Christian Renewal Focused on True Knowledge of Christ vs. Neo-Marxism then CBGM

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We've got a lot to get to today, a lot of exciting stuff. I'm excited. I'm not sure if anyone else will be by the time we get done, but I'm pretty excited about the program today.

First, we announced over the weekend, and you can find this information on our website. Well, the initial information, the detail, we're going to add stuff. We sort of threw this together really, really quickly so people would be aware of it.

But we arranged the first of—it may end up being the only debate. I don't know. We'll see. There's a possibility of one other debate during the course of this particular trip coming up in May. The trip via London to Johannesburg, up to Zambia, back to Johannesburg, up to London again, then to the Midlands, Glasgow, and finishing off in Belfast.

Yeah, so prayers appreciated. It's exciting. It's going to be great. But one bad infection and the whole thing really gets ugly, so prayers for that. But we have confirmed the debate for the—this is brilliant.

The last day of the trip, the next morning I fly out—well, next afternoon probably. The next day I fly out and get back to Phoenix, Lord willing. So the last day of a long trip, you schedule the debate with the toughest opponent you could think of taking on.

And that, of course, is Peter D. Williams. Some of you have seen the debate that we did in London last year. And you've just got to give Peter Williams a lot of props. Why? First of all, he's one of the few Roman Catholic apologists that I can find who is willing to take on the tough topics.

The vast majority of Roman Catholic apologists would not touch either of the topics that we've done with a 10-foot pole. They just wouldn't. You've got to give him props because the unbelievable radio broadcast we did—we've done two unbelievable programs.

But the second one we did on the Reformation was really useful for everybody. It was very clear, very understandable, really laid things out well. He is always a gentleman. He doesn't engage in cheap debating tricks like many other people do.

And most importantly, he studies the other side. He actually listens to what the other side is saying. It's really bugged me to—I'll avoid names, but I'll listen to some of the more popular Roman Catholic apologists.

And they're repeating arguments from 20 years ago that have been thoroughly debunked, and they haven't bothered to read the debunking stuff. Now, I know, not everyone can read everything. I mean, the internet today, just making a decision as to what is important to listen to, who has any level of credibility, it's a complicated thing.

But the point is he takes the time to study the other side, seek to understand the other side. That always—I don't care what the situation is. That helps a great deal. So no matter what, a debate with Peter D. Williams is going to be useful beyond the scope of the night in which it takes place.

And so it's important to get them recorded and get them available and things like that. So I forget what it was last year. He posted—I follow him on Facebook, and he posted something about indulgences.

I mean, he is a believing—that's the other thing about this. He's not a liberal. He's a believing Roman Catholic. He's—I would say he's more Catholic than Pope Francis. He's certainly more Orthodox than Pope Francis is, which in and of itself is a contradiction when you think about it, at least in the modern form of Roman Catholicism.

The Pope, you know, I am tradition, etc., etc. That's a long story. Anyway, he's not a liberal. He is a believing Roman Catholic and as such had posted something about indulgences available for such and such an activity.

And so I contacted him and I said, OK, here's the topic for our next debate. Indulgences constitute a fundamental denial of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He said, let's do it. So we've done one debate. My goodness, that was—when did we do those debates in—was it Austin?

Yeah, Austin at that television station with—what was that guy's name? Fastigi. Fastigi. We did something on indulgences with Fastigi and that was probably 1993-ish, maybe. They're all—well, everything is on Sermon Audio.

94? July of 94. So you're talking a long, long time ago here. 20—almost a quarter century. Yeah. Excuse me here. I need to adjust my dentures. It's been a while. But look, it's—most people—see, the pressure that's going to be on me is that people who don't regularly interact with the best the other side has to offer figures, that's a slam dunk.

I mean, how can you make a respectable case for indulgences? Well, Peter D. Williams will. And so someone comes into that debate just figuring, really? I mean, I can sort of tell you where he's going to go.

We know each other well enough. He knows where I'm going to go and I pretty much know where he's going to go. And I mean, there will be some things. You can't always predict. But yeah, from my perspective—remember the debate with Stravinsky on Purgatory?

