Interview with Michael Brown on His New Book, Second Hour: James Cone’s Theology Reviewed

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00:33

Greetings and welcome to the Divine Line. My name is James White. We have a very special program for you today.

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The first part of the program, we are going to be joined by my friend

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Michael Brown. We're going to be talking about his new book, Playing with Holy Fire.

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I was on his program last week and interviewed him, which was an interesting experience, on his own program, on the subject of this book.

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And then we're going to have Michael for about an hour and we're going to have a frank conversation about the issues that he raises in the book, do some challenging as we always do, iron sharpens iron, always done in the bonds of brotherhood and love for one another.

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But it's an important subject and so we're going to do that for the first hour. I'm not sure that Rich got my note that we need to find some way to sort of take a brief break at that point, but we'll take just a minute or two and take a brief break and then we'll be back.

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And I have a tough issue to address in regards to the passing this past weekend of Dr.

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James H. Cone and what he taught and what it means to the current controversy going on amongst especially

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Reformed churches in regards to the subject of what is called racial reconciliation and what

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Dr. Cone taught, his continuing legacy, and issues related there too.

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So it's two very different topics today on the program. But let's see how our connection is going first.

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Let's see if we can get hold of Michael Brown. Mike, are you, there he is. Hello, sir.

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I'm here. I'm here. I can hear you loud and clear. Well, first of all, thank you very much. I always know that you're doing your program, you're on the air for hours.

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And so whenever you join us, I feel badly, to be honest with you, because you're having to sit there in the same studio for hours and hours on end.

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So I do appreciate you taking the time to be with us. Yeah, it's rough. It's really hard.

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It's tough. It's a heavy cross to bear, but I'll do it. I'll do it for your listeners. I'll make the sacrifice.

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Hey, it's really, it's a joy. Whenever we can talk and talk to your audience, you've got such a great, devoted audience, and they're such a serious audience.

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So generally, from the heart, it's my joy to do it. Well, we always have a fascinating conversation.

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It always ends up resulting in all sorts of interesting audio and video postings later on that may take different perspectives, but be that as it may.

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You have a new book out called Playing with Holy Fire. I don't remember exactly when

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I was able to get the text from you, but it was a couple months ago.

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I know it was still a number of months before it was coming out. And on the back, it says it's time to clean house.

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And there's a whole discussion of the Pentecostal Charismatic Church is also plagued with sexual immorality, financial corruption, doctrinal error, personal flakiness.

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That's an interesting phraseology. Spiritual gullibility, prophetic abuse, and more. In many ways, the state of the church today is not too different from how it was long ago in Corinth.

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To make matters worse, the church hides these acts under the cloak of liberty in the Holy Spirit. And so when

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I got it, as you know, I listened to stuff pretty much on bike or while traveling or something like that.

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And so I listened to it once, I listened to it a second time. I've listened to it about three and a quarter times, somewhere around in that neighborhood of things.

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And so I think I've got the arguments down pretty well. And so I asked you some good questions,

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I think. Did you think there were fairly decent questions on your show? Oh, yeah. Actually, I got some feedback from someone close to me that was kind of wondering why the nature of these questions.

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In other words, it almost sounds like I'm defending charismatic beliefs and such. I said, no, the reason James is on is to ask the questions

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I wouldn't ask, to ask questions as a non -charismatic and as one who shares some of the concerns.

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So no, I thought you did a great job of asking the questions and challenging things that, no matter how

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I'm going to ask them, they're going to come out differently. Yeah, you know, I think it does sort of help because we are coming from different perspectives.

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We've debated each other on these topics. And so it does help to, and at least for you, you've asked me, you know, well, what did you think?

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What's your perspective? And it is a little bit hard from my perspective to interact with the work because I'd be sitting there listening and I can sort of hear it in your voice.

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And I've heard you say a lot of things that you're saying, and we're tracking along and going, yeah, that's right. That's right.

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But because you're a charismatic and I'm not, there's a point in time always where all of a sudden you hang a left or you can call it a right, whatever you want to look at.

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And I'm like, whoa, we're okay. We were right with each other. And then we moved away.

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And right to start, you start off explaining why you're writing the book.

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And you said, look, I'm not writing this for the critics and I've chosen not to name names.

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So I know we've asked some of these questions on your program, but we've got a different audience here.

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So given that sometimes, and I didn't bring this up on your program, but sometimes

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I could tell who you were talking about. Why, first of all, the statement,

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I'm not writing for critics. And secondly, if you're going to do it, why not name some names?

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Yeah. So number one, quite plainly, I wrote the book despite the critics rather than because of the critics, because many of the folks, when

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I say critics, that doesn't mean they're bad people, just means they're critical in a very broad way of the things in the charismatic

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Pentecostal church. So I know some of them don't believe I'm saved because I'm charismatic. Some of them say the whole charismatic movement is aberrant, even if I might be saved, the whole movement is aberrant.

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And for them, all this is going to be as fuel for their fire. So I wasn't trying to convince them. I wasn't trying to show them

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I was a more balanced, charismatic, and basically we're in such different worlds that those that are following them are largely not listening to me and vice versa.

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So I wrote the book knowing that the critics were going to tell me it's not enough. I just saw some critic attacking me.

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I'm the worst one to write this book, you know? And so I knew that was going to happen. Nonetheless, I felt it was important enough to write it.

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And I had to say, okay, I'm going to put aside what I believe is destructive criticism and try to bring constructive criticism.

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The issue of naming names, biblically, we know sometimes Paul named people by name, John did in his epistles.

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We know that happened, but we know other times that a description was given. You know, we don't know the names of some of the false apostles that Paul wrote about often, or the false teachers that Peter warned about, and things like that.

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So sometimes we have the description and sometimes we have the names. I've written enough articles on enough individuals that I've differed with.

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Some charismatic Pentecostal brothers and sisters I've dealt with, some left -leaning evangelicals I've differed with, and I've written specific articles.

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I've tried to reach out to them first. When I haven't been able to, I've then written the article. But I was not able to reach out to many of the people involved.

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Some things I know from co -workers in other continents, they told me what they've seen with their own eyes, but I don't have the ability to verify each story, reach out.

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It's not like I'm quoting from books. And then, if the shoe fits, wear it. In other words, if the description

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I just gave about a TV minister and the way he raises money, if that fits someone, well, if the shoe fits, wear it.

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I want to bring attention to the issues. And the other thing is that there's some people that I know for a fact engaged in certain abuses years ago, but I don't know if they cleaned up their act.

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I'm not going to now write about it now when maybe 10 years ago they fixed the matter and I only heard the bad report, not the good.

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So this way, I felt I could deal very freely, very loudly and clearly with specific issues.

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And just like Paul warned, look out for people who do this, you know, he warned. Sometimes you're warning in advance before the people even exist.

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Look out for false teachers that are going to come your way, or false apostles. Here's how you can recognize them. So hopefully that's what

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I've done in the book, and in this one I could even be more bold and speak more freely. Explain for us the distinction that you make between someone who may be imbalanced or teaches something that you disagree with, and someone that would be identified as a false prophet or a false teacher.

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I'm not sure if you differentiate between false prophet and false teacher. It's important,

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I think, for people to understand at least where you're coming down on that. Yes, this was a conversation

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Hank Hanegraaff and I had many years ago. In the view of Hank Hanegraaff, at least then, and many other critics, if someone claims to be a prophet and they're not, they're a false prophet.

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If they claim to be teaching the word and they're not teaching accurately, they're a false teacher.

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I've used the term more narrowly to speak about a false believer. In other words, someone who's not actually a brother or sister in the

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Lord. As I've understood it, a false prophet, according to Jesus in Matthew 7, is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

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And a false teacher, according to Peter in 2 Peter 2, is someone who introduces damnable heresies.

