Voddie Baucham Answers Questions on Social Justice and Christianity

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm John Harris. We have a guest with us today, Dr.

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Vodibakum, who has just released, I guess now it's been a few months, but a very successful book,

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Fault Lines, and you can find out more about Vodibakum at vodibakum .org.

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Welcome Dr. Vodibakum. Thank you very much. I've been looking forward to this, man. Yeah.

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Well, thank you for writing the book that you did. I just want to ask, it's been successful, I know. Can you give us some metrics?

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Do you know how many books you've sold or anything like that? I think there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 ,000 in print now, and they just did another printing.

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Praise God. Well, that's awesome. I was happy when I read your book, and one of the things that a lot of people who are trying to fight the social justice movement are afraid to do is name some of the names, and you named quite a few of them, which

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I just want to thank you for having the bravery to do that. Yeah.

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I don't know if it was bravery or ... One of the interesting things about that, a lot of people have been scandalized by that, and there are a couple of things that come to my mind.

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Number one, I didn't slam anybody. I didn't come after anybody.

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I was giving examples of things that people have said, and even when

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I did, I tried to be as gracious as possible and say, there could be a number of motivations for this kind of thing.

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A lot of these guys were my friends. A lot of people forget, I was a TGC council member, so a lot of these guys were my friends that I was naming there.

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The other thing is that people don't understand the other side of that.

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It wouldn't have made sense if I had said, we've got this huge issue within mainstream evangelicalism, and then never gave an example of it.

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I mean, that would have been pretty ridiculous, right? Because there are people out there who haven't heard those quotes, who haven't seen those things.

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The other thing that comes to mind is just, I'm from a different perspective.

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When you write things and read things in academic circles, there's interaction, there's pushback.

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That's not something that people get hurt over or upset over.

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That's the kind of thing that you expect. For example, I love the piece that Wayne Grudem did responding to John Piper.

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I quoted that same information from Piper in the book, and Grudem thanks

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Piper for helping him strengthen his argument against John in his piece.

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That's the kind of thing that you do. I think one of the reasons that people are uncomfortable with the naming names things, number one is the 11th commandment, thou shalt be nice.

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We don't believe the other 10. I think another thing is we live in a culture that despises masculinity.

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Naming names and being willing to stand up and do that is a very masculine thing.

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Not macho, rah, rah, beat your chest, but I mean manly and masculine in the most authentic and genuine terms.

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I mean, as men, we disagree with one another. When we disagree with one another, we don't take our toys and run away.

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When somebody disagrees with us, we don't run and hide. We can have respectful disagreements.

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Anyway, I'm glad that people appreciate that, but I'm also really bothered by the fact that so many people are so uncomfortable with it.

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Yeah, well, I think you were gracious and you were accurate, and that's the two important things, speak the truth and love as you do it.

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I wanted to read, this is the longest question I have, so everything else is short. This one is a paragraph, but it's a specific situation.

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The reason I wanted to read it is because when I was asking listeners, what would you like me to ask

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Vodie Bauckham, in this version or this sentiment,

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I've received multiple versions of it by email. I think a lot of people are going through this, so here's what it says. Thank you.

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Well, it says, I read the book Fault Lines and thought it was spot on. Gave a copy to our pastor who is leaning woke.

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Disturbed by his response back, he thinks Vodie is unbiblical to name names like Al Moeller, and I don't think you actually named

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Al Moeller, but this pastor, I guess, thinks you did. I did, actually. Oh, did you?

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Okay. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of places. Well, yeah, and I don't know if that, maybe that was in my drafter.

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I just forgot. So, okay, I'll stand corrected. You did name Al Moeller. The Gospel Coalition, et cetera, and called

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Vodie arrogant and petty. How does Vodie respond to the opposition, Christians or those calling themselves

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Christian pastors, leaders calling him names? I'm wondering, as I consider my response back to my pastor,

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I'm full defense for Vodie, and this is the last olive branch to our pastor as we've decided we have to leave this church and find a new church home.

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Now, this breaks my heart to read this, and I've seen so many versions of this, and I'm sure you have.

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What's your thought on this? What advice would you give? Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm.

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Read the book of Second Timothy. Paul names names in at least three different places there in Second Timothy.

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In the disagreement between Peter and Paul, there's a name naming and a recalling of the incident.

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We have biblical precedent for naming names. The other thing is, as I said, it's important that we're honest with one another, and it would not have made sense for me to write about this issue and not give examples of what's happening.

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Also, it's implied in Titus 1 .9, an elder has a responsibility to hold fast to the trustworthy word is taught, so that he may exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict.

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Not just refute the contradiction, but refute those, refute the ones who contradict the sound doctrine.

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So we not only have biblical precedent, we have a biblical mandate to name names when necessary.

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Yeah. Has this cost you at all friendships, personal friendships, speaking opportunities, things like that?

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Oh, Lord, yes. Yeah, but it's been costing me for a long time. This was just kind of the final nail in the coffin.

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But, you know, I've been shut out of Big Eva for a number of years now, and it really goes back to my article that showed up in the

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Gospel Coalition about the Michael Brown case. I remember that. Yeah, the one that broke the internet.

