What Happened to John Piper?

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris. We have a full episode today.

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We're gonna be talking about the latest article on the election from John Piper. Many have commented on it. I've been asked to comment on it quite a bit, maybe more than any other article.

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So this is the episode where I'm gonna do that, but we're gonna actually take a trip down memory lane. I'm gonna show you how John Piper's reacted to some other political issues, some other elections, see if we can find some principles, or see if he's being inconsistent, and maybe draw some conclusions based on that.

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We're going to, I have a few announcements. I'm gonna share with you as well. One of them is actually kind of encouraging, and it's a call to action.

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It's something you guys can actually do. And I wanna put an idea in your head, maybe about something you can do at your organization, ministry,

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Christian college, whatever, wherever you are, just some food for thought. And so that will be hopefully practical for you.

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And yeah, this is like the week before the election. So everyone is running for the hills, or they're trying to make their last minute pitches for their candidate.

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This is exciting for those of you who are political junkies. In other words, like politics is your sports.

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You're just reacting to everyone else's reactions. You're living off this energy. I used to be a little more like that.

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I'm not like that anymore. I'll be honest with you, I'm just not. I used to be checking the polls all the time.

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In fact, as a member of a Baptist church, I probably shouldn't say this, but there was one time, I'll just say it was in a more younger, immature state.

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I wouldn't do it now, but there was a time when I even pitched a little money. I think it was like 50 bucks, that I put on a,

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I forget the name of the website, but it was a website where people were betting on who would win what primary and go on to the general.

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And I did well at first, and then the guy that I thought would be getting to the general election didn't do so well, and so I lost it.

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But yeah, I learned my lesson there. But that's how into it I was at one point. I mean, I would sometimes spend hours a day just looking at articles and polls.

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And I guess it was fun in a sense. It was like sports, but it's not funny anymore.

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I mean, there's times during the debates where you can see, okay, that's kind of a funny comment, but the stakes are so high right now that it's just not the same.

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It is not the same. It feels more and more like this is such a battle for our civilization that it's just not, the humor and the fun that used to exist, it just does not exist in my mind as much.

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Not that we can't still have fun. We do. But the comforting thing for us as Christians is that the

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Lord is always in control. We know that he is the one that will determine, ultimately, who gets into office.

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That doesn't mean that you don't have a responsibility to vote in the kind of Republican government that we have here in the

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United States. You do, but God is ultimately the one in charge. And so we're gonna look to him.

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We're gonna ask him, as hopefully you are doing every day, to protect us, no matter who wins, because we know persecution is coming, is here in small doses.

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But we can see right around the bend, real persecution, because we see people, especially in the Democratic Party, the base of that party, wants to persecute

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Christians. Christians are part of the oppressive religion. They oppress homosexuals, all other kinds of sexual deviants.

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They have a history in the minds of the woke of racism and sexism.

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And of course, there's creative norms that God has put in place when it comes to gender roles.

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I mean, these things are not the kinds of things that the woke will tolerate, no matter how much they used to preach on tolerance.

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We don't hear a lot of that talk anymore, I'll be honest. We do not hear it. Don't you remember? What, 10 years ago, tolerance, tolerance, tolerance.

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Now what is it? It's not tolerance, it's equity, inclusion, diversity. The tolerance thing has kind of faded.

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And so that's kind of, this is the world we're going into. And we know that there's a political religion competing with Christianity, wants to take

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Christianity out. But we know the Lord is sovereign. He's more powerful than anything, including a false religion and we're gonna put our trust in him.

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And even if that means persecution, we're gonna still put our trust in him. And that's the spirit we should have.

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Now, that doesn't mean, again, we don't vote. It doesn't mean that we aren't concerned.

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We should be concerned. We should be talking to people. We should be trying to convince people of the truth.

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And if you are a supporter of President Trump, or if you're a supporter of a third party,

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I would say that a Christian cannot vote for Joe Biden. I just don't see that as an option. I'm gonna be talking about that later this week more.

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But if you are trying in whatever way that you see available and possible to preserve the freedoms that we have in this country, to share the gospel, to share the truth of the

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Bible, then now is the time, guys. Now is the time to do it. Talk to your friends.

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Talk to those who you might think are undecided. Talk to those who might be persuaded by an article from, let's say, or in a video by like a

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Phil Vischer or an article by John Piper or a book by David Platt.

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I mean, we're seeing all these things that are almost being used now. They are being used to justify a vote for Biden.

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We can't go down this road. It's a deadly road. And it's a logically absurd road as well.

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So we're gonna talk about those things during the course of this week. But again, today we're talking about John Piper specifically.

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So let's do a few announcements here first. Before we go over all that, we're gonna look at some websites here.

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I wanna show you, this is the encouraging thing. Let's start out with something kind of on the encouraging side. And I just wanna encourage you guys to go here, sign the statement if you feel inclined, or think about, start letting this statement maybe help you think about a way that you can address this subject in the institution you're part of if it is a

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Christian institution. Here's the title of this petition. It's called Ask Liberty University to Release a Statement on Biblical Justice.

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Now, look, I think some people might be sensitive in Liberty University to something like this.

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It's possible at least. They could say, what do you mean? We're not woke or anything. Here's the thing. If you're not,

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I think James Lindsay said this the other day, if you're not actively woke yet, you will be if you don't take measures against it.

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In other words, if this battle hasn't come to your campus, then good, but you better take a measure against it because it's coming to every campus, it's coming to every organization.

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Let me read this for you. Dear Liberty University Board of Trustees. Now, I would suggest this is actually addressed to the right person.

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It is the Board of Trustees. They are the ones responsible for the university. You can petition professors all day, but it's ultimately the

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Board of Trustees that is the accountability mechanism within the university. So, Dear Liberty University Board of Trustees, we are so thankful for Liberty University.

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Great, great way to start this. We agree with Dr. Jerry Falwell Sr.'s observation in 1980 that basic values such as morality, individualism, respect for our nation's heritage, and the benefits of the free enterprise system have for the most part been censored from today's public classroom textbooks.

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This is a major reason we decided to sacrifice financially to send our young adults to a Christian university for a

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Christian education. I think this is important, this part right here. We have decided to sacrifice financially.

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You know, parents don't always get a lot of credit, and I've seen this. I've been at a number of colleges, and I've seen this many times.

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I remember, I'm gonna share a little side tangent story here. I remember when I was actually first at community college,

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I had a class, I remember the professor, what kind of class, I think it was a sociology class or something like that, or an, no, it was an intro, it was an intro class to the major I had, which

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I think was liberal arts, humanities, and yeah, that's what it was. So this person, this professor, ended up giving, just went on this tirade in class about how annoyed she was by parents.

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Parents would come and complain that their children were being indoctrinated. That's essentially, and they were. At that college, they were, it's true.

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I mean, I could tell you these stories about what was said on campus, and ironically, some of the stuff that I heard is now the kind of stuff being said on Christian campuses, at Christian universities.

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It just shows you how much, you know, I said 10 years, probably 12 years ago when I heard this.

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But anyway, this particular professor got so annoyed with parents and just sort of bad -mouthing parents of students.

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Your parents, parents don't really know anything. It's not their business. They're not the ones being educated here, but hold on, who's paying for it?

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That is key, who is paying for it? If you're paying for something, then you do have a say.

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You should have a say. You can pull your student out if you want. This is something that I think a university should be concerned with.

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Hey, we wanna please our students by giving them a good education, but we wanna please our parents as well. They're the ones paying to have their students educated there.

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I digress from my tangent. Keeps going, it says, however, it has recently come to our attention that social justice theory and the

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Black Lives Matter movement have found their way into various university -approved venues including convocation and the classroom.