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Whereas, for example, I know some people that claim to be prophets. I don't believe they are, but as far as I know, they're believers.

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So I would say, well, you're falsely calling yourself a prophet or you're falsely prophesying, but I wouldn't call them a false prophet.

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Others don't make that distinction. So I'm just a little bit more hesitant to label someone a false prophet, false teacher, unless I believe they are genuinely heretical and not part of the body.

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In other words, as best as I know, if they were to die right now, they're lost. Those are the ones I would call false prophets, false teachers, or false apostles.

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So I'd just be more circumspect in using the term. But you are very, very hesitant to make those final types of judgments, even though, given the situation you're in, you've got the radio program, you've got the television programs to do apologetics.

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It would be a lot easier if you weren't in the apologetic realm for you to avoid being pressed to make the identifications that many people want you to make and feel that you absolutely must make in regards to, basically, the spiritual state of other individuals.

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So it must be almost a daily thing where you're having to make those distinctions and explanations.

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Yeah, so look, I'm not God's policeman, and my whole ministry does not exist to answer everyone's questions day and night, which do come in day and night.

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What do I think of so -and -so? What do I think of so -and -so? I'd rather say, okay, here's what I understand they teach.

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Here's where I differ with it, because ultimately I don't know the person's private life. So what

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I base it on is, if they profess the fundamentals of the faith, so the things that we would say are the non -negotiables for salvation, that's what they profess to be true and say, yes, we believe this.

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This is our personal experience and life. And if they have not disqualified themselves by unrepentant, willful, ongoing sin, which would make me to think that they're not

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God's children, then I would say, based on their profession, I understand them to be a brother or sister, but I mean,

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I wouldn't work with them. I think that they're really deceived about this. I think that they're in serious error there.

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And what I find interesting, and I'd love your opinion on this, James, the people who blast me for not naming names enough are ones that name people

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I know to be devoted servants of the Lord, born -again people, Orthodox in their faith who love

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Jesus. And some of these critics who blast me for not naming certain names, they're calling out people that I know, as far as I know, love the

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Lord and are saved. And as much as I'm confident that you love the Lord and are saved, and they're calling them unsaved, they're not brothers, they're not

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Christians. So I wonder, isn't that dangerous also? Well, obviously in that situation, you have individuals who have a very, very, very specific standard, and the big question there is, does the standard go beyond what

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Scripture actually teaches is definitional of a Christian? And you know, I got into a tremendous amount of trouble for putting together a basics list in regards to yourself as to belief in the

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Trinity and the resurrection and the nature of salvation, and we ended up doing a program just because of all of that.

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That's really where the issue is, is there are people who are willing to say, yeah, you've got those core things, but then you've got these other things out here, and they either say, this is also part of the gospel, or if you're wrong about these things, then of necessity, you must not really believe what you say over here in regards to the gospel.

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And that's where a lot of this issue comes from. But you weren't—that really wasn't what you were dealing with in this book so much, because you started off the first chapter of issues is, why are we so gullible?

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And so again, you're writing two charismatics as a charismatic. Why are, you know, you don't have to give the example, but you talked about, you know, getting these emails from these alleged prophets, and if you'd send

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X amount of dollars, you know, God would do this, that, and the other thing. Why is there that level of gullibility?

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There's no excuse for it. It's a weakness we have. We have to acknowledge it and grow up. So I want to make that perfectly clear.

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The reason that we're gullible, there's a positive side and a negative side.

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The positive side is, we really do believe Scripture, and there are a lot of unusual things in Scripture, things that seem hard to believe, stories of miracles, prophetic words, divine intervention, that if it wasn't in the

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Bible, you'd really question it, but we believe it because we know the Bible's trustworthy. And then, in our own lives, we've had some really exceptional and unusual experiences.

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I mean, look, I was leading Bible school in Pensacola, Florida in the mid to late 90s, and there was a godly woman there, a woman of prayer, very strong evangelist, and she had a prophetic word for me that I would speak with princes.

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There are several other things, but I would speak with princes. I never thought about that in my life. Two weeks later,

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I was meeting with Prince Andrew in Buckingham Palace and shared my testimony with him, and he let me pray for him before I left.

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I mean, we've seen enough things like that happen that are really striking and unusual, and so, because of that, we're willing to step out of the boat like Peter did and believe

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God, but there hasn't been maturity with it. We have, you know, I would say sometimes you have the anti -charismatic camp that doesn't believe what the

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Spirit's doing, but then you have the charismatic camp that believes every spirit. So, the right thing is, don't believe every spirit.

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Test the spirits to see whether they're from God. Test this fundraising email based on biblical principles.

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The didache, one of the earliest documents from the church, gave guidelines for testing whether people were prophets or apostles or not, and one thing was any prophet claiming to speak in the spirit saying, give me money, was a false prophet.

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So, we just have not done a good job of self -policing, and to me, it doesn't diminish what

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God's doing. He is working wonderfully, but we've been very immature in this and, you know, don't want to quench the

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Spirit, and this guy knows how to push the right buttons, and it's shameful. Some of these manipulative letters,

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I signed up for one, and I didn't use my own name. I used the name Moses when I signed up, so I started getting all these emails, dear

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Moses, dear Moses, and it's like, you didn't respond yet. There's still time to do it. You know, God gave me a warning.

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I think it's so sad that people are actually sending in money, and people are making money off of it.

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It's to our shame, and we got to grow up. Now, from your perspective, and, you know,

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I've been thinking a lot about this, how we see the two sides of the divide that exists between us is very often related to the fact that we only see the worst of the other side.

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So, in other words, if it's not in the circles that you're normally in, if you're not normally listening to sermons from, you know, from Reformed guys, or I'm not normally listening to sermons from Charismatic guys, and so on and so forth, then what you see of the other side are the excesses.

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They are the, you might just see the statements of the critics that are saying that all

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Charismatics are lost and are going to hell, and so on and so forth. And what we see are the

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YouTube videos of the wildest, craziest stuff. And I've sent you a couple of links.

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Not many. I try not to bother you. In fact, I heard you on your program, I think yesterday or the day before yesterday, you were talking to a guy about NAR.

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What was his name? Matera? Joe Matera. Yeah. And you mentioned that you get sent links regularly, and I sort of wondered, hmm,

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I wonder who he might be talking about. No, but I appreciate it, because I don't get the emails or the tweets from some of these folks.

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So, no, you'll send them to me, you and several others, and then people on my team, whenever they say it, you know, they see something, they send it to me just for my records and to encourage me normally.

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But I wonder, James, without my radio show, what some of these critics would do? Because when you'll send me the link,

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I'll click on it. I don't really read them. But it's like, man, they're reporting on me every single day. Oh, yeah. Well, I have a different set of stalkers, personally.

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Mine tend to be Muslim. And so every time I say anything... At least they're not dangerous. At least they're not dangerous.

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I say anything, and Muslim by choice is watching right now, getting ready to edit this part and edit that part and do all that kind of stuff.

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Anyway, um, what were we talking about there? Totally lost. See, we started talking about stuff like that.

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Different sets of critics. We look at the worst of each side. Yeah. So what I see are the wild, crazy things.

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And you get, you know, and so at times it makes me wonder how we ever get anything communicated, given that we're seeing an imbalanced perspective most of the time.

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And I'm trying to keep that in mind. And yet, at the same time, when we talk about some of these excesses, we talk about some of the prophecies and things like that.

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There's just so much stuff out there from our perspective that it looks like the majority of what's on television is just way out there.

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I mean, vacuous and exegesis. I remember,

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I'll name the name, Paula White. I think it was named Paula White. Is that right? Is it Paula White? Okay.