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Yeah, that's still their most popular article, I think. It's still. Yeah, maybe. I haven't checked.

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But, you know, since that moment, there has been this sort of steady march away from me.

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So, you know, did this book cost me? Not really. You know, have people been more vocal?

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Have there been more people, you know, to come to the party on the other side?

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Yeah, there have. But, John, I don't do this because I want to be popular.

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Anybody who knows me, knows anything about me, knows anything about what I've been writing since 2004,

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I published my first book in 2004, The Ever -Loving Truth, right? Can Faith Thrive in a Post -Christian Culture? So I've been dealing in cultural apologetics for a long time.

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I've been holding positions that people have disagreed with for a long time.

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You know, a funny story. I can't remember the year exactly that I first spoke at the

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Shepherds Conference. But the year before I spoke at the Shepherds Conference, there was a breakout session, basically naming me and taking issue with a position that I took.

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It was a position on youth ministry, for example, that's really controversial, right? And so I was there the year before.

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Anyway, it's a funny story. I preached at the Master's College. Johnny Mac was in the audience.

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We had never met before. And he came up and he said, I want you to preach that message at Shepherds Conference.

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Well, this was in February when they were having their big deal at the Master's College. So I went back to my church and I'm like,

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Johnny Mac wants me to preach at the Shepherds Conference. And they said, really? When? I said, I don't know.

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They said, well, Shepherds Conference is in a month or so. So I just bought a ticket and went to the

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Shepherds Conference just in case he made that year. He was talking about the next year, but yeah, that's right.

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So there's this breakout session dealing with this issue of youth ministry or whatever.

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And Austin Duncan is doing the breakout session. He's naming me by name and staking out a position opposite to mine.

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Well, afterwards, I took Austin out to dinner. We sat and we talked.

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I invited him to come to our church and give that same presentation where he was taking issues with things.

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And so the next year when I'm coming to preach at the

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Shepherds Conference, according to John MacArthur, I was the most controversial invitation that he ever extended.

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Yeah, the most controversial invitation he'd ever extended. And so Austin Duncan actually became my defender at grace as I was preparing to come to the

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Shepherds Conference because of the way that we had dealt with these things the year before.

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So I mean, I've been controversial for a long time, man. And what

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I've learned through being, again, not intentionally controversial, I'm just a person who has strong convictions and I stand by those convictions.

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I'm not a person who tends to go with the flow and that tends to ruffle feathers.

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But it is what it is. Yeah, well, I mean, that's a great example. In fact, my next question was on this kind of tone issue.

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How do you communicate, shout the warning call, if you will, to the sheep when they're only used to hearing soft whispers in their ears?

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They don't want to hear someone who's Paul Revere riding down the street. And you are known kind of as a man's man, someone who is very direct.

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I mean, just everything about you. But at the same time, given the story you just told, you're gentle when it comes to talking with someone you disagree with.

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So how did you get to that point? Because I don't know, were you always like this? I get the impression you weren't. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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I just, yeah, I've been doing this for a long time. You know, and the other thing is

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I've been married for 32 years. I've got nine kids. That'll humble you.

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That'll humble you. And also just, you know, serving the local church. That's been another thing, you know, serving the local church, serving with local church elders and those things just kind of keep you grounded.

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And being in the battle for so long, you just learn.

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It only takes a couple of times for you to be in the battle and overstep, for you to realize that when you do that, even when you win, you lose.

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You know, I mean, there's still some areas where I'm not as gracious as I'd like to be.

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For example, I'm not on Twitter. Like I have a Twitter page and sometimes you'll see things pop up, but I don't engage on Twitter.

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I tell people I'm not sanctified enough for that. Yeah, I don't know if I was either. I got rid of mine.

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That's a whole other story. But so one of the things that I saw when

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I was reading your book that I was actually really intrigued by and impressed by was you have no, you wrote about your own personal story in your book,

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Fault Lines. And we have a little bit in common, not like a lot, but like I was born in Los Angeles.

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I went to Southeastern. There's a few places that I find similarities, but you were you're proud of who you are.

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You're proud to be a black man. You're proud of your ancestors who overcame slavery.

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I've been doing a lot of reading right now. I've been reading about John Jaspers, a slave preacher in Virginia, amazing man of God.

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And I've always had heroes like Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. And there's these great figures in black history that don't seem to get the press that others do.

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And I wanted to just pick your brain on that for a minute because there's a great you're not ashamed of your culture.

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I love that about you. And but yet at the same time, you're not woke. And some black leaders think that you have to be woke if you love your culture.

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So can you parse that out for us? Yeah, well, the thing about it for me.

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Is not as much my culture as it is my heritage.

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Okay. I have great respect for the people from whom

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I come. I have great respect for the people who raised me. I have great respect for the people, you know, for my ancestors who survived, you know, slavery.

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I talk in the book about the first time I came to Africa in 2006. And just that sobering, you know, experience and understanding.

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I mean, that's incredible. By the way, that's one of the things that I hate the woke. One of the reasons I hate the woke stuff.

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Because the woke stuff talks about black people as though we are the weakest, most helpless, useless people in the world.

