Social Justice's Abuse of Scripture by Russell Fuller

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Again, to say how grateful I am to be here. I want to thank the Johnsons.
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I want to thank Keith and Julie Johnson for hosting me, John, and David. We appreciate their hospitality and we've really enjoyed being with them.
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So this evening, I want to talk about how social justice twists the scriptures in order to get their positions.
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Obviously, social justice is not in the scriptures. The Me Too movement is not in the scriptures.
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The racial reconciliation, or really the Christian version of critical race theory, these things are not in scriptures.
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But what people want to do is they want to make it appear that this is scriptural doctrine.
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And so what I'm going to do is just look at a few instances of how people interpret scripture in order to justify these things.
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And so first, I want to read a portion of scripture from 2 Peter. Here, Peter is talking about the writings of Paul, and he says, there are in them, meaning the writings of Paul, there are in them some things that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their destruction as they do the other scriptures.
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Clearly, Peter sees Paul's writings as scriptures. His writings are like the other scriptures.
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And he notices that people will twist the scriptures,
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Paul's writings, to their own destruction. And so this evening, as we look at some passages, we're going to see the twisting of scripture in order to get this.
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If you were to look historically, if you were to look, for instance, at some of the early church writers, they're called the church fathers.
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If you were to look at them, or if you were to look at the reformers, even writers in the 1800s and the early part of the 1900s, you will not see these types of interpretations.
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These are all new novel interpretations. Because, again, they have to do this for their new novel ideas that, again, they're trying to bring into the church.
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And so with that, the first thing I would like to look at I will call just social justice, okay?
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And the favorite prophet of the social justice folks are usually
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Amos. Amos is usually the prophet that they will quote. And so I want to quote from a man who taught at Gordon -Cottonwell
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Seminary College in Massachusetts. And it's from their senior professor of ethics.
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His name is Eldon Villafane. And here's what he says. Amos had a passion for justice.
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He was a prophet par excellence of social justice, you see.
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And what he does, he interprets two passages. And so we'll look at those two passages. Let me just, first of all, give a sort of a definition for social justice.
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Social justice is justice in relation to a fair balance in the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individual rights are recognized and protected.
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Notice, again, the fair balance of distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges.
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Again, this sounds very much, again, socialistic, and that's the way social justice has been understood as more of pushing more of a socialistic notion, that we need to redistribute wealth in a fair way.
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The way it's been done in the past is always unfair. Now we're going to do it in a fair way, you see. This type of thing.
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And so, now what Christians will try to do sometimes before I do this, is they'll try to somehow take that term and we'll call it redeeming that term.
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And so what they'll do is they'll put a word in front of it, like biblical. So if you say biblical social justice, it goes down a little more easily, shall we say, okay?
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And we'll accept it if you just put biblical in front of it. And for this, a guy named
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Kevin DeYoung, who again is one of the main guys at the
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Gospel Coalition, he did this. He wrote several articles on social justice.
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And then he tries to sort of salvage it by putting the word biblical in front of it.
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And he admits, he goes, the word social justice, he goes, it's nebulous, it arouses suspicion, and so forth.
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And indeed it does because, again, when you see the background of where this word comes from, it's loaded with, again, very secular, very
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Marxist -leaning viewpoints, you see. So what he tries to do is he tries to, again, reclaim it.
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And here's what he says, for simplicity's sake, let's take biblical social justice to mean something like treating people equitably, working for systems and structures that are fair, and looking out for the weak and the vulnerable.
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Of course, really, this does not actually clarify or, it doesn't make it more simple to do this.
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Matter of fact, it complicates, it confuses people when you do this. The word social justice has, really, a meaning.
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And he even admits it's nebulous and so forth. But really, it's not that nebulous. Social justice has a distinct meaning in society.
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And by putting biblical in front of it, what you've done is you've introduced a contradiction. You can't have social justice, it's not biblical, you see.
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It's like saying, how about if we say biblical theft? You see, biblical theft is a contradiction.
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I mean, you can't hold to theft and you can't hold to the Bible at the same time. And just because you put a word like biblical in front of it, doesn't redeem the word, you see, or the phrase.
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And so this leads to confusion. Moreover, where are we going to look up these types of terms?
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How are we going to truly establish such terms? It's very confusing to use language that already has sort of a fixed, established meaning, and then try to put our own spin on it and somehow try to redeem the phrase for Christians, you see.
