Trouble in the PCA

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We're gonna pick up where we left off yesterday.

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Yesterday, we talked about Bobby Scott, who I had never heard of until I saw a

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Critical Race Theory panel at T4G last week, and we went over it. And Bobby Scott had said something interesting.

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He said that the ministry of reconciliation given to Christians could be pursued by Christians, but that reconciliation could also be pursued by those in the world, which

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I thought, well, that's interesting, because the ministry of reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5 is a reconciliation of man and God through the work of Jesus Christ.

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It's the gospel. But the world can somehow approach this? I mean, the world can't even get off the ground.

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I mean, it was just weird. But then he went further and he said, well, looking by the way this room looks, he looked at the room and looked at the fact that there wasn't a lot of ethnic diversity.

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He said we could be doing better at the ministry of reconciliation, which is really curious, because the gospel itself is the ministry of reconciliation, that message that people can be made right with God through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross and his death and his burial and his resurrection.

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And so the whole idea of using the 2 Corinthians 5 terminology, the ministry of reconciliation, and applying that to diversifying some kind of a organization is not certainly an orthodox reading of that passage.

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And it's actually, it's law. It's works. It's not grace.

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And the ministry of reconciliation is the message of grace. And so I just pointed out that this was a conflation.

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And then someone sent me all this stuff about Bobby Scott that I was like surprised at. He's went to Master Seminary.

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He's been, he's affiliated with T4G, but also the Sola Network and the

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Front Porch. The Just Gospel Conferences that B .D. Annabuele puts on, which that's kind of radical in my mind.

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He also is, what was the other thing? I forget. He did a panel, or he did an interview where he talked about how the gospel can bring about reconciliation between people.

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But he kind of like, he says, you know, between slave and master, but he's very quick to say, but not chattel slavery.

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And it was really strange. But he had these articles also for the Sola Network that seemed to be influenced by critical race theory assumptions.

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And so I just made the point. I'm like, look, this is a guy that I think, like 10 years ago, even five years ago, many of us would have thought like, well, you know, he's

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T4G's from Master Seminary. He's probably like Orthodox in his theology. And now you have to kind of like question some of those things.

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You can't just like have an open, you can't just like leave the door open. You have to have like a grid that's checking out like the

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Bereans did with Paul, the people that you let pass through that grid. And so that was my only point.

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And so I wanted to stop though, because this is so interesting to me, what's happening today.

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I'm recording this on Monday. So I'm going on a trip this week. I record a bunch of podcasts in a row.

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And on this day, I think it was yesterday, maybe actually, someone sent me this, maybe it was this morning.

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Someone sent me a video of Bobby Scott. And they said, hey, look, he's participating on this panel.

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And it was from, actually, it was a video of a guy.

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It was a podcast called Dear Woke Christian. That was the name of the podcast, Dear Woke Christian. And the guy who runs that podcast, his name is

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Jason Whittaker, went over some parts of this panel that Bobby Scott was sitting on.

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Well, it really wasn't Bobby Scott who was the main person talking, at least in the clips that Jason Whittaker was examining.

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It was someone else. And I want to talk about that person. It's a guy named

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Scott Sauls. And Scott Sauls is a pastor in Nashville, Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church.

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And he said something on this panel that was just, I just thought, oh my goodness, hold on.

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No one stopped him, no one, I just thought, wow. I don't know, I just would have immediately,

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I think, been like, wait, hold on, hold on. Let's clarify this, because this is serious stuff.

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So I want to show you some parts of this panel. I don't want to go through the whole panel. I just want to show you some parts of it.

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And then, this is the interesting timing in my mind. I got this clip, and I was thinking about Bobby Scott.

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I got this clip of Bobby Scott on this panel with Scott Sauls, who's Presbyterian. And then, this whole thing erupted on Facebook that I thought, and it was directly related.

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Well, it was indirectly related to what I was watching. And I thought, the timing of this. I couldn't believe the timing of,

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I'm not familiar with Scott Sauls. I wasn't familiar with Bobby Scott. I'm becoming more familiar now.

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And then, this all comes around the same time that I'll show you this thing happens on Facebook.

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So it's amazing to me how these things have all come together. But let me just play for you the clip that I want to play for you, and we'll go from there.

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So we'll start here at the beginning. This is, Woke Preacher Clips is the one that posted this.

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It's actually from 2021, and it's actually hosted, actually, let's go to the original source video here, if we can here.

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This is Race, Gospel, and the Local Church. And of course, it's the Sola Conference. It's that organization, the

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Sola Network, which Bobby Scott had written those articles for that I went over some aspects of in the last particular podcast.

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So Woke Preacher Clips found this, and they ended up doing this whole, they took a clip from it.

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And this is the clip I want to play for you. Listen to this. Injustice, the sin of racism is that, even though it's not a actual doctrinal gospel issue, is that something that flows from it as a gospel implication?

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So if we think about the gospel primarily as the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, being saved by grace through faith, then they can say, just talk about that.

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Don't talk about race, politics, justice, social issues. But why is gospel -centered people?

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And I think Bobby started to talk about that. Why is there a need for us to talk about these issues in the church, as the church?

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Okay, before anything else, let's just stop it right there. Did he rightly give you, in a nutshell, a definition of the gospel?

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Let's just put on the side this whole idea of gospel implications. Let's just, did he, right in that moment, say what the gospel was?

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And he did. Salvation by faith, grace through faith, the life, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus, right?

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That's the gospel. Check out what this guy, and so here's Bobby Scott sitting right here. And we've talked about the whole merging of law with grace, and at the best, sloppiness.

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At worst, it's just false teaching, is what it is. But maybe there's sloppiness resulting in that. I don't know, but he's made comments that are confusing at best.

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Listen to this guy on the far right side of this panel, as you're looking at the stage, Scott Sauls.

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Last I checked, love your neighbor is part of the gospel. It is doctrinal.

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To love your neighbor as yourself is based on a doctrine that we must love our neighbor as ourself.

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And there is no, there is no integrity in our preached gospel if there is a lack of a social dynamic that emphasizes the dignity of every person, from every background, from every nation, every tribe, tongue, people, group.

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Great commission, the phrase Jesus used was, we have it translated all nations.

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The Greek reads, ta ethne, all ethnic groups. Go into all the world to every ethnic group and preach the gospel.

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So you cannot separate the gospel from leveling the ground for ta ethne, for all ethnic groups, for all people groups.

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The second command is just like the first one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

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Love your neighbor as yourself. And when I hear just preach the gospel, when it's used as an occasion to dismiss, particularly the cries that are coming from injured people groups, people groups that feel marginalized because they have been.

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Let's stop it right there. Did you catch it? That's more than a stretch.

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That's just false teaching. It is the same false teaching I would expect from a liberation theologian.

