Session 4: The Anti-Christ of Black Liberation Theology with Virgil Walker

that this next session is titled The Antichrist of Black Liberation Theology. So if you thought that they were gonna do anything to pull punches or be unclear in any way, that just the title of that should be enough to satisfy your curiosity and show that that is not what is gonna happen.

So with that, Virgil, you are up next. All right, we're moving right along and you all are hanging in there and so I'm proud of you for that.

What I wanna do in this session, I wanna give you a little bit of background for the topic and what we're gonna do in our time together.

I do hope that you are taking notes and I'm just trying to make sure I have everything that I need up here with me and I do.

I wanted to start out, again, I wanna first give you kind of a little bit of background, what the title is, why we titled it this way and what we did with it.

Darrell and I, as we got to thinking about the

G3 event that we were doing, it was G3, I think 2021, at the

National Conference. The conference was on Christ and every speaker kind of laid out a case for who

Christ is in a different way. Darrell and I got tasked to do kind of a session and while I'm always humbled by the opportunity to present, it was incredibly humbling for me to get a main session.

One of the things that Dr. Bice did with our time was I loved how he started out.

He started out by saying that what Darrell and I do is not for the purpose of entertainment per se.

It is for the purpose of education. It is for the purpose of equipping and as a result, as we looked at the different issues that were in our culture regarding black theology, you've heard us talk a lot about that regarding BLM, regarding all of the issues surrounding social justice, we thought it was important to really unmask the

Christ, the antichrist of black liberation theology. If you've never been exposed to what black liberation theology is, you're gonna hear about it today.

What Darrell did is a fantastic job of laying out a historic framework for, he started with CT, with critical theory and how that kind of morphed into,

I believe it was CLS, right, critical legal studies and how out of that we get

CRT. He told you what that framework was, how that worked, where it stemmed from, its origins, its

Marxist origins. In between that trajectory, that's more of the secular framework for the ideology.

The question then becomes how did this thing go from a secular, anti -God, anti -biblical framework to rearing its head into evangelicalism?

How did it go from something outside there to inside here? What took place, and so there's a thread, if you will, there's a branch, if you will, of what came along, and we're gonna talk about, you're gonna hear a lot about James Cone and his black liberation theology, the origins of that.

I'm gonna pause, I'm gonna read a lot of quotations to you, and again, Darrell and I make no bones about wanting to share original source material with you.

Why, because it's not our opinion that we're delivering, it's not an idea that we had and we think somebody said something some way, somehow, and as a result, here's what we came up with, no.

You're gonna hear Cone and others in their own words, with their own writing, and really,

I'll leave it up to you to make the assessment of whether it's right or wrong, whether it's good or bad.

Truth be told, I think Cone will be very clear, he'll be crystal clear about what he means when he says what he does.

So that's kind of what you're in for in this session. It is power -packed, a lot of information, a lot of content.

I'll do my best to slow down at points so that you can gather kind of what's being said.

I'll also take some time to mention names that you'll need to write down, or perhaps books that you'll wanna have in a library if you'd like to do any deeper study.

With that said, let's dive in. Darrell, again, did a fantastic job of walking you through origins.

With those who are unfamiliar with, let me ask by show of hands, we haven't done this, how many of y 'all are familiar with the

Just Thinking Podcast, raise your hands. That's almost everybody in the room. If you've never heard of the Just Thinking Podcast, raise your hand.

Now what's wrong with you people? What you need to do is grab your phone and go to apps, not apps, go to wherever you would do your podcasts, wherever you get podcasts, and download

Just Thinking, the Just Thinking Podcast, JT Podcast, you will want that.

And the reason why I mention it at this point is because we spend six hours talking about BLM.

There's another, gosh, I'd say six hours of additional content on CRT alone where we do deep dives into things.

And so if you heard something here, probably it would be great for you to have in your hip pocket as a part of a library that you can go back to and reference.

And you don't have to read the content, you can just hear us kinda walk back through it. So I'm hoping that that's helpful. Let me jump into my content.

As believers, there's an important distinction for us of being in the world and not of the world.

As believers in Christ, we're called out of the world and into the beautiful light of Christ. As Darrell and I have watched church culture over the past few years, it's absolutely been puzzling to us to see so many in evangelicalism, professed believers in Christ, actually adopt the ideologies of the world, particularly as it pertains to the partial or full embrace of what's known as critical race theory.

We see this in far too many of our nation's pulpits. It was the apostle Paul and his admonition to the church at Ephesus where he explained that the purpose of the pastor teacher is to equip the saints for works of ministry.

And he encouraged that to be done so that they would no longer be tossed to and fro like children by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.

That's Ephesians 4, 14. Sadly, in our estimation, as we survey the landscape of culture, one of the things that we're seeing and noting is that many pastors and teachers are derelict in their duty.

They're either embracing this ideology or they're too afraid to say anything about it.

Darrell mentioned this earlier, and again, not in an effort to embarrass Pastor Jim, but it takes courage to open up your space and talk about these things in a very open way.

Why, because you risk other parts of culture, even church culture, other pastors, thinking, oh, you guys are that church.

Oh, you guys are those kind of people. Yeah, you know, the racist kind. And that's very, there are places and spaces where there's an elder who will send an email or an inbox message.

