Ligon Duncan - A Demoralized Man - Part 1

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So Much Deception - Ligon Duncan Part 2

00:00

All right, let's do this, we're gonna do this. I put a video on Twitter earlier,

00:05

I was all fired up. And then I went to the gym and calmed down. It's funny how that works sometimes.

00:11

But anyway, we're gonna do the Lillian Duncan thing, the entire video. And it's gonna be about 40 minutes of total content that we're gonna respond to.

00:22

I skipped the first nine because basically he just shares his testimony. And so, you know, if you're interested, you can go listen to it.

00:33

But I don't have anything to respond to it about, so I'm not going to. Not to say that there's nothing to talk about with his testimony.

00:40

I think there is, and there's a lot of theological issues there, but we're gonna just talk about the more controversial stuff.

00:47

So before we begin though, I just wanted to explain myself as far as why I think this is so important.

00:54

And I wanted to frame this in a very particular way. So you may know that, you know, those of us of the more aggressive persuasion, the

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Moscow mood type people, you know, the people that would be criticized in the same way as Moscow.

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I'm not saying we're all connected to Moscow, although obviously I am. But people of that persuasion, let's say.

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Um, when they saw this video, you might be surprised to know this, but what

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I saw was a lot of, I mean, I'll just say sadness is what

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I saw. A lot of sadness. There was certainly some anger too, and there were certainly some things that would be more derisive said about Ligon, but more than any other person, at least in a while, that I've seen, you know, do something like Ligon does here,

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I saw sadness. And I think I know where that comes from. You know, a lot of the guys in that group, you know, they've been

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Presbyterian for a while, and, you know, they looked up to Ligon, you know what

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I mean? Because Ligon is an extremely, Ligon, Ligon, is an extremely intelligent person.

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He's got a lot of knowledge, and he's got his doctrine buttoned up in general. And well, you know, we kind of knew for a while now that, you know, of course he's woke, he's basically responsible for creating

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Jamar -Tisby, and things like that. There was still a reverence for him, you know what

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I mean? Because when you disagree with somebody and their theology, but you acknowledge that they've taught you a lot, you know, they've got a lot of knowledge, they've got a lot of really keen insights into a lot of different areas.

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When you disagree with someone, you don't hate them. You don't lose respect for them, you just, you disagree with them.

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And you'll argue against, you know, what you perceive as their weakest point, like their weak points, not their weakest points, but like where you think they're weak.

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And you would continue to kind of, you know, promote or at least, you know, leave alone the areas where he thinks are strong.

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And you don't have any disdain for him, you know, but you argue against him, right?

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And, but this was different. You know, this video with Ligon Duncan, it wasn't about disagreements, at least not at the core.

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Everyone saw what I saw, and it made them really sad. Because what they saw is a man that they revere, they've got reverence for, they've learned from, they've respected, and in general, wouldn't have a problem, you know, recommending his books, even the ones they disagree with, there's still value there, there's still something there.

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Someone that has had such a positive impact on your life, to watch someone like that, get in front of a video camera, and just tell blatant lie after lie after lie with a straight face, no blushing, completely just comfortable with it, it was disappointing to a lot of people, and it made people really sad.

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And not sad in a way, like, look at that guy, he's just fallen so far, although he has.

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Let's face it, this was, in my opinion, a seminal moment for the man,

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I mean, he's really revealed his heart, you know, they say out of an abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

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And so what's going on inside of a heart that is just so comfortable lying with a straight face, with comfortable tones, lulling you into this thing, where, you know, he tells you things about people and about movements that are obviously, patently, on the face of it, not correct, they're wrong.

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And they're things that he knows are wrong, he knows. What does that say about a person's heart like that?

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And what I saw in a lot of my private groups was this sadness and this really deep disappointment, but also a fear, in my opinion, a very godly fear, where it's like, man,

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I gotta be careful, I really gotta be careful. It's just too easy, sin is crouching at the door, it wants to have you, you know what

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I mean? There's so many opportunities for you to let it have you. And even a great man like this, who

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I learned so much from, who I revered, who knows what is right, can just fall in an instant.

