Ratzinger's Posthumous Truth Bombs, FBC Orlando, Andy Stanley

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January 24, 2023

Had to start of with a few minutes on the posthumously published book from Joseph Ratzinger. Fascinating and important stuff from the former Pope. Then we listened to some stuff from FBC Orlando, then on to Andy Stanley and homosexuals "serving" and "worshipping" in the Church. This is when we've been called to serve, so, we have to deal with the topics of the day.

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00:31: Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We have a lot of important stuff to get to today, so no chitter -chatter at the beginning of the program today, so those of you who skip past it will miss the good stuff.
00:44: That's actually fitting. Anyways. Big news yesterday. There's a lot of uncertainty here, but it seems that Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger, the former head of what used to be called the
01:03: Inquisition, wrote a book,
01:09: What is Christianity?, and he wanted it published only posthumously.
01:17: So I guess from what I've, again, there's lots of questions about this, but from what
01:24: I've seen, some of it was written in 2018, some as late as last year.
01:31: And he, of course, has died, and so the book has come out, and I've been told that it was briefly available in Kindle format and then was polled.
01:52: I don't know that. I've just heard someone say that. Whether that's true or not,
01:58: I don't know. I have not been able to get hold of it. It has only been out for like two days. But it is definitely from him, and it definitely has a lot of bombshell stuff in it.
02:12: There's discussions of how prevalent homosexuality is in seminaries and the impact that has had upon what they call priestly formation, but there's a lot more, too.
02:27: And so one of the articles that went through it, actually it was published
02:33: January 18th, so I guess it's, but almost no one's been talking about it yet, and there seems to be some hesitancy on the part of the
02:44: Roman Catholic Church about this. Makes sense. But I'm looking at a particular article, and just some of the topics that it mentions
02:54: I think are pretty important. Opposition between Catholicism and Protestantism.
03:00: In a previously unreleased text, Benedict XVI deplores that Vatican II, quote, did not address the
03:08: Reformation's fundamental questioning of the Catholic priesthood in the 16th century, end quote.
03:16: It is a, quote, wound that is felt today and which, in my opinion, must be addressed in an open and fundamental way, end quote.
03:23: Benedict XVI, the Ratzinger, sees Luther's original error as his vision of an irreconcilable opposition between the priestly concept of the
03:33: Old Testament and the priesthood conferred by Jesus Christ. However, the early church had already connected the
03:39: Old Testament priesthood with the New Testament ministries and did not view justification by faith and by works as opposed.
03:45: Well, that, there's big stuff. This is key material right here, because I think historically and certainly biblically, the
03:56: Roman Catholic argument for the priesthood is amongst its weakest perspectives.
04:03: Sure, you have priesthood developing in the second century, but it's, it is not apostolic.
04:11: It is not apostolic. There's no question about that. It is certainly not
04:16: New Testament, and at least I had one opportunity to debate
04:22: Mitch Pacwa on this subject, and you know, Mitch is a bright guy, and so I figure he's going to give, as well, about the only conservative
04:33: Jesuit priest I've ever met, he's going to give a very strong argument for something that's obviously very important to him, and so you can watch the debate and compare for yourself.
04:47: He basically is saying that the term presbyter eventually evolved into the priesthood.
04:52: Well, I'm sorry, but presbyter and bishop are the same thing in the New Testament. It's the same office, and this is abundantly clear from the qualifications.
05:03: There's qualifications for elders, bishops, and for deacons, but none for priests, and that's supposed to be an apostolic office?
05:16: And think about how vital that is, because in Roman Catholic theology, how much more of the sacramental system is based on that fundamental premise of the priestly ministry, and if that's not what the apostles were about, and it clearly wasn't, then you're left with so much in Roman Catholicism hanging in midair.
05:41: I mean, the papacy would never exist without all the fraudulent citations that were used from early on, that everybody admits were fraudulent now, but no one goes, oh, those are fraudulent all along, and they were used to establish the very foundation of this system.
06:01: Maybe the system's standing in midair without a foundation. There you go, that's the problem.
06:11: So, it's fascinating, did not address the Reformation's fundamental questioning of the
06:18: Catholic priesthood in the 16th century. Reformation did, and whenever you see the errors of the
06:26: Reformation going back toward a sacerdotal system, as we've seen happen amongst a number of denominations, and which you see happening especially with denominations that have females now, all these women priests and women bishops and all the rest of this kind of stuff, it's a betrayal of the
06:45: Reformation. They're going the opposite direction, and it's happened a lot. Then, and this is important, and I've got to say, most of us on our side who read
07:00: Roman Catholic theology and have engaged in these things, and by the way, I'm watching this battle going on.
07:08: Trent Horn and Jimmy Akin did a video responding on the issue of...
07:15: oh, and man, I responded last night, and I should have pulled it up. Sorry. On the subject of veneration of icons and images and stuff like that, and I'm sitting here watching this going back and forth, going back and forth, a bunch of people on the
07:32: Protestant side and other side going back and forth, and I'm sitting here going, man, there's nothing new under the sun.
07:42: Anybody who's listened to this program for almost any length of time at all knows, I'm sitting here, I'm not going to bother to reach over right now, but I've got the axe of Second Council Nicaea right there.
07:51: It's right underneath the camera, about six inches from my finger, and I've used
08:00: Nicaea too. The second Nicene Council, it's 787, not 325, so long, long after.
08:11: Very, very totally different in character, and in conclusions as well.
08:18: I've used it for a long, long time as an example of just the utter degradation that takes place in only 462 years, so that's almost half a millennium.
