Difficult Days for Rome’s Apologists, the Words of James Cone, Unvarnished

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

Greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line, my name is James White and we are here on a Monday.

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It's a holiday week, of course, so the schedule is all messed up and we initially were going to do this at three.

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That's because I had well, I had my car in the shop, regular maintenance and you never know.

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You never, never, never know. Actually, they got done quite quickly. So we were able to get in and get things set up faster.

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And so it's easier on everybody to get this done rather than put it later in the day.

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So here we are and we'll be back again tomorrow and that'll be it for the week.

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Hopefully for those of you in the American audience, you will have a wonderful Thanksgiving day on Thursday, very late in the season for us.

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Because most of us have already been doing the Christmas music for a long time anyway.

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And it's so late, I mean, it's almost December. So it's sort of like, but anyway, we're going to be looking forward to a very unusual

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Thanksgiving for us. You know, our kids are gone and they're not in the state. And so we're actually getting together with folks from Apologia and we're making some, going to try to make some of my dad's dressing.

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It's hard to do. We've come close. We've come close. You can testify. Oh man,

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Rich, many, many, many, many moons ago, Rich got to experience the white family dressing.

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Yeah, no, bar none. There's no question about it. It's the best I've ever had. There's no comparison.

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Nope. And I mean, it took him decades to perfect it. And I have not perfected it again, unfortunately.

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So it's one of those dying, the knowledge of it is dying away.

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But we can come close. We come fairly close. On the way home last night, we gave my dad a call when Kelly was talking to him.

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Now, which brand of this do you use and which, you know, we're trying, you know, to do everything we can. So we're feeling a little pressure because the only thing we were asked to bring and because Jeff's never had my dad's dressing, obviously.

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And so it's sort of like, I heard about this dressing and I'm sure it's probably from summer.

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I'm sure summer mentioned it. And so we're feeling a little bit of pressure on as far as Thursday goes.

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So anyway, everyone always says that they skip over the first few minutes of the program because, you know, because we're humans and unlike, you know, some people out there.

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When you think back over the 1990s and this ministry, the primary,

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I think the primary thing that comes to mind, other than, you know, we were regularly going to Salt Lake City, regularly going out to the

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Easter pageant, continued doing work with Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses, things like that.

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But we had begun in the early 1990s, well, really, you know,

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August of 1990, the first moderated public debate, Gerry Madetik's Long Beach, and that grew into the

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Great Debate series on Long Island. And so we were doing a lot of work with the subject of Roman Catholicism.

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And we don't talk about it as much anymore as we once did. But those debates are still out there and they're still extremely relevant.

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But Pope Francis has changed everything. You know, you look at the size and the monetary value of Catholic Answers today, for example, one of the largest

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Catholic apologetics organizations in the United States, the largest, I'm sure. And I don't hear much about them doing debates anymore.

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And we tried to set up a debate. It was so weird. Tim Staples and I were in the same city on the same weekend.

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And there were lots of people on both sides that wanted to debate, and it didn't happen. And it was Sydney, Australia, just a few weeks ago.

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We had had, he had agreed to do it, and then they decided not to. Why? We don't know. We don't know.

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I think this represents the reality that in the late 1980s, when

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Catholic Answers started, this was a great way to get people excited. And certainly when people like Gerry Matitix are running around beating up on fundamentalists, which wasn't difficult to do since they didn't know anything about church history and so on and so forth, that got a lot of energy going.

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But not only has Catholic Answers changed, but I think society has changed.

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And I think they're rolling with it. In other words, I think they recognize that for a lot of people, debate is just so,

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I don't know, that assumes there's objective truth. Yeah, that's right.

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Well, and Roman Catholicism is supposed to assume that as well. I just don't know how

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Roman Catholic apologists can function today with Pope Francis.

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I mean, when we first started debating the subject of Roman Catholicism over and over and over again, you'd hear, you people are so divided, you've got all these different perspectives, you've got all these problems, and we have the

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Pope that can tell us what we need to believe. You don't hear much of that anymore.

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I've certainly noticed the difference. What I'm hearing a whole lot more of now is appeals to the ancient tradition of the church or settled doctrines that no one can change.

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It's almost become a sola scriptura ecclesia mixture type thing, where instead of just scriptura, now you have sola old tradition, something along those lines.

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And you just, you can't point to Francis and go, there's what

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I believe, because it might be different tomorrow, and everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. So it's interesting,

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I had seen an article a few days ago, I think it was sent to me, actually.

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And there's a quote from Ross Douthat, based on an interview he did with Cardinal Raymond Burke.

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And just listen to what's here. And I realize a lot of you, if you have not gone back and listened or watched any of the

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Roman Catholic debates, I had somebody on Twitter just today say that they were working through the Great Debate series from Long Island, and they had gotten the fourth one, and said,

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I just couldn't finish it, your opponent was just so rude. And I was like, well, sorry,

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I don't remember the numbers specifically, but I could guess, was that with Bob St.

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Genes? And he said, yeah. And I said, yeah, yeah, okay.

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I said, Bob's as cuddly as sandpaper. But anyway, if you have at any point attempted to engage

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Roman Catholics in conversation, especially those who have listened to, become enamored with, studied with Catholic Answers or St.

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Joseph's Catholic Communications, or whatever else, you know that their default is to attack the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

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They have to, because they have a positive claim of authority within the Roman Catholic hierarchy that they're attempting to establish.

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And so they have to attack the sufficiency of scripture to be able to do these things.

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And so, if you recognize the issues that are inherent in the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, that scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith, that we're not saying that there are not other rules of faith, we're not saying that you don't learn from early

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Church Fathers or learn from councils, whatever else it might be, the point is that the ultimate authority for the

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Christian Church is that which is Theanustas, it is God -breathed, and everything else has to be examined in light of that.

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And when we examine Roman Catholicism in the light of scripture, it fails that examination.

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But you know that inherent in Rome's denial of Sola Scriptura, Patrick Madrid's long, long -standing claim that Sola Scriptura results in chaos, in theological and doctrinal chaos.

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Well, Rome is in theological and doctrinal chaos. People are actually talking about schism right now. They're talking about the

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Church splitting. And so you're not hearing much of the Roman Catholics beating that drum right now, because that drum is busted.

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There's nothing to beat on. And the Roman Catholics know it. So listen, listen to this.

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But you can also see in my conversation with the Cardinal, how hard it is to sustain a Catholicism that is

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Orthodox against the Pope. For instance, Burke himself brought up a hypothetical scenario where Francis endorses a document that includes what the

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Cardinal considers heresy. People say, if you don't accept that, you'll be in schism, Burke said, when my point would be that the document is schismatic.

