WWUTT 1595 Q&A Year in Review (Part 2)

We're back, counting down part two of the biggest news stories that happened in 2021.

But still remembering that no matter what happens, God is sovereign and he is still in control when we understand the text.

Happy New Year from your friends at When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of God that we may shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com. Here once again is

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, who is not with me this week. I know. I hear your disappointment.

You're going, hang on, Gabe. She was with you for part one of this, counting down the biggest events that happened in 2021.

She's got to be with you for part two. I know. I feel you. I wish she could be here.

There was something that I was working on at home and I was hoping once I got that finished, we could record some episodes from home, but I didn't get it done.

I got delayed on that. Hopefully, God willing, I'll be able to do future

Friday broadcast recorded from home. Typically, we take questions from the listeners and you can submit those questions to When We Understand The Text at gmail .com.

We'll be back to that regular Q &A schedule next week. One other thing I want to mention before getting to part two of this list.

It was released on social media recently. The top 10 most watched what videos for 2021.

Now that's only according to the numbers on the YouTube channel. It's not possible for me to track how often the videos get shared on other social media.

So I'm only looking at the statistics that are given to me through the YouTube channel. But from those stats, we've got a list of the 10 most watched videos for 2021.

I'm compiling all of those videos into one video doing this for the first time. I don't understand why I haven't been doing this in years past.

But anyway, so for the first time, I'm going to put together in a in a single video, all 10 videos, the most watched videos for 2021.

That's going to be uploaded to the YouTube channel tomorrow, January the 8th.

So go to YouTube .com slash WWU TT, subscribe to the channel and then look for that video when it drops.

Thanking you for watching and for sharing those videos. You are welcome to use what videos in whatever way that you want, as long as you're not trying to profit off of it.

Show them in Sunday school, do them in family devotions, show them to Bible study. I had a guy call me up one time.

I just happened to be at the church at the right time. The phone rang. I answered it and it was a guy in California in L .A.

And he said, hey, I am witnessing to this guy on the street here and I want to show one of your what videos.

Do you mind if I share this video with him and I use them in my evangelism? I don't even know why he was calling me and asking me that.

I told him, man, that is cool. Yes, please use those videos and let me know how it goes.

I can't remember if he ever called me back or not. But so there are people out there doing evangelism and they love that the what videos are just a minute and a half and so they can bring it up on their smartphones and just share it with people right there who have, you know, maybe some deep probing theology questions.

There's just that one thing that's just been nagging at them. I don't know if I can believe the Bible because of this and maybe a what video will help you give a biblical answer, a defense for the hope that is within you, as it says in first Peter 315 in your heart, set apart

Christ Jesus as Lord, always ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within you.

But do this with gentleness and respect. And that's what I desire to do, even with these videos that I put together, that it's strong biblical answers with gentleness and respect in the way that these issues are approached and the scriptures are preached.

All right, let's get back to the top 40 biggest events that happened in 2021, mostly in Christianity, mostly in the

Western world, although we get to some global things as well. Let me just do a quick review of what we covered last week, the first half of the year.

So number one, January 3rd, it was the amen and a woman debacle in the first congressional meeting at the start of 2021.

It was representative Emanuel Cleaver that opened up with prayer. He prayed to Brahma and concluded his prayer by saying amen and a woman.

Number two was January six. The riot on the U .S. Capitol yesterday, of course, was the one year anniversary of the riot.

And you heard the narrative over and over again in the mainstream media that this was an insurrection.

It wasn't. Not one person has been arrested and charged with insurrection. Ted Cruz, senator from my own state in Texas, he said that it was a terrorist attack.

Vice President Kamala Harris compared it to Pearl Harbor and 9 -11 like this is the next great tragedy that's happened in American history after Pearl Harbor and 9 -11.

Over 2000 people died in Pearl Harbor, 3000 at 9 -11. How many died in the riot on the

U .S. Capitol last year? One person. And it was somebody who was shot by Capitol Police without warning.

So it is it is nothing like what the mainstream media is spinning this into. Incidentally, it's not just mainstream media.

There's leftist evangelical organizations that are repeating the same things. Dr. Russell Moore, through Christianity Today yesterday, also referred to this as an insurrection.

Number three, January 20th, Biden sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Only the second

Catholic president in the history of the U .S. And, of course, his vice president is

Kamala Harris. Number four was on January 22nd when Pastor Tom Buck, our pastor here at First Baptist Church in Lindale, had made a comparison between Kamala Harris and Jezebel.

He said, I can't imagine any truly God fearing Israelite who would have wanted their daughters to view

Jezebel as an inspirational role model because she was a woman in power. He doesn't even mention

Kamala Harris there. But everybody, of course, knew what he was talking about. And it became a smear in the mainstream media, not only that he had compared

Kamala Harris to Jezebel, but also the slanderous accusation that was made of him was that he was making a racial slur.

Absolutely not true. Number five, February the 3rd, what is Christian nationalism?

Christianity Today ran an article talking about Christian nationalism. And that was something we were going to hear all year long, not only in mainstream news, but even in evangelical publications.

Christianity Today, the gospel coalition, David French can't stop talking about it.

It's been his favorite subject ever since. Number six, February 5th, the Supreme Court blocks bans on religious gatherings where some states had implemented these bans preventing people from going to church unless they were masked or vaccinated or even putting restrictions on how many people could be in the building.

