MEGA EDITION: Fuller Reaction, Southern Denominations, The Civil War, CRT, Rom 13, Demonstrations

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We got a lot to get to today. We're gonna talk about the reaction of Southern Seminary to the fuller interviews that aired on this channel.

00:09

We're gonna talk about the protests going on across the country. And really, I don't even know if I wanna call them protests anymore.

00:14

It's crime. We're gonna do a bunch of history on Civil War stuff. And we're gonna talk about Romans 13 and the

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Supreme Court decision to essentially not allow churches to meet. So a lot of stuff. You can go to the timestamps at the bottom of the video in the info section if you want to watch certain parts and not others, because it's gonna be a long one.

00:34

Super mega edition. But let us talk about the elephant in the room. This is

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Josie. And a few weeks ago, I introduced Josie. Josie was about less than half this size.

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Josie's gotten a lot bigger, haven't you, Josie? And so we named her, finally.

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We named her Josie. And of course, my grandfather -in -law thought we might have named her after the outlaw

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Josie Wales, but that would be politically incorrect because Clint Eastwood played a Confederate soldier in the outlaw

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Josie Wales, and I had to inform my grandfather that that was a horrible thing to suggest.

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But no, Josie's a girl, so just a girl's name. It's like Joe from Little Women.

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Don't ask me how I know that. Anyway, Josie, Josie, you wanna go? So that was a request from,

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I guess, the children of some parents who like the podcast. They wanted to know more about Josie and see how big

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Josie had gotten. And Josie's a pretty well -tempered cat, I'll be honest with you. Oh, someone else, here's another conspiracy.

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Not that Josie was a conspiracy. Josie actually does exist. I do have a cat. Some people don't believe

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I do, because they know me and they know I'm not a cat person, but I actually do have a cat. Some people have suggested, how can this be your wife's laundry room?

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Because I always say, I'm broadcasting from my wife's laundry room. And of course, we're high -tech here. Of course, I just sway the camera just a little bit.

02:02

And you can see over here, oh, there's a shelf there. You see, it gets a little messier. And there's some laundry stuff over there.

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There's a window. Well, if you open that door up, there is, in fact, equipment to wash clothes.

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Machines that'll do it for you. We are in the 21st century. And I have 21st century equipment, as you can see.

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State -of -the -art studio here. So anyway, I don't take myself all that seriously.

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But this has been, this whole podcast, for the last little over a year now, has been really interesting to me to watch it grow.

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And I mean, it's grown a lot this week. I've had hundreds of new subscribers. And if you're new, welcome.

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The goal of what I do here is, it never started really as exposing things.

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I think that's, in some ways, I think a lot of the people that have flocked to this podcast are doing so for newsworthy reasons.

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They kinda wanna be in the know. And I'll do some of that. I think my passion, though, is more to educate.

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I want people to live by the word of God and use just logic, common sense, reason.

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I want them to think and know how to think and apply biblical principles to situations, and whether they be economics or history or government or just any facet of life that you can think of.

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And I'm certainly not the arbiter of all that. I haven't thought through everything. I certainly have a lot of things to learn.

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But life is a learning process. And for those who wanna learn along with me, welcome. So we're gonna dive into some things.

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And hopefully they'll be of help to you. I've gotten a lot of requests to talk about the fuller reaction.

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By the way, I think the number one question, if I had to pin it down possibly this week, that I've gotten is, John, should

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I stay in the Southern Baptist Convention? What do you think? Is there hope? And so I'm gonna address that a little bit.

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To be honest with you, I'm not the best person to ask. I know people think I'm really in the know, but I'm not in the

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SBC anymore. And I've asked that question to people that are higher up in different positions.

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And I'm just gonna give you my thoughts on it. But like I always say, do your own research on these things.

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You can listen to what I say, but always put it through the grid that you have of reason, of just common sense, of scripture.

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And see if what I say sounds true to you. And if it's wisdom, you know, talk to people other than just me.

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I always get nervous if someone wants to come to me and just take my opinion and run with it. Talk to others that you trust and hear what they have to say.

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But never, obviously, never go against what the word of God says.

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And if your own conscience prohibits you from doing something, don't go against that. So I'm gonna start off with this way.

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The reactions have been mostly positive to the Fuller interviews. I would say,

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I was expecting this, but I would say a lot of the reaction has been private emails saying, from inside Southern Seminary, a lot of students saying,

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Fuller's 100 % right. In fact, it's not as bad as what Fuller's making it out to be. Here's more information. But in almost every case, it's not people who are willing to go public about it.

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The intimidation factor is insane. Listen, you don't understand what it's like to be in probably like the mafia until you join an organization like the

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SBC. I'm amazed at the immense pressure.

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Of course, some people call it the 11th Commandment, but look, if you rattle the cage, the guerrilla will come after you.

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They will try to destroy you with every fiber of their being. And part of the motivation, I think, for this is they're institutionalists.

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And don't expect institutionalists to ever critique their institution. And other institutionalists as well.

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That means other seminaries, other places that rely on feeder students.

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Students from one institution will go to theirs, and they'll share resources. These people rely on the institution for their survival.

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It's like a bureaucracy in government. When a bureaucracy starts, it's very hard to get rid of it.

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People, because people depend on it for their jobs now. You've created, you've incentivized the organization.

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And so, a lot of the people that work at these institutions, they wouldn't be able to survive in the real world.

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And that's not, I don't, see, that's gonna be taken as such a cut. And I don't mean it to be a cut.

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And maybe it does come across that way. But I've been at, what, five or six academic institutions now.

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And there are some guys who just, they're regular Joes, and they can also teach.

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But there's a lot, there's a huge percentage of people that, look, if they didn't have their teaching job, if they didn't have their book contracts, which really, their publishing gigs, which really come with a teaching job, their speaking gigs at conferences, which come with a teaching job and the degrees and that whole world, if they didn't have that, put them in the real world, it'd be very difficult.

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For example, I don't think, someone like A .D. Robles, right? Working class guy, owns his own business.

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I mean, the guy, I just respect him so much. He talks about real life. I try to do that too.

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He's doing construction on his house. You know what his chickens are doing. That's the kind of guy he is. And he's just, he's not about the whole academia thing.

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He just wants you to understand what the word of God says and apply it to this situations, especially pertaining to the social justice movement.

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A .D., he's a good conversationalist. He's a really, he's good at kind of getting to the heart of the matter, putting his information out there on places like YouTube and iTunes.

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A lot of these guys, if they tried that kind of a long form conversation on YouTube, it wouldn't work. It just wouldn't work.

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I know some guys in these institutions that I think are trying to do that, trying to kind of compete in this arena. And it's kind of like the talk radio dynamic.

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They just really can't do it. Like, you don't see a lot of liberal talk radio shows that are just very competitive.

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Conservatives tend to own that. And the reason is, I think it's because working class people so the people that don't have these institutional jobs who, and then they can't sit online all day looking at social media.

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They're out there working. That's the fan base of talk radio. Those are the people that'll purchase the merchandise and buy the products that are advertised on these shows and stuff.

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And so, the institutionalists don't tend to cater to that audience.

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And that's a much bigger audience. And so, the reaction has not surprised me.

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Wagons are circling in the institutional circles. And there's a lot of institutionals out there. A lot of people really invested.

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And those who are in these institutions or on the periphery of them who don't agree, they will be silenced.

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And they are deathly afraid, some of them, of that. I mean, deathly. I mean, conservatives run for the hills. Especially if you're called racist, sexist, or homophobic.

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Like that, they're deathly afraid of being, any association with that whatsoever, they will scatter.

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And so, and they wield, institutionalists like to wield these weapons. It's really an elitism, populism thing, dynamic that's going on.

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So, here's what Southern did. We're gonna get into all of it. But they put out some,

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I would call them damage control videos. And they tried to address Dr.

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Fuller's well -sourced concerns with these highly scripted -looking damage control videos.

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I don't know how else to put it. And they all follow the same formula. They try to humanize the professor.

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How did you come to faith in Christ? And then they try to really give them either, mostly irrelevant questions.

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They don't ever bring up the real elephant in the room. They don't talk about what Fuller was bringing out.

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And by the way, I should just remind everyone, because people have asked me, did Fuller back up what he said? Well, that's the reason there are sources in each video of documents outlining where the primary sources are that Fuller is appealing to and saying, hey, these are problematic.

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So, they ignore that stuff. And then they just answer irrelevant questions or sometimes contradict their own previous positions.

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And so, it kind of feels artificial.

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It's not like what I'm trying to do now, which is just have a regular conversation with you guys and just talk to you personally, as a real person, a real human being.

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No, this is highly scripted. It's optics, it's fashion. It's not about truth and reason as much as it is optics and fashion and making the brand look good.

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It's about looks. And so, the first one they put out is

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Hernandez. So, the higher criticism critique that Fuller gave of Hernandez.

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And all he did, really, was he contradict his written positions without refuting them. And here's a little chart that I made.

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So, this only took me a few minutes after their video dropped and I watched it.

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And I just came back and I was like, hold on. You just asked some questions here. Does Hernandez believe in inspiration and errancy?

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The answer in the interview is yes. Yes, I hold to these words, inspiration and errancy.

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No problem believing in them. And then, of course, in his writings, the answer's no. He believes that the author of Job, under the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit, believed that these horrific mythological beings, such as the firstborn of death and king of terrors, truly existed.

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And so, it's like, if you believe that, that under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, someone is teaching moral lessons using actual mythology, believing the mythology is true, well, you don't have inspiration anymore.

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Does the author of Job believe in mythological characters? Of course, the answer is yes. And there's multiple places that Hernandez says this in his writings.

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And of course, in the interview, no, no, he doesn't. Did the author of Job speak through Bildad? The answer he gives in the interview is no.

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The answer, this is one of the most obvious ones. The answer in his writings is yes. He says it over and over. The author of Job was operating well within the common understanding of his cognitive environment when he warned through Bildad of these terrors and calamities that would befall the impious.

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Does the Bible contradict itself? He says no. And of course, in his writings, yes. The greatest contribution of Job and the moral lesson it teaches is that it contradicts the wisdom of Proverbs, essentially.

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So, it was just, let me go out and contradict all my written positions on these issues without any revocation, without any apology, without, like, it would be nice.

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Here's what would have been nice. If humility was at play in any of this, say, look, you know,

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I wrote some things years ago. And yeah, you know, Southern hired me and they knew about them, but I wrote them back then and I'm realizing now,

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I don't believe that anymore. And here's why I don't believe it. You know what? That kind of an answer, I think, would have been met with,

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I think even Dr. Fuller would have said, brother, you know, you're forgiven. We're so grateful that you see this.

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We're grateful for the humility, but you know, Dr. Fuller, he's been fighting this battle for years inside Southern.

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So, it's not like these are new critiques. These guys have known about this for a long time, but that's not the tack they're taking.

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They're not revoking anything. They're not distancing themselves from these writings. They're just acting like it never happened.

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And the two main concerns, I know there's some people that get confused by this, but really it boils down to this, guys.

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Did the author of Job, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, believe things that simply are not true, and then use those things that are not true to teach lessons?

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It's essentially what Hernandez advocates. Now, if you believe that the author of a biblical book can, in inspired writings of the

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Holy Spirit, propagate the idea that certain beings are true when they're not true, then that's not inerrancy.

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It's not the Bible without error. There's an error there. The other big issue is scripture contradicting scripture.

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If Job, the lessons of Job, the moral lessons of Job contradict the moral lessons of other books, then you have contradictions in the

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Bible itself. And so that also unravels the fabric of inerrancy. To me, not that difficult.

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But then again, I did read these sources, and so to see the reaction of some, well,

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Fuller didn't really understand, he didn't really prove his case 100%. Look, if Fuller was 50 % right and 50 % wrong, you'd think the magnifying glass would be on a place like Southern.

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Even if he was 50, like, Fuller doesn't work there. I certainly don't work there. I'm just asking the guy questions. But the microscope is on Fuller, and then it's on me, and then it's on some of the folks who sponsored it, like enemies within the church.

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It's not on Southern. Look at the direction that the wind blows, and you'll see who has the influence.

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And it's certainly not conservatives. It's certainly not the people who have actual legitimate theological concerns.

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Then the Pennington video. Pennington just basically answers irrelevant questions. And here's another little chart.

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There's an article, though, you can go to enemies within the church and read it, Postmodernism in Dr. Jonathan Pennington's Writings, and I'd encourage you to go there.

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And it just outlines how, basically, he answers absolutely irrelevant questions. I'll just give you a quick synopsis here.

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So, is there one objective way to read the scripture? And what Pennington says in the interview is,

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I think what most people mean by postmodernism is moral relativism and knowledge relativism. The Bible doesn't say anything clearly.

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The Bible doesn't command you to live in a certain way. The Bible doesn't teach anything clearly, which is absolutely wrong. So, here's the problem with that.

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Sounds really good, right? And we would agree with that. But it's irrelevant to his writings. So, many postmodernists teach meaning is found through a fusion of experience between the reader and the listener.

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And this is Gadamer, who Pennington, Pennington loves Gadamer. Talks about how great Gadamer is, and Echo, and these other postmodern guys.

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And Gadamer has this horizons view, which denies objectivity, but affirms that there's meaning. So, there's meaning, but the meaning is only found in this synthesis.

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It's like a reader response. It's the person who's reading, and they interact with the text, and that's where the meaning is found.

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It's not in the objective meaning that's there, that's waiting to be found in reality. And so, here's some quotes from Pennington.

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He says things like, there is no one simple right way to read a text, as both pre -modern

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Christian hermeneutics and Gadamerian postmodern interpretations understand. Instead, there are a variety of more or less faithful readings or performances of a text that are closer or farther on a spectrum to the census liberalis.

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There are also unfaithful readings and misreadings, to be sure, but a richer understanding of what it means for a text to mean releases much steam from the pressure cooker of modernist exegesis, and its angst -ridden drive for the one true objective meaning upon which all application can supposedly be built.

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And there are so, you can't go like a few pages without finding quotes like this in his writings. And so, there's a bunch of things

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I could say about that, but I would encourage you, if you really wanna know more about this, and you wanna get into the postmodernism and understand what it looks like in Jonathan Pennington's theology, read that article at Enemies Within the

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Church, because I think it lays it out pretty well. And there is no doubt, there's no doubt in my mind, after reading, especially his paper, there's like four versions of it, but version one, which you can find at Enemies Within the

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Church, there is no doubt he lays out a postmodern understanding of how to approach a text.

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And he finds whatever sense of, he thinks maybe, he doesn't really believe in an objectivity, but whatever meaning is to be found is to be found in this kind of community -driven approach, this we're gonna use the creeds and they're gonna give us a foundation.

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But that, guys, if you don't believe in objective reality, if you're an idealist, then there's nothing preventing you from going full -on postmodern.

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It's not a question of, are you a relativist? Yeah, he's not a relativist. Okay, good. But the question is, the bulwark you're trying to form against relativism, which is, well, we have this understanding, this perception that Christians have come together and we have creeds.

