News Roundup: Effeminate Singing, Ligon Duncan Hypocrisy, & Kanye Rejects Christ

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations, another podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. I'm kicking myself right now, though, because when

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I released the podcast yesterday, the live stream about the Southern Baptist Convention, I neglected to include something, and I wanted to include it for the sake of contrast.

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The Southern Baptist Convention went through the conservative resurgence. They ended up being more conservative.

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Of course, now some of those gains are being threatened, but they were more conservative than the so -called moderates who left the

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Southern Baptist Convention. I wanted to contrast what's going on at Everett, I think it's

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Averitt, maybe that's how you pronounce it, University, which is associated with a

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Baptist association in Virginia. They're not associated with the SBC, and neither is this association.

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They're the moderates, right? I wanted to contrast this story with just kind of like where things went, and this is maybe a warning for the

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Southern Baptist Convention of where things can really go. It's just one little thing, someone sent it to me, but it's somewhat surprising in a way.

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The title of this piece from the Daily Beast, and this was just a few days ago, is University Professor Who Vanished From Florida Conferences Found Dead.

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This is very sad. He was attending the Southeastern Psychological Association Conference near Universal Studios when he was reported missing.

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Now, you dig into the article, it says a professor at a Virginia university, and that is Averitt University, was found after he disappeared during an

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Orlando conference, local police said. Now, where was he found? He was found at Club Orlando, which is a homosexual men's club in Florida, and police responded to a call about an unintended death there, and upon arrival, the staff took officers to where the deceased was located, so it's not saying exactly what the cause was here, but he was a, the person who died here was an associate professor of psychology, and he joined

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Averitt University's faculty in 2015. In fact, if you look him up, which

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I did, his name is Dr. Hanbury, he was the assistant chair, I believe, so he actually had somewhat of a prominent role at the university.

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David Hanbury, that's his name, David Hanbury in the psychology department. Now, why am

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I bringing this up? What does this have to do with Southern Baptist? Well, it's not connected to Southern Baptist, but someone sent it to me thinking, hey,

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I wonder if this has any connection. I said, no, it doesn't, but Averitt University is a private

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Baptist university in Danville, Virginia. It was founded in 1859, so I'm going through the Wikipedia page, which, by the way, if you're ever in a class with me, which

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I don't teach right now, but when I used to grade papers and stuff, not a good source for a scholarly article, so you have to, like, check the sources at the bottom, but sometimes you'll find some, it can show you how to get started, sometimes, sometimes, not all the time, so just to get information quick, that's where I am, but it gives a little bit of the basic history here, and it says that it was affiliated with the

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Baptist General Association of Virginia, and then that changed in 2005 because Averitt University abandoned the

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Baptist positions on homosexuality, but then in 2011, guess what happened? The Baptist General Association of Virginia voted to restore the association's relationship with the university, so the

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Baptist General Association of Virginia is affiliated with the

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Southern Baptist Convention, but they are known as a moderate association. What does that mean?

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Okay, here's why I'm telling you all this. The Baptist General Association of Virginia is known as a moderate association because during the conservative resurgence, the moderates were the liberals.

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I know this all gets confusing, but the moderates, they like the name, it's more of a pleasing name, you sound moderate, but they were actually the liberals in the convention, and they disagreed with the direction of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and early 90s.

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One of those issues, of course, was women pastors, but there were others, the sufficiency or the authority of scripture and infallibility of it, and that kind of thing, and so, you know, they left, or they disassociated some groups, others formed other denominations, and some kept their association, but they remained moderates, and that's what you have going on here.

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You have a school that is connected to a moderate association in Virginia, it gets to the point where the co -chair of their psychology department is found dead at a conference at a homosexual men's club.

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Now, you know, there's obviously, there's circumstances, you know, that sometimes you don't know who someone is, you know, but my only point, really, and it's just, it's a very basic point, is that I don't think this would happen at one of the big

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SBC schools, at least not yet, right? You just, you're risking too much to frequent somewhere like that, and I'm not saying that can't happen in the future, but it's just not something you would expect, and it's something that, though, it reflects on an institution that started going the direction that the

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Southern Baptist Convention, in my opinion, is going now, they started going, this school started going that direction decades before.

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This is where that train eventually leads to the adoption of pro -homosexual stances, just like Averitt University adopted, and eventually you're going to get, you're going to attract professors that have the character that matches that, and so I just wanted to point that out to you by way of contrast, and I forgot to do it yesterday in the

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SBC episode, so I figured I'll do it now. Well, we have a number of things to talk about today in broader evangelicalism, things that I've been saving for quite some time that I want to bring up several videos to play.

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I'm going to start here, if I may, with Protestia put out this post a few days ago, and it's just scrolling through over 320 erotic and holistic sexual books on Logos' website,

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Logos, the Bible program. They've had over six weeks to remove these ones, yet they are still there as of this morning.

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Now, here's what I want to say about this. The person who actually figured this out is one of the patrons, and I probably should mention, yes, if you want to support this podcast, you can go patreon .com

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forward slash worldview conversation. You can also go to worldview conversation .com or johnharrispodcast .com and find my

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Patreon link. If you want to be a monthly supporter of this podcast and of all the other work I'm doing, just this morning, actually,

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I put a post out there on Patreon with a special sneak peek of the 1607 project, a video that only they're seeing, and sometimes

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I'll do that. I'll also allow patrons to participate in some of my live streams.

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They also get copies of my PowerPoints and that kind of thing. I'm also obligated to respond when they have questions and that kind of thing.

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Those are some of just basic things, benefits, I suppose. You have more access to myself if you're a patron on Patreon.

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Anyway, all that said, someone on Patreon reached out to me and said, John, I found this on Logos, the

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Bible software website. I don't know what to do. I've contacted them. They're not taking it seriously. Actually, I don't think he was getting any replies.

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He tried everything he could. I did not touch this. I did not take this story.

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Sometimes I'll talk about things like this, but it didn't match what I was talking about that week.

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If Protestia didn't get anywhere, then I was going to do something. Anyway, I connected him, and he talked to Protestia, and those guys, they wanted to take the story.

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I asked a few other Christian outlets about it, and Protestia seemed they were ready to do that. They had a conversation with Logos about this, and Logos said, it's a mistake.

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We didn't realize this. Of course, we'll change our catalog so this stuff isn't there. Well, it's still there.

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Now, I'm talking about it because it hasn't changed. I don't know all the ins and outs of exactly why they have a catalog, and it's explicitly erotic stuff, guys.

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It's not just like your Christian veneer version of romance novels.

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I'm talking about explicitly erotic, pornographic -type material in these books.

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I guess they call it erotic when it's print and not pictures, but that's what's going on at Logos.

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I use Logos. I like Logos. I've liked it for a long time, the tools it has, but that's not a good thing if they're selling this kind of stuff on their catalog.

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I hope that maybe the extra accountability will inspire them to really do something about this and get rid of that. That's number one.

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I was going to talk about that, and sure enough, there I did. The other thing I wanted to talk about, just briefly, these are all little things that I've screenshotted that I wanted to talk about later.

