ASCI Defends Walter Strickland's "UnifiED" & Sean McDowell Interviews Eric Mason

Conversations That Matter

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The Conversations That Matter podcast, my name is

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John Harris. We have two subjects to talk about today, similar in some ways. One is that the

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Association of Christian Schools International responded. That's right, they responded to some of the concerns raised on this program, as well as Capstone Reports, and now

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Founders Ministries has gotten in on this. I think the response to the concerns from ACSI, that document was released before Founders had done their podcast, but I'm sure

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Founders is now included in this. The concerns we all raised about Walter Strickland. He's heading up Unify Ed, at least he's in the top echelon of the leadership there.

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He has, unfortunately, a history, leading up to even 2020, of comments he's made about the gospel, which frankly are false teaching.

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I went over a bunch of these quotes in an episode recently about Walter Strickland's gospel, that was the title of it, and you can go check that out.

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I spent about an hour going through just, here's what he believes, let's be careful about this, let's read it in context, but this is what he said.

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It's not surprising for someone who's influenced by liberation theology, they're going to promote a false gospel, or at least a compromised gospel, a gospel that is corrupted, is morphed in some way.

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Think Galatian heresy terms here, adding to it, using social justice influenced laws to add to the gospel.

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And then of course, standpoint theory, a postmodern idea that there's different ways of, usually they'll say it's just different questions that are asked to apply the text differently, but it gets into interpretation.

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It's an assumption that different social locations are going to have a different way of understanding the truth of the word of God, or applying the truth of the word of God, and ultimately it ends up with, they're interpreting the truth of the word of God differently, and that's why we need those voices, because if we don't have those voices, it's insufficient.

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We just don't have the full truth somehow, or we can't get at it, so there's a barrier. Some people call this ethnic

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Gnosticism, it's standpoint theory though, and I've shown you some quotes, Walter Strickland advocates both these things, and this is the guy who's going to be heading up the organization,

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Unify Ed, which is going to teach, I guess, diversity and inclusion to ACSI schools.

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This is the accrediting agency that accredits 25 ,000 Christian schools in the United States and across the world.

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It is the largest, I believe, accreditor of Christian schools. This is a concern, so I'm going to show you their response, and I'll be honest, it's a disappointing response.

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Then, we're going to go over something I never thought I would go over, Eric Mason was on Sean McDowell's show.

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Sean McDowell is a Christian apologist, you might be familiar, if you're not familiar with him, with his father, Sean McDowell, he wrote a book called

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Evidence That Demands a Verdict back in, I want to say like the 70s, late 70s, early 80s, something like that.

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His son, Sean McDowell, is also an apologist. It's interesting, because I remember

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I had an exchange with Sean McDowell once. He was recommending, actually, it's the

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Jude 3 Project, the same project Lisa Fields was doing an interview with Walter Strickland on.

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It was on their podcast, Jude 3 Project, but Sean McDowell was recommending that, I want to say a year ago, maybe.

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I remember I had kind of called him out for it, and I showed him a bunch of the places in which the Jude 3 Project actually, and it was blatant, they advocated heresy.

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By heresy, I mean false teaching. He actually messaged me, he thanked me. If I recall correctly,

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I think he retracted his endorsement, or he didn't say anything about it publicly, I think, but he just took it down or something.

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Anyway, he was appreciative of that. I was kind of surprised when I saw that Eric Mason was on his show.

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We're going to go over that. I don't know that Sean McDowell agrees with every single thing Eric Mason says, but there's definitely some concerning things there.

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I want to just go back, I want to review for a little bit who Eric Mason is or has been. Look, here's the thing,

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I need to say this for Walter Strickland and Eric Mason and anyone else in this. I'll be overjoyed. I said this.

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Someone tagged Walter Strickland in an article I wrote about just getting to the heart of his soteriology in some of the comments he's made.

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Someone was trying to get him to interact, and I commented under it, and I said, look, I'd be overjoyed if Walter Strickland just repented and recanted, contradicted the false teaching that he's promoted.

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No one would be more happy than those who have shown a spotlight on this,

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I would think. If you're not happy about that, then maybe you have a different motivation and you shouldn't be criticizing others or exercising discernment on others.

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This is something that, you know, the true gospel of Jesus Christ can shine light in the darkest places, and when there's a false gospel being promoted, the true gospel shines a light on that.

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And if someone sees that, and they understand it, and if they're not saved, if they get saved, or if they have just been, if they're like Peter, and they've promoted false teaching in some way, they didn't stand up to false teaching, and now they're called out for it, and they repent of it, then we praise

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God for that. That's something that we love. We want that. That's the goal. And unfortunately, it's in right now, in our moment, people are very sensitive.

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And you're gonna see this with the ACSI statement I'm about to show you. It's like if there's any level of criticism, any level of exercising discernment, any level of caution, any level of, even if the motivation is pure love, concern, then you're just, you're maligning, you're lying.

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And really, that's maligning, and that's lying. So it's actually the opposite. It's those who are saying that are the ones doing the maligning and lying, unfortunately.

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And it's, so I just need to be clear on that. We would love it for Eric Mason and Walter Strickland, both, to just wake up to realize the false teaching they promoted, and then publicly to, in the strongest possible terms, condemn what they previously said.

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That would be good. That's what we want. And so we're gonna go over both of these things.

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First, though, I want to make an announcement here. This is important. For those who have any connection to students at Liberty University, or anyone in the

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Lynchburg area, really, but Liberty University in particular, I wanna show you this. Juan Riesco is gonna be coming on April 17th.

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April 17th, Juan Riesco, if you watch Paint the Wall Black, you know who he is. He owned the number one business on Yelp in Chicago, and then

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BLM shut it down within about four days, and he took a courageous stand for Christian truth.

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He's coming, and there's gonna be food there, and I mean, it's all the stuff college students want.

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But the goal here is Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Truth is sponsoring this.

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They've invited him to come in, and the goal is for students to get to know a young, 30 -year -old, 31 -year -old, he's young, young Christian leader, and it's gonna be positive, gospel is gonna be proclaimed.

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I mean, we're gonna be screening the movie, so the gospel's even in that, but there's gonna be questions and answers, a period for that,

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I think a panel discussion. You're gonna want, if you know a student at Liberty University, you're gonna want them to come to this. You're gonna want them to invite their friends.

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You're definitely gonna want them to meet someone like Juan Riesco, a brave person, because unfortunately, and I hate to say this, but for the most part,

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Christian institutions are not sponsoring these kinds of things. They're just not. Christian institutions are not bringing in the true, brave heroes that are standing up to the new religion, social justice religion.

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They're just not doing it. They want to sidestep it, or they platform people who are down for the revolution.

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This is a unique opportunity to meet someone who felt the sting of BLM and is still standing strong.

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So please, go to the info section. There's a link there. If you know anyone at Liberty University, you'd better send this to them, and that's not a threat.

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That's just me trying to tell you this is important, so please do it if you feel so inclined.

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So I appreciate that. Let's see, we have as well, oh, yes,

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I'll probably say this at the end again. This is a perfect time, guys, to get your

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Resend, if you're a Southern Baptist, if you're going to a Southern Baptist convention, get your Resend Resolution 9 mask, because you know they're gonna make you wear one in Nashville in June.