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Walter Strickland said something, basically the same thing that Scott Sauls is saying here. A few years ago, 2018, he said that the gospel is loving the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself. That's not even part of the gospel, that's the gospel.

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And you hear Scott Sauls doing the same thing. It's making the same move here. Love your neighbor, well, that's part of the gospel.

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And what is loving your neighbor though? That's in the category of law. That's what actually condemns us, because we can't do it, and that's why we need

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Jesus. And then once we're saved, we love our neighbor out of a love for Christ, and the law becomes a guide for us.

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But love your neighbor is not part of the good news. That's actually part of what condemns us.

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He is taking that, and then as you'll see, and there's more I could play. There's actually another clip, what preacher's clips put up here about critical race theory and Scott Sauls, but he takes this, and he takes that love your neighbor concept, and then infuses into that assumptions about an egalitarian society and making that possible in some way, shape, or form, some kind of a society that is like that, and that pursuing this is somehow part of the gospel.

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I'm gonna keep playing it for you, but I just want you to recognize that there's more errors in this than just one, but that's the big error.

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Feeling, it's actually an existential reality that there are certain skin colors, certain ethnicities, certain

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Eurocentric origins that have had the advantage economically, as PJ was saying, socially, in terms of who has access to leadership and power and decision -making and culture shaping for organizations, businesses, communities, cities, municipalities, the whole nation.

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And so, as the church, Just think about this for a minute.

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The world that Jesus came into and the world Paul was in, when they're preaching the gospel and the

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Romans are just controlling everything, economics, politics, militarily, they're controlling, they're taxing everyone, it'd be very easy to be like, well, this

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Roman privilege is just, it's a real problem. Roman male privilege, specifically. They had a slave system, they had colonialism of a sort, they had,

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I mean, you could look at the Romans and see so many things that you could even make out to, you could even portray as much worse than what happened in the

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Western world or in the United States of America recently. And so, you don't find any language even close to this in the

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New Testament, where, well, the gospels love your neighbor, and because of that, part of the gospel is going and making sure that everyone's economically equal and everyone, gotta take away that Roman privilege, and there's nothing like that.

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But this is where Scott Sauls wants to go here. You can't just preach the gospel while leaving your neighbor out.

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You're actually preaching a sub -gospel, a substandard gospel, an incomplete gospel, when you only preach love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. You know,

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C .S. Lewis said that your neighbor, next to the blessed sacrament, it's. But again, that's not the gospel.

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Loving your God and loving your neighbor isn't the gospel. That's the problem with this.

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So, like he's saying, the substandard gospel is when you just preach loving God. That's not even the gospel, though.

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You know, you gotta include love neighbor in that. No, that's the law. That's the commands of God. That's the summary of the

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Ten Commandments and the laws God has given to humans to follow.

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So, if your neighbor is the holiest object that will ever be presented to your senses, and so there's this sacredness of other human beings.

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And I think that it's important to remember, as well, in this conversation, that when

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Jesus said to preach the gospel, when he gave the Great Commission and said, go into all the world to all ethnic groups, he was doing so from the center of the earth and was talking about, in part, us, who now reside at the ends of the earth, right?

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And so, it's a very arrogant thing to behave as if we are the center of the Christian story and everybody else gets to be grafted in, when, in fact, we are on the periphery and we have been lovingly and graciously grafted in by our savior who hails from the

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Middle East and with, in all likelihood, brown skin probably more like your skin,

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PJ, than mine or Bobby's, so, which is a wonderful conglomerate, right, of...

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You show me where, in the New Testament, there's a focus on, anywhere, on the skin of Jesus and what color it was, and that being a significant factor in relationship to the salvation of people.

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Of dark and light skin is, you look at the Middle East and you see, in that particular ethnicity, what it might look like to put us all together as one.

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And so, there's just such a great symbolism there, even in the likely skin color of Christ himself, it was an inclusive color.

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And so, I just, I don't know how you can preach the gospel without loving people, and loving people includes being quick to listen and slow to speak and to be teachable, to be humble, to be ready at all times to repent of our own blind spots when those blind spots are exposed, rather than getting defensive and testy about it.

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So, yeah, that's the real inclusive thing about having every single author of the

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Bible be a male, and the particular preference that God gave to the nation of Israel, that's just an inclusive thing.

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This is so outside anything. This is taking, trying to stretch, to take things from what's happening currently in academia and politics and entertainment, and what's really popular, which is, it's not popular to be white now, that's a bad thing, and to try to downplay it as much as possible, but then to infuse it in the gospel is just, it's crazy to me.

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So anyway, this is just, it actually reminds me of Rob Bell a little bit, this guy, but this was my first taste of Scott Saul's teaching, anywhere, and I was like, who is this guy, and why is he on a panel for the

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Sola Network, which I thought this would be about the Solas of the Reformation, this is totally against, and so I didn't,

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I'm like, who is this guy? Who is this guy, right? And then this happens.

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So I want you to check this out. This is weird to me, how this all kind of came together, but this is a particular post by Rod Martin, Rod, for those who don't know, he's an investor, the

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Martin Group is his organization, but he's also part of Conservative Baptist Network, and so he posts this, and you'll see how this relates in a minute.

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This is from a guy named John Payne, and he posts this tweet, and I'll read the tweet, for those listening,

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I'll try to describe this to you, and then I will read Rob Martin's assessment of this tweet. So the tweet is, dear

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Christian, if Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter ignites more hope and joy in your heart than the gospel, you either don't understand the gospel, have drifted from the gospel, or have forsaken the gospel altogether.

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The believer's true and lasting hope and joy is not found in any man or worldly institution, but Christians' hope and joy are found in the saving grace and sovereign rule of Christ alone, and in sola dea gloria.

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So I looked at this first, and I just saw it on my newsfeed, and I was like, yeah, that's the reason

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I'm not on Twitter, because I'm like, those are the kinds of things that I started to see a tendency in myself to want to just start lecturing everyone and tweeting out all these just hot takes, really, of like, hey, and usually they're like obvious truths, like so obvious, no one's gonna come out and disagree with you on the idea that the gospel should ignite your heart more than Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter.

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But what's happened, I think, especially in the last few, in the last year, people are getting tired of these hot takes, especially from gospel coalition articles.

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So it's not just Twitter, it's broader than that, but if you look at gospel coalition articles, it's like, their shorter ones are like a string of hot takes and they're made for Twitter.

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Twitter has, I don't know, it's changed the way that people even blog and stuff. It's been around for a while,

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I know, but if you look at before Twitter was popular, I think blogs have changed. That's just totally a unfounded assumption that I have that I did not prepare to prove, but that's what

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I think. So anyway, these hot takes are primarily, okay, from the more progressive side of, even if,

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I don't even know, I wanna call it evangelicalism, but what you find on the more progressive side of evangelicalism, for lack of a better term for it, gospel coalition will be part of this,

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Christianity Today, there's like this effort to take issues of the left and make them gospel issues or make them issues of loving your neighbor or sort of fuse them with Christianity somehow in some way.