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Frank Turek, who's probably one of the most well known Christian apologists today, put a post out there that says, don't think that the

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Bible is expressed literally. Much is not literal. Even some of the Old Testament judgment commands are said hyperbolically.

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Now, there might be a technical truth in this, in that if you mean by literal wooden, yeah, there's figurative phrases in the

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Bible, of course. When God talks about us being under his wings, is he literally a bird?

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No. Obviously, when Jesus says he's the door or the vine, is he literally a vine?

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Of course, there's figurative stuff. That's not controversial, but generally, when we talk about literally, we're talking about grammatical historical.

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We're talking about Genesis. We're talking about did these stories actually happen, and they did. I would say that this is probably, for especially someone who's an apologist, who's defending the

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Christian faith, you want to qualify this. It could signal to people that you think that you should take the

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Bible more figuratively. By figurative, the portions that the left, or not the left, but theological liberals want to be taken figuratively can be taken figuratively.

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He specifically outlines the Old Testament judgment commands are said hyperbolically. I don't want to get into the details.

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I could do a podcast on it at some point. I actually have the book. I think I put it in storage. It was on my shelf.

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The title is, Is the God of the Old Testament a Moral Monster? There's some good points, but overall, it bothers me.

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It bothers me. The reason it bothers me when people try to make a lot of these judgment commands also hyperbole, and he doesn't define which ones he's talking about, what he means by that, is because I think the motivation in this is,

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I should say, this is a newer thing from what I understand. This is as we've been enlightened, quote, unquote, and liberal democracy has progressed and all this.

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Cruel and unusual punishments are, of course, horrible, but that used to be more common to have punishments that we would consider today cruel,

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I guess, and unusual. We drink from this water. I don't like cruel and unusual punishments at all.

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I like many of the things that I grew up with and that were normal to me in my environment and that kind of thing.

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Well, you're separated though. You're separated centuries from the world of the

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Bible. In the world of the Bible, there are just things we would consider today cruel.

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There is the Israel going into foreign nations and killing everyone, including the children, and God commanding this in certain circumstances.

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Of course, there should be attempts to explain what's going on there, why is this happening, but we don't want to have a retreatist kind of mindset where we start bending things.

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That's what I have seen. I don't know if Frank Turek's doing this, but something that's not qualified like this can lend you to believe that he's going that direction.

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I don't know, but we start kind of playing around with, hey, can this be taken really literally? Because if we can just interpret it figuratively, we can get

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God off the hook here, and that's what I'm concerned about. I don't want to try to get God off the hook. Now, Frank Turek would, of course, he would be against homosexuality.

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I think I played a clip from him where he was kind of in favor of, or he thought same -sex attraction was okay, but even that's a compromise, but there's other guys who have taken the next logical step, and they've just said, well, homosexuality is figurative.

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It's the commands against that, or we shouldn't be literal with those. You get on a slope that can be slippery.

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That's just my warning kind of just, hey, be careful. I don't know if Frank Turek's listening to this podcast, but maybe there's guys who are connected with Frank Turek, and just maybe you can find out what he means by this.

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Something that I don't want to see, the apologetics community, and they function like a denomination, basically, they have a problem in this area, in my opinion, because you get into this mindset of constantly trying to defend

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God, and wow, there's a bird. As I said this, a bird just came outside.

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I wish you could see it with the camera. It has a big twig in its mouth, and now it just flew away.

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All right, sorry, squirrel. What was I saying? The apologetics community has a problem with trying to get

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God off the hook and defend God, and then starting to, because that's the end goal, they start using means that are not justified, frankly, and I've seen this before, and so just, hey, if we're in the early stages of that,

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I hope not, but just FYI. All right, now we have, oh, did

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I want to talk? I guess I'll talk about this next. Gospel Coalition Australia. People were talking about this, and it's, by the way, it says 7 -3 -20 -24.

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You're not mistaken. I guess that's how in, I think, England and Australia, they mark time. They mark dates, so it's really 3 -7, so this was a few weeks ago, but it kind of made the rounds last week, and the title is from Isaac Cowling.

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It's me. Hi, I'm the problem. It's me. The Gospel in Taylor Swift Lyrics. That's right.

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The Gospel Coalition putting out an article about the Gospel in Taylor Swift Lyrics, and yeah,

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I can't make it up. There's a, the second heading, A Gospel Summary Using Only Taylor Swift Lyrics, and then it has some

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Taylor Swift lyrics, and a lot of Taylor Swift lyrics. My goodness, the whole thing's Taylor Swift Lyrics, and so that's, it's a bunch of Taylor Swift songs strung together, and the beginning, so the only thing the author says is these first three paragraphs.

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This isn't an article about how to seek to satisfy a persistent desire for transcendence through live musical experience. He keeps talking about what the article isn't.

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He says, what is the article, though? I believe that the best way to satisfy our longings is Jesus, and I'd like to tell that, you, that story, especially for all the

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Swifties, through your favorite medium, because you don't need Billy Graham to hear this beautiful story. All you need is your Taylor Swift playlist to start glitching.

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Okay, that's, does she mention Jesus? I mean, this is just a really weird article.

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I don't really know what else to say about it. Like, I, you know, you think the Gospel Coalition is well -funded, but yeah,

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Jesus isn't mentioned. Doesn't look like it in any of these lyrics, no. So, oh, that's the next article, and your ministry shouldn't bother starting a

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YouTube or TikTok. All right, I love the fact that the Gospel Coalition is right there on the front lines of what everyone is, is deeply concerned about, and the moral navigations that are, we need desperate, we are desperate for commentary on.

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There's TGC right there. Yeah, I mean, I guess the moral of the story with TGC is don't become a ministry that's basically worthless.

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They're just putting out puff pieces that don't, I don't know what to say. I just don't, I have no words.

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Like, you can't parody them when they do stuff like this, and the thing is, like, I could see, maybe

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I could see, like, I don't know a lot about Taylor Swift, but like, maybe an article about the longings that prove,

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I guess, that even non -believers yearn for the world that God made, or something like an article, like,

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I could see that being maybe helpful, but this is silly. It's just silly. So, I have, we have a lot to get to, and I don't have much more to say.

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So, next thing I want to talk about is, how do I want to do this?

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Let's start here. Just, this is kind of like a, I don't mean it to be, and I told you so.

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Someone sent it to me. This a while ago. I've waited on this, but Virginia is for all lovers.

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Yunkin signs bill protecting marriage equality. Now, this was published March 20th, but this happened a while ago.

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March 9th, yeah. So, here's the long and short of it. The governor of Virginia, Glenn Yunkin, who

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I opposed pretty strongly when I lived in Virginia during the primary, and I was, you know,

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I was known, I went on a conservative talk radio show. I didn't even realize, I didn't know what I was getting into with this when

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I opposed Glenn Yunkin, but I just revealed the guy's woke, and I said, he's not conservative. He's not what you think, and yeah, he wasn't, and a lot of conservatives went for him.

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He won the nomination, then he won the governorship, and I was kind of like, I don't know what, you know, it's one of those things where I'm just like,

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Virginia's going to go left no matter who wins, and sure enough, Glenn Yunkin, he didn't have to do this, but he signed a bill protecting same -sex marriage, and I mean, this is not a surprise.