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When you go to the Southern Baptist convention, you know that they're gonna make you wear one. So if they're gonna wear one, why not have one that says

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Resend Resolution 9? And for those who've listened to this program, if you're Southern Baptist, you know what that means.

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Or you can get the t -shirt, if you really wanna be out there. Get the t -shirt. Resend Resolution 9. You can see

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Resolution here has, you have the Democrat Party sign, you have the hammer and the sickle.

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You have, I think that's a transgender sign, and then you have the black fist.

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But they're all in red. Insinuation is that there's a Marxist root in this.

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And that's what Resolution 9 in some ways represents.

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And so you really wanna make a statement in Nashville for the Southern Baptist convention. This is the shirt to get.

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This is the mask to get. Let's talk about ACSI now, though.

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Let's get into it a little bit here. So here is the response that was given by ACSI.

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I guess, I'm not sure if this is on their website or they emailed this out. I think it's on their website. They responded to what we did in a video called

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Walter Strickland's Gospel and some articles Capstone Report put out there. And this is what they're doing.

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Hello, ACSI school leaders. And let me blow this up so those who are watching can see it here. Hello, ACSI school leaders.

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We have heard your concerns and wanted to provide the following information. So that means people are contacting them from within saying, hey, what's going on here?

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Recently, ACSI announced its partnership with Unify Ed to provide Christian educators with resources on biblically -based unity regarding the continued race -related dissension within our culture and schools.

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Since that announcement, misleading reports have surfaced stating that Unify Ed's philosophy and theology framework are not biblical.

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Well, I mean, actually, all I've seen is concerns about the person leading it, Walter Strickland, and what he said.

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Anyway, ACSI has also been questioned and maligned. Really? Because I didn't do that.

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I'm not sure who did that. I didn't see Capstone Report doing that. I mean, questioning them, sure.

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I mean, yeah, we're questioning why would you have this organization commit maligning them? I mean, the hope is that they would retract and not use

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Unify Ed, but anyway. Naturally, several of our schools have contacted us concerning what they are hearing.

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Now, here's the thing. They're having a webinar to hear directly from our

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ACSI presidents and the leaders of Unify Ed, where all concerns will be addressed. So this is what they're doing.

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They're saying, this is the strategy. Those who have concerns about Walter Strickland, they're lying.

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They're maligning us. I've seen the strategy many times before, and I'm not sure if this is what

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ACSI is trying to do, but it may be, where they're attacking us, where they try to broaden the field of like, we have concerns about this one man's teaching.

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Here are the quotes. And they're saying, they're attacking all of us. So it kind of gets that defensiveness up.

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No, we're not attacking all of you. No. No one is. That's just not right. They're maligning us.

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No, no one's maligning anyone that I can see. We're just reading quotes, reading things that have been said.

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And then after that, after tilling the soil with, you know, these evil people are maligning us, we're going to answer everything.

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We're going to, you know, trying to, even though they don't have the answers in that email, which it would be probably pretty simple to do, let's put a little sheet together.

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No, here's where these people are wrong. Here's why they're misrepresenting Dr. Strickland, et cetera. Instead, it's kind of hidden.

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But it's a confidence. It's a confidence that we can answer these things and just know that we've got it under control.

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And that's kind of, this is the response I've seen in so many organizations when they are called out on these things.

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And ECSI wasn't even quite called out when they're, when cautions even just brought up, when concern is raised.

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They do this. I've seen this so many times. And it's so discouraging when you see it. Cause it's like, guys, like, you know, hopefully if we're

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Christians, we're all on the same team here. We want truth. We want the pure gospel. And when we raise concerns about someone not having it, this is, man,

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I don't know how to take you seriously now, if this is the leadership of ACSI. So, here's something

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I wrote and I'm just going to read it to you in response to, that's not it, in response to this.

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Yeah, I'll read some of this. It's pretty short. I said, here's a very short and straight to the point blog about Walter Strickland's soteriology.

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ACSI has unfortunately decided to defensively mischaracterize my podcast and articles on Capstone Report, et cetera, about Walter Strickland's theology as somehow maligning

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ACSI. Nothing could be further from the truth. My goal from the beginning was to warn ACSI about who they're letting advise them on diversity, inclusion, et cetera.

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Hopefully, this article, which only focuses on soteriology, will help demonstrate the legitimate concerns with using

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Unified Ed, led in part by Walter Strickland, at potentially 25 ,000 ACSI private

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Christian schools. In the Book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul warned Christians against those who preach a different or distorted gospel.

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The threat to the Galatian church was an attempt to combine faith in Christ with a requirement to keep the law, especially circumcision, for the purpose of justification.

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Paul argued that trusting in human ability to keep the law was both impossible and dangerous. Instead, he preached the good news that Christ redeemed those who lived by faith in him from the curse of the law.

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While the law served to make sinners aware of their need for Christ's atoning work and as a guide for Christian living, keeping it was never part of the gospel itself.

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This is why Paul always described the gospel as a work of God on behalf of believers. It was this idea that the just shall live by faith alone which sparked the

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Protestant Reformation. Adding the requirement of the law to the gospel created an impossible standard for sinners to reach, denied the sufficiency of the atonement, and destroyed the good news of the gospel.

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Today, the social justice movement is serving as an occasion for many leaders in churches and organizations with Protestant faith statements to severely blur the line between the law and the gospel.

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Walter Strickland, a Southern Baptist professor who is heavily influenced by liberation theology, attaches the work of liberation from systems of oppression to the gospel.

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In 2016, he told interviewer Lisa Fields that the cross in the lynching tree by James Cone was a beautiful monograph.

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She needed to read and be blessed by. He also described liberation and reconciliation by J. Deitus Roberts, which condemns the

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Bible based gospel and promotes the teachings of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx as necessary for black theology, as his favorite theological book of all time.

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In both cases, Strickland endorsed the works of liberation theologians for how they improved his understanding of the gospel.

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J. Deitus Roberts helped him see the universal imperatives of the gospel by imagining a more relatable

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Christ who appeared culturally as whoever you are, wherever you are. James Cone introduced

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Strickland to the concept of systemic sin and opened his eyes to the idea that Christ is trying to restore brokenness by addressing issues like racial reconciliation.

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In an interview from 2018 sponsored by Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Strickland described

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James Cone as someone who wanted to see social vitality of the gospel. In light of Cone's teaching, it was up to believers to do the work of the social implications or social outworkings of the gospel, which meant understanding the brokenness of creation and fixing it.

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In direct contradiction to Jesus' teaching, Strickland even described a summary of the gospel as to love God and neighbor, which

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Jesus clearly taught were actually the two commandments underlying the whole law and prophets. During a panel discussion on race and justice in the wake of the civil unrest following George Floyd's death,

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Strickland claimed that American Christians, in order to justify slavery, constructed and passed down a half -gospel, which saved people's souls but neglected the weighty matters of law.

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Instead, he advocated the two -parted reality of the gospel, which included accomplishing justice. This perception that the gospel preached in most evangelical churches is somehow incomplete without the command to work toward social justice, saturates the language of many leaders in evangelical organizations.