That debate shed more light on the doctrine of justification than the debate I did with St. Genes on justification in that series on Long Island. It really did. Because here was an application. Here was—it shed tremendous light on the subject.

And so that's what I'm hoping this is going to do as well. Obviously, justification is going to become central by the end of the debate. He's going to be arguing against sola scriptura, which you sort of have to do given the situation.

But this is going to be at All Saints Church in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Belfast, Northern Ireland. Couldn't have done that a few years ago. But we will be doing that, and that will be on June 4th. June 4th.

And so all of you who have given toward that travel fund, you're making this available. This is why we can do this kind of stuff, is people support the ministry, and we very much appreciate that. So June 4th, All Saints Church, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Myself and Peter D. Williams. Indulgence is resolved. We even have it resolved. We've got this one nailed down, which is good. Look, let's just be honest. Anything that Peter D. Williams and I do together is going to be, you're going to have the rules respected.

It's going to be gentlemanly, but it's going to be pitched. It's going to be pointed. It's not going to have compromise. It's going to be what debate's supposed to be, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Peter's not going to have five guys behind him with 20 different translations searching desperately for something that sounds like what we believe.

Yeah, we know that group. No, it's going to be really, really, really useful. And so we're excited to mention that. But again, scheduling that for the last day of a nearly three-week overseas trip may not be the smartest thing I've ever done, but we'll just have to trust the Lord to provide the energy to do that.

And I hope that you will pray for that. Thanks, Hakeem, son of Ramallah, king of graphics. He's already posted what I said, that Peter D. Williams is more orthodox than Pope Francis. It'll be interesting to see how Peter responds to that.

He may or may not appreciate that, but I think quietly, you know, over at a pub someplace, he'll go, Yeah, I think so, too. But I won't hold him to that. I don't want to get the guy in too much trouble.

He's probably going to get enough trouble as it is hanging out with weirdos like me. So anyway, so that's exciting coming up in the trip in May. So please be praying about that. You know, it's always been best when I start off with a biblical foundation upon which to make some comments about something.

So if you want to look, click over to turn in your Bibles. Or for those of you still basking in the glow of the Shepherds Conference, open the box, remove, part the tissue paper. Don't get a back strain pulling it out of the box, but get out your preacher's Bible.

I saw one. You know who was out at the temple? When we went out there? Matt DeJesus. Matt was out there, and he brought his preacher's Bible with him. No, no, no. He brought it to show me. He had it in a backpack.

So at the end of the night, he pulled that baby out. It is massive. Oh my goodness. I mean, that's a pretty big Greek-Hebrew text back there, but it's nothing compared to the preacher's Bible. It's just unbelievable.

Anyway, Peter D. Williams saw it. He says, you might think that. I couldn't possibly comment. There you go. I mean, that's the very next tweet that comes up after Micah's was Peter D. Don't want to get the boy in too much trouble.

Anyway, if you get out your preacher's Bible and very, very carefully turn over to Colossians 3. I want to make some comments before looking at some other applications here. Colossians 3, do not lie to one another.

Please note, when Paul uses this phraseology, eis alellus, he's talking about within the body. So there is to be honesty, and this is a discussion of how we are to behave within the fellowship of faith.

Do not lie to one another. Having laid aside ton palaion anthropon, the old man, the old man. So the humanity that we shared outside of the fellowship of faith, that fallen humanity, that humanity in rebellion against God, that unreconciled humanity, the sense is that since you've done this, this is a reality.

This is what it means to be in the body. You have laid aside the old man together with its practices. And some translations will say evil practices, but the word evil is not there. It's just sort of an interpretational aspect.

So lying, being dishonest in interpersonal relationships, pretty common amongst mankind as a whole. But in the body, you are not to lie to one another, seeing that there is a new reality that defines what it means to be in Christ.

And that new reality includes the laying aside, the putting off of the old man together with his practices. So there is a new reality or a new creature in Christ Jesus, as he says elsewhere. And this new reality, verse 10, and have put on.