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We believe neither of these elements are in keeping with Dr. Jerry Falwell's senior's legacy and more importantly, the

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Bible's clear teaching. We know that Liberty University is not wholly characterized by these elements, but experience has taught us that social justice theory is a serious threat that has recently compromised many

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Christian colleges and seminaries with similar faith commitments. We therefore petition out of love and as a safeguard for the integrity of Liberty University that a statement against the social justice theory and for objective truth, the purity of the gospel and biblical justice be added to the university's statement of faith.

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We propose the following declaration. And so this is something that could be added, let's say to the statement of faith.

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We affirm that Marxist and postmodern inspired critical theories contradict Christian doctrine by undermining objective truth, inspiring division in the body of Christ, promoting inequality before the law and corrupting the gospel.

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Liberty University rejects standpoint epistemology, identity politics, socialism and works righteousness as elements of a social justice religion which stands opposed to the gospel and teachings of Jesus Christ.

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Thank you for your commitment is the end to the truth of scripture and providing a Christian educational environment sincerely concerned parents, students and friends of Liberty University.

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And this petition so far, let's see, does it tell me how many signers? 528 people it looks like have signed.

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So over 500 people. Now, if this gets out there, if more people start to take notice of this,

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I think that could significantly go up. So I'm gonna just encourage you guys, go sign this. I'll put the link in the info section below the video, below the audio if you're listening on iTunes and you can go and you can sign the statement.

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But here's more importantly why I'm bringing this up. If you are someone who works at a

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Christian institution and whether they have, you've seen social justice inroads being made or not, this is something to consider.

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Think about it, really think long and hard about it. How can we safeguard this institution? And maybe a petition is appropriate.

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I think it probably for those who are not in leadership at the university and those who have, if they've tried to as best they can contact officials at the university and aren't getting anywhere, yeah, a petition would be appropriate.

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But if you can do this internally, hey, that's even better. If you can do this and not have to go public about it and the leadership's on board, get them to start thinking about this.

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Get your church to start thinking about this if possible. Now, some churches already have really good faith statements and maybe they don't need this necessarily.

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Some churches are already aware of this and are taking measures, but it's just food for thought, something to think about.

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So I just wanna encourage you with that. Here's some parents and folks concerned about Liberty University taking initiative.

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Looks like it's from a parent perspective. And then the other thing

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I wanna show you by way of announcement here, is a website, it's been out for a few weeks called

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Pro -Life Evangelicals for Biden. Interesting. Join the movement. Now, who's part of the movement?

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This is related to the book, Social Justice Goes to Church, The New Left in Modern American Evangelicalism.

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If you haven't picked it up, go get a copy. If you've gotten a copy and you've read it, please go to Amazon, rate it.

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Go to Goodreads, rate it. This is something that I guess helps get the book out there more.

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But it's a study on the evangelical left. How did these ideas get into evangelicalism?

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Well, this is, I mean, look, if I was writing the book now, this would have been included in it. Because you scroll to the bottom, and what names do you see?

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Richard Mao, Ron Sider. You see John Perkins.

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Big names in the evangelical left in the 1970s. And they're right beside all sorts of other names.

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You got the former head, actually, let me scroll down here so I can see. Yeah, former emeritus, president emeritus of Westminster Theological Seminary, Samuel Logan.

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President emeritus, Gordon Walconwell Theological Seminary, Dennis Hollinger. You got the former publisher for InterVarsity Press, Robert Freiling.

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Folks from Eastern Mennonite University. Folks from Eastern University.

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You got Joel Hunter, John Huffman, board chair of Emeritus Christianity Today. You got a lot of folks that are involved in evangelical institutions saying, yeah, it's

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Biden. Now here's how, this is how they sell it to us. As pro -life evangelicals, we disagree with vice president

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Biden and the democratic platform on the issue of abortion, but we believe in a biblically shaped commitment to the sanctity of human life compels us to a consistent ethic of life that affirms the sanctity of human life from beginning to end.

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This is the womb to tomb holistic pro -life approach that Ron Sider systematized in the 1980s.

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I've talked about this before, and here's the argument. Many things that good political decisions could change destroy persons created in the image of God and violate the sanctity of human life.

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And what are those things? Poverty, kills millions every year, a lack of healthcare and smoking, racism kills, the environment.

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So at the end, they say, for these reasons, we believe that on the balance, so on the balance, Joe Biden's policies are more consistent with a biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump.

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Now this is honestly the same kind of logic that David Platt is giving to us. You start lining up the issues and then you just start prioritizing them according to what you think the priorities should be.

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I'd like to suggest to you that the law of God already gives us priorities. It does. Thou shalt not murder is a priority in the law of God.

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And the only time in human history when God has had a nation ruled by his law, law set down for that nation, he gave us rules flowing from his character.

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Thou shalt not murder is one of those rules. In Romans 13, the government bears the sword. The sword is not an instrument of punishment.

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It's like punishment in the sense that like whipping would be punishment, that someone gets stung, they realize they did something wrong or they serve time in a penitentiary and now they're out.

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Now they can go and they can live their life, but they're warned. No, this is an instrument of death.

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That's what a sword is. It is for punishing capital offenses. That's the role of government. And these guys who forward this kind of this notion that there's this holistic pro -life that smoking kills people, therefore we can just take smoking, take abortion and start balancing it out.

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Well, you know, smoking more, we gotta say that smoking is just as important as abortion or smoking plus the climate change.

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That's just as, that's ridiculous. God's already given us a law. Murder is wrong. Smoking didn't murder anyone. It's not like someone's, you know, it's not like you have premeditated murder.

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I'm gonna go and I'm gonna put a cigarette in that person's mouth. There's adult choices being made. That leads someone to smoke.

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And if someone was, you know, having a Big Mac every day of their life, I would probably be concerned. Hey, that's not a good health decision. This is a matter of wisdom.

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You're not gonna find a Bible verse that says this is a sin, despite what people say about your body being in the temple of the Lord. Look at the context.

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It's not about that. So this is not going back to God's law, not going back to God's character, not going back to the example that God's given us.

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This is, well, we know that death is bad, so let's just look on the whole and see, okay, what policies are gonna have the least amount of death?

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And we're gonna pretend that that's Joe Biden. I don't think it is Joe Biden at all, but that's how they're getting to this.

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That's how they're reaching this argument. And you can really justify just about anything if you wanna do it that way. If you wanna be that pragmatic and just say, well, let's tally the numbers on what we project would possibly save lives.

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Instead of arguing from first principles, from biblical principles, you can tie yourself up in knots.

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You can justify anything. By their logic, you could justify a vote for Trump. You really could, because you can say, well, illegal immigration kills people too, because, well, there's illegal immigrants who have murdered people.

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And what about the jobs that they're taking away from American citizens? Isn't the role of the president and the government to protect the people in their country?

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This isn't a good thing. And it's a long -term. You're gonna have so many people coming here. It's going to flood, overwhelm our system.

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We need that system to take care of the elderly. Okay, that's a pro -life issue. Let's look at other policies. How about gun control?

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How about the people that defend themselves because they have a gun? Let's look at that. Okay, if gun control is gonna kill people, well, that's a pro -life issue.

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So if you start doing that, you can just make a great argument for President Trump. Just go down the line. I find an interesting side tangent.

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Foreign policy was barely brought up, if at all, in the last two debates between President Trump and Joe Biden. Why is that?

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You read the Constitution. The president's job mostly is concerned with foreign policy. But because there haven't been, and they could have talked about it.

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They really could have. We are not in the middle of a war, per se. I guess they don't think it's important. Now, question.

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Isn't that something that liberals would like who are anti -war? Shouldn't they like that about Donald Trump? Maybe that's the reason it wasn't brought up.

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Bigger question. Why is the president instead having to answer questions about minority parents who give their kids the talk about the police?

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Why is that a national issue? Because we are not looking to the government to live within the means, within the boundaries that the

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Constitution has laid down for the federal government, for the national government. We're just not doing it. We, instead, are looking to the government as the savior, as God, as the one that's gonna fix all our problems.

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That kind of a problem where, okay, the local police force, let's say, is showing discrimination.