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Unfortunately for Walter Strickland, the gospel includes keeping a social justice version of the law. In contrast to what can best be described as a muddled interpretation or understanding of the relationship between the law and the gospel,

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J. Gresham Machen declared that peace comes only when a man recognizes that all his striving to be right with God, all his feverish endeavors to keep the law before he can be saved, is unnecessary, and that the

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Lord Jesus has wiped out the handwriting that was against him by dying instead of him on the cross.

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Machen continued by stating, Very different is the conception of faith which prevails in the liberal church.

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According to modern liberalism, faith is essentially the same as making Christ master in one's life. At least it is by making

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Christ master in the life, and the welfare of men is sought. But that simply means that salvation is thought to be obtained by our own obedience to the commands of Christ.

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Such teaching is just a sublimated form of legalism. Not the sacrifice of Christ, on this view, but our own obedience to God's law is the ground of hope.

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The gospel, then, is not something to be trifled with or distorted. Even obscuring its clarity according to the Apostle Paul in Galatians 2 .14

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is ground for confrontation. And then I put all the sources there. So if you want to see, hey, where did Walter Strickland say this?

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The sources are all there. Now I'm sure they're going to be erasing these things. But he said these things. And the scripture verses are there.

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This is going to be a resource for you guys. Now there's more you could say about Walter Strickland than I did in that hour -long video called

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Walter Strickland's Gospel. But this is just, if you want something simple, if you're thinking like, I'm in ACSI and I don't know about standpoint theory or postmodernism, this is my encouragement to you.

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Just focus on this reality. Walter Strickland's Gospel, at certain points in time, in real time, when he's communicated it, and it hasn't been like off -the -cuff things even.

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It's been sponsored by the seminary. It's been podcasts where he's had a chance to think about what he wants to say.

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I mean, he is a theologian in theory, right? He has teach at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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Use this as a resource for combating that. And ask him about his quotes. Okay, why did you say that the gospel we have is a half gospel?

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What did you mean by that? And then watch, see if he adds works to it. Ask him, why did you say that the gospel can be summarized as loving

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God and loving neighbor? Isn't that the law? Isn't that what condemns us? Those are the kinds of questions that he needs to be asked.

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And if he doesn't agree with that anymore, he needs to retract it in the strongest possible public terms. And if he doesn't, then there's a concern there.

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What is his gospel? Does he really love the true gospel? And that's a strong, I know it sounds strong, and it should be.

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Very strong, because this is a very serious issue, and it has eternal ramifications. All right, let's keep going here.

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I wanted to talk about Eric Mason a little bit. Eric Mason has a similar issue here.

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Let me just give you, I could give you so many more, but let me just give you three. Eric Mason, this is on his

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Twitter, by the way, and this is recent stuff. It's January 2021. To do contextual apologetics for you, it is your gospel duty to do that.

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Read Romans 12, beyond verse two, and read 1 Corinthians 9. If whites will be healthy missionaries to black people, it is a gospel imperative that you study black history and culture.

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I'm done. Again, gospel imperative. This is a work of the gospel.

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Now, look, I mean, in Galatians, Paul was concerned about people who just weren't being clear about the gospel.

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At best, this is lack of clarity. Well, what is the gospel? What do you mean? If I'm gonna believe the gospel,

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I have to study black history and culture? What does that even mean? It is your gospel duty to study black history and culture.

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I mean, I guess knowing something, if you live in an area where there's a lot of black people,

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I guess maybe it'd be helpful to know something about their culture if you're completely unaware. But this is one of the things that I've said many times.

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It's almost offensive to me how certain ethnic groups are treated like in the

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United States where they speak English, where, I mean, I'll just give you personal experience here.

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Myself, I've been in thousands of homes doing repair work over a 10 -year period.

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That was my job. I would be in like 5 to sometimes 10 homes a day every day of the work week for a long time.

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And I did this in New York. I did this in North Carolina. I did this in South Carolina. Different parts of those states.

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And one of the things I've noticed especially is that there is a divide, there is a difference in the way people think.

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And the way they treat even when I would go into fixed furniture and that kind of thing, the way they even treat their furniture is much different.

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But the biggest divide was urban -rural or affluent versus impoverished. I mean,

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I've been in everything you can think of. Everything. Literally everything you can think of.

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I've been there. And it's confusing to me a little bit when

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I hear people talk about black people and usually black people, but it could be

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Hispanics or Asian people as if they're from a different planet. And it's like if you're white, it's just like such a barrier there.

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And I mean, I'd be offended I think if someone said that about me and said, well, if you're black, right, and you're going to live and you're going to move to this area that's predominantly white, you have to do

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A, B, and C. It's just not normal or organic. I mean, it's not wrong to study the history of that area or whatever culture you're moving into,

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I guess, but it's not like there's such a huge gap there. And once you get there, you're going to learn those things.

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That's the organic part of it. You meet people. You have friends. That's the normal way people should be interacting, not this academic hoop -jumping you have to do to somehow be qualified to either preach the gospel or understand the gospel in this new context.

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I mean, they speak English. I speak English. The cultures actually in some ways aren't even that different.

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I remember thinking when I was in North Carolina, I lived outside of Raleigh. I was going to Southeastern at the time, but I was working, doing repair work.

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And I would go in, sometimes in Raleigh, every single person that I would be doing repair work for that day was from New York or New Jersey.

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There were days like that in Raleigh. I mean, if you go to Raleigh, it's not the South anymore. Barely. I mean, little hints of it here and there, but it's mainly people from the

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North who moved down and they lived there. And so if you want to enter Southern culture, you go to the outskirts.

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And I remember thinking, like, the people from Raleigh are so different, so different than the people that live on the outskirts, whether white or black.

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And that honestly was a way bigger divide. But that divide never gets talked about. And I don't think you have to do some kind of crazy contextualization to address that.

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I mean, maybe there's some helpful things that you can learn. But they speak English. They understand words pretty much the same way that you understand words.

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There's a lot of commonality there. It's not like they're straight. And when you treat people, let's say, from the city as so different from those in the country or the suburbs or whatever, it creates barriers that are unnecessary.

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It's just not organic. It's not the way humans interact with each other. It's weird, guys.

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It's weird. But I've thought that for a long time. But it just sparked in my mind when

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I read this tweet that this is kind of what Dr. Eric Mason is pushing here. And in making it this priority, it's the gospel, right?

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I mean, this is not like disagreements over eschatology. This isn't like even disagreements over the way

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Genesis is interpreted, which I think does relate to the gospel in some way. I can, you know, death before sin's a problem.

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But he's going straight for the heart of the Christian message. The gospel means you have to study black history and culture.

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Really? Here's another one. Marching, protesting is fine, but we have to build institutions for those who need them.

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Giving out food is cool. Paying people's bills is all right. But all of the above, without systemic gospel action, will perpetuate continued injustice and keep them marginalized where they are.

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Now, again, systemic, I mean, this word we hear all the time now, systemic. Systemic gospel action.

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I mean, it's like hopefully he means just sharing the gospel. Hopefully that's what he's talking about. But why layer it in such a confusing manner where it sounds like you're mixing it with work somehow?