08:34: But what has happened when you deny Sola Scriptura and you allow tradition to start functioning openly as the interpretive matrix into which the
08:47: Bible must be fit? You end up with the absurd argumentation of Nicaea too, in defense of the veneration of images and icons and things like that.
09:04: And it's absurdly ahistorical claims at the same time.
09:10: And so, and then somebody, I'm not sure if this will even work.
09:20: We're supposed to have this program working on this computer so that it can... Maybe if somebody in our channel, yeah, enable, enable, enable, enable.
09:33: Oh no, now it's working. Um, well, it's not working for everybody.
09:39: I can see you. Um, I can see Ryan now.
09:46: There was a, someone might have the video that I'm referring to from Twitter, a response from the
09:53: Protestant guy. If someone throws the name in that channel, I'll hopefully see it. Knowing my luck, it'll say unable to decrypt, because that's how it works.
10:01: Um, anyway, the final comment that was made in one of the videos from the
10:10: Protestant side was, if you accept this kind of ahistorical perspective that is being presented by Aiken and Horn, as he put it, all you have left is the magisterium of the church.
10:30: And I'm like, that would be, oh, let me think if I can come up with a, oh, sola ecclesia.
10:39: The church as the final authority. Yep. That's, that's what we've been saying for a long, long, long, long, long time.
10:48: Um, uh, that's, that's, that's all you are left with is the ultimate authority of the church.
10:54: And, um, that's, that's what we're seeing. So anyways, I, I didn't mean to jump off of all of that.
11:01: Um, but back to, um, Ratzinger, I'm just used to, you know,
11:07: I've known Ratzinger for a long, long time. He was Ratzinger for a long time before he was Pope. Uh, because of their opposing theological foundations, quote, it is quite clear that the
11:18: Protestant last supper, that's really weird terminology. We call it the
11:23: Lord's supper. We don't call it the last supper. It's weird. But the Protestant last supper and the mass are two fundamentally different, mutually exclusive forms of worship.
11:37: Let those who preach intercommunion today, remember this warns Joseph Ratzinger. That's a direct quote.
11:45: So, um, Benedict XVI points out that in liturgical reform,
11:53: Luther's theses played a certain tacit role so that certain circles could claim that the decree of the council of Trent on the sacrifice of the mass had been tacitly abolished, end quote.
12:04: But it's fascinating to me, you know, Ratzinger sees what's going on.
12:10: And of course, part of what he says, one of the reasons he says he wanted this material published posthumously was because of the hatred toward him in the
12:21: German church. Now, if you haven't been keeping up with stuff like this, the German Roman Catholic church is basically in schism right now.
12:30: Uh, they're in rebellion, but they're in rebellion, not like the Reformation was.
12:36: They're in rebellion, um, against fundamental, uh, biblical teachings on human sexuality and marriage and the whole nine yards.
12:48: They're going wacko left. And, um, so he's like, you know, he was
12:55: German, obviously. That's why he was called the German shepherd. And, um, so, uh, here he's, he's saying, you know,
13:05: Luther's thesis, we, you saw the 1999 thing, the joint statement on justification, which did not have any dogmatic authority.
13:15: Um, but there's a lot of people grabbing onto that, but I want, you know, it is quite clear that the Protestant Lord's suppers, which should be, and the mass are two fundamentally different, mutually exclusive forms of worship.
13:29: He's exactly right. Ratzinger is exactly right.
13:39: You cannot put them together. You cannot let those who preach intercommunion today, remember this, warns
13:46: Ratzinger. Well, he's right. And this actually is going to connect. Hold on.
13:52: Hold on. If you're driving, be careful. This is going to connect to Andy Stanley.
14:01: I will, I will make an attempt to connect Joseph Ratzinger's comment on the mass to Andy Stanley, um, and to Danny de
14:12: Armas of, uh, First Baptist Church Orlando, because we're going to be seeing videos where they are talking about the worship of the church.
14:25: The problem is their definition of worship. And this is the sad part.
14:32: Their definition of worship takes the Bible's teaching and defining of the word worship means significantly less seriously than Benedict did.
14:46: And when the Pope is doing better than you on the Bible, you've got a problem because Benedict understands worship as something that has to be defined in a meaningful fashion.
14:57: There has to be some kind of objective way of defining what worship is. And if you do believe that worship is defined by God's revelation, then obviously what
15:10: I believe in the Lord's Supper and what Ratzinger believed dogmatically about the mass, he's right.
15:22: Mutually, fundamentally different, mutually exclusive forms of worship. Because in the
15:30: Supper, you are doing remembrance of a finished sacrifice that is not represented in an unbloody form so as to be perpetuatory.
15:46: That's Rome's teaching. The sacrifice of Christ is completed.
15:52: It is finished. It is the basis upon which he has entered into the presence of the
15:57: Father. That's why we have that anchor within the veil. There is no anchor within the veil within Rome because you don't have a finished work.
16:07: You have a continuing, perpetuatory sacrifice that does not perfect anyone. And Ratzinger recognized it.
16:15: Those are two fundamentally different, mutually exclusive forms of worship. I want to get this book when it becomes available.
16:23: I looked for it. I want to get it when it becomes available in English, and I hope it's translated well.
16:29: In fact, what I hope is that there would be a probably written in Latin, Latin English, or whatever it was.
16:38: I'm not sure what the original language was. Maybe he wrote it German. I'd love to get the
16:43: German version. Anyway, very, very important. Very, very important point there.
16:49: Really, really is. The late Pope wrote, quote, it is obvious that modern thought is more at ease with Luther's approach than with the
17:00: Catholic approach. For an explanation of Scripture that sees the Old Testament as a way to Jesus Christ is almost inaccessible to modern thought.
17:07: Now, there's clearly a big context there that I can't comment on because we're not given it yet.