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He's held events for LGBT people as, you know,

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LGBT events, and so I don't really want to read this article, but yeah, for those who are, a bunch of people just disagreeing with me, upset, no,

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Glenn Yunkin's a conservative. Yeah, well, you got to do like a little research into these guys, and it doesn't matter on what level, but you know, if you're, no matter what state you're in, the person running for governor, if they're the conservative, they're promoting themselves in the primary, like they're the, they're really conservative, look into them, do like 10 minutes of research, which is all

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I needed to do to find out, wow, okay, Glenn Yunkin doesn't have a, he has a bad score with the

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NRA, as I remember, he didn't have a good score, you know, he led a

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Be the Bridge study at his church, which is basically critical race theory.

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I can't remember all of it. He was soft on abortion. You remember that? There was someone who tried to get him on abortion, and he said, like, basically,

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I can't take a hard stand because of the general, and there was a bunch of stuff like that. And so, so just, just a reminder, hey, do a little research, you know, just a little, you don't have to do a lot, but just do a little.

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And, and you might find out some stuff and not have these problems down the road.

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So not blaming anyone in this audience, necessarily. There were people in this audience, though, that were kind of like, John, I think Glenn Yunkin's good.

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Yeah, I don't, I don't really, I don't think so. All right. So moving on now, I want to talk about this.

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There was an article put out there. This was from two weeks ago, I guess. This was Christianity Today, why

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John MacArthur is wrong about MLK. And it's this whole article by Justin Gibney. And it's basically, here's the long and short of it.

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MacArthur says that King is not a Christian at all. He's a non -believer who misrepresented everything about Christ in the gospel.

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And then, you know, Justin Gibney goes after him. He calls the gospel coalition woke.

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You had to throw that in there. And, you know, he tries to basically point out that, you know,

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King's theological journey have never been the principal concern of his detractors. So, okay.

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So the racist smear is like kind of hiding in the, let me see if I can get to actually some substance here.

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MacArthur might genuinely believe he's defending the faith, but he's defending a false narrative that's weakened to the church.

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King is the model of the unabashedly, unmistakably Christian activism we need. Christian faithfulness.

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Okay. So he keeps talking about his activism and social justice is good.

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There's really actually not a lot of substance to this. All right. So it's that in his social stuff,

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King was good. That's basically what it is. And he doesn't really make much of a defense of King's theological beliefs.

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And, you know, this is, I've heard this so many times, but King's early seminary papers don't reflect his final fully reformed theology.

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So it's just this assumption that you have that, you know, he did have some higher criticism early on.

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He didn't believe Jesus was necessarily God, but that changed later on. And you can just go back.

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I did a whole episode on MLK and I think this was back in February or maybe

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January. It was January. It was right after MLK day. I talked about the radical

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King. I also brought up some of his Christian stuff and I don't even need notes anymore because so much, I've gone over it so many times, so much of it.

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Yes. He wrote heretical seminary papers, but he also, during his activism, the activism that Justin Gibney champions as the

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Christian model, he was ecumenical, ecumenical to the point of saying that Catholics and Jews marching with him were part of a second great awakening in this country.

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He went to India and when he was in India, he admired the faith of the

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Hindu people. He admired Gandhi and thought that they had this true faith. When he, even later on in his life, he would refer to Jesus in ways that liberal theologians referred to Jesus.

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Sometimes they use a language that's like, I'm trying to remember exactly what MLK said because that I can't remember the exact word is 1968 speech where he talked about basically making

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Christianity more palatable for young people. And he talks about Jesus as the light or something.

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I forget exactly what it was, but he doesn't talk about the divinity of Christ.

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You can't make the positive case. That's my point. You can't make the positive case that King believed that Christ was

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God. And so, yeah, you can try to assume that he came back to this faith of his father's because there's this quote that they'll throw out there about he came back to the faith of his father's.

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That's what he said, but you're not going to make the positive case that he actually came back to the Trinitarian belief on that.

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He also, when he uses the word gospel at times, there's a problem because he uses it in the context of the true gospel is this social justice thing that you do.

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It ends up blending works or law and grace. And so there's just a number of problems with MLK, not to mention his personal life.

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And I'm not even talking about his political views, which I would think most of those would have been very problematic as well, which is why

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I did the podcast on the radical King by Cornel West last MLK day.

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So lots to say there, but they're going after John MacArthur because John MacArthur is a prominent voice and he said something true about MLK.

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He wasn't a Christian and he wasn't. And he doesn't really say anything that refutes it in this.

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It's just, hey, we need to, because of his social justice, because of his activism, just adopt him into the panoply of Christian model figures.

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And no, we don't, if he's not a Christian, you know, there's theological things to like, here's the thing, like these are the same guys who would take someone like a

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Robert Louis Dabney and be like, he can't be a Christian or Jonathan Edwards or something like, you know, his faith is in doubt because he owns slaves or, you know, he defended a certain segregation, social arrangement or something.

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And it's like, yeah, but on the Orthodox thing, like on the theological beliefs, these guys had, uh, when it comes to Orthodox theology, they would check the boxes.

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MLK doesn't check the boxes at all, but because of his social beliefs, we're supposed to just adopt him as a Christian.

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That's the hypocrisy of the social justice movement. And Justin Gibney, of course, with the end campaign, very much a social justice guy.

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Uh, so, so yeah, that was an article. And you had

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Anthony Bradley. I was going to, Anthony Bradley's in the PCA, uh, go after this. You know, the fact that white evangelicals are debating if MLK was a

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Christian and declaring him not to be is beyond ridiculous. It's modern day Pharisee -ism and bizarre given the fact that he, your entire tradition is full of slaveholders,

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Jim Crow supporters and modern day child molesters. I just can't help but laughing because it's just like, oh man.

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Uh, and then he, he, is this Southern Baptist pastor a Christian since he drugged and raped a teenage girl in his church?

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He preaches substitutionary atonement. So like, yeah, MLK, uh, he didn't have good theology, but of course he's a

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Christian because look, his actions were great, except they weren't. But, uh, but look at, you know, uh, these it's, it's the assumption that John MacArthur would think that this child molester must be a

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Christian, um, because of his, he signed a faith statement or something. And, you know,

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I, it should be basic, but here's the thing. What, you know, who's a true Christian? Jesus says, if you love me, you keep my commandments.

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Also says in first John, that if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us. Christian sin, Paul said he hadn't yet attained, but they, the direction of their life is, and the desire of their life is to keep the commandments of Christ because they love him.

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So their life is marked by an obedience to Christ. That's fruit. It's not root, but it's fruit of the life that has been born again and changed by the

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Holy Spirit. Now, of course, there are people who have certain, um, views on social arrangements and what they should be and that kind of thing.

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And, uh, and some people, you know, we might disagree with our, their whole lives. They, they held a belief in archaic belief or something.

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They believed in the divine right of Kings and arranged marriages. And they live in a society that had serfdom. And, and, you know, and these guys would try to make people like that, who lived in certain social arrangements and thought they were okay as horrible people, that this is in conflict with Christianity somehow.

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And it not, not necessarily, and it's not necessarily as obvious. Let me tell you something that's very obvious.