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Systemic usually applies to like these, you know, when we talk about systemic oppression or systemic racism.

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You're talking about a system that, you know, all the people in there might not be racist, but the system's racist because it promotes disparities or something like that.

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So it's very impersonal, first of all. And then putting the word action as a part of this is works.

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You know, so what work are you talking about? Now, maybe he could say, well, I was talking about, you know, people working in the sense that they are going to have faith in Christ.

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It's just the gospel. That's what I'm talking about. But it's like, well, you're a pastor. You know, you've supposedly studied theology.

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What is this? What is this nonsense? Here's another one. Two years since the release of Woke Church.

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So thankful for all those who have hit me up or tagged me speaking about it being helpful in some way. Looking forward to see the work of Jesus continue empowering us to what?

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Apply the gospel. Apply the gospel. Well, Woke Church was not about applying the gospel.

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I've read Woke Church. We did a whole episode on Woke Church. If that was applying the gospel, that's a whole bunch of social justice works.

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So Dr. Eric Mason, what's your gospel? Well, he answers some of that for us in Woke Church.

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Let me give you some quotations from Woke Church. The goal of this book is to shine a spotlight on one of the aspects of the gospel that has been neglected and dismissed as inappropriate for discourse.

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Hmm. So we've had an incomplete gospel, I guess. In Western theology, we tend to lack a comprehensive view of God's perfections, particularly righteousness, justice, and even our understanding of justification.

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Wow. Western theology lacks an understanding of justification. Isn't that interesting? We are to proclaim the gospel to change people within systems.

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That's part of the goal of the gospel? Justice is a core message of the Bible. Hmm. I'd say grace is the core message of the

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Bible. The gospel that cries out for a Woke Church. Really, that's what the gospel does. It cries out for a

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Woke Church. That's the good news. The separation between black and white flowed from the white church's unwillingness to preach and live out a full gospel.

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How astounding is it that black church exists not as an entity that was born out of willing missiological effort, but out of heretical theology and practice.

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Hmm. The white people. They just didn't have a full gospel. We are reaping the bitter fruit of a black identity crisis that I know the gospel is sufficient to fill.

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The gospel is going to solve black identity? The gospel makes you right with God.

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It can affect your identity for sure. It gives you a new identity that is greater than the other identities you have.

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It doesn't mean that you lose your identity, your cultural identity. Woke people say this all the time.

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This is one of the things they're partially right about. You don't stop being someone from England if now you have the gospel.

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You're just part of the people of God. There's earthly realities that you still have.

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There's the fact that you're a father or a husband or a member of the local elks club.

29:28

There's all these other identities and those are fine. It's using the gospel in all these works -related things.

29:37

The gospel is going to do this. The gospel is going to do that. I don't know how you can say this isn't false teaching in some way.

29:46

Or at least, at the very least, a complete lack of clarity. Someone like this shouldn't be writing books.

29:51

They shouldn't be pastoring. This is complete confusion if it's not what the words seem to indicate, which is that he believes in some sort of a salvation by works.

30:00

And not fully by works. It's an adding. It's like the Galatian heresy. It's like Walter Strickland.

30:06

The white church doesn't have the full gospel. It needs what? What does it need then? Well, it needs justice.

30:14

It needs changing within the systems. And then you get your list of works. So this is a real problem, guys.

30:22

And for Sean McDowell to platform Eric Mason, have him on, it's okay to have someone on if you're going to disagree with them especially, but you're going to see there really wasn't any pushback.

30:32

Sean's agreeing with a lot of things Eric Mason says. And so here's the advertisement. Eric Mason has a new book,

30:39

Urban Apologetics, and Sean McDowell says, What are the biggest gospel threats to the black community?

30:47

Gospel threats. We use gospel like an adjective so much. You notice that? It's kind of weird, but anyway.

30:54

Threats to the gospel, gospel threats. So he has Eric Mason on. And I have some clips that I want to share with you from this discussion.

31:02

And I'm going to stop and comment on some of them, but here we go. Farrakhan has been really a mainstay influencer in hip -hop culture because of that impact.

31:14

So that's what they're addressing of black identity and sub -spiritual prophetic voices that have spoken,

31:22

I would say, on socioeconomic issues correctly. Their root is wrong.

31:28

They don't have any eschatological hope. They don't have any soteriological rooting or empowerment.

31:38

And they have a different Jesus than us. They're fighting against... He's talking about cults here, like black Hebrew Israelites and stuff.

31:44

And he says, hey, and it's just interesting, their economic, their social views, those are correct. Those are right.

31:50

Louis Farrakhan has the right social and economic views. Now, I mean, look, if I were to say...

31:58

Oh, man, I'm trying to even think. If someone who is white, let's say, were to say, you know,

32:07

David Duke, that guy, he's got the right social and political views, but just a little confused about the gospel or something like that.

32:18

He's the wrong Jesus, but his politics. Look at some of the things David Duke says about, let's say,

32:25

Jewish people. We'll take that as an example. And then look at some of the things Louis Farrakhan says about Jewish people. They're pretty similar.

32:30

They're about the same. Louis Farrakhan says some of the most disgusting, outrageous, beyond even most

32:38

Marxist, you know, things that you can think of. He's Louis Farrakhan. I mean, we all know who Louis Farrakhan is, right?

32:43

I mean, I think most people know who Louis Farrakhan is. Nation of Islam. And Eric Mason here is just saying, yeah, you know, his social, social political views, those are right.

32:54

In context, I mean, that's, I mean, I don't even know what to say. How do you even, it's like, if you don't see the problem with that, and Sean McDowell doesn't say anything.

33:03

And that's what I don't get is like, you know, that didn't like give you pause to say like, hey, you know, did you just say

33:08

Louis Farrakhan has, you know, anyway, let's keep going here. They're fighting against the marriage of Christianity with Constantinianism.

33:19

And that's still by even alt -right Christianity and even what we, what

33:25

I would call political Christianity on Christian nationalism has its rooting in, in, in, in, in the, in, in Constantinianism that has made its way through the centuries through Europe and was transported over here during slave trade.

33:41

Hmm. So I think I understand what you mean by Christian nationalism, but tell me what you mean by Constantinianism.

33:48

Is this the blending of the church and the state that's expressed today with Christian nationalism?

33:54

Absolutely. That's, that's where it began. Okay. What did we just hear?

34:00

So categorical just soup. I don't know what in the world. So political

34:06

Christianity, alt -right Christianity, Christian nationalism and Augustinianism are all kind of like on one side.

34:14

And the root is Constantinianism. Did I say Augustinianism? I meant Constantinianism. So that's all on one side.

34:22

And then the, these cults like Louis Farrakhan and black Hebrew Israelites are trying to, with their correct social ethic.

34:28

Apparently they're trying to respond to this incorrect form of Christianity.

34:35

And, and the, the issue seems to be that there's a blending of church and state that's, that's the root issue here, apparently.

34:41

And, and so we, we've now been through, you know, a month of, two months of Christian nationalism being such a big problem.

