Abortion, Racism and Culture with Virgil Walker

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Welcome to The Wrap Report with Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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All right, get ready for a very, very quick hour today. The fellowship that I share with Brother Virgil Walker from Just Thinking is always sweet.

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We're going to be talking some stuff in a bit, but I'm going to tell you some things we want to talk about. We're going to be talking today about things like abortion and abortion ministry, which he's involved in.

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We're going to talk about, well, we're going to talk about Virginia. Have you guys noticed what's been going on in Virginia, New York?

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Let me tell you a little secret. A lot of folks have been very aware of what happened in New York. In New York, recently, there was a case where New York decided that they were going to push abortion to allow it to every stage of pregnancy.

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That got so much news. You know something that didn't get any news that same day that got legalized in New York?

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That in New York, they now have made it illegal to try to convert any child that believes in homosexuality.

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In other words, if you dare read a Bible verse to a child who believes that he might be homosexual or she might be homosexual, you could be breaking the law.

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That's where it's going. We're going to be getting to a point where reading the Bible will become illegal, or at least reading certain passages of the

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Bible. What you end up seeing in Virginia, though, Virginia had a governor who just wasn't strong enough on the issue of abortion.

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Even though they were taking a strong stance, he wasn't strong enough. And so they wanted to get him out and replace him with the lieutenant governor who is more intersectional and they would have been a better person for liberal

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Democrats to have. And what happened? Well, he had more dirt on him. We're going to talk about this because there is an interesting thing going on in our country that we have to realize.

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This is not something for Christians that we can just ignore. This is not something that we can think is something that will not affect the

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Christian because politically, we see people getting into office and they're getting into office on an anti -Christian position.

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And just remember, folks, what someone gets in power with, they stay in power with. We have politicians that are getting into office on this radical pro -abortion, pro -murder stance on a pro -anything -against -Christianity stance.

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Guess what? They have to keep that going or they lose their power base. So this is the thing

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I want you guys to realize. This is not something that we can sit there and say, well, you know, there's some

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Christians dealing with that, but the other Christians want to just get along with the world and not have to deal with, oh, you know,

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I might lose my job if I say something or I may lose my friends if I say something.

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The reality is that they're coming after us. We have a government that will be coming after Christians. I firmly believe that.

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History repeats itself. This is nothing new. We've seen this in other times and this is going to be what's going to happen with the

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Christians. This won't be the Jews this time, folks. It's going to be us. So we have to be prepared. And one of the things

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I'm going to tell you on how to be prepared is a conference that's going to be coming up in March.

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Let me play a commercial for that. I'm going to tell you after the commercial why that might help prepare you. So many Christians struggle with suffering and yet they do it alone because most of us are too ashamed to let others know that we're struggling.

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We struggle alone because we think that there's something wrong. As Christians, we shouldn't be struggling at all.

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We should just have the answers. And yet that's not the case. There's many of us who struggles, whether it be within our marriage, whether it be with our children, whether it be with physical ailments.

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I want to let you know of a conference coming to Freehold, New Jersey, to help with this.

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It is called the Sanctification Through Suffering Conference. It is going to be held at Chinese American Bible Church in Freehold, New Jersey.

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You can get all the information and the speakers. The speakers will be Justin Peters, who if you know him, you know he struggles physically.

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Frank Mullis, Colleen Sharp, and Joe Suazo. And we will have this conference.

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You can get all the details and register at strivingforeternity .org slash conference -on -suffering.

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Get all the details and I hope to see you there. And so what's different with that conference is Pastor Mullis has added a topic he's going to be doing that isn't on the website yet, but he's going to be doing a topic on basically dealing with the suffering of persecution, basically how to prepare for things like that.

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So looking forward to that. Many people do struggle with different issues and we're going to be trying to help people in that.

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So I want to welcome to the show here early on. I usually don't want to do a much shorter monologue because I really think that we're going to have a lot of good interaction between Brother Virgil and I.

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So for folks who don't know, he is from the Just Thinking podcast, which was named the 2018 podcast of the year.

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And they actually had not one, but two episodes that got named in the top podcast episodes.

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So this is one of the half of the award winning team over at Just Thinking.

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So Virgil, welcome. Bro, that's quite an intro and quite a quite a welcome, man.

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It's an honor to be with you and to have a chance to talk with you live on your show.

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I know we've been trying to do this for quite a while, man. Kind of back and forth. I kind of began to look back into some notes.

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We've been trying to make this happen for almost a year, almost a year. Just back and forth from the previous

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G3 kind of inbox back and forth. It's a pleasure to be with you. High honor to get the award.

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And Daryl and I, and, you know, we're really excited to talk with him a bit about it.

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And we're excited. I'm honored to be a part of his team and to to be with Just Thinking and to hang out with with the folks from the

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Bar podcast networks. So it's all love, man. And absolutely honored to be here with you.

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So glad we're finally doing this. Don't tell Dwayne this, but I actually think he's a great guy.

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Don't don't let him know that, you know, we don't want him to get a big head. But he the guys at the bar are just great.

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And Dwayne's Dwayne's he is he is such a great guy. Yeah, yeah.

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But you and Daryl just knock it out of the park like every episode. Oh, brother, it's it it takes a lot to prepare to just to hang with Daryl.

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And he definitely does the heavy lifting. And but, man, I enjoy kind of getting in there and sparring with them and talking about different topics and subjects that he's interested in and that we we walk through.

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And again, the whole show is based upon the blog that he writes, Just Thinking for myself.

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And, you know, when I met him, I actually met him. Dwayne actually hooked us up, met

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Daryl. I heard a an interview that Dwayne did with Daryl. And as I listened to it, this was one of the first times

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I've ever listened to to Dwayne do an interview where there were so many more questions that I wanted to ask from a standpoint of just being interested in the guy.

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And so Dwayne kind of let me do a do a round, too. So I got with with Daryl and we got to talking and just kind of the chemistry was really there.

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We had a really free flow. Dwayne had always said, hey, you guys kind of think alike. You kind of wired the same.

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This is a this is you know, this might be a good thing. So my my initial connection with Daryl was just to simply tell him, hey,

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I thought that he was, you know, the writing that he did and kind of the way he thought he should he should have a podcast.

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And if there was anything that I could do to to be a help to that, that I would be happy to do that.

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So that's really kind of kind of the whole story behind how how we hooked up. But but I definitely intended to play kind of Robin to his

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Batman and he's he's he's doing some great work. It's a joy to be be connected with him.

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So well, actually, no one who listens to the podcast actually knows who you are because you're just referred to as Omaha. Right, right.

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Right. And that that was what was funny was when we were at G3, I remember standing in a line about to get some coffee and I ordered coffee in the morning.

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Someone recognized my voice, didn't know my face, but recognized my voice and said, you're

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Omaha. Yeah, my name's Virgil. But yeah, I go by Omaha now.

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It was all good. Well, the thing I love about the show is Darrell's not up on times because this is the sound we always hear.

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Right. OK, you don't hear that on my show because I use Logos, but. Me too, me too.

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Like, I've either got that or my, you know, my iPad and I'm kind of clicking through and there's like, no, no, we're going to turn pages on this show.

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We're going to turn pages on this show. Well, now that he's a dean, he's going to have to get up on the Logos and stuff.

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Just saying. Absolutely. Absolutely.

