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Alright, we're going to finish the Atlantic article, which I'm happy to do. A lot of you guys wanted me to finish it, so I'm going to do it.
But actually, I read it this morning, and there's some good stuff there. I think the agenda really comes through in this last section, and this is what every...
All these pastors, these great, conservative, stalwart pastors, they're just suffering and weeping because their people, the white evangelicals are just so evil, and they won't do these things.
When you see the list of the stuff that they're talking about, it's going to blow your mind. Actually, it probably won't.
It's just so stupid. But we'll get into that. Before I do, though, I wanted to talk about this.
Now, you might not know this about me, but I used to be a Jets fan. I wouldn't know if I would call myself a fan anymore.
I don't watch any sports at all, pretty much, anymore, and I don't follow the games.
I don't know who's good, who's not, the players, none of that. But I do follow the inept nature of the
Jets. The Jets are one of the worst franchises in sports history, and they always make these moves and do these things, and it's always worse, it's more incompetent than the last thing that they did.
So they find a way to out -Jets themselves every time. It's more incompetent the next day.
It's funny. Just when you think you hit rock bottom, the next day it's more incompetent. It's really funny.
So I like the entertainment value of that, because you see all the fans get all uppity. It's really funny. But the evangelical sort of conference speaker,
I call them Big Eva, right? So it's like the conference speakers, the authors, the leaders, they do the same thing as the
Jets. They always find a way to out -Big Eva themselves. This is the most Big Eva thing I have ever seen in my entire life.
This is a book that Crossway is sending out all over the country to churches, you know, they want to promote this book, it's a very important work of Christian literature, and it's called
Rediscover Church, Why the Body of Christ is Essential. And it's like, well then, you know, hey, that might be pretty good, you know, you might need a book like that, considering what happened last year, you know.
Last year, if you remember, the government said that church was non -essential, and basically every Big Eva pastor went along with it.
And you remember that one guy broke ranks, it was John MacArthur, he broke ranks.
He said, you know, we're going to open our church, and if you want to try to find us, good luck with that.
And it's like, you know, that was great, everyone was getting all excited about it, and, you know, they were like, yeah, we're going to go back to church, we're going to worship the
Lord the way he commanded us to, we don't care what the government says, and everyone was getting all excited. And then if you remember, John Lehman got out of bed and wrote an emergency article, it was an emergency newswire.
Guys, whoa, whoa, we, well, maybe you can run out of the cultural capital, we can't, don't do that, don't, maybe you don't want to go to church tomorrow, it's too dangerous, the government said.
And you remember he threw cold water over all of that. And I ripped Jonathan Lehman apart for the cowardice that he showed, not only the cowardice, but I said at the time,
John, this makes me think, like, maybe you play for the wrong team, like, you're, you send out this emergency article naming names, very out of character for you,
Jonathan. And the reason is because you didn't want people to get too excited to go to church on Sunday, because we got to listen to government, because the government said it's for our own good.
So if you remember, that's what happened. So you think, oh, this is, this might be a good book, like, Rediscover Church, Why the
Body of Christ is Essential. You know, a lot of Big Eva books are totally unnecessary. Like, you go to Gospel Coalition, they're hawking a new book every day, and most of them don't need to be written.
But you're like, wait a minute, this one might need to be written, Why the Church is Essential, right after the government said the church wasn't essential.
But here's the punchline. Are you ready for this one? It's written by Jonathan Lehman.
You can't make this stuff up. This is the most Big Eva thing I've ever, this is the man who
I ripped apart for throwing cold water all over people who are like, you don't want to go to church, man, we're sick of this.
And he's like, whoa, wait, we don't have the cultural capital. And now he's writing a book.
And I'm sure there's some good stuff in this book. But why would he write this book?
I mean, the book should be one page. It should be, I'm sorry for what I said last year.
Go follow John MacArthur because he had his head on straight a lot sooner than I did. Like, if that's what the book was, maybe
I'd buy a copy. You know, if the book was just a big, you know, I'm sorry, on one page, it's a one page book.
I'm sorry for my cowardice. I'm sorry for my lack of spine.
I'm sorry for that. That cultural capital thing, that was weird. I'm sorry for all that. I repent. Please, I ask for your forgiveness.
