Pope Francis’ Inclusivism and the Little Boy Reviewed, Open Phones, Many Topics

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. I had cued this video up, I think, yesterday morning, and then it started going viral today, or maybe last night. I think someone had said to me on Twitter, one of the only reasons that I continue to use Twitter, get some good resource links and things like that.

Pope Francis, Inclusivism, and the Question of Salvation

I have been saying for a very, very, very long time, before Pope Francis became the Bishop of Rome, that the majority of the prelates, the magisterium of the Roman Church, have abandoned historic Roman Catholic doctrine on the issue of who goes to heaven and who does not.

I don't think there's any question about this. You still have conservatives. They tend to be the ones involved in apologetics, obviously. Liberals don't do apologetics. They're apologizing, not doing apologetics.

And the two perspectives that you can have as a liberal would generally fall into the categories of inclusivism and universalism. Now, universalism's fairly straightforward. No one's going to be punished.

No one's going to be lost. There is salvation for everyone. There might be a punishment for a period of time, but everyone will experience redemption. That's certainly not the teaching, historically, of the Roman Catholic Church.

No one can seriously suggest that it ever has been. Inclusivism is a little bit harder, I think, for people to wrap their minds around, especially if you've been raised in a conservative environment. I debated John Sanders, an inclusivist, a number of years ago at a place called The Grind, as I recall.

That was interesting. I wonder what ever happened to those shoes I wore that night. But anyway, it was an interesting place. It was a youth place, and it was... Anyway, there are Roman Catholic and Protestant inclusivists.

And I would say the majority, large majority, of the Roman Catholic leadership falls into one of these two categories. Inclusivism is the idea that included in the salvific work of Christ will be all people who make a positive faith movement toward God.

And of course, people want to know, well, what does movement toward God mean? What would constitute that? Well, there's obviously a range of inclusivism, too. But basically, if you have any positive actions in your life, you can be an atheist.

You can be members of other religions. If you positively respond to what might be called general revelation, even if you don't knowingly exercise faith and repentance toward the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who reveals himself in Jesus Christ, then that is considered to be faith toward God and faith toward Jesus.

And so you are included by that activity in salvation. And it means that there is an inclusion of many people who've never even heard of Jesus, simply because they have made a positive move toward God in some sense.

This gets rid of all sorts of problems, obviously, but at the same time allows you to assert the necessity and importance of the salvific work of Christ and the cross and things like that. These things are necessary, but what isn't necessary is basically a faith and repentance.

The faith simply becomes any type of positive movement toward God, and repentance becomes really completely redefined. So if a person, so even if an atheist does some kind of good works, again, we would say biblically, what is a good work?

And when you have a meaning, there is no meaningful doctrine of God's transcendence, God's holiness, sin, inclusivism has to undo all of those things. And people are very happy to allow it to do that, obviously, those are doctrines that bother people greatly.

But any good work, even of an atheist, is considered to be a positive faith response to God's general revelation. That means you believed in Jesus, and that means you will receive eternal life. So I think the cardinals, the bishops, the priests, the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, the vast majority of them, more than two-thirds, maybe more than that, I would say two-thirds fall into one of those two camps.

And I would say the inclusivistic camp is larger. So there, I think, are a lot of inclusivists who read the doctrines and teachings of even Vatican II and earlier elements of Roman Catholic teaching with a lens on that allows them to see this teaching, even though historically we know that's not what they meant.

That's not what was being taught in the past in any way. But they feel the freedom to be able to do this, mainly because they know that there are so many others like them, and Rome simply doesn't take action against these folks, and so why not?

I have said, you know, Ratzinger, as the head of what was formerly called the Inquisition, was a conservative Roman Catholic prelate, and Francis couldn't be any more different from Ratzinger than he is.

Francis is very liberal, and if we didn't have clear, documented evidence from his own mouth of his embrace of inclusivism, I know some people would say, well, he's a universalist, and I know he's made comments about atheists before, but when you listen to what he's said and what we're going to listen to right now, you will see the necessary element of that doing of good deeds.

It's still there. So he may be a universalist, but what he's enunciating is inclusivism. And if you've seen the video, the video was put out by the Catholic News Service. It is a touching video. Of course, they've put piano music in the background, you know, to enhance the kindly elderly man, and it's a heart-wrenching situation.

We don't know what the background is. Some people might say, ah, it's all a setup. I don't know. I sort of doubt that, given the way the boy is acting, but he is given the opportunity to ask the Pope a question.