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This video that he did with the Nuance podcast was so pathetic, so pathetic.

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And there's a mirror here, often what he accuses the people that he's accusing here are the very things that he's doing.

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He accuses, well, we'll get into it, but he accuses like, you're driving people away from the gospel just to build a brand.

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You're lying to people to protect your dying brand. Your brand is dying.

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And that death cannot come fast enough, in my opinion. You failed the

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Ligon, you failed and are failing. And this is the desperate sort of like last, you ever get into a fight?

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Like, I mean, I've been in fights before and I've lost fights. And when you're losing a fight, you're all disoriented, but you're in a fight.

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So you're trying to do something and you just do those like flails, like you're not really aiming or like there's no strategy.

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You're just flailing your arm like a madman. That's what Ligon Duncan here, but he does it in a very buttoned up way.

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But you can't hide from us anymore, Ligon. You can put your best press suit on and you could put your best spectacles on.

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You can comb your hair oh so nicely and you can use the smoothest words around, but what you're doing in reality is flailing like a madman and it's pathetic.

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And you've thrown away this reverence that people have had just for the sake of scoring a few points against Doug Wilson.

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My goodness. It's not just Doug Wilson as we're gonna see. He actually lies quite a bit more in this video, quite a bit.

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This is a room for nuance. I mean, I guess it's room for nuance if nuance is a placeholder for lying.

08:16

I mean, this is as simple as that. But anyway, what I wanted to do is, I'm gonna do this video because the stage that we're at right now, guys,

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I think is, we're at the stage right now where we're the units in the battle that are providing cover fire for like our big units, right?

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Like we're providing cover fire for our best fighters, the people that have positions of influence.

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Like a lot of guys like you and me, we don't have a whole lot of influence, but we can and must put out that cover fire for the people that do have influence.

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And I have a few guys in mind that I think are well -positioned that you might be surprised because they're kind of adjacent to Big Eva sort of thing, that I think are well -positioned to take some serious ground.

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And it doesn't really even matter in my view why they're in it. Like, I'll give you an example and I'll tell you exactly what

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I think is going on. Al Mohler. Al Mohler came out the other day and he's pro -abolition now, the abolitionist movement, which is a movement that Ligon Duncan here lies about in this video.

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Pretends like it just sprang up out of nowhere ever since Roe versus Wade came out. Where were you before Roe versus Wade?

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It's a lie. It's a lie and we're gonna get into that. But Al Mohler came out as an abolitionist today.

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And in my opinion, I do not trust Al Mohler. You know what I mean? They don't call him Weathervane Al Mohler for nothing.

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He is sensing, in my opinion, this is my opinion, he's sensing where the wind's going and he wants to stay relevant.

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And so abolitionists for years and decades even, and decades have been laying the groundwork and moving the needle to the point where now we've got big names that are willing to say, yeah, all that pro -life stuff

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I used to do, it's not enough. It's no bueno. We must push for abolition.

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Al Mohler wouldn't do that for anything if he didn't feel totally comfortable based on the cover fire that people like you, abolitionists out there, have been laying for decades.

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It's all clear now, Al, and he's willing to go out there and say this. And I'm pretty cynical about Al Mohler, so that's a pretty cynical take,

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I get it. I'm okay with that though. I don't care why he's doing it.

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I don't care if he's just, and doing it, or maybe he really changed his mind. We'll never know because this guy flip -flops more than Al Gore.

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Was it Al Gore that was a flip -flopper? No, it wasn't Al Gore, I don't remember. So we'll never really know, but it really doesn't matter.

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Because when you're talking politically, you got to take ground how you can. And so my hat's off to the abolitionists out there.

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They're doing thankless work. Nobody's really thanking them, some people are. They don't make money doing it, not like the pro -life movement, you know what

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I mean? And a lot of people hate them. A lot of people hate their guts. And they've been doing this work with very small victories along the way to keep them going, but they're doing it because they know it's right, they're serving their master, and the only thanks that they need is the one that they get from their master for doing the right thing.

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And we're starting to see some results of that. Al Mueller coming out is a big deal, is a big deal.