If that's what the book was, I might recommend it because that would be actually a pretty good book in my opinion. In fact,
I think that would mean a lot more than the thousands probably of words that he's going to say here all about the doctrinal reasoning and stuff like that.
That's probably pretty accurate, but he doesn't practice it. So like, what's the difference? I don't even know what to say.
I don't even know what to say. But this is just like, guys, don't buy this book. Are you crazy?
Don't buy this book. If somebody reads this book, let me know if he apologizes or asks for forgiveness.
Because I honestly do think that that would actually be a good book, just like a one pager, just like, you know, repenting.
You know, I'm sorry. I was wrong. I was in the wrong. If he does that at all though in this book, I'd like to know about it.
I'd like to know about it because I'm going to give him mad props. I highly doubt it. I highly doubt it because I happen to know that he feels like he did the right thing last year, at least as of a few months ago.
So it's just shocking. It's just shocking that he's going to try to make some bank on a thing that he failed miserably at like three months ago.
And remember, it's not like he was in total fear of coronavirus.
He went to Black Lives Matter rallies at the same time his church was shut down. It's like, unreal.
Unreal. But let's get to the article because that's what this is about and we're here six minutes in and we haven't even discussed it yet.
Let's go. Let me take a drink of water first though. All right.
The historian Mark Knoll's 1994 book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, will be re -released next year.
In the forthcoming preface, which Knoll himself and Evangelical shared with me, he argues that in various spheres, ready for this?
These are the spheres. This is what this article was written for and this is why he's so upset that Evangelicals, specifically white
Evangelicals, because he's a racist, this is what he's so upset about that they're not going along with this.
Ready for this, guys? You're just going to blow your mind. Various spheres, vaccinations, evolutionary science, anthropogenic global warming, and the 2020 elections, just to name a few, white
Evangelicals appear as the group most easily captive to conspiratorial nonsense, in greater panic about their political opponents, or as most aggressively anti -intellectual.
So, you white Evangelicals, you're just, you don't follow the science, you're anti -intellectual, you're a bunch of dum -dums, and you need to get with the program when it comes to vaccines, evolution, global warming, and the 2020 elections.
There's no controversy here, this is a settled science, and this is the big reason why all these
Evangelical churches are splitting apart, because God forbid that you would be asking questions about vaccinations, evolution, global warming, and the 2020 elections.
Like, God, that's the big stuff. And see, your problems aren't theological, they're political.
So, get with the program on all these theological issues, you should get the vaccine, you should believe in evolution, you should believe in global warming, and 2020 elections were the most secure elections of all time, and get with the program.
That's, this is the agenda of this article, guys. This is unbelievable, like, they are so stupid.
The author of this article is, I can't even, I don't even know how to describe,
I don't think he's actually stupid, but he thinks his readers are stupid, and maybe they are. Maybe they are, because if you remember, he's talking about, well, let's just, let me just read on, because it gets funnier.
He goes on to warn that the broader Evangelical population has increasingly heated populist leaders who dismiss the results of modern learning from whatever source, and he laments the intellectual self -immolation of recent
Evangelical history. Yeah, yeah, that populist leader, Donald Trump, who was totally against the vaccine science.
Like, you see them rewriting history, like, as it happens, like, it happens, and they're already rewriting it.
Like, Donald Trump was, was, and is totally pro -vaccine.
He wants credit for the vaccine that he didn't develop because he was president at the time when it was being developed.
The Operation Warp Speed. People forget this stuff. It's like, it's like, yeah, Donald Trump was big on all this stuff.
Remember the first stimulus? Donald Trump was all about that. The first stimulus, the one that kind of, you know, codified universal basic income.
That's Donald Trump. Donald Trump is all about vaccinations. Donald Trump is all about this stuff. It's like, like, how could you rewrite history?
Yeah, we're the ones, yeah, we're following the populist leader, and Trump is the biggest devil of all time, and it's just all about the anti -intellectual.
Are you serious? Trump buys all this stuff, maybe except for the 2020 elections, which he, I think he buys as well because he didn't do anything about it.
