Lots of Topics to Finish the Week!

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:31

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's a Friday. I hope you're having a good Friday.

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Looking forward, I hope you have the freedom this weekend to gather with the saints to partake of the

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Lord's Supper. I was reminded again today of the fact that over in Europe, many of our brothers and sisters are facing re -tightening of restrictions, full lockdowns.

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It is a challenging time, a very, very difficult time, literally around the globe for the church and for the commandments given to us to meet.

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A lot of people are being forced to think through why we do this. A lot of us just did it out of habit.

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It's what you're supposed to do. Never really thought, well, why? And if the government says, stop, just stop.

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Can't you just live a regular Christian life and just stop, just do your thing? And so the issue of fellowship, the meaning of koinonia, the concept of the means of grace, how

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God uses others as an encouragement in your life to keep you on the straight and narrow, to keep you going and your role in encouraging others.

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All this, we certainly have had to think through a whole lot more than we ever have before. And certainly,

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I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope the people around the globe have a much deeper appreciation of the privilege of being able to partake of the

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Lord's Supper, what the Lord's Supper means. These are all things that, as ostensibly a quote -unquote second wave hits

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Europe, are relevant to people's thinking. Last evening,

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I was sent a study. This is, oh man, that's small print.

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When you save it as a PDF, it's like, eh. This is John P. A.

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Ioannidis, Infection Fatality Rate of Code 19

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Inferred from Zero Prevalence Data. That's not zero, zero as in blood prevalence data.

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This is the Bulletin of the World Health Organization article

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ID. And so this is a peer -reviewed, but not yet published as far as I know, published in the final journal.

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But obviously right now, one of the big issues, I'll be brief with this,

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I've got a lot of other things to get to, but one of the issues is the accuracy of testing and the final results of that testing.

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And this particular article, utilizing, I would assume, the accepted numbers around the world, came to the conclusion that for people under the age of 70, the mortality rate is, as it says right here,

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COVID -19 has a very steep age gradient for risk of death, pretty much the opposite age gradient that H1N1 originally had when it hit.

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In other words, it affects older people and H1N1 went the other direction. It was younger people.

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It was very strange. But I'm concerned that we have not really yet begun doing serious analysis of what

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COVID -19 is really actually all about for political reasons rather than medical reasons. Anyway, the result of the study is a below 70 mortality rate of 0 .05

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percent. 0 .05 percent. Now, I looked up H1N1 numbers, and the most consistent number

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I could find was 0 .1%, which is twice COVID -19. For people under 70, that's part of the age curve issue.

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So that's coming out. Now, I didn't try to repost that. That was sent to me on Twitter, and thanks to the gentleman that sent it to me on Twitter.

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So I didn't try hitting repost or anything like that.

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But I also had encountered an article by Michael Thao from September 3rd talking about a

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New York Times article. Now, this was a lengthy article, and it is fascinating.

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Again, I'll try to be brief. It's about the PCR cycle.

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And if you're not familiar with this, I'm not going to go into it right now. Look it up. It is interesting. It is about the technology that is being utilized to be able to detect literally fragments of the shell of the virus.

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So in other words, you look at the virus, and what you're looking for is you're looking for something extremely unique. When you're working on a vaccine, you want something that's extremely unique and exposed that you can identify and try to attack or get the body to attack or things like that.

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But this is a PCR process where the first thing you do is you have to convert the

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RNA of the virus shell to DNA, and then you do a magnification process where you're magnifying what's in the sample over and over and over and over and over again, so much so that the standard magnification numbers are around 40 times, which is over a trillion trillion.

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I realize now that we're spending trillions of dollars, which we don't have, that the number has entered into our thinking.

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I'm not sure I ever thought about a trillion when I was a younger person, because who had anything that required that kind of a number?

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But to magnify something a trillion times, it's pretty amazing stuff.

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I'll make a long story short here. The positive results that are coming back on COVID tests, for example, the

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Giro d 'Italia may not even make it through its three -week cycling race, because people are calling for it to be shut down because there have been positive tests for COVID.

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Well, COVID isn't going to touch one of these people. They'll barely even know they've got it, but hey, it's a death sentence.

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It's the plague. It's the worst thing on the planet. It'll kill everybody if one person gets it, so you shut the whole thing down.

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All the training people have done, just shut it all down. Well, all these big numbers are coming in, and what the article is about is when you really dig into it, even the

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CDC has admitted, once you go past 33 cycles, you basically can't detect anything anymore.

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It's worthless, and most people are using 40 cycles. So the point is 95 % of these could be false positives, and they break it all down.

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I mean, I don't know how many, I could have counted a number of words, but it's a lengthy, lengthy article going into all sorts of different aspects on this particular subject.

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Well, as soon as I pasted the

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URL into my Facebook, boom, up comes you're about to share false information.

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Soon as I posted it, well, it still allows you to do it, so I did it, and then

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I clicked on their counter -argumentation. It was the most facile, simplistic, absurd little bit of nothing

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I've ever seen in my life. It did not touch. The person who wrote this doesn't even know what a PCR cycle is, but Facebook said it.

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Facebook is out there censoring stories about Hunter Biden and censoring any kind of information that would basically say we are being gamed and gamed big.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is amazing how fast,

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I mean, boom, just like that, just like that. Instant Facebook censorship, and you want something also instant and fast?

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I hope you saw the story. Al Mohler mentioned it. I had seen the, when

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I first saw this story, my first thought was, is this the bee? Is it, you know, is this a real site?

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Is this a real story? It is. During the

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Senate hearings, which were not really hearings, but during the Senate trial of future

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Justice Barrett's patients, which, you know, for her, she was probably sitting there over and over again going,

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I got seven kids, I can handle these Democrats, because they're all about on the same level. They were.

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Their behavior, depth of thought, with one exception. There was one

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Democrat that actually asked some, clearly knows something about what they were talking about, rather than just sat there screaming about Roe or whatever.

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But all the rest of them are just children, infants. And so, during that time, one of the worst,

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I mean, be careful what you say. John Calvin said that when

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God wants to punish a people, he gives them unrighteous judges. And that's biblically true, and it's historically true.

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And there are people serving in the United States Senate and House of Representatives that, if the very fact that they're there demonstrates that this nation is under severe, severe judgment.

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And, well, anyways, there's one particular female senator from a state way in the

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West, like over toward Japan, got all upset because Judge Barrett used the term sexual preference.

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And according to this senator, this is an offensive phrase. Why is it offensive?

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Because it actually assumes that you can make a choice as to your sexual activity.

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Now, of course, this was used for decades, anyone thinking that it had that, that had that meaning.

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But this senator decided that it does. And within 48 hours, actually, it's within 24 hours, the

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Merriam -Webster Online Dictionary changed its definition of the phrase and added a note that it is an offensive term.

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You can, you can look at the, you can look at the Wayback Machine, you can look at the archives. The last time it had been updated was

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September 28. There wasn't anything there about it being offensive at all. And as soon as this happens in the

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Senate, you're now changing the dictionary to match the preferences of leftists.

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Again, we just sit back and go, yeah, they read 1984 and they think it's the manual on how to do this.

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This is Newspeak. This, this is exactly what

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Orwell was talking about when he talks about how the Newspeak dictionary keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller and how you just keep changing the meanings of words.

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And it's happening right in front of our eyes. And at least right now, we recognize it.

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We still have the freedom in some venues to talk about it. How long till that's gone?

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Well, I, it could be as early as January. The way things are going, at least according to polls,

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I'm, I'm certainly hoping those polls are just as wrong as they were in 2016.

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I hope, I hope. But if you were to ask me, if you're to ask me what my confidence of A, my vote being counted and B, my vote not being wiped out by 10 fake votes through mail -in, dead people voting 47 times, my vote literally being changed, what's my level of confidence?

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The lowest it has ever been. The lowest it has ever been. I said in March, I was one of the first people to go, oh boy, uh, looks like the leftists really want to keep these lockdowns going way past two weeks.

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And, uh, we got an election coming up and I bet you anything they're going to try to start pushing mail -in ballots so they can do ballot harvesting.

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Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's what's going on. That's yeah.

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So there you go. Uh, change in dictionary. This is a lang, this is a war of language.