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It leads to confusion. It leads to problems. But now getting back to Eldon Villafane, let me give you the scripture.
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He's commenting here on Amos chapter 1 verse 3. For three transgressions of Damascus and for I will not revoke its punishment because they thresh
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Gilead with implements of sharp iron. His comment on this passage is this.
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He says, this is a condemnation of buying and selling of weapons. Cruelty and violence among nations has been institutionalized and commercialized by modern threshing slushes of iron that represent the lucrative market of weapons or armaments of war.
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And he says, of course, this view to him, this is a passage that is condemning the market of weapons and the armaments of war.
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If anything, if you're going to go by his interpretation, it's really condemning farming equipment because it's describing here farming equipment that apparently was used to torture people with, you see.
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And that's what Amos is actually talking about. He's talking about, again, he describes them as threshing implements, okay?
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This is farming equipment. This is not weapons of war. This is farming equipment. And it was being used to commit atrocities by torturing and murdering people through these things.
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It's not a condemnation of the market of weapons or the armaments of war or things of this nature.
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You can see he has an idea that he wants to condemn. He does not like arms trades, okay?
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He doesn't like that. And what he's doing is, in the name of social justice, he's reading that into the text, you see.
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Or let me give you another example. This is Amos 1 .6. Again, it says, thus says the Lord, for three transgressions of Gaza and for four,
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I will not revoke the punishment that they carried into exile a whole people to deliver them up to Edom.
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Now, Edom was a small country back in, of course, biblical days.
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And the Edomites were the arch enemies of the Judeans, the southern Israelis.
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And when they had opportunity to attack Judah, they would, but they usually did not have a large enough army to really face them in battle.
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But if they did have an opportunity to make a raid or something like that, they did. And again, they were viewed in many parts of Old Testament history as sort of the arch enemies of Judah.
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But what you have here is that a country that had a treaty with Judah, they broke the treaty and then gave over a whole population to the
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Edomites. And again, being their arch enemies, this would again, these people would be treated atrociously, okay?
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Tortured, murdered, all those kinds of things. But here's the comments of Professor Villafane.
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He says, this is talking about the globalization of markets.
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And here's what he says. The breaking of treaties is seen clearly in many nations whose loyalty is dictated not by covenant or treaty among sovereigns, but by the sovereign and universal globalization of the markets.
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Modern treaties are not worth the paper which they're written on if the god Mammon reigns.
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And so again, you can see he doesn't like what he calls the globalization of markets.
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And what he does is he just reads this right in the passage. This says nothing about the globalization of markets.
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And furthermore, when it says, he talks about, see, in the good old days, he goes, there was these treaties among sovereigns.
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That's exactly what this passage is talking about. They had a treaty and it was broken, you see.
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So again, his interpretation here is guided, he's so overcome, as it were, by his view of social justice and the evils that he perceives, that he wants to condemn, that he takes scripture and he just twists it.
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He reads into it in order to get his position. But it's not there.
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This passage is not saying anything about the globalization of markets and things of that nature.
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It's talking about the atrocity of giving up a population to a people who are going to torture and murder them.
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I mean, that's exactly what this is talking about. This is a betrayal of a covenant, you see.
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This is a betrayal that's being described here, not something about worldwide sales or something like this, global companies and so forth.
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We might have our differences with global companies and so forth. I understand that. But that's not what this passage is teaching.
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It's very much, again, a twisting of scripture in order to get our ideas.
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The next one I want to describe that has come up recently, and again, it's really part of social justice, and that is what's called the
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Me Too movement. And with the Me Too movement, it became sort of famous around, what, 2015 with this
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Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein, I believe it was. And many women have now accused him of rape and so forth.
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Of course, if you've kept up with that trial, I think apparently, lately he's overturned his conviction in New York.
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But he's not out of trouble yet, of course. But the problem, of course, was there were ladies who wanted to work in Hollywood.
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And in order to, let's say, get ahead, they had relationships with Harvey, okay?
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That's what was going on. When they didn't get the jobs they wanted, now they claimed it was rape and so forth.
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I mean, that's what we're basically talking about. And the passage in scripture that people use for the
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Me Too movement, it's a very strange one, but it's one that you hear today. And again,
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I did some research on this. I went back and looked at the old rabbis, okay? The rabbis that are,
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I'm not talking about modern rabbis, but I'm talking about the ones before Christ and the ones up to about 1000
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AD. Looking to see what their interpretation of David and Bathsheba.
