WWUTT 1590 Q&A Year in Review (Part 1)

Some big things have happened this year, and big things will happen next year, but no matter what happens, we remember that Christ is still on His throne,

He reigns, and His purposes will stand when we understand the text.

Happy New Year from your friends at When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of God that we may shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the

Gospel of Jesus Christ. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.

Sort of. It is the very last... Yeah. Happy New Year Eve. The very last day...

Uh -huh. ...of 2021. Yes. And tomorrow it will be 2020... Two. Two.

2 .0. 2 .0. 2020 2 .0, that's good. And here we are doing our year -end review.

Now, we're actually recording this on Tuesday, so for us, in real time, we've got a few more days till the end of the year.

Yes. If something crazy happens between now and the end of 2021...

We won't miss it. That's right, because we're only covering the first half of the year today. Yes. Next week we cover the second half of the year, and so if anything happens here in this last week...

Yeah. ...we'll throw it into the review next week. And therefore, we will not have an hour -and -a -half -long podcast.

That's right. We'll still keep it minimal. That's how this has always turned out. Whenever we do these year -end reviews, they always come out to be...

Super long. Yeah, an hour -and -a -half. Yeah. We don't have a patient infant. That's right. I mean, he's patient, but not that patient.

Right now, the baby's sleeping. Yes. And he just got to sleep, so we'll see. That's what I understand, because Becky called me before she came, and the baby was crying.

I heard him crying in the background. Then she arrives, and he's out cold. Yeah. So hopefully... Yep. ...he's

going to snooze all the way through this, and we'll get through the first 20 big news stories that we have of 2021.

Awesome. This is our year -end review covering the biggest stories of the year, and mostly those stories that had affected

Christianity. Mm -hmm. Normally, we do a Q &A on Friday, so you can still email us with your questions, and we will answer them, not this next week, but the week after.

Yep. And I got a building list already... Oh, yeah? ...from people that are sending their questions in. Awesome. They're getting backed up.

Good. We'll have plenty for those lulls. That's right. The email address is whenweunderstandthetextatgmail .com.

Before getting to our list, reading to you a little scripture here from Philippians 3, verses 20 and 21, a reminder that our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a

Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body by the power that enables

Him even to subject all things to Himself. Whatever we are going through in the present, whatever you went through this year, wherever you live, whatever time that you are in, like maybe some time in the future, somebody's listening to this program, know that your citizenship is not here on this earth, but in heaven.

Yes. If you are a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hold tight to that. And on that day that Christ returns, these bodies that decay on us, they fall apart, they get injured, they will be resurrected anew in our

Father's kingdom. And so hold fast to that hope that we have promised in Jesus Christ, our

Lord, who forgives us our sins and gives us eternal life. Let's get to the year -end review.

Now, of course, the biggest thing that has been going on all year has been

COVID. Right. Without question. It affects everybody. Yes. Well, pretty close to everybody.

Pretty much. Now, our lives really have not changed. We never changed anything. But we've heard a lot about it.

We didn't stop going places. We didn't start wearing masks. We have not been vaccinated.

Our lives have continued on pretty much as normal. It affected a little bit of our doctor's appointments and things like that.

Yeah. Going to stores, stuff like that. As it affected other people, it affected us, but our specific lifestyle, we didn't change.

Yeah. It didn't stop us. As much as we've seen the narrative change over and over during the year, it's changing again.

This very week that we are recording this program, the COVID narrative is changing.

On Monday, Joe Biden said that this couldn't be solved on the federal level, so he's handing it to the states.

It's the state's responsibility. Up to each individual state. Now, remember, when he was running for president in 2020, he said that 200 ,000 people had died on Donald Trump's watch from COVID.

He said, this is unacceptable. And any person who sees that much death should be removed, does not deserve to be president.

There have been four times that many deaths under Joe Biden's watch.

Oh, wow. So, now, what to make of his words? Do we say that he is not fit to be president?

By his own judgment, we know that Biden is not fit to be president, but anybody who's pro -abortion should not be president, period.

But, yeah, I mean, just taking his own judgment, being judged by the words that he has said, he does not deserve to be president of the

United States. It depends if he remembers them. Well, anyway. Moving on.

Pray for the president. Definitely. And then, on top of that, the CDC, on the same day, said we're cutting quarantine to five days from the 10 that they were recommending before.

If a person has to be put... It was 14 at the beginning. It was 14. And then it was 10. And now it's five.

Yep. And on Monday evening, CNN, all of this is going on the same day, right?

Joe Biden handing it to the states, the CDC reducing quarantine, CNN that night has doctor guests on the air who are saying the masks don't work.

And they're talking as if, like, this has always been the case. We've always said this. The masks don't work.

Well, they might have always said that. Just not on the... No, it was the same. Covered in the propaganda. It was the same doctors who, before, were saying, love your neighbor by wearing a mask.

Got it. Now, it's the narrative's changing. And we're just going to pretend like, see, we've always said this.

Right. We've always said the masks were never going to prevent this. So that's how 2021 is ending.

And one of the things we're going to... And 2022 is beginning. That's right. One of the things we're going to talk about as we go through these big stories that have happened in the year, we'll get to one of these items here where we'll talk about the divisions that have happened among Christians, even within the church, regarding masks and vaccines.

Definitely. But first of all, our number one story, and by number one, I mean the first one that happened in the year that made

Christian headlines, it was like the first big story of 2021. I don't remember that far back.

Becky hasn't seen this list. Nope, I haven't. So every one of these I'm going to mention is going to be like a walk down memory lane for her.