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It is a war of language. Control the language, you control the results. And if you're willing to change the meanings of words, you are a dishonest person.

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You have no integrity, but if you're just stardust with nothing above you, but sky, who cares?

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Integrity doesn't mean anything anyways. That's why secular worldview is destructive of any governmental system that could possibly provide you with liberty and freedom.

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Can't do it. Can't and won't. Can't and won't. Now, since we were together last, a, um, article came out that when

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I first saw it, the person who posted it, uh, said, this is a terrible article.

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Well, normally I like to come to that conclusion on my own. I read it and said, this is a terrible article.

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I would like, and I forgot to grab some of his books. I should have done that. That's been my plan.

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But I would like in light of this particular individual to try to be as, um, gracious or something as I possibly can.

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Um, because when you read an article from someone who, you know, can write well, can research well, and can argue well, and then you read the article and the article is nothing but assertions.

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There's, there's no connection. Assertions are connected with other assertions that have, that are, you can have strong assertions connected with super weak assertions.

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And there's no attempt to try to connect them together and provide any kind of meaningful argumentation and reasoning.

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And, uh, when I see something like that, I sit back and I go, okay, it's possible that this person is supposed to be writing

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X number of articles over a certain period of time, came close to their, um, deadline and they're, they just rushed it and really laid neg, you know, just really bad.

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Uh, that happens sometimes just in a bad mood, bad day, don't feel well, been wearing your mask too long, blood oxygen levels tanked, uh, too much carbon dioxide, who knows.

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And so, and then sometimes you're just limited.

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Sometimes you decide to address too big a topic for the number of words you're allowed in whatever form.

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And this is on Patheos, which, um, yeah, it is a source of all sorts of bad stuff.

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So maybe there's a limitation as word limitation. Maybe that has an, I don't know. But, uh, the, the point is that Dr.

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Michael Bird, who, um, has written some,

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Michael F. Bird has written some good stuff. He really has. Um, he's written good stuff on justification, early

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Christology, um, topics like that. And so let's, let's be aware of that straight off the top.

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And he wrote an article on October 13th so three days ago, uh,

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The Fundamentalist War on Wokeness is a War on Christian Love. That's the title.

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The Fundamentalist War on Wokeness is a War on Christian Love. The funny thing is, the ironic thing is he is currently trapped in Melbourne, which is, um, bad, bad, bad place to be.

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The irony is it looks like the despot ruler of Melbourne, uh, is going to probably survive this as far as the next election's concerned.

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Uh, which means there aren't enough people left in that particular area that are concerned about freedom, liberty, things like that.

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There you go. So much for a beautiful place, a beautiful, beautiful place. I visited once.

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That's going to be it. I won't be going back, but got a chance to, ran a 10k along the, the, uh, the shore there, uh, just last year.

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Had some great fish and chips and stuff like that. Interestingly enough, uh, the article was prompted by Jeff's sermon at the

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Fight Love Feast thing. And he, he said in the video, a certain

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Jeff Durbin, who I've never heard of, but looks like he's trying to do a 2005 Mark Driscoll impersonation, said, and then talked about, he didn't actually talk about what we talked about.

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And then he mentioned Owen Strachan, uh, who obviously last week basically said people promoting woke ideology in the church should be disciplined out of the church.

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And so there was, there was the background and he says, okay, let me try to be that rare voice of reason, this asylum of politics and religion.

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I know wokeness, believe me, I live in Melbourne, comically known as Melbongrad. Well, the wokest cities in the world where the government is so progressive makes

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California look like Alabama. The state government even create, state government even create a second

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COVID wave by hiring security guards to operate quarantine facilities who were trained in diversity awareness, but not in infection control, which is why

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I've spent the last three months living under quasi -martial law. And that's, that's true.

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Um, I have written for political mags, critiquing the progressive authoritarianism that demonizes the working class for voting for Brexit and Trump.

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I am an eager consumer of news outlets like Quillette, Heterodox Academy, Spiked Online, and follow authors like Douglas Murray, who are dedicated to standing up to the bohemian bourgeois on subjects like freedom of speech and women's rights.

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I also know very well that the progressive identity hierarchy divides everyone into either the oppressor or the oppressed.

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It imputes to ethnicities, certain immutable moral characteristics and worst of all, it viciously attacks minorities if they do not obediently perform their roles in the identity hierarchy.

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See, I told you, smart guy. For case in point, Vicky Osterweil's book,

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In Defense of Looting, makes the morally, and it's true, morally monstrous claim that looting

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Korean businesses is okay because Koreans like Jews are the faces of capital. So you might expect me to be sympathetic to the anti -woke rhetoric of Durbin and Strachan, but I'm not, so let me explain why.

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All right, let's, let's find out why, even though he didn't lay out anything that Jeff said or anything that Owen said, just sort of,

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I mean, he quoted one section from the end of Jeff's sermon, which was a lengthy presentation, talk, wasn't really a sermon, wasn't a church, but he doesn't explain the whys.

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The whole anti -woke and anti -critical race theory trope strike, should be strikes me, as not so much interested in opposing progressive authoritarianism and its divisive racial policies as much as it serves to deny ethnic minorities have any grievances and white churches have any responsibility to do anything about it.

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So stop immediately. Instantly, he adopts the language that capitulates to the woke movement.

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So as much as it serves to deny ethnic minorities have any grievances, where in the world are we talking about?

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Because you see, the application of American woke ideology, hearkening back to slavery, doesn't work in Australia.

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That's not their history. It doesn't work in Canada. It doesn't work in Mexico.

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It doesn't work in South Africa. It doesn't work in Russia. So maybe he might be talking about the aborigines, the aboriginals in Australia, maybe, and no one's going to argue that they don't have grievances going way back in the past, but I know certainly in the

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United States, the American Indian tribes were well known for horrific warfare between each other, and still some of them don't like each other, even to this day, going way back that far.

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What does the white church have to do with that? Whatever a white church is, I don't know what a white church is.

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I, what are white churches? I don't know what white churches are. I've never been to a white church.

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Oh, you've been to churches that were all white? Yeah, because everybody around that area is white, but that's not a white church. I've been to black churches as well, and many of them were black churches because they simply chose to be black churches, purposefully segregating themselves, but I've never been to a purposefully segregated white church.

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I just haven't. If I was, I didn't know when it happened. Let's put it that way, but I would not go to one that said to me, we are a white church.

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Now, if, if you go to a church that is representative of the general area around you and the general population, there's gonna be lots of places in the

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United States could be primarily non -colored, whatever that color might be.

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We could be talking Chinese and Indian and all sorts of things because there's a lot of different kinds of quote -unquote white people.

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So I don't know what a white church is. And immediately, once you, you start talking about white churches or the white church, you've already bought into the definitions of the divisiveness that he recognizes is already there.

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Nothing that either Jeff or Owen said would fit into this at all. So he's immediately left his examples.

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He's not going to go back and try to provide examples. Those were just potshots. Those were just ways of getting people's attention.

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He's not going to go back. He's not going to show any respect for elders in the congregation. He's just going to use their names as, as a means of grabbing hold of someone's attention.

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That's all there is to it. In my mind, acknowledging the reality of racism, discrimination, and injustice, whether historical, cultural, or institutional, okay, are immediately.

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We're using terms that have historical meanings and that have redefined meanings.

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And the whole point here is woke ideology likes to change the meanings of words.

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And in fact, use words in multiple ways in one paragraph or one paper or one sermon or whatever else it might be.

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They don't follow the, you know, in a sense, the rules of hermeneutics that we use for scripture, honor the author of scripture.

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So you can say, thus sayeth the Lord, but they're just as valid in applying them to human speech and showing honor to the human author.

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So when you play games with words, when you talk about racism in a biblical sense, which has to do with the purposeful, willful hatred and mistreatment of someone based upon their skin color.

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When you borrow the capital from that, you borrow the shame and the moral capital from that and transfer it over to some vague white supremacy.

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If you're white, you're a white supremacist. You're a racist because you breathe stupidity.

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You are not honoring the people you're talking to. You're not honoring language, certainly not honoring the

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God who designed language. So immediately when the reality of racism, does that include black racism?

