Beth Moore Goes Egalitarian and Evangelicals Carry Water for Communist China

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. If you're looking for something lighthearted, today is not the day.

I do have a podcast dropping Thursday morning, which is a discussion with Josh Sommer from the

Sommercast on dating and marriage. We're going to share our stories and whatever advice we have for that whole dating, courtship, marriage relationship.

So yeah, I mean, that's more lighthearted. That's more fun to talk about. But this one, this podcast is not that.

This podcast, I'm going to be hitting some things a little harder. And we're going to talk a little bit about Beth Moore.

She has pretty much, in my opinion, come out as egalitarian. Her egalitarian stripes are showing.

And then we're going to talk about the churches. And what I mean by church, I should qualify that, some big evangelical leaders, some popular preachers and so forth, ministry leaders, parachurch leaders, their reaction to this government overreach.

And I know I've hit this before. I'm going to hit it maybe harder in this episode and show you some things, including how

I think many evangelicals, including many institutions like Fuller Theological, Christianity Today, et cetera, have been taken in by a

Chinese Marxist propaganda line. And they're carrying the water for the Chinese Communist Party, whether they realize it or not.

I'm going to give you some of that evidence and share an article with you at the end of the video, and you can judge for yourself.

But it's crazy times we're living in. So first up on the social justice front, we have

Beth Moore. Now I did not think the story I'm about to share with you was really all that significant because let's face it, over the past year,

Beth Moore has made a habit of publicly accepting, receiving invitations to preach at various churches, colleges, and she does so publicly.

And she said this, she's admitted this, to irk Reform Brothers, meaning those who actually believe that the office of the pastor and the role of preaching is reserved for men.

She publicly posts about preaching at various places to irk them. And she enjoys it or else she wouldn't do it.

So that's what Beth Moore has been doing. And I just thought, well, Southern Baptist Convention, bigwigs don't care enough about this to do anything because let's face it, in the

SBC, the criticism, the pressure, it all flows in one direction. If you're a conservative, if you're the

Conservative Baptist Network, if you're Tom Askell and Founders Ministries, if you're someone who's concerned about what's happening at Southwestern in regards to Bobby Lopez being fired because he speaks out against homosexuality, and he does so actually consistently, biblically, that not just homosexual actions but homosexual desires are sinful, he gets fired for it.

If you're someone who thinks that maybe hiring Karen Swallow Pryor at Southeastern isn't a good idea and you're going to be publicly vocal about that, you will receive criticism.

If you have any kind of following, you will be criticized. I've been criticized, very much so.

I'm going to share more about that probably in my next video. But all that to say, we know which direction the criticism flows in.

It does not reach liberals. In fact, by and large, liberals are protected in the

Southern Baptist Convention. And Beth Moore has been one of these liberals. Now I think it was about a year ago now,

Al Mohler, without mentioning Beth Moore, started to kind of criticize something that she was saying.

She was quoting Roy Honeycutt, who had advocated some basically egalitarian viewpoints.

And Albert Mohler made a Twitter post where he said that, I never thought I'd see the day essentially that Honeycutt would be coming back and Southern Baptist would be going back to where they were before the conservative resurgence.

And that was a really good moment for Al Mohler. But there's been about six or seven moments since then, probably more than that, where he's basically slammed conservatives or defended liberals.

And so it's kind of like, where are you? For the past year, Beth Moore has been doing this and you haven't said a thing.

And she's one of the most popular figures in the Southern Baptist life. She's got almost a million followers on Twitter.

Now, we all know this, if you've been paying attention, at least if you're concerned in the least about the leftward drift of the

Southern Baptist Convention, you know about all this. So I thought, not a big deal, this story. But it actually does happen to kind of be a big deal.

And the reason is because this puts soft complementarians in a spot.

Let me explain to you. I'm going to first share with you the story and then I'm going to explain why it puts them in a spot. So Beth Moore says, gotta get, this is

April 14th, by the way, on Twitter, gotta get something off my chest. Don't let, Twitter's the best place to do that, right?

Just to get it off your chest. Don't go to your journal and privately write it down. Gotta go to Twitter. So just getting this off her chest.

Don't let churches disregarding social distancing tell you it's all about faith. Now I don't,

I'm not sure who she's talking about here, but I'm going to assume that there's some churches out there that are saying, the

Lord has commanded us to meet. We're not supposed to forsake the assembly of the saints. We need the full spectrum of gifts as outlined in 1

Corinthians chapter 12 represented in a physical way. We need the one another's to be able to be performed.

We need the sacraments or ordinances, depending on your tradition. We need those to be administered with right authority.

I mean, this is part of what makes for a church. You learn this in ecclesiology class, or at least at one time you did. Accountability is necessary.

A church discipline is part of the functioning of a church. We can't do all these things if we're not meeting physically, and the

Lord has commanded us to. So out of faith, we're going to, and I haven't heard of any churches doing this irresponsibly.