17:14: It almost sounds like he's saying that Luther does not have a Christocentric view of the
17:24: Hebrew scriptures as testifying to Christ, maybe. I don't know. It's too short to expand on, but it's an interesting statement.
17:35: Benedict XVI criticizes certain attempts at dialogue between Christians and Muslims, which emphasize that both the
17:42: Bible and the Quran speak of the mercy of God. When the guy was right, the guy was right.
17:50: From this stems the imperative to love one's neighbor, but it is also claimed that both texts contain calls for violence.
17:57: The result is that, in a certain sense, we place ourselves above the two religions, and we affirm that there is good and bad in both, and that it is therefore necessary to read the
18:05: Bible and the Quran with a hermeneutics of love and opposing violence taking both into account. Again, it sounds like somebody trying to simplify too much, but my gut feeling is, given
18:24: I know a little bit about Islam, is that there is no question of the fact that much of today's left -leaning ecumenical dialogue...
18:40: Remember my dialogue with Yasir Qadhi? We didn't do that.
18:47: We didn't do what the people leaning left are doing, trying to, well, there's good and bad in both.
18:54: No, I believe the Bible's the word of God. I don't believe the Quran's the word of God. You believe the Quran's the word of God. You believe the Bible's been altered and changed and corrupted over time, and so we laid out what we actually believe so you can actually discuss it.
19:07: When you put all that stuff under the ecumenical rug, then you can't talk about it, and the resultant unity is worthless.
19:17: It has no value to it because it can't last in any way. False tolerance in the
19:29: West. In another text, Ratzinger notes that the great powers of tolerance do not grant to Christianity the tolerance they propagate.
19:39: That's for sure. With their radical manipulation of man and distortion of the sexes through gender ideology, they are clearly opposed to Christianity.
19:47: Yep. Yep. This was one of the great criticisms that was leveled at him.
19:55: He's clearly not on key fundamental issues. It's not that he came from Germany for crying out loud.
20:02: Sorry, my German brothers and sisters. But he was deeply influenced by the fact that German theology has been influenced by left -leaning forces for a long, long time.
20:15: But in comparison to where the Catholics are in Germany now, he was a rabid right -wing fundamentalist, and that's why they would attack him.
20:27: He adds, "...the intolerance of this apparent modernity towards the
20:35: Christian faith has not yet turned into open persecution." Well, I disagree with that. "...and yet it manifests itself in an increasingly authoritarian way with the aim of achieving by appropriate legislation the eradication of what is essentially
20:47: Christian." Well, he's right about that. You look at what's happening in Europe, and they are seeking to use manifestos in an increasingly authoritarian way by an appropriate legislation, the eradication of what is essentially
21:05: Christian. So you see all sorts of people being brought up on charges for books they wrote 10 years ago presenting basic Christian theology.
21:21: Yeah, he's right. Finally, he refutes the criticism that the
21:28: Christian faith is inherently intolerant because of its claim to truth and universality. This view is based on the suspicion that the truth is dangerous, but it is the societies that oppose the truth that are intolerant.
21:40: Well, that's for sure. So I have a feeling there's a whole lot more in this book, and a lot of people that have access to it just aren't sure exactly what to be focusing upon.
21:53: But like I said, this particular article did not mention what I saw in other articles about homosexuality in the seminaries and stuff like that.
22:04: But what was mentioned here I think is vitally important. It's interesting that some of the things he said there, we've done debates on it because back in the 90s, back in the early 2000s, it was a given.
22:19: Yeah, we disagree on this stuff, and we need to be debating it. Now, some of that stuff is not nearly as obvious as it was only a few years ago.
22:30: Much has changed. Much, much, much has changed. Okay. I was ready to go just with, and I just realized, audio to there,
22:47: I hope. Hope that's where it's going. We've all seen it.
22:57: Well, okay, I'll take that back. Most of us have seen the video.
23:13: I responded to Andy Stanley. Was that the last program? Last week.
23:18: The last program. And the beginning of his new sermon series and the things that he said at that point in time.
23:30: And a number of people picked that up and retweeted it and reposted it, and I'm glad for that. And a number of people made the comment that, wow, you were a lot more gracious toward him than most other people were.
23:44: And I think part of it is because I am a
23:50: PK, which for those of you who don't know what that means, I did have one dear friend ask me about that because he's not raised in that context and what a
23:58: PK was. Preacher's kid. I know what that's about.
24:05: I know what that's like. And I know that even though Charles Stanley would be representative of some of the better theology of the
24:19: Southern Baptist Convention, that still, when you do not have a balanced, full -orbed view of scriptural authority and the nature of scripture, it can end up becoming this appendage that can be jettisoned, which is what
24:36: Andy Stanley has done. And so we addressed that, and then all of a sudden, something else started popping up.
24:47: And I saw a brief clip of it on homosexuality, and I was like,
24:54: I need a broader context for this, because could someone help me out? And someone did. It was from a conference in 2022, and he had these different points, and so it was point number three.
25:11: And so I was sent all of point number three. So at least it's like 10 minutes long, so there's enough there for a meaningful context.
25:19: And so I thought, well, okay, this is important. I need to address this.
25:26: I need to talk about what he's saying here. It flows with the last program, and it's important for us to consider.
25:34: And then the troublemaker from Texas, and undoubtedly while wearing one of his many, many pairs of overalls, a straw hat and chewing on a straw, popped into Twitter and said,
25:53: I see a lot of people condemning Andy Stanley for what he said about homosexuality, but none of the
25:58: SBC leadership will say anything about this. And then he quotes, and again, it's this, it's really
26:07: Andy Stanley -esque, you know, the background and the colors and the big old screen and no pulpit, no tie, a real casual, we're all just in this together type of vibe feel.