34:48

That's the issue. It's when, you know, you hold a rally in DC and you know, you're, you're against the election fraud and you pray somehow that's

34:59

Christian nationalism. You know, if you, of course, you know, the big event January 6th, when you had some

35:04

Christians in a large group, and some of them, a few hundred out of the million who were there, went into the

35:10

Capitol. And, and there was, you know, I guess they, there were some

35:15

Christian symbols. There were some people who prayed. There was a shaman who prayed in the, in the chamber.

35:21

That's not very Christian, but, but, but that was Christian nationalism. And, and of course those making the criticism didn't have much to say about the whole summer of BLM riots where local municipalities and businesses are smashed.

35:34

But as soon as it's the Capitol, it's a problem, which means you would think the people making that criticism are the real nationalists. But anyway,

35:40

I digress. They, they look at that and they say any blending of Christian symbolism or, you know,

35:48

Christian actions like prayer disciplines, that that becomes

35:54

Christian nationalism. And of course there's other things they'll say too. It's, it's, you know, Christian nationalism is thinking that we're a chosen nation, that kind of thing.

36:06

And, and I think there's a spectrum here. I think there, there are people, and this has been there for a long time.

36:11

People who think that the United States is special, manifest destiny, chosen nation, city on a hill. And, and there's some, you know, the way to actually sometimes diagnose this is, hey, what, what about secession?

36:22

What do you think if, you know, one state or a couple of states break off? You know, California is a lot different than the rest of the country.

36:28

Maybe they should go off on their own. It's like, no, you can't do that. Well, why not? And then it's cause, cause we're a sacred, you know, it's a sacred compact or something.

36:36

It's like, they, they have this sort of like almost religious way of viewing the United States that it's this you know, it's so important.

36:43

And look, I, I understand the attachment to the United States, but but, but when that attachment becomes almost like a spiritual thing, like this, this union is sacred, it cannot be broken up.

36:56

That's where you're, you are looking at something that I don't know, I don't know what term you want to use, but if you want to call that Christian nationalism in a problem,

37:04

I would understand what they're saying, but that's not really what they're saying. They'll sometimes talk about that, but they're the worst abusers of it.

37:10

Like I said, the capital is a greater priority than all these small businesses. They want to change the United States to and of course they don't have a problem with someone praying, you know, an invocation at the

37:21

Biden inauguration. They have no problem with Biden's new, he's bringing back this initiative of faith initiative.

37:28

And Russell Moore is all excited about it. That's apparently not Christian nationalism. I mean, so, so that's, that's a, when there's criticisms, it's only on the right, but then you have all the way to, like I said, any

37:39

Christian discipline symbol, thinking that like the state is accountable to the law of God, that becomes a problem too.

37:46

That's also Christian nationalism. It's vague. It's, it's just not academic. It's not helpful.

37:52

It's confusing for people. And now Pastor Mason, Eric Mason has made this more confusing by now.

37:59

He's lopping in it. Somehow Constantinianism is responsible for all of this.

38:05

And so it's a, it's a huge jump. And, and he's now saying that those with the correct ethic who are heretics, who are false teaching nation of Islam, et cetera, they're reacting against this, this incomplete or false or whatever

38:20

Christianity that's in bed with the state somehow. And it's, it's just like, what?

38:28

Like, Oh, I don't even, again, it's, it's like with the Louis Farrakhan comment, I'm not even sure like what to say to that.

38:35

It's just like, how do you dig into the primary sources and find this? I mean, it could be like, if you go back to some of the new left stuff, like in the 1970s, you're going to find people like Sojourners Magazine or something, but even secular new leftists, they're going to talk about, you know, the

38:52

Jesus of America. They don't like that. And they're reacting against that. And the Jesus that, you know, is okay with Vietnam somehow, you know,

38:59

Jesus, the assumption is that Jesus is, is actually intimately involved in all these political things and has a side he's picked.

39:05

And it's the side of the, it's the progressive side because he's against all these other right -wing things. That that's the assumption that's kind of like behind this.

39:14

And, but it, but it, but it presents itself as it's a critique from neutrality.

39:20

You know, we're not in where we're not, you know, advocating anything really political too much.

39:25

But it's that blending of church and state, but then they turn right around and they start advocating all this political stuff.

39:31

Well, what is that? And saying, it's a gospel issue. So the hypocrisy is off the charts. I don't understand how they get away with this.

39:38

I don't understand how people like Sean McDowell don't quite don't push back on this as much. And I don't know, maybe he had a reason for it.

39:45

But I mean, this is where I'd be pushing. I'd be like, okay, so wait a minute. Hold on. Like you said, political Christianity is wrong. What do you mean that we can't take biblical law and apply it to the institution of the state?

39:57

Is that what you mean by that? And, and or what laws isn't it? Is it a gospel?

40:03

Is it part of the gospel to pursue social justice? You know, make them squirm on these things.

40:09

But sadly, those hard questions are rarely asked, but I'm asking them, I'm bringing them up. I'd love to hear clarifications of this because it seems mutually exclusive.

40:19

It's just diametrically opposed. All right, let's keep going here. We've got a bunch more and I'm running short on time. They're calling us

40:24

CRT Marxist, you know, ethic narcissism and utilizing those kinds of batting terms to not deal with the black experience in America.

40:34

Don't realize that to be a Christian, like when I was talking about being in college, to be a Christian was almost to be, it was viewed by blacks as hating black people.

40:44

I looked at the story. All right. So you're saying that this is a bludgeoning, those who are against critical race theory or ethnic narcissism to pick

40:51

Bode Backham's turn. He's saying, yeah, they're just trying to avoid dealing with the black experience. I mean, that's just really there.

40:57

That's what they're doing. He's just trying to avoid dealing with that black experience. Daryl Harrison, you know, trying to avoid dealing with the black experience.

41:07

That's just a lie. I looked at the story of the massacre of, I want to say 1919 in Springfield.

41:15

And they basically, man, lynched the black people on Saturday.

41:21

And then on Easter Sunday, they went in their Easter gob, the white folks of the town and took pictures and pieces of the guards of the lynched black people as, as pieces of memorabilia from that lynching in 1200

41:38

African -Americans were literally gutted from the area of Springfield. That's the kind of history that a lot of us don't know.

41:45

When we tell history, we want to tell a part of history. So the way that blacks have been constantly traumatized, constantly traumatized here in,

41:55

I just changed camera. Oh, there we are. You're back. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I changed camera. And so I can do it like this.

42:02

And so the way blacks have been traumatized in, in our culture has just been crazy over and over and over again.

42:12

So when we see, you know, Trayvon Martin, or we see, we, we, we see, you know,

42:17

Eric Garner, you know, you see all of these different things, public lynchings, we call them.

42:23

They are reminders of our messed up past. All right. I'm going to weigh in here. So it's interesting.

42:31

He says at the beginning, we've forgotten these things. Now maybe he's using sloppy language. Maybe he meant white people.

42:37

I don't know, but he says, we forgotten this history. And then at the end he says, but when you see Trayvon Martin, that is a reminder of our past.

42:47

So it's interesting. I am like, which is it? Right. But either you forgot it or you remembered it.

42:53

The incident that he mentions here and you see, you know, this is pulling the heartstrings big time of Sean McDowell and, and whose heartstrings wouldn't it pull.

