept as biblical the

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LGBTQ lifestyle? I think there are strong biblical passages that suggest this is an area where we ought to be counter -cultural.

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That we ought to stand on the fact that Jesus said himself, God created them male and female.

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That he takes the position that the notion of biblical understanding of gender and of marriage is not what is currently acceptable in the culture.

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And that we should lovingly, compassionately, and humbly be true to the biblical mandate.

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Challenge progressive politics where they fly in the face of the biblical position.

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And to challenge conservative politics in the same way. How dare you turn your back on the poor?

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How dare you oppress people when that is something Jesus talked about far more than he ever talked about sexuality?

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So notice where the applause line is. That's what the people are motivated there for more than being biblically orthodox and LGBT.

30:52

They're there to kind of beat up on the right a little more for the sins of the right, apparently, oppressing the poor.

30:58

Because that's what people on the right do, apparently. Even though they give to charity far more than people on the left.

31:05

But this is what Miss Rivers is advocating. And she's, like I said, she's more conservative because she's actually saying we should try to hold on to some orthodoxy on the

31:14

LGBT issue. And what's interesting is you don't see that kind of pushback coming from Thabiti and Abouelay during the whole interview.

31:21

I thought that was interesting. Because we're gonna see that this gentleman is not the only one who advocates this kind of thinking.

31:31

It's, there's another panelist that we haven't seen yet who also advocates it. And Thabiti's reaction to all this is very fascinating to me.

31:41

You know, there's an opportunity here to really sound the orthodox, biblical, this is what the

31:49

Bible teaches on this subject and it just, it doesn't happen. And I realize, you know, you only get a certain amount of time on a panel.

31:56

But when you do have time to speak, you would think this is like a major thing. This is like very big.

32:03

So, all right, let's keep going here. Let's finish the book called

32:08

Let the Oppressed Go Free. Based upon Isaiah 58 and Luke chapter four.

32:15

And it is sort of an evolution of liberation theology. From black theology to liberation theology around poverty issues in Latin America.

32:25

To feminist theology, womanist theology, LGBTQ queer theology, their term, not mine.

32:33

Native American sovereignty religion, and then moving, though the book didn't come out in time for it.

32:39

Into Asian American liberation theology. I think this is where a courageous conversation is required.

32:47

Not a conclusion. There is some. So listen to that statement.

32:54

A courageous conversation, not a conclusion. This is, he's part of a different religion. Liberation theology is heresy.

33:00

And look at where it's getting him. You know, Native American tribal sovereignty religion.

33:08

That's where we're going with this. And we don't need a conclusion. I mean, we don't need a thus saith the

33:14

Lord. We just need the journey. We just need a conversation. It's very postmodern talk. Grandmother somewhere right now who is contemplating voting for a candidate because it turns out that her granddaughter is trans and she loves her granddaughter.

33:30

And she is going to vote for the person who supports her granddaughter having the fullness of her humanity.

33:36

Whether or not her theology agrees with it. What I'm trying to say is that people make complicated decisions.

33:43

And you don't have to be seminary or divinity school educated, PhD educated to be able to think through the meeting place of your theology and your justice.

33:55

I have to sit in a church where I keep hearing people refer to God as he. That doesn't fit with my own personal theology.

34:03

But I affirm that there are people for whom that is the way that they know God. That doesn't make me wrong or them wrong.

34:09

But we can be in fellowship with one another. So all I'm trying to say is is that we can't look at a voting block and make the assumption that someone is just basically not thinking.

34:21

We have lots of thinking people who have thought through their ideology, their theology, and their politics.

34:28

And just because it doesn't sound the way that it sounds when we have a conversation. We have to stop assuming that our elders, our grandparents, the folks in our neighborhoods and our communities know any less that we need to humble ourselves about that.

34:44

Years ago, Clifton Johnson wrote a book. All right, I'm gonna stop it right there. What would you say if you were sitting on the panel?

34:51

This is what I wanna ask you. Yolanda Pierce was the female voice you just heard. And she just advocated for making a separation somehow between politics and the law of God.

35:04

When there's a grandmother who wants to vote for the rights of her trans granddaughter and then talks about basically

35:12

God is a woman. I mean, you think, okay, that's a lot more messed up than Thabitiana Bwile in passing saying, using a female pronoun, as bad as that is.

35:26

Listen to how Thabitiana Bwile, which is the voice you're about to hear, reacts to this. He's the very next person to speak.

35:31

Now, what would you say? I mean, thus saith the Lord, right? He made them male and female.