I'm sure they probably exist, but the ones I've heard about, we're going to do so responsibly. We're going to do so while usually going above and beyond the

CDC guidelines for social distancing. Certainly way more, way more caution is practiced in these churches than at your local

Walmart or your Lowe's or your liquor store, or if Planned Parenthood is open, I'm sure, Planned Parenthood, all these places that are open.

Churches, I would say, from my experience, from what I've seen, are probably the most cautious about meeting.

That being said, Beth Moore is saying, don't let those churches tell you it's all about faith.

It takes more faith to trust Jesus to build his church, despite empty sanctuaries, to sustain churches financially and bring people back who broke in the habit of going.

Really? Really? So think about this for a minute.

Financially everyone's getting hurt. Just about. I mean, unless you're a big corporation who has been favored by the elites because you're essential and the mom and pop stores that are being completely ravaged by the status of being non -essential, unless you're in that position, you're an

Amazon, a Walmart, or some big grocery store of some kind, you're being hurt big time right now.

And churches, whether they meet or not, are going to feel the brunt of that. Meeting doesn't magically make money appear, necessarily.

I don't know, maybe it helps a little, I guess it could. But the bottom line is, you're being hurt no matter what if the people in your congregation don't have jobs and aren't making money.

I mean, unless every single person in your congregation works at Walmart, then you're probably being hurt, or for the government or something, some essential industry.

Now, so she's saying that it takes faith to not meet because you have, basically it's a financial thing.

And then to try to bring people back after breaking the habit, that's just so hard. It takes faith.

I don't know. Compare the two. Does it take more faith to buck the trend of the rest of the entire society and say,

I'm going to submit to the constitution of my state, and I'm going to do so responsibly, and I know

I'm going to take probably a lot of public criticism for it and possibly be arrested or fined for my stand, or does it take more faith to just go along with what everyone else is doing, receive, accept the government loan under the

CARES Act, and just not to make any waves?

I mean, which takes more faith? But Beth Moore apparently thinks it takes more faith to just not make waves and go along with everyone else.

So then, so this is where the real story comes in. And that was just the preliminary. I had, you know, I had to get something off my chest, just like Beth Moore.

So I wanted to address that. Now, Lisa Saunders, or I guess it's

Saunders is how it's pronounced. She responds to this. She says, I assume I knew and first pastor it on Easter Sunday.

Now stop. What she's saying, she's not saying I'm preaching on Easter Sunday. I happen to have a gig preaching somewhere.

I'm filling the pulpit for a week. That's not what she's saying. She's just saying, and she's doing this with a capital

P, pastor it. I assume I knew and first pastor it on Easter Sunday. So not a seasoned woman pastor, someone who literally, this is her first time, and she is entering the role for the first time of being a woman pastor.

I was on the phone preaching and singing with my new parishioners. I thanked these dear people for trusting me to shepherd them.

Capital S, shepherding them. That's beyond preaching for a

Sunday. That's taking the full role that is given to elders.

Shepherd, I, I'm now busily seeking God's wisdom on shepherding from afar.

It's daunting, but there's grace. Now before we read

Beth Moore's reaction, I want to take you to a very familiar biblical passage if you followed this debate at all, and it bears some repeating.

Let's review it real quick. First Timothy chapter two and three, Apostle Paul, he says, verse 11, a woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

Must mean cultural, right? This isn't an actual rule that's in effect today. This was during Paul's time.

Well, the next verse, verse 13 says, for it was Adam who was first created and then Eve. And then he says, but it was not

Adam who was deceived, but the woman who was deceived fell into transgression. He's saying this is a creative norm. He's saying this goes back to Adam and Eve when

I'm talking. It's nothing new. This is nothing new I'm sharing. This goes back to creation, Adam and Eve, and the context is, is the very next chapter about overseers and deacons, church leadership, and the male pronoun is used over and over in this.

If a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God? Verse five, verse eight, deacons, likewise, must be men of dignity.

Verse 10, these men must be first tested. Verse 12, deacons must be husbands. I know there's some confusion in our culture today about what gender a husband is, but in Paul's time, there was no confusion about this.

Husbands were men. There is a passage in verse 11, it says, women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things.

And there's questions about, is there another role, a role for women being a deaconess maybe, perhaps? And the reality is, if there is a role for women, that in this passage, it is a separate role from the role that is given to men because we see the male pronouns all over the place.

So in the context of church leadership and being an elder, being a deacon, men are the ones that are designated for that role, according to the apostle

Paul in first Timothy. And there's many other passages we can go to, but that's the one that often gets quoted. Now I want to read for you what

Beth Moore has to say in response to Lisa Saunders receiving her first pastorate and shepherding.

Thank God there is no limit to his grace. I had to take a few minutes last night and mourn what may never be again and steady myself for the blessings ahead.

These are new ministry days, Lisa, and he who calls us knows exactly how to equip us.

Now the significant part, the difference in this particular interaction, the difference between this and the other things

Beth Moore has said is in this particular interaction, she affirms the calling.

Not just to preach one Sunday, but an actual calling, a position, an office of Lisa Saunders in receiving and accepting her first pastorate, which involves shepherding, not just preaching.