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Does any of the old rabbis call that rape? The answer is no.
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And then again, I looked at the early Christian writers, looked at the reformers and the
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Puritans and the others, nothing. It's not till about 1980 that I can find people who will say things like that David raped
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Bathsheba. The person I'm gonna quote this time is a pastor who, very close to here,
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I think he's retired now, of course, and that's John Piper. John Piper teaches that David raped
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Bathsheba. Let me read what he says here. Yes, I think there are pointers that David exerted a kind of pressure on her to warrant the accusation of rape.
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And I don't say that because I think the act couldn't be consensual given the power dynamics at play.
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That's the key term, the power dynamics. The idea is this,
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David was the king. He had power, she didn't have power. And even if it's consensual, it can still be regarded as rape.
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This is the Me Too movement in a nutshell. In other words, you have a superior, you have an inferior in position.
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And what you have is, they call it the power dynamics at play. And therefore, even though it might have been consensual at the time, it was actually rape, you see.
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And so this is the notion. And John Piper says, there's two things in the text that he believes justifies the idea that David raped
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Bathsheba. First, it says he took her, okay? It says he took her.
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This word does not mean to rape. And frequently, it means to summon, to fetch, to use an old
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English word. He fetched her, that's what he did. As a matter of fact, the usual word you see in the
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Old Testament that talks about marriage is to take. Like we say, he took her in marriage.
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You see the same thing in the Old Testament, you see. And so the word to take does not necessarily imply violence.
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There could be, but it does not in this case at all. And again, he's basing it on he took her.
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Secondly, he's basing it on the parable that Nathan says to David.
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And let me read that to you. There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor.
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The rich man had a great many flocks of herds, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb, which he bought and nourished, and it grew up together with him and his children.
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And he would eat of his bread and drink of his cup and lie in his bosom, and was like a daughter to him.
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Now a traveler came to a rich man, and he was unwilling to take from his own flock or his own herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him.
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Rather, he took the poor man's ewe lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. Now, I don't know if you heard raping there,
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I certainly didn't. So I don't know how to even respond to that. But he looks at that parable and he says, see, this is an indicator, a pointer of rape, but there's nothing in there.
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There's nothing in there, and here's what he says, he comments on this. I love that, I love
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Nathan. Nathan did not have to create a parable in which there was a single harmless pet lamb who wasn't just taken, which it was, but was taken and killed and eaten, in other words, he really recreated the adultery.
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It's interesting he uses that term at this time. In the categories of theft and killing, not Uriah's killing, that's an added evil, as it were.
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Bathsheba's killing represented by the little helpless pet lamb being killed and served up as a meal.
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So I would say for these two reasons, we are not exaggerating to use the word rape for David's abuse of power.
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And again, there's that power, that was the key to make it rape in his idea, in the indulgence of sinful lust, in the way he took
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Bathsheba. I think the better way to interpret this is to compare it with the story of Ammon and Tamar.
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If you look at that story, the Bible even uses the very word that it normally uses for rape there, okay?
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And so if you look at that story, and let me just read it very quickly, it's in 2 Samuel, chapter 13.
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When she brought them to him to eat, he took hold of her.
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Now this word to take hold of is literally to exert strength on her. He's overpowering her, as what is described here.
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And he said, come, lie with me, my sister. But she answered, no, my brother, do not violate me.
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And again, that's the word that you normally translate in Hebrew, rape, okay? For such a thing is not done in Israel.
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Notice she's raising her voice, you see, a very important biblical concept that you see in Deuteronomy.
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If a virgin raises her voice and says, you ought not do this, now we've got rape.
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But if she's quiet and she just goes along with it, the Bible does not see that as rape, it sees it as adultery, okay?
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And that's what you're seeing. She's doing exactly what the Bible describes in a rape situation, okay?
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But as for me, where could I get rid of my reproach? But as for you, you will be like one of the fools in Israel.
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Notice he's trying to reason with him. Hey, don't do this. Now therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you.
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However, he would not listen to her, since he was stronger than she, and he violated her and lay with her, and so forth.
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Then it talks about how the hatred. As much as Ammon had loved her, now he hates.
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And there's hatred between both of them, you see. When you compare this to the story of David and Bathsheba, you don't get these types of details.
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There's no indication of someone is overpowering someone else. The words for rape, they're simply not there, okay?