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And so my hat's off to the abolitionist movement, you've done a great job. That's the phase that we're at right now, though. We're still laying cover fire out.

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Like we still need to expose liars like Ligon Duncan, because Ligon Duncan is still effective.

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He still can cause problems in local churches, you know, by saying the things he said about Doug Wilson and the

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Moscow mood and the abolitionist movement and Christian nationalism, stuff like that.

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By saying these things, this guy has lobbed a hundred grenades into your local church, because in every local church, there's a small enclave of people that appreciate some of the stuff that Doug says or appreciate some of the

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Christian nationalist stuff. And they've got motivation and they think, you know, yeah, you know, things are pretty bad right now, but they don't have to stay bad.

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You know what I mean? We're pretty far from instituting a Christian nation, but it doesn't have to be that way.

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There's no reason to think it has to be that way. We can actually move forward. We can actually do this. And this man just lobbed 10 grenades into your local church to not only say, don't do that, it's hopeless in this world or any possible world that Ligon can think of, it's hopeless.

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It's hopeless for Christians politically. That's what he said. But not only that, but also now the people that are in charge, you need to watch out for those people.

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It's gonna cause divisions. It's gonna cause unnecessary divisions. It doesn't have to be that way.

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But Ligon doesn't give one iota for your local church. He doesn't care.

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He'll bite the grenade, throw it in there, and then just walk away to his little mansion in his ivory tower.

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Not his mansion, his ivory tower. And everything's fine for him. Ligon Duncan does not care about you.

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Ligon Duncan is every single thing that I do not want my children to be like.

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He's got a nice suit on, but the suit is empty. He's got a lot of knowledge, but has very little understanding.

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He doesn't get the times. He doesn't understand what families are going through every single day.

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And if he does, he doesn't care. He's got a lot of zeal, but his zeal is wasted trying to discourage young men and their families from doing what they must in every area of life.

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Sure, he'll tip his hat to the life of the church in general, because he knows he has to.

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But when it comes to your life in the public square, in politics, in the culture, he wants to discourage you as much as possible.

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I couldn't believe it when he said, it's never going to happen in this world or any possible world. I couldn't even believe it.

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So that's what I'm aiming to do with this video. I'm providing cover fire for people that have more influence than me, that have a quicker wit than me, that have more influence than me, they're more eloquent than me, to start recognizing this kind of a man for what he truly is.

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Because this does not help the church as much as you want to pretend like it does. And this is all nuance.

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This is the most Orwellian titled podcast I can think of. If I take only this one episode,

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I mean, I've never seen the rest of the podcast. I'm sure it's great. I'm sure it's great. But if you only look at this episode, this is so Orwellian, room for nuance as I lie about my brothers and cause divisions in local churches that I don't know and I don't care and lie about all to protect my dying brand.

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This guy's losing market share and that cannot come fast enough. This kind of a person, or this kind of a perspective on Christian engagement, it's going the way of the dodo bird.

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And I, for one, I'm here for it. Let's begin because this is not all bad. And I even went back and forth.

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Yeah, 60 minutes, we're going to begin. I went back and forth on showing the whole thing because some of it

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I really have nothing to say about. You know what I mean? It's not really that big of a deal. There's controversies there, but they're not ones that I care about so much.

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But I decided to play it because, again, I don't want you to think this man is a stupid man.

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He's extremely intelligent. I think that accounts for a lot of the sadness that I saw in my private groups and a lot of the disappointment.

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So I don't want you to get the impression that I'm ripping this guy because they think I'm smarter than him. I'm not. This guy knows a lot, but he's got about an ounce of understanding.

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That's really wise of you at such a young age. I wanted them to believe the Bible because one thing that was happening was that in many of their institutions, the

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Bible was being undermined. The Baptist colleges, the Baptist seminary. You're a historian.

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You see the way things shift and move over time. The way

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I group it timeline is really back to 2012. I think if you've read

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Shylin's timeline in his book, I really think he captures it well. I think we've been in a disorienting time in evangelicalism and some of that has been the political and cultural polarization that we're living through.