He can't, so he goes up and whispers it in his ear, and they have this sweet situation of conversation, and then the Pope explains. He says he asked him permission to tell everyone publicly what was said.

In fact, now I remember where I actually saw this. It was someone in Channel yesterday morning posted this link and said, can anyone verify that what the subtitles say is actually what's being said? That's why I looked at it initially.

It just dawned on me as I looked at the chat channel. And you don't have to read or understand Italian or Spanish or anything else. You can tell that what is being said and translated on the screen is clear.

It is accurate. And so here you have a young boy, his father has died, and his father has died as an atheist, and he's asking the Pope, is my daddy in heaven? Now look, I've seen some really disappointingly shallow comments on social media about this video.

These kinds of questions are not easy questions for anyone to answer, and your hatred for the Pope may be such that you're glad he gets hit with something like that, but you have a real life situation here with a young boy with a very serious question, and sadly he's going to the wrong person to answer it.

But we live in a fallen and broken world, and these things are going to happen. And what I want you to note is the focus in the Pope's comments on what the father did. He's going to say he had a father's heart.

Well, how did he show that father's heart? He showed that father's heart by the fact that even though he was an atheist, he had his four children baptized. And that's where I think we have the very clear connection to inclusivism.

He wasn't just an atheist who lived his life in hatred of God. Here is an atheist who because of his, he was a good man. We have obvious differences with the Pope, biblically speaking, about what makes a good man.

But he was a good man because he had his children baptized. Well, an atheist would say he was just wildly inconsistent. But the point is the Pope emphasizes this as the grounds of his answer, his inclusivistic answer, to this young child.

And so this is, I think, important to understand as to the nature of inclusivism. And so let's, I guess I have to blow this up here. Oh, you've got it? Okay. Here is what the Catholic News.

Service put out. Including a boy named Emanuele.

Okay. I just lost myself. I realize some people.

Listen. And therefore, if I just let the video run, that's not going to help you out any. The Pope said that he asked permission of the young boy to publicly explain the question and his answer. And he says, so I will tell you.

He asked a little while ago, my father passed away. He was a non-believer, but he had all four of his children baptized. He was a good man. His dad in heaven. His father wasn't a believer, but he had his children baptized.

He had a good heart. And he wonders if his father, because he wasn't a believer, is in heaven. The one who says who goes to heaven is God. But what is God's heart like with a dad like that? What, what do you think?

A father's heart. God has a dad's heart. And with a dad who was not a believer, but who baptized his children and gave them that bravura, do you think God would be able to leave him far from himself? Do you think?

Speak up, come on. Does God abandon his children? Does God abandon his children when they are good? There, that is the answer. God surely was proud of your father because it is easier as a believer to baptize your children than to baptize them when you are not a believer.

Surely this pleased God very much. Talk to your dad, pray to your dad. So there is the video that has sort of gone viral. And again, I would very much counsel, care in how you address a subject like this.

I fear at times that there is such a tremendous animosity on the part of some toward the Roman system and the Pope that we lose our, our grace when addressing a subject like this. I've seen, I've seen this on, on Twitter.

I'm not going to name any names, but you have to recognize the difficulty of the question and the difficulty of the situation. But what it does is it gives us a real insight. Now, I, to head off the blog posts from the Roman Catholic apologists and the liberals, what the Pope says in a context like this is technically not infallible.

The Pope does not define dogma by answering a child's question. The whole concept of papal infallibility is, in my opinion, one of the most useless doctrines ever defined by Rome. Because the reality is, no matter how clearly the Pope may teach something, it's later generations that get to determine whether he was heretical or not.

And once you've defined that he can't be heretical by nature, then if the Pope was wrong, he wasn't speaking as a Pope. If his Pope was right, he was speaking as a Pope. It's, it's an, it's a belief that cannot be refuted because it doesn't mean anything.

And when Roman Catholics say, I'm just so thankful to have the, the living voice, the Pope to tell us what to believe, you don't. You don't, because if you believe what the Pope says now about this, you're believing something that a Pope 100 years ago would have said was completely wrong.

And I would say every Pope up until at least 60 years ago would have said was wrong. So you may pretend that that man is some living voice of interpretation. He is tradition. But the reality is, it doesn't work.

And that's the whole essence of the problem with abandoning Sola Scriptura is what you put in its place does not provide you with what you think it provides you. So that's the first thing. I'm not saying, ah, see, here, here the Pope is defining a new doctrine or something like that.