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Like we can't do for ourselves. We can't overcome. When the fact of the matter is there are very few groups of people in the world who have overcome what we have had to overcome.

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Those of us who are descendants of slaves in the United States. It's incredible that we've gone from where our ancestors were to where black people are in America today.

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So it sickens me when people talk as though, you know, with this sort of weak, kneeling mouth, you know, constantly triggered, you know, spineless group of people who can't do anything for ourselves.

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So for me, it's about my heritage. It's about those people who raised me. It's about me acknowledging the fact that I didn't just show up here, but that I'm here because of investments that were made in me.

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So for me, it's not so much, you know, like all things black as much as it is my heritage.

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And when I say that, I'm acknowledging the fact that blackness is not a monolith, right? There are parts of black culture that I'm not proud of.

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There are parts of the culture that I grew up in and I experienced that I'm not proud of.

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The members of my family who were drug dealers and drug users and gangsters, the members of my family who've been in prison and some who've died in that life, right?

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The men in my family who have run away from their families. I'm not proud of that.

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So from a cultural perspective, there are a number of things that I shun, that I'm not proud of.

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But as far as my heritage, I'm grateful for those people who are the reason that I am who

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I am. Yeah, I've often wondered if that is one of the, cure is too strong a word, but one of the ways to kind of offset this is to really obey the fifth commandment, to really obey the fifth commandment and to honor your father and mother and by extension, your ancestors.

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They're not all perfect, but to find your identity, obviously for Christians, it's in Christ. First, it's in the church, but also to recognize that God has, as you just said, you didn't come here by accident.

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None of us are. I'm not here by accident either, but it humbles you to think about that.

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And I just, I wonder if that's kind of, there's a vacuum cause because of father hunger in these things and that, and the woke movement takes advantage of that and says, this is your identity.

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Anyway, I'm kind of going on my own sermon here and I don't mean to do that. I wanted to, I wanted to ask you a little bit about your ministry.

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I know you're in, I believe it's Zambia, right? Yes. And in,

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I know Africa is a big place of people in the United States. Sometimes we don't think of it that way, but. Talk about it like it's a country.

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Yeah, it's not. Uh, so yeah, it'd be like asking you about what's going on in Mexico or something and, you know, but, but there is a lot going on in South Africa right now.

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A lot of violence, doubting about it a minute ago before I press record. Um, what's it, do you see in South Africa kind of the same ideas that you wrote against in fault lines playing out there maybe in, in a more aggressive form?

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Absolutely. Um, I, I see those things. And the interesting part about this is that it comes from the same roots.

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I've, I've been having this, um, uh, internal struggle lately because a lot of people are inviting me, um, to do interviews and to talk about critical race theory.

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And I'm happy to do that, but my book is not about critical race theory. The book is about the critical social justice movement, which is bigger than critical race theory.

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It's about critical theory and people need to understand that when you're talking about critical race theory, critical pedagogy, um, you know, feminist theory, queer theory, all of these things come under the umbrella of critical theory, which is neo -Marxism.

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And so when I'm looking at South Africa, I'm seeing a country that went whole hog, not just neo -Marxist, but classical

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Marxist, right? Um, it went whole hog in that direction, as did Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is our direct neighbor to the

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South. And then on the other side of them, we have South Africa. So we're, we're, we're in the neighborhood, you know, with South Africa, but living in this part of the world,

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I, I see Marxism up close, like unveiled, unapologetic

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Marxism. Um, you know, people who, who celebrate, you know, Marxism and it's not a pretty thing and it doesn't work.

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And so what I'm dealing with here in Fault Lines is

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I'm dealing with this ideology. And that's another thing people just sort of haven't been able to wrap their heads around that I'm standing on a wall that I've been standing on for a long time.

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I've been talking and writing about, you know, um, sort of neo -Marxism,

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Gramscian neo -Marxism since 2005, 2006, you know, when people would look at me and their eyes would kind of glaze over, um, you know, so I've been standing on this wall for a long time and, and shouting that, that this enemy was, was, was at the gate, um, and then shouting that this enemy was within the gate.

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Um, so it, it's interesting to me, you know, when, when people sort of say that I'm trying to curry favor with white people, that's my favorite one, right?

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That I'm doing this because I'm trying to curry favor with white people. Um, man, I've been talking about this for a long time and it has nothing to do with, you know, who's white or who's black or whatever.

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Um, you know, in my, in my dissertation, I, I take issue with black liberation theology.

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Um, so, you know, my, my dissertation was on, um, um,

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It's okay. It was a long time ago. I mean, I, yeah, no, no, no, no, no,

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I was, I was, I was getting ready to say neo, um, but it's, it's, it's, it's not neo.

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It was on the nation of Islam. Oh, it almost came out. It almost came out in neo -Islam. Neo -Islam.

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They probably think of themselves as that. So it's neo -Islam. Yeah. So my dissertation was on the nation of Islam.

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Um, and so, you know, I'm dealing with black nationalism and black liberation theology and really

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Marxist underpinnings, you know, of, of, of those things there. So this, this is, this is just not new.

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Yeah. Well, how bad of a shape are we in, in the evangelical church, whatever that means anymore, but the reformed -ish evangelical church,

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I mean, is it, is it stage four cancer? I mean, where, where are we really at in your mind? Yeah, we're in bad shape.