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What he was asked was if he could talk about the upheaval going on in evangelicalism over the last five years.

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So that's what he's talking about. And I would agree, we are in a disorienting time. A lot of the people, again, Ligon is a perfect example.

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A lot of the people we revered and respected and learned so much from, quite frankly, they're traitors.

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They've become traitors. They've become like, we didn't make them our enemies.

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They decided that we're their enemies. They want to destroy us. You know what I mean? There's a lot happening right now, but it's an exciting time to be on the

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Lord's side. It's an exciting time, my friends. Don't ever say, woe is me. Why was I born in these times? This is the time, my friends.

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Into the church. Yeah, and it has. And so in some places, the church has just been co -opted by their left or right and is a pawn in the hands of forces that don't care anything about Jesus, don't care anything about theology, don't care anything about the gospel, but they have an agenda.

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It's a political agenda or a cultural agenda. And the church is simply the handmaiden to that.

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And that has driven some of the polarization. Yeah. Are you hopeful?

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Oh, I am. I mean, you look out at this conference, you've got 11 ,000 young people that could be doing anything over their winter break.

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And they're here. And when I talk to them, you think, number one, a missions conference? Really?

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11 ,000 18 to 25 -year -olds are gonna come to a missions conference? But when I talk to them, they say, and they're involved in organizations.

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They're involved in CRU and InterVarsity and Campus Outreach and all these other organizations out there.

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And what they say is the content of this conference is more substantial and better than any other place

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I go. And I'm thinking, okay, and when you're here because you want substance, you want you.

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And that just makes me happy. And the thing is, I meet this all over the world. Because of my job,

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I'm on every continent about once every 18 months. Here's the thing that scares these kind of guys to death, by the way.

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And that's all fine. I'm not gonna, I mean, there's things I could quibble with with some of the stuff he said in the beginning. But that's all fine, right?

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But he expresses sort of an excitement about people wanting engaging, not engaging, but meaty content for missions and theology and stuff like that.

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That's all well and good. He likes that when it comes to the theology proper, you know, the ivory tower type stuff that he kind of is insulated in.

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But when it comes to like regular everyday people, blue collar guys, you know what

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I mean? People that talk like normal people. You know, the people that don't know what panoply means.

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You know what I mean? He says panoply later in the discussion, which I could infer what it means from the context, but I still don't know what it means.

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I haven't even looked it up. But what scares these guys to death is that we actually also really do care about Christianity and we really do love the

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Lord. And we are sick and tired of being a side table discussion.

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We want Christ and what Christ's law says to set the agenda. And there's no reason, we don't see any reason why that shouldn't be.

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And also we don't see any reason why we should fear the big majorities out there that hate the

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Lord and hate his anointed. We see no reason why we shouldn't try to fight that fight and to affect the change that we want.

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We see no reason why we should fear that when the Lord is on our side. Why would we act in the public square like the

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Lord wasn't on our side? And like that the minions of Satan are so powerful.

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Why do we act that way in the public square? That's not how we talk in the church.

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But when we get out there, we act that way that we can just nibble around the edges and stuff like that.

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Now, here's the thing. This is true whether you live in Keene, New Hampshire or you live in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, I don't know.

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But in Riyadh, we've gotta be smart and act differently.

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In Keene, New Hampshire, there's different things that we can do. And it's attainable. It's much more attainable at least according to our plans than it is in Riyadh.

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That's not to say that it's not attainable in Riyadh too. It is, but there's different things to do. There's different contexts.

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There's different battles. There's different fights. And I'm so sick and tired because they're gonna say this in a minute.

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They're like, well, you know, oh, the Christian nationalism sounds, yeah, you think it's so cool. Try that in China.

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People in China know what you're talking about. It's like, yeah, I don't live in China. I'm not part of that nation.

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They've got a different situation. We've got a situation here. Our politics and our methods and our approach doesn't have to be universal.

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We've got the same Lord, but we also can apply the same Lord's same wisdom in our situation differently than we would apply it if we grew up in China.

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This is not hard. We're big boys. We can think like big boys. And so that's the kind of thing that scares someone like this to death.