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Does that include black racism against blacks? Does that include black racism against whites? Because if you can sit in front of a keyboard or sit in front of a television camera, and talk about racism without at the same time addressing the reality of black supremacy,

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Chinese supremacy, Asian supremacy, Russian supremacy, whatever, then you're just using up the oxygen.

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You're not accomplishing anything with it. You're not getting us anywhere. Because if these things are going to be discussed, they need to be discussed all around the world in all the places where all those types of things exist.

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There is black supremacy in the United States. We've pointed it out. When you tell one ethnic group that they cannot commit the sin of racism, that is the best way in the world to inculcate them committing that sin.

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And that's been going on for a long time now. So what kind of racism? What kind of discrimination?

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What kind of injustice? Whether historical, cultural, or institutional?

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And determining to change it does not require adherence to a Marxist narrative or becoming woke.

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But in the world today, the entire utilization of the term woke is connected with a massive rise in Marxism, Marxist ideology, which is tearing up the cities in the

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United States. So do forgive us for addressing what's actually taking place outside the doors of our churches,

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Dr. Berg. Removing this from what's happening and say, well, it doesn't necessitate that.

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Removing it from the context of what's actually taking place is a waste of cyberspace.

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Rather, it is the outworking of the liberal political tradition rooted in a

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Christian worldview where everyone should have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities.

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Whoa, what's that rooted in? That requires a complete redefinition of how things such as racism, discrimination, and injustice are being used today.

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Ninety -nine percent of the time when those terms are being utilized in the press and the media today, the background is not the

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Christian worldview where everyone should have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities because they're created in the image of God.

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No, no, no, no. That's a fundamental denial of intersectionality, critical race theory, and everything else.

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But that's what we're dealing with. That's what we're addressing. Those are the people that Jeff Durbin and Owen Strachan are talking about.

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So why use them as the examples if you're not even talking about the same thing? Where, to quote

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George Washington quoting scripture, everyone will sit under their own fig tree and no one will make them afraid. Well, then we, if you can own a fig tree, you better be opposed to Marxism, okay?

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Because pretty soon the state's going to own your fig tree and take your figs and give them to someone who's not taking care of your fig tree.

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And your little cow, too. That's right. Churches and Christian leaders who are concerned with racism, okay, what kind of racism?

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Where? Be specific. Police brutality. Well, there is police brutality.

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There's probably one one -thousandth of what is claimed. The police are not, in the

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United States, hunting Black men down and shooting them every day, even though people pretend that that's actually what's going on.

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It's not. I'm concerned about the police brutality in Melbourne.

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I think it's police brutality to be arresting women and throwing them on the ground and handcuffing them and forcibly masking them.

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That's police brutality, right? Affordable health care.

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Ah, here we go. Now we're bringing in our politics. Affordable health care.

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That's a nice way of saying the state needs to take care of all your health care needs and that this is allegedly the

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Christian position, right? Is that what you're saying? So the greatest health care system ever designed on the planet, which was based on a market situation that produced all this innovation, you get rid of all of it and go back to hoping to be able to schedule a surgery, but probably dying before you get a chance to do it, right?

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Because that's what socialized medicine has been about for a long, long time. And that's what we're going back to because we're too stupid to realize the stupidity of that kind of argument.

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Protecting refugees, which is a nice way of saying open borders. I mean, that's what's behind it.

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There's hardly been any nation on the planet that has been more open to real refugees than the

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United States of America has been for 100 years. But that's not the same thing as having an open border.

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It's a different kind of insanity. Acting on poverty, which of course is what has created the crisis in the black community in the

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United States, the welfare state. Just no one argues this.

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The numbers of stability, the statistics of stability in the black family up until the beginning of the welfare state were what, 10 times stronger than they are now?

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So, acting on poverty is not the government's job.

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Oh, no. Yes, it's not. If you want the worst people to ever address this, ask the government to do it.

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That's just the reality. That's something the church has always been doing, acting on poverty.

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Who starts the, who provides the food? Who does these things? But now, oh, it's something else.

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Ending sex trafficking. Well, that's a, how is that a liberal thing?

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In fact, it seems it's the leftists in the United States that have been dabbling in all that type of stuff themselves.

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I mean, I'm really surprised What's -Her -Face is still alive. Is she still alive? Guillaume, Guillaume, Guislaine, whatever.

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Epstein's chick. Giselle something, I don't know. Seems that it's primarily leftists that were involved with that guy.

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Urging sustainable environmental policy, whatever that might mean.

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Ensuring LGBTI people have the right to work. Notice the limit, the very tight limitation there.

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Rather than, I would have to ask, how about marry? Redefine marriage?

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How about Joe Biden's incredible stuff last night? That eight -year -old transgenders should be protected by law.

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That he will change the law to protect eight -year -old transgenders. Let me just be straight up front here.

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If you actually think that an eight -year -old can make decisions about the rest of their life and their sexuality, but cannot make decisions about which shoes to put on which feet, you are a moron.

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You should not be, you shouldn't be driving. You shouldn't be voting. And yet that's where we are.

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That's where we are. Wow. As well as defending the unborn.

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Well, there we go. Promoting end -of -life care as an alternative to euthanasia.

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So notice there's been a shift here. Promoting end -of -life care as an alternative to euthanasia.

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Safeguarding religious freedom. Opposing the gambling and pornographic industries. They are not whoring or compromised.

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Now, you have joined together, very purposefully, very, very differing categories that do not flow from a consistent worldview.

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They don't flow from a consistent worldview. The woke concept of racism is utterly detrimental to any kind of response to the

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LGBT revolution, and certainly is utterly detrimental to the protection of the unborn.

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Defending the unborn. These don't go together. These don't go together.

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Not even in Melbourne. So you have a list here of, oh,

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I wish we could do all these things, let's not worry about the specifics of it. They are simply doing what

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Christians have been doing for 2 ,000 years, which is loving their neighbor, remembering the poor, being the Good Samaritan, imitating

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Jesus, hating evil, loving good, and establishing justice in the gay of the city. If you establish justice in the gay of the city, the entire woke narrative on racism, defunding the police, government theft, open borders, socialism,

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Marxism, the LGBT revolution, all of that will come tumbling down.

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Maybe that's why on the LGBT thing, have the right to work. Well, I don't know if anyone would say they don't have the right to work, but they don't have the right to demand

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Uber rights, which is exactly what they're doing, or to change the definition of marriage. If you want to talk about evangelical whoring, it applies just as easily to churches who have tethered themselves to white supremacy, don't know of one of them that ever has.

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I don't know anything. Notice he's using the woke definition of white supremacy.

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How did that get in there? Having your cake and eating it, too. Who have fattened their hearts in the days of slaughter.

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That's an easy accusation. Who messianize politicians and Caesarize, make

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Caesar Jesus. Again, easy accusation, but can be applied very simply to either side, depending on what kind of argument you want to try to make.

41:02

Who crave war like a baby craves its mother's milk. Obama's the one that was doing a lot of that stuff, so are you talking about the left here?

41:13

Who are you talking about? Who engage in a form of civil religion that combines the worst of racial prejudices with myths of national infallibility?

41:25

These are empty words. This is, oh, man, how many more words do I have to get into this?

41:31

Oh, man, because you've got that word processor thing, you know, and down there at the bottom it's got the number of words, and you're contracted to do a certain number of words.

41:39

It's almost, because this is just, let's just throw assertions out here and see what sticks.

41:46

Let's not actually argue this. That evangelical is the false prophet leads others to bow down and worship the beast with feet made of Darwinian economics, legs comprised of corporations and colonies, a stomach of moral indifference to the suffering of others, arms made of confederacy and misogyny, and a head made of the military -industrial complex.

42:11

Well, let's give Dr. Bird the props for having spent some time with a thesaurus, but this kind of disjointed, unfounded,

42:25

I'm not going to give an example, I'm not going to argue, I'm just going to throw it out there stuff, is why the first person that I saw who posted it said,

42:34

Man, this is bad. And then when I read it, I went, Man, this is bad.

42:40

Because it is. It's just, let's throw it out there and let's see what sticks. It's empty rhetoric.

42:45

Absolutely empty rhetoric. So don't buy into the lie that acknowledging a history of racial injustice and prioritizing the pursuit of racial justice is wokeness.