The Supreme Court said, nope, the states do not have the right to issue those bans. Number seven on February 7th,

James Coates goes to jail. He was the pastor in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, who wanted to go to church.

And because he did, he was arrested and put in jail. There were other pastors in Canada who have gone through this as well.

Tim Stevens, a pastor in Calgary, is another one that I think of. But the highest profile case would have been that one that we had heard about regarding James Coates.

Number eight, February 25th, the Equality Act passed the House. It is since stalled in the

Senate. We're waiting to see what's going to happen with that. But if it does pass, it would basically make it illegal to discriminate against anybody based on their sexual orientation or sexual preference.

So if you have a job, if you're a business owner, for example, and you've got somebody in your business, a man that decides he wants to be a woman, you can't fire him over that.

And if you did, you could go to jail or be charged with hefty fines.

You've got somebody that comes into your store that says, my preferred pronouns are these, and you address them by any other pronouns.

You could be fined or shut down. That's what the Equality Act is going to do, that there will not be any more male and female.

As I made the point last week, it just makes everybody potato head. Number nine, March the 1st, Bethany Christian Services will allow

LGBTQ parents to foster and adopt. This was the largest

Christian adoption agency in the country, and before the Supreme Court even came out with their decision on whether religious organizations had to give children to LGBTQ families,

Bethany Christian Services went ahead and made a preemptive decision. Now we're going to start giving our kids to those who identify as LGBTQ, these sexually depraved families.

And that's where Bethany Christian Services is putting these children. Number 10, on March the 9th,

Beth Moore leaves the SBC. Russell Moore would follow shortly after.

Number 11, March the 26th, Lil Nas X launches the Satan Shoe. Popular music is filled with paganism and demonism.

I mean, it's outright. They don't even hide it. It's right there in front of everybody, and this is a perfect example of that.

Every once in a while, one of those stories breaks through and they're like, oh, wow, pop music's really bad.

Yes, it is. It is, folks. Number 12, April 6th, Votie Bauckham releases

Fault Lines, and Becky and I had also talked about a lot of the amazing things that had happened to Votie over the course of the year, almost dying, and by the providence of God was able to get to the

United States for a life -saving operation. Number 13, April 7th, Dear God, help me to hate white people.

Yeah, that was the book that was written by Sarah Bessie entitled A Rhythm of Prayer. It featured a prayer by Chaniqua Walker Barnes under that title.

Dear God, help me to hate white people. It was as racist as it sounds. It was sold at Target.

But as Becky and I talked about that last week, this is where the Wokeness Movement goes. It does not abolish racism.

It spreads racism. Number 14, April the 20th, pseudo historians attempting to rewrite

American evangelicalism. We talked about the release of the book The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr.

Also, the popularity of Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Cobb as Dumais. There were responses that were put out by Kevin DeYoung and also

Denny Burke. But there is this push right now, and Big Eva, what we call big evangelicalism, has embraced these women and these kinds of books.

Amy Byrd being another one who's published one of these books. It really attempts to push this narrative that the understanding that a man is the head of his household and a wife is to submit to her husband is not actually a biblical reading of a passage like Ephesians 5.

It's actually a cultural interpretation that has been imposed on that text. And that's what these books attempt to do.

They want to destroy patriarchy and subvert the church. And it should be of no surprise to you that people like Beth Allison Barr and Kristin Cobb as Dumais are also pro

LGBTQ. Number 15, May the 3rd, Strip Mall Seminary. It wasn't the launch of Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas, but that was the day that it earned the title

Strip Mall Seminary when Owen Stran announced that he was leaving Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City and going down to Arkansas and becoming a professor in residence there.

I highly recommend Strip Mall Seminary, by the way. Number 16, May the 10th, Israel and Hamas's 11

Day War. Number 17, May the 18th, Kevin Max, former singer in the band

DC Talk, announced that he's an exvangelical. I didn't mention this, but he also was lead singer of the band

Audio Adrenaline. That's just weird to say. Mark Stewart will always be the lead singer of Audio Adrenaline.

There will never be another lead singer of Audio Adrenaline but Mark Stewart. Whatever the band became after that, different band.

It was not the real Audio Adrenaline. That's just a little side note there. Number 18, June the 16th, the

Southern Baptist Convention. Always a plethora of headlines will come out of any

Southern Baptist Convention, and 2021 was no disappointment as far as newsmaking headlines go.

By the way, there was something else related to the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021. Becky and I didn't mention this last week.

So there were over 20 ,000 people that were in attendance, and that has been the largest attendance in over 20 years to a

Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. Shortly after that meeting, this would have been about, it was about a week later,

USA Today ran an article on an outbreak of COVID that had happened at SBC 21.

Now, of course, we would have expected somebody to catch COVID from that. There were over 20 ,000 people in that big room.

Guess how many people it was who were infected with the small outbreak that came out of the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting.

10, 10 people, over 20 ,000 in attendance. But USA Today tracked down 10 people who had caught

COVID. And it was, you know, there's no telling that it actually came from the convention. It could have been the the flight or sitting in a restaurant, not being in that giant, massive room there at the convention center in Nashville, Tennessee.

Folks, just go about your normal lives, please. I mean, take some necessary precautions, use those precautions that you would use to try to avoid catching a cold or the flu.

COVID is a very infectious disease. It's most likely that you are going to catch it.