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I'm not, but this implies that in effect, the Pope could lead a schism, even though schism by definition involves breaking with the

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Pope. This is an idea that several conservative Catholic theologians have brought up recently. It does not become more persuasive with elaboration, and Burke himself acknowledges as much.

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It would be a total contradiction with no precedent or explanation in Church law. I mean, aside from the

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Reformation. The pull of such ideas, though, explains why you need only take a step beyond Burke's position to end up as a kind of de facto set a vacantist, a believer that the

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Pope is not really the Pope, or alternatively, that the Church is so corrupted and compromised by modernity, that the

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Pope might technically still be Pope, but his authority doesn't matter anymore. This is the flavor of a lot of very online traditionalism, and it's hard to see how it wouldn't eventually lead many of its adherents to a separation from the larger

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Church, joining the traditionalist quasi -exile pioneered after Vatican II by the

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Society of St. Pius X. Are there alternatives to Burke's tenuous position or the schismatic plunge?

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At the moment, there are two. And this is, by the way, stopping, quoting for a second, this is where Roman Catholic apologists are stuck.

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This is, every morning they get up, and I think the first thought in their mind is, was that all a dream?

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Can we go back to the good old days? You know, was that all? And then it's like, oh, no, it wasn't.

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Ah, what's he going to say today? So I think this is where they're stuck. So listen, one, there's two options here.

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One is a conservative Catholicism that strains more mightily than Burke to interpret all of Francis's moves in continuity with his predecessors, while arguing that the

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Pope's liberalizing allies and appointees are somehow misinterpreting him. This was the default conservative position early in the

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Francis pontificate. It has since become more difficult to sustain. I'm not trying to mock these poor folks, but at the same time, we've been saying for a long time, you missed the boat a long time ago.

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We've been explaining where you missed it a long time ago. And if this guy hasn't shown it to you, you know, you got more difficult to sustain.

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You mean it's impossible? You, you, you cannot take this man and his words and say that what he believes is what has been believed.

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We don't, we can go, we can stay within the past 150 years of Pope's and the contradictions are everywhere.

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I mean, you, you guys know this. You're smart guys. You know where this guy is coming from and you know what's happened.

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It's not difficult to sustain. It's impossible to sustain, but it persists in the hope of a kind of snapping back moment when

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Francis or a successor decides that Catholic bishops in countries like Germany are pushing things too far.

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At which point there can be a kind of restoration of the St. or John Paul II era battle lines with the papacy, despite Francis's experiments reinterpreting, reinterpreted to have always been on the side of orthodoxy.

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Another alternative is a conservatism that simply resolves the apparent conflict between tradition and papal power in the favor of the latter, submitting its private judgment to papal authority in 19th century style.

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Even if that submission requires accepting shifts on sex, marriage, celibacy, and other issues that look awfully like the sort of liberal

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Protestantism that the 19th century popes opposed. And this accomplishes exactly what?

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All of it, all of it is intellectual and, and integrity suicide.

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That that's what it all is. This would be a conservatism of structure more than doctrine as suggested by the title of a website that champions its approach where Peter is.

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But it would still need for its long -term coherence and account of how doctrine can and cannot change beyond just papal fiat.

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So it too awaits clarification that this papacy has conspicuously not supplied.

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Douthat appears not to be satisfied with any of these outcomes and he's right not to be. It is very, very difficult to square any kind of Catholic orthodoxy with being on the other side of this or any pope.

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On the other hand, Catholic orthodoxy, as I understand it, is not coterminous with whatever the pope says.

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And Francis has said some things that are pretty far out there. Say nothing of Pachamama, about which

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Father Dwight Lungenacker has some troubling thoughts about the future. That's another subject we haven't gotten into. Um, oh, yeah.

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Okay. The plain fact is a pope like Francis was not supposed to happen. Everybody knows that there have been bad popes, most notoriously the popes of the

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Renaissance, in particular Alexander VI de Borgia. De Borgia popes. But it has also been the case that however personally corrupt they might have been, they did not change

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Catholic doctrine. No one argues seriously that Francis is personally corrupt, but there is certainly reason to believe that he is either changing doctrine, either de facto or indirectly, by virtue of changing the disciplines of the

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Church and allowing disfavored doctrines to wither on the vine. There's just absolutely no question about any of these things.

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And the reality is, and this, this article was called, What About the Protestant Catholics?

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Um, you know, we, we've been out here for a long time going, there's, there's a, there's a solution to this.

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And it is to recognize that, um, the Church of Christ listens to the voice of Christ found in the scriptures.

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And the reality is that those who actually practice sola scriptura have a significantly greater amount of unity than Rome did under John Paul II, and certainly more than Rome does under Francis.

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So, sola scriptura has been our, our battle cry.

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We have sought to defend it against the constant canards and misrepresentations.

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It would be nice, I would, you know, we, we certainly know of many

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Roman Catholics who have come out of Roman Catholicism, found the gospel, found the truth, uh, over the years in which we have been ministering in this area.

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Obviously, our prayer should be that during this time when

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Pope Francis is so obviously outside the realm of orthodoxy, um, that those within the

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Roman communion who begin to recognize that their entire position has been built upon sand, um, will providentially be led to those debates and those presentations and those books where we've laid out the case for true sola scriptura, uh, true, uh, adherence to the sufficiency of scripture, and that they will be, uh, able to find, um, the truth in light of, of that situation.

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But it can't be easy. It just, it just cannot be easy.

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And I, I think one of the reasons that we are not seeing, uh, an interest in having the, uh, the debates that we did in the past is they're, they're reeling right now.

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And when Francis is gone, there could be a greater crisis because how the next, how his successor chooses what direction he chooses to go, um, because I've been hearing

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Francis has been packing the Cardinals with his, his type of people. And if that's the case, if the, if the successor pushes even farther than Francis, I don't see how you could have any buttischism.

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I, I, I really don't. I just don't see how it could, anything else could happen. Which is interesting, uh, because the, the other group that we have spent so much time with over the years is in somewhat of a similar situation, not that you have a conservative prophet of the

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Mormon Church. The problem is that the succession methodology that has been developed within Mormonism is non -functional.

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What do I mean by that? You cannot convince me that Joseph Smith, or even

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Brigham Young, had in mind the idea that the

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Mormon Church should be led by the most doddering, aged, infirm person that you could possibly dig out of the hierarchy of the church in the first place.

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But that's what's happened. That's how it works. And it just seems like the, the

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Mormon hierarchy is so wedded to its own tradition that nobody has the guts to go, you know what, we need to change this.

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There, there needs to be a new way of getting a Pope and, Pope, getting a prophet, and they both start with P, um, getting a prophet who isn't 94 years old.