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So folks, if you don't listen to Just Thinking, you don't know what you're missing. I'm just telling you that right now.

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You want to go make sure you subscribe to that. But I do want to talk to you, Virgil, about some stuff that you do.

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You have some ministry you do. You're a pastor. So let's first talk about that. And then I want to talk about the abortion ministry that you do.

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Just for folks who may not know who you are, who don't listen to Just Thinking, can you give us a quick update on who you are?

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Yeah, yeah. Virgil Walker. And I serve as a discipleship pastor, assistant associate pastor here in Omaha at Westside Church.

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Love what I get to do on a daily basis. Just helping people grow in their walk with Christ, being disciples of him.

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I am the husband of Tameka Walker. We've been married, gosh, 23 years, 24 years.

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I better get that right because she's going to hear this and be like, you said what? My oldest daughter,

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Princess, is 20 years old. My son, Princeton, is 16, about to be 17.

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And then my youngest son, Price, is 14. And so we enjoy life here in Omaha and quite a bit of a background from military to crazy charismania days to where we are now at a

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Southern Baptist church. And folks, you can see that he's a preacher just in the way he's named his children. They're all literated.

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They all start with the letter P. Letter P, absolutely. He's obviously a good Baptist preacher.

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Absolutely, absolutely. I try to do my best. I try to do my best. A good Baptist preacher, three points, literated with a conclusion.

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So you've got three children. They're all literate. You got it. Yep, I got it. We're good to go. And you do a lot with abortion ministry, something that I've gotten involved with as well.

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But you are very active in that. So I want to talk about that. Why do you go out to abortion clinics?

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What do you do? So for folks who aren't familiar with abortion ministry, but what do you do and why do you do it? Yeah, well, it was a while back.

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I got connected, really, I'll be honest with you, through watching video on YouTube.

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Man, the Lord used that videos to prick my heart about the issue, began to do my own research about the issue and just began to realize, man, that here's an opportunity for us to be salt and light in an incredibly dark place.

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So kind of just out of that kind of compassion, God stir in my heart,

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I just began showing up at our local Planned Parenthood. I wanted to just be out there. There's not a textbook for how to go about this or what to do.

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So I spent a lot of time watching guys whom I respect do that kind of ministry, began building that here.

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Myself, I would take my young daughter out at the time and we would just go and try to be again, salt and light, sharing the message of the gospel in the hopes to see souls saved, to see folks come to Christ.

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Our goal was to take the gospel and bring it into conflict on the issue of abortion.

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And so that was our focus. We did that. I mean, I've been doing that now for six, seven years, somewhere in there.

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Well, okay. Well, now at least you're a little bit safe that you weren't exactly sure the date for your wife. We see it as a trend.

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It's a trend. Hey, baby, I can't remember dates. Good save.

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Good looking out. Good looking out on that one. Good looking out. But no, we've been at it for a bit.

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I think early on when I first started, Andrew, we were out every Saturday, every opportunity that we could be.

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The largest, most active abortion clinic in our area is one with late -term abortionists that are here, that are involved.

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And so we began to kind of go out in that space and really kind of see a lot of activity.

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Leroy Carhart is the late -term abortionist's name. He not only offices here.

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He had one out in Maryland where he could do late -term abortion.

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And so Germantown, Maryland was where he would go to do his late -term abortion work. So I stayed involved in that.

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I would love to say that, man, I'm there every week. That's not the case. I try now just based upon my ministry responsibilities and other things to at least be out once a month.

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So I try to get out once a month, either at one of the abortion clinics or a focused time of just prayer if I can't be out there that month or something along those lines.

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But I'm there heavily involved and wanting to make sure that others who have the heart that I do about the issue know that I'm a guy who'd be happy to take them into that space and help them walk that out.

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And not that I want to get into this too much, but you and I both have been kind of involved with some groups that are very much trying to put an end to abortion, but they really distract from the church.

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They pull people out of church. Do you see problems with people who are really making an idol almost of this one issue?

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Yeah, I do. You see it. You see kind of some of these guys who've done kind of what

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I did. They saw something on YouTube. Maybe they saw a video on YouTube. They get hyped up.

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And what their thought is is that they can be a YouTube video star. And so they get all the equipment.

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They get the GoPro. They get all of the stuff. And in an effort to be kind of shock and awe, they show up at these abortion clinics and just wreck havoc, whether it's an individual who maybe has an aberrant theological idea about things or it's someone who's connected to a particular group that maybe has heightened the issue of abortion and elevated it to central to the gospel and have made an idol out of it.

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So whether they're trying to be a YouTube star or the issue of abortion is indeed the gospel, you see that out there.

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In addition, you also see folks who do love God and who do understand that what we're out there to do is to really be a reflection of loving

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God and loving neighbor as ourselves. And so we're at a place where we're trying to bring the light of the gospel into conflict with what's happening and to be a rescuer rather than a warrior in those spaces and places.

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And so that's kind of the thought process that you definitely need to walk into that with. Yeah, I mean, the goal that I have when

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I go out there is really to address the issue of salvation. I mean, it's the gospel that's going to be the solution to this problem.

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That mother who is going to kill her child, she needs the gospel.

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We want to see a life saved physically as well, but it's the soul that needs to get saved.

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And I'm out there with, you'll see the Roman Catholics out there and they're just doing the rosary.

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They need the gospel too. Yes, they do. They get very upset when you share it with them because like, oh, we're on the same side.

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No, no, we're not. No, we're not on the same side because you have a workspace salvation and not a grace based salvation.

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So they get upset when you share the gospel with them, but they need it. It is a thing where we're not all on the same side.

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And even when you have people that come out to do the abortion work, there are people who

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I think do need to, we have to be careful of because even though they may seem like they're like -minded, they really do distract.

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You know, there's groups that go and focus, as you mentioned, make abortion ministry the gospel.

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And, you know, ending abortion is an important thing for Christians to do, not because we want to be against the culture.

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It's because this is about saving a person's life. We're against all murder. It doesn't matter the age of the person being murdered.

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We're against all murder. I tweeted out this week, son, I saw that was just,

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I thought really pictures how this culture has changed because the same leftists, it's a picture of the leftists in the sixties.

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And it says the people who once called our soldiers, baby killers. And then it has a second picture of the marches today for abortion, keep abortion legal says, and it says now march for the right to kill babies.

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And it's the same leftists that were calling soldiers, baby killers, and now they want the right to kill babies.

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It's become an idol, right? Andrew, I'm curious for you, man, being in the spaces and places where you are, with regard to this particular issue,

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I'm wondering, what do you see in those spaces? Are you running into folks who kind of have the same thought process, where they're elevating the message of abortion above the gospel?

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And actually, how are you handling that? How do you navigate that? Well, okay. So I do know there's a big group that they do, they have told me that if you are not going to abortion clinics, they question your salvation.

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They will go outside of churches and protest the churches and LL say, if you're not going out there,

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I don't see you at the clinic. Why? If you're not at the clinic, your church isn't doing enough. You're not really a church.

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And so they've made it about that. You take a look, first Corinthians chapter 12, we all have different gifts.

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We are not to all be the eye or the ear or the nose. If we're all the eye, where would the hearing be?

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That's Paul's argument. God gifts every one of us in the church differently so that all of us in the church can serve the church.

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So there's going to be some people who are very passionate about trying to go out to abortion clinics to save children's lives, to convert mothers, convert nurses, convert abortionists.