I'm sure Darrell has seen this, too. And we would love to have you, but we're just, we're not there yet.

What do you mean? You're not where the scripture is on these issues? What do you mean you're not there yet?

Scripture's clear, so let's talk about it. Well, you know, it's just a, you know, it's, and that's what we're seeing.

During our time together, I wanna walk through several ideas that expose how we got from critical theory to critical race theory within evangelicalism.

Before I do that, I wanna remind you of two important things that one is one that Darrell mentioned, the other is a resource that I think would be helpful for you.

First, what Darrell shared regarding the unbiblical nature of critical race theory. He provided you, at the end of his talk, with five reasons that CRT is unbiblical.

Five reasons why CRT is unbiblical. I'm gonna walk you back through those. Because I think it's critical that you leave here with ammo, right, with being equipped.

This is the Equipped Conference, so I want you to be equipped with the conversations you need to have with people you love and care about over the kitchen table, because that's where these kinds of issues take place.

It's not in debate sessions where people's minds are changed or conversations are happening.

What happens is, you have family over, it's Sunday afternoon, everybody's there, and maybe some issue from last week comes up, and then you're talking about it, right?

And then a family member's kinda leaning in a direction where you're thinking, wait a minute, what are you talking about?

And then you wanna have something to say, but you don't. I want you to have something to say from a biblical standpoint.

Let me give you those five reasons again. He said that critical race theory is unbiblical for at least the following five reasons.

The first one was that it categorizes image bearers into groups, categorizes image bearers into groups for the purpose of causing division.

It categorizes image bearers into groups for the purpose of causing division and antagonistic class struggle.

If you don't know how to spell antagonistic, don't worry, neither do I. It categorizes image bearers of God into groups to cause division and class struggle.

You can leave it there. Let me give you some verses of Scripture. The image bearer component, of course, is

Genesis 1 .27. We talked about that earlier. Genesis 1 .27, there's your image bearers.

Genesis 5 .12, the categorizing into groups, Titus 3 .10 through 11.

So Genesis 1 .27, Genesis 5 .2, Titus 3 .10

and 11. Number two, it imparts sinful motives. It imparts sinful motives to certain image bearers.

That's important. It imparts sinful motives to certain image bearers solely based on the color of their skin.

It imparts sinful motives to certain image bearers solely based upon the color of their skin.

Why is that wrong? Well, we talked about it earlier today, Acts 17 .27. We're all one, right?

We're all one, it is God who made man from one man.

God creates one man and creates all the nations, the ethnos, all the different ethnicities come from one man.

We're one human race made up of multiple ethnicities. Right, so that's why that's wrong because it imparts sinful motives to certain image bearers of God solely on the basis of the color of their skin.

Number three, it transfers guilt, CRT, transfers the guilt of presumed sins.

It transfers the guilt of presumed sins, the presumed sins of past generations.

It transfers guilt of the presumed sins of past generations to those of present generations.

And that's Darrell Coyne, the phrase sin by proxy, right? That was the idea that I read earlier.

If you remember in my talk, I talked, I gave you the quote from Thabiti Onwubile where he had mentioned that though you weren't directly responsible for killing

Martin Luther King, you should at least admit that your grandparents were responsible in some way, that your parents or grandparents were directly responsible for the death.

You were culpable in some way, shape, or form, whether you knew it or not. And if you didn't feel that sense of guilt, the least that you should do,

Onwubile said, is to work in the same way, in the giving of your life in the same way that Martin Luther King did.

So he's encouraging you to participate in this works -based righteousness on the basis of a sin that he's presumed you're guilty of simply on the basis of what he believes your ancestors were responsible for.

Now, we could unpack that and demolish it for the foolishness that it is, because that same truth won't apply to him and his ancestors.

Darrell, I know what he's gonna talk about in the next talk, but he's gonna tell you a little bit about his background and his upbringing.

I won't steal his thunder, but make note of what he'll share with you about his background regarding sins of past generations.

The text of scripture there is Ezekiel 18 .20, Ezekiel 18 .20. Number four, it is rooted in the sin of ethnic partiality.

CRT is rooted in the sin of ethnic partiality. And there he quoted

James 2 .9, James 2 .9. And lastly, lastly,

CRT promotes materialistic covetousness. You want somebody's stuff as a result, right?

It promotes materialistic covetousness and envy under the guise of justice and equality.

It promotes materialistic covetousness. You want other people's stuff and envy under the guise of justice and equality.

Let me give you some verses of scripture there. Exodus 20 .17, Ezekiel 18 .20.

So Exodus 20 .17, Ezekiel 18 .20. You have John 6 .27,

and then 1 John 2 .9 -11. I'll give you those one more time. Exodus 20 .17, Ezekiel 18 .20,

John 6 .27, 1 John 2 .9 -11.

I slowed down for the purpose of you having this equipping. I want you to have a sheet of paper that you can go and begin thinking through these ideas so that when you do have the kitchen table conversation, you have something substantive rather than an emotional response.

These kinds of conversations, if you're not really armed and equipped with a lot of information, it's very easy to get into an emotional, an emotionally charged battle with someone.

And if you feel yourself getting that way, the other default will be you'll say nothing at all. I don't want you to do either of those things.