So you have a putting off and a putting on. And they're both seen as things that have already happened. And have put on the new, and you just borrow from the preceding, the new man, the new, which, who is being.

It changes. In the language, there's a change here. So the putting off, the taking on, already happened. But the renewing is an ongoing thing, which is being renewed unto. The goal is unto a knowledge, or some might say that epinosis, because it is a strengthened form, would be a true knowledge.

Or some others might say an experiential knowledge, but it is an emphasized form. A true knowledge according to the icon, the image of the one who created him. And now you go back again to the, this is a reality that's already taken place.

Just as the putting off, putting on, created, being renewed. Pay attention to the, you know, I think every word of Scripture is inspired of God, and so we look carefully at what it says. So, we've put on a new man that is constantly being renewed in the image, renewed to a true knowledge.

So there is, Christianity is not Gnostic, it is not the gnosis that is the goal, but the gnosis is a means used by the one who created us. And so, there is no Christianity without Christ's self-revelation to his people.

That's why doctrine is so important, that's why every church that abandons sound doctrine, abandons a recognition that it's God's intention, that his people know who he is, dies. Just dies. Just gone.

We are being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of him who created him. A renewal, and you have to borrow that back, it's not repeated, it can be assumed in the Greek language. Be easier for me looking at this to be over here.

A renewal where, a renewal in which there is, and you have the negative here, where there is no distinction, there is no marking off of Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but, and this is important to see, but Christ, all things and in all.

Christ is all and in all. Now, this renewing then, which is ongoing, this is part of sanctification, this is part of the work of the Holy Spirit of God, it involves the application of true knowledge of who Christ is.

This is something that Christ is doing in his people by his Spirit. This is why we minister the Word of God regularly, this is why we encourage people to be constantly in the Word of God, this is why there's prayer, this is why there's fellowship.

It's all bound up in this communication of this true knowledge, which renews us to the image of the one who made us, so it all goes back to who made us, who created us in Christ Jesus, Christ is involved.

The Father, the Son, this is Trinitarian, again, you could never put all this stuff together without recognizing the action of the Trinity. But this renewal in, and this is in the body, remember, not lying to one another, this renewal is a renewal that sees no distinction in who is being renewed.

This is not a renewal that has one form for the Jew and a different form for the Gentile or the Greek, the specific word used here is Greek, it doesn't look differently in the circumcised or the uncircumcised.

The barbarian, the person who would not be a part of the recognized ethnic groups of the Roman Empire, the barbarians at the borders, the Scythian, a specific ethnic group, slave and free, and Eleutheros there would normally, doesn't always, but would normally be used of someone who had been a doulos, but no longer was.

You could really see how in the fellowship of the church there could be serious ramifications of division, not only between these various ethnic groups, but what if you're sitting there and you still are a doulos, and you're sitting next to someone who once was, but isn't any longer.

It might be possible for a person to question God's goodness in granting freedom to the one and not to the other in this life. Slave and free man in all of these things. So when you look at any of these categories that are given to us, there was deep, deep history that could cause division in the body in light of the history of these groups.

I mean, just the Jewish, Greek, Jewish, Gentile division. How many pages of scripture are dedicated to warning us against the divisions that are, I mean, we see those, Paul fights constantly against the idea of there being a Jewish Christian church and a Gentile Christian church.

This is, he recognizes this is the destruction of the faith and he fights against it. Even a verse we've all memorized, for all have sinned, fall short of the glory of God. The original context, all there is Jew and Gentile to make sure that we all stand equally before God so we can be justified by faith.

All of these, the Roman citizen might look at the Barbaros or the Scythes as beneath them. You may have had army veterans in the Roman legions who had fought in other lands, maybe even generations before.

You think of the Punic Wars, you think of Rome and Carthage, and there's a Christian church in Carthage. Cyprian, wow. I've often read Cyprian's letter to the Christians who were in the mines. And there's nothing in there about how the Christians in the mines are divided because of their ethnic heritages and how there may have been people in the church in Carthage who had relatives, generations removed, who had fought against each other in the wars, in other battles that took place, in other contexts, maybe not just in Cyprian's day, but these are general principles that you have to apply and realize the church brings together in a radically unified way people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, which includes tribes and tongues that had experienced sinful interaction in generations past.