35:38

Back up, back up Ms. Rivers. He made them male and female.

35:44

And why aren't you using the pronouns God has given to himself? We cannot rip down the hierarchies and the definitions that God has created in the order that he has made.

36:02

It's not for ours to define, it is for him. And if we're going to have a robust and accurate and God -glorifying political theology, then we are going to need to take the word of God and what it teaches and apply it to the civil realm.

36:19

You just heard an argument against that, okay? What does

36:24

Thabitiana Bwile say? The golf ball is on the tee, ready to go, and this is what he does.

36:31

Called God Struck Me Dead. It's a collection of conversion testimonies from folks who were formerly enslaved.

36:40

There's almost no sophistication in the testimonies. There's a whole lot of God and a whole lot of theology.

36:49

And I think often we're closer to the book when we are listening to the folk than we are when we're listening to the scholarly and the erudite with 16 degrees or the professional pulpiteer like myself.

37:04

And so I think that's right. The question on progressive...

37:09

I think that's right. That's what he says. He gives her a pass.

37:17

He says, yeah, I think that's right. What you're saying about, and she used the example of a grandmother advocating for her trans granddaughter.

37:25

I don't think Thabitiana Bwile would, but hey, if you were sitting in the audience, what would you think? You'd think he probably endorses that on some level.

37:32

But what he is doing is endorsing the broader point that was being made by Ms.

37:39

Pierce, that we have a better understanding of the

37:46

Bible when we listen to the uneducated, the masses, the voices, in this case, he's saying slaves, the oppressed, perhaps, but when we're not going to the seminary professors, we get a better understanding, which

38:03

I'm gonna just leave that on the shelf. I can say a lot about that. Today, there might be some truth in that, but I don't think they mean it in the way that I would mean it.

38:14

The example given was a grandma and a trans granddaughter. And the cries of the people are somehow, that's a better way of navigating this world.

38:23

And it's a better way of even understanding the Bible. And Thabitiana Bwile, yeah, yeah, good point.

38:30

I agree with you on that. Just shameful. I can't even believe that this is the guy that all these solid conservative churches, right?

38:41

With pastors who went to good, solid seminaries are still using his book for church membership and stuff.

38:47

It's just, this is where this guy has gone. Conservative. I want to exhort you to lose the labels and keep the

38:55

Bible. That neither progressive or conservative are in the Bible. These are themselves worldly framings.

39:04

These are themselves secular framings under which travel a lot of ideas. Some of which you might agree with, some of which you might disagree with.

39:11

I think the Christians should find themselves in the uneasy position of saying, or maybe the easy position of saying, there's some ways

39:19

I'm conservative and there's some ways I'm progressive. These are what you're talking about. Absolutely. These are what you're talking about.

39:25

And what determines whether I am progressive or conservative is, what does saith the

39:31

Lord? What does saith the Lord? Leviticus 18, my brother referred to, starts this way.

39:39

And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your

39:45

God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, countercultural, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, still countercultural, where you're going, the land to which

39:59

I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them.

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I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules.

40:17

If a person does them, he shall live by them and I am the Lord. Now, there's a lot to wrestle with in what he commands in Leviticus 18.

40:26

But what we should not be wrestling with is the fact that he's God and we're not, that he's our creator, we're the creature, and that therefore means he owns us.

40:36

And that the way in which we were meant to operate, to live, is not according to what we think, but according to what

40:45

God says. If you lose the

40:50

Bible, you're gonna lose your way. It's a complex time.

40:56

So just to finish, just to finish my comment, just to finish my comment, it's a complex time we live in, with lots of questions.

41:08

And I just wanna exhort us to say, let's have some humility before the questions. Let's recognize the folk have thought about these things and they're things for us to learn from one another.

41:19

Let's bring it all under the book. God is still speaking and he wants to speak in these conversations.

41:26

And it is not humble, it is hubris to do one of two things. To say that I've got this figured out,

41:33

I don't need to hear what God has said. Or beloved, it's a different kind of pride to give final authority to our questions rather than to God's declarations.

41:44

Mm -hmm. Yeah. We have to doubt our doubts. We have to question our questions and we gotta do that with our books open, with the

41:53

Bible open. But you also. All right, I wanna stop it right there. So I want you to hear a few things. Number one, what does he say?

42:00

So the situation is you have a pastor on the panel or a seminary president who talks about Leviticus 18 and how it doesn't really mean what we think it means about homosexuality.

42:12

That's in the, I don't know if I've included it in the montage. So Thabiti Anabwile brings that up, but he doesn't contradict the pastor.