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And then on the other side, whether it's like a political conservative issue, it's idolatrous, you gotta watch out, that's idolatry, that's a problem, like don't love that more than Jesus, make sure that you love your country, oh man,

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Christian nationalism, you gotta make sure that you love the gospel more than you love your country, it looks like there's idolatry going on, it's always idolatry on the right, and then it's one in the same and in congruence and reconciled with the gospel when it's an issue of the political left, it's running on the same course.

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And so it gets weird, it gets like what you saw like Bobby Scott say about on that panel from T4G of like, well, there's the

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Ministry of Reconciliation and there's people in the world that are doing it and where we can do it better, it's like, well, no, there's no one in the world doing that actually, that's something only

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Christians can do. And so like, it's very easy to take these issues of the political left and things that a political left are doing, you see this like woke church,

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Eric Mason like wants to look at, look at the denazification program in Germany and man, that's the kind of thing the church should be doing as gospel ministry and looking to that example and the anti -apartheid stuff in South Africa and it's like, yeah, but these aren't even

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Christians you're talking about. And so that gets incorporated into gospel category,

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Christian category, Christian ethics, and then the other side, the right wing stuff or the conservative stuff is not.

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In this particular situation, you have Elon Musk who really honestly probably just got himself a huge headache by doing this.

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He's a target now, he'll probably lose tons of money, but he decided I'm gonna buy Twitter and he does this and the thing that makes

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Christians and conservatives, but Christians happy about it is the fact that we were banned, we saw where things were going and there's a little bit of freedom left, they're just rejoicing and like,

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I can say some stuff that's true and I can say stuff that's in keeping with my biblical morals.

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Stealing's wrong and I can say it and lying to people's wrong and guess what? The idea that men can be women and women can be men and that's not hate speech,

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I can say it, that's the thing that they're thinking at least is gonna happen with Elon Musk being in Twitter.

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I don't know if that's all true. I mean, look, who is it? Mike Lindell, like, it's kind of funny, but it's not.

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Mike Lindell got a Twitter account back and he's like, hey, I'm back on Twitter and a couple hours later, Twitter banned him again. So I don't know if he'll get that back or not, but so I'm waiting to see what'll happen, but the thing that the press is freaking out about, like, oh,

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Elon Musk is gonna, he's gonna allow all this disinformation and hate and Christians are like, he's gonna allow freedom.

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He's gonna allow us to say things that we couldn't say before. So that's a cause for rejoicing and then when that parade's going down the street, you have a guy like John Payne coming out and be like, don't forget, if that ignites more hope and joy in your heart than the gospel, you don't understand the gospel, you're drifted from the gospel, you're blah.

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These are really heavy accusations. If you really think about what he's saying, these are heavy charges, right?

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And so like, it's scary of like, oh my goodness, I can't rejoice too much in this.

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I have, you know, my pastor or this conservative leader and I'll introduce you to John Payne in a minute, but this conservative leader in the

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PCA telling me, like, you know, I better not, I gotta watch that. I better not have more joy than I have in the gospel.

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I don't even know quite how, I mean, what he's saying is like true, it's an obvious truth, but it's like,

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I'm like, where is that happening? And then secondly, it's like, how do you quantify that? That's very hard, like in the moment, like if your sports team wins and you jump up and down or if it's

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Father's Day and you're like, hey, you're the best dad or if, there's a million things we do in life where we're rejoicing in the moment and it's a special occasion, there's a time for it and it's like, are you gonna just like get your heart out and like start evaluating and be like, man,

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I really need to make sure that like my rejoicing isn't more than my, like this, I don't know,

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I used to live a little bit like this where I would just, everything's gotta be evaluated all the time or I'm not worshiping or I'm not, and it's just,

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I don't, it's a horrible way to live and this would plague my conscience, this kind of a thing. And I'm, thankfully

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I'm set free from that stuff now, but so it doesn't bother me, like my conscience at least, but when

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I see something like this, I ask the question like, okay, what's actually, what is someone actually trying to say when they say this?

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What's the point of this? Are they really legitimately concerned that Christians are, like Elon Musk is going to somehow divert

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Christian's hearts from rejoicing over the gospel or is this like a political move?

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Is this kind of like, hey, I'm not, I'm kind of like not with that parade that's rejoicing over Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter.

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I see something potentially nefarious and negative with this or I, like that's the question that I have because it seems like a odd take, like an obvious take, kind of a silly take in the beginning.

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But then there's also the idea that I'm like, well, maybe this guy has friends that I'm just not aware of. Like he's got some friends that are like literally being like, you know what?

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I think this is better than the gospel or something. I don't know. Maybe there's some weird people he's friends with. So anyway,

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I just thought, man, that's weird. And that was pretty much it. That's weird. I'm glad I'm not on Twitter. I read

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Rod Martin's take on it. He goes, liberal pietism 101, make Christians feel guilty and worldly if they're happy about positive developments, otherwise known as blessings.

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Also like Tim Keller this weekend on abortion, says another story, make Christians feel indifferent to curses and feel guilty and worldly for standing against them.

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I detect a pattern, he says. And he's spot on about this, by the way, that pattern does exist. It's like, hey, you're gonna oppose evil, then man, you must be making politics your religion or something.

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You're wrong for doing that. You better go love the gospel and pray for a few more hours. When was the last time you evangelized?

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But if you're rejoicing with a victory that's good for political conservatives, it's like, you know, you're, it's the same kind of treatment.

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Like whether you stand against that kind of evil from the left or you rejoice in like a victory for the right.

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So I see the same pattern Rod Martin's seeing. And then he says, the purpose is to prevent any positive action by believers outside the four walls of the church, like Satan tempting

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Jesus that uses the word against itself. It is Gnostic, it's author is not God. And I'm not exactly sure, maybe

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I'm just dim right now, but I'm not sure what the Gnostic reference is exactly. But it's purpose is to prevent any positive action by believers outside the four walls of the church.

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That is the effect it ultimately has. I think he's right about that. That is the effect it has. It's like, you're afraid to get involved in political things.

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And it's a big problem because you really need Christians involved. But you're afraid because, I mean, I don't wanna like subvert my love for the gospel somehow or replace it with that.

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So a lot of people like this and there's a lot of comments on it. And so this is the point though where I, the video

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I showed you at the beginning starts, you'll start to see why I'm saying there's a connection here that I didn't realize at first glance.

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So then I found this comment that tipped me off. This is the one that I, it made me, all of a sudden a bunch of things came together for me.

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This is Josh Bice, who is the director of the

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G3 Ministries. And he pushed back at this. And he said,

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I completely disagree with your approach to quote booking and quote tweeting John's statement and running down a path that both judges his motives and falsely accuses him of a devious liberal agenda.