And she's encouraging her with, hey, God called you to it, he'll provide, he'll give you the grace for it.

That's what she's doing. Now why is this significant? Well, it's significant for this reason.

I'm going to show you what the Baptist Faith and Message has to say about this. Baptist Faith and Message 2000, and I'll just read for you the relevant portion.

It's under number six. The church says, while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by the scriptures.

Now, this has been the debate thus far. This has been what Beth Moore has been able to, this is why she's been able to function in the way she has while preaching at various places and not raising as many eyebrows perhaps as it should be raising.

There is a position called soft complementarianism, and there's a range within this position.

I don't agree. I think it's a synthesis between egalitarianism and complementarianism.

It's basically some kind of a neutral, not even neutral is the word. It's a compromised position, but it is compromised.

That's why I don't like it. I don't think it reflects biblical truth at all. I usually bring it up, and I'll bring it up this time.

Danny Akin's probably a little more on the harder end of this soft complementarian perspective, but he's a soft complementarian.

He likes to tout that he believes in the Danvers Statement, and he believes in the

Baptist Faith and Message 2000, and he's rock -ribbed, I guess, conservative because of these statements.

But he also says he wants a more kinder and gentler complementarianism.

Those words, and I've shown you, I've cataloged it on this podcast how this has affected even students at the seminary.

They know what's going on. They know this is a new thing. This isn't something that was happening in the 80s and before that. This is new.

This is a kinder, softer complementarianism, which in Danny Akin's own words, which you can find.

I've talked about it on this podcast. I think A .D. Robles and I did a whole podcast on complementarianism, and the last part of it,

I think we examined one of Danny Akin's lectures on this. But Danny Akin says, yeah, I'd have Lottie Moon preach.

That's fine. I'd have a woman come preach for a Sunday. But the role, the office of pastor, now that's reserved for men.

That's the compromised position, separating the office from the function, office of pastor, function of pastor.

Beth Moore has been able to slip under the radar with this because she's able to say, well, I'm not a pastor, not taking that office.

I don't believe that the office of pastor, she doesn't even say that. She's just as silent about it. So everyone guesses. But she's not saying that she believes the office of pastor is relegated for both men and women, or it's acceptable for both of them.

So we give her the benefit of doubt. We assume that she must be complementarian, soft complementarian of some kind.

And she just thinks it's okay to preach once in a while. That doesn't mean you're a woman pastor. It just means you're preaching once in a while.

And this is acceptable. This is fine thinking in today's Southern Baptist convention among many of the elite.

Danny Akin is one of them. Doesn't mean he believes every time Beth Moore does it, it's right. But it means that he at least is opening the possibility up to people like Beth Moore to justify preaching on a particular

Sunday. Now this blows all that out of the water. This was

Beth Moore's lifeline. And she doesn't have it anymore. And for people like myself who are,

I guess, complementarians or believe in biblical hierarchy that used to be called patriarchy.

Now it's been so demonized no one wants to use the term. But people like myself who believe in what the Bible says on this topic of the role of men and women.

We never thought Beth Moore was, at least for the last year or two, was within orthodoxy anyways.

So this might not be a big deal to you and me if we're in that line of thinking.

But to someone like Danny Akin who wants to tout that he believes Baptist faith and message which says while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by the scriptures.

This is a big deal. And now we wait. Now we need to see. We know where the pressure is in the

Southern Baptist convention if you're a Tom Askell and you happen to make a documentary called By What Standard? You'll have everyone against you immediately as soon as you drop the trailer.

All the seminary heads, just about, Greenway and Allen and Moeller and Akin, they'll be on you like a duck on a

Junebug. We know what happens if you try to say something against what happened at Southwestern with Bobby Lopez.

Al Moeller is going to tweet and defend them. Al Moeller will defend Danny Akin when people are critical of his hiring of Karen Swallow Pryor who believes in revoiced theology on some level.

By the way, didn't say she endorsed every aspect of revoice. Didn't say that she believes in homosexuality.

I'm going to get into that hopefully in the next episode, the sneaky way they're trying to sell Karen Swallow Pryor to everyone.

But she does, in some level, believe in revoiced theology. And people like Tom Askell have been critical of this.

Well, he gets slapped around for it. Let's see what happens with Beth Moore. Beth Moore is directly in violation of the

Baptist Faith and Message 2000 for this. She has let us see what she actually thinks about the office of pastor.

Will she be rebuked? And if not, what does that say about the leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention?

What does that say about Danny Akin, Al Moeller, Jason Allen, Adam Greenway, J .D. Greer, Kevin Eazell, the list goes on.

Do they care about their documents anymore? Or do the documents not really matter if you have a lot of books that you've published, you're popular and have almost a million

Twitter followers? Let's see what happens. Guys, this is a test. This is a moment for us to keep our eyes open.

Because if they say nothing, then, and this has been publicized, by the way, it's not like they're ignorant.

If they say nothing, it says a lot, it speaks volumes. Now let's switch gears a little bit.

Let's talk a little more about this quarantine, pandemic, et cetera, government overreach, and how evangelicals are reacting to this.