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There's no record of Bathsheba crying out. As a matter of fact, when she becomes pregnant, she informs
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David. And perhaps she didn't mean to, but that was almost signing the death warrant of her husband. Because David at that point knew that he had to do something to cover for this, and it was done by killing
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Uriah, of course. And so you see a major difference here, okay?
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Between the story of Ammon and Tamar, and David and Bathsheba, okay?
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And again, I've already told you, if you look in Deuteronomy, it talks about what you're supposed to do.
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You're supposed to cry out, and so forth. And again, Bathsheba looks like she's certainly not so angry at David that she doesn't inform him about the pregnancy and so forth, you see.
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So again, there's no evidence that what we have here is a rape. Piper is going strictly by, really, me -too standards, that he had the power, she didn't.
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When I was at Southern Seminary, one of our professors had an illicit relations with a student.
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And we had a special faculty meeting called, and we were informed that the professor was let go.
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And then Muller said something quite strange. She said he had control over her. And I really didn't understand what he was talking about.
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And then a month or two later, we had another meeting about this. And the reason we had another meeting is because the
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Baptist Press, which is really not the Baptist Press, it's the PR wing of the
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Southern Baptist Convention. They had published a piece in which they had talked about this professor and the student as an illicit relationship, a sinful relationship.
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And the lady threatened to sue through her lawyers, of course, the
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Baptist Press if they didn't change that. And the Baptist Press immediately changed it.
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And that's why we had the meeting, I believe. Where Muller came in and said she did nothing wrong, nothing at all.
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And when he was saying that, I was in shock. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, what
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Muller was saying. And the faculty member sitting behind me was a person who knew a lot of the details.
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He was the pastor of the professor. And so when the meeting was over,
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I turned around to the pastor and I said, innocent? And he rolled his eyes and he goes,
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Russell? It started when she was 26 years old and it went on for 12 years.
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They would rendezvous in Nashville and then rendezvous in Chicago. And you could tell he was not happy either.
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This was totally consensual. This was not rape. She's not innocent, you see.
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She wasn't like 12 years old. She was 26. The lawyers of the
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Southern Baptist Convention, they had been the lawyers of the Southern Baptist since the 60s, 1960s.
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And the lady involved in this wanted to talk to the, called the executive committee.
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And what she was wanting was money. She wanted money. And the lawyers, and of course the thing was there was obviously being threats of lawsuits and so forth.
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And so the lawyers of the Southern Baptist Convention said, no, no, no. Let's fight this one. We're not going to give in.
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Let's fight this one. And the executive committee said, no, we're not going to fight this one.
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She ended up with apparently somewhere around $1 .7 million, okay. And then the man behind this, they kept saying he's a sex abuser.
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He's a sex abuser. The lawyer said, stop saying that.
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He's going to drag you into court and you're going to be in big trouble. The executive committee didn't listen to the lawyers again.
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By the way, they're no longer the lawyers. They got so fed up with the Southern Baptist Convention, even though they served them for, since the 60s, they said, that's it.
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We're done with you guys. And they quit, you see. And indeed, what they said was exactly what happened.
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Now there's a, in the federal court in Tennessee, there's a case going on. Because they, the
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Southern Baptists, they had this group come in, investigate. They called him a sex abuser.
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It was a consensual relationship. But we're living in the Me Too age. She did nothing wrong.
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To have a man like Al Mohler stand up and say, a person who had a 12 year illicit relationship is completely innocent.
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That's where we are. And not just him, but the Southern Baptist Convention has basically said this.
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They have gotten up and said, this woman is the, really, the poster child of sex abuse in the
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Southern Baptist Convention. This is amazing, okay?
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This is what would have been perceived in the Southern Baptist Convention just 20 years ago as sin, adultery, you see.
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But today, she's made out as a hero in the Southern Baptist Convention, you see. And there's many other stories
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I could tell you about this. But again, it's the sad state in which we live in today.
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And so again, what we have is people like Russell Moore, people like Rachel Denhollander.
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These people are all, again, saying David raped Bathsheba and all of these things. And that's where we are.
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That's where we are. So anyway, that's David rape of Bathsheba. The next one I wanna talk about is a verse that's greatly misused.
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I'll quote it for you. I don't know what the title is. I'll call it diversity. And it is Revelation chapter five, verse nine.
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And they sing a new song saying, worthy are you to take the book and break its seals for you were slain and you purchased for God with your blood men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.
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And so this verse has become sort of the cry for diversity.