I don't want you to be emotionally wound up, and I don't want you to say nothing at all. I want you to be armed and equipped with the word of God so that you can deal with what you are encountering.

The second thing that I wanted to make you aware of, I wanna point you to is a document that is incredibly helpful for your study.

It was in 2018 that a number of great men that you would know and respect, the statement

I think has ended up being called the John MacArthur Statement, right? It's the statement on social justice and the gospel.

And I wanna encourage you to read that document. You can go to www .statementonsocialjustice

.com. Again, www .statementonsocialjustice .com.

If you go there, what you're going to see is just, again, some great men, including John MacArthur.

I know Tom Askell was involved. I know my brother Darrell was involved in some of the writing.

Just some great men of God that got together and just really dealt with this early, early in 2018.

And you can go there and sign your name to the statement if you want to, just to say, I too affirm these things. But in my estimation,

I personally think that the statement should be not taken off of the website, but used as curriculum.

And I may go back and talk to Scott Annual, our Executive Vice President and Editor -in -Chief at G3, that we need to take that document and push it into a curriculum that people can think about and use so that they can have a biblical anthropology.

But I'm hoping that you'll find that helpful. My goal in our time together, I wanna accomplish two things.

One, I want you to understand the interconnection of the social gospel, liberation theology, and black liberation theology to CRT.

I know that's a mouthful. And I think I got two hours to work with, so I'm gonna make that work. I want you to understand the interconnectedness of the social gospel, liberation theology, black liberation theology to CRT.

So you had a social gospel, and the reason why I'm pulling the social gospel is because what it does to critical theory,

I told you this, critical theory, critical legal studies, all of these are godless ideologies that are out there.

They're Marxian in nature. Well, it would be the social gospel that would tap into it and pull kind of a thread, a cord, if you will, into the evangelical structure, right?

And I'm using that term very loosely, evangelical. I'm simply, I think that's a term you'll understand into Christian culture, right?

So you'll have Walter Rauschenbusch who will go into the stream of critical theory and pull a strand in his direction to have impact in the area of where he was in New York.

I'll walk you through those pieces. And then what you'll have, again, with black liberation theology, they'll go back out into the stream of critical theory and pull into their stream black liberation theology.

So you'll see these cords, these strands that help set the framework for what is happening in evangelicalism regarding CRT and critical race theory.

I know that was alphabet soup, and I'm hoping you're following me, but if not, let's just walk through this information.

My first goal, understand the interconnectedness of the social gospel, black liberation theology, and CRT. Number two, I wanna contrast and compare the civil rights movement with the modern day social justice movement.

I wanna contrast and compare the civil rights movement, which had its genesis in the so -called black church, with today's social justice movement.

First goal, understand the interconnectedness of the social gospel, black liberation theology, and CRT. The question that must be asked and answered is how have these foreign ideas made their way into evangelical circles?

For many, this is a bit of a mystery, but as Daryl explains, much of what we face today is the result of cultural

Marxism. This is the same cultural Marxism instituted by men like Max Horkheimer, German philosopher and sociologist who gave us the

Frankfurt School. He applied critical theory on a larger scale, and Daryl explained how this influence would become evident in every facet of culture.

But now, as vital as it is to trace the origins of CT, it's equally important to understand how the worldview entered our theological framework.

You see, when you combine the godless ideologies of Marxism and critical theory with the religious fervor of men like Walter Rauschenbusch and his social gospel of the early 1900s, you begin to see what takes place.

From there, you have the liberation theology that would take place in South America in the 60s, 50s, and 60s, along with the 70s and later on with men like James Cone and black liberation theology.

You have what we currently see in our current climate with critical race theory. So let me back up and give you some context for these people.

Known as the father of the social gospel, he was known as the father of the social gospel.

This is Walter Rauschenbusch. Let me spell the name if you haven't had a chance to write it down. R -A -U -S -C -H -E -N -B -U -S -C -H.

Walter Rauschenbusch, R -A -U -S -C -H -E -N -B -U -S -C -H.

He was a Baptist pastor and theologian in the early 1900s. He would bring us the social gospel.

And if you remember this period in time in America, this was a period of massive immigration and influx of people that were coming upon the shores there in New York, immigrants from all walks of life.

Well, Rauschenbusch began his pastorate in the Second German Baptist Church in Hell's Kitchen, New York.

Again, Rauschenbusch is known as the father of the social gospel. And his view of Christianity in short was that its purpose was not simply for the salvation of sinners.

So his thought process about Christianity was, well, this is not for the salvation simply of sinners. Instead, Christianity is the savior for society.

That was his idea. Now, if there's anything you've ever heard Darrell or me say on the podcast,

I think Darrell coined it. I probably stole it from him and didn't give him credit wherever I said it. I'm sure

I did. He said that Jesus did not come to save society. Jesus came to save sinners.

Known again as the father of liberation theology, Gustavo Gutierrez, Gustavo Gutierrez.

He's known as the father of liberation theology. He was a Catholic priest and he was practicing

Marxian liberation theology in South America whereby groups were identified as oppressed, who were the poor, and the oppressors, who were the wealthy.

Now, Gutierrez called for the liberation of these groups. His ideological beginnings were initially about just simply better working conditions.