And then I want to ask a question. Are evangelicals being played right now by Chinese communists?

And so let's talk about that. Here's what Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, had to say about Planned Parenthood.

As we speak, in Texas and a couple of other states, I think Ohio may be another, the state has asked to suspend abortion services as part of this

COVID -19 protocol. This is probably going to go to the Supreme Court. What is your reaction to that?

You're a governor. You have to make these decisions as well. There are other procedures that have been suspended. We stopped elective surgeries here in Michigan.

And some people have tried to say that that type of a procedure is considered the same.

And that's ridiculous. You know, a woman's health care, her whole future, her ability to decide if and when she starts a family is not an election.

It is a fundamental to her life. It is life sustaining. And it's something that government should not be getting in the middle of.

So churches need to be closed. They're not essential. You can't go to your friend's or family's house in Michigan because that would be dangerous.

But Planned Parenthood needs to remain open because it's life sustaining. It's so essential.

It's within the fabric of what we would call an inalienable right. It can never be trampled upon because the culture of death is so important to these folks.

They're doing so in the name of saving life, killing babies. Now, I wish that I could say

Michigan was the only state that was this totalitarian and secular and crazy, but I would be wrong.

That special order did make it clear that liquor stores here, like Discount Liquor and many others throughout southeastern

Wisconsin and the entire state, are considered essential and can remain open. A flashing open sign lights up liquor stores across New York State at a time when many businesses are closed.

What makes liquor stores essential in the first place? Koerner says first, it's a legal substance.

Any time I put restrictions on businesses, I run those restrictions through the Department of Health if we want to keep them employed.

And there's really no reason from a policy perspective to not allow people to have a drink in their home, especially when we're saying the government wants you in your home.

So liquor stores are remaining open in many places. And by the way, that last clip that you saw,

West Palm Beach, isn't that where Rodney Howard Brown was arrested for holding a church service?

But liquor stores are essential. Meanwhile, as liquor stores remain open, this is what's going on.

And while home may be the safest place to be, it's not the case for everyone across the globe.

Women and children who suffer from domestic violence have no escape from their abusers during quarantine.

I'm outside of Cornerstone Advocacy Service here in Bloomington. This is where they run a 24 -7 domestic violence hotline.

And they say in the past week, their call load has gone up 25 percent. But that's not all.

Governor Walz saying yesterday that last weekend, two out of three calls to police were related to domestic abuse.

So let's make sure we understand this. In many places, including West Palm Beach, by the way, I didn't show you the clip, but domestic abuse is on the rise there as well.

Liquor stores are open. Domestic abuse is on the rise. But churches are non -essential and need to be closed.

How does that make any sense? Let me show you how New Jersey is justifying this. Liquor is essential and the reason, and here's a quote from Paul Nestad, John Hopkins University School of Medicine.

If someone is dependent on alcohol and they can't get alcohol, then they can go into withdrawal. And that can put a load on hospitals, et cetera.

All businesses, this is Sergeant Jeff Flynn of the New Jersey State Police, says were deemed essential after careful consideration of several factors such as the impact on our health care system and transportation and accessibility to food, water, and hardware.

So New Jersey, they're making very careful, very careful decisions here on what is essential and non -essential.

Churches don't make the cut, but liquor stores do. Think about that for a moment.

Now, if that weren't enough, what is the governor of New York State saying about their attempt to flatten the curve?

Our behavior has stopped the spread of the virus. God did not stop the spread of the virus.

So to review, many states have kept their Planned Parenthood facilities open as essential.

Governor of Michigan says it's life -changing. That's why. It's essential because it's life -saving, is what she said, actually, life -saving.

Number two, many states are keeping liquor stores open as essential because of the public health crisis that would ensue if they didn't.

However, domestic abuse is up and liquor stores are open. Doesn't seem like a great combination, but churches closed.

You can't go to those. Those aren't essential. Those don't address, I guess, the public health issue like alcohol does.

And some people think, apparently, some municipalities that, well, it's not in the purview of the state or the magistrate in their local municipality to crack down on liquor stores because it's something that people can have in their home.

I guess that's the standard. But you can't gather at your home to worship the

Lord in many places. This is kind of what we're seeing out there, and it's amazing to me.

And then we have the governor of New York, and if he says this again, I wouldn't want to be near him, lest lightning strike me as well, but saying, yeah, it's not

God. God doesn't get credit for this. It's our efforts, even though New York has had more deaths than any other state as far as I know.

But it's all the efforts of the government, what they're doing there. This guy's a tyrant.

He's the one that said, hey, if we need ventilators, we're just going to take them. Privately owned citizens, we're not asking, we're just going to go take them.

And now, God doesn't get any credit for flattening the curve. And so this is what's going on.

This is a sampling of it. Now, I want to give you another sampling. How is Big Eva responding? How are Christians responding to this?

Now, there's some encouraging things in little pockets in different areas, like I think recently

I heard that a pastor in Mississippi whose congregation was ticketed and fined for attending a service will sue the local municipality who did that.

And those kinds of things are happening. But it's small churches. Where is the—you would think a drum would be banging from the highest heights of big ministries, denominations, etc.