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How about someone in their 50s? I mean, what, what could, what could happen if you could actually have an active, healthy, traveling, um, prophet of the

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Mormon Church? But at the very same time, I, I mentioned when we came back, and keep in mind, um, we are praying toward what would,

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I, I consider, I think it would be a historic event, uh, this coming

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April in Utah. Um, we are seeking to have a dialogue at Brigham Young University on campus with a leading, uh,

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New Testament scholar, Mormon New Testament scholar, on the subject of how we view the

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New Testament and its textual critical history. This is obviously extremely and vitally important, um, especially because of the interface that the

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Book of Mormon has with the text of the Old and New Testaments. And this was not an area of study of Mormonism until the past 30 years or so.

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You know, Talmadge and some of those people had some knowledge of these things, but not, not in the sense of sending people out from Utah to get their

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PhDs someplace else and then come back. So, um, also in April is the non -200th anniversary, is the non -200th anniversary of the

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First Vision. Now let me explain what I mean by that. Um, according to LDS Scripture today, uh, in the spring of 1820, hence the spring of 2020, it'll be 200 years, spring of 1820,

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Joseph Smith went out into the Sacred Grove, wasn't called the Sacred Grove back then, obviously, it's just woods behind the house, and had what's called the

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First Vision, where he sees God the Father and Jesus Christ as separate, distinct individuals with physical bodies.

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And he's told he's not to join any of the churches, they're all corrupt, they're, creeds are an abomination, professors are corrupt.

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And as we have, have said for a long, long time, um, that could not have happened in 1820.

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The Smiths didn't live there in 1820. Uh, the revivals to which the references were made, even including names of the

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Methodist minister, Reverend Lane, uh, that did not take place until 1824. Um, there were, there was no joining of churches.

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There were, the churches lost members in the area in 1820, but there was a huge increase in 1824.

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The, the revival took place in 1824. And so I say it's the non -200th anniversary, because the only time frame that any of this could have happened, uh, will, will not be until 2024.

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So maybe we should plan on having the First Vision really did not happen 200 years ago now, uh, signs in 2024.

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It was actually 200 years ago from now that it didn't happen. Uh, yeah, we'll have to think on that.

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It'd be sort of hard to come up with a proper sign to, to make that work. Anyway, so this next conference is going to be a big conference because they're, you know, they're gonna be talking about the

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First Vision and all that stuff. And of course we're planning on, on being there and, um, gonna get that First Vision track ready to go.

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Definitely have to have the First Vision track for that one. Um, um, I mean, for the 200th anniversary of the non -First

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Vision. Um, so there are, you know, they're going to be talking about the

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First Vision and stuff like that, but I just, I just think back to 1984,

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I think. I think, I think it was 1984, somewhere around in there.

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I might have the date down there. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna worry about it. Um, went up to Salt Lake City.

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I think, I think this was the trip in the 64

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Dodge Dart. I'm not sure. Um, but it was just Michael Beliveau and I, and that's when

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I went into church. Back then, I, I'm not sure if I sent you the picture of the new library where they've taken the stuff out of the church office building.

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And now it's in this really catty corner to the big, no, straight across the street from the, um, the meeting hall.

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Um, they put this big library up, but back then it was in the church office building. We went into the archives.

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And I'm thinking that we got the call number of the library, the call slip from the

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Tanners. Oh, I I've got it in there. I have, I still have the call slip in there, but I'm thinking, how, how do we know what that number was?

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I think we got it from Sandra, if I recall correctly. How else would we have known? Um, but anyways, the point is we went trembling in here to get this photocopy.

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Of this page from Joseph Smith's diary from 1834, as I recall. Um, one of the earliest account, handwritten accounts of the first vision where there are not two divine beings.

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And this is 14 years after it allegedly happened. Uh, Joseph Smith had not developed his concept of the plurality of gods yet.

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That was a couple of years in the future. And I carried that thing around. We used that photocopy for a long, long time.

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And we had to show that to Mormons because other than quote unquote, anti -Mormon literature, that's the only place you could find it.

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We could tell people here, you can go look for yourself. Now you can walk into the

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Deseret book across the street from the temple. And about the only theology books, the, the, do you remember how big that store was?

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You could walk up and down the aisles. You would simply be stunned if you went in there now.

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Do you remember, I think it was the first time I went with you and that we went downstairs and they had the used book section.

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Do you remember how massive the used book section was when we started kind of taking into account how many different works and comments and words there were just in explaining and categorizing

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Mormonism? It was, it was just massive amount of words of all this stuff for Mormons to digest.

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But even the new stuff, I mean, you could just walk up and down shelves, up and down shelves, up and down shelves.

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All the writings that, you know, and Bruce R. McConkie had his own huge section. You would just be stunned if you walked into Deseret book today.

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It looks like your, your local Christian bookstore, trinkets, plaques.

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The whole temple section is wide open, which is unusual. The scripture section is fairly small with all the triples and quads and stuff like that.

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But the theology section is almost non -existent. And like I said, Bruce R. McConkie, a grand total of five books.

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And that's not five different books. I think it was three books, two copies, two copies, one copy. It's almost like he didn't, it never even existed.

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Well, here again, we have a circumstance. We predict, we were talking about this in the nineties nationally.

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We were seeing it happen in our own circles. The dumbing down of America, the

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American church as a whole, the entire society, the entire world. And that's the result of it.

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Why would we study these things? Why would they look at their own history? Why would they look at any of it?

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Well, yes and no. I mean, you look at, you look at Jehovah's Witnesses, they're facing the same society.

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They're facing the same challenges, much lower baptisms, because they don't handle postmodernism very well either.

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But they never had the subject, the centrality of a subjective testimony problem that Mormonism has.

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There's also the, they're a little bit more reclusive, aren't they? The shunning, the...

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Well, more, more controlling. Yeah. Yeah. But they're going door to door.

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So, you know, they're, they're pretty exposed when they do something like that, even though they're taught not to get into debates and stuff like that.

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They try to keep them from being exposed to a lot of stuff. The internet's made a huge difference there too. Internet, cable television, they can't control their people anymore.

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But there's something, and this is, this was my argument with Alma. There's something in Mormonism that is inherently making the encounter with the modern world much more difficult for them.

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And you just see it. It's fracturing. It's fracturing it. And it's, I never, ever, ever, ever expected to see the

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Mormon leadership caving on issues of sexual morality, or especially homosexuality or transgenderism.

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Their God is gendered. I mean, you want patriarchy? Mormonism's the very definition of patriarchy.

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I mean, oh my goodness. I, I, you know, yeah, you're just left going, what is going on?

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It is truly amazing. And there is a crisis of leadership in the

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LDS church. And there's many Mormons who will admit it. They're just not put under nearly the same microscope as the

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Vatican is. But there's a lot of parallels between what's going on between the two of them.