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There's going to be others who are very concerned about human trafficking. That's a big issue.

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I mean, that's a huge issue because that one, I'm sorry, you know why human trafficking is not getting the attention politically?

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Because all those politicians are partaking it. If they go and they speak out against human trafficking, could you picture

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Bill Clinton speaking against human trafficking? And then you have that woman who had been kidnapped and was on that island where she was a sex slave and Bill Clinton would visit her often.

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There's a clear reason why. But everybody should be, this is the hard thing.

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And I think a lot of people don't understand this. This is the hard thing for a pastor. When I was pastoring a church, I had people who had different ministries they thought should be the central focus for the whole church.

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Right, Andrew. Right, right, right. We should be involved in prison ministry. Someone else, we should be doing evangelism, like everybody should be doing evangelism.

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Someone else being, well, everybody should be being taught creation science. And the pastor has to deal with all these people that have whatever their ministry, their parachurch ministry that they've really gotten tied up with, and they want the whole church backing it.

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And the pastor tries to mediate these things. You need all of it. We do need people who have a heart for going into prisons and reaching these prisoners and sharing the gospel with them and trying to share the gospel with their families.

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That's needed, but not everyone's going to do that and not everyone has that passion. Just like not everyone's going to have the giftedness to be a teacher or an administrator or have mercy or have exhortation or have service or generosity.

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All of these gifts, we have them. Here's an interesting thing with the gifts. When you go through that passage in Romans and that passage, 12, you look at exhortation.

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We are commanded to exhort, but some of us are gifted for it. Teaching, we're all commanded to teach, but some of us are gifted for it.

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We're all commanded to show mercy, but some of us are gifted for it. So when you look at those gifts, we're all commanded to do them, but some of us have a gifting, so it's going to come more natural.

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I think the same thing goes on with these different ministries. I think that some of what we've seen is that people have tied into parachurch ministries and support them more than their local church.

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So instead of seeing the church as the arm for discipling and training and Christian life, what we see is people that are going, well,

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I'll mention ministries and I'm nothing wrong with them, but some people, it's like Ancestors and Genesis, great ministry, but not everyone's going to be promoting that ministry because not everyone's going to want to talk about creation science.

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Way of the Master, great ministry, but I've seen so many guys that come into a church and it's like, you have to do open air preaching and you have to do

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Way of the Master, and if not, you're soft on evangelism. Absolutely. And we see the same thing with guys that do abortion ministry.

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If you're not doing this, if you're not at the abortion clinics every week, you're soft on abortion. That's one of the things that I try to do with regard to creating a balance, and that is recognize that the role of a pastor is definitely to equipping the saints for the work of ministry, for the purpose of building up the body of Christ until we attain the fullness, the unity of the faith.

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And when I think about the reality of that, my goal is not to tell everyone what quote unquote ministry that they need to be involved in.

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It's to equip them with the knowledge of the gospel, with information, with exhortation, right, that they're equipped based upon the word of God so that they can go out and do whatever work

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God has called them to. I want to provide a platform so that they know, hey, if you're interested in doing something, you're welcome to do it.

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But what I do, because you had asked earlier, you know, kind of how and why I got into it. I got into it out of just sheer compassion for the issue.

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And I believe God kind of pricked my heart to walk into that space. And so that's kind of what

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I do. I don't consider it a part of the role that I have at the church. I consider it what

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I do as a believer in God who God has motivated me, has pricked my heart to want to go and do that kind of thing.

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I don't think it's necessarily for everyone. One of the things that I realized in the role that I have is that it's important to recognize the whole role that we have is to equip the saints.

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The role as a pastor is to equip the saints for works of ministry. And that's something I think gets lost when you have a zealous parishioner, a zealous person coming in and believing that the whole focus of the church should be attached to some parish church ministry or some ministry that they've deemed important enough for us all to be engaged in.

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You see this often. I think the problem for the most part is we have kind of a warped ecclesiology.

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We don't really have a real good idea, categories for the role and function of the church, of pastors, teachers, preachers who are to equip the saints for those kinds of works.

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So rather than believing that the whole church body is to be engaged in the one ministry that you've gotten excited about,

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I think it's important to recognize, man, you need to be excited about that. God has definitely placed that as a burden on your heart, and you need to come to the church for the purpose of being equipped to go engage in that ministry.

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And so that's kind of what I do. Not only do I do things with the abortion clinic, but I'm also involved in jail ministry.

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I do some street evangelism and the like. And so I post that stuff in social media for the purpose of letting others know that I'm attached to it.

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So if you want to go do something like that, let's go do it. It's not a part of the role that I have at the church.

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This is Virgil, follower of Christ, who God's pricked my heart to go do what it is

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I'm doing. And so that's kind of how I see it. Okay, after this break, what

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I want to do is I want to talk about what went on in Virginia, some insights I think that you and I both were chatting about before we started recording.

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I think there's a lot there, both with abortion and broader aspects that we could get into.

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So let's talk about that after this. Two, two, two great books and one website.

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Visit strivingforeternity .org. There are two books that I would like to recommend you purchase.

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What they, meaning people who aren't Christians, other religions believe, and what we believe.

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Systematic Theology Made Simple. Both are great resources, especially if you plan on witnessing to somebody.

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strivingforeternity .org. Would you consider donating to Striving for Eternity?

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This ministry is one that tries to reach out to some of those smaller churches that most people, most speakers, want to avoid.

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But by our monthly donors, it allows us to get into smaller churches and provide for them the seminars and conferences that usually only larger churches can do.

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We can do that because we have monthly supporters who, on a regular basis, support us so we could support others.

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Would you consider being one of our monthly supporters today? You can go to strivingforeternity .org

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donate and set up for a monthly donation today. Your donation helps us to be able to spread the gospel around the world, to be able to disciple others, and to provide resources for churches and people who are struggling to grow deeper in God's word.

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Consider donating today at strivingforeternity .org donate and we thank you very much for your consideration.

27:53

And one of the things that we are doing is we're extending what we offer down at G3. So folks who donate $2 a month, just $2, you will get a free copy of What Do We Believe?

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If you choose to give a little bit more, $5, we are going to send to you two books,

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What Do We Believe? and What Do They Believe? If you choose to support a little bit more and go with $10 a month, we will ship to you three books, the first two we mentioned, and also the book

28:23

On the Origin of Kinds by Dr. Silvestro. If you decide to go with the $20 level, we're going to send you four books, the three mentioned, and also the book

28:34

Sharing the Good News with Mormons. We're doing that. It'll take a few months, a couple months to get those out to you.

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But basically, if you could do that at that website, you could do it at our Patreon, whichever you choose, whether you go through PayPal or Patreon, we're going to honor that.

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We decided to extend that because we're trying to promote the Christian podcast community that we're developing. Here's a crazy idea we have, and I know

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Virgil, you're familiar with this because you were down at G3, and folks that don't know, Virgil actually tried, he tried to get my wife and I to take a break.

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I tried, man. I tried. You realize I just, I don't stop. No, you do not.

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I tried with everything I had. I was like, man, please get out of here. Please, I promise you,

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I'll hold the fort down. I'll do everything needed to be done just for you to get a break. You wouldn't do it.

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Yeah, that's the way my wife and I are. So what you want to do, here's a crazy idea that we came up with.