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That's in the scripture. That's, um, a sin directly, uh, raping a teenage girl. Yeah. That's directly in scripture as evil.

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And I can take you to multiple places about sexual immorality. By the way, King, Ron Luther King jr.

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Is guilty of, uh, it at least running around on his wife.

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And it appears that also, um, forcing himself, uh, now I don't want to get into things that I can't substantiate necessarily.

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So I will make a demarcation line and say, there's good evidence for it. I don't know a hundred percent.

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What I do know though, is he definitely ran around on his wife. There was sexual immorality there. So by Anthony Bradley's own standard,

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I guess he wouldn't be a Christian, but yet it's ridiculous for white evangelicals debate. He was a Christian. So this is what you get from social justice.

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It's a rearranging of priorities. It's a new or statement of faith, basically where it's, it's an unspoken statement of faith where, uh, the biggest priorities are what you think about social arrangements and your views and opinions on them and whether they're equal or not.

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And that becomes like the basis upon which you judge whether someone's a Christian. That's why it's a false religion. And Anthony Bradley, unfortunately, he says some good things sometimes, but he's part of that.

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I don't know what else to say. All right, let's keep going with John MacArthur a little bit here. It's not really John MacArthur, but the shepherd's conference, there was a video.

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And since I'm a minister of music at my church, I figure I'll weigh in on this.

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There's a video that was, I don't know what to say controversial, but it was, it was at grace community church during the shepherd's conference that came out.

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Let me just play it and then I'll comment on it. And you'll see if you can find out what the controversy ended up being. All right, keep listening and try to listen.

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Whether you think that the men's voices are straining, if it's too high for them, listen to the effect on the keyboard and whether you think it's too frilly and, you know, is this masculine?

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Is this feminine? Is this neither? What is this? It's funny in the first verse, they were straining and the second verse, they're all trying to go an octave lower to sing the melody.

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Okay, I'm done. That's, that's the, there's more, but that's, that's what happened.

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So, you know, so how did this become like a controversy? You might wonder, and sometimes I wonder that, right?

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How do these things become controversies? Well, this is what happened. There's a guy named Pastor Armen who said, what

30:13

I said about Bob Cawthon leading worship seemed to bother some people. Maybe a video will help. This is from ShepCon 2024.

30:19

In my opinion, this has a distinctive feminine vibe. And then Mike Winger, who's got a big account, apparently, some people have told me about Mike Winger.

30:25

I've never listened to him. I don't know much about him, but I think he's more of a, I think he's a Calvary Chapel guy, but he posted this whole thing.

30:33

This is an interesting example of something I think we should be aware of and avoid. In seeing the real problems of modern gender confusion and erasure, we can react by not only grabbing firmly onto masculinity and femininity, but overreact by grabbing onto anything and everything that seems connected to them.

30:48

It's quite possible to over -apply things to the point where we feel like we are defending God's created order by nitpicking non -issues.

30:54

It's quite possible to let a good doctrine turn into an oppressive and judgmental practice. Consider the Pharisees and...

30:59

So he's, yeah, already comparing this to the Pharisees. Overly criticizing everything that in your own gut reaction seems to carry a slight connotation that it is feminine and not biblical.

31:10

If you think I'm wrong here and disapprove of a man singing that God is the lover of my soul, then consider how you would respond to a group of men singing that they would be gentle and loving like a nursing mother.

31:18

Certainly you would find that objectionable and feminine. Then there's this, but we were gentle among you like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.

31:25

Was Paul being feminine in such compromising way? No, you've just made your rules far too strict. All right.

31:30

So Mike Winger clearly offended, which I don't know. I don't go to Mike Winger's church. I just wonder what his, what the praise and worship looks like there.

31:38

Maybe this hit too close to home. I don't know. But anyway, you should check the comments.

31:45

Someone said he actually replied that it was not the lyrics he had a problem with, but how they sounded, which is the exact thing that I thought when

31:51

I first heard it, I didn't even think it was lyrics, but that's what Mike Winger said. Wait, what? What does that even mean?

31:57

So he is saying we've got male and female melodies. Is he a musician? Does he know what that does to worship?

32:03

Yeah, I do. I'm a minister of music at my church. I have to think about this stuff. I literally,

32:08

I knew exactly what he meant. As soon as I watched that video, I was like, yep, those men are straining. They can't sing it. So they go an octave lower and, and yeah, you could talk about the frilly kind of desk, the little runs on the piano and the, uh, the, the effects, the,

32:22

I don't even know what effect that is, but, but really aside from that, it's, it's how it is the, the, the melody line and how high it is.

32:33

So, um, so anyway, someone finally weighed in who knows something about music. And by the way, this is like a blog, true script should get on this.

32:41

We can, she should publish this. The sons of Cora, the sons of Cora, who I believe they, you know, how I know about the sons of Cora.

32:47

It was at a shepherd's conference years ago, they were handing out free CDs. So the sons of Cora at one time, at least there was a connection to shepherds, but, uh, this band, uh,

32:56

I guess they said the idea of gendered melodies is not really controversial amongst songwriters. Boom. Of course it's not.

33:02

You ever looked at a four part harmony, you know, look at, uh, the, obviously the base part is for the men.

33:12

Um, I don't know of any women who can sing the base part. There might be some out there, but the base part is for the men. Um, the tenor part is for the men, the soprano and alto are for the women.

33:22

That's this is like, I don't know. I took basic music theory and this is obvious stuff. So he talks about, he goes into all sorts of details here.

33:31

This is a matter of nature and wisdom, not a legal code in scripture. Boom. Of course, saying that it's effeminate doesn't mean it's violating necessarily some, uh, something in the

33:40

Bible. Not everything is chapter verse when it, like some, some things are just like, like I'm thinking of like, uh,

33:48

I'm trying to get an example now. Like, I don't know, something like as, as fool is stupid. This is the, the, for some reason coming to my head.

33:54

Cause I, uh, just, I have to take out my trash. Okay. So if I had the trash can like way on the other side of the room or something, it was inconvenient.

34:02

Like, is it unbiblical? Cause you're wasting time. Like you have to find a Bible verse that says, you know, you're supposed to redeem the time and you're wasting time by putting the trash.

34:10

Like, how about like, it's just more convenient for me to have the trash can here. It makes my job easier, right?

34:16

It makes your job easier when the music is within your range and women have a different range than then that's all it is.

34:23

Um, so talks about the natural stations of men and women, uh, women.

34:28

All right. So why do masculine men check out? Now let's discuss the current state of the church, setting aside the particular song and speaking more broadly about modern

34:36

CCM worship. I can say modern worship songs often, but not always drive masculine men to emotionally check out or just stay home because too many songs are perceived as a feminine boyfriend,

34:46

Jesus fluff. Don't get me wrong. There's a place for such music, especially in intimate personal worship, but it should not be controversial to say that a men's conference of all things should askew femininity or effeminacy.

34:57

Uh, again, putting aside completely the question of this particular song, the principle is fair and it's immense conference guys.

35:03

That's the thing. It's a different issue unrelated to masculinity and femininity.

35:09

The church is a corporate gathering. So, okay. So everyone should be able to participate. So the hyper, there, there is a hyper individualism that isn't a lot of worship songs.

