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

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.

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 Inquisition, wrote a book, What Is Christianity, and he wanted it published only posthumously.

Ratzinger’s Posthumous Book and the Priesthood Question

So I guess, again, there's lots of questions about this, but from what I've seen, some of it was written in 2018, some as late as last year. 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 pulled.

I don't know that. I've just heard someone say that. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. I have not been able to get hold of it. It has only been out for two days, but it is definitely from him, and it definitely has a lot of bombshell stuff in it.

There's discussions of how prevalent homosexuality is in seminaries and the impact that it's had upon what they call priestly formation, but there's a lot more, too. And so one of the articles that went through it, actually, it was published January 18th, but almost no one's been talking about it yet, and there seems to be some hesitancy on the part of the Roman Catholic Church about this.

Makes sense. But I'm looking at a particular article, and just some of the topics that it mentions, I think, are pretty important. Opposition between Catholicism and Protestantism. In a previously unreleased text, Benedict XVI deplores that Vatican II did not address the Reformation's fundamental questioning of the Catholic priesthood in the 16th century.

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. Benedict XVI, the rat singer, sees Luther's original error as his vision of an irreconcilable opposition between the priestly concept of the Old Testament and the priesthood conferred by Jesus Christ.

However, the early church had already connected the Old Testament priesthood with the New Testament ministries and did not view justification by faith and by works as opposed. Well, that, there's big stuff.

This is key material right here, because I think, historically and certainly biblically, the Roman Catholic argument for the priesthood is amongst its weakest perspectives. Sure, you have priesthood developing in the second century, but it is not apostolic.

It is not apostolic. There's no question about that. It is certainly not New Testament. At least I had one opportunity to debate Mitch Pacwa on this subject, and Mitch is a bright guy, and so I figure he's going to give, as, well, about the only conservative 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.

He basically is saying that the term presbyter eventually evolved into the priesthood. 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.

There's qualifications for elders, bishops, and for deacons, but none for priests, and that's supposed to be an apostolic office? 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.

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.

Maybe the system's standing in midair without a foundation. There you go. That's the problem. So, it's fascinating. It did not address the Reformation's fundamental questioning of the Catholic priesthood in the 16th century.

Reformation did, and whenever you see the errors of the 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 Reformation.

They're going the opposite direction, and it's happened a lot. Then, and this is important, I've got to say, most of us on our side who read Roman Catholic theology and have engaged in these things, and by the way, I'm watching this battle going on.

Trent Horn and Jimmy Akin did a video responding on the issue of, oh 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 Protestant side and other side going back and forth, and I'm sitting going, man, there's nothing new under the sun.

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, it's right underneath the camera, about six inches from my finger, and I've used Nicaea too.

The Second Nicene Council, it's 787, not 325, so long, long after. Very, very totally different in character, and in conclusions as well. 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.

But what has happened when you deny Sola Scriptura and you allow tradition to start functioning openly as the interpretive matrix into which the 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.

And it's absurdly ahistorical claims at the same time. And so, and then somebody, I'm not sure if this will even work, we were supposed to have this program working on this computer so that it can... Maybe if somebody in our channel...

Yeah, unable, unable, unable, unable. Oh no, now it's working. Well, it's not working for everybody. I can see you. I can see Ryan now. There was a... Someone might have the video that I'm referring to from Twitter, a response from a 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. Anyway, the final comment that was made in one of the videos from the 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.

And I'm like, that would be... Oh, let me think if I can come up with... Oh, sola ecclesia, the Church as the final authority. Yep, that's what we've been saying for a long, a long, a long, a long, a long time.

That's all you are left with, is the ultimate authority of the Church, and that's what we're seeing. So anyways, I didn't mean to jump off of all of that, but back to Ratzinger. I'm just used to... I've known Ratzinger for a long, long time.

He was Ratzinger for a long time before he was Pope. So, because of their opposing theological foundations, it is quite clear that the Protestant Last Supper... That's really weird terminology. We call it the 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. Let those who preach intercommunion today remember this, warns Joseph Ratzinger.

That's a direct quote. So, Benedict XVI points out that in liturgical reform, 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.

It's fascinating to me. Ratzinger sees what's going on. 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 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. They're in rebellion. But they're in rebellion, not like the Reformation was.

They're in rebellion against fundamental Biblical teachings on human sexuality and marriage and the whole nine yards. They're going wacko left. He was German, obviously. That's why he was called the German Shepherd.