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That's something to take care of in your local community. Maybe at the state level. You know, you have state police and stuff.

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Not as something for the president of the United States to be weighing in on. Show me in the Constitution where you find that.

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But yet, that's the kind of question that's being asked. And instead of, hey, what about Kim Jong -un?

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You know, what's your policy? What about border security? What about what's going on in Iran?

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What about what the World Health Organization wants to do and the World Economic Forum wants to do? What do you think about that, infringing on the sovereignty of nations?

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Not brought up. That's not important. So, I just wanted to make that little side tangent.

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If you're watching, the questions that are being asked tells you a lot about the philosophy that is,

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I mean, these moderators are more liberal, but it tells you probably about also where a lot of so -called conservatives are at.

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Because I don't hear a lot of complaints along that line that, hey, you know, why aren't we keeping this to the job of the president and the

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Constitution? What about the job description given? So, we're outside the boundaries of biblical law.

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We're outside the boundaries of Constitution. We are in an area where, frankly, it's scary because this is where tyranny happens.

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When there are no boundaries, when we don't respect the rules, and we just start making all these pragmatic assertions about how some plan might be better because we project in the future that it's gonna be better for everyone when we have principles we should be working off of and we're ignoring them.

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So, that's my comment on that. But Get Social Justice Goes to Church, the new left of modern American evangelicalism.

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Link is in the info section. I talk about these guys that are behind, that are signers of this pro -life evangelicals for Biden.

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I talk about them and they've influenced the current crop of evangelicals, believe you me. All right, let's move along here and talk about John Piper because this has intrigued a lot of people.

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A lot of people were wondering, what in the world happened to John Piper? And I'm gonna play a few clips. I wanna start off with a clip, though, from October 14th, 2018.

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So, this is not, you know, this is the 26th that I'm recording this, 2020. We're about two years ahead of when this was first put out there, not that long ago.

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Here's what John Piper said. Come at current events very often.

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You know, when the Twitter is ablaze with some new controversy. Where was

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Piper? Where's Piper? Well, he's over there quoting Bible verses. Like he doesn't even know what's going on.

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Don't you know we're about to lose the Supreme Court nominee? Come on, do something.

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Do something. Yeah. Okay, here's my six observations about why this is the case.

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Okay, so before we go any further, so what John Piper's talking about here is, he gets questions. Why don't you talk about politics?

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And he's answering those. We're not gonna listen to the whole thing, but here's, check this out. Here's his first reason for why he doesn't talk about politics much.

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Who is raised in an atmosphere where the spiritual condition of a person's soul, soul, or a people's soul, is infinitely, get this, infinitely more important than any political transaction on the face of the earth?

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Okay, I'm not gonna play the rest of the clip. It's kinda long for time's sake. We're not gonna do that. But he goes on, and one of his other reasons is that, hey,

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I just don't have the expertise. And he says, the example he gives is Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez supporting socialism,

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Green New Deal stuff, and he's just not qualified because he'd have to do all sorts of research to engage that, but he wants other people to.

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He's glad for others who engage that and talk about socialism, but he just can't talk about socialism because it's just too much.

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It would deviate from the higher calling he has, essentially. Here's the problem. Here's the thing. He's making a hierarchy here.

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He's saying, well, it's more important to be saving souls. We agree with that, right? It's more important, eternal realities are the most important things, but he wants people to talk about these temporal realities, you know, what socialism does, et cetera.

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So you wanna pull those people off a higher mission that they could be on if they were a

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Christian and they were tackling that, I guess, onto something that is temporal.

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I don't know. That seems like there's some tension there. Seems like that's almost, could be contradictory. The other thing, though, that gets brought out here is that John Piper doesn't think it sounds like that the

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Bible can really address these things, that God has actually spoken, given us principles, given us law, that we can apply then using reason to situations.

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Socialism's not a hard one. I've done it many times on this program. There's a lot of verses about private property and we just go over them, talk about what does the

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Lord say about private property? Would John Piper be off his mission if he looked up the

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Bible verses on that and then did a podcast on it? No, but he seems to indicate that he would be. Now, this is, and I'm gonna reference a previous video

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I did. Go back to the one I put out, I think, two weeks ago on John Piper. I did two.

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I did an interview with Enoch Burke and then I did one where I followed up and I talk about Christian hedonism and I talk about, a little bit, pietism.

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John Piper's a pietist. He's also what he calls a Christian hedonist. And I said at the time,

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I said, look, I don't think John Piper is 100 % woke. People are asking me, why isn't he fighting this? I think the reason is because his theology opens the door for social justice teaching.

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I mean, it can creep in. And Piper, I think, has adopted some of this to some extent. I don't know to what extent exactly.

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I'm gonna show you some other things that lead me to believe that. But John Piper has, in Christian hedonism, he posits this idea that the highest possible good is basically enjoying

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God. That's glorifying God, enjoying God. They're the same thing. And so that's what we need to be striving for. Everything else short of that is idolatry.

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So things like family could be idolatry. Loving your husband too much could be idolatry. Good things that God has ordained could be idolatry.

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But, and which is, by the way, that's a very serious charge. Idolatry is a very serious charge. But we hear that, it's kind of used so much on blogs like the

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Gospel Coalition. Idolatry is just, it's the go -to sin when you don't have another

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Bible verse that calls it a sin. You know, being too patriotic, which now seems to be the same thing as nationalism in the minds of some, that's idolatry.

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So you end up creating, you flatline sin. Everything is just equally idolatrous or there's having satisfaction in God.

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And so if someone struggles, let's say, with same -sex attraction, instead of trying to mortify that, fight that, which perhaps

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Piper would say we should do that, but basically the way to do it, the thing that you should be looking at is, are you enjoying

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God? Even if you have these attractions, are you enjoying God? If you pursue that, that's the main thing.

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And so what this does is it can create a situation where you have actually the people that I just referenced, the people in the pro -lifers for Biden.

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They can say, well, let's line it all up. Everything's equally, you know, this could be idolatrous. This could be idolatrous.

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This could be idolatrous. And well, it looks like, you know, in our mind, Biden has less idols than Trump.

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Therefore, we're gonna vote for Biden. I mean, you could use that kind of rationale to justify those things when you flatline sin.

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I believe there's a hierarchy in scripture because God has spoken and given us a law of sin. I believe in the civil arena and in the eternal realm.

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In the civil arena, you have different penalties for different sins. Not all sins are civil penalties. You also have, in the eternal realm, a different level of judgment for those with different levels of knowledge.

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For instance, those who rejected Jesus' teaching would be more, when Jesus was on earth, are more guilty than it would be more tolerable for a place like Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment.

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Those who lead little ones astray, it'd be better if a millstone was hung around their neck and they were drowned in the sea.

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There are levels of sin. Even in the Sermon on the Mount, that's often brought up. The Sermon on the Mount shows that lust and adultery are the same.

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Actually, what it shows is that God has a very high standard and you're guilty of adultery if you're fantasizing about that kind of thing.

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But there is not the same kind of civil penalty for lust. There is no civil penalty for lust.

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There is for adultery. And there's other sexual deviancies that you could have a civil penalty for.

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But just inside your head, that's outside the realm of government. That would be a freedom of conscience issue.

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You don't find laws against that. That's between you and God. That's something to confess. But the issue that we're having today is the boundaries are all blurred.

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We don't understand that there's a role that the civil magistrate has, and some sins are more punishable than others.

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We also don't understand that when God judges on Judgment Day, there's actually gonna be a greater judgment for certain kinds of sins than others.

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And that's just a fact. Sorry, that's what the Bible teaches. So, I think the

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Christian hedonism thing, I've at least seen it applied with people who buy into that where they tend to flatline things.

27:46

And they can, and I think Enoch Burke makes this argument in his book, essentially. John Piper's also a pietist, and pietists tend to, not, well,

27:55

I shouldn't say all, not all, but many tend to be pacifists. They tend to have a very separatistic understanding of their relationship to the civil realm.