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Well, if you don't have objective reality, then who cares? The Mormons have their understanding and different cults have their understanding, different, you can go to the early church and find the heretics back then, they had their understanding.

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This is acid in apologetics. There's no way you can take this to a college campus. And look, I did college ministry for many years.

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I know the objections. I know the objections from the new atheists because I had to answer them for years. I know the moral objections.

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I know the objections over slavery and over the way scriptures talk about women. I have a feeling that these guys aren't in those worlds.

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They don't know how to interact with someone who's actually a pagan, who's trying to one -up someone who's a

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Christian using the Bible. And this is like 101. This is one of the main things they do is try to go back and say, well, there were many different groups who had different readings of the scripture and you can't just arbitrarily choose your meaning to be the correct one.

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Pennington can't. What, he's gonna go the Catholic route and say, well, there's this faithful reading that's existed for a long time.

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Look, there's an objective meaning and that's being questioned here and that undermines the sufficiency of scripture.

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There's no doubt about it. You can say you believe in the sufficiency of scripture till the cows come home.

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You can sign every statement. Doesn't matter. Your basic philosophical beliefs undermine that.

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Then you had Williams. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this. Williams answers completely irrelevant questions.

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Yeah, basically, the Williams video is basically, I believe the gospel. It's like, well, good. We all knew that you said you believe the gospel.

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The issue with Williams is, are you adding law to it? Are you adding law to the gospel?

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Look, the gospel is the good news, right, of Jesus Christ. There's no law with the gospel.

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There's no, the gospel is you have to do something. And this is why Dr. Fuller, I think, said that Dr.

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Williams' gospel needs to be anathematized because when you start saying the gospel is about racial reconciliation, you start going down that road.

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So doing something is part of the gospel. And look, I understand James. I understand all that, but there's a different category for that.

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There's a category of law. So you have the category of law. You have the category of gospel. If you start mixing the two, then you are corrupting the gospel.

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It's actually very simple. And so, now, racial reconciliation is a weasel word because you could mean something very good by that, that we're all one in Christ.

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And they try to sort of, oftentimes, social justice guys try to slip under the radar. They'll be like, yeah, we're one in Christ, which means we need quotas and we need to do reparations.

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And, you know, we need to rip down monuments. And the list goes on and on. You can't vote for Trump or whatever.

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You know, that's kind of their idea of racial reconciliation, oftentimes. But they slip that stuff underneath of gospel.

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And it's just not, it's a categorical error. Even if you're right about all those things, it doesn't belong in that category. Then you have

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Hall. Yes, Hall answers irrelevant questions and contradicts himself. So he does a combination of the two.

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And Hall, interestingly, and Hall, so the way he contradicts himself is by he's saying, yeah, you really can't be a

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Christian and a racist. But we have Hall on record three times in public says he's a racist, he's a white supremacist because he benefits from this system.

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Self -admitted white supremacist as the provost of Southern Seminary. And then he sort of says, well, yeah, you can't really be a

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Christian and a racist. Well, which is it, Hall? Which is it? Why don't you just apologize for saying three times over the course of,

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I mean, the last time he did this too was like a year and a half ago. It wasn't even that long ago where he's in public saying, I'm a racist.

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And so, and by the way, if you wanna check out, I think all of those examples, if you really search through the links that are on the

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Fuller video on Hall and Williams, you can find those references. But the point is though, why don't you just apologize?

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I don't understand why that's so hard. But the irrelevant part is this.

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And I actually, it reminded me of something. I wanna read something for you here. This is, I'm gonna sort of analyze

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Hall and Resolution 9 at the same time after reading this quote. This is from Thomas Finger, who is a, he was a doctor of,

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I think he taught theology, but at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary back in the 70s. And he did some writing for Sojourners, Jim Wallace's organization.

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Here's what he said. Remember, these are evangelical Christians, supposedly, who, they accepted the new left critique, just like all the modern social justice guys.

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He says this, 1977. Marxism has much to offer, a set of scientific tools for social analysis and projection of strategy.

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Here, many liberation theologians distinguish between Marxism as scientific analysis with its own autonomy and objectivity, and as a metaphysical system.

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Christians may accept the first aspect as a functional tool while objecting to the second.

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Insofar as capitalism is found on selfish individualism and monetary motives, Marxist critiques can help flesh out in economic and social terms, sorry, can flesh out in economic and social terms, biblical indignation against these things.

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Marxist analysis can be understood in the light of scripture and Christian practice. Okay, Dr. Thomas Finger, Sojourners, 1977.

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What does that have to do with Matt Hall? What does that have to do with Resolution 9? It has everything to do with it in this way.

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I've been studying these guys from the 70s very closely lately. And what I found with almost all of them, just actually,

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I'm almost comfortable saying all of them, is they reject Marxism, Neo -Marxism, that whole panoply, on the basis of the fact that it's materialistic.

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They say, we don't accept materialism. And Marxism is based on materialism, so we don't accept it. What they then say is, if you want real justice, it was in scripture the whole time.

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So they accept the Marxist critique as an analytical tool. You even heard the word tool in that quote.

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But they realize the foundation needs to be on the Bible. So they try to build a Marxist house on a

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Christian foundation. That's exactly what Resolution 9 allows you to do. We can use critical race theory, which comes from Marxism, as an analytical tool.

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Intersectionality, same thing. They give us a lens by which to look at all of reality.

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They're all encompassing. These are worldview -type things. But we're not gonna build our foundation on these things, because the

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Bible's the foundation. It's exactly what they said back in the 70s. The Bible's the foundation. And if you listen closely to the

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Matt Hall interview, you hear the same thing. Why don't you like critical race theory, Matt? Well, I don't like it because it's built on materialism, and we have to reject materialism.

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Well, yeah, of course, that's not the issue. That has nothing to do with the critique. Of course we know you reject materialism.

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The question is, do you accept the critique itself, the new left critique, the critical race theory critique?

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And you're seeing it now all the time, especially in regards to these riots that are going on across the country.

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You're seeing the same line of thinking. You have police officers who, and I can't even keep track of all of it now, you have what happened up in Minneapolis.

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You have the Arbery incident, which wasn't even police officers, but you have that down in Georgia.

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And I did a whole thing on the Arbery situation. So you can't say this is racism. You don't have the evidence to say it.

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And it's the same thing with the incident in Minneapolis. You can't say what happened to Floyd was racism. You just can't.

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Now, I realize the optics are bad. Like I said, we live in a world of optics now. But when you have, I think, was it four cops that were involved with that?

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One of them I think was white. And you're basing the whole entire thing off of that.

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Yeah, I mean, look, I got called a social justice warrior light this week. At the same time,

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I'm also being called by leftists that I'm this neo -confederate racist guy. I'm being called a social justice warrior light from guys on the right, some of them, a few of them, minority, but because I thought what that cop did was horrific.

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What he did was awful. I can't even fathom putting your knee on a guy's neck after he's limp, his body's limp, for minutes.

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What were they thinking? It's awful, but doesn't mean it's racist. And I'm not trying to get the guy off.

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The guy, look, if he murdered this guy, he deserves the death penalty. I mean, this is really bad stuff.

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And there's always bad cops. There's bad apples. People are afraid to be cops. If you scare people away from being police officers, because if you get into an altercation, you might not get backed up by your department.

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It'll be a media sensation. What happens? Good men don't wanna be cops anymore. People with families don't wanna be cops.

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You're gonna get the brutes. You're gonna get the people that are bad eggs in the department, and every department, I'm sure, has some of them.

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And in this case, this guy, either negligence and inappropriate training, or this guy just was evil.

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I don't know how else to really think about it. But it doesn't mean he was racist.

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And what you're seeing right now is this narrative that it's all race. And honestly, a lot of evangelicals,

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I'm gonna show you this later, but they're fueling the fire. They fuel this fire of what's going on, the crime in all these areas, by drumming up this narrative.

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Well, where does that narrative come from? It's the same narrative that comes from critical race theory. It's just that racism is systemic, that everything is motivated by power dynamics, and race is like the primary power dynamic, factor in power dynamics.

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It's what it is. It's not about whether you build your foundation on the Bible, supposedly, or on materialism.

29:05

I mean, look, if you try to build, they don't go together. If you try to build critical race theory foundation on the scripture, and call it something else, just call it justice, the two, you cannot serve two masters.

29:18

One will win out. And what we're seeing right now is critical race theory is winning out. Absolutely winning out.

29:25

Absolutely winning out. There's no doubt about it. My generation, and those younger than me especially, have been thoroughly inculcated with this idea that anytime they see anything, that the media, of course, wants to portray, because look, the media takes these things.

29:39

They ignore other things. There are police officers who died this week in the line of duty. There are white people who were killed by police officers.

29:45

They're taking the things that advance their narrative, and they can use.

29:51

That's what they show you. And then you make the logical leap from that to it must be systemic racism.

29:59

And we're trained into it now, to identify that as it has to necessarily be motivated by hatred against someone because of the color of their skin.

30:06

Why? Why can't this just be a really bad guy who's doing really bad things? And maybe he would have done it whether the guy was black, white, or green.

30:14

Why is that not a viable understanding of this, a possibility even? Yeah, doesn't matter.

30:21

It doesn't fit the narrative. And so what Hall's saying, it's fluff, guys. It's fluff on that.

30:27

Doesn't matter. He's not really taking apart the dangers of what critical race theory actually teaches.

30:34

So those are some of my thoughts on the videos that were put out. Now, their

30:41

Twitter reaction is a little different. And I always have to give my thoughts on Twitter a little bit.

30:49

Here's one of the things about Twitter. Twitter is not a place to find out what the majority thinks.

30:55

You need to understand this, guys. You really do. Because people are so intimidated by what happens on Twitter.

31:01

I've noticed that especially this week. Run for the hills. A Twitter mob is after us. We don't wanna be associated with someone who could possibly be called racist by the

31:09

Twitter mob. Oh, no. And it really, the perception. Perception is everything with this.

31:14

If you can get the numbers. Oh, wow, 200 people like to tweet. Oh, God. I guess we might be in the minority, right?

31:23

Like, that's how it goes. You can get 1 ,000 people. You get 3 ,000 people. You get, you know, whatever.

31:29

10 ,000 people liking something doesn't mean that it's, oh, that's everyone. It means there is a narrow group of people on a platform which is really far to the left.

31:39

Anyway, Twitter is the most far to the left. Facebook is significantly more centrist. And I think the reason for that is because Facebook, you can actually have a more long -form conversation, too.

31:47

Twitter is just, I've kind of come to the conclusion with Twitter, you know, I've debated so many times over the years, should

31:54

I just delete my Twitter? Because you can't have actual conversations with anyone. Conversations that matter. There's my plug.

32:00

But you can't actually reason with someone because it's all jostling and virtue signaling and who can get a good zinger out there that, you know, and you're playing to a crowd that's already conditioned to think in a leftist categories.

32:14

And so it's very hard for conservatives to even get good zingers out there because if they wanted to, and I don't even like the zinger thing.

32:20

Like, why can't we just be rational? So Twitter's, you know, Twitter, the best thing for Twitter is just to advertise, hey, come over here.

32:28

Come to this podcast. Come to this long -form conversation if you wanna have a real discussion and we'll advertise it on Twitter.

32:34

That's probably the best way to use Twitter. It gets, it just gets dicey. And I mean, look,

32:40

I've asked for prayer on Twitter because I know it's a quick way to get your message out. But man, there's a big downside to it.

32:46

But it is a place to find out, I think, what elites think and people with time on their hands. Most conservatives just, they're working class.

32:54

They don't have time to, they're not even on Twitter. They don't have time to get into big wars on there. They're busy. They listen.

33:00

They listen to podcasts. They listen to talk radio. Twitter is just a different world. It's not the real world. So just realize that when

33:06

I say this. But here's kind of like just a really small example.

33:13

And I haven't done deep dives and I don't really care to. I'm kind of just sick of Twitter at this point. But, you know, this is some of the things that his colleagues are saying about him.

33:21

You know, here's Tom Schreiner saying, this is so true what Jim Hamilton said. And he quotes

33:26

Proverbs 18, 17. The one who states his case first seems right until the other comes along and examines him. Well, no one's examined

33:32

Fuller. No one ever intended on examining what Fuller actually believed. It's all perception. Here's Herschel York.

33:39

Jesus also said none. Jesus also did not say, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you make accusations against one another.

33:47

It's directly related to Fuller. This whole thing, look, look at the timing of all these tweets.

33:53

And I mean, there's so many of them. And really, we shouldn't care that much. I'm just giving you a small sample.

33:58

Here's Dr. Jim Hamilton. The question for many out here in cyberspace is pretty straightforward, I think. Are you with Jesus or are you with the accuser?

34:07

Yes, the accuser. Is that Satan, I guess, the accuser of the brethren? I guess that's

34:13

Dr. Russell Fuller. He's the accuser. So you're with Dr. Fuller? You're with Jesus is the question here.

34:23

I'm not even gonna get into any more of it. It's so stupid. It is so, I mean, these guys are supposedly the intelligentsia among us.

34:30

They are the scholars. And they are showing that they have pretty much playground thinking, playground bully thinking when it comes to an adult who has actual cited, well -sourced objections.

34:45

And all they know how to do is virtue signal about it. And so it really does, it shows you kind of where your institutions are at.

34:52

Like, okay, if you wanna go to Southern Seminary, this is a question I've gotten a lot. Should I go to Southern? Should I stay at Southern? Look, if you wanna go to Southern, you could learn

34:59

Hebrew there. You can learn Greek there. There's some skills you can pick up. But even the supposedly conservative professors are showing that they're not really men of integrity.

35:08

They're very sensitive people. And they're institutionalists to the core. So you're not gonna get the plain unadulterated truth from these guys.

35:17

You're just not. And can you learn some things from them? You probably can in their specialized areas.

35:23

But don't think that they're men of character. And this is the thing about biblical education. What we see in the scripture,

35:29

I think, is more of a mentorship model. And if you want that Paul and Timothy kind of relationship, then

35:36

I think you need to find someone, you need to find a pastor who you can just really be mentored by, you can invest in, and they can invest in you.

35:42

Not on a fake level either, like a real level. Like someone who will actually go fishing with you, go do visitation with you, do ministry with you, share meals with you.

35:53

See this guy's life. Someone who's an open book, who's humble, who's willing to not just teach you, but to be corrected by truth.

36:01

And doesn't take offense, like a knee -jerk reaction, and just call people the devil, essentially, whenever they're questioned.

36:07

And so, you know, it's not even about whether you're gonna learn critical race theory at Southern.

36:13

That's not even the right question. Will you have men of character teaching you at Southern? That's the question. I'm sure there's a few left.

36:18

But you have to ask the question, those few who are left, if they're not going to fight this, then really, what does that say about them?

36:28

So, make your own decisions on that. But, you know, I'm just giving you some food for thought there. The other allegation here,

36:35

John Harris is a racist, because he supposedly, he's a neo -Confederate, or an alt -right guy, and because Fuller was interviewed by him.