43:01

I mean, it's a horrible story. It's Springfield, Illinois, and it was 1908, I believe not 19.

43:06

He said 1918 or 19, but there, there was an incident where a, it was a local

43:15

I'm trying to remember. It was a worker of some kind. Anyways, it was, it was a man who was white in Springfield and he was, he was killed.

43:27

And before he died, he identified his assailant as a certain black man in the town and that he was trying to protect his, his daughters,

43:37

I guess, or something like that from a rape. So what ended up happening was there, here's the interesting part there, there was a mob that formed and it was, it started off small and got bigger.

43:51

And there, there was a man who was who was hung for it. Ultimately though, the long story short, the perpetrator in this alleged perpetrator was actually transferred out of town by the sheriff.

44:05

And that created a huge problem because it was like, you know, they couldn't go and do their, their vigilante justice.

44:12

Those who were the vigilantes there and they ended up killing six people. That's how many people died in this raid.

44:19

And there was, I think 30 something businesses that were hurt or destroyed. Or I mean, there was people cutting the fireman's hose when they were coming to try to put out fires and this kind of thing.

44:28

So it was a horrible thing. This happened in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln's hometown, which, you know, for some, some people might find that a little shocking, but but there, there certainly,

44:37

I mean, no one on, that I know of on who was against critical race theory ever denies that.

44:44

And it's, it's, it's a weird thing to me that the people like Eric Mason will say, well, they're just, they just don't want to grapple with black history.

44:51

No, like there's, there actually are some really bad things that happened in, even in the United States.

44:58

But we don't think that some of those things that happened necessarily mean that let's say that, you know, the constitution is somehow now just embedded with all this racism and that it's, we think there's true and valuable things in it.

45:13

We think that there's true and valuable things in classical music. And there's a, there's a, a, a professor right now at, it was one of the

45:22

Ivy leagues. I just saw it the other day who wants to get rid of note reading sheet music, right?

45:28

Because it's, it's a symbol of white supremacy. I mean, this is how goofy it's getting. We don't think that it's systemic.

45:34

Like it's just, it affected everything, everything, you know, the food they ate was racist. Everything they did was, was motivated by racism somehow.

45:44

Yeah. There was certainly a civilizationism that people at that time had, it was common for people at that time.

45:49

There's reasons for it. And of course, as Darwinism got involved, there was a scientific racism that started arising and no one denies any of that.

45:58

But the, the, the problem is trying to make that, uh, as you heard Dr. Eric Mason just do make that be, this is the continuum.

46:07

It's the, it's the same now, because look at these people who are shot and it's just the same thing happening again.

46:13

Um, and, and it's, it's because of that systemic, that long reach apparently.

46:18

And I guess it goes all the way back to Constantine. Maybe, I mean, who knows, maybe he'd bring that up. Uh, you'd think someone like Sean McDowell would call him on this and say, wait a minute, wait, hold on, hold on.

46:28

Are you saying that? And look, and I don't know all the details of the 1908 riot, um, in Springfield, Illinois.

46:35

I don't know. Maybe it's, it could be that on Easter Sunday, some of them were going out and doing some of these horrible things.

46:40

And I don't know that it's necessarily representative of the whole population of the town that they were like this, but look, there were a lot of racists there.

46:46

It was very possible. It's true. Actually for that time period, it's true. There would have been people who thought that, uh, who believe in a version of white supremacy.

46:54

There's no doubt about that. Um, um, it's, it's probably true that that fueled a lot of, uh, what happened.

47:00

It may be true that someone, you know, it's possible that there was someone who was trying to rape these women and, and murdered a man.

47:07

And that's how it started. Uh, it's also true that the, the, the sheriff or the, the, the police in that area transported the guy out to protect him.

47:14

So are the, I guess the police are the good guys in that scenario. I mean, that doesn't work. That doesn't fit the narrative. So history's messy.

47:21

It doesn't always fit the narrative. And you'd think Sean McDowell would pick up on that and be like, wait a minute. Are you saying that what you're describing, what happened in Springfield, Illinois in the turn of the century, that's somehow equivalent or the same, that's the same thing as like what happened, you know, recently with these police shootings with Trayvon Martin.

47:40

I mean, that's the same thing really. Um, but no, there, there's no, it doesn't seem to be.

47:46

And I'm not, again, I, I, I'm not sitting in his seat. Maybe there's a reason he, that wasn't really supposed to be the topic of conversation, but, um, but look at the jumps that Dr.

47:55

Eric Mason has to do. And even the contradiction somehow, well, we forgot the history. No, actually this is a reminder of the history.

48:01

Um, he has to do this in order to keep the narrative alive. All the police are bad. Well, actually the police, you know, in the story he's telling we're, we're not the bad guys necessarily.

48:10

The firemen weren't the bad guys. They were going out and try to put out the fires that the mob was creating. And, and, and one of the takeaways in this too, by the way,

48:17

I don't want to beat the dead horse, but I do need to say this for those who have never been in a situation where there is a mob or something turns into a riot or a mob.

48:29

Um, there is what's called the mob mentality. And some things start off very small.

48:34

And we saw this in the summer with the BLM riots, they can start off a little smaller and then boom, something with them that was very quick.

48:41

Cause I think social media promoted this. Uh, you get into it, you get into a situation where it's a riot and unless you're very clear and level headed, you just start going along with the crowd.

48:53

And that's, and the mob mentality is so dangerous because of that. Uh, and it could be over nothing. It just, some people just like to burn stuff.

49:01

Uh, they may not have even racism may not motivate them. I mean, I think a lot of the riots, uh, for BLM, I think, yeah, there's a lot of hatred against white people, a lot of hatred against, uh,

49:10

America, et cetera, going on there. But, but a lot of it, and I don't know what the percentage is. There's just people who like to go burn stuff, people who like to go steal things.

49:19

And, um, and that's perfectly consistent with an understanding of, uh, biblical anthropology.

49:25

Um, let's keep going here though. Uh, cause I don't have much time. So let's, let's keep playing this.

49:33

Yeah. So, so, so help me understand, you said there's a lot of the past that people don't know and are not aware of that you're pointing to.

49:44

And yet when these, when these present things happen, it's a reminder of the past. That's excellent.

49:50

That's an excellent thing that he just said there. Um, and so good on Sean McDowell for picking up on that.

49:56

It's like, wait a minute, hold on. You just said they forgot, they remembered. So let's see what Eric Mason says. So is it that there's particulars that are lost on people, but the big idea of how blacks are treated is a regular part of the trauma that black people still experience today.

50:13

Is that fair? Yeah. Because when you look at, it's a book called slave patrols, it's a blue book written and.

50:20

Okay. I'm going to stop there for a second. Um, so Sean McDowell is actually giving Dr. Eric Mason an out here saying, wait, hold on.

50:25

Like they don't know the specifics, you know, they've forgotten the history, but they've kind of like this, this, uh, understanding that, you know, they're oppressed or whatever, that's been carried on and they're, you know, and that's what gets drummed up when a

50:38

Trayvon Martin situation happens. That's the out Sean McDowell was trying to give, um, Eric Mason. Here's the thing though.