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So Danny Aiken, for instance, the president at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He quotes this verse and he says, that's why our goal at this seminary is in,
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I forgot how many years it was, maybe the next five years, I forgot what it was. To have 30 % minority students at the seminary.
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Now again, where in scripture do we have this? What we want to do is preach the gospel to all.
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And whom God calls into the ministry, that's who we want to train.
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Not, we're not looking for racial quotas here. We're not looking for affirmative action, whom
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God calls. I don't care who it is, from what race they are and so forth.
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Again, what the Bible teaches is, there is no Jew or Greek. Neither is there slave or free man, neither is there male or female.
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For you are all one in Christ Jesus. Now it's not saying here, there's no male and female.
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Yes, there's obviously male and female. But in Christ, it's our identity as a
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Christian that makes a difference. It's not whether we're a man, not whether we're a woman. We're either in Christ or we're out of Christ, you see.
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That's what's important. And it's not some type of partiality.
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At Southern Seminary, if you're a certain race, you can get free tuition. If you're not of that race, you don't get free tuition, you see.
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This is to me, this sounds like James to me. My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism or really it's partiality.
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Literally, the word is like to respect the face. So I look at your face and go one way,
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I look at this face over here, I do something else, you see. It's a sinful partiality.
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That's what the Bible condemns. And whether it's in the matters of race or whatever, if we have a partiality that's a sinful partiality, it's sin.
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It's just absolute sin, you see. And so that's what the Bible is talking about.
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And so again, to have a goal to have so many of this group and so many of that group and so forth, this is something the
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Bible does not teach. We want Christians in Christian schools and those who are called to the ministry.
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They're the ones and their race doesn't make any difference whatsoever, you see.
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Whom God saves and whom He calls into the ministry, that's who you want to train for the ministry, you see.
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And therefore, verses like this, they're making it as it were a command. They're reading the passage in Revelation 5, 9 as if it's some type of command.
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You must have diversity in your churches. I don't care where you are. Preach the gospel to all and whomever
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God brings in, glory be to God. But to say we've got to have so many of this, so many of that, our eldership needs to be, you know, 20 % this, 30 % that.
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No, that's not what Scripture teaches, you see. Again, race and things like this should not matter.
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We should be colorblind when it comes to the church.
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Now, that's another very controversial word, the word colorblind. Today, they call it racism.
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It's colorblind is racism. And again, I'll give you one more Southern story.
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Again, in a faculty meeting, Al Mohler called colorblindness racism.
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And immediately another faculty member, Mark Coppinger, raised his hand and goes, no, it's not. And about a month later, he was told his services were no longer needed at Southern Seminary.
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But Mark was right. Mark was absolutely right. The Scripture I read you, and I'll read you another one now,
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Romans chapter 10, verse 12, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same
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Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on him.
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See, that's what it's about right there. And that teaches a certain colorblindness, you see.
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So again, when it comes to the church and the things of God, race is not something that we should take into account in our hiring or in any other way, you see.
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Whether they should be an elder or not or Sunday school teacher, race doesn't, oh, we've got to have so many of, no, no, no, no, no, no.
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The Bible has biblical qualifications for teachers and so forth. Race is not a part of that, you see.
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And so again, it's important that sometimes you'll hear that Revelation 5, verse 9 as somehow a command that we've got to have affirmative action in our churches.
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And that's not what the Bible teaches. The next thing I want to discuss, the last thing
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I'm going to discuss, is what's called racial reconciliation. And again, this is just a
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Christian version of critical race theory, to be honest with you. Of course, the person whose name's been mentioned many times so far today,
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Jarvis Williams. I know Jarvis very well. I think Jarvis was in some of my classes. But anyway, here we go.
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I'm going to read to you, first of all, his definition of racial reconciliation.
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Here's what he says. As a result of sin, every relationship needs to be restored to the original state in which
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God intended before sin entered the creation. All races, not just black and white, scattered throughout the entire world need to be reconciled first to God and second to one another because of the universal impact of sin.
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This restoration is called reconciliation as it relates to the restoration of broken relationships between different races.
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It refers to racial reconciliation. So, first we need to be reconciled to God.
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And then we need to be reconciled, when he says to one another, he's talking about races need to be reconciled to each other.
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So we need to be reconciled to different races. But again, this is something you do not see in the
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Bible. Paul doesn't talk about being reconciled to the Romans and so forth. As a matter of fact, if you read some of...if
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you read one particular quote from Paul, my guess is
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Paul would be in a...I
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guess you'd call it a struggle session, if you know the term, he would be in big trouble for this. Listen to this quotation of Paul.