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We know that there's so many churches that support missionaries and missionary boards and things, and so few people actually talk to their missionaries.

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Missionaries will send these reports to a church, and almost no one ever reads those things. They print them out, put them on a table, and they're tossed the next week.

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What we're looking to do, if we can get $25 a month, what that would cover is us shipping out the equipment needed for podcasting and all the hosting feeds for a missionary to create a podcast so that they can communicate better with their host church, so that now the church knows what's going on because they could just listen to the podcast.

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The church now can just promote that podcast for each of their missionaries. When that missionary gets to town, guess what?

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Everybody's going to know the stories. They're going to know when that missionary puts up the picture, oh, here's

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Jamal. Well, everyone already knows how Jamal got saved. They listened on the podcast when they told it. They know how he's doing.

30:29

Now they could put the picture with the name that they've been hearing about. This is a crazy idea we have, and we need the support to do it because missionaries, they can't come up with that money.

30:38

So we're trying to raise $25 a month per missionary. For every $25 support that we get, we're going to be trying to get a new missionary on board so that they can get better relations with their supporting churches.

30:49

So that's some of the ways that we're trying to use the donations that come into us. The more you give us, the more we give away.

30:56

It's kind of like how we do it. Let's talk, Virgil, about the Virginia governor, Ralph Northam.

31:02

He got himself in a little trouble. He wasn't supporting abortion enough. He didn't go far enough, it seemed.

31:07

Got himself in trouble because of something that he did in college. By the way, who has college yearbooks?

31:13

I mean, medical school, I mean, who has those anymore? Who poses for pictures for that anymore?

31:20

Well, yeah, I mean, well... Do you have one from your college? I mean, seriously, think about it. I had one, yes. Okay. Yeah, I had one.

31:26

I think that's an East Coast thing, I don't know. Well, I don't know. I was in college a long time ago, but that was before the internet.

31:35

But yeah, I mean, granted, I did enjoy my college yearbook because in my college yearbook, though, they didn't know it was me at the time.

31:43

I used to be a mountain climber and we used to always have, the fraternities would have to hang all our flags and they would allow us to come out this balcony and we'd hang the flags from there.

31:52

Well, this one year, they decided they weren't going to allow us to do that. So, I grabbed my fraternity's flag, threw it over my shoulder.

31:58

I scaled the wall up to the balcony and someone grabbed a picture of me scaling the wall with the flag over my shoulder.

32:06

I can see you doing that. I can actually see you doing that. Yeah. Once they realized I was outside the balcony, they opened the doors to let me back in and then everyone came up.

32:16

I can actually see you doing that. Yeah. This guy has a picture that's on his college yearbook and he claims he's not either of these two people.

32:27

There is a white person with a face that's blackened and then another person with a

32:32

KKK hat. Now, it's on his page, but he says he's neither of those two people.

32:37

He ended up saying that he did blacken his face at some point to look like Michael Jackson.

32:44

Right, right. And there were people that were all over that. Now, for folks who may not know, you happen to have more melanin in your skin than I do.

32:54

That would be what people call black or African -American or whatever the term that we use now.

33:00

Right, right. Because that keeps changing. Yeah. Help me understand, because in one sense, I really don't understand if someone puts black on their face, how that becomes offensive, even if you're doing it.

33:12

We talked with that reporter who got in trouble for just saying that it's okay to do that for Halloween.

33:18

Megyn Kelly. Yeah. Megyn Kelly got fired from her job mainly for mentioning the fact that perhaps for fun during Halloween, that a child dressing up like their favorite actress or Diana Ross and maybe coloring their face a little bit differently would not be problematic.

33:46

Now, since that time we've had, and this issue that's come out on Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, we've had

33:56

Joy Behart post a picture of her as an African -American woman. I mean, all of these people now are coming out of the woodwork, so to speak, to say that they've all kind of dabbled in this black face to some degree and that it's now okay.

34:13

Now, it wasn't for Megyn Kelly, who got fired immediately from her job with NBC.

34:21

And then this governor, who I think initially was probably going to get fired.

34:28

Now, I recognize the history of blackface and the intent of it in film and in movies and the like in the past, but I'll be honest with you.

34:40

I think that the governor's portrayal, there's no, I think there's with clarity, he's intending for it to be a negative thing.

34:51

The person in blackface is standing next to someone in a KKK outfit uniform, so to speak.

34:58

So there's obviously a racial animus that's intended with that image.

35:04

At the same time, these other folks who are engaged in these images,

35:11

Megyn Kelly, these other folks, their thought process may be different. If I can be just honest with you, just between me, you and the fence post,

35:19

Andrew, I really don't care about this stuff as a quote unquote black man. But again, I'm one person.

35:25

I don't represent the whole of the black community. I could care.

35:30

I think anytime that you dress in this manner or take pictures in this manner, or I think it says more about you as an individual than it ever does cause me to have angst or to be fearful or angry or upset in any way, shape or form.

35:51

I recognize that the racial overtone that's intended, it doesn't matter to me. What mattered more to me with regard to this particular issue with regard to Ralph Northam was the fact that he advocated infanticide, that there was the idea that we could wait until after a child was born to determine whether or not for the parents to then have a conversation to see if whether or not they wanted to keep the child.

36:16

The fact that he stated that, doubled down on that on live radio, in my estimation, should have been grounds for his removal altogether when compared to this other issue.

36:27

And there were some Democrats that didn't think he went far enough. Right. And there were some who thought that the reason they were bringing up this whole thing with this blackface picture was to get rid of him for the

36:38

Lieutenant Governor who was going to be even more of a leftist. And then they found out he had been sexually assaulting a woman and they knew about it and the media covered it up.

36:50

I mean, you look at the whole thing with Brett Kavanaugh and people are saying, hey, what's the difference here? And what

36:55

I noticed in both of that, the Lieutenant Governor and the Governor, I see a hypocrisy.

37:01

I mean, these same people that are saying that this Ralph Northam is somehow wrong for a picture where he denies that he's even in the picture, but it's on his yearbook page where it's the blackface and the

37:15

KKK. And these Democrats are saying how that's so wrong. And yet this is the party of the

37:22

KKK. Right. Right. Right. I mean, the hypocrisy of here's the party that actually was the

37:29

KKK. We had Senator Byrd, who was a Klansman. Right.

37:34

From West Virginia. Right. From West Virginia. And he was hailed as being, I mean, there are more roads and buildings and things named after Senator Byrd than any other senator.

37:46

And he was a Klansman. Right. This is the hypocrisy I see. I mean, I ended up saying this.

37:52

If Ralph Northam has to resign and apologize for what he did, then when are all the

37:58

Democrats going to resign for not apologizing for being the party of the KKK? Right.

38:04

Right. Absolutely. When you think about the hypocrisy, it's astounding. I was reading an article about this particular issue, and it looks to the point you made, which was that they thought they had an intersectionality candidate that could easily step into that role with the

38:23

Lieutenant Governor just kind of in the wings, hoping that he would be able to kind of step in.

38:29

Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax would be able to step in when they recognized all of his kind of baggage and background.

38:36

They kind of passed on on that idea altogether, thinking, you know what, this is not it's not the way we want to go.