Just like it is for you. All of your reactions are going to be genuine.

Yep. No, no, no. I rehearsed mine. No, no, no. I meant the listener. Oh, okay. Right. To the listener, it's a walk down memory lane for you as well.

Yeah. I already know what this list is. Well, of course. I hope so. So the first story of the year on January -

Oh, dear, your face. He's got an ornery look. On January the 3rd,

A -men and A -women. Oh, oh, ow. Yes. That was an ornery look for a good reason.

Do you remember this? Yes. Do you remember? Now, I can - I don't remember who, but I remember. I can cheat a little bit here.

I don't have to remember all this stuff off the top of my head because I did a what video on it. Oh. Here we go.

You ready? No. You're not off to a good start here, babe.

Nope. This is not even the craziest thing that happened all year. Oh, my goodness. Here we go.

On the opening day of the 117th United States Congress, Representative Emanuel Cleaver got up to pray, and that's when this happened.

May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon us and give us peace. Peace in our families.

Peace across this land, and dare I ask, oh, Lord, peace even in this chamber, now and evermore.

We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma, and God known by many names by many different faiths,

A -men and A -woman. Yup. He just said A -men and A -woman, as if A -men is a gendered word.

A -men means so be it. A -woman means nothing, unless he's singing a Michael Bolton song. We are men and there's a woman.

And this was a prayer to Brahma, the Hindu God, not the true God of the Bible. Romans 121 says, although they knew

God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, hence concluding a prayer with A -men and A -woman.

This is the blasphemous pagan religion of the left, who want to force everyone to bow to their sex gods and pay for their child's sacrifices.

They have the audacity to stand before Congress and pray for peace when their hands are full of innocent blood.

We read in 2 John 1 .9 that everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have

God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son, when we understand the text.

So there you go. That was the first big story of the year. Oh my. A -men and A -woman.

Did he think that was a name? Yeah, right. He thought it was a gendered word.

Absolutely ridiculous. But that was not the biggest story of the year, just the first big story of the year.

There we go. The next one, oh, by the way, as we continue these stories, the infant woke up during that video.

Yes. So I'm now holding him. Yes. We've got 19 more stories to go here. Here we go. Hold on to your hats.

Hopefully he'll hold on. He'll be good. He's sucking on his burp rag at the present. Yeah, he keeps burping.

Number two, January 6, the riot on the U .S. Capitol. Now this goes by different names, the

January 6 riot, the J6 riot. Some people just call it J6. On Wikipedia, it's listed as the 2021

United States Capitol attack. Okay. So it's kind of like this day doesn't really have an official name to it.

Yeah. Even though you heard about it over and over all year long, everybody had a different name.

That's right. Political pundits were sure that you did not forget. On January 6, 2021, a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the

United States Capitol in Washington, D .C. They sought to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election by disrupting the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes that would formalize then

President -elect Joe Biden's victory. And there are some that are saying it's the worst attack that's ever happened in the history of our nation, like the worst thing that's ever happened to us since the

Civil War. No. The riots of 2020 had more long -term devastating effects on major cities in this nation than the

J6 riot. Definitely. Oh, my goodness. I mean, it's almost like people forgot that there was a riot going on in Washington, D .C.

in May and June of last year, where they had to put up barricades in front of the

White House and they put the president and his family down in a bunker. Yep. Because had those people gotten past those barricades, who knows what they were going to do.

Right. Should they get into the White House. And I have praised the Secret Service's restraint in the midst of all of that, because if the people had gotten past those barricades, which the

Secret Service put up, the Secret Service would have killed them trying to get into the

White House. And it would have been within their right to do that. It would have been a bloodbath. Yes. So people's lives were saved by the fact that the

Secret Service was keeping them out. And all of that was going on six months before.

But all of a sudden, we have amnesia when the J6 riot happens. It's like, oh, no, look at what Donald Trump supporters are like.

Yeah. Because Antifa is Donald Trump supporters. Yeah. All of the rioting that's still going on in major cities today is not being done by conservatives.

Incidentally, when I looked up these stories, I relied upon some different resources to kind of chronicle out the 40 biggest stories of the year.

Sure. And one of those sources that I looked up, I can't remember the name of it now, it was a religious news service type of a website, but it wasn't

RNS. Okay. They listed this as the number one story of the year. This is the story that generated the most traffic to their website was the

January 6th riot at the U .S. Capitol. They just forgot the A -women. I think that was on their list.

It just wasn't the top. It didn't generate the most traffic. Oh, okay. But it is true that you had the A -men and A -women thing happen just three days before that.

And that story's gone now after the riot on the U .S. Capitol. Yeah. It was quickly forgotten.

Now, I wrote a blog on that, and I said, so in the same place where the representative had stood there and prayed to Brahma and said,

A -men and A -women, then you had rioters come and stand in those places in the Capitol, and it's a judgment.

It's a judgment of God on this nation. What happened on January 6th was wrong. Don't hear us saying that, well, there were worse things that happened, therefore

January 6th was not that bad. It was still bad. Yeah, it was still bad. I've been consistent from the very beginning that those people were crazy.

That never should have happened. That kind of lawlessness should never take place. If that was our children, they would be disciplined severely.

Somebody wasn't getting spankings growing up as a kid, that's all I'm saying. We would probably allow our child to go to jail, honestly.

Yeah, right. That's what you did. You're going to sit there. That's right. And we're still hearing about investigations into all of this.

People are being prosecuted. Some are still in jail because of this, still being cleaned up, but really not the worst thing that has happened to our nation.