35:17

It's like you sing into Jesus swaying and you know, it's your own thing. And it's, it is more effeminate guys.

35:24

Um, does feminine music exist? We all know that there are feminine clothes and hairstyles and scripture warns male

35:30

Christians not to be effeminate, which is a serious matter to God. The gray area, however, includes the other feminine things in life.

35:36

Uh, there are generally more feminine colors and feminine books, movies, and poetry that don't sit well with masculine.

35:41

All right. So he goes on, I'm not going to read all of this, but, um, there's acoustic considerations.

35:47

Good, good composers will shape their melodies and harmonies in a particular vocal range. Um, masculine and feminine genres.

35:54

He, man, he really gets into it. Uh, men have some boisterous sailing songs and work songs or perform militant driving music at wartime.

36:02

Uh, and you know, rise up, Oh men of God. And he gives examples here. Um, so, all right.

36:09

So, so there's a lot to be said. It's a, it's, it's an impressive analysis. Nate, Nate Fisher's right about that. And this is all

36:15

I want to say about it. There's no, it's not like you're not, it's not right to just sing masculine songs.

36:21

It's not right to just sing feminine songs. You want to include everyone who's in your congregation, who's you want them to be able to participate to the max.

36:30

And because we are not in a time now, unfortunately, where we sing parts, the people that are looking at a screen, they're not even looking at parts.

36:36

They don't, they're not reading music. Then it makes it difficult. I have to change.

36:42

Even this Sunday, I had to change, uh, many of the keys, especially if it's a modern worship song,

36:48

I almost always have to change the key to a lower one so I can actually hit the notes when I'm leading. And you can see the men in the congregation, they're straining to try to hit some of these melodies.

36:57

So just be aware of that. That's all. And that's all this guy was saying. And it's just funny to me how you get jumped on so quickly.

37:04

Like you're being unbiblical. You're being a Pharisee. It's like, no, I'm just saying it's kind of hard to sing when it's that high.

37:11

It's like, it's all it is. And of course, when the guys go an octave lower, it doesn't sound as good. It's not, uh, you know, they're not putting in their full power.

37:19

So, so yeah, at a men's conference, you know, adjust the, uh, adjust the, the melody line.

37:26

So the guys can sing it. That's really all he's saying. It's a simple truth, but, uh, for some reason that, you know, that, that it's like, everything's a war zone now.

37:34

All right. Last but not least, I want to talk about this, uh, it's a podcast called room for nuance. If you can believe it,

37:39

Shonda Mars is supposedly he's the anti -woke guy, right? That the gospel coalition got to do their good faith debates.

37:45

Uh, and, uh, I don't know about that, but, um, he's a guy with the tattoos there and he's on his podcast room for nuance interviewing

37:51

Lincoln Duncan from the PCA and RTS and, uh, gospel coalition. And this is making the rounds down social media.

37:59

People are talking about this. I have not watched this yet. I decided to save it for the podcast and I'll, you'll get my live reaction, brother.

38:05

This is not meant to be like, uh, a click baity kind of, Ooh, for the views question. But so, so just so you know, what's coming,

38:12

I genuinely want to know thoughts on the Moscow mood conversation. Yeah. Uh, for those who don't know,

38:19

Kevin D young wrote an article, uh, on the Moscow mood and went after Doug Wilson.

38:25

I talked about it at the time, uh, and thought really, this is what you're going to go after him for this, this vibe, this, uh, this aesthetic that, that, uh, is divisive, et cetera.

38:37

So here's what Lincoln Duncan says. Yeah. I really loaded that up. And I think Kevin did a, a service to us writing on that.

38:44

I think Kevin realized that he was going to take a lot of incoming, uh, on that. He, he told me probably a month or two before he was ready to, to release that, that he was, he brought it up at ETS and gave me sort of an early, uh, draft, uh, of it.

38:58

I think that's a good warning to send right now. I think there are, there are some people in our culture, uh, today who are saying that here, this is the model of faithfulness, lob grenades.

39:12

And, um, and, and I think, I think it's really good for guys like Kevin, who himself,

39:18

Kevin's got backbone, right? Kevin is willing to speak into things that he knows are going to get people upset.

39:25

He's down for the fight. He's he's down for it. Uh, but that doesn't mean that you are the most faithful when you are lobbying the most grenades indiscriminately in every direction.

39:38

And when you are doing click baity stuff on, you know, it's, it's one thing to, to LARP faithfulness and courage on social media.

39:46

It's another thing to do it in real life. And, um, and, and I, you've got a lot of live action role playing going on in the social media world from guys acting like they're tough that put them in a room and you'd have them in a fetal position in three seconds.

40:03

And, uh, and that's, it's not good for that voice to influence our, our young folks.

40:08

We are going to have to cultivate backbone, but we're also going to have to cultivate a love for the world that hates us.

40:16

I, Bill Davis, who teaches at, um, at, uh, covenant college says that the most common student question that he gets from his philosophy students is

40:23

Dr. Davis teach me how to love a world that hates me. And that, you know,

40:29

I said, I want them, I don't want them to get any of their signals from the world. I want them to get all their signals from the

40:35

Bible. I want them to faith be faithful to the whole panoply of Christian doctrine, but I want them thinking, how can

40:41

I reach out to this lost world? How can I love people that hate me? You ever noticed with the gospel coalition and I don't know, just like big leaders in particular in general,

40:52

I should say, uh, there's like this, this word salad thing. I encounter this all the time where you can say a lot of things without really saying much, like a good example would be helpful here.

41:03

Like, what are you, what are we talking about? Like, give me an example of what it like, how is the quote unquote,

41:10

Moscow mood, not loving the world? What, where are we even going with this? It's just, it's not even like straight act it's accusation, but it's not like directed accusations.

41:21

They're very, uh, it's like picking something that everyone's for. We should love the world, but as in the people in the world as Christians, everyone's for that.

41:31

Like everyone would sign their name by that. Everyone in Moscow would sign their name by that. It's like picking that and saying, but that's the problem with, with these people without really arguing for it or at least insinuating.

41:41

It's a lot of insinuations, not the way I'm used to talking with men who are direct, but, um, yeah, just annoying.

41:49

Not how can I make them hate me more? Uh, how can I demoralize and demean them with every word that I say?

41:56

How can I drive them away from the gospel for the sake of branding and building my own and even wound my brothers and sisters on the way?

42:04

Correct. Yeah. And so I think that's, I really appreciate Kevin being willing to wade into that.

42:09

And I think underneath that is it's, it's not only a mood there, there's a, there's a theological view of the church of the gospel of fidelity and their problems at each of those levels underneath that.

42:24

I'm about to ask you about big Eva, but because you are one of the patriarchs of it,

42:29

I don't expect an honor. That's the first, like, you know, that's the first accurate thing. This is a podcast is room for nuance.

42:37

I can't make this up. Um, yeah, they are big Eva. He is big Eva. So we'll probably, uh, we'll probably, they're not going to name names,

42:45

I'm sure, but they'll probably like talk about people like myself and other, uh, bloggers who, uh, or podcast hosts and stuff who, who don't go along with the party line, which

42:55

I definitely don't with this. So if you just heard what he said, this was, you know, with a calm voice and stuff, but he's saying stuff.