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So he's saying this to Rod Martin, that I disagree with you on this. I have been friends with John for years and we have our own disagreements, but I think we lose credibility in the social justice fight in the public sphere when we lose sight of the real dragons.

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And use the sword against those who are actual brothers. Take a shot at Keller if you'd like, but I will respectfully challenge your approach here with pain.

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Go hard and strong. After real enemies, there is much at stake. I hope you win, but the pathway to victory isn't at the expense of good men's character.

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Pain's observations taken at face value is an honest observation that many gospel preachers have raised over the last week. So that was the pushback.

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And I don't think, I don't think I agree with this necessarily. And part of it is,

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I guess, I haven't seen maybe what he's seeing. And maybe you can put in a link in the info section if someone, or the comments, if someone knows about a bunch of people who are saying that this is better than the gospel.

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Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. I haven't seen that, but hey, maybe there's weird stuff out there I don't know about. But if that's true, then maybe that was something pain needed to do.

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Maybe like, I just have my doubts a little bit about that. The thing is that there is a cause to sometimes go after Christians when they're not being clear about the gospel, especially.

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And that was specifically, and this is where I'm gonna get to the video that I showed you in a minute. Specifically, when they are associating closely with false teachers.

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That's an issue because it just creates confusion because you're like, you trust this guy, right? You trust

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Peter, why is he with the Judaizers, right? That kind of dynamic. That's, you confront that person to their face when they do that kind of thing, right?

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And so I just think there is a precedent for critiquing, at times, believers.

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I'm not saying that you should make a habit of it. I'm publicly doing this, but it's a public forum.

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John Payne put it in a public forum. It's being critiqued in a public forum. And I'm not saying

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I even stand by everything Rod Martin said. I was, at first I was even skeptical, like, he's a liberal agenda.

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But then I was like, you know what? The effect of his words, I can totally see what Rod Martin's saying here. The thing though that stood out, this is more important than all of this.

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The thing that stood out to me was, I was like, why is Josh Bice the one defending this?

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I'm like, who is John Payne that Josh Bice is defending him? And then it all clicked for me. I was sent a video a few weeks ago about John Payne.

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And I then immediately, I was like, when I was sent that, I was like, oh, wow. I remembered

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I watched this video of John Payne. And so I'll find it, let's see, and we'll watch it.

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So I posted it. I said, Rod Martin, about the 26 minute mark, I think you'll find John's approach to progressives in the

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PCA interesting. Now, what am I talking about? I'm gonna come back to this thread. Let me show you what

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I'm talking about. Here's John Payne, and he's speaking with the gospel, or he's speaking on PresbyCast, which is a

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PCA, I guess, I think it's a PCA focused podcast. And he's talking about the, well, the

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GRN conference. The, what would that be? Gospel Reformation Network Conference.

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Okay, that's what he's talking about. And this is, just so people know, this is who

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John Payne is. It all came together. Serves at Christ Church Presbyterian in South Carolina.

31:25

He is the executive coordinator of Gospel Reformation Network, trustee at Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and a trustee at the

31:32

Banner of Truth. So I was like, oh, wow. Okay, so he's got some credibility here. As far as like, he's got some institutional clout in the

31:40

PCA, didn't realize that. That's why it made sense for some reason, me seeing Josh Bice talk about it.

31:46

I was like, oh, wow, okay, this was an important guy, I guess. So then

31:51

I remember this video, and I'll play the video, and then I wanna read for you more from this thread and make some comments.

31:59

We seem to be experts on all sorts of things, or at least they've read a book about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.

32:11

It's always interesting to have dialogue with friends from different perspectives around the

32:20

PCA. I've appreciated my different conversations that I've been able to have with Scott Sahls, with Mike Kanjian, with David Cassidy.

32:37

Recently, David and I had a very long email exchange, and I really appreciated that.

32:45

And he responded when I had shared some things with him of concerns that I have, and that folks in our so -called camp have.

32:56

And he responded very graciously and said, I've never really, I forget exactly the way he said it, but it was illuminating to him.

33:07

And he shared that. And I think some of that came out in his article that he wrote, where I didn't agree with everything in his article, but I appreciated his desire to say, hey, we haven't said enough about the things we're concerned about as it concerns side

33:29

B gay Christianity in the denomination. We haven't been, I don't know if he's expressly said anything about social justice issues, but that's one of the concerns we have, is if some of these more radical expressions that are happening in the

33:44

PCA are indeed as concerning to some of our more progressive or moderate leaning brothers, then why aren't they speaking out publicly or writing publicly on them?

33:57

And so I think that would be helpful in terms of the unity of the

34:02

PCA for there to be more expression from both sides about what we see as outside the bounds.

34:10

I mean, let me stop there for a minute and just kind of review what he's talking about. Because if you don't understand side

34:15

B Christianity, this idea that you can be same sex attracted, have like a homosexual orientation and still a faithful Christian.

34:23

And so these are issues that, social justice issues, but that's one of the issues plaguing the

34:29

PCA. And so he talks about this, but listen to some of the words he uses. They're brothers. Scott Sauls is part of that group.

34:36

And I don't really know about the others, but I just thought it was ironic that I'm getting this video and it's related to Bobby Scott, but Scott Sauls is the one speaking.

34:47

And then I watched this again once I saw Josh Bice's comment. And I'm like, well, let me go revisit that thing, that John Payne video that I was sent.

34:55

And I heard Scott Sauls and I was like, oh my goodness, wait a minute. He's calling, he's saying Scott Sauls is a brother.

35:01

He's wanting unity, uses that word. He's appreciating the conversations he's having with those guys.

35:09

I just thought what an interesting posture to have towards Scott Sauls and some of these others that he says are progressives.

35:17

And yet the tweet against people who rejoice about Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, I thought that's really strange.

35:25

Now, let me, I really wanna play this to the 38 -minute mark. Let me just play it a little more if we can get to that 38 -minute mark.

35:32

I encourage you to go watch the whole thing. Go watch this, John Payne on the 2022 GRN Conference and current issues in the

35:38

PCA. You can check it out on YouTube. Let me see if I can just play a little more and then I'll show you some more of that thread.

35:44

I mean, Brad, if there was some crazy TR, you know, rabid, fanged guy, you know, uncharitably going after people and being ridiculous, you know, we would say something.

35:57

We would talk to them. We would tell them to stand down. We would, and we have done. We have done in the past those kinds of things.

36:04

You know, please don't go to the mic at GA. We do not want you to go to the mic. I want you to know

36:10

I didn't hold it against you when you rebuked me in that way. But we do that from time to time because we do love the

36:20

PCA and we don't want unnecessary contention. And the fact is there are guys on the so -called extreme left and on the so -called extreme right that really do love controversy and they live and feed off of it.