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It's, it's fascinating. It really is. Could not have predicted that one. Could not have seen that one coming in any way, shape, or form.

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All right. Okay. Let's get to one other thing on the program today.

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I should have actually gotten to this quicker. I'm going to, remember for a little while we were doing story time with, with Uncle Jimmy?

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It could be Grandpa Jimmy, because I'm going to see the kids here. Not too long.

32:34

You're going to get to wrestle around with Cadence and Waylon and Clementine in January.

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I don't know if you saw the video of Jannie waking up up on, they had driven up to the mountain outside of Las Vegas.

32:50

Chesterton? Is that what it is? Huh? Something like that. I've ridden up at it so many times.

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And it's, there's snow up there. It's, it's way up there. And, um, she wakes up and they're in a, they're, there's snow everywhere.

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And so it's just such a sweet video of her throwing snowballs. And, and of course she, she picks up the snow and says, are you ready?

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And then, then shucks it. It's not, that's not, she'll learn someday.

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First time she gets nailed. Hey, hey, you didn't, you snuck up on me.

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That's the whole idea. It's so cute. Anyway, uh, so we're going to, we're going to get to see the, see the little ones.

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Um, Storytime with Uncle Jimmy. Uh, I don't like having to read this, but we have to be aware.

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I first introduced this audience to the writings of James Cone in 2008.

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Um, over a decade ago. And I just get the feeling that a lot of people, well, first of all, not everyone's heard any of this.

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I just get the feeling that those who have sort of think that he was just an eccentric out there guy, but one thing has been proven very clearly over the last year, he has a lot of followers and those followers are infiltrating churches that we never, ever, ever thought would be subject to this kind of belief.

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And I mentioned last week, uh, his grace, the right

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Reverend Bishop, uh, Talbert Wesley Swan the second.

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Um, and read some of his statements. And he was the guy that said, if, if heaven's going to be filled with white evangelicals,

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I'll take my chances on hell. His tweet feed is filled with black racism, which he says does not exist.

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Um, I have a tweet up. This is from just recently, 22 hours ago. Speaking to me, uh, also there's no such thing as black racism.

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And this is what we are. This is what critical theory says. Uh, critical theory says that only those with power, uh, can be racist and that therefore only whites can be racist.

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And so when you have an entire group being told regularly, you cannot commit this sin.

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That's the best way in the world to make sure that people will commit that sin. And Talbert Swan is one of the best examples.

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My understanding is he's a graduate of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. Here's one of the greatest examples of the damage that has been done by black liberation theology in James Cone.

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And hence, when we hear professors in Reformed seminaries,

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Southern Baptist seminaries saying, Oh, James Cone learned a lot from him. He really opened my eyes to a lot of stuff.

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This is a major problem. Talbert Swan is the result of James Cone.

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And so when you, for most of us, even though whenever he says anything, he has a choir behind him, not, not literally though,

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I'm sure at times he does. Um, but yeah, he, he could say anything, no matter how completely indefensible, completely untrue, completely slanderous it is.

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And he will have a chorus of mainly women singing his praises immediately.

37:27

You are so smart. It's just amazing. Just, if you don't believe me, go to his

37:35

Twitter feed. He was banned permanently last year for calling Candace Owen a coon.

37:41

He doesn't mind doing things like that. Um, but that permanent ban lasted two weeks.

37:49

That's how that works when you're on the left. So the point is, what explains someone like this?

38:00

The hatred, the racism, the bigotry, the bias, the just, and of course he just throws those things out all the time.

38:08

Anybody who disagrees with him as a white supremacist, he doesn't have to offer any examples. He doesn't have to reason.

38:16

Uh, critical theory does not require the oppressed to reason, but neither did

38:21

James Cone. And that's the point. James Cone's writings need to be identified as the utter heresy that they are.

38:36

You don't need to have Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary posting podcasts, honoring

38:42

James Cone when he dies. There's, there's a problem here.

38:51

So let's, we need to read a little James Cone to understand Talbert Swan. Understand how he can say there is no such thing as black racism.

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As I said last time, if racism is a sin, then anyone can commit it. If racism is not something that certain people can commit, then it's not a sin.

39:10

It's a political tool. And that's exactly how the term is being used by Talbert Swan and by others.

39:18

It's a political label only. It has no moral component to it. But what they do is they barter on the idea that you still have the moral aspect in the back of your mind, even though they're only using it in a political sense, and that's how they're effective in influencing people's thinking.

39:40

So, in a couple of Cone's books, in Black Theology and Black Power and in God of the

39:50

Oppressed, he addresses the issue of reconciliation.

39:57

And when he does so, I want you to hear. Now, I'm not reading. We've spent a lot of time in the past reading

40:03

James Cone. We've talked about how he talks about the black Jesus and God is black.

40:09

And when you read it, there is a clear animus, prejudice and bigotry on Cone's part toward whites in general.

40:28

It's just all through it. It's very difficult to read. It's very rambling. He was obviously a brilliant guy, but not a clear thinker.

40:38

Not an ordered thinker, anyways. But this is from Black Theology and Black Power under the subtitle

40:47

Reconciliation. When Black Theology emphasizes the necessity of a theology of revolution based on the unity of black people committed to the task of destroying white racism, it is to be expected that many white religious people will ask, what about the biblical message of reconciliation?

41:02

Whites who ask the question of blacks should not be surprised if some blacks reply, yeah, man, what about it?

41:09

The question, while it may be legitimate, bears a close resemblance to the old or new questions about integration and love.

41:15

White people creating the barriers of separation now want to know whether black people are willing to let bygones be bygones.

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That is why Stokely Carmichael said, as for separatism, what are they talking about?

41:29

We have no choice. They separated us a long time ago, and they sure intend to keep it that way. End quote. White people have short memories.

41:36

Otherwise, how are black people to interpret questions about reconciliation, love, and other white values? Is it human to expect black people to pretend that their parents were not chattels in society?

41:47

Let me stop for just a moment. Did you catch that? Reconciliation, love, and other white values.

41:59

Okay. Is it human to expect black people to pretend their parents were not chattels in society? There are a lot of black people today that that wouldn't be true, and it wouldn't be true of the next generation even farther back.

42:13

But anyway. Oh, by the way, everything that I'm reading is fully

42:19

American. What I mean by that is Cone's theology is American theology.

42:24

It makes no sense anywhere else in the world. It makes no sense in Canada. It makes no sense in Mexico. It makes no sense anywhere.

42:30

But we are still exporting it to the great destruction of the places where it's being exported to. But it's very

42:37

American. And not overly fair that either. Do they really expect black people to believe that their status today is unrelated to the slavery of the past?

42:46

Do they expect black people to believe that this society is not basically racist from top to bottom? And now white religious people want to know what can be done about the wall of hostility between blacks and whites.