We've had it go through our office here at the church. We've had members in our church catch it. I have known people personally who have died from it.

So most people are going to get over it. But there are going to be those few who will catch a very serious case and it could take their life.

But it's it's a virus and there's nothing that you can do to avoid it. I've known people who were completely quarantined.

They were in their home. They did not go anywhere. They even had groceries delivered to their house. They still caught

COVID. There's nothing that you can do to avoid this. If you're going to catch it, you're going to catch it. If you're going to get a serious case of it, that may happen.

Put your life in the Lord's hands. If you know that you are saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, don't live in fear.

Live your life. Anything could take your life at any given moment of any day. But trust in God, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, as it says in Colossians three, when

Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Number 19. This was June 17th. The Supreme Court rules that a Catholic group does not have to consider

LGBTQ parents. This was in the city of Philadelphia that had that was forcing a particular

Catholic group to give children in this adoption agency to LGBTQ couples.

But the Supreme Court said, no, that is a violation of their First Amendment rights. They do not have to do that.

Now, this was the the decision that Bethany Christian Services should have been waiting for, but it didn't matter to them.

Didn't matter to them one way or the other, which way the Supreme Court was going to go. They went the unbiblical, godless route and instead started giving children to sexually depraved families.

Number 20, June the 22nd. And this is where we stopped. It was the rise and fall of Mars Hill, the podcast that was when it debuted.

There was on June the 22nd. Now, I wrote a blog about it. I was somewhat praising of at least the production quality of the rise and fall of Mars Hill.

But it was very clear, even from the very first episode, that the effort here was going to be much like books that I had mentioned earlier from Christian Cobis Dume, who was a guest on the rise and fall of Mars Hill and from Beth Allison Barr.

This was an attempt by Christianity today to subvert a biblical understanding of manhood and womanhood.

That's what they use that podcast for. And it was the most popular Christian podcast in 2021.

All right. So now picking up from there, here are the 40 or yeah, the next half of these 40 big news events from 2021.

I'm picking up with number 21. This is on June the 25th. It was the Ed Litton sermon plagiarism scandal.

Now, I mentioned last week that this is the first year I made my own list.

And this is that news item. I was the first one to say something about Ed Litton's plagiarism scandal, or at least the first one to put something on social media.

It started with a tweet that I made about Ed Litton preaching the same thing that J .D.

Greer had preached a year before from Romans chapter one, that God whispers about sexual sin.

Now, I had listened to that particular sermon, the whole sermon that I took the clip from of Ed Litton saying that God whispers about sexual sin, and I put it on Twitter.

Little did I realize, even though I listened to the sermon, I did not realize how much it was like J .D.

Greer sermon from the year before. I had listened to that whole sermon, too, but it just did not click with me that Ed Litton was basically preaching the same sermon.

Well, there was somebody who follows me on Twitter. His name is Jacob, and and he caught that tweet that I made.

He listened to both sermons and spliced them together, and it's pretty evident that Ed Litton plagiarized

J .D. Greer. So I released that sermon, and it was that day, or I released that video that Jacob had sent to me.

It was on June the 25th, and I mentioned that, hey, these these two sermons are really, really close.

Well, following that, people started downloading sermons from Ed Litton's church website, and it turns out there were dozens of sermons that were that were ripped off from J .D.

Greer. Then it was discovered that he had been ripping off some other guys as well, including Tim Keller, a sermon that he and his wife,

Ed Litton and his wife, preached together in 2012. So this scandal went back at least nine years, and Litton lied and lied and lied.

He's still lying to cover this stuff up. Keeps changing his story. The narrative keeps changing.

There's a lot of people around him who are helping him lie and lying for him. And it's the lies now that have become worse than the plagiarism itself.

And even worse than that is the doctrine that he preaches and the fact that he platforms his wife along with him to preach these sermons in tandem.

So he platforms women preachers, and you would think the leadership in the SBC would stand up and decry this call for his resignation, not just as president of the

Southern Baptist Convention, but even as the pastor of his own church. But the leadership in the

SBC has been largely silent. Really, the most prominent voices that have come out and called for Litton's resignation have been

Denny Burke, who I mentioned earlier, and Jim Hamilton, who are elders at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

They wrote, We believe that Dr. Litton would do well to resign voluntarily. His credibility as a leader and a preacher has been too compromised for him to continue.

He may choose to muddle through the next convention or two, but we believe that would be a mistake. He should resign.

And absolutely, he should. But it's looking like the leadership in the SBC is not going to do anything about it.

This has made Ed Litton and the Southern Baptist Convention into a laughingstock.

The last article that I wrote at the end of 2021 chronicled the events of the Ed Litton plagiarism scandal.

You can still find that article at PastorGabe .com. Since I was involved in exposing it,

I figured I would be the one to kind of write a summary of the events. And there's also audio.

If you listen to the audio version of that blog, it plays the audio of Ed Litton's sermons, splicing it in with J .D.

Greer, Tim Keller, whoever he was plagiarizing for that particular sermon. And you can hear the evidence for yourself.

Next news item here, number 22. This was July the 1st. We get to the month of July now. The PCA, Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly, debates human sexuality in St.

Louis. I'm turning to an article here from Dr. Carl Truman, who summarized the events that happened at the

General Assembly. This was in an article he wrote for First Things. The summer of 2021 is proving to be an interesting time for the conservative

Protestant denominations of the U .S. First, the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting witnessed the contentious election of a new president who was engulfed in controversy almost as soon as the result was announced.