43:02

That's like, they have a wrong view of the church. They have wrong view of the gospel. They have wrong fidelity. Um, and the questions that they're trying to answer apparently are how can

43:11

I demoralize the world? How can I drive them away from the gospel and wound as many

43:17

Christians along the way or Christians along the way who disagree with me, like talk about putting something in the worst possible light with no examples.

43:26

That's exactly what you just heard. It's just casting aside the worst possible accusations you can make about fellow

43:32

Christians with no meat, with no substance, this doesn't help anyone.

43:38

It's, I don't know. I don't even have words. Like that's a common theme of this particular podcast.

43:44

John doesn't have words. I don't have words because there's, there's nothing for me to really oppose there is like,

43:50

I'm a, I pose it, but I can't really like sink my teeth into it, which is probably by design. Um, not this clip in particular, but just in general, that's the kind of thing you see in these big

44:02

Eva circles. Like you can't sink your teeth. It's hard. Cause what are you going to say? Like, Oh, like,

44:07

I think that you should be able to demoralize people in the world to drive them away from the gospel. Of course not. We, these are things we all agree with, but the implication is,

44:16

Hey, there's this group of Christians. They're bad guys. And that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to drive people away from the gospel with their

44:23

Moscow mood or something. All right. Let's hear what he has to say about big Eva and then we'll, we'll stop.

44:30

This answer from you, but let's just, let's just play this game. Okay. Setting a low bar for me there.

44:39

I mean, what do you think when people talk about this shadowy syndicate, this big machine of big

44:46

Eva? He's already wrong, by the way, it's not a shadowy syndicate. And I can say this, you know,

44:52

Lincoln Duncan is whatever he just said, like the king of big Eva. Uh, I'm, I'm someone who would be known and prominently known as someone who's against big

45:02

Eva, at least the compromises that they've made in certain years. And that's not what it is.

45:07

It's not this shadowy dark kind of, no, it's, it's a, maybe some people think that, but I can speak for most of the people who want to bring accountability to the evangelical complex.

45:18

Uh, is that when, when we even say that we're not saying that it's a top down conspiratorial type thing, we're saying that it's an industry with common interests.

45:29

They it's, it's, I always go over it almost every time I mentioned a big Eva, like I have to mention it's the book deals.

45:36

It's the conference circuit. It's, uh, the big churches and the opportunities to speak there.

45:42

It's the Christian music industry. It's the publication, the online publications, you know, the major ones in the magazines and that's big

45:49

Eva. It's the, the Christian radio. That's all part of big Eva. It's an industry. That's what we're saying.

45:55

We're saying that there's an industry that wants to actually, um, is driven by some, some market concerns.

46:02

They want to make money, but they also want to protect themselves from the ire of people that could put them out of business like in the governments.

46:10

So there's, um, it functions the way like a guild or an industry tends to function. They protect each other.

46:16

They look out for each other. They try to, uh, when you have a threat coming in, that's implying that maybe there's, they're not theological or one of their members isn't theologically

46:26

Orthodox or something, and it's damaging their reputation. The others tend to circle the wagons. That's what we're talking about.

46:32

It's not a conspiracy. It's just the way that guilds tend to operate. So figured I clarify that most of the conversation that I hear about big

46:42

Eva is complete nonsense. Um, and it, it is funny.

46:47

Some of the, some of the biggest critics of big Eva, if there is a big Eva, they're it, uh, you know, uh,

46:54

I, I, I could name or who, who's the big critic of big Eva. I'm just curious, like,

47:00

I guess Phil Johnson, maybe cause he kind of like coined the term. I mean, I don't know. People say mid Eva, big

47:05

Eva, little Eva, like all these, but like, you know, there, there was kind of a separation. I remember a few years ago and I was kind of like,

47:12

I was saying like, you have your big Eva, but then when G3 conference, uh, and, and mass and the shepherds conference started to kind of like break off and they weren't platforming the

47:23

Devers and the Duncans, uh, anymore. And, uh, I was going to say the Pipers, but shepherds just had

47:29

Piper. Um, you know, I'm trying to think who else was on that panel. Uh, you had Mark Dever, you had

47:34

Lincoln Duncan. Um, you had

47:40

Al Mohler. That was another one, right? So, you know, those guys kind of like split, there was a split. And so now you can say it's fragmented, but big

47:48

Eva is still like the, the major, uh, Lincoln Duncan would still be part of the bigger, I guess, chunk of that pie, uh, of reformed evangelicalism.

47:59

Organizations far larger and more extensive than the gospel coalition, for instance.

48:05

Yeah. But boy, do they hate the gospel? That hate the gospel coalition and, and they've got more money. Yeah. But here's the thing, the gospel coalition does have a lot of money, but here's the thing about the gospel coalition.

48:15

It's that they have so like, let's go there right now. Let me go to the gospel coalition website. Um, so his point is that like,

48:24

Hey, these, I don't know who he's talking about. Again, it's the whole passive aggressive kind of not, we're not going to talk about exactly who we're, we're not going to define what we're really talking about.

48:35

Um, TGC board members, this is why the gospel coalition is kind of viewed.

48:43

All right, here we go. Let me, let me pull this up. We'll come back to the video, but here's the gospel coalition website.

48:52

Here are the board members, HB Charles, Andy Davis, Dan Doriani, Lincoln Duncan.

48:58

It just, it goes on and on. There's Tony Moran. I'm just going to say the ones that I recognize, Philip Reichen, Juan Sanchez, Mark Vigope, Daryl Williamson, Danny Akin.

49:10

These are the council members. Um, Don Carson, uh,

49:16

Jim Davis, JD Greer, Kevin D Young, uh,

49:21

Crawford Loritz, Russell Moore, um,

49:27

Miguel Nunez. Some of you might have heard of some of these. Some of you didn't. John Piper, David Platt, Bobby Scott, Colin Smith, Sam Storms, Walter Strickland, Bob Thune.

49:42

Um, and then we have the council emeritus members. We have Mark Dever is there. David Dockery is there.

49:49

Uh, David Horner, um, Ray Ortland is there. There's okay.

49:55

So and obviously I didn't mention the majority of them, but there's the ones that I think were more prominent that I recognize.

50:01

So that's the gospel coalition website. Just think about this for a minute. If you had, let's say there was no money involved, but you had all these guys come together and say, we're just going to have this blog that is not even funded, but we're all part of this.

50:12

And we all agree to this. And we're going to have a statement of faith and we're going to all this stuff. You would say that's like, that's a focal point.

50:18

That's an, that, that is an organization that carries the message of all these disparate seminaries and org and organizations and missions groups and, uh, denominations and across spanning

50:33

Baptists and Presbyterians and other denominations in there. And, you know, all these guys are coming together for this common cause that Lincoln Duncan is why the gospel coalition is so often used as kind of like, here's where big

50:47

Eva, this is one of the organizations that were the big ones gospel coalition, because this is where they're all connecting.

50:54

Sure. One of them might have, let's say, you know, David Platt has an organization that has more money, more funding than the gospel coalition.