42:19

He just says, well, there's some, there's hard questions to grapple with. So he swings and he misses on that one.

42:26

Just the way he approaches this. Again, an evangelical, supposedly, organization that is

42:32

Orthodox, supposedly, you have a guy who's advocating LGBT, trans, abortion, all this stuff is happening here.

42:41

And Thabiti, this is what Thabiti has to say. Well, there's questions, questions we have, but he won't get into the specifics of it.

42:47

Doesn't rebuke it, kind of lets it pass by. I mean, what would you say to someone in 1930s

42:53

Germany who was on a, let's say, a similar panel and they're talking about the quote unquote Jewish question as they referred to it back then.

43:00

And well, there's these questions we have in scripture and we just got to put it under the authority of the Bible, but doesn't ever give you any actual application to the problems that are right there in front of them on the panel, where they have the greatest amount of influence to be able to make a difference.

43:17

That's the question that I have. Why did you swing and miss at this if you don't agree with it?

43:23

And then of course, I want you to hear this. He says that God is still speaking through conversations like this.

43:31

And he talks about, we need to hear from the folk. They have insights. Okay, that really made my antenna kind of like go up.

43:38

Like, what does he mean? Is he starting to get into like, well, what is that? What does he mean by that?

43:45

That for someone as smart as he is, who's been in solid circles, apparently that's not a statement that people generally make.

43:54

God is still using people. Okay, God is still, the

44:00

Holy Spirit is still working, but God is still speaking. What do you mean?

44:06

What do you mean? I mean, obviously there's not revelation that's taking place.

44:12

That would be like what we have in scripture going on right there. But look, these are kind of, these are vague things at best to be saying on a panel where you need to be crystal clear.

44:25

I probably could give him a harder time for that if I wanted, but I've never heard him say anything like that.

44:31

And so maybe he misspoke. I don't know. See, even I wanna give him a benefit of the doubt on this, but I don't know how

44:38

I can. That's really, that's a strange thing for him to say. And then at the end, he sounds like a postmodernist. We need to doubt our doubts, question our questions.

44:45

We need to, there's no solid anything at the end. The whole thing is about, we need to be under the

44:50

Bible, but then we can't, are we even capable then of approaching the

44:55

Bible then? Is our sense perception even accurate and able to confer information for understanding the

45:01

Bible? I mean, we're getting lost, I feel like, in a postmodern hole.

45:08

Have to acknowledge the places where the text is silent. Amen, amen. Because there are many issues around which the text is silent.

45:15

And there are also many different issues that have multiple interpretations.

45:21

So people talk about - Notice the BD, all right, before they change, many issues that have multiple interpretations.

45:28

Think about the issue that she just brought up, trans, rights. Many issues that have multiple interpretations.

45:33

The BD is nodding his head as she says this, okay? Now you could say, maybe he's just nodding to encourage her, that he's not against her or something, but like nodding is usually a,

45:44

I agree with you. That's, it could be a natural reaction, right? I'm thinking of all the ways that someone could try to say that he doesn't agree with her, but everything he's doing, everything he's saying, his body language is saying he agrees with her on some level.

45:57

He's giving her affirmation in her error. Marriage. Do you know how many kinds of marriages there are in the biblical text?

46:05

What we need to be able to do is have these conversations in context, understanding and respecting the context in which it was written, which is vastly different than our own.

46:19

It doesn't mean that it does not then have meat for us today, but it also recognizes the fact that in the time and the place, in the situation in which it was written may not be our time and place in our situation.

46:33

None of us are selling our 12 year old daughters into marriage, right? So we have to understand the text in its context.

46:42

God is still moving and God is still speaking. That doesn't mean though, that we're only confined to the words of the text.

46:49

Don't let the text be your God. That's the thing we cannot do. Because when we do that, then we simply say, well, when something is absent, nuclear war is absent.

47:00

War is not absent in the text, right? There are all kinds of things that are absent. What do we do?

47:05

How do we engage? We do that with one another. We do that with taking seriously a hermeneutical lens that is shaped by understanding the context of the text itself.

47:17

Yeah, I'm only raising my mic to eagerly agree with you. I hope nothing I've said is short -cutting the process of conversation.

47:24

I don't know the source. Wow, oh wow, that's insane. So she says all this stuff.

47:32

She says basically advocate standpoint theory, the lens that we read through, all that. And then Thabiti and Aboula, so no,

47:37

I'm just raising my mic to agree with you. All he's done is affirmed her in all her error. That's all that's happened. Think about how, think about where Thabiti's sitting, who he's sitting next to, what his reaction to them.