And so Paul's teaching is the source of unity in this body is found in the putting off of that old man, which may have all sorts of concerns about what's happened in the past, and the putting on of a new man that is being renewed, not with a focus upon the individuals around me, but with a focus upon Christ.

And since all the individuals around me in the church, likewise, are looking away from ourselves and toward Christ, he becomes the source of our unity, rather than any type of interpersonal issue where we try to solve intergenerational conflicts from the past.

This is why you can have a Christian church in the Middle East. There is no way for modern politicians or modern religious leaders to solve the animosities that have existed in the Middle East for at least 1400 or more years.

And yet you can have a Christian church where Arab, Jew, every kind of, there's all sorts of kinds of Arabs, there's all sorts of kinds of ethnicities in North Africa and the whole area there. In the Christian church, they sit side by side, they partake the Lord's Supper, they listen to the word of God, they sing praises to Jesus Christ, they celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Because the source of unity is found in their common renewal to the true knowledge of the image of the one who created. The image is of Christ. And if you are trying to create any other image other than simply that of Christ based upon a true knowledge of who he is and what he's done, you are not applying a biblical standard to the creation of Christian unity.

And in fact, I would suggest if you're letting anything else in, if you're letting anything else in, then you don't really trust what has been given to the church in the scriptures as the foundation of what our unity is to be.

There's the text. If you're going to disagree with what I just said, you've got to go into the text and show where that's wrong. Or that's insufficient. Or that's not enough. And that's not what I'm hearing from my critics these days.

Over the past few days, I've had a few interactions where once again, I have been stunned by the willingness of primarily Christian men, but Christian women as well, to insert into my mouth and into my mind beliefs, categories, expressions that I've never given voice to, but which flow from their particular worldview and their particular political worldview, and I believe they're allowing that cultural and political perspective to turn, and in some cases twist, the biblical parameters as to how we are to have unity in the body of Christ.

I even had one man make the amazing statement that my rhetoric, and that's funny, when they start using vague terms, you know there's a problem. Because when I challenged this individual to give me specifics, not so good at doing that part.

Nothing that he came up with had anything to do with the accusations he was making. So my rhetoric is liked by people who defend Hitler. Really? What in what I just said? And I just did say, I didn't have to mouth the words, but if you listened.

If you listened carefully, which a lot of my critics, they listen carefully to find stuff, but they don't listen carefully to understand. If you listen to what I just said, if you applied what I just said, I just said that the Bible refutes the neo-Marxist attempts to smuggle what is fundamentally a communist mindset into the church.

It refutes it because it says the renewal that is taking place in every believer in Christ is focused upon him. It's being performed by his spirit, and the means is the true knowledge of who he is and what he's done, and it does away with the old man.

So it does away with your old categories of thinking, and it does away with any foundation for putting, and I don't believe in races, but since people use that term, one race or ethnic group against another in light of what their experience with one another has been, because their experience with one another is irrelevant in the body of Christ.

It died at the cross. It was nailed to the cross. All the sinful actions, done. Done. Nailed to the cross. Same book, by the way, Colossians, nailed to the cross. And so, when your rhetoric is liked by someone, what does that mean?

I mean, logically, what you'd have to demonstrate is that what I'm teaching is supportive of some defense of Hitler, which is so absurd that no one would even bother to do it. So they won't go there because they know it would be so easily refuted and made to look as foolish as it really is.

So the same person, then a little while later, I see saying, well, his rhetoric could be seen as supportive of the kinists. The kinists? Seriously? I mean, you know, I've actually put myself out there and talked about my own history.

One of the first couples that I knew of outside of my own family, in my youngest days. And I've been told, don't talk about that anymore. You don't have the right to. Well, okay. I don't follow you as the Holy Spirit, so I'm not going to listen to what you have to say.