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We've quoted from Titus. I got another Titus quote for you today. He's talking about a certain race of people, if you like, a certain ethnic group.
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They're called the Cretans. You know the quote, don't you? They're always liars.
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They are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons.
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That's the...yes. Or Jesus. Or Jesus.
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He certainly does. This testimony is true. Or what about Jesus?
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Remember when he talks to the Canaanite woman? It's not good to give the crumbs to the dogs under the table.
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He's comparing her to a dog. And she makes a certain statement to that.
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She doesn't say, I'm a victim. No, she says, but Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs under the tables.
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In other words, hey, you can see it didn't turn her off at all.
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No, in faith, she would not be denied, you see. And the Lord says, your daughter is healed, you see.
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As you can see, Paul and Jesus, they just were not in tune to modern sensibilities.
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Now, I'm not saying, let's go out and be offensive just to offend people. No, the gospel has enough offense in it that it doesn't need further offense from us.
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But yet at the same time, let's understand, I mean, Paul does not need to be racially reconciled to the
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Cretans. Paul said what he said under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
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And it's true what he said, okay. You see, that's very cruel. Read Isaiah chapter one and look what he says about Judah at the time.
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That's rough language there, you see. Their seed of evildoers. I mean, he just keeps on and on.
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And then they'll talk about you rulers of Sodom, you leaders of Gomorrah, talking about, you know.
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The language you see from the apostles and the prophets, again, it is not in tune with modern sensibilities, you see, as we do this.
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But anyway, let me go ahead and I'll skip to his famous passage that he uses.
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And it's in Ephesians chapter two, verses 14 and 15. And maybe 16 as well.
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Yeah, 16 as well. And it's called One New Man. Okay, that's what he's describing.
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And let me just read the verses first. For he himself is our peace, who made both groups, and both groups meaning the
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Jews and the Gentiles, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in his flesh the enmity, which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in himself he might make the two, again,
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Jews and Gentiles, into one new man. And the one new man is a
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Christian. Okay, that's what it is. Thus establishing peace and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross by it having put to death the enmity.
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Now, again, the way Jarvis Williams wants to interpret this is he sees this as essential to racial reconciliation.
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Jesus not only died to reconcile us to God, but for races to be reconciled to one another here by the
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Jews and the Gentiles, okay? But again, if we look in scripture, look in the Old Testament, for instance,
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Israel's never told you need to be reconciled with the Babylonians, and none of that ever happens, of course.
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And even in the New Testament, there's nothing that, you know, when a person gets saved, they need to be, you know, reconciled to the
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Mongolians or, you know, this other group over here. It just doesn't say that. Yes, we need to be reconciled to each other if there's something, if there's a problem, if there's some offense between us, whether it's a person of the same race or of different races, of course, we want to get right with everyone that we can get right with, you know, certainly.
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But to say that now that you come to Christ, you have to be reconciled with, you know, this ethnic group and that ethnic group, it's just simply not in scripture.
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So, again, if you look at that passage that he's describing here, and it talks about that enmity, where did this enmity come from?
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And the answer is God. The enmity that's being described here between the
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Jews and the Gentiles was created by God in the sense that he chose Israel and he separated them from the nations.
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And he gave them laws that really distinguished them from all other peoples on the earth.
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And the laws in particular that distinguish Jews and Gentiles in the Old Testament are basically the ones you see in the book of Leviticus.
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It's those laws about clean and unclean, the foods that we can eat and we can't eat, you know, all those kinds of things.
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Those were the things that truly separated Jew and Gentile, made a real difference, okay?
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It describes it as a wall between it. And, of course, many people will refer to the wall in the temple.
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And there was a wall in the temple. In the temple, there was a wall that Gentiles couldn't go beyond.
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If they went beyond that in Jesus' day, they would be put to death, okay? They'd be put to death.
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And so what's being described here is there was a wall built. But again, it's not talking about differences of races in the sense that Jarvis Williams is using it.
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God himself made this distinction between Jew and Gentile by saving the Jews.
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Salvation was of the Jews in the Old Testament. Not that there was, you know, if you look in the Old Testament, obviously, you'll see examples where Gentiles come to Christ.
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They were to be a light to the nations, you see. And so some Gentiles do come to Christ in the
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Old Testament. And, but there's not that there has to be some type of racial reconciliation in that sense, you see.