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That's why I use the fault lines metaphor. Right. And, and people thought that I was sort of, you know, overstating the matter by making the subtitle, you know, social justice movement and evangelicals looming catastrophe.

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Um, that that's not hyperbole. Uh, I really see this as being catastrophic and it's already become catastrophic.

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You know, this, I hear you talk about it all the time, you know, churches that are being divided, denominations being divided, families being divided, um, universities and seminaries.

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Um, this is huge, man. This is hugely problematic and people have staked out, um, positions that are irreconcilable.

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Now you're, you're a big sovereignty of God guy. Um, in fact, someone, someone, one person asked me, uh, could you ask

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Vodi how many of the five points of Calvinism he believes? And I wrote him back. I said, you already know the answer to that.

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I'm pretty sure. You believe that God has a purpose in all this.

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And that's one of the hard things. I got a question about it from someone. They wanted me to ask you what's God's purpose.

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Why is He allowing the destruction of my country, of my church, of everything that I know around me?

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It just seems like it's being destroyed by this neo -Marxism critical theory. What's God thinking?

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What's He doing? Yeah, well, God's being God. Um, the center of gravity of Christianity has moved, uh, many times, right?

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You talk about Jerusalem being the center of the Christian universe initially, and then you talk about places like, you know,

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Athens and, and then you talk about, you know, continental Europe, um, and then

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Great Britain and then the United States. And in every one of those instances, there were things that were lamentable, right?

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It's, it's, it's sad when you see these great Christian, um, entities, these great

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Christian societies, these great Christian movements, um, you know, sort of fall off the scenes.

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But every time there's a next thing, um, because, because this is not the kingdom.

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The kingdom of God is undefeated, right? And one of the problems that we have as Americans is that we, for the most part, have not lived the same

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Christian experience that the overwhelming majority of Christians have lived. The overwhelming majority of Christians in history have been in the minority.

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The overwhelming majority of Christians in history have been maligned, right?

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And so in the United States, we're used to being the 800 pound gorilla, right?

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Um, we're used to being able to do virtually anything that we want to do. And we just sort of assumed that that was the way things were supposed to be because God likes us more than he likes everybody else.

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But America is not the kingdom of God. America is not the new

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Israel. We are not the new Jerusalem. I mean, ultimately it's Egypt, it's

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Babylon. And, you know, this is not something that I'm saying now. This is something that I've been saying for a long time.

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And I'm okay with that because I believe the sovereignty of God. Now, I also understand, right, that in Jeremiah 29, you know, what does

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Jeremiah tell them to do? To build houses, to plant gardens, to marry, to give in marriage, to pray, you know, for, again, to pray for their captors, right?

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In the midst of captivity, what do you do? You prosper and you cause the place where you are to prosper.

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And you trust God, even when you're in the midst of this place of captivity. As a black person, as a descendant of slaves, that has a whole nother meaning, you know, for me, because I'm a descendant of people who did that, who had to do that.

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And the beauty of it is I'm the answer to their prayers, right?

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Which again, blows my mind when I hear people complaining and talking about systemic racism, right?

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My ancestors could not or would not in their wildest dreams have anticipated me having the experience in America that I've had, like not in their wildest dreams.

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Black people in America are the wealthiest, freest, most prosperous black people in the history of planet

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Earth, period, period. That's just the God's honest truth.

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And, you know, so anyway. Yeah, that's a very good word. I hadn't even thought of that, the center of Christianity moving, but God does have a plan, and I know sometimes it's hard to see it.

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Yeah, and if it hadn't moved from continental Europe to Great Britain, to the

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United States, we just, we wouldn't even be talking about what we're talking about, right?

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Yeah. I mean, it happens. Well, here's a, this leads right into another question, and I'll combine two of them here.

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One listener asked, well, what do we do now? What's the next step in the, this person I think is very reformed.

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What's the next step in the Reformation? How do we keep reforming? But then someone else also asked, how do we combat this if we're supposed to?

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And like, isn't that in conflict with preaching the gospel? Like, are we even supposed to engage this social justice movement?

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So I'll ask you both of those questions, because I think that'll probably be the same kind of answer.

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What do we do? And is it wrong for us to kind of shed some light on this, given that our mission is to preach the gospel?

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Yeah. So we already talked about Titus 1 -9. So hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that you can exhort in sound doctrine.

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And a lot of people want to stop there. A lot of reformed people want to stop there, right? No, no, no.

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We're just supposed to have good doctrine and teach good doctrine. You know, that's all we're supposed to do.

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But then the other one is refute those who contradict it. That answers the question, should we be dealing with this issue?

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We are commanded to refute those who contradict it, right? Jude makes that very clear.

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You know, when Jude says that we're to contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all handed down to the saints.

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Well, what does that mean, right? He talks about those who crept in unnoticed. And, you know, he talks about those who deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.

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We're to contend with them, not just to, you know, I'm going to have really good doctrine and teach really good doctrine, and I'm going to hope that that, you know, no.

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Then Paul, and this is kind of where I end up in the book, in 2 Corinthians 10, right?