50:45

Um, whenever this happens, you'll notice that the media comes in and immediately they're drumming up that narrative, that narrative it's

50:53

Orthodox, it's Orthodoxy. If that narrative wasn't there, you wonder how the Trayvon Martin incident would have happened. You know, would have, would have been interpreted.

51:00

I mean, it's an, it's how much of this, and this is the question that should be asked, how much of this is conditioned and how much of this is what

51:08

Eric Mason's trying to say? Well, it's just organic. It's just a part of, you know, our existence as black people is we have to look back and just, we, we know that we're the oppressed and it's been that way for a long time.

51:20

It's still that way. It'll kind of, I guess it'll always be that way. I don't know. Um, how much of that is because they're looking back at their history, uh, and, um, and this has been just kind of infused into that culture and how much of it has been, it's a conditioning

51:34

I'd like to suggest. And I think, I think a lot of Thomas Sowell books, um, have done a good job with this in showing that, um, the kind, but before even the civil rights movement, when conditions were far worse in some ways, uh, as far as, you know, segregation and that kind of thing, um, you did not have necessarily, uh, you had a black family that was stronger.

51:58

Um, you did not have, uh, the problems at least to the level you do today without a wedlock births incarcerations.

52:05

Um, some of the things that you see today are the result of something else. And that's a fair, you gotta grapple with that somehow.

52:12

Um, and it wasn't this like history of, you know, trauma or something that was keeping upward mobility from happening.

52:20

Actually upward mobility was happening. Um, and, and so I've gone over this.

52:25

I think I did this in my response to Phil Vishers video where I showed, uh, through economic indications, uh, that look, this is what was happening.

52:32

There was actually some very positive things, even culturally speaking, there was very positive things happening. The rockabilly stuff, blacks and whites were coming together.

52:39

It was integrated. This is before the laws had changed, but it was a precursor to it. And, um, and so it was very positive things that were actually happening there.

52:48

And, and, and it, there wasn't, um, this assumption every single time, uh, there was a crime committed and a police officer got involved, but it was racism.

52:57

In fact, uh, there's actually a book on it. Um, I'm trying to remember the name of it now, but I think it's called locking up our own or something like that.

53:04

And it's, it's about how people like, you know, the Jesse Jackson's and Al Sharpton's of that time of the sixties were saying we need more police.

53:12

Um, they weren't assuming these things. This is new guys. This is a newer thing to just assume that it's must be racism when, when a police shoot someone just, it has to be automatically.

53:21

This is, so this is, there's a lie going on here. I, in my opinion, I think that the facts don't bear this out. The narrative doesn't bear this out, but here you have

53:29

Dr. Eric Mason promoting it and Sean McDowell trying to kind of give him an out here for like, wait a minute, you contradicted yourself here.

53:36

It could work this way, right? All right, let's uh, let's keep going. Basically tells you the history of the slave patrols and its connection to the police.

53:44

So the slave patrols were those who patrolled the, um, the plantations with shotguns on horses that made sure they wouldn't want to track down slaves when they ran away.

53:54

And they kept, they were kind of like the taskmasters like in Egypt. And so what ended up happening was particularly in Virginia, in Virginia, Northern Virginia, the, a lot of the slave patrols ended up becoming, uh, the police department.

54:09

And so the relationship between African Americans and the police department is a very, very traumatic one.

54:18

You know, you look at, Okay. All right. All right. Okay. So, so police, the, the, the, the tradition of policing goes back a long ways.

54:27

I mean, um, I think the first, you know, 1830s or so probably the first police departments, but, um, you had constables before that you had sheriffs before that.

54:35

This goes back to English common law, this, this far, just historically sequencing this, it, it, it goes back way before slave patrols.

54:45

Um, and, and there were, and there were slave patrols. I remember I was reading about, uh, the British in New York and how one of the things they tried to do was kind of free the slave population, say, you know, you join our side, you know, and New York became kind of a refugee for some slaves to escape to.

55:00

And there were, it was one of the things that helped turn New York against the British. They thought, hold on, you know, you're going to foment a slave insurrection.

55:07

And there were, there were, there were things like slave patrols now, whether or not it's, you know, as, uh, some, some of the characterizations or the cartoonish characterizations where, you know, this was like, you know, people just all the time in the woods with torches looking for slaves or something.

55:23

I, I don't know about that. It would, it would have been more like, uh, when there was a situation where there was a runaway, there would be people, uh, in some areas that would go out and look for that person.

55:33

But, but, but anyway, the, the, the argument that Eric Mason's trying to make work here is that that was what created policing.

55:40

No, sorry. That policing goes way back before that. I mean, stopping rape, stopping crime, uh, civil order, uh, you know, it's not, it's not like slaves.

55:50

I mean, they, they try to, everything is connected to slavery and like two steps or less for these people and they can't conceive of some, or maybe it's

55:58

Constantine. Maybe Constantine's the one that, I mean, the, the, it's just sloppy history. So the

56:05

Egyptians, none of them. Oh, and I, and I just got to point out again, um, in the story that Eric Mason had just told about the

56:10

Springfield riot. Remember it was the police who ended up protecting the accused. So just needed to say that.

56:16

Them were white, even though they were pan color, uh, they tend to be, uh, colored white.

56:23

And so art and covers of books and so many different things, uh, began to be emphasis with that.

56:29

Even the early church fathers, when you look at Augustine, whatever you believe his ethnicity was, um, the origin, you look at origin,

56:36

Irenaeus, Tertullian, uh, Athanasius, you look at those old and North African people, but they like, even in his, in, in, uh,

56:44

Thomas Odin's book, where he begins talking about the African nature of the church fathers, you know, they, they, they're viewed as the

56:51

Latin fathers. They're not called the African father. And Latin is a, is, is a word that's more connected to Southern Europe than it is

56:58

Northern Africa. So it's those types of nuances and phrases that have affected what

57:03

I would say is the white Washington Christianity. All right. So you use the term Latin to describe people who spoke it.

57:10

I mean, that's a language term. The people that spoke this language, it was the part of the former Roman empire.

57:16

That's, that's racist now. That's racist. I mean, this is ridiculous guys. This is, it's the whitewashing of Christianity is what he's saying.

57:24

Uh, if you, you know, you must categorize them as Africans, even though their culture would have been more, it would have been more

57:30

Roman. They were in Northern Africa. I mean, it's like, I don't know if he's trying to connect them with Sub -Saharan

57:36

Africa somehow. And you know that, that, but, but they had a way more, they, I mean, uh, they, they would have been traveling to Europe, to places like Italy.

57:46

They wouldn't have been going to Sub -Saharan Africa. So this is just, it's, it's a ridiculous, I mean, this is what's driving such sloppy, uh, research and scholarship.

57:58

It's a pre commitment to this idea that, uh, the Europeans are bad, um, that we need to de -platform them somehow.

58:07

I mean, what's the centerpiece of critical race theory, de -centering whiteness. That's what Dr. Eric Mason's trying to do here.

58:13

Uh, and that, that should be such a slam dunk for someone like a Josh McDowell to say, hold on, you're saying that identifying someone based on their language and cultural background is wrong because they happen to share a continent with people in Sub -Saharan

58:25

Africa. Like what are you trying to, to, to, what is your point here? That is that racist to, to identify them based on their, their language.