42:56

Define racial justice, Dr. Bird. You're not in the United States. So define what you mean.

43:04

Because racial justice is a phrase that has been freighted with meaning that is anti -biblical in our day.

43:15

So don't play games with using racial justice in the way it's going to be interpreted by someone who reads their

43:22

Bible in the way that it's not being interpreted by the people that are teaching in the universities in Western culture.

43:29

That's the very trafficking on the abuse of language that is the mark of being woke.

43:38

Don't buy into the lie that all social justice is driven by Marxist ideology. It is not. Well, then let's be real specific as to what we're talking about.

43:50

It is what the prophets commanded, what Jesus expects of his followers, what the church has accepted as normal, and what constitutional democracies of the

43:57

Christian heritage should aspire to, not in spite of, but precisely because of their Christian heritage. And that means social justice would be defined by God's law, which means the

44:07

LGBTQ movement's right out, right? Dr. Bird, do you believe in marriage of one man, one woman?

44:13

Will you stand up right now and say, there is no marriage of two men or two women?

44:19

Yes or no? How about transgenderism? Because if you're going to say that, you can't back off.

44:26

If you're going to say this and then turn around and say that, that's called hypocrisy. Don't do it.

44:32

Don't do it. Let me be clear. Love of your neighbor requires you to be concerned for the just treatment of your neighbor, whether they are

44:40

Black, Hispanic, First Peoples, I'm assuming that's in Australia, LGBT, that's not even a proper definition of a group, migrant,

44:51

Muslim, working class, or even Baptist. Any derogation of a Christian's duty to be concerned about the welfare and just treatment of the neighbor is an attack on the biblical love command itself, which has nothing,

45:02

Dr. Bird, nothing to do with what either Jeff Durbin or Oren Strachan did. That's your problem.

45:08

You used them as your example, and then you face -planted in backing up what you were supposed to say.

45:16

Face -planted. And you say, why are you so upset? Because he's written good stuff.

45:21

He knows better. He knows better. He knew better. I mean, a lot of the stuff that I really appreciated was written well over a decade ago.

45:32

Sometimes people change, and sometimes they change fundamentally, and I don't know, maybe that's what's happened.

45:40

But that was just, that was just bad. On every level, bad. So there you go.

45:48

I hope you understand. Someone just posted a picture of a flagpole with a cotton mask flying from it, and the title is the 2020 official flag.

46:06

It's true. It is true. Anyways, I shouldn't be looking at that.

46:13

I just didn't know if anybody was commenting on it at all. Okay. All right.

46:22

Let me get down to the other article that I said I would get to, and I've been touching on.

46:29

This is from Christianity Today, October 9, 2020. This is

46:37

Dr. Edmondson, Christina Barland Edmondson.

46:46

I played. No, I did not play. I also listened to, man,

46:54

I tell you, a lot of these things, a lot of these presentations are either from like Dort or Wheaton.

47:00

Man, all those colleges have just succumbed instantly. Moody, the walls caved in, and what that means is we will be fighting this ideology for decades to come, because the people come, and if you're thinking about sending your kids someplace, you need to understand these places are wildly compromised, wildly compromised.

47:35

But as I said, at Dort University, Dort College, whichever one it is,

47:42

Christina Barland Edmondson gave a presentation. I listened to it earlier this week.

47:48

I think it was maybe Monday. And once again, you have well -spoken individuals, know

48:03

Reformed theology, know how to utilize the language and to make arguments.

48:11

And I think, you know, I was saying we need to listen to the best. Dr. Bird's article is one of the worst.

48:17

But if you can track down that presentation from Dr.

48:24

Edmondson, she has blocked me, but you could find her on Twitter.

48:29

You might be able to probably just search for Edmondson and Dort, probably come up on YouTube, I would imagine.

48:37

I would encourage you to listen so that, because it's sort of like one of the reasons that when we would go up to Salt Lake City, we would do something called role -playing, where, as part of the training,

48:56

I would play the Mormon, and I would seek to respond as a

49:01

Mormon would respond. Because when you study a particular perspective that you feel is wrong, if all you read is your side's explanations of why it's wrong, you will find your first number of encounters to be somewhat frustrating.

49:21

Because they're not going to present it that way. They're not going to, you know, that was one of the reasons

49:26

I did Letters to a Mormon Elder the way I did Letters to a Mormon Elder. Because that allowed me to have the

49:33

Mormon dialoguing. You know, by my responding to the

49:39

Mormon missionaries' letters, I was allowing the other side to speak, so you can hear the context in which these arguments are being made.

49:48

And the danger is, as we talk about the woke ideology, sure, there are just wild -eyed leftists that are woke, that won't listen to a word you have to say, and are not overly concerned about the cogency, coherence of their presentations.

50:12

But there are some very, very bright people on the other side of this dispute.

50:20

And we need to be aware of it. And as I've said over and over again, if you're prepared for the best the other side has to offer, then when you run into something less than that, you're in good shape.

50:37

Aim high. So, what you discover from reading this article in Christianity Today, which is as woke as anything is any longer, just mark it down that that's where Christianity Today is.

50:57

That wasn't the case 40 years ago, but it certainly is the case now.

51:05

What you're going to hear in this article, and what you hear in anything that we need to respond to that is dangerous to the church, heresy doesn't walk into the church wearing a clown suit.

51:24

When people come into the church, and I'm not saying this about Dr. Edmondson, I'm not judging

51:31

Dr. Edmondson's heart, her profession of faith, I am talking about the methodology that is utilized to bring these foreign concepts into the church.

51:46

You don't walk in in the clown suit. You dress in the same way, you use the same language, and you try to utilize as much common vocabulary as you possibly can.

52:00

Now, part of that's just smart. I mean, if I'm witnessing to a Muslim, I'm going to utilize my knowledge of Muslim theology to make sure that I'm speaking with as much clarity as possible, and utilizing language that they will understand.

52:18

So there's nothing wrong with that. But the problem is, when you read advocates of woke ideology, if you go into it assuming that everything they say is wrong, you're going to hear them saying all sorts of right things, and that's going to put you off your game.

52:40

It's going to make you uncomfortable. You're going to be a little confused. What often happens in our day, and this is what has happened to a lot of Reformed Christians, is because of the assumption that the other side is just going to be wrong about everything, when they utilize our own language, common confessions, and then just tweak a little something, and open up a little space to allow you to slide something in here.

53:12

And you do that over here, and you slide something in there. And eventually, you open up just enough space to really start widening that crack.

53:23

And eventually, you drive an entire bus of a worldview right through the middle.

53:32

And that's where a lot of people, they'll listen to the end result of what people are saying, and they go, how did they get there?

53:40

Well, it took some work. It took some work. So in this article, it's not the world's longest article.

53:51

This is very similar to, because they're in the same group. They do the same thing.

53:59

Very similar to what Jamar Tisby did in The Color of Compromise.

54:04

What you do is you go back into primarily American history. This is all very

54:10

Americanized, even though it's being exported elsewhere, and it becomes poison when it's exported elsewhere. Well, it's poison here, too, but super poisonous when it's exported elsewhere.

54:20

You go back into American history to events that a large portion of your history classes didn't cover, especially issues relating to lynchings, riots, battles.

54:42

And there have been. It's amazing. There have been such things in the past that a lot of people are unaware of.

54:53

So, for example, let me pull this up here real quick.

54:59

I had it queued up before, and then I think I turned the computer off, and that's what happens.

55:06

She makes reference to some race riots that took place, I think, 1919, 1921.

55:15

And it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to pull this up, what I had open, but that's what

55:23

I get for not having everything queued up here. So, the race riots of Oklahoma, Chicago, St.

55:29

Petersburg, and Atlanta. The history before them seeded the great migration that forced families like mine to journey from Mississippi to Maryland.

55:38

Some follow the call of our escaped, enslaved ancestors, even past the borders of the United States. And so you start talking about stuff, horrible things that have happened in the past, especially because of what happened after the end of the war in 1865.

55:57

I think one of the worst things that ever happened for race relations was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

56:05

Because what happened in the South, the treatment of the

56:12

South by the North, led to an entrenchment of, well, the

56:19

Democratic Party. The founding of the KKK. People don't realize it was the

56:25

Democrats. The Democratic Party. And people say, well, that was way back then.