36:43

And this is absurd, guys, on so many levels. It's actually a trap for them, and I'm gonna explain why this is a trap for them.

36:48

They think, this is one big, hey, we're gathering the troops, we're gonna go after this racist

36:54

John Harris. And here's the trap, this is why. Number one, because I'm actually none of those things.

37:01

So now all they're doing is promoting a book, I'm gonna show you the book in a minute, a book that isn't racist or alt -right, but completely pokes a hole in their historiographical narrative.

37:10

So the concerns basically come back to, John Harris wrote a book with a pseudonym, and it's a racist alt -right book.

37:18

And so they've, once people actually read it, they'll find out, oh, it's not racist or alt -right.

37:25

You show me the racism, show me the alt -right. It's not in there. And so they've set a trap for themselves, and they've done a beautiful job of now marketing my book.

37:37

And so that was, I was actually enjoying this in one way, looking at it, because I'm like, oh wow, I was like, this is gonna be great, because they're helping me now move the needle in a direction that, one direction, it was, look, it's such a small part of my life, that whole topic of the denominational divisions preceding the

37:56

Civil War, it's a small part of my life. It's like 5 % of what I've written about. But it's not even the topic of my thesis.

38:03

It's not even like my expertise in the academic sense, but it's something I've read a lot about.

38:10

And I've done a lot of research on colonial history, and Civil War history, and federal period history.

38:16

I mean, that whole era has always intrigued me. So it's, when they do something like this,

38:22

I'm just, and especially the people that are putting it out there, even the people with degrees and stuff, I'm like, they have no clue what they're talking about.

38:28

And now you're gonna get a working class guy picking up this book, because they wanna see, well, is John Harris any of those things? And they're gonna find out the truth.

38:34

So good job on that, guys. Here's the other thing. Here's the other, this is the more insane part.

38:39

This is the more relevant part. Because Russell Fuller hasn't been influenced by any of the material of mine, because he's never read any of that material on that subject.

38:48

So they're showing how desperate they are to somehow deflect off of Fuller, because they don't want to have the conversation.

38:56

It's the bottom line. Dr. Fuller has offered to debate any faculty member or member of the administration, but not one of them will take him up on it, not one.

39:05

It won't happen, just won't happen. They can't survive in that environment. They will crumble like,

39:11

I don't even know, something that crumbles, a wax figurine before a blast furnace, or a piece of paper.

39:19

They'll melt. It just won't happen if they're in a room with Fuller, and he's got actual citations and sources.

39:25

They can only survive in virtue signaling and shallow thinking worlds, like Twitter, and the stuffy, pontificating world of the ivory tower of academia, where everyone pats each other on the back, and they give each other chairs, and awards, and whatever, and bells and ribbons.

39:41

But these guys, in the real world, in a real debate, the wheels would all come off, and Fuller's offered to do that.

39:46

So this is so stupid, to attack the interviewer, like somehow, what does that mean? I guess, so you have to assume, okay,

39:53

John's written some positive things about some aspects of the Confederacy, which means he must be a racist, which means his questions to Dr.

40:03

Fuller must have been motivated by racism, which means we're already in critical race theory land. We're already there, because you're thinking that it's all systemic, and everything is a power dynamic, and it's racism is, the race is the biggest factor in that power dynamic, and John is motivated by all, that just motivates,

40:19

I guess, him brushing his teeth. It's racism. So my questions were infused with racism. And now you have to make the next logical leap of I was able to ask my questions in such a way to get

40:28

Dr. Fuller to give racist answers. Only, not even kids believe this kind of stuff.

40:35

Just regular, ordinary children don't make these kinds of logical leaps.

40:42

But we've been inculcated into critical race theory. That's what you're watching. You're watching Dr.

40:47

Fuller's points be proven out in the real world. So we're gonna get into some of these issues, historical things that I've written about.

40:55

I think, I think what's going on here, I'm just gonna explain this to you. This is the dynamic, whether you like it or not.

41:04

There are establishment conservatives, and there are working class populist conservatives. Establishment conservatives, and this happens on a grand scale, this happens in evangelicalism, it happens all over the place.

41:13

They're trying to create alternative institutions. So the publishing company, the conferences, the whatever, networks that they're trying to create.

41:21

And they are, no matter who they are, they are deathly afraid, deathly afraid of being called racist, sexist, or homophobic.

41:30

And these things cycle through. And they get called these things anyway, but they don't want to, they don't wanna give ammunition to leftists who hate them.

41:41

And so, you know, this year, right now, with the police issues, with the police and the

41:46

Arbery's incident and all that, racism is the big topic.

41:52

So being called racist is like the worst thing. Next year, it might be back to the Me Too thing. It might be, hey, if you believe, you're misogynist if you believe women can't be pastors, or women should submit.

42:03

And then maybe in three years, maybe it'll be back to homosexuality, or maybe it'll be all three of them together.

42:09

I mean, they cycle through. Once they run out of steam in one area, leftists will then say, all right, we're switching it up. We're gonna create an outrage about something else.

42:16

And so the thing is, and a good example of this would be,

42:22

I guess, like a Doug Wilson. You look at the conferences, you look at publishing and all the things that go with creating a real platform.

42:33

You got guys like Doug Wilson, who are basically creating their own platform. I think he's got like his own network of classical education schools and his own like seminary or something,

42:41

Bible college. I don't know. He's got, I don't know enough about him, but he's got a publishing company now.

42:47

And so he's doing his own thing. He's thinking local. He's focusing on Idaho, where he lives. But he's got a national reach, perhaps international.

42:56

But he's not gonna be platformed at too many conferences. He's not going to get book deals outside of probably where he's publishing.

43:05

That's just not how it works. It's probably what maybe even persuaded him to go that route, I don't know. But the reason is, is because look,

43:11

Doug Wilson wrote a book called Black and Tan, and he also participated in writing a book called Southern Slavery As It Was, I think.

43:18

I think that's what it's called. And I know about those books now. I didn't know about them before some of the research

43:23

I did. So I just sort of, I always knew Doug Wilson as the atheist guy. You know, he did some good, I thought, stuff with Christopher Hitchens.

43:29

But he's put out this material. You can go online, you can go to YouTube, and he talks about being a paleo -confederate, right?

43:35

He has a video of it. And so Doug Wilson, guys, I'm not gonna name names, but other people aren't gonna platform

43:43

Doug Wilson. And there might be other reasons for that as well. But if you remember years ago,

43:49

I think it was John Piper platformed Doug Wilson. And this was in a context, this was before 2015. I think 2015 is when things started really changing.

43:57

That's when there was that Confederate battle flag in South Carolina that was supposed to, it was over the monument, just supposed to honor the troops that went into battle, which is, for those who don't know history, there's actually national

44:10

Confederate flags. So there's like the First National, Second National, Third National. And then there's the reason the one that you see on like the

44:17

Dukes of Hazzard, General Lee, is the one that generally is displayed is because it wasn't actually a government national flag.

44:23

It didn't represent the government, it just represent locating troops on a battlefield. And so it became a sort of a pop symbol, but it was, that's the reason that that was the flag used on monuments and so forth.

44:35

So anyway, that was taken down, if you remember. Well, that was the same year Obergefell happened, the

44:40

Supreme Court decision on same -sex marriage. That's the same year that I believe

44:46

Roberts, it was all within like a month or two of each other, he found that he could justify

44:52

Obamacare. And so he got this socialized medicine, essentially, or going towards socialized medicine.

44:58

So a lot of things changed in 2015. The environment was different, but this was even before 2015. And John Piper had platformed

45:06

Doug Wilson and got a lot of heat for it. And you don't see Doug Wilson speaking at Desiring God anymore.

45:12

And so I'm not making a case that Doug Wilson should speak. And I'm not familiar enough with all Doug Wilson's views on everything.

45:18

But I'm just saying, if you read him or listen to him, and I've read some of his books, even his book on marriage and stuff, he doesn't come across as this raving, lunatic, racist guy.

45:27

He's rational, it seems like. I have no reason to believe he's a racist. He condemns racism, just like I do. And I've done it many times.

45:34

He thinks the slave trade was evil. I've read a blog where he talks about it's iniquitous traffic, I agree, same thing.

45:41

He is against segregation, thinks it's wrong, same, I mean, and that's where these guys, instead of saying that, hey, pick the actual sin, partiality is a sin, racism is a sin, thinking that your ethnicity makes you more valuable than someone else, that's a sin.

45:58

Man capture, what happened in tribal warfare with capturing these other tribes and then selling them to, and I'll just say, it doesn't really matter where they're from, but I'll just say it because it pokes a hole in the narrative a little bit.

46:10

But Northeastern, they were from the Northern United States, these flesh merchants, they would sell them to them, they'd come, they'd sell them to Southern plantation owners, so forth.

46:18

That whole system had a lot of evil attached to it. Well, that was one of the evil things, the man capture part of it. Another evil thing associated with it is many of these states, slaves couldn't read, and they weren't, read their

46:29

Bibles, and they were prohibited from it because governments were afraid. Well, if we, and it wasn't always enforced, but like Stonewall Jackson had a

46:37

Sunday school class where he taught slaves to read. But the thing is, they were afraid that like radical abolitionist literature, which encouraged slave revolts would be read.

46:47

And oh my goodness, if it's read, they'll revolt. Well, that was wrong to prohibit them from reading.

46:53

Like, why can't you actually pick out the actual things that you can get Bible verses together and you can say, this is wrong. Keeping people from understanding the word of God, yeah, that's wrong.

47:01

It would be an easy case to make, but instead what they wanna do is say slavery, anytime, anywhere is evil and sinful.

47:07

And I'll tell you what, they can't make that argument on a college campus. They just can't do it. And I've done it many times.

47:15

I mean, I did college ministry for a while, and that's one of the big things that comes up. Your Bible promotes slavery.

47:20

It promotes mistreatment of women. It promotes all sorts of horrible things. And the right way to respond to that is usually, well, what standard are you appealing to?

47:29

Because then they don't have any standard. You get into a discussion of morality. But what you'd have to do if you're these guys, you'd have to say, well, the

47:35

Bible didn't say that. So you mean to tell me when Paul is writing about slaves, submit to your masters, masters, treat your slaves well, and does it multiple places.

47:42

When Jesus is giving examples in his parables of slavery, and they're doing so in not in Jewish, the ideal

47:50

Jewish slavery, which by the way is not ideal to anyone today. Even Christians wouldn't say that's ideal.

47:59

But Jesus and Paul, they're not speaking in those environments. They're speaking in environments where it's

48:04

Roman slavery. Well, what does Roman slavery include? Among other things, gladiatorial arenas where slaves kill each other.

48:12

Yeah, they didn't have that in America. It includes, you can't be a

48:17

Roman citizen and be a slave. So this whole talk about, oh, it's race -based. Yeah, well, in Rome, it was based on citizenship.

48:24

It's pretty much the same thing. What else? Sex slavery.

48:29

Sex slavery was, in Rome, it was acceptable. Of course, yeah, you have your slave for sex. That wasn't acceptable in American slavery.

48:36

Not saying it didn't happen, but it wasn't something that everyone was like, we really, we think that's part of our culture, and it's a good thing, and we commend it.

48:42

No, I mean, it was a pagan slave system. And this is where Paul wrote. This is in the context that Jesus taught.

48:50

And so it doesn't fly when you're trying to reason with someone. And I have done it. Look, I have done it.

48:56

I've gone to, I went to, remember they were protesting a Confederate monument, secularists, right? In North Carolina a few years ago.

49:02

I went, I brought them Gatorade. I talked to them about it. I witnessed. You can read, I'll put it in the info section.

49:08

You can read about my experience, because I wrote it all down, how I approached it. And I didn't see anyone else going there, even though Southeastern wasn't that far.

49:17

I don't know of any other Christians who went there. They had a captive audience. They wanted to do it. And so the strategy here,

49:25

I think, is to separate someone like me from the herd, or Doug Wilson from the herd, or whoever. Like really, if you use

49:32

John's information about anything, well, you're a racist, probably, which is another, that's a critical race theory, understanding, oh, it just gets systemic.

49:40

It just gets into everything. It motivates everything. And so people, it works with the conservative establishment types.

49:45

They run for the hills with this kind of stuff, because they want to be very, quote unquote, careful. They want to, there's very, they're not willing to stand up to these guys on something like that.

49:56

They can't fathom, even if they disagree with John on something, or Doug on something, or pick your person, they can't, if it's hard for them to defend, or if it's something that they just don't agree with, it's hard for them to say, well,

50:09

I agree in this one area with that person, and I'm using this information, because we don't have objectivity anymore.

50:14

It's not about truth. It is about fashion and optics. You've got to understand that. On the conservative side too, it's not just a liberal thing.

50:20

We live in the postmodern world, and I'll tell you why the intellectual dark web is growing, why you have

50:25

Jordan Petersons and Tom Woods, et cetera, why you have these guys with these platforms, why you have guys like A .D.

50:30

Robles out there, just, you know, podcasting, and people want to listen to it, because people are hungry for the truth.

50:38

Working class people know they're being lied to by their institutional elites. They know, in many cases, in many cases, they know their pastor's lying to them.

50:46

They know they're the authors of books that are being pushed in their face at evangelical institutions are lying to them.

50:53

They know seminary professors are lying to them. They know the government's lying to them. They know that it's all optics.

51:00

Many people, I'm not saying that for every church, I'm just saying, like, there are people in these positions, and they're realizing it, and that's a hard place to be, and they're trying to find truth.

51:09

And it's become unacceptable, Tom Woods says this when I used to listen to him, that there's a three -by -five card of acceptable opinion, and if you go outside of that, then it's like the guillotine comes down on you.

51:19

And so conservatives now, the Overton window is shifting, so conservatives are in this corner where that three -by -five card is now, it's much bigger, it's bigger than three -by -five.

51:29

It's a sheet of paper at this point, and getting bigger all the time. I mean, you can't really defend cops anymore, or the profession of being a police officer.

51:36

It's very hard to do that now. It's becoming harder all the time. And so conservatives get pushed into these corners, and they wanna navigate the minefield without cracking any eggshells, and it's becoming impossible to do it.

51:49

And so what's happening at many times is that they are platforming people who are minorities, or a lot of conservatives are platforming people who are homosexual, and this is supposed to show, it's they're buying an intersectionality, because they're saying, well, if the same things, the same truth that I would say,

52:05

I'm not gonna say it, I'm gonna have that person say it, and I'm just gonna post what they said. And so that is a world where truth is dead.

52:12

It's all about image. It's all about brand. It's all about fashion.

52:18

That's where we live, and that's why my platform is growing right now. I'm not even trying to necessarily grow my platform.

52:26

I don't care, but back to what I was saying before, the same arguments that these guys are using to virtue signal against me, it's gonna be used against them, because they don't go to the biblical verses to back up what they're saying.

52:40

They take broad categories of love, and love for a neighbor, and justice, and they infuse these terms with meanings that are outside the text, of inclusion, equity, tolerance, new left ideas, and egalitarian ideas.