42:57

Some critics of black theology are certainly going to suggest my approach to theology will do more towards the separation of black and white

43:03

Americans than toward reconciliation. And yet there is an appropriate concluding word to be spoken about reconciliation.

43:10

First, let me say reconciliation on white racist terms is impossible, since it would crush the dignity of black people.

43:17

Under these conditions, blacks must treasure their hostility. Yeah, that's what I said.

43:22

Blacks must treasure their hostility, bringing it fully into consciousness as an irreducible quality of their identity.

43:29

If white people insist on laying the ground rules for reconciliation, which can only mean black people denying the beauty of their blackness, then black people must do everything within their power to destroy the white thing.

43:42

Black people can only speak of reconciliation when the black community is permitted to do its thing. The black community has experienced the crushing white thing too long.

43:52

Therefore, black theology believes that in order for reconciliation to be meaningful and productive, black people must have room to do their thing.

43:59

The black community itself must lay down the rules of the game. White oppressors are incompetent to dictate the terms of reconciliation because they are enslaved by their own racism and will inevitably seek to base the terms on their right to play

44:11

God in human relationships. The history of slavery and Jim Crow and integration efforts renders white people virtually incapable of knowing even how to talk to black people as persons.

44:21

It is this fact that nullifies the good intentions of concerned white religious people who insist that they are prepared to relate to black people as human beings.

44:28

They simply do not know how. Since racism is inseparable from the history of America, and since practically all white people in this country are taught from birth to treat blacks as things, black theology must counsel black people to be suspicious of all whites who want to be friends of black people.

44:48

Remember, this is a man that people call a Christian theologian. Therefore, the real question is not whether black theology sees reconciliation as an end, but rather on whose terms we are to be reconciled.

45:00

The problem of reconciliation is the oppressor's problem. Being accustomed to defining human relationships between themselves and the slaves on I -it terms, they naturally think that they have a monopoly on truth and right behavior.

45:13

But when the slaves begin to say no to the God behavior of the masters, the masters are surprised. They are surprised because they thought the slaves were happy.

45:20

They cannot believe that the hostilities of the slaves stem from anything that the masters themselves have done. But neither can they believe that the unrest in the slave camps is motivated from within the slave community.

45:32

Remember, this was - these books are still in print, and they were written back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, maybe into the 90s.

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Slave camps, slave communities, 130 years down the road.

45:48

Therefore, in an attempt to explain the phenomenon of slave hostility, the masters devise tests which will show that most, if not all, people in the society are happy, and the disorders are created by outside agitators who can easily be lumped into one category, communists.

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All unhappiness is a lie created and perpetuated by the ungodly communists who want to destroy the free American society.

46:06

There are usually enough slaves around who have been so crushed by the forces of evil that they do in fact respond according to the intentions of the masters.

46:14

These slaves become the actual evidence that the slaves as a whole are satisfied with their condition. With this kind of assurance, the masters can begin to stamp out offenders against law and order, killing or caging all who refuse to cooperate with the laws against humanity.

46:25

Please notice, just in passing, the dehumanization of anyone who would disagree with Black theology and Black power, which is exactly what you see

46:37

Talbot Swan doing. In today's tweets, in the past 24 hours, you have him using language of Christian men, such as Daryl Harrison, in such an incredibly not just disrespectful fashion, but just absolutely sinful, just absolutely sinful.

47:09

Um, there was something even about dancing at one point, as I recall, um, as I'm looking through this.

47:17

Let me see here. Uh, I know it's in here somewhere. Foot -shuffling, boot -licking white supremacy apologists trying to smear, okay, oh, trying to smear the great theologian

47:30

Dr. James Cone. This is about Daryl Harrison. You work for John MacArthur, a racist evangelical who wrote a manifesto declaring social justice antithetical to scripture.

47:38

You work in the house, not in the field. No white person could ever say that to a

47:44

Black person without getting kicked off Twitter in a second. But this man will treat fellow

47:53

Blacks in this fashion with impunity. And here it is right here. That's what

47:58

James Cone did. And James Cone was lauded. Lauded.

48:04

I have, I have Talbot Swan's, um, eulogy. For James Cone when he died.

48:15

Huge impact. And it's not just, see, the reason we're looking at Talbot Swan is not because he's alone, because he's not, sadly.

48:26

But because we have so many people coming into our churches, which, up until this point, were not like Swan's church, which looks like it's purely

48:37

Black. I looked at the website. I could not see a single white person anywhere. So it seems to be fully segregated.

48:43

Coming into non -segregated churches where doors are open to everybody. Here's what we teach.

48:49

Here's what the gospel is. Let's look at the Bible together. We can all serve together. James Cone doesn't allow for that.

48:58

James Cone's theology can't allow for that. And so those he's taught, likewise, will segregate.

49:07

They can't allow for that. And they'll attack anyone who does not stay in the group.

49:13

The problem is the gospel calls you out of this group of hatred, into a group of fellowship with all ethnicities.

49:22

James Cone stood against the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was a heretic on the nature of God, on the

49:27

Trinity, on the person of Jesus, on the atonement, on salvation, on every aspect of Christian theology.

49:32

The man was a full -blown heretic. He makes the Jehovah's Witnesses look Orthodox. But what you hear are people in our society going, well, no, we certainly wouldn't agree with certain aspects of this theology.

49:47

Like, you know, the Trinity, certain aspects of this theology. But there's just so much to learn from him.

49:53

He's so insightful. Killing or caging all who refuse to cooperate with the laws against humanity.

50:02

It is impossible for the oppressed black people of America to have a dialogue with men who have this perspective. They can only say in word and deed, think what you like, about America and its goodness toward blacks.

50:11

But the black experience is different. And as long as you persist in that attitude, not only will there be no reconciliation, but soon it'll be impossible even for us mutually to survive.

50:20

He talks about revolution in here. He talks about bloody revolution. But sometimes it dawns on the liberal oppressors that the oppressed do not wish to be slaves any longer and will stop at nothing to break the change.

50:33

Sometimes it enters their minds that progress is irrelevant. What the oppressed want is freedom now. When the liberal oppressors come to that recognition, they will ask, what are we to do?

50:41

These people want to know whether all has been lost. They're inquiring whether reconciliation is possible in spite of slavery and the present crushing of every black attempt to be black.

50:51

What can we say to this group? We must inform them as calmly and clearly as possible that black people cannot talk about the possibilities of reconciliation until full emancipation has become a reality for all black people.

51:02

We cannot talk about living together as brothers, the black and white together attitude, as long as they do everything they can to destroy us.

51:08

While black people may continue to work in the factories, teach in schools, even fight in wars, there is no law that blacks have to love whites.