56:32

Well, why are you still talking about the rest of it, if it was just way back then? Not only that, but the

56:39

Democratic Party, modern period, can't get away from Robert Burke.

56:47

You can't. There are too many pictures of that guy with people who are still, like Joe Biden, who are still in Washington all these years later, who was a grand wizard of the

57:02

KKK. And if you go back to the 1960s, who passed the civil rights legislation against the

57:11

Democrats? It was the Republicans. How many people, as you're walking down the road, know this? If you walk down almost any university campus and just ask, how many of those students know that the

57:24

Jim Crow laws and post -Civil War everything was the Democratic Party doing everything they could to establish white supremacy in the

57:33

South? Eh. Well, anyway, you talk about these things, but here, let me just read you the first paragraph.

57:46

Humans were created by love, for love, to love. As such, we hold a number of love -directed freedoms that persist despite sin and distortion of our loves.

57:56

By the way, that sounds poetic, but I disagree.

58:04

We were created to worship and serve our Creator in love. So love is always there.

58:10

God is love. But when you make love the only aspect, it always becomes something that's wildly out of balance.

58:22

Sin, while grievous and comprehensive, does not recreate our humanity nor destroy our first -ordained purposes.

58:27

When our love and freedom and power design is restricted or oppressed by sin, we are compelled to resist.

58:32

We cry out, we push back, or seek shelter. We strategize and plan, we protest and legislate, we prophesy and lament.

58:38

We are human. Consequently, unrelenting violence in all of its forms, physical, psychological, and theological, is necessary to maintaining human subjugation.

58:50

Racism requires violence. Throughout the history of what is now the United States of America, violence, the generational scars of it, and the threat of more to come, has been an inexorable part of the race story.

59:02

Now, I stop right there and point out, slavery has existed for the vast majority of human history.

59:16

We know that going back into the earliest portions of Genesis, it's not difficult to all of a sudden, once mankind is in community, to find servants.

59:32

But we know they're slaves. Every single culture that we've encountered has had some form of slavery.

59:45

Some form of subjugation. Very frequently, because travel around the world is a modern reality.

59:57

Frequently, slavery in the past was, yes, chattel slavery, you were owned by someone else, but it wasn't based on race, it was based on tribe.

01:00:09

Because, you know, everybody around you pretty much looks like you. So there's a long history of slavery in Africa.

01:00:17

Black on black. China. Asian on Asian. Amongst the aborigines,

01:00:24

American Indians. There was the way that American Indians treated other

01:00:29

American Indians. Just primally evil. This is a part of the human experience.

01:00:38

And it goes back as long as you want to go. Which means any ethnic group, any ethnic group that wants to, that wants to go back far enough can say,

01:00:49

I've been scarred by this because my ancestors were scarred by this. As far back as you want to go.

01:00:57

And I've used the example of Alexander the Great a number of times. Probably the most brilliant military mind in history.

01:01:07

And yet, enslaved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. He's called

01:01:14

Alexander the Great, but I would imagine, you know, if someone actually read some books about him, they'd have to take the great part off.

01:01:23

So much of what we're facing today is Americanized. It has been, we are seeing the result of the educational system in the

01:01:35

United States breaking down to where we don't see where we fit in the rest of the world. We think the whole world revolves around us.

01:01:41

And it doesn't. But it also precludes us from placing the

01:01:47

United States in its context. And placing slavery in the United States in its context.

01:01:53

Historically, economically, internationally, and everything else. You're not allowed to.

01:01:59

You can't. The race riots of Oklahoma, Chicago, St. Petersburg, Atlanta, and the history before them see the

01:02:05

Great Migration force families like mine to journey from Mississippi to Maryland. Some follow the call of our escaped enslaved ancestors, even passive wars in the

01:02:11

United States. So then you have the story of the

01:02:17

Tulsa's Black Wall Street District. In the 1920s.

01:02:25

Where you had, and I look this up and the numbers are inflated, but where you had race riots, and without a doubt, had major injustices that took place.

01:02:39

No question about it. Just like the major injustices in the internment of Japanese Americans, the major injustices that Chinese immigrants faced in the century before, in the

01:02:53

West, in the building of the railroads, all those things that existed there. There have been grave injustices.

01:03:01

The nation has never lived up to the lofty ideals that were enshrined in its founding documents.

01:03:10

That's true. Happens to be true of every single nation on God's green earth.

01:03:18

We live in a fallen world. No two ways about it. Then there's this interesting paragraph.

01:03:29

A group of white men, this is about the Tulsa thing. A group of white men stormed the home of Hooker as her mother and siblings stood in fear.

01:03:41

In a fit of anger and covetousness, the intruders smashed the family's beloved piano. That senseless act tightly followed a peculiar expression of civil religion.

01:03:50

Before smashing the piano, the intruders gently removed the closed Bible that was positioned atop the piano.

01:03:57

This perverse version of Christianity bound to white supremacy effectively shoved aside the faith held by blacks before destroying property and personhood to maintain temporal and carnal power.

01:04:09

The so -called shared faith of white Christians and black Christians does not guard against the violence toward Emmett Till's, Tamir Rice's, or George Floyd's of society.

01:04:21

Okay. Now, a couple things. You can have civil religion, and that's what you had in this instance of showing respect for a

01:04:34

Bible before destroying a piano. That would be terrible, and if that happened to any of the black members of our church, look out.

01:04:44

Look out. It'd be hard to restrain folks.

01:04:50

But that's not happening today. And here's the problem. Do not join

01:04:56

George Floyd to Emmett Till's. That is a rabidly inappropriate connection.

01:05:08

If you have followed, what did I say at the time? Well, it sure would be nice if we could wait until the autopsy reports came out and all the other information comes out.

01:05:23

Was Emmett Till's, did Emmett Till's have a fentanyl overdose in his body three times the lethal amount?

01:05:32

Because when you parallel those two types of things, you're destroying the reality of the connections. You really are.

01:05:38

You're dishonoring those who honestly were the subjects. of purposeful racial violence.

01:05:48

I think, personally, if, and I don't think, I don't know that, I don't know the system works well enough anymore.

01:05:57

And I don't know that it could ever happen. But I've read the

01:06:04

Minneapolis Police Department guidelines for the restraint of someone that you suspect is,

01:06:15

I forget what the exact term was. There was some type of mania, I think, involved with it. Something along those lines. They followed the guidelines all the way down.

01:06:26

Everything. And evidently there was some type of miscommunication. The ambulance went to the wrong address.

01:06:32

That's why there was such a delay. All that stuff. Don't connect these together.

01:06:38

If you don't recognize the context of the one is different than the context, then don't put them together.

01:06:43

Because when you put something like that together with a true racial act of violence, which we're seeing going on, it's like looking at Chicago every weekend and the genocide going on there.

01:07:04

And we've just gotten so accustomed to it. And what do we do in our minds? What does everybody in this audience do in their minds when you realize, what are we up to numbers -wise in Chicago just this year?

01:07:23

It's like a war zone. Multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple times the number of black men that have been killed by cops are killed by black men.

01:07:36

And what do we all do? It's gangs. It's gangs. And as soon as you say gangs, you dehumanize both the people who are killed and the people who are doing the killing.

01:07:50

Because you figure, well, you know, gangs are going to be gangs. Right? Don't connect that with a racially motivated act which goes both ways.

01:08:07

Because you end up... We just become numb to the whole thing. How does anybody keep up?

01:08:14

What if someone was actually forcing us to see the young people, the children, dying in Chicago?

01:08:22

What if somebody was... What if instead of inflated COVID numbers, you had those pictures on the screen every night?

01:08:30

You think that might change something in Chicago? But we don't have it. Not going to happen.

01:08:36

Anyway, sorry. So right after mentioning George Floyd, white supremacy's sinful dance swaying back and forth between Klansmen sheets and clergy robes, pains and plagues,

01:08:53

Christians of color, and lies to white Christians. Violence is not neutered or challenged.

01:08:59

White Christianity's very design exists to maintain false piety and sear the consciences of white people against the oppression and exploitation of blacks.