Then the Presbyterian Church in America, PCA, met in St. Louis for a General Assembly that was inevitably focused on questions of sexual identity and Christianity that have been brought to the fore by Revoice.

And if you're not familiar with that, Revoice is a conference that was held at a PCA church that was praising same -sex attraction as something that was godly and good.

Dr. Truman goes on, in particular, is it acceptable for a Christian minister to identify as a celibate gay

Christian, thereby legitimizing gay as an identity while still maintaining the traditional

Christian teaching on sexual acts? To outside observers of the PCA, like myself, the result was encouraging and surprising.

What happened was that the Assembly voted to propose several changes to the denomination's

Book of Church Order, the manual of church law, that would prevent anyone who identifies as gay or same -sex attracted from holding office in the denomination.

Well done, PCA. Of course, there was a lot of pushback against this as the liberals in the PCA took to social media and really smeared those as bigots who decided that a person who identifies as same -sex attracted cannot be a minister in the

Presbyterian Church of America. We go on to number 23. This was July 11th.

Kamala Harris says, love your neighbor by getting vaccinated.

Now, this becomes a Christian headline because this was something that Kamala Harris claimed the

Bible teaches, that Jesus teaches you're supposed to love your neighbor by getting vaccinated.

Listen to the audio here. The act of getting vaccinated, the act of administering the vaccinations, well, these acts are the very essence of what the

Bible and so many faiths tell us about the importance of our role and our power when we say, love thy neighbor.

And I truly believe in the power of that. We saw divisions among Christians all year long regarding masks and vaccines and some of the big evangelical leaders trying to guilt trip

Christians into getting vaccinated. Russell Moore wrote in the Washington Post that loving your neighbor means urging people to get vaccinated and that you must also take the vaccine for the coronavirus.

David French said that reluctance among Christians to get the vaccine demonstrates a disregard for the health and well -being of neighbors.

He says Christians who do not get vaccinated do more harm to the health of the church than the worst of Joe Biden's culture war regulations or the most radical developments in the sexual revolution.

Not even kidding. Karen Swallow Pryor, professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, said on her

Twitter that pro -life Christians who do not wear a mask have brought a culture of death.

And just a couple of months ago, John Piper wrote an article and it was full of all kinds of silly reasoning as to why

Christians should get vaccinated. But he linked to a video by a guy named Curtis Chang and Chang basically preached heresy in that video to convince

Christians to get vaccinated. Listen to what he says here. Now, this idea that what began in death could be reworked into life.

Well, it's hard for the human mind to grasp. This is why we need images of redemption in the world.

We need examples that can serve as metaphors of what Jesus accomplished that show us Jesus is redemption.

Well, it's kind of like that. I propose that the COVID vaccine is an image of redemption.

Yes, the vaccine may have a distant origin story in abortion, but that past has been reworked and redeemed into something that saves life.

We can point to the vaccine and say, Jesus' redemption is kind of like that. And indeed, the production of a vaccine in less than a year, it's really a miracle.

Something like this has never happened this quickly. I personally believe God's redemptive power was present in the process.

So my invitation to pro -life Christians who may distrust the COVID vaccine currently is this.

Please remember that the Christian story is the story of redemption. Every one of us has an origin story in sin.

None of us can avoid this. Yet each of us has had our story reworked by Jesus into new life.

That's what it ultimately means to be pro -life. To be pro -life is to be pro -redemption.

And to be pro -redemption, in my view, means being pro -vaccine.

That's just absolutely astonishing. And that was Curtis Chang from Duke University. That video was linked to by John Piper.

It's astounding the level of false teaching that people have gone to, to try to convince

Christians to either wear a mask or get vaccinated. This is a matter of conscience.

This is a difference of opinion. And Romans 14 .1 says not to quarrel over opinions.

If somebody is convinced that they need to wear a mask or get vaccinated, then do that. If somebody is convinced that they should not wear a mask or not get vaccinated, then let them, in their freedom of conscience, make that decision on their own.

But they are not any less loving their neighbor. See, that's actually a slander. You see somebody not wearing a mask or not getting a vaccine, and you say of that person, well, they don't love their neighbor like I do.

Because I wear a mask and I get vaccinated. You are puffing yourself up like the Pharisees, dude. That is virtue signaling.

That is a slander against your brother or sister in Christ to say of them that they do not love their neighbor because they're not wearing a mask and getting vaccinated.

When nothing in the scripture tells us to do any such thing, even during a pandemic. Listen, we have been lied to over and over and over again about the

COVID stuff that has been going on. Joe Biden said that if you get the vaccine, you will not catch

COVID. The CDC director, Andrea Walensky, said that vaccinated people do not carry the virus and do not get sick.

Rachel Maddow said that you will not get COVID if you have been vaccinated.

Let me just play all three of those clips for you in succession here. Joe Biden, Andrea Walensky and Rachel Maddow telling you that if you get the vaccine, you won't catch

COVID. You're OK. You're not going to you're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.

Our data from the CDC today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don't get sick, and that it's not just in the clinical trials, but it's also in real world data.

Instead of the virus being able to hop from person to person to person. Potentially mutating and becoming more virulent and drug resistant along the way.

Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person.

A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus. The virus does not infect them.

The virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else. It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people.

That means the vaccines will get us to the end of this.