26:24: Okay, all right. And there's this guy reading about First Baptist Church, Orlando, FBC Orlando.
26:35: I don't know who he is. I have been told, and I do not, I am not a networker, none of that kind of stuff.
26:44: I'm not a big name guy, unless you're dead. I'm good with names of dead people, but living people, not so much.
26:54: Right, Bob, Tom, Rich, Rich, that's right. Actually, I should remember very well, because you're getting pretty close.
27:03: One foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel is how they say. Anyway, but I've been told that his name is
27:12: Danny DeArmas, D -E capital A -R -M -A -S, Associate Pastor, FBC Orlando, and former
27:20: Vice President of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Okay.
27:30: And he's sitting here talking about their church. And so I want to start with this one because it, well, you'll see why.
27:41: Let's take a listen here. For some reason, it moved forward. I'm not sure how to get it to start.
27:48: We have longtime members of 50 plus years greeting and welcoming new people who are walking in for the very first time.
27:55: We have those who love traditional music and hymns and those who know only contemporary music.
28:02: We have choir lovers and non -music lovers, a pipe organ and loud electric guitars.
28:11: Okay, now let me just point something out here. What we're hearing right now are irrelevancies.
28:21: Um, every church has people with different musical tastes and people have been there forever and people that haven't.
28:30: Um, but that's important to note because what's going to be listed later on, if it's being joined together with irrelevancies, that's a means of communication.
28:46: A lot of people don't catch that. That is a mechanism where without saying it, you can communicate to your audience that we have
28:57: LGBTQ, we have people cohabiting, we have all these things that the
29:04: Bible says are an abomination before God. And that's right along with whether you like pipe organs, choir music, or aren't really big into music.
29:17: So when you squish them all together, you're communicating something to your people by the way you've associated them together.
29:26: It's, yeah. We have the 99 -year -old World War II hero and the millennial immigrant who doesn't know anything about American history sitting on the same row and listening and learning about Jesus together.
29:40: We have transgender, LGBTQ, straight, single, married, divorced, and cohabitating people.
29:51: And you hadn't seen that, huh? Rich, Rich, Rich's mouth just dropped open. I think if I recall correctly, they're going to slow that down, repeat it so you can hear it really clearly.
30:01: These same people attend, listen, serve, grow, and give. We have transgender,
30:09: LGBTQ, straight, single, married, divorced, and cohabitating people.
30:17: These same people attend, listen, serve, grow, and give.
30:24: Okay. Now, this is the same issue that we need to address with Andy Stanley in a moment.
30:40: It is, it's beyond astonishing to me that the man has a
30:48: Bible in his hand, and he's going to say at the end of this thing, hey, this is who we are.
30:58: This is FBC Orlando. And he means all this in a positive sense.
31:08: It's a good thing that we have all these different kinds of people here.
31:14: And I noticed when I mentioned last night,
31:19: I was going to respond to Andy Stanley. There are so many people who identify as Christians. You just need to have an ounce of compassion.
31:27: These are people who are hurting. We are living in a day where we now live in a society where your feelings are confused with truth and rational thought.
31:50: And we are seeing, I've used the illustration many times,
31:56: I wish we could design a device that you could put around the door of the church. And as soon as you walk through this door, it just zaps out of you all the influence of the world so that you would just be influenced by what is found in Scripture, applied to your life by the
32:17: Spirit of God. No such thing exists. All of our people come into our service with a week's worth of worldly influence upon their souls.
32:35: And we are supposed to be bringing the
32:40: Word of God to bear to repair that damage. But that can be troubling to people and challenging to people and uncomfortable to people.
32:50: And so what we have developing is a form of Christianity that is meant to validate all the emotion and validate all of the childishness, because it is childishness, of the modern world.
33:13: And so here you have a man, and like I said, these people on Twitter, they're like, all these people are trying to do is to make a safe space, a warm and welcoming place.
33:34: And I get it. The problem is, you look at the temple, you look at the worship in the old way, that wasn't a safe place.
33:54: It wasn't a safe space. There would be all this smell, the smell of the sacrifice, the bleeding of the animals, the smoke ascending up.
34:14: Only people worthy to approach were allowed to come in there. And you come to the
34:21: New Testament church, and the problem places like Corinth, they've got problems in their services.
34:33: But there's supposed to be holiness and seriousness. Ask Ananias and Sapphira.
34:41: Ask in the Old Covenant, Aaron's sons, this stuff about safe spaces and all that kind of stuff.
34:52: I don't know where in the Bible that doesn't come from Scripture. And so when you recognize that, when you recognize what should define
35:10: Christian worship, and this is where the connection is, why are you coming to this building on a
35:17: Sunday to see this man sitting on a bar stool chatting with you?
35:23: They're calling it worship. They're calling it worship. But he's just told us that they have in this group lesbians, bisexuals, gays, transgenders, people who are straight, living in, you know, shacking up.
35:52: And then he says they're serving and giving and learning.
36:05: How do they serve? And this is going to be the same thing with Andy Stanley, okay?
36:11: In fact, I'll just go ahead and stop it there. I'll pull up Andy Stanley. You're going to, I'm going to put
36:18: Andy up here, and that's as big as he gets. So I don't know if you can zoom in on him, but I cannot get him any larger than that if my life depended on it.
36:33: When we talk about serving in the church, look, you know, we have to talk about things in a way that we can communicate to others.
36:45: When we talk about serving in the church, you know, I think of how many people in our church serve.
36:54: We have to, we rent our church space. And if you've rented, you know what that involves.
37:01: That involves everybody has to work. You have to clean the place up.