58:33

That was the language that people in Sub -Saharan Africa speak Latin. But no, um, this is what, well, listen.

58:40

Growing up, and this is something I've learned, has not been on my radar and as attentive to as I need to be.

58:47

But hearing you say this, I'm like, I can do that. We can work on this. If it's sending a message to people that Christianity is a white man's religion and it's turning away people of other ethnicities, let's be careful how we present it.

58:59

That seems a pretty easy thing that we can do. All right. So Josh, so Sean McDowell better not ever refer to, uh, to, to Athanasius or, um, any of the early church fathers who, uh, were in that region as Latin.

59:16

I mean, it's, here's the thing, guys, here's the thing with this. It seems like, well, this is where I've said before that the gentlemanly, the manners and stuff is being used against us in some ways that, that kind of, uh, wanting to not cause an offense, which is what manners is, um, is being used against us because you have a perpetually offended group of people.

59:38

And, and, and the list goes on. It's like, you try to do one thing and then it's like, now you're offended. If you use the term

59:43

Latin to describe people who spoke Latin, you'll have nothing left at the end. You cannot be, um, so, uh, the truth has to prevail somewhere in this.

59:54

Truth has to be important enough to defend it against people, whether or not they're offended or not.

59:59

That's the little, that's the needle they're using to get the medicine down. They're, they're subverting by saying by, by, um, they, they, they put you off guard by the offense approach.

01:00:10

I'm offended by this. So you're immediately like, oh, I don't want to cause an offense. And so what can I do to not cause an offense? Well, you better stop saying that these people who spoke

01:00:17

Latin or Latin, you better refer to them as African. Okay, well I can do that. And then it's going to be the next day, the next day, the next day there's going to be something else.

01:00:25

And what they're doing is they're getting you to, um, subvert reality eventually that you're, you're saying things that are either lies or, um, they're painting a narrative that's just not accurate.

01:00:36

Is it, isn't an accurate narrative to start say, okay, so everyone on the continent of Africa, um, they're, because they're on that continent, they have so much in common.

01:00:45

That continent is, that's the identity. I mean, would, would, um, you know, Augustine have thought of himself as well.

01:00:53

I'm, I'm, you know, first and foremost, an African before I am, you know, a, a, a

01:00:58

Latin speaker before I am, I don't know, uh, part of, part of the former Roman empire, the, you know, it, it, it creates,

01:01:04

I mean, he was more European. It would, you would to use the term European. I don't even like using that necessarily even more

01:01:10

Roman, but, but shared more in common with someone in the Mediterranean area than he would have with someone who lived in, uh, sub -Saharan

01:01:19

Africa. So it changes, it'll change your scholarship. If you start creating these other categories, there's a reason those categories are there.

01:01:26

And I, I just, I don't, I, I get, um, concerned about this kind of thing because I know if, if, if someone's going to bully you by, by playing the victim is, first of all, it's something it's very, uh, it's something

01:01:39

I think that if you're maternal, especially more, so you want to care and concern, we all should have some of that.

01:01:45

But if, if you're, if you're a nurturer, someone who likes to nurture more and someone has a hurt, you know, little boo -boo or whatever, and you're the first to go give them a hug kind of thing, this is, that's the kind of person that gets taken advantage by this.

01:01:58

And we need to protect against people that are emotionally vulnerable to this kind of an argument, right?

01:02:04

Um, this is why even, you know, this is a husbands and wives, even sometimes, you know, wives can sometimes be taken in by this kind of thing and husbands need to stand their ground and be like, wait, hold on.

01:02:14

We need to be compassionate. But what's the best thing sometimes for someone who is a perpetual victim and sees themselves as victims and stuff.

01:02:22

Sometimes it's, they need to face the truth. They need to face the music. That's the best thing for them. And sometimes doing the best thing for them isn't always the thing they want.

01:02:29

And, um, and so this is just one little bitty thing, but I'm just telling you this, this kind of thing, it, it, it bleeds into all kinds of other things.

01:02:37

Uh, what happened, you know, what happens when like a church that I heard about recently, um, a family comes in and they say, we're offended by your hymns.

01:02:45

We don't like hymn books. That's not part of our culture. We think that's whiteness. I'm telling you that actually happened. And it's happening in a lot of places.

01:02:52

Well, I guess we can do that. We can give up our hymns. We can, where do you draw the line? I'm offended by that Trump sign in your yard.

01:02:58

I'm offended by where do you draw the line? Truth has to, truth is offensive at some point. And you don't want to be, uh, it's actually an opportunity for you to educate that person if they're in the wrong in a nice way.

01:03:12

Uh, but you can explain to them why he, this is why we do hymns has nothing to do with racism. In fact, assuming that about us is kind of, that's wrong.

01:03:18

That's actually your slandering us, you know? So anyway, um, let's keep going. We're almost done here.

01:03:25

I know it's a longer one, but I think it's important. Because of the whole race conversation. And of course my, you know, my other book woke church,

01:03:32

I get people assuming that I'm talking that I'm promoting ethnocentrism and that I'm promoting, you know,

01:03:40

CRT or Marxism. And so when they see urban apologetics restoring black dignity with the gospel, they're, they're thinking

01:03:47

I got a different gospel. So it's, so that kind of stuff is out there, but I really. Yeah, but that's actually not the reason it's the quotes

01:03:53

I just read at the beginning. That's why people think you're promoting a different gospel because you keep adding works to it and, and phrasing it that way.

01:04:00

Ignore it because I know that none of those people are going to turn their face towards the mission field that we have before us.

01:04:06

Well, at some point, maybe you come back on and we could discuss some of the issues of CRT and cultural

01:04:12

Marxism and wokeness and in a little more depth where we have common ground and maybe you and I see some things differently there.

01:04:19

I would, I would, I'd love to have that conversation with you. What I found is when we try to have these conversations and have common ground, labels are thrown, the conversation is shut down.

01:04:29

And I think we don't find the common ground that we have in the gospel. The question, the question though is does, do we have common ground in the gospel?

01:04:38

That's the question with someone like Eric Mason. That's, that's the root issue more than any other issue.

01:04:44

And so anyway, if you're trying to find that common ground, it may not be there, but anyway, if Sean McDowell has them on and they're going to like debate this or, you know, go back and forth and really dig into it, it's, it's going to be good.

01:04:58

But if Sean McDowell truly doesn't agree with that stuff, but it could end up if Sean McDowell really is against critical race theory, liberation, theology, et cetera, it's going to run right into Eric Mason's core beliefs about some things.

01:05:11

And it's, it's not going to, you know, it's going to be, it's going to be interesting anyway. Maybe when that happens, we can talk about it if it does.

01:05:19

But that is, that is all for today. As far as the two big issues again,

01:05:25

I would like to encourage you to go check out if, if you're a Southern Baptist, especially the

01:05:31

Resend Resolution 9 mask and the Resend Resolution 9 t -shirt links are in the info section.

01:05:36

And don't forget to tell your friends at Liberty University, come to the paint the wall black showing Juan Riesco is going to be there.

01:05:43

He's going to speak and you can ask him any question you want. Hey, God bless. Appreciate all your support.