You'd think the Gospel Coalition would be posting endless articles about this. I mean, they care about abuse so much.

What about the abuse that's going on against pastors and churches? The discrimination, right? Discrimination is such an issue.

I guess it's only racial discrimination. If it's religious discrimination or religious bigotry, they're not creating statements about this.

What are they doing, though? What are they doing? Well, here's a couple things that they are doing. Number one—and this just shows you some of the anemic response that's being put out there.

ERLC on the 11th, new from Dr. Moore, most local and state authorities have operated well and in good faith.

Let's keep it that way. So he's going to try to focus on the local and state authorities that are doing well and encourage churches to go along.

Okay. Explainer. Here's the most aggressive they've gotten. Department of Justice Statement of Interest Regarding Religious Freedom Case in Mississippi.

ERLC will continue to monitor and engage these situations. So this is the situation in Mississippi where you had people showing up at a drive -in church and getting ticketed for it.

They're going to monitor this while continuing to advocate for churches to cooperate in good faith with state and local authorities, as well as public health officials.

Churches and government remain critical allies in the fight against COVID -19, and we must continue to engage with each other to maintain trust and strong cooperation.

Does that sound anything like a strong stand against the abuse and discrimination that is coming against pastors and churches?

No, it doesn't. Not one bit. This is not the kind of language they use when they think something might even smell like racism or sexism.

No. And in fact, in that vein, here's what J .D. Greer has done.

J .D. Greer has launched, in this pandemic, the Church Cares website. We believe every church must be equipped to respond well in the initial stages of learning about instances of sexual, physical, or emotional abuse.

This is why we created Becoming a Church That Cares Well for the Abused. We have a 12 -lesson program.

Rachel Denhollander is helping out with it, and so forth. And so on. Context, guys.

What's going on around you? And this is where you're going to put your time and effort? This is the president of the

Southern Baptist Convention. This is what his efforts are being put into right now. Not the obvious discrimination and bigotry against churches that are in his own denomination.

It's amazing. Amazing. And to soften the blow of not being able to go to church,

I saw this. This is from David Platt's church, McLean Bible. And they sponsored this, which means they paid money to have this advertised.

Literally. They actually want people, this is what they want people to see on social media. This is from their

Instagram. 10 benefits of going to church online for Easter. If you've ever been curious about church, or why we celebrate

Easter tomorrow, it's your chance. So this is going out, I'm assuming, to non -Christians. Hey, if you've been curious about us, now you can tune in to a live stream.

1. There's no commute. 2. Get the closest parking spot. 3.

No small talk. 4. Your church and your restaurant for brunch. Lunch or dinner afterwards is the same place.

5. Refill your coffee anytime. 6. Keep wearing your sweatpants if you want. 7.

If you show up late, you can rewind back to the beginning. 8. Sing as loud as you want.

9. Get to have the pastor over to your house. 10. Connect with others in a season of social distancing.

Now, this would be funny, in a sense, if it was a conversation, perhaps, between believers, like,

I don't know, like, in a small group or on the phone, like, hey, you know, look at, even then it's not that funny to me, to be honest with you.

But I could see it potentially being funny to someone. But you're literally talking about a situation in which liquor stores and abortion clinics can remain open.

And I know, I happen to know, they are in Virginia. So I know what's going on in Virginia. And this is the situation they're in.

They have one of the worst governors, as far as the crackdown is concerned. You have that going on.

Churches are non -essential. Churches can't meet. Distancing guidelines and so forth and so on.

So this is what's happening. Grocery stores are petri dishes. I mean, I live in the same state. And this is what they want to put out there, especially for non -Christians to see.

It's like, hey, look, it's convenient. It's a seeker -sensitive thing. Wear your sweatpants. Don't have to find a parking space.

Don't have to go through all that small talk. Because that's so terrible, apparently. Having to talk to Christians in small talk.

You can just get your bird's eye view. You can be a fly on the wall. You can see what's going on inside our church.

Don't you want to see it? We're going to be doing a live stream. So hey, a live stream is good. This is a good scenario.

Ignore those other things. I've seen this a lot, and I could give you countless examples of it. But how often have you heard this phrase?

And here's a bunch of churches that are pushing it. The church isn't the building.

It's the people. Here's some other examples of it. Church is the people. It's not a building. A number of churches trying to advertise that.

Here's one. I'll read it. Legacy North's Quiet Sanctuary is a great reminder that the church isn't a building. It's the people.

We can't wait to worship with you this Sunday at 9am. Worship with you online, of course. Now look,

I'm not against pastors doing an online stream. I mean, churches I've gone to now, for most of them, in the last few years, have some kind of an online stream to accompany their regular physical service.

Anyways, for those who are sick. Or to keep a record. So there's reasons for it. But, that being said, to promote this as the ideal, and to trot out this false dichotomy that church isn't building, church is people.

As if those are the two options. No, the church is the gathered assembly. If you're talking about a local church, not the universal church.

There's the universal church, everyone who's saved. But the gathered assembly, the local church, means they get together.