51:16

And as long as whites may pass laws against blacks, black people will affirm their dignity in spite of white racism at every opportunity.

51:22

This country is and will continue to be two societies, one black and one white, as long as whites demand the right to define the basis of relationship.

51:29

For white people to speak of reconciliation at the very moment when they are subduing every expression of black self -determination is the height of racist arrogance.

51:38

Some of our liberal white friends will probably insist we are not being fair when white people speak of black people being fair.

51:47

Let me skip down here. It's a story that no one would know. Do not misunderstand me.

51:52

Black theology is the theology it takes... Now, listen, listen. Tune back in here. This is important.

51:59

Black theology is the theology it takes seriously God's reconciling act in Jesus Christ.

52:05

Oh, here we go. Here we go. This is important. In fact, the

52:10

Heart of the New Testament message is a gospel of reconciliation. As St. Paul says, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,

52:16

St. Corinthians 5 .19. Yes! Among other things, this means the wall of hostility is broken down between blacks and whites, making color irrelevant to man's essential nature.

52:31

Well, I don't think that's what Paul was talking about, but I would agree. But in a white racist society, black theology believes that the biblical doctrine of reconciliation can be made a reality only when the white people are prepared to address black men as black men, that's in italics, and not as some grease -painted form of white humanity.

52:59

Black theology will not respond positively to whites who insist on making blacks as white as possible by deemphasizing their blackness and stressing the irrelevance of color while really living as racists.

53:14

There's no winning in this situation. There is no redemption in the woke church, folks. We've been saying this for a long time.

53:21

As long as whites live like white people through marriage, schools, neighborhood, power, etc., black people must use blackness as the sole criterion for dialogue.

53:32

We're still in the same paragraph as the quotation of 2 Corinthians. We lost it a long time ago.

53:41

Otherwise, reconciliation will mean black people living according to white rules and glorifying white values, being orderly and calm while others enact laws which will destroy them.

53:54

Black theology must reject outright this style of behavior and insist that black people can bring something to the relationship.

54:00

They must bring a system of black values which deny that white is right and stress the beauty of being black.

54:09

They must bring color to a sterile and depraved white people who have endeavored to label this world for whites only.

54:19

You see how this is just, it's so local. The Christians suffering for the gospel in China right now would be going, what a waste of ink.

54:31

And it was. It was a waste of ink. The task of black theology is to make the biblical message of reconciliation contemporaneous with the black situation in America.

54:41

There's your problem. According to the New Testament, reconciliation is the exclusive work of God in which he becomes man in Jesus Christ in order that depraved humanity might become whole.

54:52

Got some quotes here. Um... But that is only one side of reconciliation.

55:00

It gives the biblical stuff. To be reconciled with God involves reconciliation with the neighbor. To be pledged to God is to be pledged to other men.

55:05

That is why the reconciling work of Jesus Christ involves a gathering of those who are committed to obedience in the world. The Christian community is inseparable from the work of the

55:13

Holy Spirit. Sounds really good. It is that community which accepts God's justification of man in Christ and is thus prepared to live as justified men.

55:20

When we analyze the black -white relationship in the 20th century in the light of God's reconciling work in Jesus Christ, the message is clear.

55:25

For black people, it means that God has reconciled us to an acceptance of our blackness. What? For black people, it means that God has reconciled us to an acceptance of our blackness.

55:41

If the death and resurrection of Christ means anything... Ready for this?

55:47

It means that the blackness of black people is a creation of God himself. If the death and resurrection of Christ means anything, it means that the blackness of black people is a creation of God himself.

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God came into the world in order that black people need not be ashamed of who they are.

56:09

In Christ, we not only know who we are, but who God is. This is the heart of the biblical message. God has created man in such a way that man's humanity is inseparable from divine fellowship, speaking of the covenant as the precept of...

56:21

Then we got some more quotations of Barth, who had no idea what was going on with this. Therefore, when black people say yes to their humanity by affirming their blackness, we must conclude that the affirmation was made possible through God's reconciling act in Jesus Christ.

56:43

Okay. For white people, God's reconciliation in Jesus Christ means that God has made black people a beautiful people, and if they are going to be in relationship with God...

56:53

Okay. I know, I know. You've all tuned out. You can't. You'll never understand

56:59

Talbert Swan. Listen to this. For white people, God's reconciliation in Jesus Christ means that God has made black people a beautiful people.

57:08

And if they, the white people, are going to be in relationship with God, they must enter by means of their black brothers, who are a manifestation of God's presence on earth.

57:25

I'm not making this up. I'm not making that up. This is

57:32

Black Theology and Black Power, page 150, 153, in Kindle anyways. If you're going to be in relationship to God, according to James Cone, you must enter by means of black people, because black's beautiful, and their manifestations of God's presence on earth.

57:54

But you're not. The assumption that one can know God without knowing blackness is the basic heresy of the white churches.

58:05

Direct quote. The assumption that one can know God without knowing blackness is the basic heresy of the white churches.

58:13

They want God without blackness, Christ without obedience, love without death. What they fail to realize is that in America, God's revelation on earth has always been black, red, or some other shocking shade, but never white.

58:28

Never white. Whiteness, as revealed in the history of America, is the expression of what is wrong with man.

58:35

It is a symbol of man's depravity. God cannot be white, even though white churches have portrayed him as white.

58:43

When we look at what whiteness has done the minds of men in this country, we can see clearly what the

58:49

New Testament meant when it spoke of the principalities and powers. To speak of Satan and his powers becomes not just a way of speaking, but a fact of reality.

59:01

When we can see a people who are controlled by an ideology of whiteness, then we know what reconciliation must mean.

59:09

The coming of Christ means a denial of what we thought we were. It means destroying the white devil in us.

59:16

Reconciliation to God means that white people are prepared to deny themselves whiteness, take up the cross, blackness, and follow

59:25

Christ, black ghetto. To be sure, this is not easy, but whoever said the gospel of Christ was easy.

59:38

Obedience always means going where we otherwise would not go, being what we would not be, doing what we would not do.

59:44

Reconciliation means that Christ has freed us for this. In a white racist society, Christian obedience can only mean being obedient to blackness.

59:53

It's glorification and exaltation. The problem with white society is that it wants to assume that everything is basically all right.

01:00:03

It wants black people to assume that slavery never existed and the present brutalities inflicted on them are the working of isolated individuals and not basically part of the system itself.

01:00:11

In this sense, reconciliation would mean admitting that white values are the values of God. It means black people accepting the white way of life.

01:00:17

It assumes that black people have no values except those which are given by the white masters. But according to black theology, it is the other way around.

01:00:23

Reconciliation does not transcend color, thus making us all white. The problem of values is not that white people need to instill values in the ghetto, but white society itself needs values so that it will no longer need a ghetto.