Not at all. Any given day in an abortion clinic is far worse than anything that happened on January 6th at the

U .S. Capitol. You know, on the same day, Raphael Warnock won the Senate seat in Georgia in a runoff, but that's one of those stories that was just kind of forgotten because January 6th riot was kind of the leading headline.

Number three, third big story of the year happened on January 20th. It was President Joe Biden sworn in as 46th

President of the United States. Now what would that have to do with being a major Christian headline? Well, there were a lot of evangelicals that were pretty gaga over that.

Trump still had the majority of evangelicals voting for him in the election in 2020.

Sure. Yeah. But there has been a swing to the left. And even among evangelical leadership, there were people that voted for Biden.

I had arguments with some of them online. And even people like Beth Moore were online doing like a live play by play of everything that was going on during the inauguration.

And she was just gushing over the stuff that she was observing. Thabiti Anuabueli talking about how wonderful it was that we have a black woman who is vice president of the

United States. I mean, forget that she's one of the most pro -abortion, pro -LGBTQ politicians in American history.

But he's proud of the fact that a black woman is vice president. Also Biden is only the second

Catholic president of the United States. John F. Kennedy was the first. Joe Biden is the second.

He's Catholic? He's Catholic. Oh. He says he is. Well, that's interesting. Yeah. No real true convictions of the

Roman Catholic Church, but he claims to be Catholic. Okay. Yeah. Is that one of those things where you're going to run for president, so you got to choose one?

No, he's always claimed to be Catholic. Okay. But yeah, I mean, when it came to running for president in 2020, he moved as far to the left as he had to move in order to win that.

So Albert Mueller, for example, on the briefing, he talked about how between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders won the argument, even though Joe Biden won the nomination.

Because Biden had to become Sanders, basically, in order to get

Sanders' base to vote for him. I could see that. To become president. So there you go.

That's number three. Number four, January 22nd,

Dr. Tom Buck makes a comparison between Kamala Harris and Jezebel.

Oh. But he didn't. He didn't, though. No, he did not call

Kamala Harris Jezebel. He didn't call her Jezebel. Right. That was what all the news sources were saying.

Right. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. It was misconstrued so bad. His actual tweet was this.

This is the tweet that he made on January 22nd. He said, I can't imagine any truly God -fearing

Israelite who would have wanted their daughters to view Jezebel as an inspirational role model because she was a woman in power.

Right. But all the sort of like the Washington Post, they're running these stories saying Tom Buck called her.

Yeah. Well, he's saying Southern Baptist pastor. Yeah. And they decided to invent this idea that Jezebel is a racist term.

And oh, there was another one. I can't remember the name of the guy over toward Dallas now. There was another guy that did it, too.

He didn't do it on Twitter. He did it in a sermon. Oh. But they found the sermon and ran that all over the place as well.

So they're talking about these Baptist pastors that are comparing Kamala Harris to Jezebel. I'm pretty sure he did actually say that Kamala Harris was

Jezebel. So this tweet quickly set off a firestorm of controversy. Sarah Pulliam Bailey of the

Washington Post was really the first one to respond. And she said it took two days in office for a Southern Baptist pastor to call

Vice President Kamala Harris Jezebel. I'm going to guess she's not getting an invitation to speak at the convention, as former

Vice President Mike Pence did in twenty eighteen. You're darn tooting.

She's not going to get an invite. But yeah, it was huge around here in our church because we had phone calls galore.

We had threats. I mean, we eventually took like our contact information down on our website just to kind of stifle it all.

And then once it calmed down, we put all that back up again. But yeah, I mean, that was that was a big deal. It was run in national papers.

It was talked about and debated among evangelicals. And it happened right here on our soil, right here in Lindale, Texas.

Congratulations, Pastor Tom. You made my list in twenty twenty one.

Now I'm actually on this list, too. Oh, and I have never I have never made my own list before, but I did this year.

You can probably guess what it was now. But OK, I'm drawn. I won't find out until next week. OK, well, good.

So we go on here to number five, February 3rd. What is

Christian nationalism? Christianity Today ran an article under that title.

What is Christian nationalism? And this became a big talk among evangelicals, especially following the

January 6th riots and all the conversation and debate that that stirred up. So so what is

Christian nationalism? Exactly. You've heard this term thrown around a lot. It's been used heavily over the course of twenty twenty one.

It may be the term in evangelicalism for this year, Christian nationalism.

All right. But what is it? Nobody knows. No idea. Is it one of those phrases that everybody has their own definition?

Right. It's it's just. Or is it just like an insert word? It's just a catch all term. OK, to criticize any

Christian who gets political. OK, so it's kind of like how Karen went in and out, you know, and the boomer kind of.

Right. Any any woman who's kind of making a ruckus and complaining about things and wants to talk to the manager, we call her

Karen. Sure. Right. Yes. Just like Karen becomes that catch all word. Right. That's what Christian nationalist is.

OK. Any Christian who starts talking politics, you're probably going to get called a Christian nationalist. So what is it exactly?

Well, here's some varying definitions. All right. According to the article in Christianity Today, Christian nationalism is the belief that the

American nation is defined by Christianity and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.

What's wrong with that? Yeah. If we want our nation to be a

Christian nation, what what's the problem with that? But Christianity Today, Ed Stetzer, all these guys that have been writing on this.

All year long, David French, Russell Moore. They've all spoken about this in a completely negative sense.

Now, there is a way, of course, in which a professing Christian can make our our national citizenship.

Bless you, son. Can make our national citizenship an idol.

You know, patriotism, Americanism. You can you can turn that into an idol. Yeah, we got to be careful about that.