But it is plain as day. If you're an honest Roman Catholic, it is plain as day that Francis is an inclusivist. He doesn't believe what Trent taught. He doesn't believe what the, the bishops of Rome taught all the way up through at least in the last century and Toto without question, without dispute, he has a different perspective.

And you can excuse that if you want and say, well, but it's not a fit. You can, anything you want, but the reality is that's where he stands. And his words made that very clear. You heard him saying, good man, good heart.

And how is this demonstrated? He had his children baptized. That could have been a cultural thing. But the reality is this man has an anthropology that is not derived from scripture. It is derived from his very, very humanistic leftist political perspectives.

And he is allowed that to determine his reading of the theology he is supposed to be the protector of and the definer of. And that's another one of the problems in having the alleged papacy being your final authority in all things, which in Roman Catholicism, that's what it boils down to.

No matter, I've met, I talked to Roman Catholic just within the past eight or nine months, just refused to recognize the final authority of the Bible without being able to define how he would ever know.

The whole point is that Bishop of Rome gets to define the church's teaching. There are a lot of Roman Catholics today, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They realize they can't go to sola scriptura.

They can't go to that unchanging standard. And they don't have an unchanging standard in the papacy anymore. They have an incoherent system, but they're doing their best to hold on with what they don't really have anymore.

Anyway, but you caught very plainly and very clearly in his words what has been said by earlier popes as well, but especially by him. This man was God's child. Well, if you mean that in the sense that all of us are God's children, as in he created us, that's one thing.

That's not how he's using it. The biblical teaching is you become a child of God by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. That's not what the pope believes. Everybody is, automatically. He did something that plainly showed a good heart, which you can have in Roman, in his understanding of Roman Catholicism.

Obviously not an Augustinian, he's a Jesuit. You can have a good heart in and of yourself. It doesn't require that radical work of the Holy Spirit of God, any of that type of stuff. You can have that good heart.

And because he did that and had that good heart, then God will not want him to be far from him. That is separated from him. He will not only take him to heaven, but you heard him say, you can pray to your dad.

You can pray to your dad, which I found really odd because from a, from an Orthodox Roman Catholic perspective, it's the saints that hear prayers. So I'm not sure if the pope just sainted this guy for having baptized his children, but any bishop of Rome up until the last century would have recoiled in horror at the expression of this doctrine and this theology.

But like I said, go back in history, you've got Pope Honorius writing letters, explaining theology to people as the bishop of Rome teaches a heresy known as monothelitism. For 400 years when you became pope, you had to anathematize him by name to become pope.

Yet despite that, the church defines infallibility of the pope today, even though Honorius, they consider to be one of the actual chain of popes. But you see, he only did that in letters. He didn't do it officially.

How are you supposed to know what the pope actually believes? I'd say what we just watched, really, it communicates to us what Pope Francis believes. More so, I would say, than an encyclical that he has to run through all the internal stuff of the Vatican.

That's what he believes. There's no question about it. All the pretense is gone. And what Honorius believed was communicated in those letters. What that means is you can never know in this life what you're supposed to actually believe if you trust in the concept of an infallible pope.

If he's your final answer, you'll never know, not in this life. If you had believed what Honorius said, based upon a letter he wrote to you, you would have been in error. If you believe what Francis says, same thing, even from an orthodox Roman Catholic perspective.

The whole idea of the infusion of grace, the whole idea of Honorius, it's just not there in this whole story of this man's experience. Now, I'll make a few more comments, but I want to go ahead and open the phones, because that's the primary thing we're going to be doing today, is that this particular video.

We didn't do phones last time. We did a nearly two-hour program on a tough subject, so we'll open the phones at 877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number if you want to give us a call. But how do you respond to a young child like this?

Well, obviously, I don't think that having him parading in a public situation like this is the best way of handling something like this. Of course, you're talking about the Pope here, so you're getting a tremendous opportunity from their perspective to get blessing from God.

But the best way to deal with these issues is not to lie to children. When you have the issue come up of a child who dies as an infant, when you are asked to do a funeral in that type of situation, it's a similar type of very complex situation.

With the parents in an infant death situation, the vast majority of them simply want you as a minister to exercise an authority you do not have to basically pass their loved one into heaven as if you have that capacity, you have that ability to do that, which you don't.

But that's what they want. And there's tremendous pressure put upon you because you know exactly what they want. And when someone is grieving, is that really the time to be theologically accurate? Yeah, it is.