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We want to do, we want to take every thought captive to obey Christ, right? Amen, hallelujah, praise the

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Lord. Good reformed boys and girls take every thought captive to obey Christ. But what does he say before that?

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He says, we destroy arguments and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God. In every one of these instances, it's a both end.

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It is, yes, we hold firm. Yes, we have sound doctrine. Yes, we preach the gospel.

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Yes, we reach the laws. And yes, we destroy arguments and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God.

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Yes, we refute those who contradict sound doctrine. Those things are not mutually exclusive.

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And in fact, another thing that people do is they say, well, we're supposed to be loving.

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And, you know, all that, you know, war language and refuting this and that is just not loving.

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But the interesting thing about that is the most loving thing you can do is tell somebody the truth.

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That's right. The most loving thing you can do, if you believe in hell, if you believe that Jesus came to die for sinners who need a savior, then the most loving thing you can do is tell them the truth about that savior.

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Amen. No, absolutely. It seems like there's the social justice side, not just the social justice side, but I don't know if it's a pietist strain in Christianity as well.

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They're sort of pulling all stops to prevent Christians from being able to teach their children, respond to this.

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And I see especially, I'll ask you this with children as they get into their teenage years, they go to college.

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I can't count the number of people I know personally, who I thought were on a decent, solid track.

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And then they go to college and they become, they leave the church. They're woke social justice warriors.

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Sometimes it happens instantly. Sometimes it takes time. But there's a religious conversion that happens.

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And these are people who grew up in the church. What's going on there? Is there a mass apostasy kind of thing?

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And we can think of even public figures like Josh Harris and others. Do you have any thoughts on that?

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Yeah. And my thoughts are these, it goes back to what we talked about before. This stuff is not new.

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We have been swimming in this neo -Marxist stream for a very long time.

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And what, 85 % of Christians send their children to the government for their education, right?

32:47

We've been swimming in this stream for a long time. And a lot of churches, a lot of our churches, a lot of our leading churches and a lot of leading evangelicals have been preaching a gospel that is sort of bathed in this neo -Marxist ideology and bathed in pragmatism.

33:10

So again, this is not new. This stuff is not happening overnight. You know, we, to borrow an illustration from this part of the world, you know, we let the camel get his nose in the tent a long time ago.

33:28

Well, it seems like maybe it's revealing what's already been there. That's what you're saying. It's not new.

33:34

And that made people think of it that way. Out of nowhere, all of a sudden, 2020 happened. And no, this was decades, even a century, perhaps, we were leading up to this.

33:45

And let me say this too. Let me say this too, because I don't want to downplay the importance of the moment, right?

33:51

It's not just that there's been this slow boil and all of a sudden, we're now seeing it.

33:57

It's also the fact that these ideas are so potent and so pernicious that they do have catastrophic impact on people.

34:12

So it's not either or, it's both and. Yeah. Well, switching gears a little bit, if that's okay, there's some people who want to know some personal things about you.

34:22

Not too personal, but just a little bit about just how you carry yourself, the habits of your life, devotionally.

34:31

Some people struggle with that. Nothing changes as far as Christians who struggle to walk with the

34:38

Lord in times of calamity and strife and with a pull of the world, with pornography, with all the things that are out there.

34:45

How does Vodie Bachum guard himself against that? Yeah. You know, it's interesting.

34:53

People talk about the big struggle with pornography or the big struggle with ABC, XYZ.

35:02

As though, if we deal with that, then we'll be good and the struggle will be over.

35:12

No, not at all. I think about it in terms of professional athletes.

35:20

When you're playing football, peewee football, right? You got the little kids playing football.

35:26

You're happy if you can just get everybody in their position for a while. Facing the same way, right?

35:32

I mean, you're just happy when you can do that, right? Then you get to high school. Then you get to high school and you start paying attention to more intricacies.

35:43

Then you get to the NFL and that was a six -inch step. It should have been a nine -inch step, right?

35:50

You see smaller things. And as believers, this is what we have to realize. That when we're new believers, we think that it's all the big stuff.

36:02

And if I can just tackle the big stuff, if I can just not look at porn, if I can just read my

36:08

Bible regularly, if I can just deal with the big stuff. And then what happens is when you deal with those things, you recognize that those things came from somewhere.

36:19

And that in your heart, there's something far more significant out of which all of this flows.

36:26

So for me, that's what I'm trying to learn to wrestle with.

36:37

Because there's a lot of this stuff that I'm not thinking about. I don't talk about it. I don't spend a lot of time talking about porn or whatever.

36:47

But there are things in me that are so much worse. There are things in me that are so much significant.

36:54

And I need the Lord, not just day by day, but hour by hour, because of this brokenness that is being healed.

37:08

There's this already, not yet, reality. And one of the reasons I said that to get back to what we're talking about is, a lot of people think we really need the

37:18

Lord every day. We really need our Bible reading. We really need our devotion. We really need the church. Because of these big things out there.

37:26

No. You know, I need that stuff. Period.

37:33

But I need that stuff because of things that people outside of me would never see.

37:41

You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a good word.