36:39

And that's just not the GRN. I don't think that's the best of our brothers in the national partnership.

36:49

But I do think that while, you know, we do contend for what we believe is right for the

36:56

PCA and the future of the PCA, we need to be honest. And that's why I really appreciate when confessional guys and more progressive guys are just honest about what their commitments are.

37:12

Because then we can have a conversation on whether or not it's gonna be possible for us to all stay in the denomination. I can't do the,

37:19

I guess I'm just not wired this way. I don't know if it's my 20 years of soccer or my competitiveness.

37:25

I'm just not wired to just look at a problem and to see such division and say, well, let's just all go ahead and stay together.

37:35

It's gonna be okay. Let's just not worry about these things. These really matter. These are very serious issues that are facing the

37:41

PCA right now. I want you to listen to this because there's a switch in my mind.

37:47

So the first part of this is that we want unity. They're brothers. We've had good conversations.

37:54

And then it switches and he starts saying, these are serious issues in the PCA. These are, this is important.

38:01

The issues that divide us. And so at the beginning, it's like we're having these good conversations and they just need to write more.

38:08

They need to clarify more. It's like, there's kind of like this sense in which he's saying it's unclear kind of where all the disagreements are and we're trying to figure it out.

38:17

We're still in this process of just trying to figure it out and we got to write more. And then he kind of does this transition where, well, it's the radicals on both the right and the left that are, they're feeding off the controversy and almost like there's unity in the middle.

38:30

And then this switch is all that common ground is kind of built. And then boom, we got these serious issues.

38:38

And so listen to what he says about these serious issues. And so we have to be honest with each other about what we believe and embrace.

38:44

That's why I appreciate these RUF guys that have just left for the Anglican church. Man, that's great.

38:51

If you want to be an Anglican, go be an Anglican. If you want to embrace side gay

38:56

Christianity as a kind of legitimate expression of historic biblical

39:03

Christianity, then go to a denomination that does, but don't stay here and cause such disruption.

39:11

That's one thing I tried to say last year at the national conferences. Don't stay in the denomination and seek to unsettle it.

39:20

I believe not been the unsettlers, the GRN, we've sought merely to hold the line as to what the

39:28

PCA has always embraced. For those who aren't picking up on this, you have the Reformation Network, and then you have the

39:35

National Partnership. National Partnership is the more liberal, for lack of a better, see, I'm not the best on PCA politics here, but that's my understanding.

39:44

So he's saying that his group, the Gospel Reformation Network, is the more conservative group.

39:51

And so that will help those who don't understand that. Which is reformed confessional

39:57

Christianity. Yeah, we don't accuse our, air quotes, smile on my face, opponents in the

40:09

PCA of being theological liberals. But we do believe that they may be trying to turn the

40:15

PCA into something that it really can't be, according to its standards. You know, in Machen's day, he made the case that if you're infiltrating an organization and seeking to fundamentally change it, the honorable thing to do is to stop doing that and go elsewhere.

40:37

Not to wreck or change an organization just because it has a certain amount of, you know, power, respectability, property, cache, whatever.

40:51

And I'm not saying that people are, you know, trying to do that, and that they're consciously doing that.

40:58

But that's how we would view those who want to radically transform the PCA. And it all comes down ultimately,

41:08

I think, to the standards. And as people in the PCA may adjust how they view things like revoice and that sort of thing,

41:16

I believe we saw last year, as we turn to talk about this year's conference, I really think the bombshell address from last year was

41:25

David Strain's opening address on confessional subscription.

41:31

And I think that's really what it comes down to. And we can hang out with a diverse crowd.

41:39

We can be nice to each other, but if we don't agree on that, it's going to be difficult. So that's a bedrock issue.

41:47

And tell me what you think about that before we move on to talk about this year's conference.

41:53

Yeah, I mean, David's message was outstanding last year, and it really touched a nerve of the denomination because I think the denomination has grown a soft underbelly as it concerns our confessional commitments.

42:10

And that message, which should not be controversial, that message should not...

42:17

To show where we are right now as a denomination, we see that by the visceral response to David's talk.

42:29

If you take an exception to the confession of faith that we have all agreed is our system of doctrine and our standard in our churches and our denomination, to take an exception to that and to say,

42:43

I want to teach that exception or for presbyteries to be allowed from one presbytery to another, to allow which exceptions will be taught, essentially makes us not a confessional denomination anymore.

42:57

It makes us as confessional as we want to be and not truly confessional.

43:05

Now, some have argued, well, the GRN wants strict subscriptionists.

43:11

Well, all of these ways we talk about confessionalism can be... So for those who aren't

43:17

PCA and are trying to figure this out, what he's saying is that the Westminster standards, the rules that govern the denomination, the theology that the denomination believes must be adhered to.

43:29

And if there's someone who's saying, well, we think that there's a certain exception here, that this particular, this view that we believe that contradicts the standards, we should be able to teach.

43:41

If they're allowed to teach, he's saying, well, that's a problem. And so this is part of... This is why this is such a serious thing because you have people that want to push an understanding and an application...

43:59

Well, not an application. You want people who want to push ideas that are contrary to the standards. And so I'm gonna let him finish.

44:06

There's a few more minutes. And then I need to show you some more of this thread and explain, I think, what's going on here.

44:12

Slippery, right? And they have kind of a spectrum. Like, so when we talk about scruples, we talk about exceptions.

44:24

So the problem is, again, getting back to the kind of reductionism is we talk about, well, if it doesn't strike at the vitals, we use that language, then we should be able to...

44:38

If it's an exception, we should be able to teach it in our presbyteries. Well, what does that mean if it doesn't strike at the vitals?

44:47

Does it strike at the vitals to not believe in election?

44:54

We let people come into our churches and become members and not believe in predestination. I assume your church does that.

45:00

Our church, we don't have a confessional membership. So if someone's struggling with predestination, we allow them to come in and be members and to be under the instruction that teaches that.

45:08

But would we let a teaching elder do that? Does it strike at the vitals to not believe that?

45:14

Well, I would argue that it does. I would argue that it strikes at the vitals to not believe in infant baptism as it concerns confessionalism.

45:26

I would argue these issues of sanctification strike at the vitals. So how latitudinarian are we going to be?

45:37

And I think that's the big tent conversations that's been happening, right, is we've had a large tent, a big tent since the beginning of our denomination.

45:49

No one's disputing that. Some are saying that the GRN wants to make the tent a lot smaller.

45:58

We're making the argument that there are those who want to make the tent a lot bigger. Really, the case is that we want the tent to stay the same and also to constantly grow in their understanding and commitment to reformed confessionalism.

46:18

Where we've been weak in that in the past, we want to strengthen that. I almost think in broadness or latitude, we're in a unique time because we sort of have postmodernism plus -

46:33

One more minute, just hang with me, okay? I know some of you are wondering, why is he showing me all this? Just hang with me.