So, here he's saying Luther's theses, you saw the 1999 thing, the Joint Statement on Justification, which did not have any dogmatic authority. But there's a lot of people grabbing onto that. But it is quite clear that the Protestant Lord should be.

And the Mass are two fundamentally different, mutually exclusive forms of worship. He's exactly right. Ratzinger is exactly right. You cannot put them together. You cannot let those who preach intercommunion today remember this, warns Ratzinger.

Well, he's right. And this actually is going to connect. Hold on. Hold on. If you're driving, be careful. This is going to connect to Andy Stanley. I will make an attempt to connect Joseph Ratzinger's comment on the Mass to Andy Stanley and to Danny de Armas of First Baptist Church, Orlando, because we're going to be seeing videos where they are talking about the worship of the church.

The problem is their definition of worship—and this is the sad part—their definition of worship takes the Bible's teaching and defining of the word worship means significantly less seriously than Benedict did.

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. 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 I believe in the Lord's Supper and what Ratzinger believed dogmatically about the Mass, he's right. Mutually, fundamentally different, mutually exclusive forms of worship.

Because in the Supper, you are doing remembrance of a finished sacrifice that is not represented in an unbloody form so as to be perpetuatory. That's Rome's teaching. The sacrifice of Christ is completed.

It is finished. It is the basis upon which he has entered into the presence of the 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.

You have a continuing perpetuatory sacrifice that does not perfect anyone. And Ratzinger recognized it. Those are two fundamentally different, mutually exclusive forms of worship. I want to get this book when it becomes available.

I looked for it. I want to get it when it becomes available in English, and I hope it's translated well. In fact, what I hope is that there would be a translation. Probably written in Latin, Latin, English, or whatever it was.

I'm not sure what the original language was. Maybe he wrote it in German. I'd love to get the German version. Anyway, very, very important. Very, very important point there. 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 Catholic approach.

For an explanation of Scripture that sees the Old Testament as a way to Jesus Christ is almost inaccessible to modern thought. Now, there's clearly a big context there that I can't comment on, because we're not given it.

It almost sounds like he's saying that Luther does not have a Christocentric view of the Hebrew Scriptures as testifying to Christ. Maybe. I don't know. It's too short to expand on, but it's an interesting statement.

Benedict XVI criticizes certain attempts at dialogue between Christians and Muslims, which emphasize that both the Bible and Koran speak of the mercy of God. When the guy was right, the guy was right.

From this stems the imperative to love one's neighbor, but it is also claimed that both texts contain calls for violence. 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 Bible and the Koran with the 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 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—well, let's just put it this way.

Remember my dialogue with Yasser Qadhi? We didn't do that. We didn't do what the people leaning left are doing, trying to—well, there's good and bad in both. No, I believe the Bible's the word of God.

I don't believe the Koran's the word of God. Do you believe the Koran's the word of God? Do 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.

When you put all that stuff under the ecumenical rug, then you can't talk about it, and the resultant unity is worthless. It has no value to it, because it can't last in any way. So, false tolerance in the West.

Yeah, in another text, Ratzinger notes that the great powers of tolerance do not grant to Christianity the tolerance they propagate. That's for sure. With their radical manipulation of man and distortion of the sexes through gender ideology, they are clearly opposed to Christianity.

Yep. Yep. This was one of the great criticisms that was leveled at him, was he's clearly not on key fundamental issues. It's not that he came from Germany for crying out loud. 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. 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.

He adds, the intolerance of this apparent modernity towards the 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 Christian.

Well, he's right about that. You look at what's happening in Europe, and they are seeking to use, manifest in an increasingly authoritarian way, by appropriate legislation, the eradication of what is essentially Christian.

And so you see all sorts of people being brought up on charges for books they wrote 10 years ago presenting basic Christian theology. Yeah, he's right. Finally, he refutes the criticism that the Christian faith is inherently intolerant because of its claim to truth and universality.

This view is based on the suspicion that the societies that oppose the truth that are intolerant. Well, that's for sure. 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.

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. But what was mentioned here I think is vitally important, and 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.

Yeah, we disagree on this stuff, and we need to be debating it. And now some of that stuff is not nearly as obvious as it was only a few years ago. Much has changed. Much, much, much has changed. Okay.

Andy Stanley, the Next Generation, and Gay “Service” in the Church

I was ready to go just with, and I just realized, audio to there, I hope. Hope that's where it's going. I was, we've all seen it. Well, okay, I'll take that back. Most of us have seen most of us have seen the video.