37:49

It is. I know a lot of people look up to you and want, and sometimes if you lack spiritual direction in your local area, which

37:57

I believe everyone should try to be part of a local church. That's our calling. But they want to know, you know, how do

38:02

I live this Christian life? When I feel like at my job, they make fun of me. And they're using foul language and all these things.

38:09

And it's, you know, it is a struggle. But, you know, praise God. He does give us the spiritual tools that we need for that.

38:18

I wanted to find out, too, as far as future plans. I know, and I should have opened the podcast with this,

38:26

I think. But I'll talk about it now. You had a major medical emergency not that long ago.

38:33

And I know a number of us were praying for you. And we're so overjoyed that it seems like you're better. I don't know if you're 100%.

38:39

But what's going on with that? Are you able to continue what you were doing before?

38:47

Yeah, man, I'm doing great. That's awesome. You know, I finished a January tour in the

38:55

U .S. And, you know, was having some issues at the end of that tour. Turns out I was in heart failure, you know, even throughout that tour.

39:03

It's interesting because, you know, that last weekend, I was doing an event.

39:10

I preached, what, seven times over that last weekend. And I think that Saturday, I had to preach a number of times.

39:20

And I would preach, and then I'd go back to the green room and have to lay down. And I'd fall asleep.

39:27

And they'd give me up to, you know, to go and preach again. And I'm just thinking, man, this tour is just, you know, because it was, it was 18 days.

39:36

And then 17 days of preaching, I had one day off in that 18 -day period. Most of those times, preaching multiple days.

39:42

So I kind of chalked it up to, hey, you know, I'm getting a little older. That was a rough tour. Not to mention the 40 -hour flight, you know, to get there to do that.

39:51

But when I came home, I realized it was something a lot more than that.

39:57

And I felt like I was being waterboarded every four or five minutes.

40:04

You know, I couldn't sleep more than 15, 20 minutes at a time because I'd wake up gasping for air.

40:12

So long story short, man, we ended up leaving and going back to the

40:18

U .S. early in February. Ended up at the

40:23

Mayo Clinic. My immediate problem was an arrhythmia that I had and tachycardia.

40:29

So my rhythm was bad and my heart was racing between 130 and 160 nonstop for several weeks.

40:38

So had a procedure to take care of that. And that happened on February 25th.

40:44

And I started, you know, my recovery and everything. And then, you know, just as I was sort of getting some final checks, there was a couple of things that they really wanted to look at.

40:55

They went and looked at my heart again and found some blockages. And when they did that, they just immediately checked me in again and scheduled me for open -heart surgery and had a quadruple bypass.

41:09

And the tech who sort of was looking at the pictures and everything, when they did that, he was like, how's this guy walking?

41:18

A couple of my arteries were 100 % clogged. My main artery, the widowmaker, was over 80 % clogged.

41:26

I mean, it was just bad news, man. Yeah, I was a walking time bomb.

41:33

But they fixed it. I'm back in the gym. I would be back at jiu -jitsu if it wasn't for the fact that we're on a total lockdown here in Lusaka now because of this, you know, third wave of COVID.

41:46

You know, we've lost three people in our immediate circles in the last two weeks. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

41:52

So it's hitting there differently than it sounds like for a different time. Yeah, here it's not so much the disease as it is the medical care.

42:02

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad that you're doing a lot better.

42:08

Praise the Lord for that. Yeah, man, they fixed me. You know,

42:13

I have a doctor friend in Mississippi. And, you know, when we found out about this,

42:18

I mean, it was devastating. I was supposed to leave the next day so that I could start the book tour to promote the book that was about to launch, right?

42:27

And then instead, I get checked into the hospital and it's like, hey, you know, we're going to split you open and, you know.

42:33

And so my doctor friend in Mississippi, you know, I'm talking to him and he's like, listen, man, I know you're upset.

42:39

I know you're discouraged. He said, but here's the good news. You have no idea how bad you feel. I was like, what?

42:46

He said, yeah, man, your heart is awful right now.

42:51

When they fix it, only then will you begin to realize, you know, how bad things were.

42:57

And that's true. I feel better now than I did before, you know, things went bad.

43:03

I mean, they fixed me, man. So are you, there's been rumors floating around, you can put them to death then right now, that you're going to come back to the

43:11

States and maybe because of medical or something like that. Is that true? Are you planning on staying in Zambia?

43:17

Can you even say? We're here, man. We're building a house here. All right. Yeah, we're here.

43:24

Plans for the future then. Yeah, I'm back in the U .S. like three or four times a year. I try to do three speaking tours a year in the

43:31

U .S. and then one somewhere else in the world. Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm back, uh, and I guess that's why people sort of think, you know, that, that I'm there or whatever.

43:43

But yeah, I thought you were calling me from Texas or something. I didn't realize you were back in Zambia. So that's, that's why

43:48

I got the hoodie on, man. It's, it's, it's the end of winter here. I was telling you before we started, it's been in the, in the, in the mid forties, the mid to low forties, which here where there's no central heat, um, and we're at almost a mile high elevation.

44:02

Um, the mid forties here feels, feels like the mid twenties, man. It's cold. Well, I, I have one,

44:08

I, like I said, I didn't want to take up too much of your time and I've already taken it more than I thought I would. Um, I just had one question that I wanted to ask you kind of in closing, if you will.