And in Western culture, that's happened in a building. And the building is generally the most prominent structure in the town.

It used to be. That's how the Puritans, when they came here, that's how they set up their town. It was all centered on the church. That's why steeples are the highest thing in the town.

Most prominent. You have church bells that go up to remind everyone. Usually there's a hymn. I have one down the street from me here.

It's very nice. I hear hymns all day as each hour passes. The Muslims have sort of a version of this that they still do in Muslim countries where they have the call to prayer.

In Western countries, in Christian civilization, it wasn't like that.

We had churches that were prominent that you could see and then you could hear with church bells. It doesn't say in the

Bible to have those things. It's just telling. It's a public witness to the community that this is where the gathered assembly meets.

And if you want hope, if you want to find the Lord, if you're searching for Him, that's the place to go.

And you knew where to find it. It wasn't a secret. Apparently, we can just disregard all that now.

That church is just the people. That's all it is. No, it's the people publicly gathered and you don't have that online.

That's not a public gathering. You don't have the full spectrum of gifts as outlined in 1 Corinthians 12. You can't practice necessarily all the one another's if you're not physically meeting.

You can't do all the ordinances, certainly, online. I don't know how you would do baptisms, marriages, communion.

Not really. I mean, I've seen some attempts at this that, frankly, are frightening. You can't do a lot of these things.

You have to physically meet. We're commanded in Scripture not to forsake the assembling of the saints.

And there's a lot of churches that are saying, well, on that basis, we have to meet. We have to obey God rather than men.

And I've been through this before. I don't want to go into it again, necessarily. I know the whole discussion about what if a hurricane comes through?

Look, I grew up in the Northeast. I know what a blizzard's like. I never saw the government, though, ever mandate that you can't go to church.

It was just, hey, it's impossible to go to church today, or impossible to do it safely because of the conditions outside.

And neither would we go to the grocery store or the liquor store. We wouldn't go anywhere because the conditions are so bad.

We wouldn't go to work. And usually, it's, we're going to find an alternative. We're going to meet on another day.

Or there's just this one week that we're going to forego. We're going to postpone the service.

I don't know how many times I saw that. It wasn't just, hey, let's give up meeting together for weeks on end.

Never seen that. And I'd never seen the government mandate it while keeping other things open. That's the difference, the key difference here.

So we're living in this. We're living in this era of bigotry, of discrimination against churches,

Christians, pastors. And these are the kind of responses we get. And they're terribly just ignorant of history, of why the gathered assembly is important and why meeting in a building is important to that gathered assembly.

Look, and I'm going to share this story with you real quick. You know, because I'm, you know, I get in trouble for this sometimes with some people online who don't like the fact that I admire someone like a

Stonewall Jackson. But I want to tell you a little story about him. Stonewall Jackson had an all -black

Sunday school that he taught. And he taught the folks in that Sunday school to read.

And at the time, this was before the war between the states in Virginia, that was illegal.

And the reason it was illegal was because of slave insurrections and because of a lot of the radical northern literature that was coming down in the postal crisis.

And there was a lot of, believe it or not, there were missionaries from the North who said that if you had slavery, you didn't have the gospel. So they were going to come preach this gospel, which was not just intended to free men from bondage to sin, but was supposed to, in some extremes cases, start slave revolts, or at least try to get slaves to just not submit to their masters.

So you had these northern missionaries coming down and they were, you know, from certain, just certain denominations.

It wasn't like the whole North felt this way. They certainly didn't. It was more the abolitionists. But they did a really good job of getting a lot of literature down in the

South during the postal crisis and beyond that. And so in Virginia, and this was wrong of them, absolutely wrong of them, and I'll tell you what

Stonewall Jackson did about it, but they said, we don't want them reading this stuff. It's going to encourage them to revolt. It's going to destabilize our society.

And of course, Virginia was foremost from the beginning in wanting to get rid of slavery, wanting to get rid of the slave trade.

And we see that even through the war, there was attempts to somehow curtail this. But they didn't want an insurrection.

So they said, no, we're not going to, we're going to make it illegal for slaves to be taught to read. Stonewall Jackson defied that.

Civil disobedience. And you know how he did it? He did it at church. He did it in a

Sunday school. That's where he taught slaves to read. And today, there's actually a church, a black church that has a tribute to Stonewall Jackson in their stained glass window because some of the people he taught to read became pastors.

And they went out and they pastored churches. And the reason that was able to proceed in the way that it did was because there was a respect at that time that the magistrate cannot interfere with what happens inside a church.

That gathered assembly and the building in which the gathered assembly met was off limits to the civil magistrate.

This was just an understanding that everyone pretty much knew up until the last hundred years, until recently, really.

It's important to not give that up. But we are giving it up. And we're giving it up with this kind of a slogan.

Well, church is the people. It doesn't really matter, apparently, if you don't have a building to meet in. It's a scary thing.

That means that's actually, that has a lot of implications for the kind of culture that we've lived in and how it's changing.

It certainly shows that there's a shift going on. So you have some prominent folks who want to speak out against abuse in the church.