That was one of the issues I struggled with greatly when I worked as a hospital chaplain many years ago now. The pressure that was placed upon you to simply tell people what they wanted to hear, not what the truth was, but what they wanted to hear was overwhelming.

And I think being a hospital chaplain is one of the hardest things anyone could ever do. And I would have a hard time condemning someone who gives into that pressure because I saw it. I experienced it.

I remember one dark night in the cancer ward with a family right at the point of death of the loved one. And this young lady, it was just so clear exactly what she wanted to hear from me. But exactly what she wanted to hear from me is not what she was going to need a year later or two years later or five years later.

In fact, exactly what she wanted to hear at that particular point in time may have been absolutely detrimental to her a year from then, two years from then, five years from then. Now, of course, when you're a hospital chaplain, you're probably never going to see him again.

So you can sort of go, but if you take a more eternal view of things. Now, so many of these instances, you're talking about people who aren't in the church. They're not in a meaningful, grounded church to begin with.

And your hope, of course, is that someday they will be. And so you have to keep that in mind in the answers that you provide. In this situation, the only answer is the gospel. To a young person, you point them to Christ and you answer by saying, God is holy.

God is just. And God is a forgiving God. Nehemiah 9, God is a forgiving God. But he is a forgiving God, consistent with his own nature, consistent with what is revealed about himself. And that's why the cross exists.

You see, Rome's emptying of the cross of its inherent biblical meaning, by making it a repetitious thing that never perfects anyone, robs its people of a real answer to the toughest questions. When you can present the cross for what it was.

Now, for a little child, these may be things that you express in the simplest way you can and say, we'll talk more about it as you grow older and can understand more things. It's not bad to tell young children that there are certain things in life that they should not be dealing with at this point in time, even though they've experienced tragedies in their life.

Wait, grow, learn, mature. That's what's so grossly destructive about the attitude that we have right now in our society that says that four and five-year-olds can determine their own gender to the point where we will mutilate their bodies based upon their own choices.

It's just absurd that the children are now running the society when you make, when you do things like that. Anyway, when the time is right, then you focus upon what God has done in Christ Jesus and what he calls each one of us to do.

And that we should not allow anyone who has gone before us to keep us from doing what is right before God. But what you don't do is basically remove the gospel from your answer, which is what Francis did.

Now, Francis doesn't have a gospel. He doesn't have a finished work of Christ. He may have a cross on the ring on his finger, but the meaning of that cross has been thoroughly redefined by Roman Catholic theology and tradition.

So leaving that to the side, in the real world, when you're talking with someone who's experienced something like this, you point them to the fact that the cross demonstrates both God's justice and his goodness.

That that empty tomb is sufficient to explain why there will be some who will experience by God's grace his presence and eternal life and others will not. God's big enough. God is big enough to answer those big questions.

But like I said, I would really, I would highly, highly encourage folks who have taken this video and just used it as a simplistic permission to blast the Pope to rethink, in light of the context, your actions.

And instead, to more carefully hear what was said and to identify what inclusivism is so you can hear it. Because it's not just Roman Catholics who believe it. It's not only very popular amongst liberal Protestants, but sadly, I would say it has a life of its own, even amongst conservative Protestants.

I think you will encounter people in your own churches who have adopted this attitude out of having a lack of comfort in the goodness of God and how to hold the goodness of God, the grace of God, and the justice and mercy of God, and the wrath of God against sin, how to hold all that together.

Well, it's all held together in the God-man. It's all held together in the cross. So, you've got to have a proper understanding of that to make all that work. So, just some thoughts on the issue. And yep, we're ready to go here.

Jesus Sanctified Himself in His High Priestly Work

And I'm assuming we need to go for as far—those who are the farthest away, yes? Yeah, okay. So, let's talk to Gregory.

Hi, Gregory. Good day, Dr. White. How are you? I'm rejoicing in the name of Jesus Christ. What about you? That's always a good thing to do. Amen. God bless you, brother, and God bless the mission. God bless Rich Pace and everybody associated with your ministry and the families as well.

Thank you. Now, first of all, yes, first of all, I would like to say—I'd like to ask a question, but two issues, but quickly as possible. The first one is, Jesus being sanctified in His blood, like I've heard you talk more than once.

I would like to know, what does that really mean? When did it happen? Did it happen on the cross, or did it happen after His resurrection, at His ascension? And what are the implications of Jesus Christ being sanctified by His blood?