The earliest couple that I know of, other than my parents, were a mixed race couple. And so, the idea that there is anything, in anything I've said, that would be supportive of kinist theology may be the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.

It requires such a twisting of context and intention that it's beyond my comprehension. And it requires such an overwhelming commitment to a crusade, to a cause that you could just simply dismiss utterly one's entire self-profession of what you believe and where you're coming from to just twist it into the exact opposite of what the reality is.

And it's frightening to see someone doing something like that. In the process, I've discovered, for example, that you are not allowed today to do serious historical reading. In the middle of Hitler and the kinists came the Civil War.

And so, if you acknowledge that there were many motivations and many issues that led to the Civil War, in other words, the only thing you can believe is that there was one reason, and one reason only, and everybody that wore blue was good, everybody that wore gray was bad, and that's it.

That's it. Evidently, everybody in blue was a Christian, everybody in gray wasn't. And anybody who knows history knows that that is such a charade. It's just a lie. It's just a lie. Nothing is ever that simple.

Nothing is ever that simple. But it has to be today because it needs to fit into our paradigm. It needs to fit into what we are forcing everyone to bow to. And if you don't bow to this, then there are certain words we will use of you.

And you will be dismissed from the table. I was thinking, on the way home last night, listening to a secular station, a news station, they had a story about George Washington University. At a stoplight, I mentioned to my family, we have this family thing where we can talk to each other, I've got to look this up, but George Washington University is doing a seminar on Christian privilege.

Not white privilege. Christian privilege. So I get home, I put Christian privilege in. It's a thing! There's all sorts of stuff. Wikipedia entries. Well, is there anything that doesn't have a Wikipedia entry?

Christian privilege. And so I guess now we're going to be told we need to give up our Christian privilege. And I just go, is that what... Is Christian privilege what happens to Vice President Pence whenever he says anything positive about the Bible or Jesus?

And the entire culture and all the media elites become unglued and use every kind of four-letter word under the planet to rip and snort at him? Is that what Christian privilege is? I'm a little confused as to what that is.

Is it if you're discovered having donated to Prop 8 in California, how you're drummed out of Silicon Valley? Is that the Christian privilege? Up in Canada, where if you have a law school based upon Christian privilege, you can't do that anymore?

You're not allowed to? There's no such thing as being able to have a Christian attorney before the law? Is that Christian privilege? I'm just trying to figure it out. Where's the Christian privilege in North Korea, I wonder?

Or China right now? I'm just a little confused about that. But yeah, George Washington needs to warn us about Christian privilege. Even though at George Washington University, if you are actually an Orthodox Christian, your chances of getting tenure or having any type of meaningful...

No! They're still going to have something about Christian privilege. Doesn't that tell you this privilege thing might just be a little bit on the vacuous side? Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit.

Yeah, George Washington University. Wow. So I was thinking about not only that, but I listened to the briefing. And you can't listen to the briefing anymore without multiple times per week hearing about the utter collapse of meaningful, moral, and ethical foundations within Western culture.

And you hear judges... You know, there was just today, there was a judge who died who was absolutely... He was the most overturned federal judge. And he was proud of it. Because as he said once, they can't catch them all.

So here's a guy, wide open. I will not do what I said I would do as a judge and follow the Constitution. I'm purposely trying to change things and they can't stop me. The liberal lion, they called him.

And he died. While still on the bench. I mean, these liberals will go until they drop because this is their whole meaning in life. That's why they're there. And so you listen to this stuff fairly regularly.

And you listen to all this discussion of privilege. That guy, remember a few years ago, what, four or five years ago? That Southern Baptist pastor in probably California. It's always a safe guess. Yes.

Yeah, I think it was Danny Cortez, I think it was. Yeah. I think it was California. Anyway, who embraced a pro-LGBTQ perspective because his son came out as gay. He resigned as pastor because he said that he had come to realize pastoral privilege.

That a pastor has privilege in the church. And so he doesn't want to have any privilege. But they don't have anybody to take his place. I mean, I think it's good that he resigned for obviously other reasons.