I responded to Andy Stanley, was that the last program? Last week, the last program. And the beginning of his new sermon series and the things that he said at that point in time. 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. And I think part of it is because I am a P .K., 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 P .K. was.

Preacher's Kid, I know what that's about. 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 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 Andy Stanley has done.

And so we addressed that, and then all of a sudden, something else started popping up. And I saw a brief clip of it on homosexuality, and I was like, 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, 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.

And so I thought, well, okay, this is important. Need to address this. Need to talk about what he's saying here. It flows with the last program, and it's important for us to consider. And then the troublemaker from Texas, undoubtedly while wearing one of his many, many, many pairs of overalls, a straw hat and chewing on a straw, popped into Twitter and said, you know, I see a lot of people condemning Andy Stanley for what he said about homosexuality, but none of the SBC leadership will say anything about this.

And then he quotes, and again, it's this, it's really Andy Stanley-esque, you know, the background and the colors and the big old screen and no pulpit, no tie, real casual, just in this together type of vibe feel.

Okay, all right. And there's this guy reading about First Baptist Church, Orlando, FBC Orlando. 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.

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. Right, Bob, Tom, Rich, Rich, that's right. Actually, I should remember very well, because you're getting pretty close.

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 Danny DeArmas, D-E, capital A-R-M-A-S, Associate Pastor, FBC Orlando and former Vice President of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Okay. 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. Let's take a listen here. For some reason, it moved forward. I'm not sure how to get it to start.

We have longtime members of 50 plus years, greeting and welcoming new people who are walking in for the very first time. We have those who love traditional music and hymns, and those who know only contemporary music.

We have choir lovers and non-music lovers,.

A pipe organ, and loud electric guitars. Okay, now let me just point something out here. What we're hearing right now are irrelevancies. Every church has people with different musical tastes, and people have been there forever, and people that haven't.

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. 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 LGBTQ, we have people cohabiting, we have all these things that the 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. So when you squish them all together, you're communicating something to your people.

By the way you've associated them together. 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.

We have transgender, LGBTQ, straight, single, married, divorced, and cohabitating people.

Hadn't seen that, huh? Rich's mouth just dropped open. I think, if I recall correctly, they're going to slow that down and repeat it so you can hear it really clearly.

These same people attend, listen, serve, grow, and give.

We have transgender, LGBTQ, straight, single, married, divorced, and cohabitating people. These same people attend, listen, serve, grow, and give.

Okay. Now, this is the same issue that we need to address with Andy Stanley in a moment. It is beyond astonishing to me that the man has a Bible in his hand and he's going to say at the end of this thing, hey, this is who we are.

This is FBC Orlando. He means all this in a positive sense. It's a good thing that we have all these different kinds of people here. I noticed when I mentioned last night, 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. 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.

We are seeing... I've used the illustration many times. I wish we could design a device that you could put around the door of the church. 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 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. And we are supposed to be bringing the Word of God to bear to repair that damage.

But that can be troubling to people and challenging to people and uncomfortable to people. 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.

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. 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.

That 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. Only people worthy to approach were allowed to come in there. And you come to the New Testament church, and the problem places, like Corinth, they've got problems in their services.

But there's supposed to be holiness and seriousness. Ask Ananias and Sapphira. Ask in the old covenant, Aaron's sons. This stuff about safe spaces and all that kind of stuff, I don't know where in the world it comes from, but it doesn't come from Scripture.

And so when you recognize that, when you recognize what should define Christian worship, and this is where the connection is, why are you coming to this building on a Sunday to see this man sitting on a bar stool chatting with you?

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, and then he says they're serving and giving and learning.

How do they serve? And this is going to be the same thing with Andy Stanley, okay? In fact, I'll just go ahead and stop it with there. I'll pull up Andy Stanley. I'm going to put 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. 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.

When we talk about serving in the church, you know, I think of how many people in our church serve. We have to—we rent our church space, and if you've rented, you know what that involves. That involves everybody has to work.

You have to clean the place up. 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. 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 challenge.

And our weekly activities, not only the meetings that we have, but the outreach to abortion clinics and to the 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—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. It's amazing. So people serve, serve, serve, serve. And so we tend to define it in that way.

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 pestle, the idols, the graven images, should be ashamed. Avad, in Hebrew, is translated to serve or as to worship.

They're both included. That's why the whole bifurcation in Roman Catholicism of Latria and Dulia has no biblical basis. It's completely artificial. And so here we have someone talking about people serving in the church, that 1 Corinthians chapter 6 says, do not be deceived.