46:40

Biblicism plus a type of piety. I mean, we saw that in the Lutheran Church, I don't know, it was 18th century, 19th, where pietism sort of took over.

46:50

And one of those three segments of the PCA that Tim Keller sort of taxonomized, if that's a word, were the pietists and the culturalists as opposed to the doctrinalists.

47:04

And there is a kind of piety. I mean, Machen went to Germany and found a high level of piety among those liberals.

47:13

And again, we're not calling anyone a liberal, but we have these forces where postmodernism has had its effect, language, it affects language, and also the idea of self.

47:28

And then a certain kind of pietistic biblicism, if I think I know better than the confession, well, surely the

47:36

Bible's the most important thing, so why not? Why not just go off on my own? But like our friend,

47:43

Scott Clark says, we need to read scripture with the confessions. We need to read with history and with our founders, but also, of course, we do need to read scripture.

47:56

So I think that's a unique place we find ourselves in today. And every time the church has problems, they're never exactly the same.

48:04

They sort of rhyme, but they don't exactly repeat these problems.

48:11

Well, let's talk about this year's conference. Okay, so, and you see that John Payne's kind of nodding along as the host is talking about those things, which is, there's a level of seriousness they inject at the end that's like, oh my goodness, this is a big problem, but there's threats to the

48:30

PCA. There are threats coming in, and so there's so many ways

48:35

I think you could analyze this, but one of them is that, let me see if I can get myself on the screen here for those watching.

48:43

Oh, I just did something. Hold on a minute. I'm coming back. Here we are. All right, so one of those is that when we're speaking about people concretely, concretely, actual people, the language is very much, it's soft.

49:04

There's an olive branch being extended. These are brothers. These are people that we're having conversations with.

49:10

We're trying to figure out kind of what the differences are. We're on a quest here together, and then when it comes to doctrinal issues, and it's kind of vague, but you heard him mention, as an example, but I think he was giving, like these are just four instances, but he was giving examples like election, and paedo -baptism, and sanctification issues, but the concrete example he gave that was in a discussion that was a current threat to the

49:42

PCA is the Side B Christianity stuff, and he said, well, if you want that, you should probably just go start your own denomination, and he's talking about how important these issues are.

49:52

So I just thought it was super interesting to me to look at this, and to see someone make that, it almost felt like a switch to me, and it was also so different than this tweet that was just going full bore after people who would rejoice over Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, and so this is how things kind of, what happened after that.

50:21

So I said, Rod Martin, around the 26 -minute mark, I think you'll find John's approach to progressives in the PCA interesting.

50:26

That's what I said, it was interesting, and I'm telling you now why it was interesting to me, because Rod Martin says, hey, this guy's promoting this stuff, and I'm like,

50:34

I find it interesting, because look how soft he is towards these guys in the

50:39

PCA, like Scott Sauls, who you just saw a video of, who I'm gonna just say, that's false teaching, and that's like, he just went off on false teaching for minutes, that wasn't like a little, oh, man,

50:49

I made a little comment, and no, he kept going, and doubled down in what he was saying.

50:59

So someone like a Scott Sauls is like, he's a brother, and we're just trying to understand it, we appreciate each other, but then if you rejoice over Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, it's like, you better not love that more than the gospel, it's like, whoa.

51:16

So that's why I thought it was interesting, I'm like, that's the same guy who was like,

51:21

I thought being so soft on some of the progressives in the PCA. So, and then,

51:27

Nicholas Leone posted this, I'm not gonna get into this, I didn't really read the whole article,

51:32

I just, I saw the picture, and just, it was, I guess, someone who was critical of John Payne for the fellowship that he has with the progressives in the

51:43

PCA. And then Josh Bice said, he listened to the clip

51:50

I just shared with you, and he said, I hear a man laboring for clarity on all sides in order to see if the churches of the

51:55

PCA can go forward together. His call for clarity is a means by which a full and clear conversation within the denomination can take place.

52:04

Sounds like what the Conservative Baptist Network is laboring for within the SBC. So I said,

52:09

I see that too, but that's not the interesting thing to me. On the one hand, there's the present threat of expanding the tent beyond the confession, a serious charge.

52:17

That is a serious charge. John Payne made a serious charge. There's people trying to expand the tent beyond the confession.

52:23

On the other hand, there's camaraderie and seeming uncertainty of where the disagreements exactly lie without further clarification.

52:29

It's a tension that seems to exist among the more conservative institutional leaders every time a denomination liberalizes.

52:36

I have no doubt John is a great guy on the opposite side of Keller et al, as are the folks in CBN.

52:41

So I stand by that. And then Josh Bice, I'll just read it.

52:48

He says, I understand the tension in this ideological war around us. However, even during war, there's an appropriate way to go on the offense.

52:54

Since the Bible is sufficient, we should do well to yield to the text that encourages us to be slow to speak. I see people accusing

53:00

Payne of sin and even categories of heresy, but not much Bible is being referenced. And maybe he's right about that. I haven't read all these comments, but if someone's saying that,

53:08

I don't know, he's a heretic or false teacher or something, then that's totally out of bounds just because of that. But I would say if you have someone like Scott Sauls, who is preaching a false gospel, and then the reaction is, well, you know, we're trying to figure it out and he's a brother and we appreciate one another.

53:29

That's, I think you have your Peter moment to go to that person and be like, hey, you're not being clear here by, you need to condemn this.

53:38

If you're a leader in this organization, yeah, condemn this. And so I was thinking too, like James 1, 19, everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God, verse 20, right?

53:56

And the whole, what I think James is getting at is an angry speech.

54:02

You know, you shouldn't, it's all within the context of living holy.

54:08

And so it's, don't be angry. And maybe that's what Josh Bice is trying to say. There's angry people going after John Payne unfairly, and that's possible.

54:17

I don't, I'm not defending them. But here's the thing. I think in this, if you're, if it's

54:25

John Payne, right? And if my reading of this is a different reading of what

54:30

Josh Bice is trying to say, because I'm not exactly clear what he's saying. If maybe what he's saying is that Josh, and even if Josh Bice isn't saying this, let me just, for an example here.

54:42

If John Payne is trying to be quick to listen and slow to speak, and that's what's happening, we just need to keep gathering information to find out what this threat is.

54:52

Even though he knows there's this threat, it's a serious threat, he can sort of identify it. But when it comes to the people that would be promoting the threat, it's like, you know, we just gotta keep gathering information.

55:02

To me, I immediately thought, well, this is the issue. I think in the PCA, in the

55:07

SBC, and you could fill in the blank, with navigators, not navigators, crew, it's the same thing

55:14

I've seen from conservatives in all these organizations. Every time, there is this period of time, there's a window they have to set the organization right,

55:23

I believe. And that window, it comes and it goes. Because churches start leaving, staff members start leaving, because they realize they can't put up with the false gospel.