You also have, and I've pointed this out many times, I'm not going to beat the dead horse, but you have a number of very prominent evangelicals and organizations signing on to what's called the

Statement on Anti -Asian Racism in the time of COVID -19. And I read some of that for you the other day, but a lot of prominent organizations got behind this one, including

InterVarsity and Fuller Theological Seminary. The list just went on and on. And then you have

Tim Keller and Mark Dever and Russell Moore and Steve Sellers.

I'll read you that one. I didn't talk about that one yet. Steve Sellers is the U .S. National Director of CRU.

He put out, and I'm not going to read this whole thing because it's too long for me to want to read it, but basically says

COVID -19 is serving as a reason for some to slander and discriminate against Asian Americans. This hits us close to home, as many of our

Asian American staff have experienced this. And then he says they're part of the family of God's forever family, and he wants to say that we're with you, and I'm so sorry.

He apologizes for what they've gone through and their families, and he loves them.

And so, of course, nothing in the email about what's happening right now to discriminate the government discriminating against pastors,

Christians, churches, that kind of bigotry doesn't say anything about it. Now, I have to wonder whether we are being played by the

Chinese communists right now, and this includes and I'm going to show you the direct connection big evangelicals in our country.

So, here's a story I saw. This is Rare Foundation USA. No hate crimes are not rising against Asian Americans.

And here's the thesis that essentially the narrative that you're hearing

NPR, PBS, Washington Post, New York Times about a rise in anti -Asian racism, etc.

This is actually the brainchild of three individuals. Russell Zhang, I think is how you pronounce it, chair and professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

Manchusa Kolkari, executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, which is directly linked in the statement that I just showed you, the

Asian American Christian Collaborative, which was signed on by a number of evangelicals. And then

Cynthia Choi, the co -executive director of the Maoist -leaning Chinese for Affirmative Action. So this trio has worked closely with known front organizations for Liberation Road.

This is, I guess, some of Trevor Loudon's information, but Liberation Road is the Maoist group that's working, according to this article, with establishment media to promote the

Chinese Communist Party. Now, here's what they're doing. They have a

Stop AAPI Hate tool, and here it is, right on, this is,

I'll show you, this is the website that I was just talking about, the Statement on Anti -Asian Racism in the Time of COVID -19. You can scroll down, you can see all their promotional materials.

You can go to the signers here, About Us, Meet the Collaborative. Actually, I want to go to signers.

So here's institutional endorsements. So if we go down, you start seeing

Princeton Theological Seminary, InterVarsity, Christian Philip National Association of Evangelicals, Christianity Today.

The list goes on and on. Different colleges, there's World Relief. I mean, it's

Biologos. It's everyone and every, you know, every, not even just leftists, but just mainstream evangelical, we would think, or what used to be mainstream evangelical sources are represented here.

And if we go to some of the signatories, I mean, look, it's a long, long list once it loads here.

You have a lot of the 70s guys, Ron Sider, Richard Mouw, Jim Wallace have all signed it.

But look, there's Thabiti Anabwile right there. We have Jamar Tisby.

We have Matt Chandler right there. Tish Harrison -Warren, I've talked about her. Issa Macaulay.

And I've gone over some of this before, but I want to emphasize it again because if we go to the area on this website where it says submit an incident report, prominently on the top, submit an incident report.

What does it link us to? There it is. A3PCON. Asia Pacific Policy and Planning Council.

And you can click on that and you can submit your report. Now let's go back to this story. It's the same exact organization that this article is saying that a communist front group started to create this narrative of anti -Asian racism.

And of course here they give some examples. A guy came behind me, called out, hey, as they turned around.

He started spraying me with Lysol and called me all sorts of names. So these are the kind of things that are being reported here.

Of course there's no, you know, we don't have actual footage necessarily. It's, you know, it's people's stories.

And so this article, I'm going to link this in the info section if you want to go and read it.

But it connects all the dots for how, I guess, Chinese communists are promoting this narrative and want to promote this narrative and how it benefits them.

So if that's true, and you can go read it for yourself, then we have prominent evangelicals right now essentially carrying the water for communist

Marxists. And I want to remind you, communist Marxists, they are the ones that allowed this commercial to go out in China.

Not exactly the most tolerant thing I've ever seen in the world. In fact, that may be one of the most textbook definition, not, you know, critical race theory definition, but textbook definition racist things

I've ever seen in my life, perhaps, on television for a commercial.

And this is the same country that this just happened in. This headline,

Yahoo News, McDonald's apologizes after a restaurant in China bans black people. April 17th, three days ago this story came out.

McDonald's came under fire this week after one of its branches in China displayed a sign saying that black people are not allowed to enter.

And it has the notice and I'm just I just have to wonder why these evangelicals, these prominent evangelicals, why do they hate black people so much?

I mean, they're carrying the water for an organization that is in bed and in a front group for Chinese Marxists.

And those are the same Marxists who are allowing that kind of a commercial and allowing

McDonald's to discriminate blatantly against African Americans.

And I know that we can't have, there's no partnership that we can have with evil if you want to be in the evangelical world.