And we now know that's not true. If you get vaccinated, you can still catch

COVID and you can still pass it on. Some extended members of my family were on a trip just recently, a couple of weeks ago.

They've been vaccinated and boosted. And on their trip, they caught COVID. So, yeah, you can still catch it and you can still become contagious to other people.

It's a virus. It's what this does. And the vaccines are still experimental.

We've only had them for a little over a year. It will be four more years before we'll see the five -year studies on the effects of this vaccine and another five years after that before we'll see the 10 -year studies.

Vaccines typically have a long history of study before they get released to the public.

That has not been the case with the COVID vaccine. And the further we get into this pandemic, the more we are seeing that there have been side effects to these vaccines.

One that I just saw this week is something that has been talked about for months, but it's now making its way into the mainstream media is that for women taking the vaccine has been affecting menstrual cycles, not in every woman, but a large number of women.

And some women are reporting that they can no longer get pregnant after they have had the vaccine.

It is really, really sad to see Christians guilt tripping one another over this. This is, again, a matter of conscience.

If a person feels like they must do it, then let them do it. If they feel like they can't, then let them.

But once again, do not quarrel over opinions. We're discriminating against one another between vaxxed and unvaxed.

Where is their biblical precedence for this? On the contrary, it says in James 2 .1, show no partiality as you hold fast to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We go on in our news items here to event number 24. This was on August the 8th, going to church on the

Internet. Now, this wasn't a strictly August the 8th. This has been something we've been talking about since 2020.

Can you go to church on the Internet? But I picked that day in particular because that was the date that Colin Hansen of the

Gospel Coalition had an article published in the New York Times about whether or not Christians can go to church on the

Internet. The answer to this question is no, you cannot. The name church, that word church itself, the word in Greek that is used in the

New Testament that we have translated into English, the word church, it means assembly. It means a gathering.

And this concept of Internet church, a virtual church, this is brand new in human history.

This has only come about in the last 10 to 20 years. This is not something that for the previous 2 ,000 years of church history had been talked about.

Only since the Internet has come around has there been such a widespread movement among tons of churches, even small churches, to be able to stream their services online.

Now, we've probably been having this debate, you know, even going back to the 50s when church services were being televised, right?

You could watch a church service on TV. So I'm sure there was probably debate in there over 50 years ago with people going, hey, you know,

I went to church. I watched whatever preacher on TV. So that was the same thing, right?

No, that's not the same as getting together with the body of Christ in order to practice the one another's love one another, look out for one another, forgive one another.

The only way to practice those things is to be with one another. You can't do that virtually online.

The Lord's Supper is to be practiced together in communion as we've been studying this going through our first Corinthian study on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, when

I was just recently in first Corinthians 11. And Paul talks there several times. He makes this statement.

He says, when you gather, when you come together to partake of the Lord's table, this is something that we do together in person.

And those elements are administered there as the bread and the cup, not all these other different things.

This is something you're seeing pop up online here and there. Somebody saying, hey, I had apple juice and leftover slice of pizza.

There's my that would be a gross combination anyway. You know, somebody just grabbing some random elements out of their fridge and saying, here was my

Lord's Supper today. No, that's no. That kind of thing was strictly forbidden when

Paul wrote to the Corinthians in first Corinthians 11 and said, I do not commend you in this because what you are doing when you gather together is not practicing the

Lord's table. But that we remember these elements as Jesus gave them to his disciples.

He did not consecrate pizza and apple juice. The Lord consecrated the bread and the cup.

And so those are the elements that we use for the Lord's table. We must gather together, really not online.

You must go to church and we must continue to encourage and build up one another in our most holy faith.

We must continue to practice the Lord's Supper in a right manner. And we do these to the praise of God in the ways that he's commanded these things, according to his word.

Number 25, August the 12th, Joshua Harris deconstruction starter pack.

So Joshua Harris is the I Kiss Dating Goodbye guy. And you might recall that in 2020, he left the faith.

He basically deconstructed was the word that he used. So no longer a Christian and decided even to leave his marriage.

He was later photographed at an LGBTQ event in Great Britain. So who knows what direction this guy is going now after deconstructing and leaving the faith.

But following a swath of high profile Christian leaders who have recently renounced their faith, celebrity ex evangelical

Joshua Harris is taking it a step further. According to Newsweek magazine, Harris has just announced that he's launching a course about deconstructing one's faith to, as he puts it, pass on to others what

I've learned about the process. The course entitled Reframe Your Story, which includes a deconstruction starter pack, costs $275.

Yeah, so this guy went from making money off of Christianity to making money off of not being a

Christian. The pushback that Joshua Harris received as a result of this, he was so roundly made fun of that he dropped the whole program a couple of weeks later.

But all of that started on August the 12th. 26th news event of the year is on August the 15th.

In my opinion, this was the biggest story of the year. We heard about January 6 the most that was repeated over and over again.

We had the anniversary of January 6 yesterday. The biggest news story of the year really was this one on August the 15th.

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul.

Here is how Vox recalled the incident in their publication online.

On August the 15th, 2021, the Taliban took over Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. The Afghan president fled the country.

Almost all of Afghanistan is now under Taliban control. It marks the end of an era.

America's longest war is now over and America lost. It happened fast, stunning the world and leaving many in the country racing to find an exit.

But even among those surprised by the way the end played out, many knew the war was destined to end badly.