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I just remember the last name because we happened to share it. But I just remember this whole thing. I don't know why

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I turned on TBN that day. All I remember is I was making some type of lunch, and it wasn't even really good lunch.

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In fact, with you around, I won't mention what it was because you'll talk about how bad it is on the food level. But anyway, and she was talking about Psalm 68 and sending $68 because it was

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Psalm 68 and stuff like this. That's what I see. Is that aberrational?

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Or is Christian media distorting, from your perspective, the normative experience within your community?

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Oh, it's definitely distorting. Look, I've been in thousands of services and seen thousands of offerings taken up.

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And I've never been in a meeting like that myself, where someone got up and did that. Actually, hang on.

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I was in a meeting decades ago. I was in a meeting with a famous evangelist then in 1982,

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September of 1982, in Madison Square Garden. I thought the way he took up the offering was manipulative, and the way he was getting people to give.

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If you give this amount, you can come up and shake the preacher's hand. I thought, what? I was really disturbed by it, and it stood out to me.

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Now, the practices exist. Again, it's why I address it in the book. And there must be enough gullible people watching on TV to make the thing work.

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So I'm not downplaying its existence or saying it's not widespread, but it's absolutely aberrant in terms of the norm.

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If you just look at your average church life, look, I preach in some megachurches. They don't even receive offerings at all.

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They're charismatic. People just know that they give in boxes in the back or online. If there were places that were like that,

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I would walk out. I've had many, many thousands of offerings, I'm sure, taken up for our ministry over the years, and no one's ever taken one up like that.

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So I look at this as kind of the superstar fringe, but enough people must follow it to make it work.

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That being said, I know, for example, one of my grads, Ward Simpson, is now the chairman and CEO of God TV.

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And one of the first things he did is change the way that they raise funds. And the way he raised funds the last couple of years is he got up and said, what we're going to do is we're going to help support ministry to the

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Jewish people. And the first fruits of what we get, we're going to put towards needy children in Israel and ended up rehabilitating a whole children's playground and this whole thing.

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And so, I mean, I know what happened. And he was all smiles to say people gave with generosity and they helped the overall ministry help what we're doing.

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I was told I can't verify it. I was told that TBN is cleaning up its act in some ways. I don't know that.

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So I'm just saying I heard that from a friend, but the stuff exists. But if you just go, go to your app, find out a local

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Assembly of God church or charismatic church or whatever, go there, you won't find these abuses taking place with money and stuff like that.

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It's definitely aberrant, but it's, look, it's a blemish on us because it's on big TV. Yeah, it is.

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Now, we talked on your program a little bit about what the standards are.

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And when my side emphasizes the supremacy of Scripture, you came back and said, well, you know, let's talk about apostles.

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And you make this strong distinction between the apostles of Jesus and then small a apostles is how you've described it.

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Someone like Agabus or someone along those lines that are sent individuals, but they're not necessarily pastors, but they have a different office and things like that.

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Just briefly explain to someone how you can, on the one hand, say there was a unique office of apostle and hence a unique character to Scripture, and then on the other side, you have chapters where you deal with false prophets who prophesy things, and yet at the same time strongly affirm that there is prophecy today, but it's not scriptural prophecy, but it's

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Spirit -inspired prophecy, and even gave examples of your own activity in that.

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Yeah, so the two issues, apostles and prophets today. First, if we go to Ephesians 4, where God establishes apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers until we get to a certain point.

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So when you read Ephesians 4, we haven't gotten to that point yet, just first thing, in terms of the unity and the faith and maturity and the

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Son of God. Then second thing, we know that in Revelation 2, the believers there were testing those who claimed to be apostles and were not.

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In other words, there's some that were apostles and some were not, and it wasn't just the 12. You don't have to test it.

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If it's just the 12, anybody else comes along and says they're an apostle, you know they're not. But even the didache, which we mentioned in the early document of the church, is talking about how to identify apostles and prophets.

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So these ministries continue. We have evidence for that, and then we have people like Barnabas in Acts 14 who's called an apostle.

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There are quite a few people who are called apostles. So the word is used in different ways for the 12, and they're singled out the 12.

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Their names are written on the 12 foundation stones of the New Jerusalem. They are singled out in an honorific way.

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They were involved with authority in laying the foundations of the early church and writing scripture. Nobody after that can do that.

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Nobody can write scripture. You can give the wisest, most inspired teaching, but it does not have the level of authority of scripture.

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We also know that not only in the New Testament time, there were tons of prophecy that didn't get written down, and yet it was genuine prophecy.

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We also know that church leaders speak for several centuries after the New Testament was written about prophecy, prophetic utterances, and things like that.

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So it's understood that the Bible is unique. It is God -breathed in a unique way.

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It has authority over everyone. It doesn't have to be tested. It tests us.

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It reveals who God is in an authoritative, final way. It reveals doctrine, period. You can pray all day, fast all day.

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You get your doctrine from what's written in scripture. Nothing's changed with that. Now, is the Spirit continuing to speak?

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Yeah, in a thousand different ways. He's leading us and guiding us, and he's giving dreams and visions and speaking prophetically, but the

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Bible is the Bible. It has its authority. So I see many of the people that found it, what have become denominations and movements,

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I look at them as modern -day apostles. You know, a John Wesley or a William Booth or a

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Hudson Taylor or my friend Yesuponim in India. They were pioneers. They were planters. They didn't just have the function of local pastor -teacher.

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They were fathers of movements. So I simply recognize that happening today and recognize people having prophetic insight into what's happening in the world, but the

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Bible is the Bible, stands alone, and early apostles stand alone, and that's why they're called the

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Twelve, in distinction from everybody else. Now, the titles that you have, and of course, there's a number of these issues where if this was a debate type thing and we had a moderator and we're going back and forth, we'd go back and forth on issues and look at scriptures and things like that, but the titles that you have for your chapters here, we saw

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Why Are We So Gullible? Mercenary Prophets, Superstar Leaders, Abusive Leadership, Unaccountable Prophecy, Sexual Immorality, The Pep Talk Prosperity Gospel, Celebrating Doctrinal Deviance, To the

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Third Heaven and Back in a Flash, and Wanting to be Wise Like the World. Now, there's quite a range there.

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Some of these, you know, are clear. Sexual immorality and things like that.

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One of the themes that goes through all of this, though, was, and you came back to a number of times, was you mentioned how you are literally frightened by the story of Samson and how the gift of God continued to work through him even when he was in horrific sin.

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And so, one of the issues that you raise is, well, you know, I know about this one guy and he preached this incredible sermon, and yet then we found out that, you know, right before the sermon, he had been lying to the elders of his church and he was in an adulterous relationship and so on and so forth, and yet he could still do all of these things.

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How do you do the testing with scripture in a context like that where you are functioning on the basis of the idea that, well, there could still be supernatural things going on here, but this guy is in wholesale rebellion against God the whole time that he's doing it?

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Yeah, so if someone is operating on what seems to be a supernatural gift, there would be three possible explanations for it.

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One is, it's a gift from the Holy Spirit. The other is, it's demonic counterfeit.

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The other is, the person is just a trickster and they're just giving the appearance of something supernatural.

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But the thing itself has to be evaluated based on the fruit that it produces and the teaching involved.

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In other words, if someone gets up and says, I'm going to demonstrate now that Jesus is really with me.

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Watch when I raise my hands, the power of God's going to hit you. That doesn't prove that the guy's right with God.

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It doesn't prove that what he teaches is right. It's a misuse of power. And again, it's either demonic power, a

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Holy Spirit power being used in an abusive way, or the guy's just a trickster or a charlatan. What I want to evaluate is, okay, what are you saying?