44:16

Um, I, I, I'm assuming you've, you've had some, um, probably some tempting offers, uh, in the

44:24

United States from maybe political groups or, or maybe even churches, uh, to, um, to be involved in kind of like what's going on, the social justice fight, uh, you know, all the things that are happening in America, you're choosing those would be in Zambia.

44:40

You're, you're doing ministry there. And I think for some people who want to be in the limelight or think that,

44:45

Hey, I could be influential. I can make money, all these kinds of things. That would be what, why not?

44:50

Why not do that? Isn't God putting that in your, in your, uh, on your map, so to speak, and doesn't want you to do that.

44:58

But I suspect with you, there's a priority that you have and, and that's why you're in Zambia.

45:04

So I was hoping maybe you could talk about that, maybe explain why you're choosing to be where you are and maybe the fruit that you're seeing and why you think

45:12

God wants you there instead of in the limelight in the United States, you know, having that platform. Yeah, there's a couple of things.

45:19

Number one, I, by God's grace, I don't think that much of myself. Right. Um, I don't,

45:27

I don't sit here thinking America needs me. Um, uh, and, and I don't, I don't, yeah,

45:33

I just don't believe that. I don't, I don't think I'm some kind of, you know, well,

45:40

I'll just leave it at that. Superhero. I still, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, not, I'm not a superhero.

45:45

I gotcha. Um, on the other hand, um,

45:51

I don't think that America is the kingdom of God.

45:57

I don't think that America is the new Jerusalem. So I'm not sitting here going,

46:03

Hey, you know, the kingdom needs me. The new Jerusalem needs me. I gotta go get back.

46:09

Cause if it falls, you know, all is lost. Um, I don't believe that. Um, the other thing is

46:16

I see guys like you and, and a bunch of other, I mean, there's thousands of prophets who have not bowed their knee to bail.

46:22

America is a huge country. And a lot of people are, a lot of people despair because they think that big

46:30

Eva is Christianity in America. And that's just not true. There are thousands of prophets who have not bowed their knee to bail, you know?

46:38

And then lastly, you know, I'm doing what the Lord called me to do.

46:45

The Lord brought us here. And the work that the Lord brought us here to do, um, is, is not done yet.

46:51

Um, I came here to help start a university, um, in a place that is strategic.

46:58

That is incredibly important. Um, you know, Europe, Europe has fallen, right?

47:04

I mean, Europe has fallen. And who's going to re -evangelize

47:10

Europe? Um, I don't know, but I know some of that's going to happen from South. Um, and I'm excited to be a part of what

47:18

God is doing in this part of the world. I'm excited to be a part of helping to establish a classical

47:24

Christian liberal arts university, um, with a student labor program.

47:30

I tell people we're early Ivy league meets the Tuskegee Institute. Um, and it's a great privilege, you know, to, to, to be a part of that.

47:41

And I haven't been called away from here. The work here is not done. And I'll just say this because of mediums like this,

47:50

I have an opportunity to have a much broader impact and to be involved in a variety of different ways without having to, you know, pick up sticks and move.

48:00

Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. I think that, um, that encourages a lot of us, uh, to know, just to be reminded, the kingdom of God is so much bigger than what we see in front of us right now, which can be discouraging.

48:14

And, uh, and you've been a breath of fresh air and encouragement to me. Um, if people want to find out this too,

48:19

John, let me say this too, John, because on that same point, you know, people thinking that the, the America's the kingdom of God and sending the other, one of the problems with what's happening right now is people think

48:30

America is the center of the slave trade. Right. They look at slavery in America and they think that America basically introduced that to the world when nothing could be further from the truth.

48:42

America didn't come early to the slave trade came late. What it was early to was abolition, right?

48:48

The unique thing about America is not that America had slaves. The unique thing is that America fought a war in part to emancipate, you know, those slaves and, and, and change this constitution, you know, to emancipate those, those slaves.

49:03

That's, what's unique, um, about America as it relates to slavery. Um, it's not even unique.

49:11

The idea that slaves would, would come from, you know, there was a, there was a switch in history, make slaves have been around.

49:18

I mean, you read the Bible, you read about slavery and there was this unique thing that happened in history where slaves weren't taken from nearby.

49:26

And a lot of people think that, well, America is unique because America brought slaves of different ethnicities and cultures from far away.

49:34

Well, you know, there were a bunch of European slaves in North Africa as well.

49:40

Yeah. So North Africans were bringing Europeans to North Africa as slaves.

49:47

So again, we're not even unique in, in the idea of bringing people who are, are of a different culture.

49:53

Um, and so one of the things that we have to recognize is this is a, this is a global issue.

50:02

Um, and it's a global phenomenon. And also there are more slaves in the world today than there were when there were slaves in the

50:09

United States. Yeah. Mostly all over the Islamic world. Um, and so again,

50:16

I just, I just wanted to point that out because living in this part of the world, that's just one of the things that, you know,

50:22

I, there's a place in the North of Zambia, Ndola, and there's this place where there's a, this tree, this old tree, and they've got it behind, you know, this sort of iron fence and they call it the slave tree.