37:07: You have to put your stuff out, take your stuff down. The place that I sit, people come up to me after the service, they want to take pictures, they want to sign a book, they want to ask questions, they want to do stuff like that.
37:18: And we're always having to dodge all of our people that are breaking down music equipment and breaking down sound equipment, and the people that are coming that are cleaning, and you know, it's a challenge.
37:31: And our weekly activities, not only the meetings that we have, but the outreach to abortion clinics, and to the
37:43: Mormons, and to strip clubs, and ASU, and everything else. Busy, busy, busy, busy place, and lots and lots and lots of people serving, ministering to others, from folding chairs to,
37:58: I mean, talk about having meal trains. Yeah, constant need for that kind of stuff, between the sickness and the fact that there's a baby being born about every week.
38:13: It's amazing. So people serve, serve, serve, serve, serve. And so we tend to define it in that way.
38:21: I pointed out in my sermon on Sunday at Apology of Church on Psalm 97, that the term serve, it was in the context of all you who serve pesel, the idols, the graven images, should be ashamed.
38:41: Avad in Hebrew is translated to serve or as to worship. They're both included.
38:48: That's why the whole bifurcation in Roman Catholicism of Latria and Dulia has no biblical basis. It's completely artificial.
38:58: And so here we have someone talking about people serving in the church. The First Corinthians chapter 6 says, do not be deceived.
39:07: These people will not be in the kingdom of heaven. They will not be in the kingdom of heaven.
39:14: Now it says, now such were some of you, which would mean there would be absolutely no reason to talk about LGBTQ, trans, any of that stuff, because we're talking about a transition has taken place.
39:28: You were cleansed. You were washed. You were justified. But when you use this kind of language that the armist uses, at a
39:39: Southern Baptist church, you're left with communicating to the people that these self -identifying markers,
39:55: LGBTQ, trans, unmarried, living together, that these are perfectly fine.
40:06: And you can serve and you can worship. Scripture knows nothing of this.
40:16: Scripture knows nothing of this at all. Any apostle would listen to that and go, what is that man talking about?
40:28: Who is he? What religion is he a part of? They wouldn't get it. And so I asked someone today, so this is a
40:38: Southern Baptist church. Yep. That's a former vice president of the
40:43: North American Mission Board. Yep. Help me out here.
40:50: Why aren't the leaders of the SBC decrying this?
40:57: Because that's where they want the whole SBC to go. So why pretend, because it is pretense, why pretend that you have the
41:11: Baptist faith and message? You clearly don't believe what it says about Scripture, and you clearly don't believe what it says about moral activities, nature of marriage, human sexuality, or anything else.
41:26: So don't you realize that you're putting the
41:31: Baptist faith and message and what it says up for mockery when the most platformed leaders in the
41:42: SBC are not standing up and going, no, no, no, no, no.
41:47: Because the SBC has always had its problems and it's always had its politics, but I can guarantee you one thing.
41:53: When I was at an SBC church, and I was until 1989, back then, that never would have happened.
42:04: Someone gets up and talks like that in 1989, and I can guarantee you the pastor of the church
42:11: I was at would be in the pulpit the next Sunday calling for that church to be ousted. You better believe it would happen.
42:24: So I don't get it. There are big Southern Baptists with big names and big platforms, and they're just sitting there knowing this is going on?
42:36: Man, I don't understand it. So, Andy Stanley, last year there was a conference they had, and point number three of his presentation, sort of small here, well, it's small on my screen, "...the
43:03: faith of the next generation is worth..." Now, I'll be honest.
43:14: I have no idea what his graphic actually means, and he didn't really explain it. It says, "...leading
43:21: our churches to acknowledge there are gay people, not just straight people, with a sin problem."
43:33: So let me read that again, put the punctuation in. "...leading our churches to..." So, "...the
43:39: faith of the next generation is worth..." So we have to do this. This is somehow, you know, his big thing is the next generation, next generation, next generation.
43:46: Okay. Next generation is obviously a very secular generation from his perspective.
43:53: I guess the idea of raising up children in the church, not so much.
44:01: This didn't work for him, I guess. "...leading our churches to acknowledge there are gay people, not just straight people, with a sin problem."
44:20: Okay. I don't understand that. It almost sounds like he's saying gay people are gay people because gay people are gay people, and it's not a choice, and it's just the way they are, and they have a sin problem, and straight people have a sin problem, and we're all just in the same boat together, and he's going to say, he said, and now it's very interesting when you listen to this, he's going to use the term clobber passages.
44:53: You know where that came from? The gay community. It came from the gay community. If you refer to clobber passages in the way he does, you're reading homosexual apologists.
45:06: That didn't come from us. What? Don't I remember that phrase all the way back to 2000 when you had that exchange on KPXQ?
45:15: I'm pretty sure I remember them using that phrase. Maybe. Maybe. It's certainly nothing new.
45:21: It's certainly nothing new. But yeah, it's been around for a long time, but it comes from the homosexual community. It didn't come from us.
45:28: And he'll say, I know about these texts. Okay.
45:34: If you say you know about them, but then you're going to say that the most faith -filled servants in your church are homosexuals, then it is absolutely required of you to explain how the book in your hand or maybe he's not even having one up there, but it's supposed to be in your hand, says that those who are homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.
46:14: That homosexuality is used as an example of rebellion against God. That it is a violation of his created order,
46:21: Romans chapter 1. That it's actually a part of Paul's interpretation of the 10 commandments, and you shall not commit adultery, sex sin.
46:32: He includes homosexuality in that. You can sit there and say, we know about those.
46:39: But it almost sounds to me like he's saying, but we don't really know what that's supposed to mean. And if you get to that point where something that clear, where the apostle is saying, do not be deceived.