And this really all falls on President Biden and his administration. It falls on them like the previous two presidents are not.

They don't have clean hands in this either. Donald Trump or Barack Obama, even

George W. Bush. This was a war that really seemed doomed from the very beginning.

Now, that's not on the soldiers who died, who gave their lives over there in Afghanistan.

But it is upon those who failed to plan this war or even come up with a genuine strategy on how they were going to defeat the

Taliban and make sure that that the turnover that happened in Afghanistan would remain. For weeks after that, we were getting calls from different missionary organizations that were telling us

I'm talking about we I'm talking about here at our church. We were visiting with various missionary organizations that were talking about the missionaries that were still there.

Now, a lot of them were not trying to get out. There were some that were trying to flee the country because they knew the danger that they were in and the danger to their families lives.

But many stayed because they had churches there. They had brothers and sisters in the

Lord that they had brought to faith and were working in their sanctification. They were not about to abandon them, even though the

Taliban was threatening to come to those churches and put those Christians to death. So there's still a lot of persecution that's going on there in Afghanistan right now.

Continue to pray for those Christians, those that are being put to death by the Taliban who have taken over Afghanistan.

And that is probably the control that will remain there. You know, the United States would have done much, much better for Afghanistan if instead of investing all of that money in the military occupation.

And by the way, you know, you probably heard all those news stories about the the weapons and the vehicles and things like that that got left behind rather than investing all of that money into the military occupation.

The United States government should have been putting money into missionary organizations, sending a whole bunch of Christians over there to evangelize

Afghanistan. Then this nation would not have fallen to Taliban control the way that it has.

But we continue to believe that Jesus Christ is on his throne. Even a situation that is happening there in Afghanistan is not out of God's control, and he will return to judge the living and the dead, and he will rule the nations with a rod of iron, as said to us in Revelation 19.

We go on to event number 27, August the 26th. Greg Epstein, an atheist, is elected president of Harvard's chaplains organization.

Yes, an atheist was elected president of the chaplains there at Harvard. His election was even unanimous.

There were Christians who voted for him to become the president of Harvard's chaplains.

He was congratulated by none other than Tim Keller Twitter on August the 30th.

Tim Keller said, Congratulations, Greg, on your appointment as just sad.

Number 28 on September the 8th, a death row inmate wants to have his chaplain touch him as he is being executed.

Did you hear about this story? This happened right here in the state of Texas. A Texas prisoner wants his pastor to place his hands on him as he's executed.

But the state won't allow it. John Ramirez was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2004 robbery and stabbing death of Pablo Castro, a convenience store clerk in Corpus Christi.

The judge added that TDCJ will accommodate Ramirez's religious beliefs by giving

Ramirez access to his pastor on the day of execution and allowing him to stand nearby during the execution.

But it was not going to be allowed that the chaplain would lay hands on him as he was being executed.

Number 29. This was on September the 9th. President Biden announced the vaccine mandate against large employers.

And as a result, requests for religious exemptions went up. Here's how one news article reads.

Yesterday, President Biden announced that he is entering two executive orders requiring COVID -19 vaccines for federal workers and contractors and that the administrative agencies will be issuing requirements, establishing vaccine protocols for large employers and health care providers.

President Biden expressed his frustration with the loss of momentum in citizens getting vaccinated and stated that our patience is wearing thin.

The new mandates may affect around 100 million U .S. workers. The president has asked

OSHA to put out an emergency temporary standard, ETS, that will cover any business that has 100 or more employees.

Now, we've had people within our own church congregation who worked for big corporations like that and had requested of us pastors here at the church that we would write for them a religious exemption letter.

And we've done that. So something like that, though, we would recommend to you that you talk to your pastor about not call another church's pastor and ask them to write a letter of religious exemption for you.

But, you know, it was last week and Becky and I talked about this on last week's program that President Biden had said there is no federal solution to the pandemic and he is handing the problem now off to the states.

Well, the demand that's being made of the president now is that if there is no federal solution to covid -19, then you have to take away the federal mandates to get vaccinated.

If the if the federal government is not going to do anything to try to eradicate the vaccine, then they cannot be issuing federal mandates against its own citizens.

Pray that all those things work out, because these things are still affecting people in a big way. A lot of people are still losing their jobs, especially those who work in health, in health care, who are not vaccinated.

They're getting fired. Still, because of this federal mandate and further along with the hypocrisy of this whole narrative.

Of course, there was a time when President Biden said he absolutely would not make the vaccine mandatory.

And he's gone back on his word. You can hear it in this clip here. It begins with a reporter asking him if he's going to make the vaccines mandatory.

This was this was back at the beginning of his presidency. No, I don't think it should be mandatory.

I wouldn't demand to be mandatory, but I would do everything in my power. It's like I don't think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide.

I'll do everything in my power as president of the United States to encourage people to do the right thing.

And when they do it, demonstrate that it matters. That's why I said in my inaugural speech,

I'm going to ask people to commit for 100 days to wear a mask. Not because I'm asking it for any reason to punish.

This is not a political issue. It's become one. That's right. And he made it one. So be in prayer for those people whose jobs are being threatened as a result of these federal mandates and pray also that the federal government will overturn these mandates.

They are not good for anybody and an infringement upon our liberty and our rights.