01:00:35

Black values did not create the ghetto. White values did. Therefore, God's work of reconciliation means that we can only be justified by becoming black.

01:00:46

Reconciliation makes us all black. Through this radical change, we become identified totally with the suffering of the black masses.

01:00:52

It is this fact that makes all white churches anti -Christian in their essence. And if you don't see that in Talbot Swan, Talbot Swan thinks white evangelicals...

01:01:03

That's why he says, if heaven's gonna be filled with white evangelicals, I want hell. His Twitter feed is filled with James Cone.

01:01:14

This is the explanation. This is where it comes from. To be

01:01:20

Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people.

01:01:27

I am quoting. It is to be expected that many white people will ask, how can

01:01:34

I, a white man, become black? My skin is white and there is nothing I can do. Being black in America has very little to do with skin color.

01:01:43

To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, your body are where the dispossessed are. Here comes the

01:01:49

Marxism. We all know that a racist structure will reject and threaten a black man in white skin as quickly as a black man in black skin.

01:01:58

It accepts and rewards whites in black skins nearly as well as whites in white skins. Therefore, and remember a certain person at a well -known get -together last year that talked about men who are black on the outside and white on the inside?

01:02:20

Where do you think he got that? It accepts and rewards whites in black skins nearly as well as whites in white skins.

01:02:28

Therefore, being reconciled to God does not mean that one's skin is physically black. It essentially depends on the color of your heart, soul, and mind.

01:02:34

Some may want to argue that persons with skins physically black will have a running start on others, but there seems to be enough evidence that though one's skin is black, the heart may be lily white.

01:02:45

The real questions are, where is your identity? Where is your being? Does it lie with the oppressed blacks or with the white oppressors?

01:02:53

There's the identity part. Nothing about Christ. These people identify on the basis of their community.

01:03:05

Not Christ. Let us hope that there are enough to answer this question correctly so that America will not be compelled to acknowledge a common humanity only by seeing that blood is always one color.

01:03:24

There is an entire section on this in God of the

01:03:35

Oppressed, which again, I have heard professors in Reformed Southern Baptist seminaries pointing to this book and saying to people, you need to read this book.

01:03:50

This book changed my life. What? Yeah.

01:04:13

I know. I know. I know. So I'm sitting here going, do

01:04:20

I save this for tomorrow? Or do I press on?

01:04:26

Because it's going to take us to an hour and a half. I don't know, there's so much there that I think it's easier to pick up with it.

01:04:40

Again, believe me, I do not enjoy reading this kind of heresy.

01:04:49

And it is heresy. I sit here assuming, especially our audience, is sitting back going, what?

01:05:00

We've got to get past the what to an understanding of, okay, that's what

01:05:07

Cone taught. That's what is being taught at Union Theological Seminary. That is what is being taught.

01:05:16

And we look at Union and go, duh. Cone taught there. Okay? They just announced who's taking his chair.

01:05:27

His professorship. And you look at her stuff and same thing completely.

01:05:38

But we go, that's out there. It's not out there anymore. It's not out there anymore.

01:05:46

Resolution 9, the SBC made it clear. It's not out there anymore. It's in here.

01:05:53

And when you've got Eric Mason running around doing what Eric Mason does, and you've got Jamar Tisby running around doing what

01:05:58

Jamar Tisby does, don't for a second think that these men have not been deeply influenced by James Cone.

01:06:06

They may not be at the Talbert Swan stage yet, but you can't see the trajectory.

01:06:15

You can't hear the language. The assertions being made here are absolutely, positively amazing.

01:06:34

Just a couple things, just to, let me see if I, let me see here, inbox, there we go.

01:06:56

Someone mentioned recently that they showed a tweet of mine to some of their relatives, and they cringed.

01:07:07

And I was thinking about that, and I went, you know, we as believers have a lot to learn.

01:07:13

We have to come to the point where the only thing that will make us cringe is the disapproval of our

01:07:21

Heavenly Father. When you think of what

01:07:28

Chinese Christians are facing right now, they have to go through facial scanning to just go into a church, just to make it all that much easier for the communists to come and get them in the middle of the night and never be seen again.

01:07:45

To be faithful to scriptures in that church, you have to say things that are going to make people in the society cringe.

01:07:54

And in fact, if you're not faithful, if no one cringes, then you're just repeating what the society thinks is true.

01:08:06

When we speak as scripture speaks today, we will get the cringe, not because the content of apostolic truth is evil, but because the society is so comfortable in its rebellion.

01:08:19

And we as individual Christians have to spend serious time turning off all the media and everything else, and seriously thinking through where we're going to stand and how we're going to react when that pressure comes to bear upon us, when that cringe moment comes, when you're going to have to say boldly and completely, yes,

01:08:44

God makes man, male and female, and there is no such thing as a transgender woman or a transgender man.

01:08:56

At this very point in time, we also have to think this through, this social justice movement, this neo -Marxism.

01:09:05

Remember, this movement can never unite, it can only divide. It cannot produce a unity amongst the so -called oppressed groups, for it has no foundation in itself for such unity.

01:09:22

What we just read from Cone about the beauty of blackness, blackness is not a foundation for unity, but only for further division since it focuses your identity upon yourself.

01:09:39

It's empty. And when I listen to the rantings of Talbert Swan, my heart breaks for him.

01:09:48

I know what he's saying is a lie. I think he knows what he's saying is a lie, but he's gotten so far down the rabbit hole of neo -Marxism and critical theory, he doesn't know what lies and truth are anymore.

01:10:02

I feel for the man. I mean, here's a graduate of Gordon Conwell Seminary saying the types of things he does, treating people the way he treats people.

01:10:09

It's stunning. Absolutely stunning. But we have to wake up.

01:10:20

It's not out there anymore. It's now in here, and it's coming into our churches.

01:10:30

It has been doing it a lot longer than we thought, as that means the people who have been infected by this way of thinking are already in positions of authority.

01:10:41

They're already in positions of authority. So, some people ask, you know, why did you poke the hornet's nest?

01:10:54

You knew what Swan would do. Yeah, I did. I wanted an entire catalog of direct statements that I now have already that demonstrate that the theoretical writings of James Cone are fleshing themselves out in people like Talbot Swan.

01:11:23

You don't keep this kind of revolutionary, divisive, and fully, thoroughly heretical teachings in a classroom.

01:11:38

It's going to escape, and it has, and that's what we're looking at.

01:11:45

To your point regarding the fact that this has been going on, and it's been going on,

01:11:52

I think, for much longer than we're even imagining, when we look at the interchange between you and all the names he's got,

01:12:04

Swan, because he's got a lot of them. He does. And some afterwards, too.