55:33

They can't put up with the false doctrine. But the conservatives are still on a fact -finding mission, trying to figure out, is there a disagreement?

55:40

And then it's, where is the disagreement? And then, who's promoting the disagreement? And then you've got guys like myself, and A .D.

55:47

Robles, and you've got Protestia, and you've got, and the list goes on. Sometimes people, you know, Alan Atchinson, sometimes people call those blogs and stuff, discernment blogs, but the list goes on of all these other people, some of them laymen, that have come in to do this job that the denominational leaders aren't doing, or the organizational leaders won't do.

56:07

They wanna try to generally keep things in house. I'm not saying in every case, but in general, they wanna keep things in house.

56:13

They want to exercise such extreme caution and such charitable readings. They're not accurate readings anymore.

56:20

There's charitable readings that you're calling all these false teachers brothers, and you're allowing this stuff to come into the denomination unchecked, and they're just taking advantage of it, and they're pushing hard, and they're accusing you of stuff, and they're pushing you out, and meanwhile, it's not let's get out our sword and fight.

56:40

It's, well, you know, maybe we're on the same side, and we just, we haven't seen eye to eye, and we can convince them, or we can, and so verses that come to my mind would be like,

56:55

I'm thinking of like, be ready to give an answer to all those who ask for the hope that lies within you.

57:03

That's like the, that's the kind of thing I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of like a 1 Peter 3 15 response to this, or better yet, some of the verses that talk about false teachers, like Romans 16, says this, verse 17,

57:14

I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles that create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught.

57:22

Avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive.

57:32

What does he, what does Paul say? Watch out for them who cause those kinds of divisions, because they deceive hearts.

57:39

Well, that means you're talking, because they're deceiving hearts. You're not just watching out, you're saying something. You're seeing something, you're saying something.

57:46

You're sounding the alarm bell. So it's this idea that you, well, you just gotta keep kind of, and I'm not saying

57:52

Josh Bice necessarily advocates this, but I, it just clicked in my mind, because the idea that a lot of conservatives are doing this, where they take so long, it takes months and years, when there's false teaching in front of you, it's just not condemned, because man, that's a good brother.

58:07

We don't really wanna go after that. We want to be careful, and it just ends up it being a completely losing strategy.

58:17

So I'm gonna take you to the end of this, which is where I interact directly with John Payne about this stuff, and I'll pull it up here.

58:28

And so if I can find it with all these comments, man, there's so many comments.

58:36

Let's see. Okay, here it is. John Payne, he says, there's one comment on this thread, said that what

58:44

Elon Musk did last week was more gospel than what most churches do in a year. It was pointed, strategic, impactful, powerful, fair, just, costly, loving, smart, brave, sacrificing, et cetera, and it took zero committees.

58:55

I think that's a joke, but John Payne is taking it seriously and he says another comment on this thread, and maybe

59:00

I'm wrong. Maybe that was not, you know, the zero committees, I thought meant it was a joke. What Payne said was a false dichotomy.

59:07

I literally know zero Christians that confuse Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter with the gospel. Who would do that? Is this a clear enough example of the temptation to misunderstand the true gospel, he asks.

59:17

My pastoral impulse is to encourage God's people, including me, to not have a misplaced confidence in a misunderstanding of the true gospel.

59:24

The mischaracterization and uncharitable assumptions communicated in this and other tweet slash

59:29

Facebook threads are extraordinary. Many thanks to Josh Bice for his lucid and gracious response on this thread.

59:37

So John Payne thanking his friend, Josh Bice for defending him. So I responded is what

59:43

I said. I for one do appreciate your concern for protecting the gospel. And I'm serious, I do. Some Christians I'm sure are putting too much hope in Musks.

59:51

I think that some are concerned with, myself included, are things like this.

59:57

And I posted the video that you saw at the beginning here, Scott Saul's basically being a heretic.

01:00:03

And then I said, your posture towards Scott Saul seems to be friendship, appreciation, and a desire for unity.

01:00:10

Yet you're very concerned about Christians who are too excited that Elon Musk is returning a sense of freedom to Twitter.

01:00:16

Perhaps I'm missing something. My desire is to help clarify and encourage as iron sharpens iron. John Payne says, a response to me,

01:00:23

Scott and I are in very different places, opposite ends of the PCA. We sharply disagree on many things, but we still talk and I want to understand and challenge his views.

01:00:32

He wants to understand and challenge my views too. It's what we do, though not always well.

01:00:40

And when I read that, and it's hard for people, I think, who think in terms of personalities.

01:00:47

I'm trying to think in terms of just truth, objectivity, try to get the personalities out of the way.

01:00:53

When I saw that, I can recognize John Payne is probably a really nice guy.

01:00:59

John Payne is probably someone I would love to go to church and worship at his church, I'm sure. In fact, I'll be in Charleston in July and I would love to go to John Payne's church.

01:01:08

I mean, I would, the thing is, I have no personal issue with him or anything. But when

01:01:13

I read that, immediately I realized that this kind of thing, this kind of posture and this kind of approach to a false teacher is not going to work.

01:01:33

And the disagreement might be that John Payne doesn't think he's a false teacher, he called him brother. That might be it.

01:01:40

The disagreement might be that maybe we are supposed to treat false teachers differently.

01:01:47

And I have, I think the scripture teaches us to be more aggressive towards false teachers and that might be the disagreement too,

01:01:54

I'm not sure. But either way, this approach is not going to work in the PCA. And it concerns me that,

01:02:03

I think this is the thing that frustrates regular ordinary working class Christians is who are just grateful they can tweet out again without having the same threats of getting suspended is something like this tweet is punching right, punching right hard.

01:02:22

And it's so easy to do that. It's so, you can do that so freely. There's no, there's hardly any risk associated with this institutionally to punch right.

01:02:32

But if you punch left, sometimes there can be, you gotta make a lot of qualifications, you gotta be very careful, you gotta reinforce that the people promoting the false teaching are good friends that you wanna have camaraderie with.

01:02:48

That's I think what's playing out in this. And so I think if I could articulate the frustration that people have and why people did react to that, it's because they've been, in their minds, they've been browbeaten for years by organizations like TGC, where anything they wanna rejoice in, any little glimmer of hope that they have, it's like, well, it's bad actually.

01:03:11

It's like, or it's, you can't temper that a bit son, you know, and don't stand too much against evil.

01:03:18

And they've been, there's been a diet of this. And so I think there's just like, it's boiling over now.

01:03:23

They're just so upset and disappointed in their Christian leaders in denominations and organizations and pastors sometimes that they just don't know what to do with themselves.