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Not in that sense. And so there was that wall. But the wall was built by God himself, you see.
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It was the law of God that put that distinction between Jew and Gentile, which would generate a certain enmity between the two.
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Now obviously, as a Gentile coming to the Lord, it's not as if once a
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Gentile becomes saved, now you need to be reconciled to the Jews. No, no. That's not what it's teaching.
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Or as a Jewish person. If they come to the Lord, all right, you now need to be reconciled to the
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Gentiles. No, that's not what that's saying. What it's saying is, now we are, what used to distinguish us from the
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Old Testament, especially those laws that you see in Leviticus, it's not there anymore.
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We now have one new man, one new Christian man, whether Jew or Gentile, you see.
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This is what Scripture teaches. And therefore, what I'm trying to say to you here is that these new doctrines for these new ideas coming down, inevitably there's a twisting of Scripture in order to sort of justify these views.
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But if you look at how Christians have read like this passage for basically 2 ,000 years, you don't see this type of interpretation, you see.
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But when something new comes, people will take Scripture, twist it, distort it in order to fit what's going on in society right now, you see.
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And that's very unfortunate. There's even passages, let me just give you one more real quick, because it comes from the conservative side of things, okay.
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Let me just give you one other passage here. There's a passage in Exodus chapter,
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I believe it's 21 -22, which talks about two men fighting and they hit a pregnant woman, okay.
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So that if you read the translations, you'll see different translations of this.
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For instance, if you look at the New American Standard, the original one, which was published in the 70s, it says, and she has a miscarriage.
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Later in 1995, the New American Standard came out with a new edition and said premature birth.
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And you go, why does the same translation in the New American Standard, why in the 70s did they say miscarriage?
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And then in 1995, why did they say premature birth?
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And the answer is because of the arguments going on about abortion in this country.
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And so, because if you read that passage, what it says is, if there's any further harm, if you take it as a miscarriage, then any further harm can only refer to the mother, you see.
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If there's any further harm, then you'll have capital punishment. In other words, if she dies, you die.
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On the other hand, if you read it as a premature birth and there's further harm to the children or to the mother, then you have capital punishment.
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The abortionists latched onto this. They saw this and they said, see, the Bible teaches abortion's okay because it's a miscarriage, they said.
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They said it's a miscarriage. And you can see that if the children are miscarried because of this, all you have is a fine.
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If the mother dies, you have capital punishment. So what does this mean? This means the children are not human beings.
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You see the logic there? The abortionists picked on this very quickly. And if you look at translations, if you look at, let's say, liberal translations, and yes, there are liberal translations, okay, the
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Revised Standard Version being probably the chief one, they'll always have miscarriage. Your more evangelical ones will always take it the other way.
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Now, if you ask me which one is right, I'm going to shock you. The miscarriage is right.
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Because what we've had is, we've had a lot of... When you get a hot public issue, it's easy to look at that hot public issue and to allow that to sort of force you into an interpretation.
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If you know what I'm saying. For instance, if you go back in American history to, let's say, 1850, you'd be shocked at a book that a lot of people wrote a commentary on.
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Because you'd say, that's a very small book, Philemon. And you're like, why is there so many commentaries in America on Philemon in the mid -1800s?
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And you know why, slavery. Because one side wanted to write and say, this justifies slavery.
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The other side wants to say, no, it doesn't justify slavery. And so there was a lot of heat over that.
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Now, let me tell you, I'm this pro -life, I'm pro, pro, pro -life. But look, let me just tell you this.
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There's no such thing as premature birth in the old times.
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That just doesn't exist. One of the last things that develops in an infant, as you know, is the lungs.
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So basically, you're looking at, what, week 36, 37. There was no concept of premature birth.
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You wouldn't pass a law for that, you see. It just didn't happen. You say, well, wait a minute.
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Why capital punishment in one case and not another case? I can show you other biblical laws the same way.
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Just because you have differences in legal status doesn't mean you have differences in personhood, okay?
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For instance, if you go back to ancient Babylon, they had the same laws that you see in the
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Bible about hitting a pregnant woman. And for all those children, there was only one type of fetus they had capital punishment for, for the harlot.
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You killed the fetus of a harlot, you had capital punishment, but for no other fetus. And you go, why?
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Why is the fetus of the harlot? Because people were killing them.
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Killing who? Killing the women, the harlots.
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Because that baby's going to be born and it's going to resemble somebody. You know what I'm saying?