I mean, if it even sniffs a little smells a little bit, if you sniff it it's slightly racist, even could possibly, potentially be racist.

There's no way that you can actually get into any partnership with that organization because that would make you racist.

Unless they're communists, apparently. So, I'll let you check out that article and you can do what you want with that.

But all that to say we've got a vacuum right now in leadership and I was talking to someone the other day about this.

It's hard. If you're a pastor and you feel isolated and alone in this what do

I do? No one else around me wants to open up their church. And I'm saying do it responsibly in some way, even.

I know I was talking to my father the other day. He's a pastor in New York and in the area he lives he called his local representative, one of them, and she had said that he's the only pastor to have called.

It's a business people call because they're losing their businesses. He's the only pastor. And I think there's a sense in which a lot of pastors across the country feel fairly isolated and that's why

I think it's important to think through a few things right now. One is do you obey

God or men? Listen, I'm not saying you have to open up just like you would normally open up.

But you need to try to find some way that your people can meet physically in some way, responsibly.

If that means you have to create distances, multiple separate rooms, separate services, drive -in, whatever you need to do to have an area where you can practice the one another's full display of the gifts in 1

Corinthians 12, ordinances, so forth, then you need to do it. You need to do it somehow.

And this is where obedience to God comes in and leading your people, explaining to them from the scripture why this is important.

And the other thing is trying to find in this isolation people, and maybe you can do it through the internet now, try to find some people that are like -minded that can encourage you in this because in many places you're not going to get encouragement anywhere else.

But I guarantee you there is a groundswell of people right now that are starting to get tired of the government overreach.

They're seeing the numbers. I saw a study in Santa Clara County, California now

I think from 3 weeks ago or so the samples were taken, and 38 times as many people had

COVID -19 as were actually tested based on the presence of antibodies in their system.

And so if that's true, that means that this virus is not as deadly, still deadly if you have those pre -existing conditions especially, but it's not as deadly as was originally projected.

And people are, I know where I am, people are just starting to go out. I mean on Saturday, the area that, there's a walkway not far from my house, it was more crowded than it's ever been.

The traffic out there is just incredible during the day. People are getting out, people are going to all the stores, it's happening.

And to say that liquor stores and grocery stores and Planned Parenthood need to be open because they're essential, but churches need to be closed these people need to be called out for it.

And that would be truly prophetic for all the Russell Moores and the

J .D. Greers of the world and Tim Kellers and the list goes on and on. The people that want to be really prophetic, meaning they write an article in a secular newspaper against people in the church and what they're doing.

That's usually their definition of prophecy. If you want to be truly prophetic, go to the world and call them out for their hypocrisy.

Do what Jesus did to the Pharisees. And just blatantly call them out for it and call them to repentance while you do it.

That would be being prophetic. And this is my I guess this is my own chastening, if you will, to those who claim to be

Christians who are in these positions of authority and their response is to call attention to all kinds of problems, some of them that are hardly even hardly even existing and yet they want to ignore the elephant in the room.

This is the kind of thing that your people are watching right now. They're watching what you say about the importance of gathering together to meet and they're going to learn from it.

They're going to learn from you what to think about civil authority as well. You're their teacher.

My encouragement to you, I know you may not be getting an example anywhere else, but man up and start calling these things out.

Start leading your people in a responsible way to a point where they can, and if you're in Michigan, this might require even civil disobedience.

I mean, it's civil disobedience in Michigan to go across the street to your neighbor's house, so kind of hard to avoid.

Some of these states have enacted these edicts that it's impossible not to break them. So be mindful of that.

Maybe this is a time for you to learn. Maybe you weren't taught in seminary. Try to figure out what is the role of government? What can they do and what can't they do?

Where are the limitations and boundaries there? Because I guarantee you, something like this is going to happen again.

This isn't the end of it. So, maybe not the most encouraging episode in the world, but here's the announcement.

On Thursday morning, I am going to release a discussion between Josh Summer and myself.

He runs the Summercast, his podcast, and I think it's like an hour and a half or so. It's kind of long, but we just talk about dating, relationships, marriage.

We talk a little bit about the COVID thing as it relates to being cooped up close together with people and the potential for conflict, but mostly we share our stories.

How we got to know our wives, what advice we'd give for people dating today. Pretty sure we answered every question there is out there on the topic.

Just kidding. So you can enjoy that. It's a little more fun and positive. And then this weekend is when

I'm thinking of putting out something that's pretty hard -hitting. Some new information.

I was going to release it possibly today, and there's a reason that I haven't. I'm waiting to see.

There's some developments out there. I'm waiting to see what happens with them. I know that I'm not giving you any information on what that is, but it is related to the social justice fight and planning on releasing it probably this

Saturday, and you can look forward to that. So two podcasts on the way. I hope this was helpful, even though maybe it hurt a little bit if you're a pastor who has liked going along with the flow where you go to a church like that, but I'm not trying to get down on you unnecessarily.

I just want to encourage you to think through what you're allowing to have happen, and to think through what you're teaching your people.