28:05

In fact, I remember I was with some Anabaptist Mennonites whom I loved dearly not too long ago.

28:10

Very, oh, so generous. I mean, just so loving. So, I mean, I just had a great time with them. And I asked this question, because I said, look, you guys seem like you're on the right track.

28:21

But I hear that a lot of Mennonites, and especially Amish, I know they're different, but I said, you may know some

28:27

Amish. There seems to be some connection sometimes. You know, they don't vote. And I know Amish don't serve in war.

28:33

So, what's the deal? And he said, well, you know, they say that, but some of them say that at least, but, you know, a lot of them do vote.

28:39

I was like, okay, I'm glad to hear that. And the reality is, though, that there is a mentality in pietism that says that the only thing that matters is your personal piety, your relationship with God, your personal decision, and everything else is just so secondary, you know, and distant secondary sometimes, that it's just, it's not important.

29:00

You can even look down your nose sometimes at people that are involved in that messy political realm. And Piper, he says he's grateful for people who are going to talk about socialism.

29:11

But look, that's, he's in a higher calling. It's not what he does. It's more important because of eternal realities.

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And fact is, guys, we're gonna lose those eternal, those, we're never losing eternal realities, but we're gonna lose the freedom to evangelize, to assemble, to protect ourselves, worship, and speech, all of that.

29:35

We're gonna lose those things if the Democrats get their way, if the hardcore left base of the

29:40

Democratic Party gets their way. We've already seen what they want. We've seen the hate crimes legislation. We've seen what they say in the streets when they're protesting.

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They hate the church, and they will do everything to limit the ability of the church to obey the commands of Christ.

29:53

That's why, partially, it is important to go out there and to vote, to get involved in these kinds of things.

30:00

Yes, witness. Yes, pray. Yes, read the Bible. Yes, attend church. And yes, go and defend your right to do those things.

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It is a God -given right. It is not a right given by government. Government is supposed to secure those God -given rights.

30:12

That's the way it works. This is part of your duty. This is part of being a responsible adult, a responsible citizen, a responsible

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Christian. And just like it's responsible for you to raise your children, it's a responsibility for you to protect the right you have and the ability you have to raise your children.

30:34

So if you're a homeschooler, what are the Democrats trying to do in your state? Or the

30:40

Republicans. I don't care who it is, but if people are trying to limit your ability to raise your children right in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord, you need to take a stand. It's gonna be a political stand at some point. So there is a connection there.

30:53

Yes, there are two different kingdoms in a sense, to take the Augustinian sort of dichotomy there.

30:59

There is a realm. There's a heavenly realm, an eternal realm. There is a temporary realm. Those eternal realities will not manifest themselves in this temporal realm.

31:08

In fact, you're never going to have perfect satisfaction in God. I don't believe on this side of heaven. Paul couldn't reach perfection.

31:15

I don't think you're gonna reach perfection. Not on this side of heaven, but we know there's a day that that will happen. And we can't usher in eternal realities.

31:22

That's one of the problems with the social justice movement often, is they try to, I mean, why do they appeal to Revelation 6 and 7 so much when they're talking about, you know, like the multi -ethnic church model?

31:32

Well, it's a heavenly reality. Why do you, you know, we gotta, it's not mandating that people push for this in the temporal realm, but that's what they do.

31:39

And so we need to be able to separate those things and understand what's eternal, what's temporal. But at the same time, while we're doing that, we need to recognize that the temporal realm and the governments in this temporal realm are set up to protect our right to exercise the responsibilities we have in the eternal realm, right?

32:02

I don't think this stuff is that hard, but pietists can sometimes twist themselves up in knots and get into contradictory situations.

32:11

And it allows for social justice kind of thinking to creep in. Thinking that says we can have some of those eternal realities now, that's kind of a deception.

32:20

And also thinking that softens the sins that God says are sins, and hardens those things that God does not call sin based on some kind of a pietistic framework.

32:35

Hopefully that makes sense to you all. If it doesn't, you know, comment and maybe

32:41

I'll try to address some of that later. But that's just the prelude. And we got more to go over, believe me.

32:47

But that's just, I want to set this up that this is what Piper has said about why he's not that involved in politics.

32:53

Here's the thing though, Piper is involved in politics. And we just got evidence last week of that.

33:00

So let's go over some of the things that I've noticed that Piper has been involved with over the years.

33:07

So he had a, I think this is actually sequential if I'm not mistaken. He had an article, this is in 2015.

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You might remember this. I think it got picked up if I'm not mistaken by the Washington Post. Should Christians be encouraged to arm themselves?

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December 22nd, 2015. And there's a picture. And this is not a mistake, guys.

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This picture is not a mistake. Holy Bible over an American flag and a pistol. A revolver with some ammo, hollow points.

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And this is, looks like hollow points. Anyway, this is the caption here.

33:42

So this is something to do with America, something to do with the Bible, something to do with guns. And here's a few quotes, choice quotes from it.

33:50

So Piper's weighing in on politics here, is he not? Now, he probably thinks, oh, this is related to Christianity.

33:55

But look at this. The issue is not primarily about when and if a

34:01

Christian may ever use force in self -defense or the defense of one's family or friends.

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There are significant situational ambiguities. So here we go, it's complicated. And the answer to that question.

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The issue is about the whole tenor and focus and demeanor and hard attitude of the Christian life. Now listen, this is the pietism, guys.

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Listen to how complicated this gets. Well, the tenor, the focus, the demeanor, the hard attitude, you know, all these things gotta be weighed before you can really make a decision about whether to use force in self -defense.

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Does it accord with the New Testament to encourage the attitude that says, I have the power to kill you in my pocket so you don't mess with me? My answer is no.

34:37

Peter's claim, he says, for churches as sojourners and exiles on the earth is not that we put our hope in the self -protecting rights of the

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Second Amendment. Okay, is anyone putting their hope, their eternal hope? This is a ridiculous conflation.

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No one's putting their internal hope that I know of in the rights of the Second Amendment. They're putting their temporal hope, but Piper conflates them.

34:55

That's the pietism. That's the, you know, letting these eternal realities somehow, he doesn't make the distinctions he should between the eternal realm and the civil realm, the temporal realm.

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But in the revelation of Jesus Christ in glory, his aim that we suffer well and show that our treasure is in heaven, not in self -preservation.

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Now, look, it's fine. If you want to make the choice as a missionary to let's say the Akha Indians, you want to lay down your life.

35:22

You don't want to use force because you know these people will be going to hell or something. I respect that. I get it. Understood.

35:28

There's nothing wrong with that. Those people are to be honored. Those people made a sacrifice. The Lord used it.

35:33

But if they had made the decision that if we are attacked, we are going to protect ourselves because we have children and we don't want to let these people murder or at least try to,

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I mean, I wasn't there. I don't know what the situation looked at. Maybe they were unable, but look, if they had made the decision, we're going to protect ourselves, that would not have been a wrong decision to make.

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And there would have been good reasons for it. You can't fulfill the responsibilities God has given you to your family if you're dead.

36:03

Now you can trust God that hopefully he's going to provide someone else to do that and he does often. But there's nothing wrong with preserving your life, keeping someone from breaking

36:12

God's law by murdering you. Piper says a natural instinct is to boil this issue down to the question, can

36:17

I shoot my wife's assailant? Now this is, okay, for most of us red -blooded males out there, right?

36:24

You love your wife. Is this really something that would be much of a question for you?

36:30

Like, would you really have to think about whether or not you're going to stop the guy who wants to, let's say, rape and kill your wife?

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Or do you just let it happen? This should be a no -brainer for any man of God who's trying to love his wife in an understanding way.

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Someone who sees that as also protecting his wife, who is the stronger vessel, is supposed to protect the weaker vessel.

36:54

Is this even, like the fact that this is even a question that deserves some kind of nuance is amazing to me.