38:41

This is kind of how we win. And again, the hypocrisy begins to roll, whether it's the issue of Brett Kavanaugh, when women were to be believed, the

38:49

MeToo movement believe women was kind of the push. We're going to we're going to kind of slow down and perhaps investigate this and kind of see what happens with this with the with the governor,

38:58

Ralph Northam. You know, well, we're not we're not sure, you know, we need to kind of pause for the cause where others are taken completely out, whether it's a

39:06

Megyn Kelly, whether it's someone else who they feel like may have have racial overtones to their background. We're going to pause for a moment and kind of kind of take a look.

39:13

I thought what was even more interesting was the article that I read that looked at what the penance is going to be for for Governor Northam, which is

39:22

I think they're going to they're going to make sure that he reads Alex Haley's book, Roots, and and that in addition to reading

39:30

Alex Haley's book, Roots, he was going to be a kind of a soldier for the for the black cause, whatever that is supposed to be.

39:38

The relation between Brett Kavanaugh and this lieutenant governor is so interesting because here you have a lieutenant governor who they knew the media knew about the allegations and chose to say nothing, where in the case with with Brett Kavanaugh, as we now know, now that we have more of the facts, we now know the

39:58

FBI did do an investigation. The FBI did have a person who did admit to being that person that had sexually assaulted

40:06

Ford and it wasn't Kavanaugh. So there was and people had said there was something that happened to her, but the evidence didn't look like it pointed to Kavanaugh.

40:16

So here you have all these Democrats who now had read the FBI report and were still pushing to get

40:23

Kavanaugh removed or put off after they knew that the allegations weren't true.

40:30

Right. But hey, it's it's about the the idea this that counts more the fact that we can ruin his life.

40:37

And look, when it comes to politics here, I I'm going to get a lot of heat for this. I know. I think this is terrorism.

40:43

It really is. It is it is a group of people who are making everybody so afraid.

40:48

Do you think any conservative ever wants to be a Supreme Court justice? No. I mean, no one wants to put their family through that.

40:57

You see now that conservatives are afraid to say what they believe. It is like as Christians, we're going to be afraid we're not going to be allowed to say what we believe.

41:07

Like, hey, look, you believe homosexuality is fine. Well, I don't. Right. We can't even have that discussion anymore.

41:14

No, we can't discuss whether it's a sin or not. It's just you must accept their way of thinking or you will be you'll be fired.

41:22

You'll be blackballed. You'll be that might be racist. I mean, I said you're going to be in trouble somehow.

41:28

Right. It doesn't matter what you do. You're going to be have to be punished if you go against this fringe group, this leftist group that wants to say they dictate for the entire country.

41:40

Yeah. Yeah. I used I used to say that that the LGBTQ agenda is a religion.

41:49

It's worse than any any religion that that that I've witnessed in years.

41:55

I mean, the the the advocacy for for wanting to take any really what we're dealing with is a group, an organization that a group of individuals who kind of make up this this block that that are thought police.

42:09

They want to they want to be the arbiters of what and how people think. And when that's when that's at play,

42:17

I think we're in I think we're in dangerous ground. I really do. Well, this this really is the book 1984. It really is.

42:24

You have people who with their their new speak where we just change the words. We're changing history.

42:31

And I think when you go back to a guy's 30, 40 years in some of these cases and you want to judge people on what they said and did,

42:39

I think of that the comedian who was going to speak at the Oscars or whatever, and they went back nine years to something he said nine years ago that he's already apologized for.

42:49

And he's he's being held to today's standard and today's views for something he believed or stated back then.

42:57

And yeah, that's Kevin Hart. Yeah. I think the reason they went after Kevin Hart was because he had the audacity to stand up to them.

43:03

Yeah. The audacity to say, no, I'm not going to apologize for this again. I've already apologized for it.

43:10

There's no need for that. And he he had the audacity to say no to them. And that's why I think they went vicious on him and turned on him is because I think this this is a an ideology that can't be told.

43:23

No, they are that intolerant. Yeah. That they cannot accept anybody else's view.

43:29

Totally agree. I, you know, I I was saddened to see him eventually back down again. I'm I'm I'm just I'm for freedom of thought.

43:37

I'm for freedom of speech. I'm for I'm in favor of whether I whether I agree or disagree with with the speech in question.

43:45

I think we used to be in America. We used to be about those things. We used to be in favor of those kinds of things.

43:51

And what we're now seeing is that the culture has shifted to such a degree that we basically with the

44:00

LGBTQ kind of agenda, we're looking at thought police.

44:06

You know, you can't so much as think the idea, you know, Mike Pence's wife, who's, you know, been with the school system for years prior to him becoming the vice president, goes back to work for that school system.

44:21

And and she's ostracized as as kind of a cast out. Now, now you have those who are advocating the

44:27

LGBT movement who are saying that it's Mike Pence who needs to be removed for his wife exercising her freedom of choice and who she goes and works for.

44:39

I mean, it's that kind of thing that's happening time and time again that causes you pause. But again, none of this.

44:45

The thing that I try to tell the believers is that none of this should catch us by surprise.

44:51

This is this is exactly what is supposed to happen when you have a culture that has suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness in an effort to embrace sin and try to try to thwart, you know,

45:06

God. So that's I mean, we're looking at a Romans 118 in live and in color and very upfront on our computer screens on a daily basis.

45:15

You're absolutely right. And this is the thing you end up seeing that we do not allow freedom of speech really anymore.

45:21

I used to go on college campuses all the time, get invited in for interfaith dialogues. We used to sit there and I have a

45:27

Muslim there. We'd have a Jewish person. I would represent Christianity. And I didn't have a problem saying to a

45:35

Muslim, I had many debates with Muslims and Imams and I'd have no problem saying, I believe that what the

45:41

Bible makes clear is that you, if you don't change your belief, you're destined to hell.

45:47

And he said, and I'd have him say, and I believe that from the Quran, you're destined to hell. I agree with that.

45:53

But we can't even have that discussion anymore. No, because now it's like, no, no, you have to, you have to toe the line.

46:00

It's like a group of people that used to argue that they were forced into a closet and they just wanted to come out of the closet and they would keep it in their own bedrooms.

46:07

You shouldn't have any say in what they do in their bedrooms. Now they're out of the closet, but that's not enough. Now they want us to not only celebrate what they do, but they want to shove us into the church.

46:17

In other words, we're not supposed to say anything outside of those four walls of a church building. We have to keep it to there.

46:24

We shouldn't have our opinions in public. And sadly, many Christians, as you well know, are very comfortable with that stance.

46:33

I mean, many, many Christians are very, very comfortable with, you know what, I will, I'll count out,

46:38

I'll go ahead and make sure that I keep my thoughts to myself.

46:44

You had the situation, I know you're familiar with it, with Grand Canyon University, a

46:50

Christian institution, a Christian school that decided they would not have

46:56

Ben Shapiro come speak. And the reason for this was because they really didn't want to create any division.

47:02

They appealed to the idea that it was more important for them to maintain unity on the campus than to bring a

47:09

Jewish speaker who aligns himself with Judeo -Christian values onto their

47:16

Christian school campus. So, now we've kind of flipped the script where even believers, even those who claim to be

47:25

Christian, are willing to keep their Christianity tightly, you know, a tight lid on it, so as not to wave any flag of attention by the rest of the culture.

47:36

And so, you know, this is something that's not new with us. You see people that want to try to, as Christians, kind of fit in, not ruffle feathers.

47:44

Look, this is Galatians chapter 2, verse 11. This is Paul. Paul says, but when

47:50

Cephas, that's Peter, when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned.