01:03:34

I think I'm channeling that right, that energy. I think I'm representing that right just because I've talked to so many people that have these similar stories and they really desperately want, they wanna see so bad someone who's in a position like John Paines to go out there and just start calling a spade a spade.

01:03:54

They just wanna hear him say something like, we've got a false teacher problem in the PCA. They don't wanna hear someone trying to trip over themselves saying they're not liberals and they're brothers.

01:04:04

They want someone to say, this is why things feel so different to you. This is why your lives have changed because there's false teaching coming in.

01:04:12

This is why it's not the regular ordinary old church like it used to be in so many of your churches because we have false teaching coming in.

01:04:20

And let me tell you, Scott Sauls is one of those false teachers. And let me tell you another one, it's Tim Keller and let me, that's what they wanna hear.

01:04:28

And because they know that that's the truth. They know inside that there's something wrong on a fundamental level.

01:04:34

And anyone who tries to downplay it or temper it or can't identify where it's coming from, they know that there's something awry with that.

01:04:42

And that's how they're taking this. Whether this is true or not of John Paine, that's how it's being taken. And I would just encourage someone like a

01:04:52

John Paine, even a Josh Bice. And I don't see everything these guys do. This is the thing. Like I'm, it's not like I'm watching every single thing they put out or something.

01:05:00

I'm sure that they, these guys have probably named the names of false teachers at some point in some way.

01:05:07

I would just, my encouragement is in general, there's not a lot of that going on. We need more of that.

01:05:13

We need more identification of, I mean, that's what scripture calls us to do. Identify those who cause those divisions.

01:05:21

Those who cause the divisions are the ones bringing the false teaching. They're not, and there's a division. You can't deny there's a division. So what's the problem?

01:05:27

Why is there a division? Is it this nameless, faceless? No, it's actually there's false teaching.

01:05:33

There's, and there's false teachers. It's not disembodied error. It's error coming in from people that are subversive who are bringing it in.

01:05:40

Let's identify them. Let's mark them. Let's say what we need to say about them to warn others because we love others.

01:05:50

We love the people in our congregations and our denominations and organizations. That's what people are craving so bad.

01:05:57

They want, and that's what shepherds do. They want a shepherd who's gonna, you know, has that staff and isn't afraid to go whack a wolf with that staff.

01:06:06

Isn't just thinking like, well, I want to make sure the wolves, you know, or they don't know how to identify a wolf.

01:06:12

That's the other thing. It's like, that's, that wolf in a sheep costume, I'm gonna treat that like a sheep.

01:06:19

They want someone who can identify the wolves. And then once the wolves are identified, someone who will whack those wolves, drive them away from the shepherd.

01:06:27

The shepherd's getting ravaged right now. So ravaged. And it's a grievous thing to me.

01:06:33

And that's, honestly, that's the thing that keeps me doing this kind of thing and making videos. Because frankly, if I didn't call out someone like on this platform, if I didn't call out

01:06:43

Scott Sauls, you have the Dear Woke Christian, you know, I'm grateful that that particular channel did call out him, did call him out.

01:06:52

But if I didn't do it, if you didn't have Dear Woke Christian, if you didn't have AD Robles, if you didn't have some of these other smaller platforms of people that generally aren't even pastors a lot of the time, they're just, they're picking, they're providing a service that is being neglected because pastors should be doing this, but they're providing a neglected service.

01:07:12

If those guys weren't doing it, then I don't think that there would be, that path wouldn't be cleared for conservatives in these organizations to do much of anything.

01:07:21

They wouldn't, that, and it's a dirty work, it's thankless work oftentimes. It's hard, and I'm not trying to play the world's smallest violin.

01:07:31

I'm thinking of others who I know who have been in real tough spots, who have been attacked in ways that I haven't, that risk themselves to go identify these false teachers, and it took a toll on them and their family and their ministry in some cases, and they would do it over because they know that it will be ignored, and so I think people are looking for shepherds with guts who are willing to say what needs to be said, that will care about the sheep, not about positioning, not about, who cares about that?

01:08:04

Who cares? Honestly, who cares about the nominations at the end of the day? Who cares? And I'm not saying you shouldn't care about your domination, I'm just saying ultimately speaking, if the denomination's gonna go in a bad direction, that's not the kingdom of God, and if it's gonna go, it's gonna go, and we just, we need to steward our resources and what we have in the best way possible, and we don't wanna compromise truth to save the denomination or the institution or the seminary.

01:08:27

That's the issue. We don't just try to protect the institution, destroy that guy who's pointing out the actual flaws that are here.

01:08:35

We don't, anyway, I'm going on my own tangent here, because I think there's a righteous indignation I have that we don't have more of that, and it's so sad to me.

01:08:44

So I'll end this with this. So I texted some Presbyterian friends of mine, one of whom told me to follow

01:08:50

John Payne, and maybe even set up an interview with him a few months ago, it was last fall,

01:08:56

I guess, and so, hey, you need to follow John Payne. Like, this is the guy, this is the conservative guy who's on leading the charge against the left and the false teachers, and so I texted them about this, and basically,

01:09:14

I'm just gonna tell you straight up, both of them, I thought, because I was just like, I'm missing something, what's going on?

01:09:20

And both of them were just like, yeah. To tell you the truth, John, we don't expect that there's gonna be great things.

01:09:26

In fact, one of them said it's inevitable, the denomination's gonna split. There's just no way to avoid it.

01:09:31

This is someone last year who was telling me that he thought it was recoverable. I was pretty surprised by the changing of tunes there, and there's, and that's what's going on.

01:09:45

So either some guy's gotta grow some spines real quick and really go after this stuff hard, go full

01:09:51

Jay Gresham -Machin on him, or it may be an

01:09:57

SBC type situation. I hate to say that, and I'm not as well -versed on the Presbyterian issues, but if this is the best that the conservatives have as far as fighting this,

01:10:08

I don't foresee good things myself. And this isn't meant to be like an unfair criticism of John Payne or anything like that.

01:10:20

Maybe he's a guy that just, he's ill -suited for where he's at, and he needs to be in a different spot or something, but there needs to be people in the

01:10:26

SBC and PCA that will go do the aggressive things at the institutional level.

01:10:32

It can't just be war horn media and folks like that. It can't be, and I've read like maybe two of their articles, but they seem to be more aggressive.

01:10:42

It can't just be people without that kind of clout. It's gotta be people that have that authority to do something, so.

01:10:49

All right, I've taken way too long on this. I hope that was helpful for folks. God bless, and we'll see if there's any more developments on this, but I hope that, hope it was encouraging to at least,

01:11:00

I know it's discouraging in some ways, but I hope it's encouraging for you to at least recognize, if you're in the

01:11:07

PCA especially, the kind of leadership, maybe, look for the leaders that are going to say those things.

01:11:14

And maybe there are some that I'm not aware of. I don't know. Maybe that's the person you need to be, and God's calling you to that.