47:50

This is far worse than a passing comment about female pastors. Like, it doesn't even,

47:57

I don't know. I don't know what to say. I just, some people predicted this a few years ago with Thabiti, and it's coming true.

48:05

Of homosexual leanings, I don't pretend to know. I know that the research tends to indicate that it may in fact be something that people are born with.

48:16

How painful to have to live that way your entire life. Yet, there are people born because of sin that exists in the world.

48:27

There are people born without arms and legs. They have to live with those limitations. There are some things in our lives we stand on principle.

48:36

I hope that as you're watching this, part of what you're getting is an attempt up here to model how to have conversations where there are differences.

48:44

And Dr. McMickle is right. One of the differences that you're seeing sort of expressed right now, it's a difference with regard to hermeneutics and how we approach the text.

48:52

And sometimes we need to have that conversation before we have the conversation about the subject, right? So that's at play here.

48:58

We don't have time to do all that, but that's at play here. My response to your frustration and response to your question is,

49:08

I think we do ourselves great help as preachers if we in fact commit ourselves to sequential exposition of the text.

49:20

That's what keeps me from cherry picking. That's what keeps me from my hobby horses. That's what keeps me going past the comma to the period.

49:29

But it's also what helps me understand that in this chapter, in this chapter, Paul spent two paragraphs on homosexuality, right?

49:39

In this chapter, that's where he put the weight. But he doesn't do that in 1 Corinthians 6. It's just one in a list.

49:46

So if my commitment to preaching the text and preaching it sequential and expounding the argument that's in the text rather than slyly putting my argument and my perspective in there, that's part of the safeguard to that.

49:58

That's part of what keeps us from this, what you've called selective exegesis, which I agree can be a problem. Now, the other thing

50:05

I would wanna say though, is particularly as a pastor and a preacher of the scripture, I want my people to have confidence in the

50:12

Bible. Yes. I wanna preach in such a way that I... Okay, let's stop there, because I think we would all agree with what he's saying, but again, he's not applying it.

50:23

So, you know, we need to do this in the text. We need to have this conversation, but you don't find the prophets or apostles when they are in situations where...

50:36

Let's just be honest about what this is. This is, if in fact, there are

50:42

Orthodox believers on this panel, if in fact, then this is an interfaith dialogue, okay?

50:51

And you can't treat that guy, you can't treat him like he's a brother, which I don't know if it's, maybe

50:56

I missed it. I know there's a point in this montage where Thabiti Anabwile actually calls, he says brother. He calls this guy, he's a heretic, a brother in this panel.

51:05

And then, anyway, if it's an interfaith dialogue, then the errors that have been advocated are really damning errors.

51:15

They're bad things. Advocating for abortion, for homosexuality, for we can't understand what the word of God actually says.

51:23

These are all attacks on orthodoxy, right here, right in front of them. And the best he can do, if there's any pushback, is we affirm everyone here, you're a brother.

51:38

I agree with what you said, but we just need to have the authority of the Bible. We need to be able to trust the

51:44

Bible, even though we can't trust our perception, apparently. And we need to read the

51:53

Bible in context. Okay, like all true, but then apply it. Just, hey, you're not reading the

51:59

Bible in context, which you just said is damaging. For our audience here, for the people who watch this video, I need you to know,

52:05

I don't agree with what this person just said. It's evil. And again, you could sort of see,

52:13

I wouldn't even think for a PBS or an NPR thing, this would be right, but you could sort of see it a little more.

52:21

But for an evangelical organization, supposedly, he should have complete freedom.

52:29

This is an apologetics organization. This is literally, he's there for apologetics.

52:34

The Bible's being attacked and he can't defend it because they haven't had their hermeneutical discussion. Okay, all right, let's finish this out.

52:44

I convey that they can trust God's word. Yes. That the fact that we wrestle with texts and the text is silent on some things, very true, doesn't mean that therefore we walk away questioning and rejecting the text.

53:00

God has told us what he wanted us to know and it's sufficient. Now that doesn't mean you just point at the text and all the work is done.

53:08

You gotta keep thinking. You gotta keep wrestling, but you gotta do that,

53:13

I think, both standing on the text and beneath the text. On the text as your foundation.

53:19

This is the rock. All of the ground is sinking sand. And beneath the text, because Jesus is

53:25

Lord, because God is our creator, and we've gotta sort of strike that balance.