But just because a Christian starts talking politics doesn't mean all. Hold on.

You're doing something heretical. Yeah. And there was what was the podcast

I listened to recently? The Plowcast. In the Plowcast, they called Christian nationalism heresy.

A few minutes later, they were talking about a kind of Christian nationalism. That's good. Oh. So is it heresy or not?

That doesn't make any sense. I mean, it just it exemplifies that it's a catch all term. It's whatever

I want it to mean in the moment that I want it to mean this. All right. So you've got like some other definitions.

Grant Gaines, Christian nationalism was attempting to legislate God's moral law.

Again, don't really see a problem with that. No. Jonathan Lehman, Christian nationalism is confusing

Christian identity and national identity or church membership and citizenship. But who's doing that?

Who's confusing their church membership with their American citizenship? That's just it's a it's a definition without an example.

Yeah, I'm lost. Let's go on. I don't want to dwell on that one too much. We could do a whole show, though, on how ridiculous the term

Christian nationalism has become. Let's not. Number six. Number six,

February 5th. The Supreme Court blocks bans on religious gatherings.

So remember, there were different states that were trying to prevent people from going to church because of COVID lockdowns and all this other kind of thing.

The Supreme Court says, nope, can't do that. Good. So thank you, Supreme Court. Yes.

But I mean, it was this never should have happened in the first place. Agreed. But since it did, it's a good step in the right direction.

I don't know. You know, you got to give them something. Yeah, well, you give them an inch and they think they're a ruler.

That's true. So which brings us to Canada. Oh, boy. Number seven,

February 7th. James Coates goes to jail. Oh, yeah. That was a big deal. Yeah.

Now there were several pastors that that had felt the tyranny of their government because they wanted to go to church.

They wanted to keep their churches open. Right. So you had pastors that were fined. You had pastors that went to jail.

But the biggest ground. Right. Yeah. And going underground, which is what James Coates Church ended up doing.

Right. They continue to have services, but from an undisclosed location. James Coates, though, was probably the biggest name or the story that had gotten the most attention because he wanted to go to church

Grace Life Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And then that led to other churches that were not as strong in faith to just shut down completely.

Yeah. They got scared, wanted to please man rather than God. Right. And so they shut down their churches.

But James Coates wanted to honor the Lord. Yes. And so kept his church open. And we saw all kinds of stories about, you know, fences going up around the church.

They had rented fences and had fenced off the church. And James Coates went to jail over that.

And we prayed for him. We talked about it here on the program. I wrote a blog about it as well. That would have been.

Oh, I thought I had it up in front of me here. And now it's disappeared early February anyway, in early

February, early to mid February. I had featured a transcript from Jacob Reum, another pastor in Canada who was talking about, you know, just some of the cowardly pastors that weren't standing up against the government.

Now, the the primary motivation here was not to oppose the government. Right. It was to honor God. Right. But to not fear man, instead, fear the

Lord. And that's part of their law anyway. So. Right. They have their government. Their government was going against their laws anyway.

Yeah. So there's religious freedom in Canada, too. Yep. So not upholding their own laws and and rather afflicting these pastors who were just going to church in the midst of all the covid nonsense, which, again, as as we're coming to the close of the year, there are more and more coming out that is revealing the lies that we've been told for the last two years.

Yeah. And I can't imagine overseas. I don't hear their news. So the the ones that are more locked down than what we are in America.

Yeah. Hi, guy. You doing OK? And of course, one of one of the news stories

I should include in here is September 1. This guy was born. That's that's next week.

That's right. We're not that far into the end of the year yet. Let's see if he'll let us get through 20.

Now, I have a bonus on on this next one. OK, so it's not really counted as one of our news stories,

OK, because we talked about it last year. But it was a story that continued on into 2021.

And that was the Ravi Zacharias scandal. Oh, OK. So all of the the sex scandals that he was in really came out on February 11th as confirmed.

So all the suspicions were confirmed. It was realized that it was even worse than we thought it was. He had multiple cell phones that had hundreds of women's numbers, text messages, photos from them like lewd photographs.

And it really supported something that I said back in October of 2020 when

I said that Zacharias's ministry was completely discredited and RZIM should just completely shut their doors, not not do an apology tour, not rebrand.

They just needed to shut down. And there were some people that were upset at me for that and said, no, we should wait until the report comes out.

And I said, look, the report's going to disclose one of two things. Either they will try to lie about how extensive it was, what

Ravi Zacharias did, or they will actually be honest and we'll find out it's way worse than we thought it was.

And that's exactly what we got. Yeah, we got the honesty, thankfully. But in the honesty, it was bad.

It was revealed that Zacharias may not have ever even been a Christian. Yeah. He confessed it with his mouth, but it was not in his actions.

Man, that is sad. Yeah. Because I know a lot of people have looked up to him.

A lot of people. A lot. I mean, his death was a big deal. He has influenced a lot of people. Yeah.

His death was one of the major news stories of 2020. Yeah, that's true. That's crazy.

You had even the president of the United States saying how sad it was to have lost a theologian like Ravi Zacharias.

But turns out that his life was a total lie. So anyway, that's not that doesn't count as one of our news stories.

But just to mention it, since it was one of the big events of the year, that's a terrible bonus. Can I trade it in for another?

Yeah, that's right. Give me a different story there. Number eight, February, February, February 25th, the

Equality Act passes the House. Now, the Equality Act.