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It's going to really affect things. The Assyrians, the people who had no respect for human life basically in the
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Old Testament, had a law, if you kill the fetus of a harlot, you die.
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Because again, they were killing them left and right. What you find is, in the scriptures, let me show you this one.
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In the scriptures, suppose you had a goring ox and people have warned you about that goring ox and it kills somebody.
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What happens to you? You die. But suppose you had an Israelite slave and it gores the
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Israelite slave and kills them. Remember, an Israelite slave is a temporary slave.
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He's not a slave for life, unless he wants to be. And what happens there?
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Nothing. Because you see, it was seen as an occupational hazard. Where do you think they worked?
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They worked out where the bulls were and it was a danger and it could happen. But yet, notice they have capital punishment in one case, not in another.
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It doesn't mean that the Hebrew slave was not a human being. Oh, no, clearly was a human being, you see.
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Or suppose you beat a man to death. Suppose you do something like that. You're executed.
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Suppose you beat your slave and they walk around a day or two, they have a recovery, but then they die.
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What happens? You are not punished, you see, at that point because you did not intend to kill anyone, you see.
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You say, wait a minute, is one person a legal person and the other person not considered a human being?
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No, no, no, no. We have different legal statuses. In this country, at least a few years ago, you kill a policeman, the chances of you being executed in our country are far greater than if you're not a policeman.
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Why is that? We tried to, at least at one time, try to protect policemen. We know they have a very dangerous job.
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If you kill them, you have a much greater chance of being executed in this country, especially if you live in Texas.
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But you understand what I'm saying. We have different legal statuses. Suppose a 17 -year -old commits murder in this country.
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Suppose a 21 -year -old commits murder. There's a big difference in the legal... Is one human and one not unhuman?
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No, no. The Bible is clearly pro -life because what's the issue?
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The issue is the status of the fetus. By the way, if you look at that passage, it uses the word, children come out.
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And the idea is that children come out dead, you see. They're called children because they make no distinction between children in the womb or children out of the womb.
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You see the same thing in the New Testament when it talks about Jesus, by the way, and John the Baptist being in the womb. That same word will be used, you know, as a child and as a fetus.
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They don't make any real distinction between the two. Or how about, you know, obviously like Jeremiah.
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Before you were born, I knew you, meaning I chose you is the idea there. God had already chosen
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Jeremiah from the foundation of the world, basically what that's saying. And then,
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I set you apart, or sanctified, I set you apart as a prophet in the womb.
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So in the womb, God had already set apart Jeremiah as a prophet, you see.
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That's a person, okay. And so again, the Bible's very clear on the status of the fetus.
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And again, if you do historical research, you look at the old rabbis. And again, I always like to look at them just because they're not looking at it through,
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I'd say, Christian lenses, so to speak. So I like to see, how did they read it? Because, I mean, they have the
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Old Testament too. How are they reading that? Because they won't call it the Old Testament. And they all saw abortion as murder.
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As a matter of fact, they'll say it breaks the first commandment. And what's the first commandment? Be fruitful and multiply, you see.
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And therefore, they were against it. Josephus, who was the Jewish historian, of course, called it murder.
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He just flat out called it murder. And in the first Christian document we have after the New Testament, it calls, again, abortion murder.
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It's called the didache, by the way, the teaching of the 12 apostles, which probably not literally, but it was the first document.
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So again, all I want to tell you is this. When you have these issues come through, whether it's abortion, all the other issues, we've got to be careful to interpret the
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Bible correctly. We cannot let the pressures of the moment help us to twist scripture.
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And we cannot do that. Let the scripture say what it says. And we have to deal with it and not twist it in order to get our desired outcome, okay?
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We do not want to read scripture like some Supreme Court justices want to read the
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Constitution. There's a certain outcome they want, and they're going to get that outcome no matter what, okay?
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The Bible is not a living document, okay? It's got a fixed meaning.
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And what we're trying to do is discover that fixed meaning and then reform our beliefs and reform our practices accordingly.
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Thank you very much. All right, we're going to do the
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Q &A. So if the speakers would make your way to the stage. We're going to get the chairs up here. Yeah, thank you,
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Dr. Fuller. Are there any new questions? Oh, we got some more.
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Oh, we got more questions. Okay. Wait, one more door prize.
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Okay, yeah. All right.
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Is Matthew Grabener here? Matthew Grabener? Okay. Marilee Blum?
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Okay. Eric McKinley.