51:01

Let's say that's true. It doesn't really matter. Cause not everyone else is like on board with David Platt. This is the intersection of all these people.

51:08

So he's missing the point of why people go after TGC. They've got more reach.

51:14

They've got more, you know, all in and, and, and they'll jump in on the big Eva conversation. So a lot of it is just nonsense and I pay no attention to it whatsoever.

51:23

Now have people been, what he just said was nonsense though. That's it. That's irrelevant to whether the

51:29

God, like he's focusing on one thing and it's not the thing that makes the gospel coalition representative of big

51:35

Eva disappointed by leaders, unwilling to take stands on important things.

51:41

Sure. I'm sure that's happened. You know, welcome to the fallen world. No example though, you're not going to find an example of, of there's no example in any of this, of what he's talking about, which leaders, what, what stands, what organizations are critical of TGC, what things in the

51:55

Moscow mood drive people away from the gospel. And I want us to be people of principle.

52:02

And sometimes that means calling out people that we love and care about, but you can, you can do that in such a way that is not, we have a culture in, in a, in a part of evangelical evangelicalism right now that is desensitized to its own spirit of mocking and slander.

52:21

Okay. Let's just stop here for a moment. Lincoln Duncan is saying there's this right way to go about, uh, correcting brothers who go off the rails or that kind of thing.

52:31

And the problem is that you've got mocking and slander and we're desensitized to it, except for the fact that what, a few minutes ago, he just said that the

52:40

Moscow mood, and this means Doug Wilson, he's talking about, but like not just him. It's like the people involved that are in that orbit that speak at those conferences.

52:48

It's a competing guild guys. It's really, that's what it is. This competing guild, you can't make this up.

52:57

They're driving people away from the gospel. They're trying to, uh, to smear

53:02

Christians or what was the word? Um, they're, they're trying to discourage, oppose, whatever other

53:10

Christians they're trying to demoralize people in the world. Uh, they have issues with the church and their ecclesiology issues with their view of the gospel and their fidelity to it.

53:20

He just said all of these things without any specifics about an entire group, not just one person, but a competing smaller industry, if you want to put it that way.

53:32

And that was totally fine. Apparently that's not mocking. That's not, that's the right way to go about it. And that's, that kind of goes back to the

53:39

Moscow mood thing. Again, mocking and slander is not a Christian way of dealing with anything.

53:45

And so, you know, many of those mockers and slanders, I have no reason to even think they're

53:50

Christians. Can I pause you out there? Well, I don't, he doesn't name who they are.

53:57

He doesn't mark them. We don't even know who they're, it's this vague kind of this whole group. It's called the

54:02

Moscow mood. And, and they're not, now we just even question their salvation.

54:08

We got to look suspiciously at them. We don't even know if they're Christians because they're mocking. And, and there's, by the way, there are places in scripture for mockery, for holy mockery.

54:18

Yes. Think of Elijah at Mount Carmel. Like there are places for it. Um, but I just,

54:25

I can't get over the fact that Ligon Duncan, this is, it's just, his expression is also distracting me here.

54:33

How in the world can you say this? That they're not Christians because of the slander.

54:38

And then this is what you're saying about them without any examples. I don't understand how this doesn't qualify as slanderous.

54:45

Now, if he can like bring up all the examples and back it up, which I'm, I know he can't, not about a whole entire quote unquote mood as vague as that is.

54:52

He, there's way for him to do that. So this is, there's people caught in the crossfire here who aren't guilty.

54:58

There's no doubt. And yet that is perfectly fine. I guess that's not mocking. That's not slander. Oh, cause

55:05

I know somebody from that world will hear you say that and go, this guy doesn't know his Bible. What about the prophets?

55:11

What about Jesus? Look at the way Paul talks. How would you respond to that? Well, I mean, one thing is Jesus. Look at how

55:18

Lincoln Duncan talks. That's what I would say. This was neither a mocker or a slander. So when, and if you, by the way, if some of these folks had been around, they would have been going, yay,

55:32

John the Baptist, Jesus, you're a weasel. John is preaching truth to power.

55:37

Why don't you come out and say, why don't you go up and say, Herod, you fox, you know, why don't you be like John?

55:45

And I think one of the things about. Okay. This is all assumptions. There were zealots at that time who wanted

55:52

Jesus to enact a revolution against Rome and they expected that to come.

55:58

And that wasn't Jesus, the mission of Jesus's first coming. So it's that, that doesn't mean that Jesus, so he's making a character claim about Jesus.

56:05

Jesus is coming back with a double -edged sword guys. Um, so it, his specific mission when he first came though, was to seek and save those.

56:15

That which was lost. It wasn't to have a revolution. He did speak truth to power. If you want to use that phrase,

56:21

I hate that phrase, but he did it to the Pharisees. And, um, and he did mock them at times.

56:27

I mean, there's a whole chapter that he talks about. You make your proselytes twice as much a son of hell as you,

56:33

I mean, total mockery. Bible teaches you, is there different ways to be faithful? You know, if, if, if some of these people had been around, they would have been on Daniel, like white on rice, you're a sellout.

56:44

You, you work for the wickedest King in the world. You are facilitating his wickedness.

56:52

And when he means these people, he's talking about the Moscow mood, the people who are against big Eva, et cetera, his enemies, the enemies of his industry.

56:58

And his ungodly rule. Yeah. Daniel is a high ranking official in a pagan empire with extensive influence in how.

57:08

Is it just me? I know I'm stopping this every two seconds, but like hear the ethereal music in the background.

57:14

It just seems to fit the, uh, a show that's about nuance. It's just, it's just weird.

57:21

The, the empire works. So in the Bible, you find believers in very different circumstances, dealing differently.

57:29

Now, you know, is, is Daniel willing to go to the lion's den rather than stop praying to his

57:35

God? Yeah. I feel like I'm in a sauna as I'm listening to Lincoln Duncan slander other

57:41

Christians. It's like the weirdest feeling. But he's still working for the government, you know, and there's some people that call you out today for, for that.

57:58

Okay. I'm speechless guys. That's just, uh, you know, how

58:04

I feel about Lincoln Duncan, the guys who listened to me regularly. I said it the last time I talked about Lincoln Duncan.

58:09

I really can't stand Lincoln Duncan, uh, because of this, because of what you just saw, there's zero self -reflection there's it's not even like, like he's a guy who's run a seminary and like just basic, just, there should be just a basic Bible knowledge here.

58:27

Basic, like understanding that Jesus did speak truth to power, but his goal wasn't to lead a revolution against Rome.

58:35

And there were people who were zealots back then who wanted Jesus to do those kinds of things.

58:40

Um, but he's saying, I guess if, if people like myself, I guess, I don't know if people in the Moscow mood is certainly if they were back then they would have said

58:48

Jesus was a sellout. So they're opposed to Jesus too. They they're out of step with Jesus. They would be against Jesus.

58:54

They'd be his enemies. They're they're against the gospel. I mean, these are the worst kinds of people ever.

58:59

They're not Christians. That's the impression you get after listening to Lincoln Duncan. And he gave you no examples and he painted with a broad brush and, uh, and then he chastised them for being slanderers, the height of hypocrisy.