52:57

They infuse the text with those things, and then they use that to override the specific passages on the topic.

53:03

Like, if you wanna know about slavery, let's say, go to all the Bible verses that talk about it, and figure out what they mean.

53:09

But these guys aren't starting out from that starting point. I'm just telling you, and these are supposedly the intelligentsia that teach seminary classes and so forth.

53:19

It's become all about politics and fashion now, how you approach these things. And if you wanna try to say, like, we're gonna condemn, we're gonna condemn like a

53:29

Robert E. Lee, let's say, or a George Washington. We're gonna say, well, they own slaves. Jonathan Edwards, that was wrong, it was sinful, and I would have excommunicated him from my church.

53:38

Well, it's gonna be hard for you, then, once someone says, hey, homosexuality isn't wrong. You say, well, there's a

53:44

Bible verse about it. Let me show you, let me show you what Romans 1 says, and then they try to use the same thing on you. They'll say, well, equity, inclusion, tolerance, love for a neighbor.

53:53

Doesn't love for a neighbor override this specific command? Can't you use love for a neighbor to interpret what

53:59

Romans 1 says? That's what they're gonna do, and it will work because you've given them the logic by which to do it with.

54:06

Now, I'm gonna talk a little bit about myself and my writings. You can go to the info section if you want to skip ahead onto a new topic, because this is a mega, mega, mega long edition, but there is a place to have the discussion

54:19

I'm about to have. I didn't think it was appropriate to have it in the context of Fuller. Fuller, this has nothing to do with what

54:25

Fuller was saying. So, but now, hey, look, I'm willing to have a reasonable adult discussion with anyone who wants to have it, as I have time for it.

54:35

I mean, my time is pretty limited, but hey, if you're someone with, even, it doesn't even have to be a big platform, but if a reasonable platform, and you wanna ask me questions about this, or have a debate, or a friendly, respectful, hey,

54:45

I'm not opposed to that. But I won't get into the whole

54:51

Twitter virtue signaling world, because it's just stupid. It's just, I'll go with it to a point, but it's nonsense.

55:00

So here's the long form conversation that you guys come to hear from me. A little bit about me.

55:05

There really isn't anything new about objections to my position on the emancipation of slavery, or the legality of secession.

55:11

Nothing new has really been brought up. I've discussed these topics at length already, here, here, and here, and other places as well.

55:23

Most of the historical research is not, my research is not on these topics anymore, but I do plan on discussing them more this summer, putting out some videos for understanding these things.

55:35

I'm not a southerner, so I should say that up front. Sorry to disappoint some of you. I'm actually from California. I was raised in upstate

55:42

New York. My mom's side is from Ohio. My dad's side is from California, Mississippi. So here's the southern connection.

55:47

My grandfather was a cotton farmer. He was a soldier in World War II. He lived through the Great Depression. He settled in California as a carpenter, and I grew up going to some family reunions in Mississippi.

55:57

Now, I have seen white supremacy. I saw it in Michigan once, and I saw it in New York on a few occasions, and ironically, both in the north.

56:07

And I've lived in the south for about three years. No, maybe even more than that now.

56:13

I've lived in the south about four years. Time flies. I haven't seen it down here yet. I'm sure it exists.

56:19

I'm sure it's there somewhere, and it always will. That's the thing. And you don't stamp it out by crying racist.

56:25

In fact, sometimes you build their numbers by doing that. You stamp it. There's a way to approach this, and I have approached it.

56:31

In fact, I helped lead someone to the Lord who was from that alt -right thinking a few years ago, and the way to approach it is to honestly bring up the unity of Christ, the unity of what

56:42

Christ has done in creating the new man, and that's what I've endeavored to do. I don't like calling that racial reconciliation.

56:48

I just like calling that the effect of the biblical gospel. It just brings people together, because now you have something in common that transcends culture and your skin color and anything else.

56:59

You have the love for Jesus Christ. Some of the places I felt the most comfortable,

57:04

I'll be honest, have been sometimes in areas where I was the minority, but I'm with brothers in Christ.

57:15

It drives me nuts. We have to separate everyone. I mean,

57:20

I'll get into this a little bit later, but you have Christian organizations like Gospel Coalition and Crew endorsing now, and even the

57:27

Southern Baptist Convention in some senses, and I'll show you that a little bit, or I'll talk about it, but they're endorsing a type of segregation, as if you need to hear a different message, because you're a different color of skin.

57:38

No, we're together, we're together. So anyway, the guy

57:45

I led to the Lord who was alt -right, or helped with that in that process, he loves Lincoln, loved

57:51

Lincoln, and I noticed this, my study on alt -right stuff is limited pretty much.

57:58

I mean, I've read a few things about them, because I was in the process of helping lead someone to the

58:04

Lord who kind of had that background, and so I know alt -right is often, often it's just thrown out there as a slanderous term, but there is a group of people, you wanna call them alt -right or not, there is a group of people that are kind of neo -Nazi types, and they do believe in a type of white supremacy, which is disgusting, and it's wrong, and it's sinful, and it's evil, and I have no problem saying that, and I think

58:31

Richard Spencer kind of, sort of the people kind of around him have these kind of ideas of racial solidarity, and I think even he would say he's not a white supremacist, he would say he's a white nationalist, and there's a difference there, but either way, he thinks that's kind of, that's the thing you build community and unity around, and it's better when you're dealing with someone like that, if you're gonna do it, instead of just crying racist at them and getting all angry, if you're trying to lead them to the

58:59

Lord, it's better to actually have a rational conversation and argue with them, because there were times in human history where the majority of people believe that kind of thing, what would you have done in those circumstances where all the wins were against you?

59:12

You couldn't have just cried racist and had a million Twitter people to come bad mouth the guy and make him feel bad, oftentimes that makes them even more ingrained in their opinion, it's better to argue against it, to use and say that genetic determinism is

59:26

Darwinistic, and here's why it's wrong, but we don't, yeah, we're not getting that training from the seminaries,

59:35

I'll tell you that. So, so here's the thing about Lincoln, it's right, and I'm gonna start off the historical discussion this way for a reason,

59:44

Hitler used Lincoln to justify the consolidation of the Weimar Republic, I have read Mein Kampf, not because I was gaining inspiration from it, because I wanted to know what it said, so I could critique it, just so everyone's clear on that, but I have read it, and yes,

59:57

Hitler does appeal to what Lincoln did in the Civil War, as it's a really good thing, and we need to get rid of the Weimar Republic and consolidate,

01:00:05

Fidel Castro, big fan of Lincoln, had a Lincoln bust in his office, was very inspired by Lincoln, Karl Marx wrote a letter to Lincoln, congratulating him on essentially his victory in the war, and some of his ideas were certainly in line with white supremacy, as were many of the

01:00:24

Republican Party platforms at the time of the war, who wanted free white labor in the Western states, that was their opposition to the supposed expansion of slavery, we want free white labor in these states, that was a big part of it at least, and Lincoln obviously had some views that were consistent with white supremacy as well, he wanted whites to be at the top of the class structure, he wanted to ship slaves back to Africa, he was an advocate for that, and I know this about Lincoln, and I don't want

01:00:56

Lincoln canceled, I'll be honest with you, don't like the guy in many ways, I don't want him canceled,

01:01:02

I don't want you going and ripping down the Lincoln Memorial, and John, how can you say that, how can you say all the horrible things, because I know that that wasn't all the man was about, and I know that Lincoln is a very, very important part of our history, this was the consolidation of the

01:01:18

United States, this was the forced unification of the country, and it has changed the character of the country, people need to know about Lincoln, I don't want to erase him from the landscape,

01:01:28

I don't want to lobotomize that part of history, I don't want to lobotomize a region of history, I don't want to lobotomize southerners, but if you really want to follow the logic that these guys are using, they'd have to take down Lincoln, now all of those ideas

01:01:43

I just told you, those politically incorrect ideas Lincoln had, which are easily sourced, all those ideas are 180 degrees away from what

01:01:50

I believe, or what Christians ought to believe, partiality is sin, and I believe the modern state that Lincoln helped create, is becoming more constraining, and it's basically replacing

01:02:02

God with the government, and to the point now, in a sense we all live on the government plantation now, look at what's happened during COVID, you think you're free, really?

01:02:12

Now the Bible Belt in general has become the nation's whipping post for all manner of national sin,

01:02:19

I'll give you some examples, it's the Bible Belt's fault that there are school shootings because of gun culture, it's the

01:02:25

Bible Belt's fault women aren't equal to men because of patriarchy, it's the Bible Belt's fault that American education is falling behind because they believe in creationism, it's the

01:02:34

Bible Belt's fault that homosexuals aren't equal because of these strong patriarchal nuclear families in the

01:02:39

Bible Belt, it's the Bible Belt's fault that people like Trump are elected because they're just all racists down there, and the assumption is always that the most socially influenced by Christian part of the country is the most complicit in holding back progress towards equality, inclusion and diversity,

01:02:58

Southern Christians carry a heavy burden as a result of this, and they have become very resentful of the stereotype the media paints them in, it used to be cool to be

01:03:08

Southern, it was part of the pop culture, and this is by the way after the Civil Rights Movement, so Southern symbols,

01:03:13

Southern music, Southern politics, Southern accents, were all cool from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton, two

01:03:20

Democrat presidents ironically, both from the South, but this is Dukes of Hazzard, the

01:03:25

General Lee, big Confederate battle flag on the top of it, Leonard Skinner, Clinton used the flag to campaign with Gore, country music was on the rise,

01:03:39

I mean you saw this stuff all over the place in pop culture, I mean it was even on shows like Murder, She Wrote and Matlock, and they had no aversion to pictures of Robert E.

01:03:50

Lee, it was just part of this, that was Southern culture, it wasn't viewed as a racist thing at all, and this is after the

01:03:56

Civil Rights Movement, again, so these symbols weren't controlled by Klansmen, it wasn't viewed that way in most of the culture, in fact

01:04:04

I have, there was someone online who was really criticizing me, I happen to know that the church they attend in the 80s, the late 80s

01:04:16

I believe, did a VBS theme, and they had people dressed up like Confederate soldiers, and they had

01:04:25

Dixie flags, and it was all there, and I'm not gonna, because in this political environment,

01:04:32

I'm not gonna release that stuff, because I don't wanna hurt those guys, but look,

01:04:38

I'm just bringing that out to say, there was a time when, and it wasn't because of racism, there was a time when it was cool to be

01:04:48

Southern, and it wasn't like that long ago, okay, that this was the case,

01:04:53

I mean when I was a little kid, this was still in effect, I mean I remember going down South, and people were still very proud of the fact that they were

01:05:04

Southern. Since George W. Bush, this has not been the case though, progressives have successfully painted anyone who takes pride, not just in their

01:05:13

Confederate heritage, but in their Jeffersonian heritage as backward, ignorant racists. Academia has thought this way really since starting maybe about the

01:05:22

Scopes trial, but Southern elites have by and large accepted this interpretation, and sought to wield it as a weapon against anyone who they think causes trouble, like a

01:05:31

Phil Robertson, or a Roy Moore, so what they do is they'll signal to the elites in the media that they are in fact enlightened, having escaped the trappings of their evil culture, but meanwhile that Roy Moore over there, man you gotta go after him.

01:05:46

So that's kind of what's happened, especially since Bush. Now I'm not willing to do that,

01:05:52

I'm not willing to lobotomize all that history, and say that if you have any affiliation, with or affinity for your relatives who fought for the

01:06:06

Confederacy, or if you're part of Sons of Confederate Veterans, and you want to keep their legacy alive in some way,

01:06:12

I'm not willing to just say no, you can't do that, because I know the slippery slope that we're on right now,

01:06:21

I happen to see the precipice before me, and I know as soon as you start going down that road, you've lost everything, because you've given them the argument, the

01:06:29

South is a low -hanging fruit, but you've given them the argument now, to go after the founding fathers, to go after everything else, the

01:06:38

World War II, everything. Now, and I'm gonna explain this a little more, now

01:06:44

I've read the Foner's, the Gallagher's, Bonekemper's, Blight's, Elizabeth Pryor's, Dew's, I've read these guys,

01:06:53

I know there are holes in their narrative, these are Civil War historians that everyone looks to, and in fact those holes are directly related to critical theory, actually, that's the interesting part of this, look up David Blight's memory studies, as opposed to history, so we're not doing history, we're doing memory studies, and you'll see exactly what

01:07:12

I mean, it's critical theory in history, it changes the whole historiography, now the establishment historians have been weaving a narrative for over 40 years, which has led us to the 1619

01:07:21

Project, and it all started with the South is evil, the war was all about slavery, everything is motivated by racism in this country, now here's the truth, racism has certainly motivated some things, in fact segregation in both the

01:07:35

North and the South was bad, and as race relations became poisoned during Reconstruction, it was fueled by white supremacy, now in some ways it was worse in the

01:07:45

North, believe it or not, in some ways, now the majority of the population wasn't in the North, of African Americans, so that's one of the big differences, but you didn't have, like Odabanga, this pygmy

01:07:58

African in the zoo, in the Bronx Zoo, I mean this actually happened, eugenics was bigger outside the

01:08:06

South, that happened in the South, but it was bigger outside, especially in California, you have, this is

01:08:15

Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote, but you have him, and we're actually seeing this happen right now in some ways, in sort of an ironic way, but he would say things like, the people of Chicago could teach the people of Mississippi how to hate, and they were just more violent up there, when he tried to march up there, and we're seeing that,

01:08:33

I'm just saying we're seeing that violence play out now, in Northern cities especially, it seems like the conditions are worse, but it's even down to like pop culture things, like Northerners had a real problem with people like Elvis mixing black musical dance forms with rockabilly music,

01:08:52

Elvis was popular in the South before he became a national, international sensation, and the way he moved his hips and everything, it wasn't controversial really in the

01:09:00

South, it got controversial when he started going on to like Northern television shows and stuff, and there was this kind of idea that, from even before the

01:09:08

Civil War, Northerners had this idea that, that the South was like this big brothel, that like there was a race mixing going on down there, and it was just, and that was a terrible thing, for white supremacist reasons, it was a terrible thing to mix races, that's why they, part of the reason they didn't want slavery expanding into the

01:09:25

Western territories, they don't want black people there, and look, that's not, that doesn't characterize the whole country now, but that one time, there were people who thought that way, and I can show you documents that prove that, but that sort of, that narrative actually existed up until even, like Elvis Presley, you could make the argument,

01:09:45

I'm just saying you could make that argument, so anyways, there's a hypocrisy

01:09:51

I think sometimes when people wanna put the South under the microscope, but they don't look at other regions of the country, and judge accurately, now the

01:09:58

Bible Belt was conquered, and impoverished during a war, because the Bible Belt was seen as traitors for secession, and the

01:10:05

Bible Belt, they were seen as abusers, because the elites in their culture held slaves, even though it was

01:10:11

Northerners who transported them, they've gotten to bear the entire brunt of racism, and slavery for years now, and so it's a, they're a convenient scapegoat, that's what's happened, the area of the country most affected by Christianity, has become the area that is the scapegoat, for all the national sins, a few years ago,