That's really what he was after. He thought, man, all these poor people are here. We should probably get them better working condition.

However, these would eventually extend theologically into a space where he identified the oppressed and the oppressor, and his thought was, his idea was that Jesus only identified with the oppressed and he came to liberate the oppressed, not from their sin, but from their oppressors.

That was the idea, in short, of Gustavo Gutierrez. What Gutierrez and other liberation theologians were doing in the mid to late 1960s actually caught the attention of one

James Cone. So James Cone is looking at the landscape of culture, seeing where it's having impact, especially in South America, seeing how

Jesus is identified with the oppressed and how they're having some gains, even to the degree that the

Catholic Church at the time actually wanted to kick Gustavo Gutierrez out of their mist. He was bad for business.

He was upsetting the apple cart, if you will, in South America. And so when

Cone saw this, he thought, oh, there might be something useful there. James Cone, he was known as a theologian, and I would use that term in air quotes.

If you ever get a chance, and I would encourage you, given that we've done this weekend with you,

I would now, after that, encourage you to read the works of James Cone. I'm gonna quote copiously from him just momentarily, and you'll understand what

I mean by that. But I think it would be good for you to read James Cone, because what you realize quickly is that he was no theologian at all.

His theology was rather weak. He was the Judith Moyers Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Now, if you remembered anything that Darrell talked about earlier, I think it was during the

Q &A, where he said anything from Union Theological Seminary, they should just take the word seminary off of it.

These are the people, if you're paying attention to what's happening in the news, these are the people who are, when everyone was bending the knee to the nearest black person that they could find during the

Black Lives Matter things going on, these people were bending their knee to trees, asking for the forgiveness of trees.

And this is what was happening in their quote -unquote seminaries at that time. Many people consider

James Cone the father of black liberation theology. And as you trace critical race theory within modern evangelicalism, it's crucial to note

James Cone for his influence. Why? The works of Cone are now actually being celebrated within some of the most conservative theological seminaries of our day.

If I thought about it, I could've pulled a Justin Peters and had a video up and shown you a lot of these professors from quote -unquote conservative seminaries who are proclaiming the great work of James Cone.

I want you to listen to James Cone today in our time together, and for you to assess in your own mind whether or not his work is of tremendous value.

As we always do on Just Thinking, I wanna begin by defining black liberation theology in the terms of what the public would've heard it on July 31st, 1966.

So I'm gonna treat you as the public would've been treated to black liberation theology,

July 31st, 1966, when the National Committee of Black Churchmen were responsible for exposing, or yeah, for exposing the public rather to black theology.

This was a committee of black churchmen. They would comprise approximately, eventually approximately 300 men from various ecumenical and ecclesiastical backgrounds.

Here's a statement in part. Here's how it reads. Quote, this is a definition, a defining of black theology, and you're hearing this definition from about 300 black churchmen who agreed to this definition.

These are not my words. This is not somebody who hates what they're doing, who's trying to tell you what they meant to say.

These are these men in their own words. Quote, for us, black theology is a theology of black liberation.

It seeks to plumb the black condition in light of God's revelation in Jesus Christ so that the black community can see that the gospel is commensurate with the achievement of black humanity.

I don't even know what that is. Black theology is a theology of blackness.

It is the affirmation of black humanity that emancipates black people from white racism.

So Jesus no longer comes to pay for, as a propitiation for the sin debt that you owe a holy

God, a thrice holy God. Jesus Christ now comes for the purpose of emancipating you from white racism, thus providing authentic freedom both for white and black people, end quote.

Once a critic of social justice, now an advocate for social justice. I'm gonna quote to you from Dr.

Anthony Bradley. Let me say that again. Once a critic, Bradley was once a critic of social justice, now an avid, rabid advocate of social justice.

But at the time, he wrote a book criticizing social justice. And I thought, when

I read the book, I thought it was worth, the critique was a solid, sound critique.

He has since changed directions and positions on many of these issues. His book was called Liberating Black Theology.

Now I had a problem with the title because it's a play on words, Liberation Black Theology. But there was a thought process that should have been picked up when

I read the book that there was, that Bradley was holding out hope to some degree, that black liberation theology or black theology could somehow be used in a positive light.

So while he offers a solid critique of the work, he also at the end of the book holds out, you know what, there may be some way to use this.

I wanna be clear, I absolutely reject that premise and idea. But if you do happen to go get the book,

I want you to be aware of what you're going to find in there. I do wanna quote from it because he writes this.

He talks about James Cone's hermeneutic. And he says this, quote, "'Cone and his writings remain critical "'of an orthodox evangelical theology "'that maintains the infallibility and inerrancy "'of the scriptures and the creature -creator distinction "'and holds the scriptures as final authority "'over all matters of faith.

"'Those positions fail to uncover issues "'important to the wretchedness of the earth.'"

Let me stop there. What Bradley is stating here is that Cone's theology, he rejects anything orthodox and evangelical.

And he does so on the basis of the fact that he does not hold to the infallibility of the text of Scripture. He does not hold to inerrancy of Scripture.

He holds to the idea that Scripture can only be used in matters where I can be seen as the victim.