These people will not be in the kingdom of heaven. They will not be in the kingdom of heaven. 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 kind of stuff, because we're talking about a transition has taken place.

You were cleansed, you were washed, you were justified. But when you use this kind of language that the armist uses, at a Southern Baptist church, you're left with communicating to the people that these self-identifying markers, LGBTQ, trans, unmarried, living together, that these are perfectly fine.

And you can serve and you can worship. Scripture knows nothing of it. Scripture knows nothing of this at all. Any apostle would listen to that and go, what is that man talking about? 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 Southern Baptist church. Yep. That's a former vice president of the North American Mission Board. Yep. Um, help me out here. Why aren't the leaders of the SBC, um, decrying this?

Because that's where they want the whole SBC to go. So why, why pretend, because it is pretense. Why pretend that you have the 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.

So don't you realize that you are, you're, you're putting the Baptist faith and message, message, and what it says up for mockery when the most platform leaders in the SBC are not standing up and going, no, no, no, no, no.

Because, you know, the SBC has always had its problems and it's always had its politics, but I can guarantee you one thing. When I was at an SBC church, and I was until 1989, back then that never would have happened.

Someone, someone gets up and talks like that in 1989, and I can guarantee you the pastor of the church I was at would be in the pulpit the next Sunday calling for that church to be ousted. You, you better believe it would happen.

Um, so I don't, 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? Man, I, 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, huh?

Well, it's small on my screen. The faith of the next generation is worth dot, dot, dot. Now, I'll, I'll, I'll be honest. I have no idea what his graphic actually means, and he didn't really explain it.

It says, leading our churches to acknowledge there are gay people, not just straight people with a sin problem. So, let me read that again, put the punctuation in. Leading our churches to it. So, the 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. Okay. Next generation is obviously a very secular generation from his perspective.

I guess the idea of raising up children in the church, eh, not so much. This didn't work for him, I guess. Leading our churches to acknowledge there are gay people, comma, not just straight people, comma, with a sin problem.

Um, okay. I don't understand that. Um, 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.

You know where that came from? The gay community. Came from the gay community. If you refer to clobber passages in the way he does, you're reading homosexual apologists. You're not, 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? I'm pretty sure I remember them using that phrase.

Maybe, maybe it's certainly nothing new. 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, and he'll say, I know about these texts.

Okay, 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.

That homosexuality is used as an example of rebellion against God. That it is a violation of his created order, Romans chapter 1. That it's actually a part of Paul's interpretation of the Ten Commandments, and you shall not commit adultery, sex sin.

He includes homosexuality in that. You can sit there and say, we know about those, 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, these things will keep you out of the kingdom of God.

Well, you know, it's just so hard to understand what he means by that. What are you going to communicate to people as to what allegedly God's truth is? I don't get it. I don't understand it, but here's the section.

Like I said, this is 11 minutes long. I hope, did I fast forward? 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, the next generation that has, okay, here we go.

Number three, the faith of the next generation is worth, okay, here we go. Leading our churches to acknowledge there are gay people, not just straight people with a sin problem. 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. They assume that, but as long as they think that we don't understand that, they can't hear us. 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. This is so complicated.

I sense real confusion on his own part here. I sense real confusion here because he's not communicating clearly, but he's saying that the next generation will not hear us. Well, okay, you buy that, 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.

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 Spirit of God opens their hearts anyways. So, you are trying to do something without the 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 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, I go, no, it's called the Scriptures. But he's already unhitched himself from that anyways. So, I get where the problem lies, right? I mean, that's a problem.

Now, if you're gay, don't hear me saying you're complicated and you're difficult. You're not the problem. The church is still trying to adjust to a reality that we struggle with,.

And we struggle with it for good reasons. What? What's the reality, and what are the good reasons? I think the reality is that there are homosexuals that want to be in church, okay? 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.

My grandparents could never have understood the conversations we're having today. 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.

Once this stuff hit, trying to deal with someone coming into the church with same-sex attraction, we struggled. So, but that's not the issue here. The issue, 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.

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 Bible at this point, is the word repentance.

Repentance, probably the most unpopular theological word that's found over and over again in the New Testament. Andy Stanley, he comes from that spectrum of theology that gets rid of repentance. Repentance is for super-Christians.

It's not for regular Christians. You only repent if you want to be one of those super-Christians, so it's anti-lordship stuff, and it has an impact of necessity. It has to get around it. And so, everything the scripture says, all the promises scripture makes to sinners seeking salvation in Christ, seeking to worship Christ, is predicated upon repentance.