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What's the content of your message? How are you living? That's how I'm going to evaluate it. So I know

30:48

I've laid hands on countless thousands of people, and I felt what seemed to be the power of God going through me, touching them, and they have a visible effect of being touched by the power of God.

30:59

It may sound strange to some of your audience, but I mean, it looked like a bomb went off. And when they got up off the ground, they were changed people.

31:07

You know, I remember praying for a guy, I'm a big guy, but this guy hulked over me, looked like a football player, offensive lineman, and skeptic, arms folded, just staring at me.

31:17

But people have been praying for him. He came to a gospel service, and I just barely got to him because there are too many people.

31:24

I barely put my finger just by his chest. And next thing he fell to the ground sobbing and shaking and weeping, and he got up, a changed man, you know, born again man.

31:35

Well, I would say the Holy, he heard the message and the Holy Spirit touched him. But the power itself doesn't, it could be human emotion, it could be manipulation, it could be demonic, it could be the spirit.

31:45

So it's always the same test, moral and creedal. How is the person living and what are they teaching?

31:52

That's how we have to evaluate. And sometimes, see, in our circles, we can be more easily manipulated because you have this person who seems so anointed.

32:00

In your circles, maybe it would be the person who's so brilliant theologically, who's such a great exegete, who knows the words so well, and, you know, knows the

32:08

Hebrew and Greek so well, that person might be able to deceive more easily. In our circles, the person that seems to have more power, you see more easily.

32:16

And like, hey, if I call you in the middle of the night, say, James, I just had a burden for your daughter, is this going on in her life?

32:22

How did you know that? Well, the Lord showed me this and this. Wow, God's really speaking through Mike Brown. It could be very easy now that I try to bring you under my power or use you to manipulate financially.

32:32

Those are some of the pitfalls that we have. Would you agree that, for example, in the instance that you mentioned of this skeptical individual, isn't the final analysis on that the reality that true saving faith will endure?

32:51

So, in other words, isn't the proof in the pudding 10, 20 years later? In many cases, yes, it is.

32:59

Steve Hill, who was the evangelist in the Brownsville Revival, used to say the true test of an evangelist ministry is 10 years down the line.

33:07

And you just don't know someone here. I heard Randy Clark teaching about healing when we were at meetings together in Toronto.

33:14

And he said, if something seems to be healing, in other words, I've had cancer, but the pain's all gone.

33:20

And it lasts a few hours. And next thing everything's back, he says, probably just psychosomatic, probably just caught up in the emotion of the moment.

33:28

And if that's what happened and it left so quickly, it was probably never real. So many times you have to watch and see long term fruit.

33:37

And then here's the other thing. How do I know how the person's living? I don't know the way a lot of people are living privately.

33:43

And sometimes that's the danger. And we have it in all circles, charismatic, non -charismatic,

33:49

Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran. You find out that the pastor so -and -so has been stealing money or living in adultery for years and covering it up.

33:55

And that's the scary thing, that any of us can live a double life and God in his mercy is giving us time to repent.

34:01

In the meantime, we're heaping up judgment on ourselves. Yeah. There's no question about that.

34:06

Now, um, two things. Um, I, we, we started,

34:13

I'm pretty certain I could be wrong about this, but you and I, for some odd reason, primarily, uh, communicate via Twitter DM, which is really weird.

34:22

Um, but that's how we do it. I mean, I have WhatsApp and stuff. We could do it probably easier than Twitter DM, but anyway, that's how we do it.

34:30

And we had a conversation, um, at some point, uh, not too long ago.

34:37

Um, and what it basically ended up devolving down to was looking at, uh, strange behaviors in the part of charismatic leaders and going, well,

34:52

Hey, it could have been a one -off thing. If it was a regular thing, that'd be a problem. But if it only happens once, then, you know, uh, do you, do you get rid of everything good that the person does?

35:03

And if I recall correctly, we were talking about Heidi Baker. Uh, do you, if you remember that?

35:09

Yep. Yep. So let me, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do this almost anybody else, but I think you and I can do this.

35:15

Um, let me, I, I know you can't, I don't think you can see my side, so that's, that's, you can't see this, but I'm sure you've seen it.

35:23

Uh, there is a, um, video, I guess I'll just have to describe it because it, because, um, um, you've probably seen it where, uh, evidently falling under the power of God or something like that.

35:38

She can't stand up. She's laying on, um, on the stage and just the microphone is sort of on on the ground next to her.

35:49

And she's, I don't even know how to describe it. I mean, I could play some of it here for you, but, um, it's drunk in the spirit.

35:58

It's, it's incoherent. There is no content that is biblical.

36:04

There is no content that I can understand or discern that would be, um, uh, that would bring conviction of sin or, uh, there's nothing about Christology or soteriology or anything.

36:17

It's, it just sort of wanders around and stories about this, that, and the other thing. And here is a speaker literally laying on the floor, um, at a conference and, and as far as I can tell, incoherent.

36:34

And so when I look at something like that, I, I understand that Heidi Baker has a

36:39

PhD in theology from somewhere in England or something along those lines. Okay. I've heard that she and her husband have done things,

36:48

I believe it's in Madagascar or someplace over toward Africa and helping the poor and things like that.

36:54

Um, okay. I don't know anything about that. I've not encountered any of that. That's just simply what

37:00

I've, what I've heard. I think you've mentioned it to me. I think I've heard it in other contexts. Um, but when

37:05

I look at something like this, am I wrong to, uh, look at this and go, the

37:12

Spirit of God, uh, that I know is a spirit of order and self -discipline, sanctification, and in a place where the

37:24

Bible is open and people are there to hear the Word of God preached and so on and so forth,

37:30

I, I can't even begin to comprehend how that can be seen as a move of the

37:37

Spirit of God. Uh, do, do you at least understand why? I mean, she even, she even says in the video, she says, hey, if, if this wasn't happening to me and if I was watching this,

37:46

I would think this was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Yeah, obviously from, uh, from your perspective, absolutely understand.

37:54

And I've sat down with friends and said, there's no way that someone would look at this quote from the outside and make any sense of it.

38:03

So here's what I do. And I, I, I saw parts of the video and the one I saw had all these really ugly captions to it, but, but I did see part of it.

38:11

Uh, I ministered together with Heidi in Germany. So we were in one another's meetings for a few days and she was just in meetings.

38:18

We were both in Toronto together. So let me tell you what I know first about Heidi or what

38:23

I believe to be true about Heidi, and then address that specific video that you watched. Okay.

38:28

Uh, I have never met anyone more in love with Jesus than Heidi Baker.

38:34

Never met anyone who could is full of love for human beings. I take the worst critic in the world could post, write a thousand page book about her.

38:43

And if she met that person, she'd love them and pray for them. And during the meetings, as we're having maybe an hour of worship before the preaching each, each meeting, uh, she's just lost with the

38:53

Lord. She's on her face worshiping. She's lost to the world and in love with Jesus. And she and her husband in Mozambique, they both have

39:00

PhDs. Hers is in systematic theology. I think from King's college in, in England, but, uh, they planted thousands of churches.

39:10

They've seen many Muslims come to the Lord. They've lost some of their people to martyrdom. Uh, they live sacrificially with the poorest of the poor.

39:17

And if you want to judge a tree by the fruit, not by one particular meeting, I challenge all critics of Heidi Baker, go to Mozambique, live with your people for a month.

39:26

If you could make it a month, cause it's not the easiest living conditions, check the fruit. That's how we're supposed to judge.

39:31

And you'll be blown away by the fruit. Also, there were some tests that were done published in the peer reviewed

39:38

Southern medical journal, where doctors and researchers went over to Mozambique with equipment to measure hearing and seeing and verified miracles taking place after people were prayed for receiving sight and hearing.