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Like the kind of guy that, you know, doesn't have time to go to a mission conference, but still cares for the

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Lord and still wants to be working for the Lord. Doesn't have the money for a missions conference.

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That's another thing. These conferences, and look, my guys do conferences too, right? So I'm not saying conferences across the board are evil, but these conferences, they cost a lot of money.

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Not everybody has that, but what they find with some of these other guys, like Doug Wilson and Michael Foster, for example,

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I went head to head against him in the podcast battle and he won, and I thought he should have won. I voted for him.

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I voted for him. Because what's so good about Michael's podcast is that, and we talk a lot to the same audience, but he's got a clearer focus, a clearer niche than I do.

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I'm kind of all over the place. But what's so good about Michael's content is it's so practical.

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I stopped listening to James White, not because I think he's bad or anything, but I was, not that I'm totally done with it, but I had just consumed so much high theology content and apologetics content.

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I'd consumed so much of that, gorge on that stuff. And it's good stuff. I mean, I used to live in New York City and I had a lot of Muslim coworkers and man, his stuff was so helpful when

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I would talk to my Muslim coworkers about the Lord. It was so helpful. But the thing is, we also need this practical stuff, like everyday life, like regular life for regular people that are interacting with regular situations.

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It's just so helpful. And so he's very encouraged by the people that can spend a couple hundred dollars on a conference to go to a missions conference.

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And that's wonderful. I'm glad they're learning missions. That's wonderful. They're learning high theology. How many conferences can we have about Calvinism and the doctrines of grace?

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I guess the answer is we can never have too many of those. I don't attend them, but we can never have too many of those.

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I'm not against conferences, guys. I'm not against learning theology. I'm not. But what scares guys like this to death are when regular people work for the

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Lord and they've got regular lives and they do it in regular ways and they do it with regular speech.

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They hate that. That scares them to death. And this is a time of upheaval because we're realizing that we all don't have to pretend we're pastors in order to be faithful to the

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Lord. This will change your life. I was just talking to my brother about this. My brother is a pastor. So my brother is a pastor and I was just talking to him about this.

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And this changed my life. When I realized that the book of Timothy wasn't written to me.

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It wasn't. I am not the primary audience of Timothy. Timothy is.

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I know it sounds stupid, but Timothy is. And so there are some things in Timothy that are for Timothy and people like Timothy.

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Pastors. And I can still learn from those things, right? Because a lot of those things still apply to me for sure.

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But I'm not a pastor. And so if I try to apply Timothy the way Timothy would have applied it,

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I would be wrong. That's not the way I should read Timothy. You don't have to be a pastor to be faithful to God.

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You don't have to act like a pastor to be faithful to God. You don't have to have a life that looks like your pastor's life to be faithful to God.

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You can be faithful to God as a plumber, doing plumber stuff and spending most of your time plumbing and then spending some time with your kids.

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Pastor's job is to know the Bible and to pray and to do that kind of stuff.

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That's his whole job. When you're doing plumbing, that's what your pastor's doing. He's studying, he's reading, he's praying.

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That's not to say you don't pray, but you don't have to pray as much as your pastor. Your prayers are gonna be in the pockets of your day.

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Your prayers are gonna be at the end of the day with your children. Your prayers are gonna be around the dinner table. Your pastor does that too, but he also prays for his job.

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And sometimes I pray for my job too, and I'm struggling. But anyway, that'll change your life.

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That'll change your life. A lot of those epistles, man, they're for elders. They apply to you in certain ways, but in other ways they don't.

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And so regular people doing regular things for the Lord in their regular lives, talking plainly.

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Don't feel bad if you don't understand what lapsarianism is. Don't feel bad.

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Don't feel like you're not being faithful. Anyway, let's continue. And this is there everywhere

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I go. And so I'm very hopeful about that. I think 2024 is gonna bring us another season of -

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Discontent. Yeah, discontent, disorientation and polarization. Don't care.

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Jesus is gonna win. God's working a plan out. There are good... As long as we can get people to really care about the

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Bible and really care about theology and really care about the Great Commission, the other things will pale in comparison.