If I can use Scripture to identify myself with being oppressed or being a victim,

I will use Scripture. Where Scripture doesn't help my personal cause, I will abandon it or negate it or not use it.

And you'll see that in his own words. Cone's own words from his book, A Black Theology of Liberation.

He states this, quote, "'To the contrary,' he says, "'many conservatives would say that the Bible "'is not a blueprint on matters of faith.

"'It is a valuable symbol for pointing "'to God's revelation in Jesus, "'but it is not self -interpreting.'"

Do you see what he's doing? He's saying, you can't look at it like I can look at it. He's about to insert his own ideas into the text.

The only way that you could understand it in the way that I do is if you had black skin.

And the reason you don't read the text of Scripture in the same way that I do is because you're not like me.

What Cone, and by extension, Black Liberation Theology is advocating is that you throw away your

Bible unless he and other black theologians can abuse the text of Scripture to promote a

Marxist form of social justice. If anyone thinks I'm exaggerating about the Marxian framework for Black Liberation Theology, Cone tells us so in his book entitled

For My People, Black Theology and the Black Church. On page 186, he says this, quote, "'The

Christian faith does not possess,' listen closely, "'The Christian faith does not possess in its nature "'the means for analyzing the structure of capitalism.'"

If you think about the talk that you just heard Darrell give, what is the main issue with the idea around capitalism?

The main thought is, well, capitalism is endemic or connected to white supremacy.

So in order to get rid of white supremacy, we have to get rid of capitalism. That's the idea and pervading thought behind what is taught.

Cone says, "'The Christian faith does not possess "'in its nature the means for analyzing "'the structure of capitalism.'"

He says, "'Marxism, however, as a tool for social analysis "'can disclose the gap between appearance and reality "'and thereby help

Christians to see how things really are.'" So the lens that you need to use, the economic lens that you need to use to really understand things is a

Marxian lens. And again, that's from his book For My People, Black Theology and the Black Church, page 186.

So Marxism is the tool that is suggested by Cone and his form of orthodoxy is actually heterodoxy.

In case there's any misunderstanding about what Cone is believing and saying, I used to, when

I initially gave this talk, I would sit audiences down and play a game of who said it first. And in the game, what

I would do is I would take quotes from James Cone and I would lay them side by side with quotes from the

Ku Klux Klan. I would use their theology, their ideas and theology and put them side by side.

I would take out the words white and or black from each of the quotes that were given.

And I would ask the audience, who said it first? Was it Cone or the

KKK? Now, we don't have time to play that game here, though it would be entertaining to see how you responded.

It's incredible how aligned their viewpoints, their worldviews actually are.

In an article titled Christianity and Black Power, Cone writes this, quote, Jesus's death on the cross represented

God's boundless solidarity with victims, even unto death.

Jesus's resurrection is good news that there is new life for the poor that is not determined by their poverty, but overcomes it.

What is he appealing to here? He's appealing to a social justice Jesus who looks out for the poor, identifies who they are and helps them out of that temporal poverty.

The poverty is never the weightiness of their sin, it's simply their temporal or perceived oppression by other men who don't look like them.

James Cone would write this in his book, Black Theology and Black Power. He says this, quote, for white people,

God's reconciliation in Jesus Christ means that God has made black people a beautiful people.

And if they, white people, are going to be in relationship with God, listen closely, they must enter utilizing their black brothers who are a manifestation of God's presence on the earth.

This is ethnic deism, do you see it? This is ethnic deism.

Your road to salvation is now not through Jesus Christ and him crucified, but through the nearest black brother that you can find because that black brother or sister is a manifestation of God's presence on the earth.

Again, if you think about what is being said here and you mirror it against what is said by organizations like the

Klan, these kinds of things align themselves completely. Black Theology and Black Power, again, initially published in 1969,

James Cone writes this, quote, if the gospel is a gospel of liberation for the oppressed, then

Jesus is where the oppressed are and continues his work of liberation there.

Jesus is not safely confined in the first century. He's our contemporary, proclaiming release to the captives and rebelling against all who silently accept the structures of injustice.

If he, Jesus, is not in the ghetto, listen closely, if he is not where the men are living at the brink of existence, but is rather in the easy life of the suburbs, then the gospel is a lie.

Is this not why God became a man in Jesus Christ so that man might become as he is?

This is an ethnic little God's doctrine, right? This is the idea that if I'm the right ethnicity,

I can be a God. I can have the same, isn't that why Christ came to make me deity?

He says this, he goes on in that same quote, he says as long as man is a slave to another power, he is not free to serve

God with mature responsibility and he's not free to become what he is, which is human.

I wish I could take this quote and frame it for you because in the next talk that my brother,

Darrell, is going to deliver, you're gonna hear about a slave who absolutely would repudiate this statement in and of itself.

I won't steal my brother's thunder by any stretch, but I just want you to remember what Cone said. He says that if he's a slave to another power, he is not free to serve

God with mature responsibility. He's not free to become what he really is, human. I want you to remember that again in light of what you'll hear when

Darrell returns. What Cone is arguing is the same thing that men before him argued. Men like Gutierrez and Rauschenbusch, they desired a

Jesus who came to save society instead of one that came to save sinners.