01:10:29

I started noticing that Southern Baptists, and Presbyterians especially, started touting the view that the entire foundation, and formation of their denominations, were motivated by racism, and the propagation of the

01:10:40

American slave system, there was a lot of guilt, and a lot of calls to action as a result, to start a process of racial reconciliation, now, no one

01:10:50

I know of, has a problem with racial reconciliation, but the version being pushed, often includes quotas, affirmative action, reparations, white guilt, global curriculums, changing voting patterns, so that's the kind of, that was the solution, to these historic alleged injustices, now furthermore, this was added to the gospel itself, so it was a blatant conflation of works, and grace, even if those things are all right to do, which

01:11:18

I think the Bible would contest, they are not part of the gospel, so it should also be noted, that those who use these past injustices, to foment these changes, and neutralize opposition, because if you oppose these, this racial reconciliation, you were the racist, that's the treatment

01:11:34

I'm getting now, they were not part of the alleged injustices, they believed they were guilty for, so I think that's important to understand, they're kind of bringing themselves out of this, they're saying they're doing something, they have like a pass, because look at what they're doing, that's the virtue signal, look at what we're doing, to address these historic injustices, we get a pass, you don't, because you're not on our side, so there are many problems with this approach, to supposedly unify, they'll use the term unify around the gospel, but this is the way they're doing it, one of them was the fact, that the foundation for this assertion, wasn't entirely true, about the denominational divisions, it just wasn't true, so I became curious, about the denominational divisions, when

01:12:24

I was a student at master's in 2011, I did a historical theology project, on theological issues leading up, to these divisions, so Presbyterians, Methodists, Wesleyan split off,

01:12:37

Southern Baptists, became their own denomination, so you have these denominational divisions going on, and there's a bunch of them, at the time, and really starting in the 18, it really spanned the 1830s, through the 1860s, there were divisions going on, and part of them, and related to issues, that concerned, whether or not, someone holding slaves, was sinful in and of itself, now, here's the paper

01:13:02

I did, essentially, it showed, that there were a bunch of issues, leading up to this conflict, higher criticism was an issue, phrenology, so the measuring of skulls, to determine, whether someone was inferior or not, this is scientific racism essentially, proto -Darwinist ideas, so higher criticism, scientific racism, and whether or not slavery in and of itself, was a sin according to scripture, these were all part of the fabric, of what led to these divisions, and what

01:13:33

I discovered, was that most historians, had a historiographical problem, in how they framed the whole discussion, they started in the 1840s usually, and approached the whole issue, as a moral play, between good -hearted

01:13:46

Northerners, who wanted to stop injustices, and evil Southerners, who wanted to keep them going, so what

01:13:52

I found was, that this cartoonish version of history, was inaccurate, and its effect was to demonize, and dehumanize

01:13:59

Southerners, which of course is exactly, what academics were already doing, so Christian elites, who went this direction, could gain favor from the world, for forwarding the same narrative, and use the guilt, their interpretation created, to forward progressive causes, within the church, which brings us to where we are today, and I should probably say, that there was a historian,

01:14:24

Edward Crowther I believe, who actually did not, he bucked the trend, he did not go this direction, he didn't go like the

01:14:30

Mark Knoll direction, and Mark Knoll's not bad, you can read civil wars, a theological crisis, but all the other surveys, as well that don't, they don't have the same scope, they don't start in the late 1700s, and talk about these other issues,

01:14:46

Edward Crowther I think, actually did sort of talk about those things, but his book is way out of print, and no one cares, and you're not gonna get, the academia book deals, you're not gonna get platformed, if you're gonna do actual historical, primary source research, and take the whole entire enchilada, and create a paradigm, they only want you to take, one slice of the enchilada, just find the racist quotes, string them together, and that's your paradigm, rather than taking the whole entire thing, so anyways, there's some bad historiography going on, so I showed that in reality, one gets a fuller picture, by starting in the late 1700s, and seeing how many

01:15:22

Northerners, adopted higher criticism, scientific racism, and finally the idea, that owning slave labor, in and of itself was sinful, and needed to be abolished immediately, regardless of economic consequences, or how it would impact, the well -being of slaves themselves, many

01:15:37

Southern clergy, standing on scripture, opposed higher criticism, scientific racism, and the notion that a slave was, that a slave owner was by definition, in sin, now remember, slavery happened organically, this is actually the

01:15:51

Achilles heel, of the 1619 project, critical race theorists assume, that racism motivated, every aspect of American life, and that every evil attached to slavery, was somehow part, of a systemic plan by America, as an abstract concept, to found an entire country, on the premise that minorities, are inferior, actually though the slave trade, which was it was horrific, it was sinful, took place outside the jurisdiction, of governing bodies, and once Americans, could do something about it, legally at the constitutional convention, they outlawed it, starting in 1808,

01:16:25

Virginia a Southern state, have been trying to outlaw, the slave trade for years, it was one of in the original drafts, of the

01:16:30

Declaration of Independence, that was one of Thomas Jefferson's, problems with Great Britain, you're not letting us end this thing, there were smugglers though, up through the

01:16:40

Civil War, that kept bringing slaves in, and so you know what, the Confederate Constitution, outlawed the slave trade, how does that fit your narrative, right, so when there was legal recourse, when there was ways of trying to stem this, people of the

01:16:53

United States, did try to oppose it, but they weren't careless about it, they knew that you couldn't, some cures were worse than their diseases, and so it wasn't as simple as people today, try to look back and make it seem, to just get rid of the whole institution immediately, so that the first step was obviously cut it off, and that's what the

01:17:13

United States did, that's what the Confederate States of America, tried to do, and like Joseph, who was wrongfully sold into slavery, because many of these people were, dealing with the slaves who were present, within the boundary of the

01:17:26

United States, was not as easy as flipping a switch, the North did not want African Americans, integrated into their region, or the

01:17:32

West, they also did not want to compensate, Southerners or freed slaves, in order to help them integrate into the

01:17:38

South, no political party had a plan, for how to deal with a problem, which was increasingly on their conscience,

01:17:47

Southerners like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, John Randolph, and even Jefferson Davis, favored forms of gradual emancipation,

01:17:54

Lee thought the influence of Christianity, over time would free the slaves, but he did not think it was a sin for him, to take care of and provide for the slaves, that he inherited, he didn't buy them, he inherited them, they were his responsibility, and without him, he knew that they would not, it would be harder for them, they couldn't make it in the world around them, so he took that responsibility, and that's what he believed, it was his responsibility, so are we gonna call him sinful, we're gonna call him evil for that, he's in sin, show me the

01:18:23

Bible verse, that's the issue here, that I think things are becoming hopefully more clear, as you're listening, with how nuanced and complex this issue was, it wasn't the cartoon, that these guys try to make it out to be, now

01:18:35

Protestant denominations in the South, repeatedly encouraged masters to treat slaves, the way Paul commanded them to in Ephesians six, in a pagan slave system, not talking about Hebrew slavery, not talking about things that are ideal in any way, many of the denominational splits, occurred when it became apparent, that Northerners did not have regard, for the numerous passages concerning slavery, so the issue became one of biblical authority, not racism, and not whether slavery ought to be abolished, at some point, wasn't really, that wasn't the issue, so it's important to remember, that the

01:19:13

Roman slave system, I just already went over this, was a pagan slave system, all right, and this is where Paul gives his commands, where Jesus uses slavery in his parables, and these analogies aren't perfect in every way, but I wanna help you grasp this concept a little bit, because we're dealing with presentism, we're dealing with 165 years later, looking back and saying, those guys were brutes, and here's what

01:19:38

I want you to consider, can a Christian shop at Walmart? Yeah, of course a Christian can shop at Walmart, what about sweatshop labor?

01:19:48

Yeah, you're right, some of those products do have some sweatshop labor, that go into them, and the conditions of those sweatshops, it's basically slavery,

01:19:54

I mean, the people in those countries, don't have other options in some cases, so can a Christian participate in that system?

01:20:01

How about this one? Can a Christian work as a welfare worker? Generational welfare is horrific, it's not biblical, it's, you know, the man doesn't work, he shouldn't eat, but we incentivize people for not working, and having children, and not getting married, it is evil, the family was more intact, slave families were more intact, than today's inner city family, it's just the truth, statistics speak for themselves on this, now, can a

01:20:29

Christian then, become a welfare worker, and participate in that system, and be salt and light in it? Yeah, yeah, a

01:20:35

Christian can do that, I don't see why that would be sinful, show me the Bible verse that says it's sinful, can a

01:20:41

Christian pay taxes? Some of our taxes go to evil things, can a Christian participate in that system?

01:20:47

Can a Christian vote for Trump? What will the historians say? Even, and even, they're saying it now on the media, but what will they say in 30 years, looking back at Trump's presidency, building walls against brown people, hates women, and look at all these

01:21:04

Christians who voted for Trump, look, a lot of them are in the South, and in the Midwest, evil, evil

01:21:11

Christians, evil, evil Bible Belt people, evil, evil Southerners, can a

01:21:17

Christian vote for Trump? Can a Christian participate in that system? Does that mean you're endorsing every single thing Trump has ever done?

01:21:24

These are things you need to consider, because it's the same moral principles at work on the issue of whether or not it is a sin in and of itself for someone to own slave labor in a context in which that labor existed.

01:21:39

These are the questions that you need to deal with, these are questions thinking people think about, these aren't questions that you're gonna get from the

01:21:44

Twitter mom, and the answer to these is, of course, Christians can participate in those things, and the reason is because one can work against evils in a certain system while participating in the system of salt and light, and I'll give you an example of this, someone who's not a

01:21:59

Christian, but Oscar Schindler, Schindler's List, have you seen that movie? He engaged in Jewish slavery during World War II, during the

01:22:06

Holocaust, he had slaves in his factory, they were slaves, but he's thought of as a hero, he's thought of as righteous among the nations, because he saved them from a worse fate in concentration camps.

01:22:18

So his motive was correct, but we think of him as a hero, it's interesting, isn't it?

01:22:26

So I pointed out in this paper that I wrote that the issue is actually not as morally simple as some wanna make it out to be.

01:22:33

Southerners were not perfect, you'll no doubt find racist quotes, just as you will in the North and in Europe at the time, but in general, their objections to the

01:22:41

North when it came to higher criticism, scientific racism, and biblical teachings on slavery were biblical objections not motivated by racism.

01:22:48

And again, I'm not fleshing this out as much, I will at some point, but the scientific racism objections, you had

01:22:54

Southern clergy taking to task these race scientists in Philadelphia who thought that blacks and Indians and the words they didn't use, these words, they used other words, but they're inferior, they have these charts,

01:23:08

I mean, they look like the Nazi charts, and it was Southerners who said that's evil, that's wrong. You don't hear that, you don't hear that anywhere, they said the slaves are humans, they're our brothers in Christ, many of them.

01:23:19

So were there racists in the South? Yeah, there were. Does that mean that racism motivated these denominational divisions?

01:23:30

Not necessarily, no. And that's kind of a key thing that I discovered.

01:23:36

And so one aspect to this, this is I think one area that I'd probably be attacked is that they'd say you're minimizing the horrors of slavery.

01:23:47

I say, no, I'm not. I use primary sources, census data, slave narratives, foreign observers to show that the majority of masters treated their slaves charitably.

01:23:58

Now, why is that important? It's important for this reason. If you're gonna do a study on the denominational divisions and the issue of whether holding slaves is sinful in and of itself, and you're gonna start with the premise that slavery was horrific, right?

01:24:16

You know that picture that every time you see anything was associated with slavery? Now it's in all the national parks, it didn't used to, you know, battlefields, didn't used to be that way, but you pretty much go into any national battlefield and you see this picture of a slave who's been beaten, his neck was just, his back is just raw with scars.

01:24:33

The implication is that's slavery. Now, think about it this way. If you were, let's say you were, this is actually a good example.

01:24:42

If a denomination was going to split over marriage, some kind, you know, and one side wants to say heterosexual marriage is, that's the only way, that's what

01:24:53

God's way is, and then the other side were to hold up a picture and say, hold on, this is a heterosexual marriage where the husband beat the wife, and look at her black eye, look how bad, she's in messed up condition, she almost died.

01:25:05

That's what heterosexual marriage is, that's marriage. You'd say, hold on, that was one marriage.

01:25:11

It's not the institution of marriage, it's not every marriage, and of course marriage is something fundamental, it's something

01:25:16

God created, slavery is not. I'm very glad slavery is gone, it needed to be gone, needed to be done away with.

01:25:23

We unfortunately, the way it was done away with was the worst way possible because it killed about a million slaves through decimating the entire economy, and then doing it that way.

01:25:36

There would have been much better ways to do it. Now we're entering a stage in which we're slowly going, actually quickly now, we're heading at break net speed now towards civil slavery called socialism, and I don't like that either, and listening to some of the things that I've heard come out of people's stories from the

01:25:57

Soviet Union and from these other countries that were socialist, we should be focused on the actual slavery that is probably a threat to us right now.

01:26:04

That would probably be good. But if you're gonna do a historical study, and if you're gonna look at the motivations of people who wanted to, many of them were gradual emancipationists, many of them, they just did not believe that it was sinful biblically to condemn someone simply because they owned slaves, condemn them as sinners, because hey, there's all sorts of different circumstances which lead to this kind of thing.

01:26:31

They just thought that slave masters should follow the biblical commands, and slaves should follow the biblical commands.

01:26:38

People who believe that, they weren't necessarily motivated by, they just love abusing people, and that's the implication.

01:26:47

And so you have to talk about this if you're gonna study that topic, you have to, because the historiographical paradigm as it is now is that there's only one image of slavery, abuse.

01:27:00

There was no such thing as master -slave relationships that were actually mutually respectful.

01:27:06

It just, that's impossible. And so anyway, I've done a lot of reading on this, and I'm not saying

01:27:13

I'm the world expert on it at all, but I've tried to approach it as objectively as I can. And so that was, like I said, taking census data, slave narratives.

01:27:21

I think Fogel and Ingerman have done a great job studying the slave narratives, what slaves actually said, to try to determine kind of what conditions were like.

01:27:28

And then what foreign observers said is they compared conditions in the South to conditions in the North, to conditions in Europe.

01:27:34

And I'm sorry, if you take the whole enchilada, it doesn't paint a picture that everyone was just abused in that way.

01:27:43

So the modern historiographical paradigm is to just take one part of the enchilada, and you're only allowed to take that part.

01:27:50

And if you take the whole enchilada, and if you talk about situations in which there were good master slavery, like John Randolph, I'll just use an example, a mutual affection between John Randolph and his slaves, to the point that he actually even freed his slaves.

01:28:04

They go out West, I think to Ohio, if I'm not mistaken, and they come back. They wanna come back to their mountain.

01:28:11

Jefferson Davis lived with his slaves after the war. This is a relationship.

01:28:19

The reason they had even segregation in the South, segregation was already in effect in the North. The Jim Crow laws were in the North. Segregation comes to the

01:28:25

South during Reconstruction, like real segregation. And it comes to urban areas. And in rural areas, you didn't have it as much.