39:52

And it's, it's documented, published in the Southern medical journal. As far as a meeting like that, I think it's regrettable that these things are videoed and put out for a larger audience because they're going to bring reproach.

40:03

That's the first thing. And remember Paul said, if everybody speaks in tongues together, he didn't deny the tongues were real.

40:09

He said, someone that's unlearned or an outsider will think you're crazy. So I think there's certain things that are best left in house.

40:17

And as far as I understand the setting, I don't know the whole setting and I only watched a few minutes of what was happening.

40:24

But as far as I understand, this was a time of, of impartation of wanting to pray for people.

40:30

And maybe they had been in, in teaching sessions, you know, four or five hours a day for three or four days.

40:37

And now she gets up and she just had an overflow of her heart, just wants to pray for people to share. Maybe it was out of order.

40:43

Maybe it was, maybe I would have been uncomfortable with it if I was there, or maybe I would have been receiving something from the

40:50

Holy spirit working through. So if that's the only ministry that happens, of course, where's the teaching, where's the preaching, where's the instruction, where's the discipling, where's the didactic taking people deeper in God, where of course, but if it's in the context of lots of other ministry, look at the end of every night in Toronto, we laid hands on about a thousand people wanting prayer.

41:11

If that was the only thing we did, it would have been terribly defective. We worship for hours every day. If that was the only thing we did, it would have been rich, but still missing something.

41:20

But there is hours and hours of teaching every day, panel discussions, and then maybe some section where they're just going to pray for people.

41:27

So I think to be fair, the Jonathan Edwards practice, don't judge by the part, but by the whole.

41:34

So what troubles me, and I think Heidi could care less if she knew about it, but what troubles me is people who actually damn her to hell.

41:43

And we'll say, look, that's demons. Look at that. Instead of saying, you know, this woman loves

41:48

Jesus, lives sacrifice. There's probably one more people to the Lord in a month than you will in your lifetime.

41:54

Praise fast, gives yourself to the gospel, and can do theology as well as anyone you're going to challenge her on, and yet she's very free in the

42:02

Spirit. So you can debate whether it's out of order or not, whether it's appropriate in a public setting. That's a perfectly fair debate based on 1

42:08

Corinthians 14. But to me, it's superficial and mature when people completely write her off based on the way she ministered in that particular setting.

42:18

Well, when I looked at videos, it actually took me a while to find that, so I actually had to look at a number of others.

42:27

And so I could, I would have to push back a little bit on the issue of the fact that that wasn't the only place where, and again, if it's on YouTube and it's probably not the whole thing, then that means it's been edited and so it's probably been chosen for a specific reason.

42:47

But the point is that it sort of takes me back to that issue of the ultimate standard and how we judge something.

42:56

And that is, in the proclamation of the Word, I can't know everything about the individual.

43:03

I can't know what their life is. And what you know, you've been told.

43:09

I don't, I'm not sure that you've been to, I think it was, I said Madagascar, it was Mozambique. It started with an

43:14

M anyways, and it's over the same general direction. I have friends of mine that have ministered over there often.

43:21

Then I have children of some of my colleagues who spent months over there living together with the ministry.

43:28

So you have friends that you have talked to who have direct knowledge. I go to Africa, I'm going to be in Zambia in a few weeks, and obviously

43:39

I hear a lot from going there of the negative results of a lot of the teaching and preaching from primarily people who call themselves prophets and apostles.

43:54

You mentioned some of those in the book. Oh yes, a lot of abuse in Africa. Especially in South Africa. It's unbelievable what's going on.

44:02

Prosperity gospel, manipulative prophetic stuff, abusive leaders. And part of it is, there's a lot of great stuff in African culture, and there's some weaknesses in the

44:10

African culture. There's a lot of mixture with witchcraft and superstition. Yes, so quite a few times in the book,

44:16

I mentioned some of the finest Christians I know on the planet are African, but there are a lot of big problems.

44:22

It's going to be a lot of discipling to be done. That's why I wrote the book. And just to be sincere, for everyone watching and listening, read the book.

44:30

Read Playing with Holy Fire. If you're concerned about abuses, I'm addressing them. If the fundamental issue is you don't believe the things of the

44:38

Spirit that were in New Testament for today, so that's where we have our fundamental difference. But please know, we are addressing issues and abuses, and we have not done a good enough job of self -policing.

44:49

But also know that there's been an explosion of the gospel in the last 50 years in Africa, almost unprecedented in world history.

44:57

So there's a lot of stuff to clean up. And yes, I'm sure James, you are running into all kinds of problems that even cause the hair you have to stand on end.

45:08

Not sure how that's possible, but yes, there certainly are. We've only got 15 minutes left.

45:15

Let's address something else, because you brought it up in the book. And you have mentioned on the program, on Line of Fire, probably three or four different times in different clips, where you've responded to critics and addressed issues and so on and so forth.

45:36

I remember what got us talking again after all those years, and back in 95 when

45:45

I moderated the debate with Rabbi Shochet and so on and so forth, there was a fairly lengthy period of time where we didn't really have contact with one another.

45:52

And then someone sent me the programs you did on Call -In

45:59

Calvinist Day or whatever it was, Calvinist Call -In Day, I forget what it was. But you made the reference to having once been a

46:06

Calvinist, and you described that period of time, so on and so forth. And then in the book and then on the program, you have talked about this time period.

46:17

And it doesn't take a genius to put two and two together, that when you talk about what you consider to be the low point in your spiritual life, was that period when you were a

46:31

Calvinist. Am I not correct about that? Exactly right, 77 to 82, absolutely.

46:39

And it seems to me that from what you said on the Line of Fire not too long ago, one of the elements of that was your involvement with the excommunication of a family member, am

46:51

I correct? Yeah, that was symptomatic, right, when she was pushing that God wanted to heal everyone all the time after she had been healed at a

46:59

Kenneth Copeland meeting, and we found her being divisive and so on.

47:04

Yet to my shame, we excommunicated her. Yeah, so is it possible, because we all, you know, people are always asking me all the time, well look, you know this

47:16

Michael Brown guy, he's obviously a smart guy, so why doesn't he get it? Why doesn't he see this?

47:22

And why doesn't he see that? So on and so forth. And is it possible, because I got the feeling,

47:29

I'm not going to make you say one way or the other, but I got the feeling at one point in the book that you're actually talking about something that Kenneth Copeland had done, when you were talking about somebody with their airplanes, and you talked about, you know, hey it's great when people provide for you when you're a speaker and things like that, but at the same time, raising millions of dollars to have a private airplane just because you don't want to be with all the demonized people in the flying tube, which you and I get to do all the time, and doesn't seem to have any overly negative impact upon us, but we've all seen the video clip of Kenneth Copeland, this other guy, sitting around talking about how they've been blessed by God to have these airplanes and stuff.

48:13

And so the thought crossed my mind, is it possible that when you look at some of these individuals, when you look at a

48:23

Kenneth Copeland, that that's in the background? Is that, well,

48:29

I was wrong about it once, so I'm just going to be very, very, so careful about this, whereas I try to be careful,

48:43

I can't look into people's hearts, I can't judge people's hearts in that way, but when it comes to these things,

48:52

I mentioned Copeland to you, and you referred me to his statement of faith, said, well, it seems like a really orthodox statement of faith.

49:00

How does all that work? Do you see what I'm saying? No, it's a great question, and it's a very perceptive question.

49:07

So I'm always careful to say that for me, the time in my life when

49:12

I was a Calvinist coincided with me leaving my first love, and for me, it was part of a hyper -intellectual, hyper -theological, spiritually proud time doing my master's and PhD work, and Calvinism fit in with that for me, but I don't assume that for others.

49:30

I never make that judgment. I always try to be very careful. They happen to coincide. Some would say, well, it's only natural that they coincide it.