Man, like, it's just amazing how they could rewrite history like this, as it happens. It's funny. Much of what is distinctive about American Evangelicalism is not essential to Christianity, Noel has written.
Oh, but you know what is essential to Christianity? Global warming is evil, and, you know, we gotta stop eating meat, and, you know, we got, oh yeah, evolution, that's distinctive, essential to Christianity.
2020 elections were the most secure elections of all time. That's essential to Christianity. It's like, you see, you see what's being presented here?
This is, this is shocking stuff. Shocking stuff. Much of what is distinctive about American Evangelicalism is not essential to Christianity, Noel has written, and he is surely correct.
I would only add that it isn't simply the case that much of what is distinctive about American Evangelicalism is not essential to Christianity.
It is now that, in important respects, much of what is distinctive about American Evangelicalism has become antithetical to authentic Christianity.
I'd like an example of that, right? Because, because he just says that. That's what this whole article is about.
Like, American Evangelicals, they're believing things that are antithetical to authentic Christianity. If you've noticed, he hasn't said even one of what those things are.
He's kind of hinted, and he's even hinting here, it's about, like, vaccines and immigration and stuff like that.
Okay, so what is the authentic Christian position on immigration? I don't think the author of this article has even ever thought about that.
To him, it's just, it's to feel good, as long as it feels yummy in your tummy, like, then it's probably okay.
It's like, no, that's actually not how it is at all. So he just says it. That's what the propaganda is.
You know, American Evangelicals are actually anti -Christians, but that, he's never actually said what that means.
So let's continue. All right, what we're dealing with, not in all cases, but of course, in far too many, is political identity, cultural anxieties, anti -intellectualism and ethnic nationalism, resentments and grievances, all dressed up as Christianity.
Again, this is the propaganda. This is the drumbeat. He's making it seem like all those churches that he talked about before, and, you know,
McLean Bible Church, it's just a bunch of ethnic, ethno -nationalists. They hate black people, and they're fearful of black people, and that's why they're splitting up the church.
Guys, just look at my content about McLean Bible Church. That's not what's happening. That's not what's happening.
I have like 100 videos out there about churches that are having turmoil. I have probably 10 videos about McLean Bible Church, and it's never what they say is happening is actually happening.
That's the scare tactic. Oh, they're just racists. They try to get you all uppity. It's never that.
It's never that. It's just the bottom line. All right, let's continue. Jesus now has to be reclaimed from his church.
Blasphemy, by the way. That's a small little sentence, but it's blasphemous. No, Jesus doesn't need to be redeemed from anything.
Jesus redeems his people. We don't redeem Jesus. It's a cutesy little turn or phrase that he's using, but it's a cutesy little blasphemy.
It's just Jesus does not need to be reclaimed, redeemed from anything. Jesus is the
King of Kings. He's the Lord of Lords. Again, I know he's trying to be cutesy -dootsy, but it's actually blasphemy.
Okay, there you go. It's blasphemy. From those who pretend to speak most authoritatively in his name.
And, you know, the reason why we often think that we're speaking authoritatively the words of Jesus is because often we're just literally quoting scriptures.
We're literally quoting scriptures. Sometimes we're quoting scripture and then giving the sense of it.
That's what preaching is. So that's what we do, but then you're like, well, they're pretending to speak for Jesus.
And what a real Jesus speaker would do, they would accept vaccination. They would accept evolution.
They would expect anthropogenic global warming. And they'd be totally intellectual. They wouldn't be anti -intellectual.
They'd just accept it because it's settled science. It's just shocking. It's like the projection here.
It's like you're pretending to speak for Christ. It's like, no, I'm just speaking the words of Christ because I'm literally quoting scripture.
You're actually doing that by saying that it's a gospel imperative that the 2020 election were the most secure in all history.
Unreal. Unreal. It's embarrassing, this kind of writing. It's not the writing that's embarrassing.
The writing's good. It's the way he thinks. It's the logic. It's embarrassing, the amount of errors he's making here.
Anyway, let's continue. Too many Christians have domesticated Jesus by their resistance to his call to radically rethink our attitude towards power, ourselves, and others.
Mark Labberton, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, told me, We live in an era of acute anxiety and great fear, he said.