Well, I wrote an article on my blog that was the Equality Act makes everybody potato heads because on the same day that the

Equality Act passed, we got that story from Hasbro, who was announcing that the

Mr. and Mr. Potato Head was getting dropped and it was just going to be potato head. Got it. So there is no longer

Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. It was just potato head. Awesome. And so really, the Equality Act does that to everybody.

There's no man and woman. There's no male or female. It's just everybody is potato head. That's what you get in the

Equality Act. Now it goes to the Senate and we have not seen the Senate do anything with the

Equality Act in 2021. Hmm. So we're going to I guess that's something we're going to find out in 2022, what the

Senate's going to end up doing with that. This is this has passed the House before same people, same people who have been behind this act for years, that it's passed the

House before, but it always died in committee in the Senate. And now we're waiting to see what's what's going to happen with this in the

Senate. But it will basically it would basically make it illegal to say that a man pretending to be a woman.

Right. It would be illegal to say, no, that's still a man. Yeah, that's that's what the Equality Act is going to do.

Illegal like you get arrested. Kind of illegal. Yeah, probably like it. Like if we're if our church is proclaiming that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, a man cannot become a woman.

Boys cannot become girls under the Equality Act. That would be considered discrimination. Ah, so we could get fined or shut down or lose our tax exempt status.

You know, it would be some kind of penalty like that. But I see that's what would come under the Equality Act if it passes the

Senate. So be be in prayer for that. That's right. Not that the

Senate would have wisdom and kill that thing in committee. Now, there was recently a poll that came out just this last year or this last week, rather of twenty twenty one.

A Rasmussen poll has come out and has said that 75 percent of Americans believe there are only two genders, man and woman, male and female.

OK, well, which means 25 percent of the country is certifiably insane. Well, there you go.

But yeah. And overruling everything. Exactly. You have shoved in my face.

Yes. Seventy five percent of the country understands male and female. And yet the

Equality Act would push upon everybody in the country. No, there is no male and female like the

House. The House rules. They ruled on this at the beginning of the year. Even in legislation that comes to the

House, there cannot be designations of male and female, not aunt or uncle, Mr. Or Mrs..

I mean, that just makes things hugely confusing. What about those languages that are. Right.

I know that have masculine and feminine. Yeah. Right. It's like that. Wow. And there are woke people in other countries that speak languages that have masculine and feminine words and they're running into this.

Yeah. They want to they want to dump that the word pants has a masculine and feminine. So then you're going to get rid of the word totally.

Right. I know. What are you going to do with that? Let's let's not talk to one another. Not really as big a problem in English, but it is in other languages where they have masculine and feminine words.

Definitely. I remember when this is going to be a totally a side story. But the film Dances with Wolves back in the 90s,

Kevin Costner movie. You remember that? I remember reading about that movie, that they showed it to the

Native American. I can't remember the tribe, the Native American tribe that's in that film. OK, but they showed it to indigenous persons that were descended from that tribe that's represented in the movie.

Sure. And they were watching the movie and they were laughing all the way through it because the language that they were speaking was actually the feminine form of their language.

So they're watching these warrior men talk about themselves as women, basically using the language the way that women would speak it.

All right. And so they're they're like, yeah, you guys did terrible. But isn't that just Hollywood?

Yeah, of course. They always like, you know, if you have a career that you are in, usually the army and they're like, no, that's not how the army works.

Yeah. Yeah. Soldiers that watch war films. Detectives. They're like, no, that's not how cop movies.

No, that's not how ER nurses like to giggle. Yeah, right. That doesn't happen in a hospital.

That's not how it works. Where in the world was I? OK, number nine. March 1st.

Bethany Christian Services will allow LGBTQ parents to foster and adopt.

Now, this was a Christian adoption agency, and they made the decision that they were going to allow

LGBTQ parents to foster children and adopt children. And this was before the

Supreme Court had even made a ruling on this. We were still waiting for the Supreme Court to come out with their decision as to whether or not

LGBTQ parents or adoption agency should be required to give children to LGBTQ families.

Well, I mean, if churches are accepting of them, LGBTQ, which is what we're seeing, right, evangelicalism becoming more and more accepting.

Overflow into Christian organizations as well. A lot of churches in America, certainly not the true church and not even the majority of Protestantism in America, but is a lot of churches out there.

I mean, you're seeing them like like woke preacher clips, shows these things all the time.

Preachers that are wearing their rainbow sashes and talking about LGBTQ ism. And sadly, it's not for Noah, the

Noah's right. Yeah, it's not it's not about God's covenant after the Noahic flood.

It's celebrating the ethics of Sodom. Yeah. Of our present age. So anyway, that's what happened

March 1st. Bethany Christian Services are now giving children to those families, those couples that identify as LGBTQ, which we understand.

I mean, LGBTQ, we're using the the acronym or the acrostic,

I guess you would call it. But it is not a thing. People are not LGBTQ.

They engage in homosexual activities because they're sinful, but they don't see what you mean.

Yeah, they don't have an immutable trait that they can't change. Right.

It's sinful. And Bethany Christian Services is approving of sinful behavior and deciding we're going to put children in wicked, depraved homes.

Yeah. God help them. Number 10, March 9th, Beth Moore leaves the

SBC. I can't say that that's a bad thing, especially where she ended up at the end of the year.

Yeah, but I mean, she just has adoring fans that just thought it was the most heroic thing in the world for her to have left the

Southern Baptist Convention and throw Southern Baptists under the bus. Very few Southern Baptists really came out.

Very few influential Southern Baptists came out and and spoke about how she manipulated the

Southern Baptist Church for years. Yeah. Got herself rich. Yes. Big time.

Off of Southern Baptist and Lifeway. And then when it wasn't as lucrative for her anymore as it was.