Because that is something that has been on my mind, as I've heard you talk on it. Well, two things. It.

Comes up in—primarily in two places—in Jesus' High Priestly Prayer in John chapter 17, where He specifically says that He sanctifies Himself, He sets Himself apart, that very term, sanctification, set apart unto a specific purpose.

And I think there, its primary emphasis is upon the fact that Jesus knows what is coming. He knows what He's going to accomplish. The reason, for example, that He sweats, as it were, drops of blood in the garden—there's a textual variant there, but assuming that it's there—that He struggles so in prayer is not fear of death.

There are many men who have very bravely faced their own deaths. There's got to be something more. And the more is the sinless second person of the Godhead, having become incarnate, becoming sin for us, being treated as a sinner by the Father in our place.

Our sin's imputed to Him, His righteousness is imputed to us. So it is that transaction that He has sanctified Himself to. It's necessary for Him to go to Jerusalem and endure these things. And that's the same reference, I think, in Hebrews 10 .29, where it's making reference to that blood by which He, Jesus, is set apart, that one sacrifice which earlier in chapter 10, we are told, perfects those for whom it is made.

By that one testament, we have been sanctified, we have been made holy, we have been set apart. This is the whole argument coming to its climax there in Hebrews chapter 10. And so, when did that happen?

Well, it would, I suppose if you wanted to absolutely nail down a specific point, it would be between the garden and Jesus is saying, Tetelestai, it is finished. It would be in the voluntary, purposeful, self-giving of the Son, which I guess you could say is at the very point of death, but I would say really is seen in that submission to the Father in the garden, and then the entire, you know, betrayal and arrest and beating and trial and then crucifixion would be the entirety of that redemptive act that Jesus accomplishes.

And so, it's related, as I understand it, to the fact that the Son keeps saying, it is necessary, it is necessary. He understands what the price of redemption is going to be. And that also removes one of the objections that many people have in saying, I can't see why you put so much emphasis upon this if Jesus knew what was going to happen.

If God's God knows the future, there was no problem here. And that ignores the reality of the incarnation itself. Even having knowledge of future events doesn't change the fact that the Son voluntarily endures this substitutionary act, knowing what it is going to entail.

You don't have to have the, our limitation of knowledge of future events for that to be a real self-giving and a real trial that results in Jesus's prayer in the garden and all the associated things with it.

So, Gregory? Hello?

Yes. Okay, yes. I think I might have a little time delay here with the internet. Yes, okay. Okay, yes. So, and the implication of that is that he will be able to serve as our high priest. Yes. Okay, but, okay, lastly, lastly, I would like to ask, lastly.

You have said in the past that where the Trinity is concerned, because of the nature of the three persons of the Trinity, because their nature is infinite, therefore they're shared in the same nature totally and completely and exhaustively.

They're all shared the same nature.

I normally use the term being specifically, but yes, the being of God is unlimited by time and space and is shared fully by each of the three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. Yes.

Right, and I fully agree with that. I fully believe that. But I would like to know as well, because this thought also occurred in my mind. The personhood, the three personhoods of the Trinity, they are not shareable, I think.

So does that mean while the nature is infinite, the personhood are finite?

That's an interesting question. I don't know how you would define personhood without reference to nature. The persons are identifiable and distinct from one another. And if you were to say that the persons were infinite, there would be no way of differentiating them from one another.

So I'm not sure that the terminology is what's appropriate there, because when we talk about personhood, we're talking about those things which identify and distinguish. And I guess in the sense that God's nature can be identified and distinguished from its creation, from what He has created, that's one aspect to it.

But when you say shareable, yeah, because if you shared personhood, then it's no longer definitional of one person. So there's a definitional issue here in the way we're using words that is introducing some confusion, I think, because if my personhood was shareable, I wouldn't be the person that I am.

So by definition, I would say no, but not because of an intrinsic limitation on the person, but upon how we're describing that person and how we're identifying that person. It's difficult to talk about, because for us, our personhood is limited not only in time and space, but limited as to duration of time, very short period of time, and our being is limited as well.

So we're reasoning from down below towards something far greater than ourselves, and very frequently that can cause a problem. Okay, Dr. Webb, thank you very much, I really appreciate your time, and God bless you.

And thank you very much. Thanks for calling, Gregory. God bless you. Okay, God bless you. 877 -753 -33—you know, it's quarter till, but we'll see what we got here. Let's talk to Adam. Hi, Adam. Hello, Dr. White.

Yes, sir.