53:30

And so there's a hermeneutic discussion to have, there are issues about hobby horses and all of that, but I wanna encourage us to trust the book and study the book line upon line, precept upon precept, learn about hermeneutics, talk with folks who differ.

53:45

Romans 14, accept one another, not to doubtful disputations. Romans 14, is this an application of Romans 14 right here?

53:55

The difference is, if the BD thinks this is Romans 14, he is downplaying the false teaching that is manifesting itself right there on the stage.

54:08

A lot of time arguing about things the Bible doesn't speak to very clearly and about issues that really are matters of conscience, but we don't spend enough time.

54:21

Actually, I'm troubled by the clear parts. I'm troubled by the clear parts.

54:28

The clear parts are enough to occupy the rest of my life. And so we need to get under the book.

54:35

There's room for me at God's table. And for me, I mean, the womanist theologian, pro -choice,

54:43

LGBT advocate, queer advocate, the person who would probably be on the absolute left of every spectrum that you would find, that there is room for me and there's room for all of us.

54:59

Well, there's two things that I didn't pick up.

55:04

When I was listening to this whole thing, there's two things that happened that for some reason, I either missed them in the montage or I must not have included them.

55:13

But there is a point in which the BDN of Wheelay says that Lisa Fields, the one who organizes the

55:19

Jude Three Project, does such a great job. And that just really endorses the project and she does a great job putting this on.

55:28

And then there's another point in which he calls Marvin McNichol brother. And so I don't know if maybe

55:34

I played them and I just, for some reason I missed them or whether maybe I just didn't include them. But the full video, you will see those things.

55:41

Major point here, the big thing, the big takeaway is that the

55:47

BD, look where he's sitting, look where he is, look how he treats the blatant errors right in front of him and the effect that that's having.

55:57

It's devastating. It's, I mean, for those who looked up to him in any way at any time, this is something that is very difficult and it is something to cry over, honestly.

56:10

It is something to be fearful over. It's something that goes so much farther beyond a passing comment about a pronoun and applying it to pastors.

56:23

It's, you know, there can be female pastors. It shows a character flaw in him that he's willing to kind of, if he doesn't believe these things, to kind of be a chameleon.

56:36

And this is the kind, these are the people that he's cool fellowshipping with. If he does agree with them, which

56:44

I mean, he's signaling that to some extent with some of these things, then there's even a bigger problem there.

56:53

And so you see an endorsement on some level of standpoint theory. You see a failure to correct the trans stuff, the

57:01

LGBT stuff, the abortion stuff. You see a trying to encourage someone who just keeps putting out false teaching over and over and over.

57:13

You see a basic endorsement of the organization and what they're doing, which this panel would be a manifestation of.

57:19

You see him calling a heretic a brother. This is the Thabiti Anabwile of 2022.

57:26

And so this is also the Jude Three Project, which is why I could never endorse what they're doing.

57:33

It's just that this is not apologetics. This is the opposite. This is ripping down.

57:39

The Bible, this is, you know, there was more in this panel that ripped down what scripture clearly teaches than built it up.

57:49

That's for sure. So that's all I have to say about that. More come in later this week.

57:55

I want everyone to remember too, I will be in Louisville and I will be in Tennessee.

58:02

You can go check out worldviewconversation .com and the schedule's there for speaking engagements.

58:10

And I'm getting word that Friday night families are invited to come to,

58:16

I know there's the War Room Conference that's just for men on Saturday, but on Friday night, families are welcome to come and there's gonna be a meal and I'm gonna be,

58:24

I guess, leading a discussion. We're gonna talk about, I think we're gonna be talking about how

58:30

Christians and specifically how the Bible deals with the issue of slavery.

58:36

I believe that's going to be the topic. And so this isn't just in the American context, this is more broadly speaking, what does the

58:42

Bible say in ancient Hebrew and Greco -Roman slavery. And so that should be interesting because this is one of the topics that is not really talked about among conservatives as much.

58:55

This is something that those on the left really think that they wanna use that quite often, either to show how horrible the quote unquote white church is or to, from the other end, show how there is a particular version of Christianity that they're part of a social justice crusade because they'll link it to the abolition movement that is legitimate and we should go along with them because they're the current manifestation of that.

59:24

And we're gonna, I think I'll probably be destroying some of those narratives, so. But it should be a good time.

59:32

Whatever discussion we have, it'll be good and you'll meet some brothers and sisters that have similar outlooks on some of these issues.

59:40

God bless, looking forward to seeing you all this Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, wherever you are, if you can come out and see me and more coming, bye now.