Butcher the cash cow. That's right. Dump it and move on to something else, which now she's Anglican. That's the story that's come out in the last couple of weeks.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah. Which just proves what it is that we have been saying about her for years.

She was not truly Baptist. She did not care about the Baptist statement of faith, nor does she care about the sufficiency of scripture.

She's an egalitarian mystic. Yeah. Which means she believes women can be pastors and God speaks to her through extra biblical visions and revelations.

Which is something that has bothered me for a long time. I mean, we've been bothered by Beth Moore for a while.

Farewell, Beth Moore. Yes. But it's still obnoxious how many Southern Baptist continue to defend her as though she's some sort of darling of the

SBC. Yeah, I don't know. If ever there comes a day where Beth Moore and Russell Moore will stand in front of the

Southern Baptist Convention, they'll receive a hero's welcome. Oh, likely. Yes. And it's astonishing that that's where the

Southern Baptist Convention is headed. Number 11, March 26th. You might not remember this one.

Lil Nas X, I don't know if that's even how you pronounce his name. Lil Nas X, Nas X, L -I -L -N -A -S -X.

He's a rapper. OK. Launches the Satan shoe. No, I don't remember. You don't remember that?

There was only six hundred and sixty six pairs of this shoe available. Yeah. And it had real blood in them.

Ew. Yes. Whose blood? I think it was his. Ew. I don't recall for sure.

Ew. You know, I remember reading that and wondering if somebody going to go commit a crime and leave

Lil Nas X's blood at the scene of the crime. That's kind of morbid. It's like I had it in my shoe.

It's right there. I was able to frame Lil Nas X. Anyway, I don't know whose blood it was. I'm really grossed out.

We move on. Yes, please. To number 12. This is

April the 6th. And it was Votie Bauckham releases Fault Lines.

Ah, yes. Which was a fantastic book. If you haven't picked it up yet, you should. Yes. And of course, it was

Votie Bauckham who was speaking against the woke movement, especially the way that it is infiltrated churches.

Yes. In particular, not just the way it's splitting apart a culture, but even the way it's breaking up brothers and sisters in the

Lord. Yes. So check out Votie Bauckham's book Fault Lines. You know, in addition to that, I mean, Votie Bauckham about lost his life this year.

He really had a lot happened to him in 2021. He did. It's been a big year for him.

There was that heart complication that he had. They thought that he wasn't going to survive. We raised over a million dollars to get him from Africa to the

States. Right. And he was able to get the operation that he needed. Thought he was going to need a transplant.

Yeah. Barely made it. Which I remember him saying that one of these days he's going to tell the story of everything that happened because it really was.

I'm sure it's still too soon. Yeah. The providence of God. And too much. I know it. The providence of God just making everything line up the way that it did so that he was able to get here.

Praise the Lord. But it was Founders Ministry, Tom Askell and others. Our church was part of it as well, but raised money to help fund

Votie Bauckham getting to the States and getting the life saving operation that he needed. Something was going on where where he couldn't get a flight out.

What was that? Yeah. I can't remember where that was. I don't remember the sequence of events. There was a lot of layovers anyway.

Yeah, there was. For storms of some sort. Was that the winter storm? In April? I don't remember if that was or not.

Well, no, no, no, no. That was the fault line. That's when the book came out. Yeah. There was winter storms in March, which was when anyway, when all of that was going on.

Yeah. So let's see here. The next one, you might not remember this one either.

Dear God, please help me to hate white people. No. Do you remember this?

I can't say that I do. This was on April the 7th. But I'm definitely giving you a blank stamp when this story went big.

So it was a book that was called A Rhythm of Prayer, A Collection of Meditations for Renewal.

And it was compiled and edited by Sarah Bessie. She's kind of takes after Rachel Held Evans, who was one of her heroes.

But in that particular book. Is she white or black? Oh, she's white. OK, but in that book, there was a a prayer that was written by Chenequa Walker Barnes, and it was the prayer of a weary black woman.

And the prayer begins, Dear God, please help me to hate white people or at least to want to hate them.

At least I want to stop caring about them individually and collectively. I want to stop caring about their misguided racist souls to stop believing that they can be better, that they can stop being racist.

This is where the woke movement has gotten people to to just think evil, suspicious thoughts of one another.

Definitely. And Paul warned in First Timothy, Chapter six, that when we leave the gospel and the sound words of our

Lord Jesus Christ, that it leads to more and more ungodliness and that which breaks people up rather than unifies.

The woke movement is never going to unify anybody and there's not an end to it.

There's no solution to this. Right. It's just constantly suspecting one another, dividing people into different groups and saying who's better than whom.

That's that's what it's designed to do is to keep people separated, even to the point that you got this woman praying to God, I want to hate white people, not unify us.

Oh, Lord, help me hate white people. I just I don't want to hate anybody.

Like, why? Why would you want to hate somebody? Right. You know, all year long, we were hearing love your neighbor by wearing a mask or getting vaccinated.

Exactly. But apparently it's OK to hate your neighbor if they're a different skin color than you or if they're not back.

Well, if they're white. Now, I take that back. It's OK to hate your neighbor if they're white and not vaccinated and not vaccinated.

Yes. Man, the hypocrisy of all of this is just now. I'm not saying that everybody thinks that that was one of the things going around this year.

Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Hang on. Let me let me read you this. Let me read you this tweet. This was something that I had just shared on Twitter earlier this week.

Hang on. I pull this up. Great.

You're pulling up Twitter. Oh, no. Becky's good. This just went from bad to worse.