37:02

But here's the nuance, some of it. And I think he comes up with like seven reasons. I was like, seven reasons? What are you gonna stand there and calculate?

37:08

Seven reasons? Here's some of those. So some clips from that, some snippets. If one's heart is controlled mainly by fear or anger or revenge, that sinful disposition may be expressed by using the police as well as taking up arms yourself.

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So if your heart's controlled by fear, anger, or revenge, that sinful disposition may be expressed.

37:34

I don't even know where to start there. Is there a godly, like if someone's gonna come and kill, rape your wife, like should you have anger?

37:41

Yeah. Should you protect? Yeah. Should you fear for your wife?

37:47

I would say yeah. Revenge? I mean, how about justice? Revenge.

37:54

This is like, so you're gonna examine your heart attitude there? Well, if I shoot this guy, you know, am

38:00

I having fear or anger? Hmm, I don't know. I mean, hopefully you're not thinking too far about it and you're gonna fulfill the duty you have to your wife to protect her whether your motives are right or not.

38:11

And this is where being a man comes in, guys. How many times do you have to go to work and you just, you know, maybe your heart's not right, you're not submitting to your boss in your heart, you're really angry about what your boss did, but you're gonna do the right thing.

38:25

How many times are you angry at your kids or your wife, or I'm speaking to men now, but you're angry about a situation and you're gonna go and you're gonna do it anyway?

38:34

Because you have a duty to fulfill. Or do you just say, well, I'm not gonna fulfill that duty because, well, my heart's not in the right place.

38:42

There are some duties, I guess, like that. I mean, you shouldn't be probably taking communion if your heart's, if your neighbor has something against you, if another

38:49

Christian has something against you. There are situations like that where you need to go get it right with them so you can be right with the

38:54

Lord. But there's duties God gives us that, look, you gotta do this whether or not you feel like it. And whether or not your heart's in the right place, you just pray to God, help,

39:03

I confess my attitude, and I pray that you change it because I know I need to do this. It's part of being a man.

39:11

This is disappointing to me, and of course, this is old news in a way, but I'm leading to something here.

39:16

This is why I'm bringing this up again. I live in inner city Minneapolis, and I would personally counsel a Christian not to have a firearm available for such circumstances.

39:24

So if someone's gonna assail your wife, you should not have a firearm because of the possibility that I guess you could kill the guy.

39:31

And he lives in Minneapolis. And what's happened in Minneapolis since all these Black Lives Matter protests, et cetera?

39:38

Yeah, we know what's happened in Minneapolis. I do not know what I would do before this situation presents itself with all its innumerable variations of factors.

39:46

So this is just so complicated. And this is where Piper, again, this sounds like his whole idea that what's just so complicated?

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So you gotta do so much work, I have a higher calling. You see that attitude manifest itself in this situation.

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And look, if someone hears this, someone listens to this article, reads it, and is influenced by Piper, where do you think they're gonna come down?

40:13

More on the Democrat gun control side or more on the Republicans who are trying to preserve the right to defend ourselves?

40:19

Where do you think they're gonna end up? I don't think it's a big question. I think we know where they would end up. Democrats are trying to do a good thing here.

40:26

Hey, it could even be a good thing for heaven, because for eternal realities, because look, we don't want the opportunity to manifest the anger and hatred if someone is going to assail our wife.

40:38

That logic could be used. That logic could be used. It's incredible, it's incredible to me.

40:45

But this is an example of Piper doing this. Let's look at some other stuff here. I'm gonna bring in some election stuff here soon, but I wanna go over, this is from 2017.

40:59

Now, people have asked, is John Piper woke? I'll let you listen to this clip, and you can tell me what you think.

41:05

The people of God have to assume a pilgrim mentality, which means we're not at home in this culture.

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We are marching to the beat of a different drum that Jesus is beating, because our citizenship is in heaven.

41:19

So that's the pilgrim principle. But there's also this indigenous principle, which means that in every culture where the gospel penetrates, there are cultural aspects, cultural dimensions, which are not necessarily sinful, and which without changing will become incarnations and expressions through which

41:42

Jesus Christ in his ways can be expressed. And these two principles, the indigenous and the pilgrim, are always in tension with each other.

41:54

And that tension needs to be owned by everybody.

42:00

And most minorities feel it. They're compelled to come to terms with the fact that they have a culture and that they're encountering other features of culture as they try to be

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Christian. The problem for whites for centuries in this country is that we have felt so at home as Americans, so at home with our civil religion,

42:35

Christianity, that we haven't even, by and large, thought in terms of, oh,

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I have a culture. And my culture is in tension with the claims of Christ on me.

42:49

And I gotta work at this. I gotta work at how my culture and my faith might be at odds, my commitments to certain things in America, certain aspects of nationalism, certain ideology, certain priorities have to be thought through more carefully than many of us have.

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That's why this pilgrim indigenous tension has proved to be so helpful to me.

43:21

All right, did you catch that? So he's going through the whole, we're just strangers here, we're passing through pilgrims on our way to heaven.

43:28

That's true. But because, I guess, partially because of that, and because of the fact that if you're white in the

43:37

United States of America, you just take for granted things like nationalism. And he presents it kind of like, almost like it could be a state worship kind of thing.

43:45

It's a negative in the way Piper presents this. That this is, what he's trying to do is he's trying to say that this could be out of step with minority

43:56

Christians, right? Loving America so much. I mean, nationalism, that kind of thing, that could just be out of step with minority

44:05

Christians. And so we just need to kind of recognize that this is a problem.

44:11

Now, our identity ultimately is this, we're passing through, but we need to realize, hey, we got some temporary things that may be conflicting with that identity of passing through, all right?

44:25

This is the leverage. Guys, this is the argument that's been used against so many of you.

44:31

Whenever you bring up, wait a minute, isn't that kind of Marxism that you're saying? You're told basically you gotta deconstruct your whole entire worldview and culture because you just don't understand what you've taken for granted for so many years.

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And what you've taken for granted is in conflict with heavenly realities. So basically, it makes it a sin.

44:55

Nationalism becomes a sin. These things become sins because it's in conflict with the kingdom of heaven.

45:02

So you've heard this kind of line before. Well, now it's been coming, at least for a few years.

45:08

This was in 2017, out of John Piper's mouth. Now, check this out. Here's another clip. The people of God.

45:14

I'm going to, let's see if I can get back here to where I was. Here's another clip from the same talk that I'm gonna show you.

45:24

The more dominant the culture is, the more invisible it seems to us.

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And I think it's true that there is more cultural captivity in our churches and in our lives than most of us realize.

45:46

So that's the first thing I wanted to say to us who are white. All right, so if you're not white, you have more knowledge.

45:55

You know something that white people don't know because it's not invisible to you because that's not your culture.

46:00

So you can critique that culture. You can see the errors of that culture. But if you're in that culture, you can't see those things.

46:07

Or he doesn't say you can't, like it's impossible, but it's very difficult. And what do we hear all the time?

46:14

Well, you need this lens. You need this minority lens to really understand. You never hear, well, minority cultures have their own culture and so they have their own sins and they need a majority culture lens to understand the problems in their culture.

46:25

You never hear it, never. This is because there's a priority placed on minority cultures, that there's a superiority there, a moral superiority, a knowledge superiority.

46:37

And you hear John Piper sounding like the evangelicals who push that kind of thing, that standpoint epistemology. All right,

46:43

I think for the sake of time, I don't wanna go too far, but let's do another clip from that talk.

46:51

Could it be that this little tribe of Christians who love the glory of God, love the sovereignty of God, even over our suffering, love the sovereign grace that saves sinners like us, could it be that in this loosening of ties, the increasing indigenization of this big

47:23

God theology in minority ethnic cultural ministries and churches, and could it be that the decreasing politicization and decreasing cultural captivity of majority ethnic cultural ministries, could it be that that increasing indigenization of big

47:51

God theology and the decreasing politicization and enculturation of big

48:00

God theology might, through a season of sorrow like we're in, bring us out to a new day, chastened, humbled, awake, where these ministries, these churches, led mainly by minority cultural leaders and led mainly by dominant cultural leaders in which on both sides here, there is significant individual diversity in those churches and in those ministries, pause.