01:12:11

But when I look at that, and then you go back and you read Cone again, and I was sitting here in 2008 when you were doing this, when we didn't have cameras on.

01:12:19

Oh, yeah. When we were going through James Cone's stuff, and I was like, whoa, this is,

01:12:24

I mean, I was shocked when you went through Alphonse Liguori. Yeah. You made me have to sit there and go through each one of those quotes.

01:12:32

I was absolutely shocked, and I was equally shocked on that level. The thing that we need to realize is they have kept this under wraps probably until MLK 50 was when they just kind of released the whole thing.

01:12:48

Hey, this is us. Released the Kraken. Yeah, and there's a whole crowd of them standing up, and you're going, oh my goodness, it's huge.

01:12:58

And the problem is there's still a great many who this is going on in their heads.

01:13:05

It's just not coming out of their mouths yet. It's sneaking out here and there, but it's not to this level yet.

01:13:11

And I think there's still a huge population of folks who are thinking just like this.

01:13:17

Well, not only that, but as I said to Swann on Twitter, I said, you know, last week

01:13:26

I went out passing out tracks and witnessing to people on the streets of London.

01:13:36

And there were dozens of ethnicities. I mean, London is the melting pot.

01:13:43

And so when you're passing out tracks to people coming out of a tube station in London, you get everybody.

01:13:53

And you do not sit there and go, oh, this is this type of person. We had one track and one message for everybody.

01:14:02

And on our side, the brothers that were out there, half of us were white, half of us were black.

01:14:09

Did it even enter our thinking? Any of this stuff that Cone said?

01:14:15

Nope. Nope. One message. One thing that unified us.

01:14:23

And I simply believe that that ability to have men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation come together and preach one gospel with unity between us is worth taking on the

01:14:41

James Cones and Talbot Swanns of the world who would divide that and destroy that. Because this, this, this

01:14:47

James Cone is an enemy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was.

01:14:54

And he has multiplied himself. And the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of some of my reformed brothers is that I should never say a word about it.

01:15:10

Well, first of all, your last name's white. That's pretty much death right there. But you're also white.

01:15:18

And so just leave it to the black brothers. There are,

01:15:24

I can name big names right now who have said this.

01:15:33

Don't talk about it. Three and a half times, black women seeking abortion, three and a half times in the

01:15:43

United States and Canada. What's the reasons? Don't talk about it.

01:15:49

Shh. Leave that to somebody else.

01:15:55

Leave that to somebody else. We can't talk about it. Talk about that anymore. There are many Christian leaders who have bought the idea that there are certain truths that can no longer be enunciated because it costs too much.

01:16:11

They may, they may agree, but it can't be said. So what they're really saying is abandon the black ministers who are fighting this kind of incredible treatment at the hands of the

01:16:35

Talbot swans of the world. Leave it all to them. You just need to need to back away.

01:16:43

Leave them alone. More segregation, more division. Not going to do it.

01:16:55

Not going to do it. So yeah, the second book, there's some even more interesting stuff in there.

01:17:03

If you want to take a look at it beforehand. But unlike the other side, which just simply relies upon yelling and screaming and epithets, we're going to the original source.

01:17:25

Lay it out there in the light to be seen for what it is. Because what I'm, what I'm hearing is

01:17:30

I'm hearing people go, oh, but, but, you know, there's a quote here, there's a quote there, but you know, there's still great insights.

01:17:37

I read page after page after page already on the air today.

01:17:43

Those aren't isolated quotes. This is the essence of the book. This is the essence of the position.

01:17:52

Don't try to soft pedal it by saying, yeah, but there's, there's a lot of other good stuff. There is nothing that you can get in James Cone that is true, that you couldn't have gotten from other sources.

01:18:03

Nothing, nothing at all. So we'll look at some more of that and press on tomorrow.

01:18:12

I want to try to finish tomorrow with something uptempo, something happy before Thanksgiving, something for which we can give thanks.

01:18:21

But, you know, let me, let me just comment on that. I am really thankful that when

01:18:31

I went to London last week, you know, I landed at like 10 in the morning. I wasn't able to get in my room to like one, but, and I could try to get him in trouble.

01:18:44

But as soon as I landed, I was met by a dear brother there in London who happens to be of darker skin than I am.

01:18:56

And we just had a really good time sitting there.

01:19:02

Well, he'll laugh at this, but when you try to get breakfast in London, English breakfast, you know, we, we bought this entire

01:19:17

English breakfast. And I'm just picking through trying to find something hungry.

01:19:23

There was a tiny little pile of eggs. And, you know, what they call bacon is actually just badly made ham.

01:19:32

And then of course you've got your beans, your baked beans for breakfast. That's, that's, you know, and the tomatoes and there was some black stuff.

01:19:40

I don't know what it was. I about died anyway. But despite all that, we had a wonderful time talking about ministry and learning

01:19:52

Greek and Greek New Testaments and theology and what's going on the church and, and here

01:20:00

I can fly across the ocean and we just have, we have everything in common.

01:20:09

There's no division. There's no, and then that night, you know,

01:20:15

I had, I had contacted one of the pastors at the second church I was speaking at. So, you know,

01:20:22

I'm not sure if I'm going to, I had, we had talked about doing something. I'm not sure if I'm going to make it. You know, I didn't sleep much last night and I could tell everybody was going to be disappointed.

01:20:30

So I got myself on the tube. I got to where I needed to go and had a great time.

01:20:37

The weather was horrible. It was that London mist, you know, not, not just fog. It wasn't fog, but it was raining.

01:20:43

You get, you get soaked if you stood in it, but it's not super heavy and it was cold.

01:20:53

And, but we were out there together. Like I said,

01:20:59

I talked to Jehovah's witnesses, briefly talked to the Muslim man, talked to some other people, passed out a fair number of tracts.

01:21:08

And it was just, I'm so thankful, despite all this negative stuff.

01:21:14

I am so thankful that I can go so many different places and what unites true believers in Christ so transcends anything that could divide us, whether it's

01:21:32

South Africa, I mean, I've gone into the townships down there and I've just loved the fact that these brothers, black, black, black

01:21:46

African brothers, you know what they want? Dr.

01:21:52

White, everywhere we go in the township, there are Jehovah's witnesses on every corner.

01:21:59

Help us, help us, prepare us, teach us. We want to get the gospel out.

01:22:09

And whether it's South Africa, whether it's, it's Melbourne, Australia, Kiev, Samara, the

01:22:19

Netherlands, it doesn't matter. What we have in common is so much more than what could ever divide us, and that we are to be thankful for.

01:22:32

That we are simply to be very, very thankful for. So let us not finish on a totally negative note.

01:22:41

Let's be thankful for that. Lord willing, we'll see you again tomorrow. Thanks for watching the program today.