As a result, too often Christians end up wrapping Jesus into our angry and fearful distortions. We want
Jesus to validate everything we believe, often as if he never walked the face of this earth.
What we're witnessing can't be explained more by sociology than Christology. We need examples of this, because this is something that you just are saying here.
Because what I would argue is the things that I believe about Jesus, I derive them from Jesus's words, right?
And so my endeavor is to have everything I believe be what God taught, what
Jesus taught. And so there's going to be overlap there. I'm going to get some things wrong, of course, but I'm going to try to be as consistent with Jesus's words as possible.
That's not a bad thing. But the Fuller Theological Seminary president is trying to make it seem as if that's a bad thing.
Like, if you believe everything Jesus taught, then there must be something wrong with you, because that must mean that you're distorting
Jesus. And it's like, OR it means that you're deriving your beliefs from Jesus.
You're taking your cues from Jesus. You're giving Jesus all respect and all honor.
And you actually believe that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Now, what the Atlantic article doesn't actually do here is explain that progressive
Christians like Fuller Theological Seminary and other liberals, they actually do believe that if you believe everything that the
Scripture says about Christ and about Christ taught and stuff like that, that you're a fundamentalist. That's actually a bad thing.
And so you see the sleight of hand here. He's making it seem as if your beliefs, if they are too in line with Jesus, then what you're doing is you're pretending to speak for Jesus as opposed to following Jesus.
Guys, this is so stupid. This is so backwards.
It's not a bad thing if your beliefs are in line with Christ. Like, it's not.
That's a good thing. That's a very good thing. And the liberals are always going to accuse you of this. They're going to say stuff like, oh, you're making an idol of the
Bible. It's idolatry of the Bible. You worship the Bible. People say this all the time.
In fact, one of the first things I ever did on YouTube was a debate from a PCUSA pastor about this exact thing.
And he accused me of committing idolatry of the Bible because I take it too seriously, too literally, and pretending that I speak for God.
I'm putting God in a box. That's what he said. I'm not putting God in a box by listening to what he says and trying to accomplish it.
But this is what liberal Christians believe. And by the way, guys, I want you to understand this. That all the conservative
Christians, you know, David French, David Platt, Russell Moore, Beth Moore, they're all looking at this article and yesing and amening.
They believe this stuff. They're liberals, guys. They're progressives. They think when you take God too seriously, you're a fundamentalist.
When you're too anti -intellectual, then that's anti -Christian. It's like, you didn't get that from the
Bible. You didn't get that from the Bible. That's for sure. Unlike in the
Sermon on the Mount and the Parable of the Good Samaritan, unlike Jesus's barrier -breaking encounters with prostitutes and Roman collaborators, with the lowly and despised, with the unclean and those in the wrong side of the holiness code, with the wounded souls whom he healed on the
Sabbath, many Christians today, listen to this, I want you to get this, guys. This is, first of all, there's so much hypocrisy here because they have the people that they won't touch.
They won't touch racists. They won't touch white supremacists. Those are those people over there. They're just over there. Listen to this though, guys.
Listen to this. He's using this as a criticism. This is what
I mean by these guys are complete liberals, theological liberals. They don't love
God. They don't love his word. They pretend to when it's expedient for them. But the minute it's not expedient for them, they discard the words of Christ.
You ready for this? Here's what it says. They're talking about the prostitutes and the people Jesus healed.
Ready? He's saying, unlike that, unlike Christ, this is what many Christians today see.
You ready for this? This is the bad thing. Many Christians today see the world divided between us and them, the children of light and the children of darkness.
Blessed are the politically powerful for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are the culture warriors for they will be called children of God.
So he's saying, unlike Jesus, Christians today see the world as, as us and them, children of light on one side, children of darkness on the other.
Now, guys, I don't know how well you guys know your Bibles. And you know, we all, everyone can know their
Bibles better than they do right now. He's literally telling you that something the
Bible teaches is wrong. I'm not just making this up where they say, if your, if your beliefs are too in line with the scripture, that that's a bad thing.
They actually believe that if you're, or if your beliefs are too in line with Christ, that's actually a bad thing.