01:09:09

That's James Cone speaking. That's James Cone speaking.

01:09:16

And notice what you've done. You have taken events from 100 years ago and used that as the basis of accusation of white supremacy and seared consciences today.

01:09:34

That's what you're doing. That's what they have to do. They have to ignore the massive improvements that have taken place, especially over the past 60 years.

01:09:50

Not in the black community with black -on -black violence.

01:09:59

But in the attitudes and actions of non -whites in the acceptance of blacks into full participation in the culture.

01:10:09

And that did happen. And up until 2014, it looked like it was going great.

01:10:20

And then not so much. But this willingness to take a narrative from 100 years ago, 150 years ago, 160 years ago, and just assume it is a continuing reality today, when the reality is the greatest danger to any living black man today is another black man.

01:10:48

That's not even arguable. That's a fact. Everybody who studies the numbers knows that's the case.

01:10:55

In the United States, this is not the case in other places, but certainly is here.

01:11:02

It might be the case in other places. But it might not be. Then she talks about caste systems, gun -toting militias, vigilante neighbors, under -policing.

01:11:22

Under -policing? At the same time we're talking about defund the police? And corrupt over -policing.

01:11:30

Yeah, you can't cut a break if you're a cop one way or the other. To protect select neighborhoods from crime, this violence is even wielded or conveniently ignored by those who claim to follow the

01:11:41

Prince of Peace. This necessary violence of racism is not only physical, but deeply psychological and spiritual.

01:11:49

So you need to understand something. The very fact that I would respond to this is considered by the other side as me committing spiritual violence.

01:11:58

So if you analyze anything, if you... You've already seen it. Remember the white supremacy thing from the museum?

01:12:06

Where if you demand that people work hard, accurate in their work, or saying that, for example, demanding that you have good research behind your argumentation is colonialism?

01:12:22

You're colonizing people? That's where all this is coming from. But this is...

01:12:30

So the accusation is that's spiritual violence. And of course, it can't be committed by those who then claim they themselves are the victims of spiritual violence.

01:12:43

Because that's victim -shaming. Just like you can't have black racism.

01:12:49

Even though it's rampant, you can't have black racism. Because, well, only oppressors can be racist. Spiritual violence abusively casts people within our systems, but also in our imaginations and social media feeds with name -callings such as heretic or unbeliever.

01:13:06

Isn't it interesting when I dared say that when you're at the Lord's Supper, there can be no black spaces, white spaces, anything like that?

01:13:17

I was the one attacked as a heretic. Social power further amplifies and legitimizes these accusations.

01:13:27

How we think about our neighbor and enemy, resources and rights, duties and governance is both theological and political.

01:13:33

That's true. It is. And in fact, I would say one of the errors of American evangelicalism and certain forms of evangelicalism has been the pretense of neutrality.

01:13:51

That you actually can separate out Christ's claims from politics.

01:14:00

Moreover, our theologies are political because we have to live in light of who

01:14:07

God is. Moreover, our theologies are political because how we live in light of who

01:14:16

God is is necessarily public, civic, and embodied. I agree. We're not indiscreet on that one.

01:14:28

Excuse me. Then here we go. Spiritual violence against black

01:14:35

Americans in the political sphere means disparaging and minimizing the faith of black

01:14:40

Christians. Appealing to the notion of a singular Christian worldview,

01:14:47

Southern Baptist Seminary President Al Mohler stated in a room filled with white men that a vote for Trump in 2020 would be most in line with Christian worldview.

01:14:57

Now let me just stop. There's two sentences. How are they connected? The only way

01:15:04

I can read it is that by recognizing the worldview contrast between Marxists and non -Marxists, which is what

01:15:18

Dr. Mohler was doing, that this is spiritual violence against black

01:15:23

Americans in the political sphere and that he's disparaging and minimizing the faith of black Christians. Mohler's statement went beyond the partisan and the political.

01:15:36

His statement was theological with significant implications for the unity of the church in America. That's true.

01:15:42

It was, and he would acknowledge that. I mean, he's Mr.

01:15:48

Christian worldview, right? I mean, that's what the briefing's all about, right? So he is saying that there are definitional aspects of the

01:15:57

Christian worldview that are fundamentally negated by the left. And they are. There's no question about that.

01:16:04

Joe Biden did it just last night. Wasn't that amazing, by the way, just in passing? I did not sit down and watch both of those.

01:16:12

The vast majority of Americans didn't, from what I'm seeing. But far more people watched the

01:16:20

Trump one than they did the Biden one, because Biden is as exciting as eating stale white bread.

01:16:41

Oh, okay. What wasn't aired?

01:16:48

The Trump one? Well, anyway, the point is that Trump took on an aggressive, biased, prejudiced moderator and audience.

01:17:06

And Biden, of course, was in an almost empty room taking softballs.

01:17:12

And even in the midst of all that, wasn't even asked, wasn't even asked about one of the biggest stories in American political history, the suppression by Facebook and Twitter of the emails demonstrating

01:17:30

Biden's son's involvement in making big bucks through influence peddling.

01:17:37

Wasn't even asked. You know that if the shoe was on the other foot, that's all that would have been talked about.

01:17:44

You know that. The prejudice of the media is astonishing.

01:17:49

Don't call these people journalists. They don't know what journalism is. Journalism is dead. Dead and buried.

01:17:57

Anyway, how did I get on to all that? So here is the assertion.

01:18:08

His statement was theological with significant implications for the unity of the church in America. I agree.

01:18:15

It's worldview. Biden showed his worldview last night. Did you watch that clip?

01:18:20

I almost cued it up, but I didn't. Did you watch that clip about transgender eight -year -olds?

01:18:26

That's not a... Okay, first of all, it's just pandering. I know it's just pandering. This man will say whatever he's told to say.

01:18:34

It's sad. It is just despicable. But what he said was evil.

01:18:40

Was morally, culpably evil. It is child abuse.

01:18:48

Absolute child abuse. And yet there are woke

01:18:54

Baptists defending it today. That's worldview. That's worldview.

01:19:01

And yes, I will say, right here, right now, if you can purposely vote for someone who has promised to make sure that eight -year -olds can be injected with hormones to try to nurture them and massacre their bodies so that you can get a bigger welfare check, shame on you!

01:19:33

Shame on you! You will get what you deserve. You will get what you deserve.

01:19:40

Sorry. Anyway. As president of the flagship seminary for the largest

01:19:47

Christian denomination in the United States, his religious endorsement of a highly controversial president known for racist and sexist rhetoric and actions mattered significantly.

01:19:55

That, I listened.

01:20:00

I have listened to what Dr. Moeller said. And I recognize, and anyone, even those of you who really don't like Al Moeller at all, you don't like what he's done with the professors, you don't like what he's allowed here or there, fine, put all that aside.

01:20:17

Is that what Al Moeller did? No, no honest person can even begin to think that's what Al Moeller did. Al Moeller recognizes, look, folks, the worldview difference in this election is as wide as the

01:20:34

Grand Canyon. And if you can't tell the North Rim from the South Rim, you shouldn't be anywhere near the rim.

01:20:43

That's what he's saying. He is talking about one worldview that is absolutely consistent in its detestation of the

01:20:57

Christian worldview. He's not saying Donald J. Trump is an Orthodox Christian promoting everything that a

01:21:03

Christian would want to be promoted. But what he is saying is that Biden and Harris have signed on with everything the other side wants to push to destroy religious freedom in the

01:21:16

United States of America and to absolutely destroy human flourishing. Marriage, sexuality, you name it, abortion up to the point of birth, they're on all of it.

01:21:31

And there's no arguing that. There's no arguing that. That's what he was talking about. So to say, endorsement of a highly controversial president known for racist and sexist rhetoric, even if the racist part was true, which

01:21:44

I don't think it is, the sexist stuff, oh yeah. Remember 2015 when this first started and that picture of him in his office with the

01:21:55

Playboy cover and he's all proud of it? Oh yeah, no question about it.

01:22:01

No question about it. But that does not define the worldview that he has been defending and putting forth in his policy decisions.

01:22:15

I am no fan of Donald Trump. Most of us aren't. Why can't you get the idea that this isn't about Joe Biden and Donald Trump?