01:28:32

But in urban areas, it was enforced, but they had to enforce it, because Southerners had grown up living with the...

01:28:40

Southerners who were black, Southerners who were white, grew up living with each other. I mean, Booker T. Washington talks about this, when the slaves, he remembers when a little boy, and I've been to his house, and it's, unfortunately, they politically correct it up a little bit of the...

01:28:55

They don't talk about what he believed in his book, Up From Slavery, which I recommend, it's a great book. He's a hero, American hero.

01:29:02

But he talks about when they were freed, they rejoiced, and then they all went to the master's house, and they had tears, tears, because of, they had raised, they'd helped raise the master's kids, and the master had looked after them when they were sick.

01:29:18

You're not allowed to tell those stories anymore. And those are the kind of human stories history's made of, history's complicated, guys.

01:29:26

We've destroyed the whole fabric of what history is, and how to study it. It's all politicized now.

01:29:33

And I'm not gonna play identity politics with my grandparents, and I'm not gonna play identity politics with your grandparents,

01:29:40

I'm done with it. No, there's a right way to do history, and hardly anyone who has the actual degree does it that way, when they're approaching certain topics, unfortunately.

01:29:52

And so, and I don't regret, I don't regret that. So I should say this.

01:29:58

I was 20 or 21 when I wrote the paper, and I wasn't as good of a writer.

01:30:05

I don't know how many papers you wrote when you were in your early 20s, how you'd look back now and be like, oh, you probably embarrassed a little bit, ooh, you know, it's kind of like, when you hear yourself talking when you were like 13 years old on tape or something, you're like, oh,

01:30:19

I sounded like that. So I don't even have a copy of this thing, but I'm sure that I did not,

01:30:28

I would not hold myself to everything I wrote when I was 20, but more because of formatting and presenting, and perhaps just, probably not even putting in some of the qualifications that knowing now,

01:30:41

I surely should put in, but I will say this. It's primary source -based, it's true. What I wrote was true.

01:30:48

So you have to accept, fight against it on its merits, if you really have a problem with it. In fact, better yet, fight against what

01:30:54

I've actually written lately, but there's nothing racist in it. There's nothing, the

01:31:00

CRT guys aren't gonna find anything white nationalist. They're not gonna find anything racist. They'll find things that offend them, but the question is, are they true?

01:31:10

Are they true? Now, it has nothing to do with Fuller's interview, but that's the hook they think they can find.

01:31:18

I didn't even remember the full title of this paper at first, when this was sort of shoved in my face, as John, did you write this horrible thing?

01:31:27

It was a while ago. I do remember this though. My historical theology class at master's,

01:31:33

I did get an A, and I believe on that paper, I also got an A or an A minus. I know that I never had any problems in that class, as far as my grade was concerned.

01:31:44

And so, you know, there you go. But here's the thing, what this has done is create an opportunity for me, because I've been thinking of releasing the book that I've written, which

01:31:56

I use some of the research that I put into that paper, but I've been thinking of rewriting it, releasing it, but also adding some things to it without my pseudonym.

01:32:06

And the reason I did a pseudonym was because I, so 10 years ago,

01:32:14

I did a lot of this research. I started researching this topic a little bit, and I've done a lot of more research on other things since then, but that's when

01:32:22

I started. And I put this short book out, here it is,

01:32:28

Sacred Conviction, South's Fight for Biblical Authority by Joseph J. I put that out and I encourage you, hey, read it, challenge it.

01:32:37

I'm open to that. If you're an adult and you're not just, you know, doing the whole, you're a racist thing, then yeah,

01:32:42

I would love to hear what you think. But approach it like an educated, rational person.

01:32:48

That would just be my only request. And look, if you think there's racism, find the racism, because I don't think there's any racism.

01:32:55

It's a short book. In fact, I will say this. You go to page, it's like the one, two, three, it's the third page in here, says it should be stated at the outset that no aspect of this work can justify nor is intended to justify the

01:33:13

American slave labor system. Yeah, I wrote that. Hmm, beginning of the book. I have a whole section on the slave is human in this, but it's apparently racist.

01:33:23

So why did I use the pseudonym? The reason I used the pseudonym is because I decided a few years ago when

01:33:30

I saw Lincoln Duncan doing this whole, he distorted Presbyterian history and had this virtue signal time about how much he had been deceived and he's tearing up.

01:33:42

And I remember seeing this and I'm like, it's not true. What is he talking about? And I was like,

01:33:47

I gotta put some of this information out there about these denominational splits. And so I sent it,

01:33:54

I sent what I had. For a few years, I had just been adding things here and there, but I barely ever thought,

01:34:01

I would go years without even touching that information. But I had some of this information and I was like, well,

01:34:10

I think people should probably read this. And I was a student at Southeastern at the time and I was naive. This was before I realized the new orthodoxy.

01:34:18

The new orthodoxy isn't about the Trinity or like biblical anything. The new orthodoxy is about equity, inclusion, and tolerance and the new left ideas and you can't deviate from those.

01:34:28

That's the new orthodoxy. Now at Southeastern, I thought, well, this has happened in the SBC too.

01:34:34

And I should really put this out there. So I sent it to some people, some scholars who, and I'm not gonna tell you who they are because they probably wouldn't appreciate it, but a number of scholars who knew about this topic fairly well, like they're experts in this.

01:34:47

And I said, what do you think about what I'm kind of where I'm going? I just wanna start asking these questions. I want people to take this research farther.

01:34:52

And they said, you have some good thoughts, some good conclusions here. But what they said was, I'd encourage you, if you even can find a publishing company that's willing to put this out there, don't use your name.

01:35:03

And the reason was because if you want a job in academia, this is how bad academia is, there's certain topics that are forbidden and that's one of them.

01:35:11

Unless you come at it from also there's a racist, then you're not gonna be able to, and motivated by racism, that's the key thing.

01:35:17

You can't publish. So I decided, well, I don't know yet. I might wanna be in academia.

01:35:23

Well, about a year ago, I made the decision. I just thought, you know what? I don't wanna be in academia. I don't wanna be in academia.

01:35:28

Academia is falling. Academia, I think academia, the academy is done, guys. And we're just waiting,

01:35:34

I think, to see what the next thing is at this point. But I think the academy is just, you pay how much money to get a degree, and then you're specialized in this one little area that no one hardly ever cares about.

01:35:49

And you can't actually market to the real world usually. And I just, look,

01:35:54

I'm not against real academics. And you can go to some places and you can get that. But in general,

01:35:59

I'm just not a fan of the guild. It's a guild. And the guild has become corrupt at this point.

01:36:07

And so I released it with a pseudonym, a family name that was important to me.

01:36:13

And I'm fine now. I'm actually, I was already getting ready to let people know about it.

01:36:19

A lot of people already did know because I had put it on my Facebook. And if the guys trying to do oppo research on me were smart, they would have found it.

01:36:25

But yeah, order the book. Show me if you have a problem with it.

01:36:31

But be rational about it. My intention was to spark a discussion with this whole thing that may lead to more research on the topic, real research.

01:36:42

And that has been my intention all along. And look, pseudonyms have been used in Western culture for years. The Federalist Papers are pseudonyms.

01:36:49

I don't think it's wrong to use a pseudonym, especially in times when you wanna protect yourself. So a year ago,

01:36:55

I decided to start lecturing on this topic. It was about the same time I decided I didn't wanna be in academia. I decided, yeah, you know what,

01:37:01

I'll lecture. I've lectured, by the way, on a bunch of topics. There's just one. But I decided, yeah, I'll lecture on this topic.

01:37:06

And I think there's been three or four, three places, four places that I've given, I've delivered a lecture on it.

01:37:11

And I will do one here. And I won an award for it. And I started thinking two things.

01:37:17

I started thinking, maybe there is a small receptive audience in academia. And also, maybe I don't wanna be part of academia because of how constrained and politically correct it often is.

01:37:27

And so I'm working on another book right now that's much longer and it's kind of an earth -shattering book, a critique of New Left's impact on evangelicalism.

01:37:36

And that's gonna be coming out this year. And I think even though it's mostly just research, it wouldn't be looked on favorably by academics anyway.

01:37:44

So I think most of the things that I'm writing about, people wouldn't like. So if you want to know my thoughts on this particular topic, denominational divisions, just get the book.

01:37:55

And the Twitter trolls have helped me market it. So I appreciate that. If you're a CRT guy, though, you won't find any racism.

01:38:01

You won't find any white nationalism or white supremacy. In fact, at the beginning of the book, I state, as I already told you, that you can't use this to justify the

01:38:09

American slave system. It was evil. That the system as a whole was bad. It had evils attached to it, specific evils.

01:38:18

And yeah, slaves were people. Every person is a person. There's only one race, guys.

01:38:24

It's the human race. That's where I stand on this. But what you will find is research that pokes a hole in the narrative that everything

01:38:33

Southern is by nature motivated by racism. I don't believe that. Now, these are things I'm more than happy to discuss and have a little conversation about.

01:38:41

And I want to give you some sort of, because the larger discussion is, John, you know, he's politically incorrect in general when it comes to the

01:38:50

Civil War. Look, he was at an event with Sons of Confederate Veterans. And here's my thing, guys.

01:38:56

I'm gonna just divide this up for you to get all the issues on the table. When you're studying the

01:39:02

Civil War, you must be able to make distinctions, okay? This is key to studying. So you need to make a distinction between the motivations of the

01:39:11

Lower South and the Upper South in secession. There were different motives. There were. In general, the

01:39:16

Upper South seceding because they were afraid of Lincoln's call to troops. They didn't want to live in the Hotel California where you couldn't leave.

01:39:24

Lower South, economic concerns, concerns pertaining to the enumeration of slaves and usually called the expansion of slavery, but into the

01:39:33

Western territories. And they write about it, yeah. Slavery is definitely part of those documents.

01:39:39

And usually people bring those up to say, it was all slavery, but they're not making distinctions. They're not making distinctions. And that's the problem.

01:39:47

Between the reasons for Southern secession, you gotta make a distinction. Between that and the reasons for Northern invasion. Invasion is the reason for the war itself.

01:39:55

Could have had a secession without an invasion, without a war. And the million or so people who died after the war, because of economic devastation, 600 ,000 or so who died during the war.

01:40:06

I mean, this is devastating, especially for the population at that time. Devastating numbers. But we don't think about the evil of invasion.

01:40:14

People are trained to just think about the evil of slavery. And because slavery is evil, then the invasion and all those dead people and the horrors that this created, it's justified because slavery is so evil.

01:40:26

We don't even assign a moral value to invasion. Why is that? Why is that?

01:40:32

Between the political debate over allowing slaveholders into Western territories and the moral question of whether slavery was a sin in and of itself.

01:40:40

Those are actually two different issues. Whether slavery should be allowed in Missouri and in Kansas and beyond that.

01:40:47

And whether slavery is moral in and of itself. They're actually two different discussions.

01:40:55

They're related, but you have to make a distinction. You can't just conflate it as slavery, slavery, slavery. You have to make a distinction between those who advocated immediate abolition and those who advocated gradual emancipation.

01:41:06

Someone's not insane for saying, you know what? There's a smarter way to do this over time that will be better for the slaves who are gonna be emancipated.

01:41:17

Between the economic concerns over tariffs, internal improvements, and the cotton trade and issues pertaining to emancipation.

01:41:23

You gotta make a distinction there too. They're different issues. Are they all related? Yeah, there's connections. But if you're not willing to lay those things out on the table and have a discussion about them, then what ends up happening is what you get today.

01:41:34

Slavery, slavery, slavery. And it's just not interesting anymore. It's just not interesting. We don't do this with hardly any other conflict.

01:41:41

We don't say, what was the cause of World War II? Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust. No, we realize it's a complex issue.

01:41:48

Or World War I. Do we really think World War I was caused because of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand?

01:41:55

No, it's a lot more complicated than that. Or how about the American Revolution? Some people do that.

01:42:01

Taxation, it was just taxation. Yeah, you start reading the Declaration of Independence, look at all the things that are listed there. It was a jurisdictional fight and there's a lot of issues that played into it.

01:42:11

But we do this with the Civil War. Why is that? What is justified in a modern political context, maybe, that would motivate not looking at the

01:42:22

Civil War in a nuanced way? This is what I think. I think the standard interpretation serves a current political agenda.

01:42:29

Now, here's the thing. I'm a descendant of indentured servants who came to Virginia, persecuted Christians, who came over on the

01:42:35

Mayflower, and families who were burned out of their homes by Sherman's Army. And they were poor as dirt and they never had a hope of owning a slave.

01:42:42

I don't look back on the experiences of my ancestors and think I'm owed something because of what they went through.

01:42:49

I'm grateful for their legacy. I'm proud of it. I think African Americans ought to be proud of their ancestors who overcame many barriers to serve in the highest places of our society.

01:42:58

All of our ancestors came from somewhere else and they all experienced varying degrees of difficulty and they all have something to be proud of as Americans.

01:43:08

And I'm not into lobotomizing certain parts of history because it fits a current political agenda.

01:43:14

I'm not gonna play identity politics with my ancestors or your ancestors. Not gonna do it. Every group that's come over here has had barriers.

01:43:24

I mean, you wanna look at racism, look at the Chinese in California and what they underwent. And look where they are now.

01:43:33

You know, that's the story of America. I'm gonna learn from my ancestors, including from their mistakes.

01:43:41

I received this gift, these gifts the other day from a patron and these are wonderful.

01:43:47

I used to collect coins more. And so the first one is from 1953 and it's the

01:43:54

Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver coin. It says, freedom and opportunity for all,

01:44:04

Americanism, 1953. And yeah, I'm getting chills just looking at this cause

01:44:10

I mean, these are two heroes of mine. I mean, this is what the South contributed. South isn't just white folks.

01:44:17

What do you guys think? This is also part of the South and you probably can't even see it. There they are though, if it'll focus on it.

01:44:25

Yeah, it's not gonna focus on it. But another coin that was sent to me and the person sent it to me cause they knew that I was fans of those guys.

01:44:34

Stone Mountain, 1925. 1925, three years after my grandfather who's still alive was born.

01:44:43

My grandfather, by the way, knew slaves and knew Confederate soldiers growing up. He's still alive. Memorial to the valor of the soldier of the

01:44:52

South. This is from the United States of America Mint. United States of America is saying that because you know what?

01:45:00

We e pluribus unum. We out of the many one. Everyone came from somewhere else.

01:45:08

We're not hyphenated Americans. We're Americans. We're Americans and we've all come together. And these critical race theorists types are splitting us apart like you wouldn't believe.

01:45:19

They're trying to cause division and our cities are on fire because of the stoke that, I'm mad about how they're making the flames worse.

01:45:32

This is not the country that I remember even when I was a kid. And the way that, forget about me.