46:53: These things will keep you out of kingdom of God. Well, you know, it's just so hard to understand what he means by that.
47:03: What are you going to communicate to people as to what allegedly God's truth is?
47:09: I don't get it. I don't understand it. But here's the section.
47:18: Like I said, this is 11 minutes long. Did I fast forward?
47:26: Let's just see if I started at the right place. 9 % of the people in the room. This is easy, personally, you know, gay people, you have gay friends, you have gay relatives, you may have a gay son or daughter.
47:34: No, I didn't. The next generation that has. Okay, here we go. Number three, the faith of the next generation is worth.
47:41: Okay, here we go. Leading our churches to acknowledge there are gay people, not just straight people with a sin problem.
47:50: Now, what does this have to do with the next generation that has everything to be clear? We don't need to get the next generation to acknowledge that.
47:58: They assume that. But as long as they think that we don't understand that, they can't hear us.
48:07: They just can't. Now, is that fair? No. Is it even fair? Should it be that way? No. But it's just that way.
48:14: And this is so complicated. And this is so... I sense real confusion on his own part here.
48:22: Okay, I sense real confusion here. Because he's not communicating clearly.
48:28: But he's saying that the next generation will not hear us. Well, okay, you buy that.
48:38: And you buy... What people are saying is, we're dealing with a secular generation, and they have certain presuppositions, and so we have to get on board.
48:51: And I go, no, we don't. Well, then they won't listen to you. They're not going to listen to me unless the
48:57: Spirit of God opens their hearts anyways. So, you are trying to do something without the
49:06: Spirit here. You are trying to say that there are ways for us to communicate to the secularized young mind that bypass the fact they're made in the image of God, and it has to be the
49:19: Spirit of God that opens their hearts and minds to begin with. And what are we going to use to do that, from his perspective, buying into their worldview?
49:27: I go, no, it's called the Scriptures. But he's already unhitched himself from that anyways.
49:33: So, I get where the problem lies, right? I mean, that's a problem.
49:40: Now, if you're gay, don't hear me saying you're complicated and you're difficult. You're not the problem.
49:45: The church is still trying to adjust to a reality that we struggle with, and we struggle with it for good reasons.
49:54: What? What's the reality, and what are the good reasons?
50:01: I think the reality is that there are homosexuals that want to be in church, okay?
50:12: And look, it's always good to recognize when there might be some truth in something, so then you can get to the error more clearly.
50:24: My grandparents could never have understood the conversations we're having today.
50:30: They never could have. It's just, you didn't talk about stuff like this in church, and as a result, we were left way behind the eight ball.
50:44: Once this stuff hit, trying to deal with someone coming into the church with same -sex attraction, we struggled.
50:58: But that's not the issue here. The one word that Andy Stanley abandoned theologically a long time ago, and he abandoned it when he was still semi -conservative, and that's the problem.
51:14: The word that you will not hear at FBC Orlando, the word that you will not hear at Andy Stanley's place, that is absolutely necessary for any connection whatsoever to the
51:25: Bible at this point, is the word repentance. Repentance.
51:33: Probably the most unpopular theological word that's found over and over again in the New Testament, okay?
51:38: Andy Stanley, he comes from that spectrum of theology that gets rid of repentance.
51:49: Repentance is for super -Christians. It's not for regular Christians. You only repent if you want to be one of those super -Christians.
51:56: So it's anti -lordship stuff, and it has an impact of necessity.
52:01: It has an impact. You can't get around it. And so everything the
52:06: Scripture says, all the promises Scripture makes to sinners seeking salvation in Christ, seeking to worship
52:18: Christ, is predicated upon repentance. It's predicated upon the clarity of God's law so that there can be repentance.
52:30: And once you don't have that, once you have people coming in demanding that the church conform itself to their desires and their decisions, you're going to end up with this mess.
52:42: And it is a mess. Your church shouldn't have to deal with unrepentant sinners seeking to serve
52:53: Christ because you can't serve Christ when you have not repented of the sins that nailed
53:02: Him to the cross. As long as you continue to love those sins and are not repentant, you cannot serve
53:12: Christ, and you cannot serve His church. You cannot worship Christ, and you cannot worship in His church when you love the things that He says you're to hate, because then you can't love the things
53:27: He says you're to love. That's obvious. This is all obvious.
53:36: The problems we're seeing with Andy Stanley and with First Baptist Church, Orlando, etc.,
53:43: etc., comes from much earlier departures from fundamental, foundational
53:51: Christian truths, such as the first command of Jesus when He preaches the gospel is repent.
54:00: And we don't like that, and we don't think that works anymore because we don't trust the Holy Spirit of God to make the gospel the power that it is.
54:11: That's all there is to it. Now, this is so easy personally.
54:17: In fact, I don't know all of you, but I bet for 99 % of the people in the room, this is easy personally.
54:23: You know gay people. You have gay friends. You have gay relatives. You may have a gay son or daughter or granddaughter. You know, you do business with gay people.
54:29: Gay people come to your church. You're not like, oh. In fact, it's the opposite. It's like, I think you're gay.
54:35: There's gay people here. It's great. I love our church. I mean, and if you're gay, I know, just be patient with us.
54:40: We're weird. I know. But you... See, I can't even begin to grasp this.
54:50: I really can't. Because again, the key issue is, are they repentant?
54:58: You know, if someone comes to the elders to say, I struggle with these feelings, okay, we're going to deal with them.
55:05: We're going to disciple them. We are going to counsel them to mortify, put to death the deeds and the desires of the flesh.
55:14: That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about an acceptance of the world's idea that homosexual behavior and orientation or transgender...