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Because when you think about the things that we have gone through that are a part of this polarization, then you look back over the 200 years of this country.

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I know he's talking about the optimism for the church, and so I'm not gonna disagree with him, of course.

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I'm very optimistic for the church. But I don't personally appreciate the discounting language of basically all of your life, essentially, is what he does.

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It's like, as long as you understand the Bible, as long as you appreciate missions, as long as you study theology, then the other things pale in comparison.

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The other things are your life, everything in life.

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God didn't teach us theology just because he wanted us to know theology. God taught us about himself because it should shape how we live our life.

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All the rest of the stuff that pales in comparison, God cares about that stuff, man.

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That's why he taught us about himself. That's why he revealed himself, because that stuff matters.

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He made that stuff. He made you in his image, and he cares.

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And I came to faith later in life, so I'm the perfect guy to talk about Ligon Duncan because he had no influence on me, none, at least directly.

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I mean, I'm sure some of the guys I listened to were influenced by Ligon Duncan, but I didn't. I didn't really know him. But I got this from a lot of guys where it was almost like my life was an afterthought.

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My life was like, he wasn't really all that concerned with it. Like, yeah, he wanted me to behave, but that was sort of just like a side benefit or like a side effect, but that's not how it is.

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He actually cares about your life, your life, all the rest of the stuff.

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When you're studying theology, that's wonderful. When you're thinking about missions, that's wonderful.

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That's the commission, right? But it's the commission to obey Christ. You want to teach people to obey

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Christ. You need to obey Christ, and your lives are important to him, and he uses your life for his purposes.

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And so to try to like make it seem like it's less holy or it's carnal to say, man,

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I really want to do what's right for my Lord. And that means that I want the best for my children.

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I want the best for my community. I want the best for my nation, and God's got the answers to all of that stuff.

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And I really should care about that stuff. I should work towards positive ends in those areas. It's part of the great commission for goodness sake.

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Don't downplay that. I know he's not like directly downplaying that here, but even just the language and the way he talks about it, it pales in comparison.

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I mean, yes, life is about knowing God and enjoying God. And it just so happens that God cares about your life as well.

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And so all the rest of that stuff, that's where we do the loving God and knowing

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God and enjoying God. Like you can enjoy your life for goodness sake. Man.

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Country. There have been other times when far more catastrophic things have been divided. Whatever could you be?

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This is the most divided we've ever been. Yeah, yeah. And so I think as long as we are discipling a generation in a deep commitment to the sole final authority of scripture, to robust historic biblical

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Christian theology, to an absolute commitment to the great commission, yeah, everything will work out.

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I don't know what the timetable of that will be, but the church needs to be discipled by the script.

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Everything will work out. When you hear these guys talk, it's like through osmosis, everything works out.

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Just study your Bible, just be committed to the great commission and everything will work out.

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Well, but that's not really the whole truth. Like it works out because people act for the

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Lord. It works out because you got guys like Nehemiah out there that are actually building the wall and fighting enemies off and disciplining the

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Israelites, pulling their beards out, beating them, making them swear oaths not to marry pagan women anymore and that kind of stuff.

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It works out because there are people acting for the Lord. And everything that people from this perspective do signals against that.

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They don't want you to have zeal to do it. In fact, later on in this video, for all the bluster about how it's all gonna work out, he later says, it's never going to happen.

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It'll never happen in this universe or any possible universe or world or any possible world. He's got zeal to discourage you, but it's all framed in what's gonna eventually work out so long as you study your

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Bible. It's not enough. Reading your Bible, it's not enough.

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I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Like every time I say that, reading your Bible is not enough or something like that,

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I lose subscribers. I mean, it's true. I'm not gonna stop saying it. It's not enough.

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You read your Bible to prepare for action. You read your Bible so you understand what

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God is like as much as you can. And you start to understand how God operates.

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You start to read about people that trusted God, and then through that reading and through that understanding you get prepared to act as you should.

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It's unbelievable. He talks about people that were tools for the left or the right and stuff like that.

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I mean, we're talking about this just barely at the heels of everyone and their mother saying you gotta get the vaccine to be truly love your

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Lord and you gotta mask up and you gotta cancel church. It's like, you're the tools.