But this is the thinking. If you will think this through. If you will think through what's being said. Well, you have this privilege and you have that privilege. And if you're in the majority in one country, you might go to another country and you're no longer in the majority.

You're in the minority. And so what is behind the thinking in the totalitarian left in our country? See, and this is why for decades now, public education hasn't taught you how to think, but what to think.

Because if you were taught how to think, you would recognize the need to examine the presuppositions behind the positions being forced upon you. Today's American thinks emotionally rather than logically.

And therefore, entirely absurd presuppositions can be accepted by a large portion of the population because they don't recognize that they're there. The emotional content communicates the worldview presuppositions, but their filters are off for that.

It's the emotional thing that they grab hold of. And so all this privilege stuff, when you think about it, what's being said is we all need to have not equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome.

Now, they can't make this work, but when you think about it, there should be a lot of objection on these folks' part to the fact that the guys that played for Villanova last night in the NCAA Finals, some of them, well, most of them are really tall.

I didn't see anybody out there under about 6 '1", 6 '2". They're privileged. They should give up that privilege and let people that are 5 '4 do the same things. Because, I mean, just think of the advantages that these men have.

They just won a national championship. I mean, there's going to be a bunch of those guys. That one guy, Dee Lorenzo or something like that, he led Villanova last night off the bench with 31 points. He's probably going to end up in the NBA.

Man, you get in the NBA, you get a lot of money. There's a real advantage there. He's advantaged. He has privilege. And you're not supposed to have privilege. Because, you see, in the communist worldview, there is no God who raises up one man and abases another.

There is no God who makes men to differ. There is no God who makes one man 5 '2". When I taught at this little Christian school one year, the basketball team, there was this one young man who was a tremendous basketball player.

But at full height, as an adult, he may have been 5 '4". Great shooter. But, you know, when the other guy guarding you is 6 '2", basketball is just not going to be your thing. And in the Christian worldview, you go, that's God's doing.

You look to what he has gifted you to do. You look to the gifts he's given to you. And you're thankful for them. And you don't complain about everyone else. And you don't say to God, we should all be, everybody should just be 6 '0".

Just nobody below, nobody above. Everybody should just be 6 '0". You don't do that. You recognize God makes men to differ. And you do not find in Scripture this, you should be angry at those who have more than you.

Now, if they get it unjustly, but see, these people are thinking that justice means we all have the same amount in our bank account at all times. That's not justice. That's not justice. And it's not a Christian worldview that gives rise to that kind of greed and envy.

Because that's what it is. It's greed and envy. So when you think through what all this privilege talk is about, what it boils down to is they want not equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome.

And I hope you know what that means. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Now, he didn't make it up. He borrowed it from somebody else, but he made it famous. His name was Karl Marx.

And that's why it is perfectly, absolutely appropriate to identify the foundations of, even when it's dressed in religious garb, this is neo-Marxism. This is communism. And it's alive and well in the West.

And it's taking over because the educational system was set up to allow it to do so. There are so many communists in our universities right now. It's astounding. In their worldview. They're all around us.

And those of us that don't want that are sitting around going, how'd they get there? It's pretty obvious how they got there. Now, in case you haven't noticed, communism and Christianity do not get along.

Communism inevitably persecutes believing Christians. Ask anyone in China or North Korea today. The scary thing is, if you talk to even middle-aged Americans today and say, do you know how many people died under communist regimes in the last century?

I mean, you've watched jaywalking before. You've watched anybody these days can go out and ask these questions. And, you know, when you can show people pictures of Ronald Reagan, they don't know who he was.

You don't expect to know much more about this stuff. And, of course, you've got these people running around with the Che Guevara shirts on. Just mind-numbed robots. And just ask them, how many people do you think died under communist regimes in the 20th century?

I really wonder what kind of answers you would get from the vast majority of the American populace. There is no absolute number, because how are we supposed to know? But, pretty safely, 80 to 100 million.

Yeah, that's what I said. Million. Look at Stalin. Look at Mao. Look at Pol Pot. Look at the killing fields. I recently started writing a book about the murder of 3 .9 million Ukrainian peasants and 1 .1 million Russian peasants.