55:25: He didn't say transgender. The other guy said transgender. So who knows? But that's just the way people are.
55:35: That whole thing there, that's just the way people are. You've got members of your family, people you work with, blah, blah, blah, people sitting next to you.
55:43: No problem. I love our church because the gay people come here. For what?
55:51: Why do gay people come to church? Ever thought about that? Okay, why do repentant homosexuals come to church?
56:06: To find help in mortifying the desires of the flesh. Okay, so they're looking...
56:13: A repentant homosexual does not come to the church and say, you need to change your theology to make me feel comfortable.
56:21: In fact, a repentant homosexual comes to a church and says, I don't want to be comfortable. I've already been too comfortable as it is.
56:30: I want you to make me uncomfortable in my sin because I need help. But we're talking about unrepentant gay people.
56:42: And unrepentant homosexuals say to the church, you need to make me feel accepted.
56:48: So you need to stop preaching those aspects of God's law and His character that I know
56:55: I'm living in rebellion against. That's what the homosexual movement, the gay
57:03: Christian movement, is all about. That's its essence. That's what it is. I understand because you're here because you love
57:10: Jesus, and you probably grew up in church, and you know we're trying to figure this whole out. But at some point...
57:15: We're trying to figure this whole thing... Unless I am missing something,
57:22: Andy Stanley is the senior minister of this church. And I don't know about you, but he certainly does not communicate to me the idea that this church has really clear answers to give to the world.
57:35: We're not really sure, but we're trying to figure it out.
57:41: Okay. Well, that's just humility. When you have clear texts of scripture in context, in the original language, not so sure.
57:52: Along the way, and this is a process, and I want to drill down on this one a little bit. In fact, in my notes, I was going to read this when
57:59: I say, good luck. Let's go to number four, but that would be mean, okay? So personally, this is not a problem.
58:06: You love people. You don't write people off because of their sexual preference. I mean, we all know how to love people. Sexual preference?
58:16: Could I look that up in accordance? Am I going to find that anywhere? No. Where's that coming from?
58:23: It's coming from the world. Purely from the world. Here you have someone who has allowed the world to define these categories, and seemingly is communicating to a large number of people that the
58:38: Bible, yeah, it sort of says some things, but we're not really sure.
58:49: That's frightening. But corporately, it is challenging, and it's challenging for good reasons, but we have to embrace this challenge, and we have to lead the way.
59:02: In my experience, now, this is just my experience, okay? I'm just going to read what I wrote.
59:07: If I could figure out how to get straight people as excited about serving and engaging as the gay men and women
59:15: I know, we would have a volunteer backlog. So now we're going to start propping up gay people as the example of service in the church.
59:28: Has the thought ever crossed your mind that maybe the reason gay people have more time to do stuff at the church is they're not raising children?
59:38: At least not ones they produced. This is going to be a process, and again, it does lead us to ask the question.
59:52: Let's say he's right, and there's a lot of people at his church that want to do stuff that are homosexual.
59:59: Why? Because homosexuals are suppressing the knowledge of God.
01:00:05: They do it every day. It must be exhausting. It must be exhausting, and for many, they just express that in their hatred of religion, hatred of Christianity.
01:00:16: I saw a picture—not a picture, I saw a video of a former homosexual being baptized, and the homosexuals showed up with flags and stuff like that, and they're throwing stuff at them, and they're screaming.
01:00:28: They hate the Christian faith. There are other people, though, that try to do stuff to satiate the conviction they feel, knowing that they are suppressing the knowledge of God in their very being, and if you give them stuff to do, all you're doing is putting salve on a sucking chest wound that is going to lead them to eternal death.
01:01:09: Maybe from the pews of your church, but that's what you're going to do. What a horrible position to be in.
01:01:19: That's my experience in our churches. Well, a gay person—I'll just read it to you. A gay person—when
01:01:25: I say gay, men and women, okay? A gay person who still wants to attend church after the way the church has treated the gay community?
01:01:34: I'm telling you, they have more faith than I do. Is this your senior minister?
01:01:42: What do you mean how the church has treated the gay community? Where do you get the fact that there is such a thing as the gay community, from a biblical perspective, first of all?
01:01:53: And what exactly does the church owe the gay community, whatever that is?
01:02:03: See, there's stuff being communicated here. It's just nothing that an apostle would have ever recognized.
01:02:10: It's nothing you'll find anywhere in Scripture, and once you embrace it, you'll never be able to figure out, you'll never be able to make heads or tails of what
01:02:19: Scripture actually teaches in morality and ethics, because it's been evacuated by this kind of thinking.
01:02:28: But this, again, this man's been reading—I read the same books for a different reason.
01:02:36: I've read so many of the books that have come out, and this is their language. This is their argument, and he's accepted.
01:02:42: He's bought it hook, line, and sinker, and he's using his platform to get other people to buy it hook, line, and sinker.
01:02:52: You're not going to hear a scintilla of biblical argumentation here. You're not. You're not.
01:03:00: And so you wonder why Andy Stanley's talking about unhooking from this and unhooking from that, and we need a different starting place in the
01:03:07: Bible, and the Bible's not sufficient as a starting place, because what he's teaching isn't from the Bible. It's not what the apostles taught.
01:03:13: It's not the Christian faith. It is an Americanized—well, there's a specific term,
01:03:20: I won't use it—that would communicate accurately what it is, but it's a mutant version.
01:03:27: It's a mutant version of the Christian faith, separated from what gives the Christian faith its form, and that is
01:03:34: Scripture. That's why he has to take this, you know, not everything in the
01:03:40: Bible is historical, and that's not all true. That's what makes this so dangerous.