47:57

For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles. But when they came, he drew and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.

48:09

He was afraid. Peter was afraid. He had no problem eating with the Gentiles. There was no issue there.

48:14

But in Judaism, Jews and Gentiles do not associate. You don't enter a Gentile home.

48:20

None of that. It would make you unclean. So, here's Peter. He's sitting there with the Gentiles, having no problem sharing a meal with them until these people come from James.

48:29

And now, all of a sudden, he's feeling there's a little pressure here. It'd be easier for me just to not eat with the

48:35

Gentiles. And Paul confronts him to his face. Why? Because what he's doing inadvertently, softening the message of the gospel to the

48:44

Gentiles. Because they're saying, oh, there is that wall of separation that we were told that wasn't there, that was taken down at the cross.

48:51

But now, oh, no, it seems like it's back up with Peter. And he opposed him. And he was right to oppose him.

48:57

It's a frustrating thing. We can see this history repeated over and over and over again.

49:03

And yet, it's like it's right in front of us. Being raised Jewish, I always had to sit through all the teachings in Hebrew school of the

49:10

Holocaust. And one of the things that always blew me away was one of the things with the

49:16

Germans, why they refused to believe that the Nazis were killing

49:22

Jews, what was going on in these concentration camps. The reason they gave for over and over again was we're too civilized for that.

49:31

And that's exactly what we're hearing today. We're more civilized. That can't happen with us.

49:36

We're too civilized. But it's the same thing happening over. I think that the thing that happened with the

49:42

Jews in Germany was there were too many people that wanted to get along. They thought if they just get along with the state, the state wouldn't come after them.

49:49

And there's a lot of those that profess to be Christians that are doing the same thing, just like Cephas with the

49:55

Gentiles. If I just kind of pull away from the Gentiles, it's easier.

50:00

There's less issues there. Maybe I can avoid some of the difficulties I'd have to deal with those

50:06

Jews, those circumcised party. Well, all of a sudden, he gets confronted and rightly. Why?

50:11

Because this is the same thing we have today. We have a bunch of Christians who are trying to, how can

50:17

I soft pedal this? I would have loved to deal with the head of the SBC did that sermon.

50:24

J .D. Greer did a sermon, and I forget the title of it, recently on homosexuality. He was dealing with Romans 1, the very passage you just read or referred to.

50:33

And he's trying to soft pedal homosexuality. Now, there's a lot what he said that's right in that.

50:40

I mean, look, sin is sin. And I don't believe that homosexuality is the worst sin in the entire world.

50:49

I would say murder is probably up there a little bit more, murder of a child, maybe even more. I mean, there are different degrees.

50:56

There are different punishments that we have, not just culturally, but God has different degrees of punishment. The thing is that what

51:02

I end up seeing here is that he ends up trying to soft pedal to say, I teach.

51:08

We should, as Christians, we should be showing love to people who practice homosexuality.

51:14

We should, so that we can share the gospel with them. I have had friends who practice homosexuality.

51:21

I have no problem with being friends with them because I want to share the gospel with them. I don't soft pedal that.

51:27

They know exactly where I stand, and I know exactly where they stand. We disagree, and we would talk about it. But what I've noticed is over the time, they've pulled away.

51:34

They can't be friends with me anymore because the culture is saying, no, you're either all on board with their side or not.

51:41

Right, right. It's a leveling. I mean, kind of speaking to that sermon, it's a leveling of all sin, and a lot of Christians do this.

51:51

You would hope that someone who's doing teaching to as many people as a

51:59

J .D. Greer would know the difference from a standpoint of leveling all sin as equal without recognizing the category that though sin is equal in that all sin separates us from God, that there are sins that are more egregious from a standpoint of their penalty than others, and Scripture is clear about that.

52:25

Yeah, yeah. We're talking with some of the cultural issues here with the homosexuality.

52:31

We see transgenderism, something that my wife came up thought about, thinking about, because there's so much of the

52:37

LGTBQ, whatever other letters they add on to it, movement.

52:43

They end up trying to argue that this is the new racism. I mean, that they're suffering the same issue of that racism.

52:51

Well, race, you can't change, right? I mean, you can't, well, I guess, okay, Michael Jackson tried to change the color of his skin.

52:57

It didn't work well for him. You're going to get in trouble for that one, man.

53:04

Well, and then we have the white woman who is the head of the NAACP, and she tried to make herself darker, but there's a big difference between that and something you practice, and they're going to say they have no control, but you can't change the color or the amount of melanin in your skin.

53:22

That's not something you're going to change, but since they make that connection, it was really interesting because my wife was saying if painting your face,

53:30

I mean, no matter what the intention is, if that's mockery, if that's wrong, then what about a guy that dresses as a girl or a girl that's pretending to be a guy?

53:39

And I know I tweeted that out, and someone was like, oh, you're showing your bigotry. That's disingenuous.

53:45

These aren't the same. They make it the same. They're the ones that are linking it together. So, if they're linking racism with this transgenderism and homosexuality and all that, then isn't this then fair to say that if you're mocking one, if you're pretending to be something you're not, and it's mockery and wrong, then if you're a guy or a girl that's pretending or thinking you're something you're not, wouldn't that logic then fit the same way?

54:10

Just like the head of the NAACP who was white but changed her appearance and just said, well, she identifies as being black?

54:20

There's no, I mean, in my estimation, there's no difference between someone who's making a claim about gender and changing their appearance for that purpose, and Rachel Dolezal, who was the woman who posed as black, who was the leader of the

54:40

NAACP. There's absolutely no difference, and there's no logical line of reasoning or argument that you can make that would have, one, the male claiming to be a female and dressing as such being any different than this woman who made a decision that she wanted to self -identify as a different race.

55:07

I mean, melanin or the color of one's skin is an easier transition or change than changing from male to female.

55:15

And the thing where I think if you are a minority, if you are someone who, you look at the women's sports right now, they're having a major issue because you have all these men who wouldn't be doing as well against men in men's sports are identifying as females and doing very well.

55:36

Track, you have this with wrestling, and you end up having a big question.

55:41

I mean, what is this going to do for the females that want the same rights to get full scholarships into college?

55:47

Now they're competing against the men who identify as a woman, or you end up having a woman, and this happened on wrestling, high school wrestling, a girl who won state who was transitioning to as a guy.

56:00

So she was allowed to take hormones that helped her. They enhanced her ability to wrestle, but she's still wrestling the girls.

56:10

So if she was just a girl that those same drugs would not be allowed, it would disqualify her.

56:16

But because she's in transition, she was allowed. Well, it's like, well, then have her wrestle the guys. But I think in these cases, for minorities,

56:25

I think you have things that we have scholarships for African -Americans so that they can get into college, have a better opportunity to get paid for college so that their scholarships would cover those costs.

56:39

Well, if you have people who can just identify, you have this with the, oh,

56:44

I forget her name, the one Senate Democrat who says she was Native American and she got scholarships in college being

56:52

Native American when she wasn't Native American. Well, there might be some Native American who didn't get that scholarship because she took it.

56:59

I think that all this gray area that we end up having for the people who legitimately should be getting scholarships, they're not getting them because people like this are just saying, well,

57:10

I identify this way, therefore I should be able to take advantage of the system to benefit me.