They were looking for a quick fix Jesus to deliver them from temporal outcomes. And the reality is that is not the goal of Christ.

What Cone and Gutierrez and Rauschenbusch believe is that Christ came to do exactly the opposite of what he prayed for and talked about.

Jesus came to, if Jesus came to save societies, then the Jews and even the disciples would have been right in believing that the overthrow of the

Roman government was the right thing to do in establishing the kingdom. However, Jesus would instruct that his kingdom would not be a kingdom that he would establish through change from the outside, but rather that the kingdom would be a part of the heart transformation necessitating the complete change from the inside out.

What we're witnessing are men who desire to see this transformation, this utopia, if you will, take place from the outside in.

They're trying to use their own powers of persuasion, their own ideological framework, their own economic empowerment, their own political strategy in an effort to change society into what they believe it needs to be.

Well, the gospel of the kingdom works absolutely the reverse way. What happened in the first century after Jesus ascends, right?

Those men whose hearts were transformed began to have a massive impact on the culture, but they did so not by trying to change the government structure, they did so because of the heart transformation that was on the inside of them, and they began to proclaim that gospel message person to person, house to house, and the society and the culture transformed as a result.

So that by the time we read about Paul and the church in Ephesus and Acts 17 and 18, and you've unpacked what

Paul is doing, there's a riot that breaks out, why? Because the silversmith there is upset because everybody in the world seems to be turning over their hearts and giving them to Christ.

And it's having a large economic impact on Ephesus. He's saying, we're gonna get out of, if all of these folks become believers, we're gonna be out of business soon.

Nobody's gonna wanna worship the goddess Artemis. What's gonna happen to us? Well, he didn't do that based upon them marching on Rome.

No one did that as a result of them deciding they were gonna change the political structure during that time.

They did so person to person, heart to heart, as a result of gospel proclamation.

I wanna move on to goal number two in our time together as it pertains to the interconnectedness of the ideas of CRT.

Again, I talked about men like Rauschenbusch, Gutierrez, and Cohn. And what they did, what these men did,

I told you about these strands, these strings that they bring into evangelicalism, if you will,

Christianity, if you will. Their work laid the foundation for a theological framework for the

Marxian ideology to rest on. Do you see that? They begin to put terminologies and ideas and misuse and abuse the text of scripture for the purpose of laying a groundwork, a foundation for others to build upon later on down the road.

These godless ideologies, critical theory, critical race theory, now would have a theological framework for which modern

CRTs would lay the foundation of what we see in evangelicalism today. So I wanted to make the case that the way that this invaded our day, just like I did in the previous talk when

I talked about gender theory. I took you to 1949, right, with Simone de

Beauvoir. And I showed you how her ideas 70 years ago infected everything to the degree that by 1990, we had

Judith Butler espousing ideas that now everyone in culture is talking about today. I wanted to also take you through the process of from what

Darrell did with CT, CLS, and CRT and show you how these pseudo -theological ideas of men like Gutierrez and Rauschenbusch and others and Cone began to pull from that idea into Christian circles for the purpose of laying the groundwork for what we are experiencing.

My second goal is I wanna contrast and compare the civil rights movement which had its primary genesis in the so -called black church with today's social justice movement.

I'll be quick as I run through this. In his famous speech given on August 18th, 1963 and delivered under the shadow of one of the most symbolic

American monuments, the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech. And in his speech, Dr. King would explain the grievances of Negro life in great detail as he and many others had experienced it during the days of Jim Crow and segregation.

It would be this platform that Dr. King would use to call America to the height and beauty of the

Judeo -Christian ideals that permeate the nation's founding documents. King would say this, quote,

In a sense, we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the

Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every

American was to fall heir. This note was a promise to all men.

Yes, black men as well as white men would be guaranteed the unalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Dr. King would go on to say this, quote, We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation, and so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice, end quote.

Dr. King would then appeal to the equality of all humanity in the most famous portion of his speech when he said this, quote,

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where we will not be judged by the color of their skin, but they will be judged by the content of their character, end quote.

Well, again, many theologians struggle with Dr. King's theology, and you should.

There's a lot to struggle with. There's a lot of issues with Dr. King. I'd argue that he wasn't a believer in Christ.

I would argue that he was not a Christian. I would be very clear about that, but in the common grace of God, there were things that he got right for which we can point to and say that right there, that's right, and it's based upon a biblical worldview that did not originate with Dr.

King, but that originated from Scripture, amen? Let me keep going. Dr. King appealed to three central components that were identified at the core of his movement, and they were these.

One, an appeal to the Judeo -Christian founding of the

United States. He appealed to the Judeo -Christian founding of the United States and identified it in his founding documents.

He referenced the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence. At the time of his speech,

Dr. King delivered this. Number two, an appeal for the equality of opportunity rather than the equity of outcomes.

I'm gonna say that again. His appeal was to the equality of opportunity rather than to the equity of outcomes.

And this could be seen in the language of freedom, liberty, and justice for all, black men and white men.

Number three, he appealed to the Imago Dei in all of humanity.

He appealed to the Imago Dei in all of humanity. This could be heard in the constant language of equality for people of every ethnicity and background, black men and white men,

Jews and Gentiles, Protestants, Catholics. He appealed to the Imago Dei in all of humanity.