49:38

Others would say, no, it just happened to work out like that for you. So I never judge anyone else's spirituality or devotion to the

49:44

Lord based on them being Calvinist or not, but that for me is what happened, and at that time, I really fought against my

49:50

Pentecostal roots. I fought against believing these things that, you know, it's like silly practices and slain in the spirit.

49:56

I had a whole teaching, being slain in the spirit wasn't from God, and then end up getting known as knock him down brown because I pray for people.

50:02

Everybody falls down. It's like, oh, great, you know, so I tried to get away from that, but I couldn't scripturally.

50:08

I remember reading Warfield's Counterfeit Miracles and Gromacki's Modern Tongues Movement and other books, and I thought, no, the word is too clear on this.

50:16

These things are for today, but something's wrong out there. You know, that was kind of my conclusion, but here's what happened.

50:22

I used to think I was God's policeman, and here, you know, the arrogance of not just getting a theological degree because the theologians need to rely on the translations that we come up with.

50:33

You know, we're the philologians, and we really know what the text means, and all these, you know, Christian translations making errors, and, you know, so I, even though I was serious with the

50:42

Lord, I was really very prideful, and every service I'd go to, I was critiquing this and upset with this, and this really dealt with me about, you know, who do you think you are?

50:56

Why are you the one that's right? You know, people want me to call out false teachers, but what if I said, all right, anyone who denies the Spirit is for today is a false teacher, so I'm going to start calling out

51:04

James White or John McCormick, I mean, in terms of cessationism. I mean, how ridiculous is that?

51:10

So, but I would have been one that I was always right, and I was correcting everybody, and God really had a deal with me.

51:17

You're not my policeman, and you be faithful to teach and preach the truth and evaluate on that, and walk in love, give the benefit of the doubt as much as possible to others.

51:27

So, look, I wrote a letter openly why Creflo is not getting any of my dollars, you know, when he was fundraising for his planning.

51:34

My most shared article, my open letter, open appeal to Joel and Victoria Osteen on the

51:40

Charisma website, shared over 400 ,000 times. I'm happy to address things openly, and behind the scenes,

51:46

I'm doing it all the time, and yes, it was a video with Kenneth Copeland, and I think

51:51

Jesse Duplantis, talking about riding commercial flights at all the demonized people, and you know,

51:59

I, yeah, so I don't reference the names, but I do reference that in the article. I have friends of mine that have private planes, and that's what their ministry requires, and they're all over the world, and somehow it's good stewardship, whatever, it's between them and God, but the deal is, you're absolutely right, unless I know that this person is either denying a fundamental of the gospel, like a

52:21

Jehovah's Witness, or a Mormon, or something like that, or is living in unrepentant sin, I will deal with them as a brother or sister in error.

52:30

So, I have always, always repudiated the carnal prosperity message.

52:35

I have always differed strongly with certain emphases of Kenneth Copeland's ministry. That's never changed.

52:41

I've written about these differences for decades. That's never changed. I go after some of this again in my book, and if he still holds to the idea that Jesus' death on the cross was not sufficient, and that he had to go into hell and die there, and become demonized, and be resurrected as a born -again man, then

53:02

I'd say he's outside the faith, without hesitation, but as far as I know, he's repudiated that, and it's not in the statement of faith.

53:08

So, yes, I am very careful about crossing that line. I'll address error day and night until I'm blue in the face, and when

53:15

I'm writing a book with documentation like Hypergrace, I'll name the names, I'll quote the people, I'll give the sources, when

53:22

I could more readily do that. But to say this one's saved and this one's not saved, I'm going to be very careful and hesitant.

53:28

Am I being too careful? God knows. But you're absolutely right, there is a reason for it. Saved, unsaved is one thing, but let not many of you be teachers, for ours is the greater condemnation, the greater standard of judgment.

53:45

If, and I don't think there's really a question about this, if someone teaches that Jesus had to be born again in hell, doesn't that, it, on one hand, you could say someone could be confused as whether saved or unsaved, but there's a difference between that and being a person who is considered to be a

54:09

Christian leader who has the right to stand before people and open the

54:15

Word of God and say, thus saith the Lord. Isn't there a different standard we have to apply there? Yeah, there is, but here's my question.

54:23

What if the Pentecostal charismatic position is true, that the gifts of the

54:29

Spirit haven't ceased, they continue to this day, and what if there are, as Craig Keener estimates in his

54:35

Miracles book, perhaps 200 million or more people who are eyewitnesses to miracles, and there are teachers in the body saying this is not for today, they're holding strange

54:44

Friday conferences, they're calling these things counterfeit, isn't that a massive, massive error of great proportion, not only to deny the explicit testimony of Scripture, Paul says, earnestly seek prophecy and don't forbid tongues, and they're violating both of those, but to deny what the

55:01

Spirit's doing today, isn't that also a massive error? Should they therefore not be teaching? Well, I'd have to push back on that to say that categorically, that's a completely different kind of thing.

55:12

We're talking about a central Christological affirmation about who Jesus is, about how it is

55:18

He brings about redemption, versus not a question about whether the Spirit is still active or there are still spiritual gifts, but a specific category of spiritual gifts specifically associated with the apostolic age.

55:31

So, I don't see that those would be parallel, and certainly in the case of someone like a

55:38

Kenneth Copeland, unless he hasn't been listening to anybody, I remember, my goodness, it was one of the first things that I happened to do a study on at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, that was in the early 90s.

55:54

So, I know you and I, that sounds like yesterday, but we're coming up on 30 years that—

56:03

Yeah, yeah, so just for time sake, yeah, if someone makes a statement that's fundamentally aberrant, then they should be disqualified from being taken seriously until they fix it.

56:15

Yeah, that's scary that someone could have that much influence and teach something that wrong. That's scary, that should have been corrected a long time ago, and that to me, unless it's fixed, does disqualify someone from being taken seriously as a teacher.

56:29

That's a glaring, fundamental, ugly error. So, I agree. At some point in the future, you and I are going to have to have a conversation about ecclesiology, because I think we would have a similar—do you have multiple elders in your church?

56:48

Deacons and elders, primarily? Yeah, yeah, so you have the pastor is like the lead elder. So, you have pastor, elders, and deacons functioning like that.

56:56

It just seems to me it would be an interesting conversation at some point, because what you were just saying is, yeah, this guy would be disqualified.

57:02

Well, who gets to make that kind of a call these days? This isn't just an

57:08

American problem, and it does seem like there is, within the charismatic movement, you've got a lot of different groups.

57:18

There seems to be even more splintering, because someone can say, well, follow me and my promptings of the

57:24

Spirit, than there is outside the charismatic group. We don't seem to have quite as many split -offs as quickly.

57:33

I've just seen a lot of charismatic churches where you didn't have a church structure. You had one person who sort of had tremendous amounts of authority, and it goes back to that prophet idea,

57:44

I think. Yeah, and that's why I address abusive leaders. Again, look, because God's moving so wonderfully, because His power is being manifest, because so many people are being saved, we're having these problems.

57:57

Paul never denied to the Corinthians what was going on was real. He simply said, this is out of order, this needs to change, and rebuked them very strongly and seriously about certain things.

58:08

He even said, some of you are dead because of these abuses, and others are sick. In no way am

58:14

I downplaying these, but the explanation is, yes, if I can, because we take the anointing seriously, and we believe

58:21

God has raised someone up or anointed this person for leadership, yes, it is more possible to be an abusive leader, because you say, don't touch the anointed one.

58:31

It's like, yeah, when you laid hands on my grandmother, she was healed last week, and yeah, when you gave that prophecy to my son, that was life -changing for him.

58:39

So, pastor, I'm not going to mess with you. So yeah, absolutely, we can have more abuse.