48:55

I shared this with the staff, some of them this afternoon, and they said, you know what people are gonna hear right now?

49:05

They're gonna hear segregation, separate but equal. All right, let's see here.

49:15

Let's go to the final clip here in this, because we don't have a lot of time. I just wanna play this final clip and comment. Would not feel culturally compromising or paternalistic.

49:33

Perhaps God is taking us to that future.

49:40

All right, so here's the thing. I know this is confusing, and you haven't listened to the whole sermon, because he doesn't wanna get into politics because it's too complicated, but he overcomplicates things that should be, you would think, rather simple.

49:54

He doesn't want minority Christians, in his mind, with these minority cultures that he talks about, to be compromised culturally.

50:04

He doesn't want, he wants to protect that. They shouldn't be compromised culturally. So, if they combine with white people too much, that's the term he uses, to combine with white people too much, one of the dangers is that there could be a subordination.

50:21

The white people are the ones on top, and minorities are the ones on the bottom, and this is just such a horrible thing. And so maybe there should be a kind of a separation.

50:30

Maybe minority Christians, they can kind of do their thing without risking that subordination, and majority culture

50:37

Christians, which, I mean, these terms, we didn't even hear these terms, what, 10, 15 years ago much.

50:42

Now we hear them all the time. But those kinds of people, the white people, essentially, they can also improve.

50:48

They can lose their cultural captivity without then mixing too much with minority

50:56

Christians and subordinating them. That's what he's trying to say, essentially, in those clips, and there's more.

51:03

I would actually recommend, if you wanna see more of this, you can go to, on Twitter, I'll actually look it up right now so I make sure that I get the right place to send you here.

51:16

It's Woke Preacher Clips, at Woke Preacher TV on Twitter, and they have, they put out clips like this.

51:24

That's where I first saw this one. I was told, actually, by someone, there was something that Piper said that was like super woke years ago at,

51:31

I think it was a Shepherd's Conference, but it's been since it's gone. So I know there's like clips out there,

51:37

I know there's things, but this was something that, I guess, Woke Preacher Clips found, and you can go check it out, and the original sermon is also there.

51:46

But here's what Piper is trying to argue, that there is some kind of majority culture that people in that culture can be blind to.

51:58

Minority cultures have some kind of a unique vantage point by which to see the flaws in a majority culture.

52:06

Majority culture should, he doesn't say decolonize, but that's kind of, get rid of its cultural captivity.

52:13

Its nationalism is part of that. And change, but not subordinate the minorities.

52:18

That would be a problem, and so we need to protect that. And this is like, where do you find this in the

52:24

New Testament, right? Where do you find this kind of stuff with the Jews and the

52:30

Romans? Do you find this kind of, well, we gotta protect this culture, and the flaws in this majority

52:37

Jewish area, or this majority Roman area, well, they just don't know because they're in that.

52:42

And no, how about there's a truth in the Word of God, and the truth of the Word of God can be applied, even by someone like Paul who grew up Jewish, who was a

52:53

Pharisee of the Pharisees. He can go to a Jewish church, and he can show the flaws because he's got

52:58

God's law. Jesus, Jewish, in a Jewish culture with Roman occupation, and who does he take to task?

53:07

Well, he takes to task the religious leaders. What does he say? Well, you're just blinded by the culture you lived in.

53:13

No, no, that's not what he does. Does he say anything against the Romans?

53:18

Does Paul say anything against the Romans? Well, you're subordinating because you have the political clout, and you have a civil religion.

53:24

No, you don't hear that kind of language, but you do hear it from someone like John Piper. This is social justice -ish language, and it does come in, and you can see the pietist flavor that is colored by this, that somehow these present realities of the culture you grew up in, well, it's just way out of step with these heavenly realities, but he's not bringing the law of God to bear on this.

53:47

He's not showing you, here's what scripture says concretely about the sin that you're involved in.

53:52

It's an identity thing, and so Piper has some weaknesses. Now, here's what

53:58

Piper has done with elections, and I'm leading up to the article that everyone wanted me to talk about here, so let's go to that.

54:08

Here's how Piper has reacted. 2004, all right? So what does he say during that election?

54:16

Now, if you are dissatisfied today the way I am, why vote? The answer is that you don't.

54:22

That if you don't, you are guilty of the very oversimplification you condemn. There is no escape from responsibility by pointing out the imperfections of leaders.

54:30

That is the only kind of leaders that there will ever be. Our calling in this world is not to wait for the arrival of the perfect, but to pick our way through the thicket of flaws.

54:39

We would be arrogant to put ourselves above this fray and say a curse on both your houses. The Lord Jesus does not give us this luxury of disengagement.

54:48

He says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar, to God things that are God's. Caesar, even pagan Caesar, has his claim on our lives.

54:53

Why? Because God Almighty, whom we serve above all men, made human governments his way of running the world.

54:58

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. In a democratic republic like ours, that means at least vote.

55:06

So 2004, right? That was George W. Bush versus John Kerry. And this is what

55:13

John Piper's saying at the time. Look, you gotta vote. Yeah, I know you could be dissatisfied with both of them, but you still don't, you know, don't be guilty of the oversimplification you condemn.

55:24

We live in this real world. We gotta deal with it. We got a responsibility. We can't, you know, calling is not to wait for the perfect.

55:32

We got candidates with flaws. So almost like, hey, you know, and he's saying, you know, you can't say a curse on both your houses.

55:39

So this is almost like, it sounds like, a lesser of two evils kind of thing he's saying. That was 2004.

55:46

This is his reaction to Obama. Now, now listen to this.

55:51

This is interesting because he's against abortion, which is great, but listen to what he says about Obama.

55:59

It's a magnificent thing. The only newly originating life in the universe that comes in the image of God is man.

56:11

The only newly originating life in the universe that lasts forever is man.

56:20

This is an awesome thing. And as everyone knows, that reverence is not shared by our new president, over whom we have rejoiced.

56:38

All right, listen, hear that, remember that. Over whom we have rejoiced is what he says about Obama.

56:44

Now he's, yeah, rightly so, upset at Obama for his pro -choice, pro -abortion position, but he's rejoicing over Obama.

56:56

He is trapped and blind in a culture of deceit.

57:05

Let me ask you a question. Is Trump trapped and blind in a culture of deceit? Is that the problem with President Trump?

57:11

You know, we can rejoice. Hey, we're rejoicing over President Trump. We just recognize he's trapped and blind in a culture of deceit.

57:18

Or is the reaction to Trump much different? Think about that. That's what he says about Obama.

57:25

And on the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade last Thursday, he released this statement.

57:32

All right, so I'm gonna skip ahead because this is just more about, he's pro -life. And I think there was another statement in here about how much, you know, they appreciate

57:39

Obama. They're hopeful for Obama. But this is the attitude of John Piper towards Barack Obama.

57:45

Barack Obama, they were rejoicing. I think there's a point in this where he says that tears were in his eyes.

57:52

You know, he was emotionally just, ah, you know, this is great. But Obama's, he's,

58:00

I know Piper thinks it's Obama's fault on some level, but hear the language, the softened language of, well, it's the culture.

58:10

He's enslaved to this culture. That's the problem. Trump doesn't get that pass. But Obama, for some reason, does.

58:17

And so I want you to see the difference. Now, here's a clip from John Piper in 2010.

58:27

John, could a pastor at Bethlehem have voted for Obama? Yes, I suspect one did.