01:45:40

You can demonize me all day. I'm gonna be proud. Look, my Southern forefathers who were poor as dirt and they defended themselves,

01:45:46

I have nothing to apologize for them. I was a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans for two years, which is an historical organization for the preservation of the

01:45:56

Southern soldier, not the political stuff, the soldier. Here's a picture of me, by the way.

01:46:03

This is a picture that is readily available on my Facebook and they never put it up there because it doesn't fit the narrative.

01:46:09

There I was at the county fair and they were giving out these stickers and I put one of them on and there was this other guy there who also had the sticker on and we got a picture together.

01:46:21

We're both proud of it. Both proud of that heritage. You know why? Because there's a bunch of people in North Carolina who still understand that even their ancestors were

01:46:31

Confederates of color. This information has been suppressed by segregationist states.

01:46:36

It's been suppressed by now the politically correct mafia in academia, but it's true.

01:46:43

Watch Earl Imes. Earl Imes does a whole documentary on this on Confederates of color. They existed too, guys.

01:46:49

Those monuments honor them too. And it's not because they're, oh, they're fighting all for slavery. They're fighting for their homes.

01:46:56

What do most soldiers fight for? For sacrifice. What do they sacrifice for? For honor, for their hearth and their home, for their families.

01:47:05

Is that not worth defending? I mean, those values are in short supply today, aren't they? And you find them in the

01:47:11

South, you find them in the North. I say this as a

01:47:16

New York boy with ancestors who also wore blue. I own a home in New York.

01:47:22

Up the street from my home is a Union Memorial. If anyone tried to rip it down, they'd need to come through me first.

01:47:29

And at the bottom of my street, there's an old house the British fired on during the Revolutionary War. And there's a marker, because it's on the

01:47:35

Hudson River, boat shot at it. And there's a marker on the house informing tourists to the

01:47:42

Hudson Valley that slaves once lived in it. During the time of the revolution, over 20 % of the population were slaves in the

01:47:51

Hudson Valley of New York. In fact, many slaves escaped to British lines to obtain freedom and colonial forces spent time, militia forces, to find runaway slaves.

01:48:01

When the colonists won, the peace treaty prohibited the British from taking any Negroes or other property of the

01:48:08

American inhabitants with them. General Guy Carlton, a British commander, ignored the order and took the slaves that had escaped to his lines to Nova Scotia.

01:48:20

And George Washington at the time, you know what he did? He strongly objected to Carlton. He wrote him a letter.

01:48:25

You can't do that. You can't take them. They're our property. That's the father of our country right there.

01:48:34

Now, does this mean I have to stop waving the American flag? I have to decry the American Revolution? And New York, the state that I was raised in?

01:48:41

No. In fact, I've dressed up like Washington in recent years, more than any other historical figure.

01:48:47

If we're going to apply the logic of the Twitter mob, I guess I should forget about symbols of the founding period. But I realized

01:48:55

Washington stood for a lot more than that. I know what Washington stood for.

01:49:01

I don't cartoonize him and make him this one -dimensional character. That's where this is going.

01:49:07

My grandfather, he'll be 98 this year, he fought in the Pacific Theater and he even helped keep a black man alive who was by mistake on his ship and couldn't go to the mess hall.

01:49:19

My grandfather served in a segregated army, in a war in which thousands of Japanese were placed into camps, a war in which racially charged language was commonly used by Allied forces against Germans and Japanese, a war in which for the first time in human history, an atomic bomb was released twice, two atomic bombs on civilian populations in Japan.

01:49:37

How do you think history will treat our grandparents who fought in World War II? Fast forward 50 years, 100 years, 165 years, we'll make it that long.

01:49:48

How's history going to treat them? You and I both know what's at stake. I've chosen to draw my line at Confederate monuments because I know if I don't,

01:49:59

I've just handed haters of this country the logic they need to rip it all down. And it's all coming down, believe me.

01:50:06

We need repentance. We need fear of God. We need to ditch the arrogance that says we've made so much progress.

01:50:13

Meanwhile, our country slaughters the unborn, profanes marriage, is adopting civil slavery in the form of socialism.

01:50:20

And as I speak, American cities are burning. You call that progress. I've drawn my line.

01:50:27

I used to be for two years, a member of the SCV, this historical association.

01:50:34

And I did so because I was in an area where they were meeting at the time and I loved history. And it's the history of my family, part of my family.

01:50:43

And I honor all the history that I'm a part of. I'm a direct descendant of John Knox.

01:50:50

I honor the Reformation history. And I honor the history that's not even part of my genetic lines, my spiritual history, which is the most important history, is it not?

01:51:01

And many of those men were flawed. John Calvin was very flawed. Martin Luther was very flawed. Are we gonna cancel them?

01:51:14

These men sacrificed in brave and honorable ways to protect their family and home, just as Northerners did, sacrificed in brave and honorable ways for their cause to preserve the

01:51:24

Union. Can we honor soldiers? Can we preserve what's true and valuable in the

01:51:30

American tradition? Or do we just nitpick ourselves to death until our entire cities erupt in flames?

01:51:38

This country is on fire right now. And the flames are being fanned by evil men who love causing division and thrive on actual hate.

01:51:45

They have no fear of God. And the elites cater to them because they are terrified of being called racist or sexist or homophobic.

01:51:56

That's how you know that the institutions are done because of the direction of the current. There's no way the current's gonna flow in the opposite direct.

01:52:02

No one cares what John Harris thinks. And that's fine. I don't want him to. But people really care what a

01:52:09

Kyle J. Howard thinks. They don't want him calling them racist. They'd prefer that.

01:52:15

They'll put up with it sometimes, but they try to avoid it like the plague. I'm not gonna be part of it, guys.

01:52:22

I don't distance myself from people because they may say something that offends someone. I don't live in the world of fashion and optics.

01:52:30

I live in the world of truth and reason. And you shouldn't live in the world of fashion and optics either.

01:52:36

Live in the world that God created and let his word judge.

01:52:42

Think of Judgment Day when you say things. We have a lot of hypocrisy going on right now in the world.

01:52:49

And I'm gonna show you some of that stuff. Let's talk about segregation. Here's two stories. First one about Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

01:52:57

And this was in 2019, no whites allowed. Southern Baptist Seminary, a school to hold minorities only job fair from the

01:53:04

American Renaissance. Here's the Gospel Coalition. In 2018,

01:53:10

Legacy Disciple invites all women of color to TGCW18 to a special evening of fun and fellowship during the conference on Friday night.

01:53:19

And it's only for women of color. Now, for years in Christianity, there have been conferences for men and conferences for women because we recognize in scripture, there's unique commands and unique roles that women and men have that are different.

01:53:34

And we see that it's in the very fabric of God's design. And there's commands that come along with that.

01:53:41

Show me where that is in race or ethnicity. That God has different commands, there's different roles, there's different, why start segregating people off?

01:53:54

And having, we're gonna have our night of only black people can come. Well, how do you determine that?

01:54:00

How do you, oh man, it's got my blood boiling a little because to be honest with you, this is the kind of thing they say they're so against.

01:54:11

We want everyone to be together, the new man in Christ together. And then they go and they segment people off.

01:54:20

They create divisions where there shouldn't be any divisions. Segregation, it was really a bad, horrible, evil thing.

01:54:30

The idea behind segregation, separate drinking fountains, separate restaurants.

01:54:37

Are we gonna start doing that now? Are we gonna have just separate events, separate spaces, separate? This is where we're going.

01:54:44

Well, why did I bring that up? I brought that up not because of to drag up things that happened the last two years.

01:54:49

I brought it up because of this. This is Crew, Crew's Lenses Institute.

01:54:55

It's Campus Crusade for Christ, formally. Here's what they're doing. The Lenses Institute will be hosting calls for people of color, white brothers and sisters to process the recent injustices towards the black community.

01:55:06

Fill out the form below for the invite. This is open to anyone. So it's a

01:55:11

Zoom conference of some kind and you got to apply for it. There are three spaces it says, two for brothers and sisters of color and one for white brothers and sisters.

01:55:22

Let me read that again. There are three spaces, two for brothers and sisters of color and one for white brothers and sisters.

01:55:29

So when you sign up, which space are you registering for? A space for prayer, solidarity, lament and action with other people of color or a space for prayer, solidarity, lament and action with other white people?

01:55:42

I'm reading this. I'm not interpreting anything. I'm just reading what they have. This is scary, guys.

01:55:48

I don't want to bring segregation back. It's a horrible thing. Why are we, we've come so far in so many ways in this country.

01:56:00

Up until through the Bush years, it seems like we had come so far in being united as Americans.

01:56:06

I remember after 9 -11 and I'm not gonna get on an emotional rant here, but I remember how everyone was an American after that happened.

01:56:14

What are we doing? Why are we going back to this? And I'm highlighting supposed

01:56:19

Christian organizations, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Gospel Coalition, Crew.

01:56:28

They're participating in, and somehow this isn't racist. That's intersectionality there, guys.

01:56:37

Because they're basing this all on a supposed level of oppression. You need to be in a separate category because of your level of oppression, your understanding is gonna be different.

01:56:50

The word of God does not discriminate. It pierces through the hearts of all men.

01:56:57

And it's men, men made in God's image who are of equal worth. And you folks who believe in this critical race theory nonsense are unraveling that truth.

01:57:11

And you call me the racist. No, no, we don't accept this anymore.

01:57:18

North, South, East, West in this country, the working class people don't accept this logic anymore.

01:57:25

We've gone with you guys through many things. And we've tried to give the benefit of the doubt and we're seeing your true colors now.

01:57:35

How you demonize someone who honors their ancestors, respects things that are true and valuable in a tradition they're a part of.

01:57:45

Doesn't like the bad parts of it. You demonize that person. But then you go and you participate in segregation.

01:57:51

It's disgusting. How about racism itself? Because everyone's being accused of it right now.

01:57:59

But I'm seeing Christians on Twitter retweeting

01:58:05

Black Lives Matter. And Black Lives Matter is talking about how positive it is.

01:58:11

It's public. I'm not even gonna get you the video. You can just go look at it yourself. Don't trust me on any of the things I'm saying.

01:58:16

Research it. Research it yourself. But Black Lives Matter is supporting looting. They're supporting it publicly.

01:58:25

And I see Christians liking this kind of thing. It's absolutely insane to me.

01:58:33

I'll give you an example here. And this is just one. I mean, I could have gotten so many. Here's protesters block off Ann Arbor intersection to protest.

01:58:42

Washtenaw deputy punching Black. Okay, so anyways, here's a guy who works for NAMM. He's funded it.

01:58:49

Listen, Southern Baptist, you're funding the North American Mission Board when you give to the

01:58:55

Cooperative Program. You are funding guys like Roland Caldwell Jr.

01:59:02

to go say this is great that these protesters are blocking things. And look, we know what these protesters are doing.

01:59:09

Have you watched the news? Are you looking at what these protesters, they're burning down multiple cities now.

01:59:16

People have died. This isn't funny stuff, guys. I've seen videos of people getting beaten up.

01:59:23

A white elderly person in Minneapolis just getting beaten up and stolen from.

01:59:30

She can't even walk, she's disabled. And this is happening all over the place. And meanwhile, we're virtue signaling about nonsense while our country burns to the ground.

01:59:47

That's real hate, guys. That's real hate. You got the provost at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary saying he's a racist not once, not twice, but three times.

01:59:56

The last time was about a year and a half ago. It's recent, guys. No one bats an eye.

02:00:02

Says he's a racist, says he's a white supremacist. No one seems to care. We have church leaders who shared stages with Doug Wilson, who as far as I know, and I haven't read everything by Doug Wilson, but as far as I know, he's just proud of his

02:00:19

Southern heritage in a way, I guess. And he thinks the Confederates had a constitutional point.

02:00:28

And he's written about slavery and politically incorrect things about it, but not a racist guy from what

02:00:36

I know. And yet you got people like Dr. Hamilton who went after me hard on Twitter.

02:00:42

You got John Piper. A lot of big evangelicals sharing stages with him and yeah, they're still credible people, but somehow

02:00:49

Russell Fuller's not because he did an interview with me. The hypocrisy is overwhelming, guys.

02:00:57

Jamar Tisby is tweeting out pro -Black Panther material right now. Who are you people?

02:01:04

What arbitrary standards are you using? The Lord hates unjust weights and measures.

02:01:09

He loves equal weights and measures. And you're not using them. The Democrats are pursuing right now full -blown socialism.

02:01:20

And you need to realize, like the Tim Kellers and the Mark Devers of the world that seem to think that the

02:01:26

Democrats have a point. They say, well, there's the Republicans, there's the Democrats, and they both have some good points and Christians just need to kind of navigate between these two.

02:01:36

Really, they would have been doing that in any of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century as they were ascending, as this third way nonsense.

02:01:48

You can't be against slavery and then think, well, these socialists, they got a point with the reparations thing.

02:01:55

No, it doesn't work that way. Doesn't work that way. Those guys have something to teach us, the pro -abortionist

02:02:06

Democrats have something to teach us, but not the states' rights guys.

02:02:12

They don't have anything to teach us about abortion. Maybe we could stop abortion, maybe a state could nullify, maybe a state could secede and save the babies in their state.

02:02:19

No, those guys don't have anything to teach us. That's just racism. Really, really. We've got the

02:02:27

Romans 13 issue. And I'm not gonna beat a dead horse. I had a call the other day, my foolishness, with someone who actually wrote a book on Romans 13.

02:02:46

Has even run for, I think he ran for either vice president or president, but Chuck Baldwin's his name.

02:02:52

He's a pastor out in Montana. And I had this whole conversation with him and I thought I was recording it and apparently

02:02:58

I wasn't. So I didn't have the heart to say, hey. But it was worthwhile and here's why.

02:03:04

Because he can articulate it well. I asked him the hard questions. I asked him, hey, what about Nero?

02:03:10

People say, oh, Paul was writing about Nero, submitting to Nero, and so we should submit. And he's like, hey,

02:03:17

Paul went to prison for opposing Nero. Like, he's clearly not saying that Nero is this really, this good guy.

02:03:26

He's the terror of God, the deacon of God. He's not saying that, that's the purpose. He's talking about an office and he's talking about how

02:03:32

Christians react to an office. Anyway, in context, that's such a smoke screen.

02:03:39

But I asked him the other hard questions about Romans 13 that people often bring up too.

02:03:44

He's like, well, as long as you're not sinning. And he answered those beautifully. I would encourage you, go get his book. Go to chuckbaldwinlive .com.

02:03:51

Get his book on Romans 13 because you know what happened this week? This might be buried in the news somewhere.

02:03:57

Here, I'll show you if I can here. Yeah, Supreme Court rejects challenge to limits on church services.

02:04:06

Robert sides with liberals. Robert's not a conservative, guys. The U .S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a California church's challenge to state coronavirus rules imposing limits on worship services.

02:04:14

The Associated Press report in the court's 5 -4 decision. Chief Justice Roberts sided with the court's four liberals. The court also rejected appeals by two

02:04:21

Chicago area churches that oppose Illinois' rules that have since been modified, the AP said. You know what this means? I'll tell you what it means.