On these three accounts, based upon the common grace of God, he got these things right. But even if we were to assess

King and what he stood for based upon today's standards, the monument that should be torn down is

King's monument in Washington, D .C. Why? Because his appeal was not on the basis of color of skin but on the basis of content of character.

And today's modern social justician would have problem with the idea that they should not be judged on the basis of the color of their skin because that's the manner in which all judgments are actually made.

Long after Dr. King's assassination on April 4th, 1968, historians would agree that this speech delivered to more than 250 ,000 people in the shadows of the

Lincoln Memorial was the actual high point of the Civil Rights Movement. King's constant reminder was the cause of nonviolent protest, the hallmark, this hallmark, rather, served as the strength of his movement.

Again, remember, nonviolent protest was considered the strength of the movement.

King said it this way, quote, "'We must never forget to conduct our struggle "'on the high plane of dignity and discipline.

"'We must not allow our creative protest "'to degenerate into physical violence.'" Continuing a quote from King, quote, "'The nonviolent resistor "'not only avoids external physical violence, "'but he avoids internal violence of the spirit.

"'He not only refuses to shoot his opponent, "'but he refuses to hate him. "'And he always stands with understanding and goodwill.'"

End quote. Now, here we are 54 years after King's historic speech as we examine the current landscape of culture.

What we have now is the modern -day social justice movement with three women, womenists, right?

Now you know the difference between a feminist and a womanist, right? A feminist, that's a what?

That's a white woman who's a feminist, who espouses the ideas of liberalism with regard to femininity.

You don't call a black woman a feminist. Though she may subscribe to feminist ideas, what do you call her?

She's a womanist. So we have three womanists, Alicia Garza, Patrice Colors, and Opal Tometi.

They lead the charge for Black Lives Matter. Now this is a new approach, this new approach rather to social justice began with the jury verdict in the case of the

Trayvon Martin debacle, right? On July 13th, 2013, after hearing all the evidence in the

Trayvon Martin case, a six -women jury, which included one minority, found

George Zimmerman not guilty. And again, the Trayvon Martin case, I have to pause here and say, this seems like ancient history.

2013 seems like forever ago in light of what we've encountered in the years after, right?

But I wanna revisit it, why? Because this is the case that is placed on the Black Lives Matter website as the reason and rationale for why they started their organization to begin with.

So I wanna revisit it with you momentarily. This verdict was delivered despite being given at the last minute the option of three choices.

So after the case, this was gonna be a guilty or not guilty. He was either guilty of murder or not guilty.

And here's what happened. After listening to all of the content, the judge at the last hour said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I want you to consider a couple of other additional things here. He says, I want you to consider three choices. You can either find

Zimmerman guilty of second -degree murder or find him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter or find him not guilty.

Now this began the modern -day Black Lives Matter movement. As you know, that the verdict was not guilty.

Next in line to follow this decision for Black Lives Matter, they began their movement. What really stirred it was the

Michael Brown case, the Michael Brown case. Now before the investigation of the Brown case, you saw everywhere in culture the hands -up, don't shoot narrative that swept the country.

You had football players and baseball players, sports people all over walking out with hands -up, don't shoot.

This was the narrative that, you had news broadcasters, you had no business doing this kind of thing, doing hands -up, don't shoot everywhere.

From entertainers to athletes, all promoting the narrative. The Brown case, however, would be investigated by the

Obama administration's Department of Justice head, Eric Holder. And in the case of Michael Brown, Obama's DOJ could not find enough evidence for the charge of the, to charge the officers with wrongdoing in the

Brown shooting. I wanna be clear. So if you checked out,

I want you to be clear. I wanna be clear, I want you to hear this. A black president, a black attorney general, a black district attorney, could not find the hands -up, don't shoot narrative to be accurate.

Nor was there enough evidence for the prosecution of the officer involved in the death of Michael Brown.

Black president, black attorney, black district attorney. Could not find the evidence.

After a seven -month investigation, Attorney General Eric Holder said the following in a statement. Quote, this morning, the

Justice Department announced the conclusion of our investigation and released a 87 -page report documenting our findings and conclusions that the facts do not support the filing of criminal charges against Officer Darren Wilson in the case.

Michael Brown's death or tragedy did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of Officer Wilson.

The Michael Brown case notwithstanding, this was, the next case that I'm gonna talk about was definitely the high point.

We had for Martin Luther King, the high point was the I Have a

Dream speech. For the social justice movement, the high point is the

George Floyd case. Now, before even the adjudication of Derek Chauvin for killing

George Floyd, protests to seek justice for Floyd had spread to over 2 ,000 cities and towns in all 50 states, including more than 60 countries.

While some protests were, quote, unquote, peaceful, according to the media, it's staggering to consider the number of innocent victims killed and the inestimable cost of repair to damaged cities and businesses forever lost in black communities alone, not to mention elsewhere.

All of this was perpetrated by black lives mattering.

These businesses didn't matter to black lives. The black lives that were lost didn't matter to black lives matter.

If we're clear, George Floyd didn't matter to black lives matter.

He was used for the purpose of acquiring wealth. And now we're seeing that.