58:35

I mean, maybe more than one. I didn't, mainly because of the abortion issue. But yes, and the reason,

58:44

I assume the question does relate to abortion, maybe fiscal policies,

58:52

I don't know. But I would say that as you weigh out the effects of a man's whole being on a culture, his views, his personality, his family, his ethnicity, his philosophy, if you take that whole package,

59:17

I would be hard -pressed to say that it is impossible for a solid, reformed,

59:26

Bible -saturated Christian to make the judgment that at this point in history, it might have been a good thing for him to be president.

59:34

That wasn't my call. It's increasingly less my call. And I don't know how the others voted, but yes, they could.

59:44

That's very telling, guys. It's very telling. That's the same logic employed by the evangelicals for Biden -Harris.

59:50

And I already talked about that, so I'm not gonna wax long on it. But that's the same logic. Piper opens the door for it right there. He's not starting with the law of God and whether or not this person interprets things in an original intent, and are they gonna uphold the

01:00:03

Constitution? I mean, he's saying he can vote for a person who basically wants to destroy the Constitution, doesn't care what it says, it's a living document, is going to further enact laws and policies that secure abortion, appointing judges that will do that.

01:00:22

You can vote for that person because, well, their ethnicity, their personality, all these other issues, it's such a complex equation,

01:00:30

I guess, I don't know what issues necessarily those would be. But, well, they're gonna be better for, what, smoking?

01:00:38

Is that gonna be the argument? So, I mean, this is the same logic we hear in the evangelicals for Biden -Harris being spun by John Piper.

01:00:48

And it's okay if a guy on his staff votes for Obama, that's perfectly fine with John Piper.

01:00:54

Now, we've seen Piper's reaction to Bush, to Obama. Let's see his reaction to Trump.

01:01:02

Now, remember, lesser of two evils logic was employed with Bush in 2004. Not so much employed here.

01:01:09

Not so much employed when he talks about President Trump. Donald Trump's immoral behavior in the past and his ongoing unwillingness to renounce it as evil show that he is morally unfit to lead our nation, so is

01:01:19

Hillary Clinton, because she approved of killing the unborn. Now, look, Hillary Clinton's got a lot more against her than just killing the unborn. But he's right about Donald Trump's immoral behavior in the past.

01:01:27

That's one of the reasons I didn't vote for Trump. It's one of the reasons I thought I can't depend on him to keep his oath to the Constitution if he couldn't keep his oath to his wives, his marriage vows.

01:01:36

It's one of the reasons I thought, you know, Trump, I can't trust that he's a conservative. He said all this liberal stuff in the past.

01:01:41

How can I trust this guy? And then Piper says, here's the principles. A leader should lead. A leader should be dependable, trustworthy.

01:01:47

A leader should be a good example to the young. Should not model success of immoral behavior.

01:01:53

Should be known for the virtues that make a Republican form of government possible. I mean, in general, I agree with this stuff. I don't know, the fifth one

01:02:00

I don't get, to be honest with you. Like, I mean, you hear that all the time, that Trump's against democracy or Republican form of government or something.

01:02:09

You hear these kinds of things. No, in fact, I think Trump's trying to make sure that we actually have fair elections with, anyway,

01:02:19

I'm gonna leave that one alone because it's not the main point. But anyways, the first four, I agree with to an extent.

01:02:25

And he says, because I regard these as qualifying marks of leadership in public office, I regard Donald Trump as not qualified for the presidency.

01:02:32

Okay, now I just, I'm not disagreeing necessarily with this. I'm not saying that he's wrong to have concerns about Trump's past immoral behavior, but did he say this about Obama?

01:02:43

Did he say, you know, Obama's just not qualified? No, no. He said, yeah, someone on my staff could have voted for him, that's fine.

01:02:50

He said, yeah, you know, we were rejoicing over Obama. That's what he said.

01:02:56

But he's, you know, Obama's just captive to this culture that likes abortion. But yeah, we're rejoicing over Obama.

01:03:02

Not so much with Trump. Look at the difference, huge difference. I mean, even the picture they use.

01:03:08

But today, he will become president. This is not surprising from a Christian point of view. The Christian faith was born and has flourished under regimes less qualified to lead than Trump.

01:03:16

The murderous Herod and the Christian killing Nero. Okay, so Trump's somehow in league, even though he's less, he's not as bad as those guys, but he's somehow in league with Nero and Herod.

01:03:27

And where was Obama, excuse me? Where was Obama in this? Where's Biden in this? Interesting.

01:03:34

The movement that Jesus Christ unleashed in this world when he died and rose again does not depend on qualified human government for its existence.

01:03:44

Okay, no, but it sure does help when you have governments that allow mission work to continue.

01:03:50

I mean, this is just, we're supposed to be praying for our leaders so that we can lead lives that are in peace and quiet.

01:04:00

And we're not gonna get that with Biden. This is just, the hypocrisy is overwhelming here, how he reacted to Trump and how he reacted to Obama, and Bush for that matter.

01:04:12

You know, lesser of two evils is fine under Bush. Doesn't employ that logic anymore with Trump. Yeah, we rejoice over Barack Obama.

01:04:20

No, not rejoicing. How about rejoicing that you got a president who's more pro -life, a president that's not involved in the kind of illegal proceedings that Hillary Clinton was involved in?

01:04:30

No, no, not gonna do that. So it's just, it's interesting. I'm trying to compare apples with apples here.

01:04:37

Here's the article that everyone wanted me to comment on. Here's a few things from it. Title is,

01:04:43

Policies, Persons, and Paths to Ruin. Interesting, pondering the implications of the 2020 election, October 22nd, 2020.

01:04:49

Nothing I say here is intended to dictate how anyone else should vote. That's how he starts. Nothing here is intended to dictate.

01:04:56

So why, you know, I'm hearing this all the time from evangelical leaders. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to vote.

01:05:03

That's not what I'm doing. Then why, like, we actually want you to weigh in and give us moral guidance.

01:05:11

Tell us how you're gonna vote. Tell us why you're gonna make the decision you're gonna make. Tell us how you're trying to apply biblical principles to this.

01:05:18

It's just under, it's disappointing and it undercuts whatever you're gonna say after that when you say, you start off with,

01:05:25

I'm not trying to influence your vote, really. I'm not dictating how you should vote, but I'm gonna tell you this stuff.

01:05:32

Actually, this is a long overdue article attempting to explain why I remain baffled that so many Christians consider the sins of an unrepentant, sexually immoral, unrepentant boastfulness, unrepentant vulgarity, unrepentant factiousness, and the like to be only toxic for our nation, while policies that endorse baby killing, sex switching, freedom limiting, and socialistic overreach are viewed as deadly.

01:05:53

All right, so this is to shellack the Trump people. He's doing this right before the election to shellack the Trump people.

01:05:59

He's not surprised about the rising tide of evangelicals for Biden. Nope, he's surprised about how many

01:06:06

Christians would be so okay with Trump's rudeness, I guess, sexually immoral behavior in the past.

01:06:13

I mean, as far as we know, this hasn't been something that's characterized him in the presidency, but he's just so confused about this, except that the logic he gave in 2004 could alleviate the confusion.

01:06:29

If people are just thinking the way that he thought in 2004 in voting lesser of two evils, then that alone, that's one reason, it's not the only one, but that's one reason that would alleviate his confusion.

01:06:39

It just amazes me that he's confused about this. And somehow this is on a moral plane that's equal to somehow in the same neighborhood as policies that endorse baby killing, sex switching, freedom limiting, and socialistic overreach.

01:06:55

You gotta be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. Someone's mean on Twitter.

01:07:01

So look at the policies of President Trump and compare them to the policies of the other party.

01:07:07

That would be comparing apples with apples. Instead, he wants to compare apples with oranges. Let's compare Trump's behavior, moral behavior in his personal life, and then compare that to the policies that are deadly, that are endorsed by the other side.

01:07:21

These aren't the same thing. And I'm not saying it's, look, his past sexual moral behavior was wrong. I guess boastfulness,

01:07:28

I mean, that's wrong too, but what is he, I mean, is that killing people in the streets?