57:16

Absolutely. Absolutely. You're talking about Elizabeth, Elizabeth Warren claiming to be Native American for advantage at to be being looked upon favorably at her at her university, at a university.

57:29

So I the other thing you were talking about earlier, the the the female power lifters, it reminded me of the story from the young lady who is the representative.

57:41

I believe the name is pronounced Ilhan Omar, and she's the one that is,

57:47

I believe, from Minnesota. She's asking a Minnesota Democrat attorney general,

57:53

Keith Ellison, to investigate the USA Powerlifting Association for barring a male who is transitioning to female from a women's powerlifting competition.

58:07

I mean, that's that that's that that craziness is where we are.

58:13

I mean, that that kind of thing where we would have we would have we would have laughed. I mean, this would have been a punch line of a joke somewhere like, you know, this is reality now for for where things are in our country.

58:26

And it just you just kind of you've got to shake your head and ask the question, where did this craziness come from?

58:33

And it's almost as if, Andrew, I mean, it's almost as if you wake up every day to see what the next crazier thing is going to be like, who can out crazy the next person?

58:44

Well, you know, we could tell you where it came from, really, because it's just been it's in the last decade that all this has happened.

58:51

And it really came from, I think, a lot of it, what I said in the beginning, right, when you get in power with you stay in power with and I think that Barack Obama got a lot of support from the homosexual movement.

59:04

And he pushed that agenda. And he may it was clearly a goal he had to push it.

59:09

And, you know, an interesting thing, people may not remember this. It was his first couple days of office, he does an executive order.

59:16

And he did an executive order to, to basically allow for government funding of research on fetal stem cells.

59:26

Now, that had never been allowed before. He was claiming that he was going to turn back the the

59:31

Bush error doctrines. And it was interesting, because it wasn't a Bush didn't create a law,

59:37

Bush upheld what was always the law, you know, and it was very interesting, because the big headline, when when

59:43

Obama had written had signed this executive order, was the the headline that he said, we will not allow faith to get in the way of science.

59:54

And that was the big headline. But what got no fanfare is what he did the very next day, the very next day, he signed an executive order that undid the exit, that executive order that got all the fanfare.

01:00:06

So there so it is not legal to use government for the government to fund the fetal stem cells.

01:00:11

But why? Why would he do that, then? I think he did it because he wanted he wanted that headline that he was going to make science above faith.

01:00:21

And that's that's what he got, you know, what pushed him into the power position. And I think what ends up happening is when someone gets in there, they have to keep it going.

01:00:31

And now you're going to see with all this intersexuality, it's going to be crazy. It's just gonna be crazy to see as people get into power what they're going to say next to keep this thing going.

01:00:43

And it's going to be scary. Yeah, the only the only good aspect of that is as it gets more dark around us in the culture, light definitely turns up more brightly.

01:00:53

And the thing that excites me is the right word. I think the thing that'll be interesting,

01:01:00

I think, in the days to come will be to see the light of true believers really shine forth in ways that we haven't seen because of the way the culture has turned.

01:01:11

Well, we're going to see, and this is what I anticipate, is we're going to see what we see in countries like China and elsewhere, where those

01:01:18

Christians, the Joel Osteen Christians, those people that follow Joel Osteen and Benny Hinn and all those folks, they're going to be dropping out.

01:01:26

I mean, when it's their life on the line, when it's their jobs on the line, when it's their freedoms on the line, they're going to give that up.

01:01:35

And then you're going to see the true Christians. And you're right, it is in the light of persecution that you have seen throughout history that Christ shines.

01:01:46

Absolutely. Because there the gospel becomes clear. It's not this watered down,

01:01:51

Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That's not going to cut it. It's going to be that we are sinners in light of a holy

01:02:00

God who is infinitely just. And because he is so holy and so just, he is going to punish all sin.

01:02:09

But he made a way of escape, that he came and died on a cross. God himself became a man and died on a cross that we could be set free.

01:02:18

Come on, man. That's what's going to be, that is going to be the message that's going to shine in light of all that we're seeing.

01:02:25

Absolutely. Because that's the only message that's going to set people free from this. I was just in New York City this past weekend.

01:02:30

I was doing some open air. And this is the thing, I'm pleading with these people as they're mocking and all this.

01:02:37

It's like, you're sitting here living a life saying you're free because you can carry on your sin.

01:02:43

And all you're trying to do is cover up the guilt of your sin with your drugs and your alcohol and your sex and everything else because you can't stand the guilt of it.

01:02:53

And the reason you have that guilt is because God exists. And he put that there so you would repent.

01:03:00

Absolutely. Turning to more sin will not remove the guilt. Repentance, that's what's required.

01:03:09

And so, yeah. I love it. Let's do this. We'll do some closing comments. But after this commercial, we'll play a game, a spiritual transition game.

01:03:18

All the pressure's on me, none on you. So you get to relax. But it'll be fun.

01:03:24

So we'll do that right after this commercial. The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover

01:03:44

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01:03:50

to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. Striving for Eternity is a

01:03:58

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01:04:23

Striving to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. Yeah, I think the reason that we struggle so much in the church is because hermeneutics hasn't been taught.

01:04:31

People don't know how to interpret. So we're going to play a game now where the pressure's on me. Virgil is going to give me something, whatever comes to his mind.

01:04:40

And I'm going to have to transition from whatever he gives me to the gospel. Why do we play this game, folks? It's very simple.

01:04:45

Most of us as Christians feel more comfortable sharing the gospel with people when the conversation gets on spiritual realms.

01:04:53

How do we get there? And so many people are like, okay, I'm just going to pray. Lord, please open up a door.

01:04:59

Please make a way for me to share the gospel. I don't pray that anymore. My pastor years ago taught me that I can make any conversation a spiritual conversation if I just learn how to transition from the natural to the spiritual.

01:05:12

And it takes practice. The more you practice, the easier it gets. So people see me do this and they go, oh, you make that so easy.

01:05:19

You're so good at it. No, I've been doing it for 30 years. If you practice this game on a regular basis for 30 years, you may be better than me.

01:05:28

So we're going to see how we do. I'm going to give Virgil a couple seconds here to think about what it's going to be while we play the intro song.

01:05:36

It's time now to start the spiritual transition game.

01:05:43

All right. So I will not be editing this part out. So if there's long pauses, that's because I got stuck.

01:05:53

Okay. I mean, Matt Slick's giving me words. I don't even know what they mean. I don't know if Matt knows what some of his words mean.

01:06:03

I don't know if he just makes up the definitions. I don't know. I could start checking that. That'd be a good thing to do.

01:06:10

In a future episode of The Wrap Report, Todd Friel, I have an interview with him that'll come out the week after this one probably.

01:06:19

And on that one, yeah, he got me and I was like, where am I going to go with this? So Virgil, give me something and I have to take whatever you give me and transition to the gospel.

01:06:30

Okay. OU football. Why does everyone go with sports? It's my favorite, man.

01:06:35

That's my team, man. And I should have expected that. Yeah. If you listen to the

01:06:41

Just Thinking podcast, you know that's where I was going to go. OU. I should have known that it was going to be a football reference, college football, because you guys talk about that all the time.

01:06:49

It's those first couple minutes of thinking that I go, what? Okay. For folks that are regular listeners to Wrap Report, you know that I'm basically like pop culture and most sports illiterate.