01:22:22

It is about a worldview difference that is so massive that I look at you who call yourselves

01:22:28

Baptists and realize you are voting to destroy yourself. You're voting to destroy your church.

01:22:34

You're voting to destroy religious liberty. All educational systems will come under state control.

01:22:42

That's what you're voting for. For what? Because you don't like Donald Trump.

01:22:47

Well, congratulations. Good job. Anyway, so this is spiritual violence.

01:22:57

If I dare say this argumentation is utterly without merit, spiritual violence.

01:23:04

That's what you're accused of. That's what you're accused of. Christians debate the appropriateness of religious leaders speaking so openly about their personal support of candidates and necessity of other

01:23:16

Christians to fall in line. My concern, while subtle, knocks at the door of spiritual violence. By saying one's

01:23:22

Christian worldview leads to re -electing Donald Trump in 2020. Stop! My Christian worldview leads me to try to stop

01:23:29

Marxist destruction of religious liberty and the destruction of human beings that comes from the promotion of abortion and infanticide and transgenderism and the profaning of marriage, which are all fundamental to society.

01:23:46

Why can't you see that? Why can't you allow that? Why can't you interact with that? By saying one's

01:23:54

Christian worldview leads to re -electing Donald Trump in 2020, Moeller asserts that faithful Christian theology applied to politics must draw the same political conclusions as most white conservative

01:24:03

Christian men in this country. He said nothing about white conservative Christian men. You're the one inserting race, not him.

01:24:10

You're being the racist there, not him. He's talking worldview. He's talking abortion.

01:24:17

He's talking sexuality. He's talking religious freedom. He's talking the

01:24:23

Equality Act. He's talking a fundamental makeover of the entire structure upon which freedom and liberty in this nation is based.

01:24:32

It has nothing to do with white men. This is the group that has voted and will likely vote for Trump in large numbers again.

01:24:40

Probably will. And if black Christians would wake up and look, as many are, thanks be to God, you'd be voting against Biden -Harris too.

01:24:54

If you were most concerned and first concerned about Christian worldview issues.

01:25:00

Welfare is not a Christian worldview issue. Marriage is. Abortion is. Homosexuality is.

01:25:07

Religious freedom is. Open borders isn't a Christian worldview issue at all.

01:25:13

It's an anti -Christian worldview. God made nations. Hate to mention that, but he did.

01:25:22

This same assertion, proclaimed from pulpits, tweets, and faux -confessional statements, put on trial the

01:25:30

Christian integrity and witness of black Christians who have overwhelmingly voted against Donald Trump. Black women report some of the highest levels of Bible study, charitable giving, authoritative views of Scripture, amount of time praying, and church attendance.

01:25:43

But because of their political and theological misalignment with Trump and Republican agendas, they are deemed by default biblically ignorant, and at worst, heretics, cultural

01:25:50

Marxists, and whatever new term works to caricature and discredit those holding a different view. Welcome to politically motivated spiritual violence.

01:25:57

So there you go. We know more about the Bible than you do, but we're still going to vote for the people who are going to promote homosexuality, transgenderism, profaning of marriage, abortion.

01:26:12

How does that work? So it's spiritual violence. If we go, you're being inconsistent.

01:26:19

You're allowing voices out here. You're allowing the narrative out here to determine what you're doing in here, in the church.

01:26:27

Don't do that. Here's where you start. Reject that if it tells you that to be black you have to be this way.

01:26:36

I see how my black brothers and sisters are treated who dare stand up and do the right thing.

01:26:43

I see how they are kicked out of the community. I see the terms that are used from them.

01:26:49

I saw one of those animated GIFs. Someone needs to actually come up with the final word on how you pronounce that.

01:27:00

I saw one just recently where a black man stood up against the narrative and there were people responding to him with a dancing raccoon.

01:27:12

A dancing raccoon with a crown on his head. It came from black people.

01:27:20

I see how that is. Is that spiritual violence too? I wonder when that happens.

01:27:29

Despite claiming loyalty to the same Jesus, divergent Christian worldviews historically produce people Ready for this?

01:27:35

Hold on. Despite claiming loyalty to the same Jesus, divergent Christian worldviews historically produce people like George Whitefield She does not like George Whitefield.

01:27:44

That was what the primary part of her talk at Dort was about. Jonathan Edwards, John Gresham Machens It should be

01:27:54

J. Gresham Machen and even Al Mohlers on the one hand and the

01:28:01

Harriet Tubmans, Ida B. Wells, Vashti Mackenzies and Stacey Abrams on the other.

01:28:11

Stacey Abrams? She's the daughter of ministers. Black ministers.

01:28:18

Male and female. As far on the left on every

01:28:25

Christian worldview issue possible. But there you go.

01:28:32

There's the range given to you. Stacey Abrams. So, anyway

01:28:47

The humanity of its intrinsic resistance to oppression is so evident in the Black belief in America, pushing, pressing, praying, and protesting against the violence of racism.

01:28:55

Through humor, scholarship, and art, they mock the foolishness of the caste system that places the beloved of God on the bottom. The necessary violence of racism is combated by the nonviolent and steadfast resistance of Black Christians, which reminds all of us who we are designed to be.

01:29:08

White Christians, will your shared humanity and Christianity move you from violence and violence denying to the nonviolence of empathy, solidarity, and repair?

01:29:17

Christina Edmondson is a collaborating partner with the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Author, public speaker, former mental health therapist and co -host of the

01:29:24

Truth Table podcast. Truth Table is the former Ron thing now

01:29:30

Jamar Tisby's thing. So, that last paragraph needs to be understood.

01:29:36

Again, very well laid out. The necessary violence of racism is combated by the nonviolent and steadfast resistance of Black Christians, which reminds all of us who we are designed to be.

01:29:48

So, white Christians have never been steadfast. We're all just guilty. That's the real problem here.

01:29:56

White Christians, will your shared humanity and Christianity move you from violence you're guilty of violence and violence denying to the nonviolence of empathy, solidarity, and repair?

01:30:10

That is a false dichotomy and a false offer. I'm always told, you just need to listen to our side.

01:30:19

The problem is, what your side is, you have to agree with us to listen. You have to start here.

01:30:25

You have to accept your guilt. You have to start by accepting the accusation. And we can't talk to you until then.

01:30:34

That is going to get us nowhere. That's going to get us nowhere. At all. Wow, it's been an hour and a half and I didn't get to the last thing

01:30:43

I was supposed to do. Okay, I'll be quick. Sorry. Real quickly, there was a total shift in everything is shifting here.

01:30:58

And this will just be the last thing. I'll try to keep it to just a few minutes. But it's the last one of the week and by next week we will move onward,

01:31:09

I'm sure. Shifting to I posted,

01:31:15

I think, on Twitter. Yeah. A couple days ago, I posted on Twitter.

01:31:21

Well, here's a chuckle for the evening. There is a confessional bibliology Facebook group. You can imagine there's a lot of less than glowing comments about yours, truly, in there.

01:31:29

But what I just learned is truly humorous. Guess who also posts in there? Stephen Anderson. Yes, that Stephen Anderson.

01:31:35

In the confessional bibliology group. I guess the enemy of my enemy is confessional. I put a little smiley face.

01:31:41

Now, Stephen Anderson, the last I knew, does not have a confession of faith.

01:31:49

He has preached wild -eyed sermons against Calvinism, identified it as the very spawn of Satan.

01:31:59

I would love to hear that he has repented of all these things and the only reason we don't know he's repented of all that is because his

01:32:06

YouTube channel was removed. I don't know. But that's not the real issue here.

01:32:14

The real issue is a fellow by the name of Chris Thomas. It would be one thing to say Chris Thomas has been a long -time critic.

01:32:21

That's being way too generous. I cannot say the sky is blue without Chris Thomas saying that I'm a liar.

01:32:30

I mean, that's the level of acerbic just nastiness. Just real nasty.

01:32:37

Chris Thomas wrote, well, like I said, unless White behaves more foolishly than normal, he'll be ignored.

01:32:44

But then he tries this nonsense. The irony, Stephen Anderson is more confessional than Mr.

01:32:50

White when it comes to Chapter 1. Another glowing example of Mr. White's willingness, time probably supposed to be time and again.