58:45

The same thing with sexual immorality. That's rampant everywhere, but often idolatry and immorality go hand -in -hand, and the idolatry of power and the superstar leadership.

58:55

That's why there are three distinct chapters that deal with those kinds of abuses, and they are unique in that way.

59:01

Not unique, but they are especially prevalent in the charismatic movement. Yeah, that was amazing stuff to read.

59:08

Sort of hard stuff to read, honestly. It couldn't have been fun to write either. Michael, thank you very much.

59:14

Believe it or not, we've gone through the whole hour. I'm not sure if it feels like it goes faster or slower when you don't have all the commercial breaks.

59:20

Because you've got to just keep going and going and going. You don't get to take a drink of water and stuff like that like you do with your schedule, but you can get a whole lot more crammed into one hour when you don't have all those breaks.

59:32

But what we just did, on the road, I do a Facebook Live stream video instead of my normal studio one while I'm talking.

59:40

So during the break, rather than just having to listen to commercial, I actually unplugged that feed and I talked.

59:45

So I just did my last hour without interruption. In fact, I don't know how it looks, but if folks notice, I kept looking up.

59:51

That's where the phone was, and I keep looking up for that, but it's actually down here. So great being with you, man.

59:58

Thank you, Michael, and I'm sure we'll be chatting again in the near future. Thanks for joining us. God bless.

01:00:04

Thanks. All right, God bless. All right, there you go. Playing with holy fire. You know, the funny thing is various people said they were going to write full reviews of it and stuff, and I keep asking,

01:00:17

Michael, seen anything? And I haven't seen anything yet. And I'd like to see some reviews because, you know, my experience, like I said, the beginning was you'll be tracking along going, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:00:28

And then he's charismatic. I'm not. Therefore, boom, we all of a sudden go different directions.

01:00:35

And then you go to the next chapter is like, OK, yeah, you got to be sexually pure. And well, OK, not in those chapters that those chapters we would we agreed on all the way.

01:00:44

But the stuff about prophecy and stuff like that, that's where we ended up having major differences. You know,

01:00:49

I think we can just press on. I don't think that. Well, no, but no one cares.

01:00:59

There's no reason to play music or do something else. We can just go ahead. And since I have the quotes in front of me, it probably best to use what?

01:01:12

No, I just there was a couple of things that I was going to interject during the.

01:01:17

Oh, you want to switch over to that one? Let's switch over to that one. Hey, there you are. I was in the other one, too.

01:01:23

Just yeah. Well, that is that's true. Your microphone still sounds horrible.

01:01:28

My microphone sounds horrible to you. There is a there is a buzz. There's a buzz in my microphone.

01:01:34

Yep. I don't know why that is. It's in line. It's a line buzz. Oh, well, which is weird anyway.

01:01:42

Anyway, now that you've distracted me, what I was going to discuss during your little short break, just a couple of things that the the travel fund for now is fully funded and then some were very thankful.

01:01:57

I did want to let folks know that on the general fund side of things, we're paying things where the bills come in and they get paid and then there's not much left.

01:02:09

And then there's you know, and that kind of is this this routine. And so if folks want to continue to be as generous as they've been, the general fund

01:02:18

I think everybody just wants to get rid of me. Well, there is that, too, to send you off. And, you know, but, you know, they send enough to bring you back, unfortunately.

01:02:27

Anyway, so so that was that's that. That's all I wanted to throw out there.

01:02:32

Just kind of let folks know what's going on. And and I'm really, really, really, really sorry about the the buzz noise.

01:02:39

Some people are even in the channel are complaining. They hear it, too. So I don't know. I'll have to smack this thing around or something, you know, that actually did something for a second.

01:02:47

Oh, did that clear it up? Something did for a second. Anyway, well, I'll let you move on. Okay. All right.

01:02:54

Well, if I was trying to raise money, I wouldn't be doing this program. Believe you me. There's so many other topics that we would be addressing to try to get people to send money in that this this this program would not be one of them,

01:03:13

I can assure you. Okay. Totally shifting gears. And we'll make sure to open the phones on on Thursday if you want to just, you know, do what people used to do.

01:03:28

Write down your questions. It's like like these days, people's attention spans, you know, by Thursday, it's not going to be relevant to me.

01:03:35

Wow. That sort of says something about our society. But write down your questions, either from what the conversation has had with Michael Brown or what's coming up here.

01:03:45

And that is, as some of you know, over the weekend,

01:03:51

Dr. James H. Cone passed away. Now, who was

01:03:57

Dr. Cone? Well, 10, almost exactly. Well, it was, it was

01:04:03

April was April 8 of 2008. I think we did a dividing line program.

01:04:11

What? I don't think it was in May. Well, okay, I bought the book on April 8.

01:04:19

Okay, so it's basically 10 years ago. I did a program.

01:04:26

And it was back when this was a white room with light coming in the back, and I don't think there were any cameras or anything like that back then.

01:04:34

I could wear whatever I wanted to wear in doing the program. And I did a program on James Cone's theology.

01:04:49

And primarily quoted from a black theology of liberation, of black power and black theology.

01:04:57

These are, were books from quite some time ago. But the reason that I did the program was because it had become known in the media that Jeremiah Wright, who was

01:05:14

Barack Hussein Obama's pastor for a number of years, was deeply influenced by, and basically a disciple of James Cone.

01:05:26

And if you wanted to understand what had influenced

01:05:32

Barack Obama, who at that point was running for president of the United States, had just,

01:05:38

I think, won the primaries, or was in the primaries, or he just, well, that would have been before the convention.

01:05:43

So, but he may have locked it up by then, or he was obviously a major candidate, and obviously won twice.

01:05:50

That you needed to, if you needed, if you wanted to understand Jeremiah Wright, and his statement, you know,

01:05:57

God bleep America, and what his impact upon Obama would be, then you needed to understand his mentor, who was

01:06:07

James Cone. And so I bought one book, I was going to grab it out of my library, forgot, it probably would have taken me half the morning to find it, but I bought one book, and I read numerous citations out of this one particular book to help people to understand where James Cone was coming from.

01:06:28

Well, I hadn't thought a whole lot about James Cone, even with the

01:06:34

MLK 50 thing, the sermons at T4G, the stuff with Kyle Howard, and all the rest of this stuff.

01:06:44

I, Jamar Tisby's stuff, you know, when Trump was elected,

01:06:50

I really didn't think much about Cone. They weren't citing from him. Just didn't, in fact,

01:07:00

I honestly didn't know whether he was alive or dead. And then over the weekend comes the news that he had just passed away.

01:07:10

And what started happening is you started seeing references by some of these leading men in this movement, in the reformed area,

01:07:22

Jamar Tisby, and Kyle Howard, and a few others, regarding James Cone.

01:07:30

And what I didn't see was anything that said, you know, very sad to hear about Dr.

01:07:37

Cone's death. He certainly had a great influence, but we strongly warn people against his teachings.

01:07:52

And I was like, why am I hearing him being described as an incisive theologian?

01:08:03

Why just this morning, this said 16 hours ago, and that was probably about four, but then in the past 24 hours, on Religion News Service, does

01:08:13

Jamar Tisby have an article, James Cone, the Cross and the Lynching Memorial. And the categories of Jamar Tisby's article, he says,

01:08:26

A father of black liberation theology, Cone helped pioneer a field that dealt with the racism at the core of much of American Christianity.

01:08:33

Now, I'm going to read you a lot of Cone here over the next few minutes. I want you to think about what this means.

01:08:39

His journey into black theology began with the social upheavals in mid -1960s. Malcolm X in particular had a pivotal effect on him.