01:07:34

Show me the application of that. I mean, I know it applies. People can emulate it, think they're, I'm being like the president,

01:07:40

I guess, but that doesn't even approach the kind of evil of abortion, of sex switching, of freedom limiting, socialistic overreach.

01:07:50

I mean, this is amazing to me that he even, I mean, look, this election, I think James White said this, and he said it well.

01:07:56

This election is going to determine whether or not we have another election, a real one. I think that he may be onto something there.

01:08:03

I'm gonna be talking about this, but if you want a little sneak preak, go look up the Great Reset. One of the biggest reasons that I'll probably be voting for Trump.

01:08:12

And I'm gonna be, we're gonna be talking about this, but yeah, to compare these things, no, no,

01:08:18

I reject this. Christians communicate a falsehood to unbelievers who are also baffled, so this is our public witness, when we act as if policies and laws that protect life and freedom are more precious than being a certain kind of person.

01:08:30

The church is paying dearly and will continue to pay for our communicating this falsehood year after year.

01:08:36

You know what? This is morally reprehensible what Piper's doing here. I don't know any

01:08:42

Christians that endorse the behavior of Donald Trump when it's sinful. In fact, even the people I know who are voting for him have taken stands and said, look, hey, when

01:08:50

Trump said this or when he did this, I can't endorse that, that's wrong. Does the unbelieving world not see that as well?

01:08:56

Or are they just a bunch of dupes apparently in the mind of John Piper that they can't see people who can make a distinction between policies and the behavior, the policies enacted and some of the behavior of the president?

01:09:11

You know, and this is just hurting our public witness so much, it's embarrassing to John Piper apparently.

01:09:19

I find it bewildering that Christians can be so sure that greater damage will be done by bad judges, bad laws, and bad policies than is being done by the culture -infecting spread of the gangring of sinful self -exalting, boasting, and self -strife -stirring.

01:09:33

Who's stirring the strife? Is it Trump or is it the media? Is it the

01:09:38

Democratic Party? Is it the violence in the street in your own city of Minneapolis, John Piper? This sounds like the pietism.

01:09:51

You know, we're flatlining the sins. We're just saying, well, yay, that boastful arrogance is just so bad.

01:09:58

It's creating polarization. We're at a point right now, we need more polarization in this country.

01:10:04

And I'll repeat it, we need more polarization in this country. And the reason for it, and the right kind of polarization, we need polarization because we need to make sure we know where the lines are.

01:10:16

When we don't know where the lines are, when people are so ambiguous about what they believe, we don't know, where do you stand?

01:10:23

We need to know where people stand right now because there are some very big decisions coming about whether or not we're gonna have national sovereignty.

01:10:31

We're gonna force people to take immunizations. We're going to shut down this country at the whim of the federal government, if Biden's in.

01:10:40

We're going to accept the Great Reset and accept the technocracy that will emerge because of that.

01:10:47

Are we going to be the United States anymore? And I'm getting ahead of myself.

01:10:52

I'll explain what this stuff is. But is that who we are? Or are we going to follow the globalist path?

01:11:01

That's a huge issue in this election because once we go down that path, there's no coming back.

01:11:08

I mean, it's like game over at that point. You don't have the same country anymore. The mechanisms by which we could use to, before God, we're so grateful that we could use these mechanisms, elections, petitions, et cetera.

01:11:22

I mean, Obama started clamping down on that. He made the IRS go after conservative organizations. You think that was bad?

01:11:28

Wait till you get Kamala Harris in there. And she wants to make the rest of the country like California.

01:11:34

Wait till we get people from the World Economic Forum coming in to advise the president. You think my

01:11:39

YouTube channel is gonna stay around? No, it's not. It's not. So this is, maybe

01:11:48

Piper's not aware of all that stuff. I mean, I find it hard to believe, pick his language here. I find it hard to believe he wouldn't be if he's paying even half attention.

01:11:57

But that's the problem. Trump's proud. I don't see people in the streets burning things down because Trump's proud.

01:12:04

That doesn't seem like it's the big problem in 2020, does it? May I suggest to pastors that in the quietness of your study, you do this.

01:12:11

Imagine that America collapses, first to anarchy, then tyranny, from right or the left. It's not gonna come from the right.

01:12:17

Now, could it? I guess. In the way, the future, when you get a tyrant in there who doesn't care about the concept.

01:12:24

But you'd have to go against the whole Republican Party platform. But I digress. From the right or the left.

01:12:30

Imagine that religious freedom is gone. What remains for Christians is fines, prisons, exile, martyrdom. Then ask yourself this.

01:12:35

Has my preaching been developing real radical Christians? How about ask yourself this.

01:12:43

What did you do to prevent that situation from happening? Did you train your people to understand how to vote?

01:12:52

What principles to use? What the issues were? And so when that time comes, if it comes, you are realizing, and you're looking back and you're saying,

01:13:05

I did everything I could. Or will you look back and be ashamed that you didn't?

01:13:12

Two people can play at this guilt game that Piper's using. Because it is a guilt game. You should be ashamed of yourself.

01:13:19

You're a public witness. You should be ashamed of yourself. You're inconsistent. You should, Piper didn't play this game in 2004, but he's playing it now.

01:13:27

So I disagree wholeheartedly with this. Here's a follow -up question for you.

01:13:33

What do you do with all your Piper material now? I know some people are asking that question. I think at the very least, you give a disclaimer.

01:13:39

Or you at least let people know there's some weaknesses. The pietism, the Christian hedonism, explain that to people.

01:13:48

If you're gonna recommend his stuff, I would just, because I recognize that maybe there's some stuff that Desiring God has put out that's been good.

01:13:57

Do I use Desiring God's stuff anymore? I don't. I just, it's not a conversation.

01:14:02

I don't wanna have that conversation with someone. Here, read this book. It's really got some good things in it. But let me,

01:14:08

I mean, it's like recommending. It's not as bad as this at all, actually. But it's, there's a similarity in the sense of having to give a disclaimer.

01:14:16

Recommending like a Josh Harris book. Some of Josh Harris's books actually weren't too bad. Now, they were formulaic, which, because Josh Harris wasn't,

01:14:23

I mean, I don't believe he was ever actually a believer. But he, but did he actually go into scripture, find some good principles, apply them rightly?

01:14:30

And he actually did in some of his books. Am I gonna go hand someone a book like Stop Dating the

01:14:37

Church and say, well, yeah, you really, you need to read this book, it's good. But, you know,

01:14:43

Josh Harris has now renounced Christianity. No, this is not a conversation that I'm gonna have. Like, why?

01:14:48

I can give him other resources. So, I would say a similar thing about John Piper.

01:14:53

Not, he's not in Josh Harris's category at all. But I would just say that if you're gonna recommend that, then you should probably,

01:15:00

I mean, I think that his inconsistencies and his bad teaching, it's enough for me.

01:15:10

Everyone's got, no two people are the same, really, when it comes to theology. At least, I haven't really met someone who's the same on every bit of theology, every part of the

01:15:19

Bible. But John Piper's errors, I think, are at a different level than just disagreeing over something here or there.

01:15:28

You know, it works its way into, the pietism does, and the Christian hedonism, it works its way into so many different things.

01:15:35

And we can see how it works its way into politics. And it creates a lot of confusion. So, that's my take on the

01:15:41

John Piper article. Hope you enjoyed that. Go ahead and go sign that petition.

01:15:48

Not this one, not the one that I have here, not the Pro -Life Evangelicals for Biden, this one, the

01:15:53

Ask Liberty University to Release a Statement on Biblical Justice. Go ahead and go sign that. You can find the link in the info section.

01:16:01

And think about whether or not you wanna take a measure like this, maybe with your church or Christian organization that you're part of.

01:16:07

So, hope that was helpful to you. Lots more content coming this week. Hopefully, you're looking forward to that.