01:07:02

Okay. I don't do team sports. I don't watch football, don't watch baseball, not basketball. I have two sports that I watch, tennis and mixed martial arts.

01:07:10

Ah, okay. That's a drastic kind of difference, tennis and mixed martial arts.

01:07:16

Well, that's what I always thought, but here was the thing that it ended up like someone was asking me why those two? And after thinking about it,

01:07:22

I think what it is is it's an individual sport and I do enjoy watching an underdog come back.

01:07:28

I got you. Okay. Right? Okay. I mean, there's something about a guy that, you know, you just, you know, someone who can beat

01:07:34

Roger Federer when he was at the top of his game. I mean, it'd be incredible to see someone do that. And you root for the person that is making that almost impossible type of thing and look like they can pull it off.

01:07:46

And then sometimes they actually do. And I guess it's the individual sport. And I like seeing someone that either works really, really hard at their expertise, someone like a

01:07:57

Roger Federer who just works outstandingly. And then you end up seeing that there is something about that.

01:08:04

And I think, you know, when you think about this, it is something where there are certain things that we all just naturally are going to be appealed to and to be drawn to.

01:08:15

I like the fact of seeing an underdog win, you know, and there are cases where you see something that looks like it could be the most impossible thing and yet someone pulls it off.

01:08:25

I mean, here's an impossible thing. I mean, this boggles my mind, but here's an impossible thing.

01:08:31

The thought of me, if you know me, I mean, the thought of me ever being able to say that I could deserve to go to heaven in any way would be impossible.

01:08:40

And yet, you know what? I can say that not because of what I did, but because of what someone else did.

01:08:46

See, it wasn't me, but there was someone else that was undefeatable and he took my place. So, what ended up happening was where I should never have in any way been allowed to be in heaven because I am a wretched, wretched sinner.

01:08:59

I've broken God's law. I lie. I steal. I've done so many bad things that there's no way

01:09:05

I should be allowed to be in heaven. But God himself came to earth as a man, died in my place and offers me the forgiveness of sin.

01:09:12

And what I need to do is change my thinking, stop thinking of myself as a good person or trusting in my good works or in my case, thinking that my

01:09:19

Judaism was going to save me, that I was born God's chosen people. I thought that would save me, that I was going to heaven just because of that.

01:09:25

I had to get lost. I had to realize I was at a place where I wasn't automatically getting an immediate ticket to heaven because I was

01:09:32

Jewish. I had to change my thinking and realize I needed to trust what Jesus Christ did. Now, if you notice -

01:09:39

That's pretty good, man. I know nothing about Omaha College football.

01:09:46

No, that's pretty good. So I had to transition to something I did know. Know something about.

01:09:52

And then you made the kind of analogy of having somebody on a comeback and then you went from the comeback to how

01:09:59

God helped you experience the comeback, right? Yeah. And folks, the thing is this, you can do this.

01:10:07

Every one of us can do this. It takes practice and it becomes a fun game. I used to do this when I was - We work with the youth groups all the time.

01:10:14

We just throw something out there, a sneaker, and everyone does a transition and it's going to take five minutes at first.

01:10:22

But you know what? They start coming quicker the more you practice. And the other thing is you end up realizing everyone has a different way of doing it.

01:10:29

I mean, I'm sure if Daryl was here, he would transition much differently. Let me take a shot and you could ask

01:10:35

Daryl if this would have been his. I think Daryl would have said, that team is so bad.

01:10:43

That's like deserving hell to root for that team. We'll have to see if that's how

01:10:51

Daryl would transition. He probably would have come with something real quick. Absolutely. Absolutely.

01:10:58

Oh, that would be fun. You should ask Daryl how he would transition. I definitely need to do. We need to try that on the

01:11:03

Just Thinking podcast. I have to shoot that idea to him and see what he comes up with. That'd be great.

01:11:10

That would be funny. So, is there anything you want to share folks, whether it be your ministry at the church, the ministry you have on the streets with the abortion or with Just Thinking?

01:11:23

Anything you want to share with folks? No, man, just continue to pray for my dear brother, partner in the podcast world,

01:11:31

Daryl, as he's transitioning. He's got it rough. He's working for a rough company with GTY now and all that.

01:11:41

So, his boss is going to be Phil Johnson. Phil Johnson will be his boss. Yeah, that's got to be rough, right?

01:11:48

No, he's in a wonderful place. Tell me, you wouldn't love to just be in that lunchroom sitting there when they're going to have their coffee breaks.

01:11:57

Right, right, right. Who wouldn't, right? Who wouldn't want to be? Yeah, he should just start recording.

01:12:03

Okay, let's talk theology, Phil. Right, right. No doubt. No doubt. No, I'm excited for Daryl for all that he's kind of doing and be praying for him in the transition.

01:12:15

And just so you know, I kind of gave him an out. I said, brother, if the

01:12:21

Just Thinking podcast is not something that you can continue, let me know, man. I'm definitely robbing.

01:12:27

I have no problem. I'm good. But I really love the work that I do here with the local church and here in Omaha.

01:12:35

And so, he wants to continue, wants to keep that going. So, be praying for us and for that platform as it continues on.

01:12:43

We pick things up here in about a couple of weeks. We've been running kind of reruns of old shows just so that Daryl can get locked in and transition into place.

01:12:55

But our show picks up. I could probably tell you the date here if I just look at it. We pick back up on the 24th of February.

01:13:03

We'll record our episode then for that following Wednesday. So, we're excited about that, excited to get back live, excited to get in on the subject matter that is of interest to the culture and that kind of thing.

01:13:18

But I'm looking forward to that. Be praying for him. Be praying for us. Be praying for me as I endeavor to do what God's called me to do here in Omaha, Nebraska.

01:13:26

So, appreciate it a bunch. Appreciate getting a chance to connect with you as well, brother. This is a long time coming.

01:13:33

And, man, I'm glad we got a chance to chop it up. And here, listen, I hope to be more, you know, be on the show more often, man.

01:13:41

That's my way of inviting myself back onto the show. Hey, we can do that. You know, I put a post out some time ago in the

01:13:48

Striving Fraternity Facebook group saying, folks, what do you like better? Do you like it when I have co -hosts that we just chop it up?

01:13:53

Or do you like it when I'm solo? A lot of people voted that they like it when I'm solo. But then everyone else was like, actually, we like the mix.

01:14:00

Because there's times where, because I have different people that come in as co -hosts. So, they hear different voices, different personalities.

01:14:08

And so, I think I'm going to just keep doing that. I'm going to bring people in as co -hosts on a somewhat regular basis and do some solos.

01:14:14

And so, that's how we're probably going to do it. Let me know, man. You get some subject matter that you think would be fun for us to chop up.

01:14:20

Let me know. And I'll make sure I devour it ahead of time and I'm a little bit more prepared. We can just roll with it.

01:14:26

So, I look forward to it. All right. Well, we can do that. All right. Well, folks, I appreciate you guys listening. And we will be back next week.

01:14:33

Next week should be an interview on discernment with Todd Friel. You do not want to miss that.

01:14:41

He had some really, really, really great pointers on how to do discernment.

01:14:46

There's few people that do discernment well. He is one of them. And so, you want to make sure you catch that episode.

01:14:53

So, please, if you find value in this podcast, would you consider subscribing? That helps.

01:14:59

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01:15:06

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01:15:11

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01:15:20

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01:15:26

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