And this paragraph proves it because he's saying, unlike Christ, too many
Christians today believe that there's the children of the light and the children of the darkness. Now, in that sermon, in that sermon that he's pretending to quote from here,
Sermon on the Mount, these are the words of God. Ye are the light of the world.
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Ye are the light of the world.
Is that not close enough for you? Well, there's others. Here's John chapter 12. Again, the words of the
Lord, while ye have light, believe in the light that ye may be children of light while ye have light, believe in the light so that ye may be children of the light.
If you want me to speak it in normal English, I'll speak it in normal English. While you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light.
Paul even taught this. There's just so many verses. It's embarrassing. Here's Paul.
This is 1 Thessalonians. This is the first verse I thought of when the other two I hadn't thought of at the top of my head, but this is the first one
I thought of when I read this paragraph. This is Paul. Ye are children of the light and children of the day.
We are not of the night nor of the darkness. Here's a normal English.
For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.
There are children of light and children of darkness. And Jesus taught it and Paul taught it.
And the word of God teaches this in many, many places. And here is Weiner, whatever his name is,
Paul Weiner saying that unlike Christ, this is what Christians believe. See, this is the problem that we're having.
A lot of conservative believers, conservatives believe just like this.
That if you're too close to the scripture, there must be something wrong with you. If you think that you have a
Bible verse that applies to every situation, there's something, you're a fundamentalist. You're actually probably not even a believer.
We have a fundamentally different religion than these great reset pastors. It's just that simple. It's just that simple.
So here the article, you know, he basically tries to say that unlike Christ, Christians are believing like Christ.
It makes no sense at all. It's just all a subversion and it's all just to drive this point that white evangelicals are like the worst people around.
And it's just really, it's just, it's embarrassing that so many people fall for this. You know what I mean? It's embarrassing. Let's finish this up.
For many of us who have made Christianity central to our lives, the pain of this moment is watching those who claim to follow
Jesus do so much to distort who he really was. Those who deform his image may be doing so unwittingly.
This isn't an intentionally malicious enterprise they're engaging in. They believe they're being faithful, but it's nonetheless destructive and unsettling.
Notice he hasn't even said anything about the specifics here. He's just throwing accusations.
Oh, they're racist. They're white supremacists. They're xenophobic. It's just a bunch of propaganda accusations.
He hasn't actually said anything. And every time he tries to bring up scripture, he actually twists it to the point where it's almost opposite.
It's embarrassing. He says, I believe the portrait I've painted in this essay is accurate. Well, I'm sure you do because you're probably following Satan, the father of lies.
And so you're a comfortable lying as well. I'm sure you believe it. It's not accurate though.
He says, but it is also necessarily incomplete. Countless acts of kindness, generosity, and self -giving love are performed every day by people precisely because they are
Christians. Probably not those white evangelicals though, right? The white evangelicals are just pure evil. Their lives have been changed and in some cases transformed by their faith.
My own life has been immeasurably blessed by people of faith who have walked the journey with me, who have shown me grace and encouraged me in difficult moments.
But I recognize the wreckage. I can recognize that while also recognizing the wreckage all around us.
Something has gone amiss. Pastors know it as well as anyone and better than most. The Jesus of the gospels, the
Jesus who won their hearts and who long ago won mine needs to be reclaimed. Blasphemy.
Absolute, utter, nice sounding. You could probably put it on a coffee mug. It's still blasphemy.
Jesus does not need to be reclaimed. Jesus does not need to be redeemed. Jesus needs to be obeyed.
Because he is the king of kings. He's the lord of lords.
He is currently a man sitting at the right hand of the father and he is putting all of his enemies.
Yes, Christ has enemies. The children of darkness. The thing that you said that Christ didn't believe that he actually literally taught in those exact words.
This is the thing. It doesn't take interpretation. He said he didn't teach the thing he taught in the exact words that he taught it.
He has enemies and he's putting those under his feet. And the church is building day by day, step by step.
The gates of hell cannot prevail against the church. And that's what's happening. Yes, there's going to be conflict because that's necessary.
There's going to be, listen, the demons aren't giving up on just because we say we want, you know, the ground that they have.
Just because we want to pluck people from the fire doesn't mean the demons are going to be like, okay, take them, take them. No, they need to be defeated.