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Don't be saying that everyone's a tool. You were a tool. That doesn't mean everyone was a tool or is a tool.

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It's amazing. It's amazing. Let's continue. And by the church, not by the world.

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And we're just struggling right now with people that are trying to play the hand of being we're the real

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Christians, but actually importing a worldly outlook and wanting to disciple the church on the left and the right with that.

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And we just need to say, we're the Bible guys. We're the theology guys. We're the Great Commission guys. And I don't know when we'll get through this period, but we will.

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And the young people that come to RTS, that come to Southern, that come to Midwestern, and I could go down the list of wonderful.

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We'll get through this period for sure. And every day we get closer to that end.

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The more your perspective falls by the wayside and goes away forever, forever, the more ground we're gaining.

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It's not because we're Christians and you're not. That's not really what it is. It's because you've abandoned so many of us.

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You've decided to have zeal to discourage us from thinking that we could actually win this thing.

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We can actually work for the Lord. The Great Commission actually will be accomplished. The nations will be discipled.

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And we're gonna not just say, it's gonna work out one day if I study my Bible, we're gonna study our Bibles. And then we're gonna go and plan and plot and act to try to make it happen.

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We're not heeding your disdain for action. We're not heeding your call, your zeal for discouragement.

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We're not heeding that stuff anymore. We used to, we used to, but not anymore.

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So it's not just all gonna work out one day. We're acting, we're working.

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We've got jobs to do. We've got good works to do. That's why we were saved. We were saved to do good works.

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And those good works, again, I always say this. If you ask a typical Big Eva type guy or a student of a

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Big Eva type guy, what are the good works that you were saved to? You would get basically the list that he said. Care about missions, read your

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Bible, come to my conference. Like, those are the good works. Those are some good works.

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Those aren't the good works that we were saved in order to do. Institutions where the

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Bible is believed and theology is sound, they know they're out of step with their culture.

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They know that. And so they've already taken a step to being marginalized.

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It wouldn't be a big deal if he was talking about, his arena of battle is ensuring sound theology and fortifying the institutions to teach sound theology and refuting error and stuff like that, because that is an important task.

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It has to be done. It's part of the fight. It's part of the fight. So if he was just saying that and that was it, he would be fine.

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Like, I have no beef with him. But the thing is he says that and then tries to discourage all other fights, discourage all other action, as if the life of a

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Christian is just about theological institutions. And it's not.

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It's not. There's other fights. There's other good works.

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And most of us have other good works besides that to focus on.

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It makes sense for a theologian or a professor or a leader of a seminary to focus on those kinds of tasks, because that's his job.

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That's his vocation. But so many of these people act as if it's the only vocation and it's the only one that really matters.

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Sure, I guess we need plumbers too, but truly the only Christian vocation that really matters and really makes a difference is theological purity and this and that.

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It's just not the case. It's not the case. And that's why your perspective is dying out, because the kind of guys that scare you to death, guys like me, having any influence whatsoever, that scares you.

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That keeps you up at night. I know it does. I know it does. You hate that he even says it.

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Later he says that it's so bad that anyone with a camera can get attention.

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And so he hates that. He hates the fact that I've got a $40 camera and I can come up here and have an influence on anybody.

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He hates that. Tough luck. Tough luck. Anyway, so we've been at this for 40 minutes.

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We're gonna stop there. It's a good stopping point. There's a lot more to cover and it's going to get a lot more spicy.

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But I just wanted to frame it this way, because I didn't have any connection to Ligon Duncan.

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Didn't really know him. But I just wanted to let you guys know that it's not pleasurable to us to see this.

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It really isn't. It's very sad. It's very sad. It's very sobering as well. A lot of my friends took this very hard.

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The lies, just the comfortability with lying. But also it served as a warning to so many of us that there's always opportunities.

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There's always opportunities to lie, to deceive, to sin. Always, they're always available to you.

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And it can happen just like that. In a moment of weakness or getting defensive, it can happen just like that.

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And it just, anyway, let me just say it. Just like that.