Responding to Accusations in the MLK 50 Controversy

As for the dividing line in your interaction and the comments with the MLK 50 situation, and I just kind of ask, how can you not come to call these guys out on, you know, questioning their salvation based on their comments, you know, the type of uncharitable things they're saying?

Well, because it's not my place. I'm not the judge. We're all going to stand before God, and I'm concerned because it does seem that for some—I'm assuming—let's begin here—I'm assuming that we're talking about individuals who make a specific claim to be followers of Jesus Christ.

And so, since I don't know them in the vast majority of situations, I simply have to go with that claim. Many of them are pastors of churches that have orthodox statements of faith, so I'm going to have to start with the assumption that if they have a statement of faith that is an orthodox statement of faith, that they actually believe that.

Now, I could be wrong. They may be reinterpreting it. I don't know, but I have to start someplace. That's the nature of social interaction these days, and I choose to try to think the best until I am disabused of that.

That may be a weakness on my part, but I don't, you know, I'm—the older I get, the less—the older I get, the more the eternal state is real to me, because it's right around the corner. And I'm going to be encountering these individuals.

At least, I think I'm going to be encountering these individuals in the eternal state, and I don't want to have to be going through a whole bunch of stuff saying, I'm sorry. So, if they say they're Christians, then I'm going to leave the rest to God.

If they are teaching something that is going to fundamentally impact in a negative fashion the church, and the fellowship of the church, and the proclamation of the gospel, I will address that. But you see, the real tendency on all of our parts, and me as a younger person too, but the tendency on the part of all of us is to assume, if you disagree with me on this, and I think this is just so clear and so vital, if you disagree with me on this, then you just must not be a Christian.

Well, if the New Testament says that, if the New Testament makes that application, if when Paul talks about false brothers, Pseudo-Delphoi and Galatians 2, and identifies the gospel as a dividing line that truly must be observed, okay, then that's what we need to do.

But as you know, in many of these situations, what you're really dealing with is an application issue where, you know, I think that what we're dealing with in critical race theory and things like that, as it comes into the church, is a gospel issue.

But that doesn't mean that I'm assuming that everyone I'm talking to, or even that I disagree with, is being consistent in the application of these things. So they may, on one hand, fully believe that they are made right before God, solely on the merits of Jesus Christ, solely by His grace, solely by faith.

They bring an empty hand of faith to God. And then on the other hand, they may not be making a consistent application of that in light of their personal experiences, their heroes, who said X, Y, or Z, whatever it might be, I have to recognize that there's going to be inconsistencies there, just as there are inconsistencies other places.

I point out the inconsistencies, which they may not like, and which may result in their attacking me and attacking my character and saying all sorts of false things about me. Well, you know what? That happens in the New Testament.

It's happened down through church history. I can't think of anyone who's ever stood up and tried to do anything in service for the church that that hasn't happened to them. And as Christians, you give it to the and you stay focused upon Him.

I've told the story before, but I'll tell it again real quickly. I was in Bible college, I was on staff at a really super big, large church. There was a assistant pastor in the staff who was sort of really the pastor of the church.

I mean, if you really really need to talk to somebody, this is the guy that you'd go talk to, the guy who did the preaching, you really wouldn't get to see him much. But I saw him horribly mistreated by another staff member in front of half the staff.

And when he went into his office, my little office was right across the hallway from him, so I followed him in. And I said, how do you put up with that? How do you survive that? And I'll never forget what he said to me.

He's passed on since this time. And I got to have lunch with him, I don't know, about a year before he died, and I reminded him of this. And he didn't remember it, of course, but I reminded him of it.

Of course, in his own droll way, he said, those are really good words of wisdom, wish I had remembered them. But he looked at me and he said, Jim, if you ever get your eyes off the shepherd and onto the sheep, you will burn out of the ministry very quickly.

And I've tried to remember that because I think it's quite true. We focus upon Christ, we focus upon His calling in our lives. And we warn the church because if we see things coming that are detrimental, and I feel that this movement is detrimental to the church, that's why I've addressed it.

It's not something I want to address. It's not something I wake up in the morning and go, oh, good, I wonder what slander has been posted about me on the internet today. It's the farthest thing from my mind.

But I am convinced that it is a real danger. And so I've tried to address it. I don't want to create enemies, but I recognize that when you stand for the truth, that's going to happen at times. I want to be open to any brother or sister of any color or ethnic background that comes to me and says, I want to make sure that you and I do not have a division between us about these things.