Number 30, September the 27th, woke preacher clips exposes wokeness in churches.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with woke preacher clips, but it kind of became a guilty pleasure for me on Twitter. It's bittersweet because it's disgusting to see all of the leftism, the liberalism that's made its way into so many evangelical churches.

But at the same time, I mean, it's like a car wreck. You just can't turn your eyes away from it. So I asked,

I contacted woke preacher clips and told him to give me a rundown of his five biggest videos of the year.

And here's what they are in order. Number one, New York Governor Kathy Hockul says at an at an

NYC megachurch that people who haven't gotten the covid shot are not listening to God.

Number two, Ibram X. Kendi, who's kind of the father of the anti -racism movement. He made it clear that he views the true gospel as a false one.

And the clip blew up on Twitter right before Jamar Tisby got hired at his anti -racism organization.

Number three, Jarvis Williams in 2018 articulated the obvious critical race theory concept of racism without racists at John Piper's college, which was much, much bigger clip on Twitter than it was on YouTube.

Number four, a clip from Tim Keller, who said that Christians will be purged from government and schools, and we brought it on ourselves.

And finally, number five, a video of a pastor washing a black man's feet in a sermon.

It was just extremely cringy. But as I said earlier, critical race theory, wokeness, all of this stuff does does nothing to eradicate racism.

On the contrary, it fosters it and spreads it. Critical race theory and wokeness are racist.

The next news item here, number 34 on. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm jumping ahead.

I've skipped all of October here. Number 31, October the 1st. Pat Robertson retires the host of the 700

Club. I don't think I need to expound on that one anymore. Number 32, October the 4th. Pope Francis and other religious leaders sign

Faith and Science, an appeal for COP26. And in case you're not familiar with what that is,

COP26 stands for Conference of the Parties. And it was the 26th annual summit in which a bunch of people get together and talk about how the world is going to end because of climate change.

And of course, this is a lot of wealthy people that spend a ton of money and burn a lot of fossil fuels in order to get to this particular place.

But Pope Francis led a bunch of other religious leaders into saying, hey, this is this is a serious thing and we need to do something about this.

Here's an article from The New York Times warning global leaders that time is running out to address climate change. Pope Francis urged them on Friday to take radical decisions that would provide effective responses to the present ecological crisis from the outset of his papacy, which is now in its eighth year.

Francis made clear that environmental issues would be a priority. He has noted that poor people suffer most as a result of an ecological crisis brought about by economic models, industrial systems and policies that are detrimental to the environment.

It's all a bunch of baloney. Number 33, October the 14th. This was an article that appeared in the

Christian Post. The Amish survived covid -19 better than most by not locking down and by not ceasing church gatherings.

The Amish County in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has made it through the coronavirus pandemic without experiencing a catastrophic loss of life, despite their refusal to adopt many of the safety precautions portrayed as necessary to prevent widespread loss of life, according to a new report.

So this is one of those instances. We can follow the Amish example. Don't lock down and go to church.

How about that? All right, this next one, number 34, November the 4th, the full edition of the

Legacy Standard Bible begins shipping. You know, I don't know exactly what day it was that that the first full edition of the

Legacy Standard Bible ended up in somebody's hands, but I wrote down the date that they put on.

Well, it would have been Twitter. Steadfast Bibles said that the full edition of the Legacy Standard Bible is now being sent out.

So when they posted that, which would have been November the 4th, that was that's the date that I decided to include in this.

This is the Bible that John MacArthur says is the most accurate English translation of the

Bible, just continuing to improve on a good thing where previously the most accurate translation was the

NASB 95. Then the NASB came out with the 2020 edition, which actually went backward.

Instead of getting better, it went back. But the Legacy Standard translators had purchased that or at least had acquired the rights to that manuscript, the

NASB 95, updated it with a few other changes. And now we have the Legacy Standard Bible and you can get the full edition online when you go to steadfastbibles .com.

Number 35, November the 9th. Immigration at the southern border.

This is something that hasn't gone away. This was a big issue when Trump was president, but the media's fell largely silent on it while Biden has been president.

Imagine that the U .S. Border Patrol reported more than 1 .6 million encounters with migrants along the

U .S. Mexico border in the 2021 fiscal year, more than quadruple the number of the prior fiscal year and the highest annual total on record.

The number of encounters had fallen to just over 400 ,000 in fiscal 2020 as the coronavirus outbreak slowed migration across much of the world.

But encounters at the southwest border rebounded sharply in fiscal 2021 and ultimately eclipsed the previous annual high recorded the previous annual high recorded in fiscal 2020, according to recently published data from the

U .S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that encompasses the Border Patrol.

Pray for our Border Patrol guys that are down there. Missionary efforts are now progressing in the in southern

U .S. to reach out with the gospel to some of these immigrants that are coming over. This is going to have an economic effect on the

United States of America, and we just have to wait and see what that is going to be. Number 36 on November the 23rd, justice is served in the

Court of Christian Opinions. You have different court matters that were resolved toward the end of 2021.

The Derek Chauvin case, he was the guy that knelt on the neck of George Floyd. He was ruled as guilty.

Ahmaud Arbery, the the men that had murdered him, found guilty. Jussie Smollett was found guilty of having of having faked an attack against himself.

There was a whole unite the right thing that had happened in Charlottesville. There was a decision that was made on that damages that were awarded that trial wrapped up at the end of 2021.

And then, of course, there was the Kyle Rittenhouse decision. The young man who was defending his community in Wisconsin against the riots that were happening there in 2020.