01:33:00

Another glowing example of Mr. White's willingness, time, engage in ad hominems and White lying that he is confessional when he has repeatedly stated he rejects

01:33:10

Chapter 1 and the reasoning of the Reformers on providential preservation. That's a mess of a sentence.

01:33:16

Number of verbs missing. But what I wanted to respond to was that I have repeatedly stated that I reject

01:33:27

Chapter 1, and the reasoning of the Reformers on providential preservation. Now, we all know that's a lie.

01:33:32

That's just a given. But I want to look at Chapter 1 and point out how it's a lie.

01:33:40

The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, infallible rule of saving faith knowledge, of saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as leave men inexcusable.

01:33:54

Yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and His will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the

01:34:00

Lord at sundry times and in adverse manners to reveal Himself and declare that His will unto the

01:34:05

Church and afterward for the better preserving and propagating the truth and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the

01:34:11

Church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and of the world to commit the same holy unto writing.

01:34:17

Notice the term holy there is in reference to the Roman Catholic concept of oral tradition, which makes the

01:34:22

Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God's revealing His will unto His people being now completed.

01:34:27

I have defended that paragraph repeatedly in debate beginning in August of 1990 at St.

01:34:34

Cyprian Catholic Church in Long Beach, California against Gerry Matitix, a former Reformed apostate.

01:34:42

So, I fully confirm that it is a lie to say that I deny it. Then there's the listing of the books, all of which are given by the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life.

01:34:52

Fully agree, have defended that canon in debate numerous times. It is a lie to say that I deny it.

01:34:58

Paragraph 3, the books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of Scripture and therefore are of no authority to the

01:35:05

Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.

01:35:11

I have defended that at Boston College and in New York against Roman Catholic apologists who said otherwise. To say

01:35:16

I deny it is a lie. Paragraph 4, the authority of the Holy Scripture for which ought to be believed depends not upon the testimony of any man of Church but wholly upon God who is truth itself.

01:35:25

The author thereof, therefore, is to be received because it is the word of God. Affirmed completely, and I would point out that if you try to say, well, you don't believe that because you believe men have to do textual criticism, well,

01:35:39

I would include Erasmus in that list. And you depend upon Erasmus. You can ignore that if you want.

01:35:46

You can play fantasy with history if you want. But I affirm paragraph 4.

01:35:53

Paragraph 5, and it's a lie to say I don't. Paragraph 5, we may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the

01:35:59

Holy Scriptures, and the heaviness of the matter, the efficacy, the doctrine, the majesty, the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole which is to give all glory to God, the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, and many other incomparable excellencies and entire perfections thereof are arguments whereby it does abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God.

01:36:16

Yet, notwithstanding our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is the from the inward work of the

01:36:24

Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts. Defended that, that's what presuppositionalism also demands, and it is a abuse of this paragraph to attach that to a particular printing of the

01:36:43

Greek New Testament. That undercuts its meaning, that undercuts its intention, that is not what it was about, and if you go there, you are the one that doesn't believe in Chapter 1.

01:36:54

Okay? Paragraph 6. The whole counsel of God, considering all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the

01:37:04

Holy Scriptures, unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelation of the Spirit or traditions of men. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the

01:37:11

Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such sayings as are revealed in the Word, and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the

01:37:18

Church common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the

01:37:23

Word, which are always to be observed. Defended that, fully affirm it, to say

01:37:28

I do not is a lie. Paragraph 7. All things of Scripture are not alike, plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all, yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and open in some place or Scripture or other, that not only the learned but the unlearned in a due use of ordinary means may attain to a sufficient understanding of them.

01:37:44

Defended in, wow, my second book, Answers to Catholic Claims, defended in Scripture alone, in print for many many years, saying

01:37:54

I deny it is a lie. Paragraph 8. The Old Testament in Hebrew, which was the native language of the people of God of old, and the

01:37:59

New Testament in Greek, which at the time the writing of it was most generally known to the nations, being immediately inspired by God and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentic.

01:38:08

So in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal to them, but because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have a right unto and interest in the

01:38:16

Scriptures, and are commanded in the fear of God to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that the

01:38:24

Word of God, dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an acceptable manner, and through patience and comfort of the

01:38:31

Scriptures may have hope. Now, clearly, I would assume this is the only foundation that could even be slightly asserted of the idea that I do not believe in chapter 1.

01:38:44

Why is it a lie to say that? Well, let's back up.

01:38:50

There are those who have made the argumentation that if you do not utilize the exact same

01:38:57

Greek New Testament that the framers would have had access to in 1689, which is not this, but is very close to this.

01:39:13

Some of them would have had the 1550, some of them would have had Beza, some would have had Erasmus, but the compilation from the

01:39:22

Elsevier brothers, which is not absolutely identical to this, this is Scribner's, but the compilation of the

01:39:27

Elsevier brothers who were not actually brothers, but anyway, was widely being used at that particular point in time.

01:39:35

Now, second thing to remember, historically, we are past the

01:39:42

Second Reformation, the rise of the Jesuits and the anti -Reformation response from the

01:39:51

Roman Catholic Church, and one of the issues that has now been developed is the issue of the Latin Vulgate versus the primacy of the

01:39:59

Greek. That's what lies behind some of this. Attacks have been made on the

01:40:05

Greek text based upon text of variation by Jesuit scholars and by Roman Catholic scholars.

01:40:11

Here is the key. They didn't have this.

01:40:19

The authors did not have this, and the only way you can interpret paragraph 8 to accuse me of rejecting it is if they did.

01:40:31

They didn't have this. They had, this is an essay on the 28th edition. This is the

01:40:36

Textus Receptus. They did not know of another text type.

01:40:42

They did not know of the number of manuscripts. They did not know there was not yet, it would be, what, 60 years before the very first semi, and I mean really, semi -critical edition of the

01:41:02

Greek New Testament that actually started to try to collate manuscripts, identify manuscripts, but it's going to be still hundreds of years before scholars can sit around and say, the reading of manuscript 33 is this.

01:41:23

Because due to communication, manuscripts being in different places, there is no catalog.

01:41:29

There's no way to, there is these are.

01:41:36

Can't exist. So, to try to read the differences between these back into this is called anachronism.

01:41:47

It is a violation of all historical parameters. Alright? So, the argument is, well, and now we heard when it says, by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages.

01:42:05

When the TR -only folks are faced with Ephesians 3 -9,

01:42:12

Revelation 16 -5, whatever it might be, pure doesn't mean pure. What did the writers mean by that?

01:42:21

What did the framers mean by that? Did they mean photocopy? They did not.

01:42:27

They did not. Did they mean printed text? They knew that there hadn't been a printed text until the preceding century.

01:42:34

They knew all of these things. They were much smarter. And so, they're not going to engage in anachronism.

01:42:42

So, if you're going to want to try to read into this an accusation of infidelity to the

01:42:50

London Baptist Confession of Faith, based upon the fact that we now know the difference between these, you are abusing the

01:43:01

London Baptist Confession of 1689 and you should be ashamed of yourself.

01:43:08

Okay? Paragraph 9, the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is Scripture itself, and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any

01:43:16

Scripture, which are not many but one, it must be searched by other places to speak more clearly, defended that many times, saying,

01:43:22

Deny it is a lie. Final paragraph, paragraph 10, the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of counsels, opinions, and ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest can be no other but the

01:43:34

Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit, into which Scripture so delivered, our faith is finally resolved, and defended that in debate all over the place, with Roman Catholics, will continue to do so by the grace of God, saying,

01:43:44

I deny it is a lie. Assertion refuted. Fully and completely,

01:43:51

I will not receive an apology. I assure you. Unless the

01:43:56

Spirit of God does an amazing work, that is not the first accusation this man has made against me, and it won't be the last.

01:44:03

But, I do like being able to point out where that kind of false accusation is, well, just that, a false accusation.

01:44:12

Alright, well, three programs this week, and went fairly long today.

01:44:18

Something tells me we'll have plenty to catch up on. I did, by the way, track down the Jamar Tisby full sermon from the clip that I played, and I'm going to get it listened to so I can see if there is any contextual foundation for the identifications that he made at the end of the sermon, and so we'll see if that results in anything or not.