So, right at 5 million people between December of 1930 and into 1932. So, 18 months. Starved to death by the communist Russian government. Soviet government. Starved to death. I won't even describe. Dying of starvation is ugly.

And there was no need for it. It was done purposely. To wipe out the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Millions. Millions. People will march on Washington and promote the adoption of a governmental system that was guilty in the last century of the murder of millions of people.

As if they are the moral virtue warriors. Unbelievable. You know how they get away with it? People don't know. They've been deceived. They've been misled. They don't know. They're ignorant. There's no reason for the ignorance.

I mean, the internet is still pretty good at finding stuff like that. But, it is astounding. It is astounding. There is a reason why, as Christians, we should oppose communism. Communism, at its foundation, rejects biblical standards regarding the nature of man.

And God's right as creator to determine how his creatures live. When you think about the secular worldview that is the foundation of every application of communism that has ever been established. There is a warfare between that system and the Christian faith.

And it's easy to see why. Christianity tells us that man is fundamentally evil. And that concentrating power in the hands of fundamentally evil men will result in bad things. And it always has. It always has.

The idea of this utopia. This idea of this utopia where we're all satisfied with our loaf of bread and our half a jug of milk each day. Because that's what we all get. Is absurd. No one's going to live that way.

You always have the people in power getting more than everybody else. Because, the Bible tells us, their heart is desperately sick and wicked. They will lie to others. They will deceive others. And they will fulfill their lusts.

If you have a biblical anthropology, you can't believe this foolishness of the socialist communist worldview. It's absurd. You have to warn against it. And you do so primarily by preaching the gospel.

Because when you preach the gospel, you preach, man is a sinner. God's law says this, man does this. Therefore, the best governmental system is one where you spread power out instead of concentrating it in one place.

Look at what happened with the kings in Israel. God said, this is what's going to happen. And that's exactly what happened. Right? Now, Christians can live under any governmental system. And they do. Believe it or not, there are Christians in North Korea.

Oh, Lord, pray for them. But that doesn't mean that when we have the freedom to warn against the evils of men, that we should keep our mouths shut and not warn against the evils of men. And so, you will have to forgive me.

I'm so very, very sorry. But I will not keep my mouth shut when I see Marxism putting on Jesus t-shirts and parading around as evangelicalism. Those brothers and sisters may be very dedicated and they may be very sincere, but they're being used.

There were lots of really sincere people that were part of the revolution that brought Marxism, Leninism to power in Russia. There were all sorts of things that the czars had done that were unjust and unfair.

But the solution was significantly more murderous than the problem. And those young people, they were zealous. They may have had good motivations, but they were foolish. Foolish. In being used in that way.

In being used in that way. One of the reasons I go over this camera is I can't see Twitter. I could put over here, I suppose, but I put Accordance over here. I can't see Twitter. And so I do see that there are a bunch of things over there that I'll have to possibly respond to at a later point, or maybe not respond to at all.

Honestly, the only reason I keep Twitter going is because there are a few of you that really do help me with show prep, with program prep. You send links that go, I go, wow, that's helpful because I don't sit around doing that kind of stuff all the time.

So I do appreciate that. What am I going to do here? I went sort of long on that. So, I'm going to hold off on the next Ehrman response for the next program, which, are you going to be around tomorrow?

Probably be tomorrow because I've got something on Thursday. So, we'll put Ehrman off for that because after sort of a heavy start to the program, there's something else I want to discuss that I'm all excited about, but I'm not sure how many of you will be.

Here's the deal. We've done pretty much a whole hour. And so, those of you who figured that was heavy enough, because if you have to watch this, everybody else does too, right? Yeah, right. Right. No, I am.

We are about to get geeky. We are about to dive deep. And I'm well aware of the fact that there are a bunch of you in the audience going, yes, but then there are others. Look, we have a wide audience.

What I want to talk about is related to the PhD studies that I'm doing right now. I've actually had time recently to make some, I think, serious advancements in my studies. And so, I want to do some basic introductory stuff.