They need to be defeated. Every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God needs to be put down and it's going to be ugly at times.
And so, yes, there's going to be some wreckage. But the thing is, there's a time to break down. And then there's a time to build up.
And so we need to recognize that. Not fear from it, but to lean into it. To borrow one of their stupid phrases, you got to lean into this.
It's a fight and we're leaning into it. And it's a fight that's going to be ugly and brutal, but we are definitely without question going to win because Jesus Christ doesn't lose.
I hope you found this series helpful. I hope you found this video helpful. God bless. So the question becomes, how do we deal with people that subscribe to the
Atlantic, right? How do we deal with brothers and sisters in Christ who they would read this article and they would yes and amen at every point.
And we've, I've totally destroyed this article. I mean, this article is a big subversion. It's a tactic, it's propaganda.
And a lot of it is pretty evil stuff, right? So, but how do we deal with people who are fooled by this, right?
Because not everyone who's fooled by this is an unbeliever. I think a lot of the leaders are unbelievers.
I think that's as simple as that. A lot of these guys are wolves, you know, Russell Moore, someone I think of as a probable wolf, you know, and there's a lot of people like that.
And so, you know, I rip people, you know, all the time in this channel, but for the people that they're leading astray, we need to figure out how to deal with them.
Or how do you deal with a pastor, right? Who shares gospel coalition articles or this Atlantic article and is just in total agreement, like, oh yeah, there's so much death.
It's just the death. How do you deal with them? And so the reality is that I think that this article is an attempt to get you to not deal with them as a
Christian ought to, because this article just consistently laments all the conflict, all the confrontation and all of that.
And unfortunately, that's the exact thing that needs to happen. I'm not saying you need to be jerks.
I'm not saying you need to be mean about it. But you need to confront your brothers and sisters who are falling for this propaganda because, you know, they're tiptoeing their way into the fire.
And one of the things that we need to do is we need to pluck people out of the fire. And so you need to confront when your brother's in sin.
This is not a mystery. This comes straight from the scripture, right? When your brother's in sin, you go to him and you confront him and you try to win your brother, right?
And sometimes this is pretty messy. Like my own brother, you know, I remember a distinct situation where I was irritable and acting like just a jerk.
And, you know, he confronted me and, you know, got kind of heated. You know, he was yelling at me and I was yelling back.
And over time, you know, our hearts softened. I remember there's a brother that is not, you know, a biological brother, but a brother in Christ that we had a big disagreement and we screamed at each other for like an hour.
And at the end of that conversation, we were both weeping. We were both repentant of the things that we had done wrong against each other and things like that.
And, you know, that conversation, we kind of, we kind of, what's it called? Reconciled, right?
We won each other in that situation. But it takes confrontation, right? You have to be willing to lose your brother.
This article speaks of confrontation as if it's the worst thing possible. But it's actually necessary.
You need to fight. You need to duke it out the way you would with a biological brother who's doing something crazy.
You have to be willing to risk the relationship in order to confront their sin, to confront their error.
Again, you don't have to be a jerk, but you have to confront it. You owe it to them to confront it directly.
And so you go to your pastor and you say, we share this Atlantic article. Let me tell you what my concerns are here. And you just lay it out just straight up.
And you're going to get one of two responses. You're going to get a humble response or you're going to get a very angry response. And then you kind of take it step by step and you go through the steps of normal church discipline.
And you kind of deal with it the way the scripture tells you to deal with it. You have to be willing to lose your brother in order to win him.
You see what I'm saying? I mean, this doesn't always have a happy ending. I've got a lot of happy endings where we had a knockdown, drag out fight and we came out hugging each other and stuff like that.
But I've also got some situations where there wasn't even a fight. And the guy treats me like as if I'm a tax collector.
He has nothing to do with me. And it's like, that's not a happy story. It's not something I liked, but it's true.
And it doesn't always happen the way it should happen. But that's how you got to do it. If you've got brothers or even a pastor, you know, with humility, with love, you go to them and you confront them over their sin of ripping white people just because the pagans are doing it too.
You know, that kind of thing. Like, you got to do it. You have to confront them over their sin, and hopefully you win them with that.