59:15

It's almost unbelievable that this podcast was even released. All right. Last but not least, let's talk about Kanye West.

59:22

Um, this is sad guys. Uh, I'm just praying for that space where you're comfortable enough to say, this is where I am right now.

59:30

I'm still a man of God. Jesus still is King, but this is vultures right now.

59:36

This is where I am. It is. But I, you know, I have my issues with Jesus. There's a lot of stuff I went through.

59:41

That is scary. That's a scary thing to say. I have my issues with Jesus that I would be terrified to say that, um, you know, the

59:50

God of the universe, I got my issues with him as if you're going to judge God. And, and this is the, you know,

59:56

Kanye, Kanye, you know, I wonder if he's ever, I had hoped for him for a few weeks there.

01:00:01

Really a few months. I really had hoped that something was changing. And, um, and I think many of us did.

01:00:09

And one of the things you're going to see people probably they already have said, you know, I told you, so we shouldn't, we shouldn't have promoted this guy and stuff.

01:00:15

And it's like, I don't think sharing his testimony or sharing that the hope that he saved is promoting him, putting him in front of your church and letting him like run the services, promoting him.

01:00:25

He's a new Christian. He can't handle that. And people did that. And that was wrong. Uh, he shouldn't be on the stage.

01:00:31

He needs some time to learn, to be discipled, all of that. And that that's the unfortunate thing about someone like Kanye West.

01:00:39

And there's this hunger in Christian circles sometimes to take the celebrities and then to put them in those positions that they're not ready for.

01:00:47

Um, Kanye West, it sounds like from what you're about to hear, he may have been a false convert.

01:00:53

Uh, he may have been, you know, like the, the soil that, you know, it, it springs up and then, you know, the, the weather kills it.

01:01:02

The sun comes out and heats it up or something. I don't know exactly where he's at and he's, but you know, there's no reason we shouldn't pray for him.

01:01:09

I just, this is scary thing to say though. This is against everything that he was initially after he said he was a Christian, what he was saying.

01:01:17

That I prayed and I ain't see Jesus show up. So I had to put my, uh, my experience in this world, my experience with my children, my experience with other people, my experience with my account, my experience with my brand and my experience with the level of music that I was dealing with in my own hands.

01:01:34

Like a lot of times I just feel like in our society, in America, you know, people,

01:01:40

Christians, we depend on Jesus so much that we won't put the word in ourself. And the main thing that really that I don't rock with is like, it's just always like,

01:01:50

I'm going to pray for you. And it's just like, you can actually physically do something yourself too, more than just pray.

01:02:00

And we're so in this mentality that that's all that needs to happen.

01:02:05

But we, we ain't praying our way out of prison. We ain't praying our way out of the abortion clinics.

01:02:13

We ain't threats we've been dealt dealt with. And I didn't pray my way through them threats either.

01:02:20

I had to get up and do it myself. I had so much to do. I ain't had time to pray.

01:02:26

So that's where that's, that's where my issue is. And look at where I'm at today. Show up, show up, you know what

01:02:34

I'm saying? I understand that that's a controversial, but I dropped the con. So I'll be surprised that I'm still alive every day.

01:02:45

How did you not so -called disappear? Like, cause that's a hell of a fight.

01:02:57

Cause you know, cause I'm God and anyone who disagree,

01:03:02

I'm the God of me. And you can't tell me who I am. I can't tell y 'all.

01:03:08

I could tell y 'all it's your job to listen. I'm the God of me. I don't know if I'm in heaven already and shit.

01:03:15

I got number one. Well, you know, I might be on like a fourth dimension version of the lifestyle is, you know,

01:03:21

I don't know. Like I said, I must have died in this accident. It must be heaven. Why should you fear? You know, it's another thing

01:03:26

I don't like in Christianity, the fear of God. If God is love, why should you fear him?

01:03:33

Because you place one fear, you get another fear, you get another fear. What do you have at that point? You're easily controllable.

01:03:39

You're easily sellable. You're easily contracted because you have this fear on you.

01:03:49

All right. Well, certainly sad. It reminds me of the poem by William Ernest Hensley.

01:03:56

I'm the master of my fate. I'm the captain of my ship, the master of my fate. Kanye West doesn't,

01:04:02

I mean, this isn't the fruit in keeping with a true conversion to Christianity. I mean, it's blasphemy saying I am God.

01:04:08

It's a total rejection of the Lordship of Christ. So we need to pray that he repents, you know, if you're concerned about this.

01:04:18

And it's he was going to a church that had a solid gospel message. He was connected with a pastor who was preaching the gospel.

01:04:26

He even started bringing him to some of his shows and he was preaching the truth of the gospel. And early on he started, you know, affiliating with Joel Osteen and stuff like that.

01:04:36

And now, and now who we have this. And so super sad.

01:04:41

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but you know, what does this say for us as Christians? You know, I think the moral lesson is you don't platform people just because they're celebrities.

01:04:50

And the other thing is, you know, it doesn't take away from, I should say this. It doesn't mean you can't rejoice and hope for the best when this happens.

01:04:57

When someone says that they're a Christian, I generally take it at face value. And I I'll celebrate that.

01:05:03

I remember with Kanye West, I don't listen to hip hop at all, but to support what he was doing, I actually downloaded his first Christian album, just to give him supportive encouragement that like, you know,

01:05:14

I I'm going to take what you're saying and, you know, hope that it's true. And I'm just going to treat you like you are a

01:05:20

Christian. And, um, and, and it doesn't mean I'm, I think that's okay to be,

01:05:25

I've been fooled many times by people just in more personal circles who made professions.

01:05:30

I remember one guy, he was reading the Bible, like his whole entire weekend when he would be off work, he got baptized and then he totally fell away.

01:05:38

It happens. And the Bible, you know, the Bible says that we're supposed to expect that to happen.

01:05:43

It's not something that should surprise us really. Um, and it's not just the parable of the soils, you know, you have false teachers, uh, even when false teachers rise up, they sound, they deceive that that's their whole thing.

01:05:56

Right. But, um, there'll be sheep, uh, among, there'll be goats, uh, with the sheep, there'll be, uh, chaff with the wheat, with the wheat.

01:06:06

I can't pronounce what I'm saying here are tears. I should say tears with the wheat. Um, but you know, in Luke eight, the parable of the soils, um, it talks about, uh, the farmer went out, he was scattering.

01:06:17

Some fell on the path where it was crushed. The birds of the sky came and ate it. Other seed fell on the rock and it grew and it dried because it had no moisture.

01:06:24

Others fell among thorny plants. The thorny thorns grew with the plants and choked them.

01:06:30

That might be Kanye. So others landed on good soil when it grew, it produced, uh, and, and, you know, that was, those are the true believers, but, um, it just scares me.

01:06:41

I think of like even Hebrews, those who have tasted of the heavenly gift and have rejected. And it's just like,

01:06:46

I don't know if that's Kanye or not, but, um, it's just sad. It's a, it's a shame to Christ, uh, when this kind of thing happens.

01:06:53

So, um, kind of ending on a bummer note, I know, uh, and I know I was critiquing for a lot of this, but, uh,

01:07:00

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