Daryl and I were doing podcasts talking about this. We did a podcast where I went and examined line by line,

I gave you in this podcast, every single dollar amount that was presented by every single company around the country to black lives matter and told you it was a fraud long before any of this information that you're hearing about today had come out.

Their motives were wrong. There are numerous contrasts that can be made to examine this modern social justice movement with the civil rights movement.

I'll do this in shorthand and walk you through what they are. Earlier I said that the civil rights movement of the 60s appealed to three things.

The three things were the Judeo -Christian founding of the United States, two, the equality rather than equity of outcome, and the

Imago Dei in all of us. Now the black lives matter movement, here were their three things, you ready? They appealed to these three things, that American culture at its founding is racist.

American culture at its founding is racist and based upon the sin of slavery.

American culture at its founding is racist and based upon the sin of slavery.

Number two, all inequity, all inequity is the result of systemic racism.

So if there's an inequity anywhere, if I have less money in my pocket than you have, it's because you're racist.

If I didn't get the job, not because my qualifications weren't such, but if I got it, if I didn't get it and you got it, it's because racism, right?

If I score lower on a test at a particular school than whites are scoring, it's because of racism.

It has nothing to do with the fact that I didn't study, didn't care, watched TV all night and stayed up and didn't study for the test, it has nothing to do with that, it has everything to do with racism.

Everything, every inequity is attributed to racism. Number three, that black lives matter and no one else does.

Black lives matter and no one else does. Now for those who might be thinking I'm overstating the case, allow me to quote again from Black Lives Matter website where they state, quote,

Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of the

Trayvon Martin murderer. Black Lives Matter Foundation Inc., whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on black communities and by state vigilantes.

By combating and countering acts of violence, we want to create space for black imagination and innovation centering on black joy.

I have no idea what black imagination, black joy, I've never,

I've been black my whole life, believe me. I have no idea, you know, and again, if this is being video, this will be the part that they capture.

Yeah, he's been black his whole life, but he don't know what black joy is. I have no, I know what joy is.

I know what imagination is, but I don't look at those things through a lens of melanin or skin color, but obviously that's what they're doing.

They're winning, they said they're winning, again, quoting from Black Lives Matter, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.

Well, yeah, that's true, they are. Darrell said it earlier, BLM stands for By Large Mansions.

Yeah, their lives are benefiting every day. They had no calls for unity, no calls for upholding a historic

Judeo -Christian values, no calls for freedom or the joy that comes from living in a just society.

These contrasting approaches of these two organizations could not be more evident. So here's my warning as I close.

As Christians, we cannot afford to attach ourselves to an organization like this.

I would argue that it would be foolish of you to parrot the same phrases.

Darrell and I never bought into the idea that Black Lives Matter. You won't be able to find a place where we made a statement, yep,

Black Lives Matter, why? Because we wanna get as far from this as possible.

We wanna uphold what scripture has to say about life and about the lives of human beings created in the image of God mattering.

In my first talk, I spent the time talking about a theology of mankind and the fact that we are all image bearers of God, of one race deserving of distinct value, dignity, and worth.

I'd shared with you in my first talk that you and I are connected. If we're in Christ, you and I are connected for eternity.

Though I've come all the way here from Atlanta, you are here in Sandpoint.

It's irrelevant to the fact that we are a family forever if you're in Christ.

And my melanin, or your lack thereof, is nothing but a part of the beautiful fabric of God that created diversity.

And I share this as well, diversity in and of itself is not virtuous.

Its beauty is inherent in the one who created it, amen? It is God who created diversity, and as a result of who

God is and his beauty, we get to experience that in the expression of different levels of melanin in our skin.

And all of it is not to fall on you, oh, look at you, you're black, or look at you, you're this color, you got this.

All of it is for the purpose of saying, look at the beauty of God's creation. That's what it's for.

It's not for the purpose of separation and division. It's for the purpose of unity, especially for us as believers, into the body of Christ.

I should look out for you because you're my brother. Let somebody mess with you. I got you.

You've got me. And that's how this is supposed to work. Let me conclude this by saying, is this my second or last conclusion?

My second. Having, again, presented the contrast between the civil rights movement and the modern social justice movement,

I wanna just encourage you with the words of Paul to the church at Ephesus. I mentioned the church at Ephesus earlier.

But I wanna read to you what he said to the elders as he's about to depart from them in Acts 20, verses 31 and 32.

He challenges them to therefore be alert, remembering that for the last three years, he did not cease day or night to admonish them with tears.

And now he says, I commend you to God, to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all of those who are being sanctified.

Now, this was a conversation of Paul to elders of a church, to be sure. I think we could find encouragement in the fact that the word of his grace is able to build us up and give us an inheritance for all of us who are being sanctified by that word, growing in grace with one another as a result of our knowledge of God's word.

It's with that I'm gonna close with prayer. Father God, I just thank you so much for the truth of your word, the impact of it on our lives.

May it sink deeply into us. May we be transformed and renewed by that word.

And as a result, live lives that look differently than those of the world.

May the light of the gospel shine forth in such a way that we have more opportunity to express that truth to others.

The truth that you came, you lived a perfect life, you died for our sin, and if we would but repent and place our faith in you, we would experience eternal life.

That is good news, and we're grateful for it. In Christ's name, amen.