01:03:47: They have more faith than a lot of you. A gay person who knows, you know what? I might not be accepted here, but I'm going to try it anyway.
01:03:55: Have you ever done that as a straight person? Where do you go that you're not sure you're going to be accepted, and you go over and over and over and over?
01:04:05: Only your in -law's house. That's the only place you go where you know you're not completely accepted, but you go over and over and it's because you have to.
01:04:15: But other than the in -laws, what environment do you continue to step foot in knowing at any moment you may feel ostracized?
01:04:23: No place. I'm telling you, the gay men and women who grew up in church, and the gay men and women who've come to faith in Christ as adults, who want to participate in our church, oh my goodness.
01:04:35: Do you hear the communication of the theology here? The gay men and women who come to Christ.
01:04:42: It sounds to me like what he's saying is, and they remain homosexual. That remains the identifier of these individuals.
01:04:51: There's nothing here about the danger of using a sin as the identifying marker.
01:04:58: There's nothing about that. And given his view of scripture, how could there be in the first place?
01:05:07: You've unhooked from the Old Testament. The Bible as a whole isn't a sufficient starting place.
01:05:13: So you can't put together a consistent biblical teaching on man, woman, marriage, anything.
01:05:27: You've unhooked all of it. And now you're just simply redefining everything using the terms of the world rather than terms of scripture.
01:05:37: That's what's missing here. And of course, people are going to want to come to a church like this because they will never be convicted.
01:05:45: The holiness of God's law will never be brought to bear upon them in this context.
01:05:52: I know 1 Corinthians 6, and I know Leviticus, and I know Romans 1. It's so interesting to talk about all that stuff.
01:05:58: What do you mean it's so interesting to talk about all that stuff?
01:06:03: How dare you? Man, pray for this man.
01:06:09: He's going to have to stand before God for what he just said there. I know about Leviticus, and I know about 1
01:06:18: Corinthians 6, and I know about Romans 1. Yeah, and they're interesting to talk about?
01:06:30: They are just as central to the definition of God's law that was fulfilled in Christ as anything else.
01:06:40: They're interesting to talk about? Is there no one in this church that will take him aside and go,
01:06:48: Sir, what are you doing? Have you listened to yourself?
01:06:57: Oh my goodness, a gay man or woman who wants to worship their heavenly
01:07:03: Father? So, true worship can be desired and accomplished by a person that the scripture says will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.
01:07:17: Unrepentant, unjustified, or is he saying, oh no, you can be justified even though Paul says such were some of you,
01:07:26: Andy Stanley's saying is such are some of you, and you can be justified apart from repentance for that sin.
01:07:37: That's what I'm hearing. Anybody else? Who did not answer the cry of their heart when they were 12, and 13, and 14, and 15.
01:07:47: God said no, and they still love God? I think what he's saying there is, sounded like he's saying that they realized they were gay as a teenager, but they didn't act on it.
01:08:04: That's extremely rare. Every study has shown that's less than 1%.
01:08:10: Less than 1%. But are those the only people who come to Christ?
01:08:19: Is he now only talking about people who are oriented that way, but don't act on that?
01:08:28: We have some things to learn from a group of men and women who love Jesus that much and who want to worship with us, and I know the verses.
01:08:36: I know the collaborative passages, right? There you are. Did you catch that?
01:08:42: I know the collaborative passages. Even the way he said it is exactly how the homosexual apologists say it.
01:08:51: I know what he's been reading. I've got them. I know where he's getting it.
01:09:00: We got to figure this out, and you know what? I think you are. I think you wouldn't come to a conference like this, or you wouldn't have come back, right?
01:09:07: We are, and we'll be criticized for it, and there's no perfect way to do this, but I can give you a hint.
01:09:12: We do what Jesus did. You know who Jesus started with? Jesus never started with theology. Jesus started with the people in front of him.
01:09:22: Jesus never started with the doctrine of God. He started with the people in front of him. Knowledge of God.
01:09:30: Jesus started with repent. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and turn from the wrath of God.
01:09:37: What are you talking about? He started with the people in front of him. This is just this psychological psychobabble, but once you've abandoned the high view of Scripture, that's all you've got.
01:09:50: You can't just throw the Bible out yet. A lot of people eventually do, but he's in that in -between place where he's disconnected from any meaningful definitional view of Scripture, but he hasn't gotten to the point of atheism yet, so when you're in the middle here, you've got this squishy stuff where you still try to use religious language, but you can't derive your morals and ethics from it any longer, and that's what you end up with in this kind of stuff, this kind of teaching.
01:10:24: There's a lot more, but that was the main part. I mean, we could go another seven minutes, but that would take starting and stopping.
01:10:32: That would take forever. Look, you have a lot of friends.
01:10:40: You've probably got a lot of evangelical friends, like I said, the people on Twitter. How dare you play what
01:10:51: Andy Stanley says, and you don't have any compassion. I was just announcing
01:10:59: I was going to talk about this. These people don't care. They've got no hearts. They're just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and that's what we're facing.
01:11:12: It's one thing to stand firm for a while. To stand firm for your entire life is what becomes difficult.
01:11:22: That's why you see people giving in. I remember sitting in this room many, many years ago saying there is a tsunami of apostasy coming.
01:11:35: People who claim to be Christians, and they are going to be denying important elements of the
01:11:45: Bible that you would never believe are going to be doing it right in front of you. It's coming. It's right in front of us.
01:11:53: It's right there. No question about it. There you go. All right.
01:11:58: Well, we went a little bit over, but that's all right. We had important stuff to talk about, and we have covered the waterfront today, but hopefully a little bit of something for everybody edifying to you, challenging to you, encouraging to you, whatever else it may be.