TGC, the Gospel Coalition, had written an article that was that was comparing Kyle Rittenhouse to Dylan Roof and calling him a mass murderer.

But he's since been found innocent and TGC has not retracted their article. Number 37.

December the 1st, the Supreme Court listens to oral arguments in Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Now, it is supposed by many that this will be the court decision that could potentially overturn

Roe versus Wade. The Supreme Court listened to oral arguments and then that whole thing was debated during that week when the

Supreme Court was listening to those arguments. But they have not yet made a ruling on the case.

We may hear about it later this month. And I just have to wonder if maybe the Supreme Court is holding on to the anniversary of Roe v.

Wade to announce their decision. That'll be on January the 22nd. If that ends up being the day that the

Supreme Court will announce the decision in this particular case. Also, later on in the year, this happened in the month of December as well.

The FDA approved mail order abortion. So abortion pills are now being mailed to people.

And that, no doubt, is a response to what many believe is going to happen with the

Supreme Court decision in Dobbs versus Jackson. Number 38, December the 7th, Canada bans conversion therapy.

This is Bill C -4 that was passed in Canada. And it's essentially going to make it illegal for pastors to preach against homosexuality.

If a pastor preaches 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, that the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Just for preaching that a church could get shut down under this conversion therapy ban, because they'll consider that to be conversion therapy.

If a pastor preaches that Christ will give you a new heart and a new mind, you will not be same sex attracted any longer, but you will turn from this sin to the

Lord Jesus Christ. If somebody preaches that, that will be considered conversion therapy preaching.

And there will be sanctions, fines, maybe jail time issued as a result of this particular bill that passed in the nation of Canada.

A lot of things going on that make church a whole lot harder in Canada right now.

Pray for our brothers and sisters there. Number 39, December the 21st, Elon Musk accepts

Jesus, but not really. This was a Babylon Bee interview.

It was a great interview. I enjoyed it. I liked listening to Elon Musk's thoughts.

Of course, Elon Musk is the founder of Tesla and the richest man in the world at the present.

Now, at the conclusion of the Babylon Bee interviews, they will ask these questions.

They have these 10 questions that they ask of all of their guests. I was one of the guests, so I got these questions asked of me.

But their last question is, will you accept Jesus as your Lord and personal savior?

And Elon Musk responded. Yeah, sure. You know, I accept Jesus. But when you listen to the interview, the gospel was not actually preached.

And Elon did not actually become a Christian. He said, as Einstein would say,

I believe in the God of Spinoza, which is a concept held by some scientists that the natural laws of the universe constitute a sort of deity.

And Elon went on to say, but hey, if Jesus is saving people, I mean, I wouldn't stand in his way, you know, like, sure,

I'll be saved. Why not? But the gospel was not actually proclaimed to Elon.

There was no mention of sin, repenting of sin, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.

And it is only by faith in Jesus will a person be saved from death and have everlasting life.

That was never explained to Elon. So as much as it sounded like in the Babylon Bee interview that Elon Musk became a

Christian, that's not true. But pray for his salvation. Hopefully there was conversation after the cameras stopped rolling in which these things were explained to Elon.

And he came to understand a seriousness of his sin and the need for a savior. Finally, last news item of 2021.

I saved this one for December 31st. It wasn't really on December 31st. Gallup reports that Americans membership in houses of worship has dropped below 50 % for the first time in over 80 years.

According to a Pew Forum survey, about three in 10 U .S. adults are religiously unaffiliated.

So greater than 30 % of Americans right now are saying that they have no religious affiliation whatsoever.

And over 50 % of Americans, over 50 % are not attending church.

They do not have a membership in a house of worship of any kind. Pray for America, because it is becoming more and more evident all the time that God is taking his hand off of this nation and turning the

United States over to its own depravity. I still love being an American. I think that we have more freedoms in the

United States of America than we have anywhere. But it is true that depravity is rampant, sexual immorality, especially murder the death of the unborn through abortion.

So pray for this nation. Continue to preach the gospel. Our most desperate need at the present hour is not to alert people of conspiracies that are going on in the government.

It's to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave.

Whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life. The judgment of God is coming.

The only way to be saved from judgment is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is our desire for you as hosts of When We Understand the Text. Find a place, a good, solid

Bible teaching church to worship with this weekend and go. Go to church.

Be with brothers and sisters in the Lord. Grow in sanctification and holiness with one another.

Worship the Lord God until the day of his coming. As I mentioned earlier, from Colossians 3, when

Christ, who is your life, appears, you also will appear with him in glory. God bless.

Thank you for a great 2021. We're already into 2022, and I desire to continue to be faithful to the preaching of the word of God through this program.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the ministry that's being done through When We Understand the Text, and would you bless me and my wife that we would continue to remain faithful to the scriptures as we broadcast this through the internet around the world so that more would hear the gospel and grow in a knowledge of the word of God.

For as Romans 10, 17 says, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

And as Jesus prayed in John 17, 17, Father, sanctify them in your truth.

Your word is truth. We need truth to penetrate the lies and save us from this wicked and crooked generation

May your truth go forth in Jesus' name. Amen. This is

When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web, and we thank you for selecting ours.

But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family. Find a good gospel -teaching,

Christ -centered church to worship with this weekend, and join us again Monday for more Bible study when we understand the text.