50:35

And there's this big sort of slave catchment area there in Ndola. So slavers from Zanzibar had come down,

50:46

Arab slavers from Zanzibar come down to Zambia and they would bring slaves here to a market in Ndola and they would go across to Angola and then from Angola to the

50:58

U .S. I thought all the slave trade was from West Africa, right?

51:03

Further North. I had no idea, but guess what? There's a prison in Louisiana called

51:10

Angola and it's named Angola because a lot of the slaves that worked that land were from Angola.

51:19

Wow. That's where they shipped out from Angola, which a lot of them came from here.

51:25

And they were slaves here before they became slaves there.

51:31

There weren't white people traipsing through the jungle, you know, capturing black slaves. They were coming to the coast and buying people who had already been slaves.

51:40

And so I just think that it's ironic that so many people are saying, well, people are against CRT because they don't want an honest reckoning about the history of slavery.

51:53

And that's absolutely ridiculous, you know, because they're the ones who don't have an honest depiction of slavery because they only look at it from the standpoint of slavery in the

52:05

United States, not slavery in the rest of the world. Yeah, well, it's a tool of deconstruction to create a wedge between people today for modern political purposes, unfortunately.

52:15

And I think that's what's behind the monuments coming down and all the rest of it is just trying to get people to hate each other.

52:22

And it's a tragedy. But no, very good point. Have you, I'm just curious, have you ever read my favorite book on history of slavery is

52:29

Roll, Jordan, Roll by Eugene Genovese? Have you ever heard of that or read that? I've heard of it. I've heard of it, but I haven't read it.

52:35

The subtitle, though, is called The World the Slaves Built, which is, it was kind of a different, I think it was written in the 70s, but Eugene Genovese is like, hold on, these weren't just passive people who were the, you know, controlled by the forces around them.

52:49

They built something in the United States and we're still living with it. We still, our music, our cuisine, our, our ideas, a large part of Southern culture is built because these people came here and influenced things.

53:03

And it is such a different story than what we're hearing today, which is that there was no culture.

53:10

It was just the only. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no. When did you say that book was written? I think it was the 70s, if I'm not mistaken.

53:17

Oh, no, no, no, no. It's not possible because we didn't really learn about slavery or talk about slavery before CRT.

53:24

Well. It's just not possible that anybody was doing a deep dive on slavery before.

53:31

So I'm going to have to correct you there, brother, because I've been told that CRT is the only way that we get an honest assessment of slavery.

53:41

Yeah, well, the problem was Eugene Genovese was a Marxist who then in the course of studying slavery.

53:48

And then I think the last book he wrote was Mind of the Master Class, where he studied slave holders and Christian ones too. And he was kind of, he said some of the things that were said about some of them were not accurate.

53:59

And he kind of, he became a Republican, long story short. And so I think he's kind of blacklisted today, but, but his first book, it's an excellent book and it's, it's fascinated me.

54:09

I've been, I haven't had as much time as I wanted to, maybe you have books you can recommend me, but I've wanted to study this more because I feel like there in academia, there was a whole bunch of information to, to, to look at, to show a rich culture and to be proud of that culture.

54:26

And anyway, I'm getting on my sermon. I got to get off of it, but anyway. Hey, thank you so much.

54:33

I, I didn't, you, you spent about an hour with me answering questions from listeners and we're grateful for it.

54:39

So thank you. Yeah. It's been my pleasure, man. I really appreciate what you're doing. And people can go to vodibachum .org.

54:46

It's your ministry website, anywhere else you want to send them for the book or. Yeah.

54:51

Well, they can also learn more about what we're doing at acu -usa .com.

54:58

Okay. And where would they order the book? Amazon or vodibachum .org? Yeah. Where, wherever you get books, go, go to the stores.

55:07

A lot of stores are not carrying this book. It's a national bestseller. It debuted at number seven on wall street journal.

55:15

And New York Times. Publishers Weekly and USA Today. No, New York Times. No, New York Times never, never.

55:22

They didn't want to acknowledge it. They never listed it. That's a whole nother story. But if you go in Barnes and Noble, I've been in a couple of Barnes and Noble where they, they maybe had one copy and it was hidden back in the back or, or wherever.

55:34

So I just encourage people to go into their stores. Hobby Lobby bought a whole bunch of them and they're, you know, happy to display them or whatever, but there are a lot of bookstores that are reluctant, even though it's a national bestseller, you know, and they all have displays out here, you know, bestsellers, whatever, and it's not there.

55:52

So I encourage people to go into local bookstores and, and ask for the book. Okay. Yeah.

55:59

Good word. So, all right. Christian bookstores, Christian bookstores, by the way, at the

56:05

SBC, Lifeway had their store at the SBC and Lifeway didn't carry it.

56:10

I heard that. Yeah. I heard they carried some heretical books, but not fault lines, which doesn't surprise me for some odd reason, but anyway, they don't have any brick and mortar stores anyway.

56:20

So you'd have to go to Barnes and Noble if you're going to go out there or Brookstone, but well, anyway,

56:26

I encourage everyone to get the book, get fault lines, check it out. It's encouraging. And thank you once again,