What did I just say? OK, so this is this is from Leonidas Johnson. All right. And he says, simply because I'm black,

I've been treated negatively. I've been discriminated against. I've been stereotyped, told

I couldn't go to certain places, been falsely accused of being a dangerous murderer. And I've been threatened by my job.

Just kidding. It's because I was unvaccinated. Oh, my. But he's right.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter what skin color you are. You're hated if you're unvaccinated.

This is true. All right. Let's move on in some circles. I can't say

I'll move on to another story before Becky's head explodes. Yes, please. Number. But there is a separation there is a separation where between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated for the most part.

I can't say everybody cares, but there is a vast majority that care. Like if you're one side or the other, like there is a conflict.

Well, of course there is. Yeah, there's a segregation there. Yeah. Yeah. No question about it. Yeah. I mean, people are people are losing their jobs.

Joe Biden, the president of the United States, said that if all the big companies. Well, yeah, there was that the mandates in here.

Oh, we get to that next week. Yeah. So you're jumping ahead. I'm jumping ahead. So this is why

I don't lead. Right. Right. Right. But he did say and this was in the first half of the year where he said law enforcement officials, if they're not going to get vaccinated, they deserve to lose their jobs.

The president said that it was in a town hall that was on, I believe it was CNN. Good grief. So if you if you're not willing to get vaccinated, you should lose your job.

And now, as we talked about at the beginning of the program, they're walking all that back now. Yeah. I mean, it's it's. All right.

Moving on. Number 14, 14. This was April 20th. Pseudo historians attempt to rewrite

American evangelicalism. And I put this on April 20th because that was the day that the making of biblical womanhood came out by Beth Allison Barr.

And so over the course of the year, you've had Kevin Young, who's responded to that book and saying that it was it's full of some made up history, history that's been twisted, as though to say that our current understanding of biblical manhood and womanhood is wrong.

OK, like it's never it's never intended to be. The husband is the head of his wife, his crisis, the head of the church.

But rather, that's a cultural reading that we've put into that text. It's not really what the

Bible meant. That's what some of these books are trying to push, whether it's the making of biblical womanhood or DeMay's book,

Jesus and John Wayne. All of these are kind of rewriting history. They're not really looking at a biblical understanding of manhood and womanhood.

They're trying to say, no, our biblical understandings have been culturally influenced. Yeah, OK.

So they're trying to rewrite American evangelicalism with this pseudo history and this deconstruction sort of approach to things.

Oh, boy. But you can find some good articles out there from Denny Burke and Kevin DeYoung responding to these things.

And I wrote one, too, when Denny Burke and DeMay had their exchange.

This was just a few weeks ago. But I kind of link to some of those in my blog. So you can go to PastorGabe .com

and find some of that information there. Number 15, May the 3rd, the launch.

Of Strip Mall Seminary. Now, that wasn't that wasn't the day that that Grace Bible Theological Seminary launched, but that was the day that it blew up online.

Yeah, and became a big deal. Right. Because Dr. Owen Strand was leaving Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he was taking residence at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas.

Yes. And so there were people that kind of were making fun of that online. Kristen DeMay even said that she thought there was some kind of moral failing.

Like the gossip online was just awful. She was saying that that Dr. Strand had to have done something wrong.

Oh, for him to leave. Yeah. And that's why he left MBTS or they were going to fire him or something like that.

Yeah. And it's just amazing what people can come up with. Yeah. Instead of just asking.

They didn't care. No, they didn't. Whatever we can make fun of him for. So anyway, because of that, they were like, wow.

Dr. Strand leaves a prestigious seminary and he goes down to Strip Mall Seminary. Oh, yeah.

And and since then, they have added Dr. James White. Oh, really?

To that lineup. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. And Scott Anuel is one of the professors there as well.

I mean, they're just they're just building this all star cast. That's awesome. And you got a T -shirt.

That's right. I got a great I got a great T -shirt. Strip Mall Seminary. They were just giving those out at G3. It was awesome.

All right. So check them out. Check out Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

We go on to let's see, number 16. This was on May the 10th.

Israel and Hamas, their 11 day war. Oh, yeah. So May the 10th,

I believe, was when the war experienced the ceasefire. Hang on, guy. Now he's starting to lose it here.

So Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire Thursday, halting a bruising 11 day war that caused widespread destruction in the

Gaza Strip. Brought life in much of Israel to a standstill and left more than 200 people dead.

So because of that 11 day war, we saw images online of of Israel shooting rockets out of the air.

Pretty stunning to see how their defense system worked. Yeah. But a lot of people still died. And and of course, involving

Israel. You've got a lot of Christians that will see something happening in Israel and wondering if it's tied to the end times.

So we heard a lot of that talk that was going on in the midst of that 11 day war as well.

Mm hmm. Number 17, May 18th. Kevin Max announces that he's an exvangelical.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Kevin Max, singer from D .C. Talk. Right. OK. I knew it was a singer, but I couldn't remember which band.

Yeah. He's become pro LGBTQ. And we were seeing that happen a lot among especially among Christian artists.

Yeah, there is this growing acceptance of LGBTQ ism. And then a denouncing of faith.

Yeah, right. And then a leaving of the faith. Well, that's that's eventually what it leads to. Right. But you had a couple of years ago there was the story of.

Oh, I can't remember the artist's name now. I did a what video on it. Lauren Daigle. Oh, yeah. And she was interviewed and said she didn't know if homosexuality was a sin.