02:04:30

President Trump can say anything he wants about churches are essential. Supreme Court's not gonna back him up on it.

02:04:37

And in a sense, there might be a logic in which

02:04:43

I would say, that's okay. Okay, well, this is a state's issue, but the states really don't have the authority to do this, to override their own state constitutions.

02:04:53

But what this means is all the guys that have been giving up all our civil liberties and religious liberty included in that because of Romans 13, and then the same guys are gonna go back to church now because, well,

02:05:08

President Trump, he's the high, civics doesn't work this way. President Trump doesn't have the authority to do that, but they all took that as, hey, we can go back to church now.

02:05:16

A lot of them took it that way. Now the Supreme Court has struck it down. What are they gonna do now? How long is too long?

02:05:23

You're approaching, what are we at, almost three months now without going to church at some of these places? Three months of the body not meeting physically?

02:05:32

What about four months? What about five months? At what point does it become an issue of religious liberty and an issue of obeying

02:05:43

God over men? What point? Give me the line. No one wants to draw the line. No one

02:05:48

I've seen at least. It's what's happening to our country. And we're really worried about stupid things.

02:06:01

There's actual murder going on right now. We have a, there was a small group leader at J .D.

02:06:08

Greer's church a few weeks ago who was publicly pro -choice, volunteered for Planned Parenthood. Yeah, leader at J .D.

02:06:14

Greer's church, the flagship church really for the whole Southern Baptist Convention Summit. Not a peep from the guys, the evangelical woke guys.

02:06:24

Not a peep about it. No one cares. Look at these statements. Let me show you this. Check this out.

02:06:34

Look at the statements that are coming out here. Here's one. This is the Southern Baptist Convention.

02:06:41

Albert Mueller just put this up today. Breaking, Southern Baptist Convention leaders released statement on the death of George Floyd.

02:06:46

I was glad to join in this statement. This, this was signed by just about every big wig in the convention.

02:06:55

If you want to know the answer to the question, where's the convention going? You have your answer in this. Here's the statement.

02:07:02

I'm going to read for you portions of it. While we all must grieve, we understand that in the hearts of our fellow citizens of color, incidents like these connect to a long history of unequal justice in our country.

02:07:15

Going back to the grievous Jim Crow and slavery eras. We're already in critical race theory.

02:07:23

I'll explain why. The images and information we have available to us in this case are horrific and remind us that there is much work to be done to ensure that there is not even a hint of racial inequality in the distribution of justice in our country.

02:07:38

We grieve to see these examples of misuse of force and call for these issues to be addressed with speed and justice.

02:07:44

While we thank God for our law enforcement officials that bravely risked their lives for the sake of others and uphold justice with dignity and integrity, we also lament when some law enforcement officers misuse their authority and bring unnecessary harm on people.

02:07:57

They are called to protect. He talks, they talk more about the unequal distribution of justice.

02:08:04

So throughout the Old and New Testaments, the Bible speaks of matters of justice and human dignity. This is a joke.

02:08:11

This is a complete joke. The word injustice comes up even more. The Bible further condemns injustice.

02:08:17

They're not going to any specifics about due process or any of that stuff. I'm gonna show you one more statement and then

02:08:23

I'll give you some critiques here about this. Here's another statement.

02:08:30

Let's see if I can get this pulled up here. I wanna show you. Statement from the

02:08:35

AND Campaign on racialized violence in America. We mourn the loss of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and those who have lost their lives due to racialized violence.

02:08:47

We're in Critical Race 3 land. I'm gonna tell you why in a minute. This is the most aggressive statement you'll see about the riots.

02:08:58

The riots in Minneapolis are not to be glorified or romanticized, but we must realize that they are a product of a riotous and unjust system.

02:09:05

So they're justified. They're justifying it right here. This order begins when a man's rights were violated.

02:09:11

American racism was rioting against the people long before they took to the streets. This is disgusting.

02:09:19

We must condemn and address the cause before we can appropriately address the broken reaction. So they're shifting everyone's,

02:09:25

Minneapolis is burning to the ground and they're gonna, oh my goodness, they're shifting all the focus to, well, we gotta look at the underlying cause.

02:09:34

It's American racism. The Bible very clearly demands justice in the sight of oppression, murder, in response to vain worship.

02:09:40

So what do they quote? Amos 5, take away from me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments but let justice roll down like water and righteousness might.

02:09:49

If I have to hear this verse one more time, taken out of context, I can't read any more of this. They give you practical steps for what to do.

02:09:57

Yeah, become a Democrat. That's the practical steps. So let's, let me give you a critique of this, guys.

02:10:05

I don't wanna, I don't wanna get too upset about it, but here's the reality of this situation.

02:10:14

Critical race theory. One of the tenants is that power dynamics are fundamentally related to race.

02:10:25

Race is a power structure. And this power structure is abusive to those who are certain ethnicities, certain races, okay?

02:10:35

I shouldn't say ethnicity. Critical race theorists would correct me. Certain races. Now, the idea is that in majority culture, by definition, they're racist.

02:10:50

I'll show you a little chart showing this. I'll probably come back to this chart. Here it is.

02:10:58

This is the chart. So here's a good way to look at it. This chart is being, by the way, shared everywhere right now. This is why I'm using it.

02:11:03

Overt white supremacy. Socially unacceptable. That would be like using the N -word, being part of the KKK, neo -Nazis.

02:11:09

Here's covert white supremacy. Make America Great Again. Confederate flags. Police brutality.

02:11:18

English -only initiatives. Color blindness. Claiming reverse racism.

02:11:24

Paternalism. Denial of racism is racism. I said I wasn't a racist, therefore

02:11:30

I'm a racist. All right, so here's the thing. You are by definition a racist if you're part of majority culture.

02:11:40

By definition. You've benefited in some way, you've participated in some way, and it doesn't matter how you, you could be a

02:11:47

Klansman or a neo -Nazi, or you could just be a guy who says, I'm not a racist, but you're benefiting from racism, supposedly, therefore you're racist.

02:11:54

So it doesn't matter. It's flatlining of all of it. You live in a country which has been favoring the majority culture for years, everything about this country.

02:12:04

From the way that we eat food to the way that we divvy up medical care to the way that we understand science to the way that we,

02:12:14

A, B, or C, you pick whatever you want. It's all motivated by racism. Everything is racist.

02:12:20

Whether you know it or not. The question is, are you woke? Are you aware that everything's motivated by racism? Southern Baptist Convention is sounding like the

02:12:29

AND campaign. This is scary. The AND campaign, which is really left supposed evangelicalism.

02:12:36

It's not evangelicalism. It's just left -wing politics, trying to hoodwink evangelicals. You have the main leaders of the

02:12:44

Southern Baptist Convention coming out and saying, yep, yep, that's America.

02:12:50

Systemic racism, that's what we're about. And you know what? The death of this guy, George Floyd, that was racist.

02:12:58

Let me ask you a question. How do you know that? I did a whole two videos now on the

02:13:04

Arbery thing. Got a lot of flack for it. But I don't really care. Truth is truth.

02:13:10

Prove to me that this is racist. They'd say I'm racist for asking the question. But there were, what, four cops involved?

02:13:19

One of them's white. He's the one in the film, of course. What he did was absolutely wrong.

02:13:25

In fact, I got called a social justice warrior light for saying that. What he did was wrong.

02:13:30

It's disgusting. It's filthy. There's bad apples in the police departments. But you can't say that it was all, you don't know the heart behind that.

02:13:40

You don't know what it was. You don't know that the guy's a racist. And they're assuming it without evidence.

02:13:46

And then they're going and they're attaching that caboose to what they think is a train, a narrative of just racism, racism, racism from the foundation of the country to now.

02:13:57

It's been there the whole time and it rears its head all the time. And that's where we're living.

02:14:04

That's what they think. It's really what they believe. And it's a complete fantasy. Yeah, there's racism.

02:14:09

But you can't just take incidents that there's no evidence that there's any racism attached to it and then weave this pattern of it's just fundamental to who

02:14:17

America is and what America's like and what America has been. These guys hate our country.

02:14:23

I don't see any way around it. They might say that, oh, we just want the country to be better. But when you start saying that this is fundamental, that there's really nothing true and valuable about this country because at the fundamental core level, when you peel back all the layers, what you find is racism, is oppression, is xenophobia, is

02:14:42

I refuse to believe that narrative. I buck that trend, guys. I think that history is a lot more complicated than that.

02:14:51

And I think we choose to emulate heroes, people that demonstrated high virtues of character, integrity, and decency.

02:14:59

And we take what's true and valuable in every tradition, no matter what tradition or culture you're part of.

02:15:05

You look up to the heroes who have maintained true and valuable things.

02:15:13

The SBC's gone, guys. I hate to break this to you, but the SBC's gone. Now, if you wanna mount a rearguard action, if you wanna go to the convention next year and really try to take this thing back, look,

02:15:23

I'll, hey, I'm with you, but I'm coming to the point now, I think I've exposed an awful lot.

02:15:30

And I'm not saying I'm not gonna ever expose anything again, but I'm, guys, I'm kinda like, if you're not gonna believe this stack of evidence, then there's no stack high enough that I can show you because it's there.

02:15:42

If you can't go read what this SBC just put out and what Al Mohler's proud of and see how hypocritical and wrong and falsely accusing and CRT chocked full in there that this statement is, if you don't see any of that stuff,

02:16:03

I don't know that I can help you. My goal, guys, in this podcast, with whatever time

02:16:09

I have left, I'm gonna educate as much as I can. We're gonna talk about a lot of things, things I'm interested in, but I wanna help you guys.

02:16:16

I wanna help you laymen. You need it in your churches to make these arguments, hopefully to get into a church or to start a church.

02:16:22

And this is where real men need to step up. If you don't have a church in your community that's gonna fight this stuff, you may need to start one.

02:16:31

I'm serious about that. You may need to be the man. You say, I've never been a pastor. You may need to start thinking about it.

02:16:38

I've never been to seminary. You know what? Let me tell you something. You tell me, what academic ever led a revival?

02:16:46

Ever. Academics don't lead revivals generally.

02:16:53

It's people. It's people who are obedient and faithful. You got God's word.

02:16:58

You have a translation of God's word. Yeah, you should probably go try to learn the languages, but you can do that. You can do that over the long haul, and it's not necessary.

02:17:06

Follow what's clearly written there. Take it to the streets. Take it to the pews. Be faithful.

02:17:13

That's more valuable to the Lord, obedience, than all the knowledge a seminary could ever give you.

02:17:19

And frankly, I don't know that they're giving you much. Many of them. There's some good ones out there,

02:17:25

I think, but not many left. Remember when

02:17:31

I said that the same arguments they're using to virtue signal against me will be used against them on issues like homosexuality and complementarianism?

02:17:43

It's because the biggest problem that social justice advocates have is with God's law. That's their biggest enemy.

02:17:50

This is how it works. Don't go to the specifics in God's word and see what it says about nations, about immigration, about slavery, about marriage, about family, about looting, stealing.

02:18:04

Don't go to God's word and look up those things. Instead, go to general passages that use the words justice or love, and then infuse the left's notions of inclusion, equity, and tolerance into the definition of those words and beat everyone else over the head with them, and that's how it works.

02:18:24

If you wanna say that in 1830, the American slave system had evils attached to it,

02:18:29

I'm right there with you. Tribal warfare, man capture, the middle passage abuse, forbidding from reading, et cetera, all evil, all evil.

02:18:37

If you wanna say it's good that we did away with it, I'm 100 % with you. If you wanna say the sin of partiality in the form of racism is wicked,

02:18:45

I'm 100 % with you. Let's confront the white, black, Asian, Latino supremacists.

02:18:52

As I have done with an actual white supremacist, it's wicked. But if you want me to say that God's word condemns owning slave labor in a context in the past where that was done in and of itself, and that's necessarily sinful, you're going to need to override a whole lot of Bible passages, including

02:19:17

Jesus' parables and Paul's writings. That's the cold, hard truth, guys.

02:19:24

Deal with it. You have the God's word, you're gonna have to deal with what it says. And that's my only passion in this, guys.

02:19:31

I want you to get your ethics from God's word. You cannot get them from the world because the world's bankrupt and empty.

02:19:40

I'll tell you what, if we got back to fear of God and his law and the idea that God is judging us,

02:19:47

I don't think we'd have these problems. If we had true gratitude to God for the blessings in our life, I don't think we'd have these problems.

02:19:54

What's happening right now as cities are burning and COVID -19 supposedly in some people's minds is still this huge threat out there, is we have men and women crying out to their true gods.

02:20:06

And you know who their true gods are? The government. Their true gods are in Washington or the capital of their state.

02:20:14

That's who they're looking to to solve all their issues. A lot of people from broken families didn't have a mom, didn't have a dad.

02:20:20

They're rioting and you know who they think failed them? You know who they're taking their rage out on because they didn't have a mom or dad?

02:20:27

Their alternative mom and dad, government. Or they're looking to government to save them.

02:20:34

That's the world we live in now. And this is the opportunity for Christians to step in and say, you do have a father.

02:20:43

And not in this, if you're saved, you really have a father. If you're not saved, you have a creator.

02:20:49

So I should make that distinction. But there is someone who created you. There is someone who has blessed you.

02:20:56

Even if you're not a Christian, they haven't, they've shown you mercy by withholding the judgment you deserve.

02:21:03

And the offer of salvation is there. The call is made to you.

02:21:09

And there are people in the church who are willing to take you under their wing if you will follow him.

02:21:16

That's what we should be doing. Should be going out there. I don't see it happening.

02:21:22

I see virtue signaling. I see, please world, love us. Please, we're taking the side that you're taking. Please think that we're just as tolerant as you.

02:21:31

We're not these deplorables that you hear about. Not gonna work, guys. This is, that is the death blow to Christianity when you start mixing it with the philosophies of the world and trying to be hip and cool and relevant and woke.

02:21:49

It's not gonna work. So some of that was dismal and I get it. It's sober.

02:21:55

It's sober. As you watch American cities burn, you have to be sober. But some of that I think needed to be said because it's true.

02:22:04

And I don't mind if I'm the last person on earth saying it. I'll keep saying it. And I appreciate all of you who have supported my work, supported this podcast.

02:22:15

And I'm praying for this country. I'm praying for the church. But I know at this point, there's nothing more that we can pull all our efforts and without the help of the

02:22:30

Lord, without the Lord going and doing the heart work, we can lead a horse to water, but we can't make that horse drink.

02:22:36

The Lord has to do something in the hearts of men, including so -called Christians. He's gotta humble them.

02:22:42

He's gotta make them fear him more than they fear the media and what people think about them. He's gotta inculcate in them a sense of gratitude and instead of in a sense of entitlement, there needs to be real love for all people and not hatred towards certain demographics, which is exactly what

02:23:01

I'm seeing. And then of course, those who want to be colorblind are viewed as the real haters.

02:23:12

No, that's not how it works, guys. So anyway, there's your big dose of truth.

02:23:18

This was the mega long edition. I don't know if I've ever done a podcast this long. I hope it was helpful to you.