Right. That turned out to be my most watched 90 second video. Wow. So of the what videos

I've done, that one has the most views on it of the 90 second videos. Anyway, the one that I did on the

Bible project is still my most watched video. That's over a quarter of a million views now,

I think. Number 18, June 16th, the Southern Baptist Convention.

Oh, boy. Just that. Just the Southern Baptist Convention. That was a train wreck. Well, yeah, there are all kinds of things that were wrapped up in that.

So many. There was the I didn't even go. I was like back home, just cringing.

All the news and the stories that came out from that on June the 1st was when Russell Moore resigned from the

E .R .L .C. and then he even left the SBC altogether. He went to a Pato Baptist Church.

So you had somebody else who really never had a true conviction in the Baptist statement of faith. Yeah. And then he was in charge.

Yeah. Right. Big. I mean, he had a big role. He was he was probably the second or third most famous person in the

SBC after Al Mohler and J .D. Greer. Russell Moore had the face that you saw on the news because he was constantly responding to things that were happening in the culture and giving like the

Southern Baptist. And then you noticed him not responding when he should and responding to things that he shouldn't.

Oh, yeah. He's completely absent through the whole shutdown thing. He was doing book reports from his basement office.

Yeah. Instead of defending those churches that were being persecuted. Yeah. By the government because they were going to church.

Yeah. He was kind of quit doing his job. Yeah. And then he quits. Yeah. It's like, why didn't you quit before that?

You were mentally checked out. He was useless as the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the

Southern Baptist Convention. Yes. So then all the drama, all the drama that he caused, leaking those letters and making slanderous statements about Mike Stone.

Right. And then that is clearly what swung the vote, leading to Ed Litton winning.

Yeah. President of the Southern Baptist Convention. But anyway, there were all kinds of stories wrapped up in all of that.

You had the women pastors was a big element of the debate

Saddleback, which was the largest Southern Baptist church pastored by Rick Warren. They ordained their first women ministers on May the 6th.

And so that became a topic of discussion at the Southern Baptist Convention. You had the vote to to completely condemn abortion.

There was the attempt to try to rescind Resolution nine, which never actually happened.

You had the whole debate going on regarding critical race theory and intersectionality.

Man, can we list all of the no controversies? You just can't. There were too many.

A lot of stuff breaking up the SBC right now. A lot of things that are breaking up a lot of different denominations rocking the foundation.

That's right. Because it wasn't built on the Bible. When we when we come back to this next week, we'll be talking about the

Presbyterian General Assembly that they had later on in July. So we saw a lot of a lot of movement, a lot of division, especially over sexual ethics among various denominations in 2021.

This guy's getting this guy's getting fed up. I'm fed up with this news. It's OK.

Mommy's agitated, too. You're going to be like mama. Let's get these last two out of the way.

The number 19 was on June 17th. The Supreme Court rules that the Catholic group doesn't have to consider

LGBTQ parents. That was the ruling that we were waiting for from the Supreme Court. But Bethany Christian Services preemptively decided, yep, we're going to give children to LGBTQ parents, even though the

Supreme Court ended up ruling that adoption agencies do not have to go against their

Christian convictions and give children to depraved families. Last of all, number 20 on June the 22nd, the debut of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.

Ah, probably the most popular podcast in the country in 2021. Now, last year in 2020, the most popular podcast in the country was

Just Thinking. Yeah, I like that one. They often topped

Christian charts. Yes. On the Apple list and other places. But this year it was

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. That became a talk all over evangelicalism. It was a terrible podcast.

I was going to say, I didn't listen. It started off better than it ended. I actually didn't finish it. But the episodes that I heard, you know, about two thirds of the way through was about where I dropped off.

It was just getting so bad. Yeah. I was like, nah. So anyway, there you go.

There's the first half of 2021. When we come back next week, we'll still be in the month of June.

OK. And then we'll hear the next 20 big stories of 2021. Awesome.

We've given kind of a teaser to a few of them. I don't know if I'm really looking forward to coming back. Becky's announcing her retirement.

Oh, my goodness. But as we are told in the world, as we are told in the scriptures, the

Lord is in the heavens. He does what he pleases. There is nothing that is happening that is outside of the sovereign will of God.

Amen. Psalm 115, verse one. Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name.

Give glory for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. Why should the nation say where is their

God? Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases.

Their idols are silver and gold. The work of human hands. I know it. Idols. They have mouths, but do not speak eyes, but do not see.

They have ears, but do not hear noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel feet, but do not walk.

And they do not make a sound with their throat. Those who make them become like them.

So do all who trust in them. Oh, Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield.

The Lord has remembered us. He will bless us. He will bless those who fear the

Lord, both the small and the great. The heavens are the Lord's heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man.

The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence. But we will bless the

Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Praise the Lord. Amen.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time together. And no matter what it is that has happened this year or will happen in the next, we put our trust in God who does all things to the counsel of his will.

We trust in you. May we continue to hold fast to the gospel and share it with this lost and dying world.

It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. Amen. And we we know that Grace Community Church, John MacArthur's church, was a target.

Oh, a big time in 2020. It was a big story in 2021 as well.

Yep. Because that was one of our stories last year when we did our year in review. It was just simply John MacArthur goes to church.

Yep. It was like the big one of the biggest stories, one of the biggest things of 2020.

He defied California lockdowns and just went to church. Yep. But the Supreme Court upheld it.

February 5th said, yep, you can do that. It's constitutionally protected. You hang on.

He just ripped and it's whoa. I felt it on my lap and now

I'm losing concentration. So at least you're not losing consciousness. I might.

You're not sitting over here. Whoo. Kid, my goodness. Are you proud of yourself?