01:08:46

The more he listened to the most well -known prophet of the nation of Islam, the more disturbed he became by the

01:08:51

Eurocentric form of Christianity he and other black people practiced. He mentions one of Cone's last books,

01:09:01

The Cross and the Lynching Tree, where he draws a parallel between Jesus as the crucified one and the black man on the lynching tree.

01:09:12

He calls it one of his seminal works. In the book, he traces the parallels between Christ's crucifixion and the persecution of black people in America.

01:09:21

For Cone, the lynching tree is a visual and historic representation of white racist tyranny. Juxtaposed with the cross of Jesus Christ, lynching becomes a kind of crucifixion for black people.

01:09:30

This is Jamar Tisby. This is a man who has had the ears of some of the leading reformed men in our land and still does.

01:09:41

Used to be with Ron, now Ron is the, what's it called? The Witness.

01:09:50

Yeah, The Witness. I was looking at one of Jarvis Williams's articles on intersectionality and reconciliation in our churches, filled with the language of things we should be warning people about.

01:10:04

Anyway, so then Cone believed in the power of the cross because,

01:10:14

I've seen with my own eyes, how that symbol empowered black people to stand up and become agents of change for their freedom. Now, as we're going to see, that included throwing

01:10:21

Molotov cocktails into houses, into buildings owned by white people. Directly from Cone, we'll see that.

01:10:30

James Cone has laid down his cross to take up his eternal rest. The lynching memorial at Montgomery challenges the new generation to take up the cross of justice today and continue with the struggle for black liberation.

01:10:43

It sounds to me like Jamar Tisby believes that James Cone was a Christian man who has taken up his eternal rest.

01:10:52

Now, Kyle Howard wanted to be known that he does not embrace black liberation theology, but he had also written,

01:11:04

I think white Christians should listen to Cone's prophetic voice and deal with his critiques and perspective, which has fashioned, which was fashioned out of the fires of racism and white theologically informed supremacy.

01:11:17

He's using all of Cone's categories. It's not challenging them. He's accepting them. I'd encourage black saints to find more stable ground in traditional black theology.

01:11:28

See, Kyle knows what I'm going to be reading for you. Cone's theology never truly made it to the local ground level of black thought and theology, though it provided helpful critiques and a unique perspective regarding redemptive suffering.

01:11:44

The black church largely reformed Protestant theology rather than reject it altogether.

01:11:50

I don't hear any warnings. I just hear incisive theologian taking up his eternal rest, interesting perspectives.

01:12:05

So I put together, I just, all I did really over the weekend and yesterday,

01:12:15

I was posting quotes. I didn't post all the quotes I'm going to read for you now because you had to format them and it takes time and so on.

01:12:21

So I put up, I don't know, a small Twitter storm of citations from James Cone on Twitter and you wouldn't believe the response.

01:12:32

The pushback was amazing. It was a racist pushback. Not only do

01:12:38

I have no right to be quoting him, but how dare you be quoting a man who just died? Well, that's normally when your books end up getting quoted.

01:12:45

I'm not sure if you noticed that, but the reality is that what we're going to read here needs to be heard and understood.

01:12:56

And I'm reading directly from his own words. You can look them up for yourself.

01:13:02

I'll be primarily reading from a black theology of liberation. You can buy it on Kindle like I did and have it on your screen almost immediately.

01:13:13

That's how things work these days. That's probably why I bought the paper edition back in 2008 because I'm not sure that the

01:13:19

Kindle was around 10 years ago. Not sure, but anyway, let's listen to some

01:13:26

James Cone, shall we? You might say, I only need to hear a few quotes. No, I think we need a little bit more than that because I've already been accused of taking him out of context, misrepresenting him, everything else.

01:13:37

So once you've quoted him for 20 minutes or more, it's sort of hard to say, well, you're taking him out of context.

01:13:46

But I challenge you. If you think I am, prove it.

01:13:52

Go read it yourself. Sources. This is from a chapter on the sources and norm of black theology.

01:14:01

Invariably, when white theology attempts to speak to blacks about Jesus Christ, the gospel is presented in the light of the social, political, and economic interests of the white majority.

01:14:12

One example of this is the interpretation of Christian love as non -violence. Black theologians must work to destroy the corruptive influence of white thought by building theology on sources and a norm that are appropriate to the black community.

01:14:29

Now, let me just mention, Dr. Cohn was a very bright man.

01:14:37

Dr. Cohn quotes almost constantly from Niebuhr and Tillich and Barth, big names when

01:14:45

I was in seminary as well, though this would been years after he was. I went to Fuller and we had to read

01:14:52

Niebuhr and Barth and Tillich, and I got sick of all of them, to be perfectly honest with you.

01:14:58

But I did my duty and I got my good grades because I did listen and I do know where they were coming from.

01:15:04

And I'll be perfectly honest with you, none of them have anything really to say to a person who fully believes in the sufficiency of the revelation of scripture.

01:15:15

So, but he knows them well, and he knows Luther, he knows how to use his sources.

01:15:21

And so you'll be reading along, it'll be talking about Tillich and it'll be talking about Niebuhr and it's like, okay, and all of a sudden, boom, you transition into, and this is why we must resist the white man.

01:15:37

And he didn't, especially in his earlier works, even attempt to belabor the connection between what he had just been saying and what he was saying now.

01:15:45

It was almost as if the disjunction was meant to communicate something in and of itself. So I don't want anyone to get the idea that I'm saying that Dr.

01:15:53

Cohn was not a brilliant thinker. He was, but here's the problem.

01:15:59

What we're going to read from Dr. Cohn is going to demonstrate beyond all question that he was an incredible, unrepentant, self -professed racist.

01:16:10

He was a black racist in the fullest sense of the term.

01:16:15

You take almost any one of his statements, reverse the colors, and it would be very obvious.

01:16:24

So one of the reasons I'm doing this is one of the questions I asked on Twitter, can those who are calling for continual penance on the part of whites in the church today for things that allegedly their progenitors did, which you can't prove that they did or didn't.

01:16:48

Most of us don't know much about our lineage on the way back, but be that as it may, it's systemic racism.

01:16:59

So we are to be in continual penance for whatever wrongs were done to somebody else's ancestors.

01:17:09

Can these individuals recognize the existence of black racism?

01:17:15

Because I don't almost ever hear anybody ever talking about it. If racism is a sin, and it is a hatred of your brother, then sin can exist in the heart of any man who is a child of Adam.

01:17:32

And therefore, the black or the Chinese or the

01:17:37

Japanese or the German or the Brazilian or whoever is just as liable to the sin of racism as anyone else.

01:17:46

Now, I have specifically heard people saying that's not possible. I've seen people on Twitter, it's not possible.

01:17:51

You cannot be a racist if you're a minority. That is just a naivete on a level that's difficult for me to understand.

01:18:00

I've seen a lot of racism from blacks toward whites that was excused on the basis of something that happened to people they never met.

01:18:10

The heart has an amazing way of justifying things.

01:18:17

And from a Christian perspective, it is sinful for you to justify your hatred of a fellow

01:18:23

Christian based upon what you think their ancestors might have done to yours.

01:18:30

So the question is, can we recognize black racism? When we talk about the horrific things like lynchings, can we at the same time recognize that right now, there are lynchings taking place every night in Chicago being performed by black men against black men with guns?

01:18:50

That probably in three years in Chicago, more black men have died than the entire history of the

01:18:56

Jim Crow South by lynchings at the hands of black men, and almost nobody can say a word about it.

01:19:03

Can we recognize that? Can that even be discussed? And if it can't, why can't it?

01:19:09

Why can't James Cone's racism be recognized and repudiated?

01:19:18

I mean, if you have to these days question Jonathan Edwards' salvation because of his position in the 1700s, how, in light of what is now known by everybody in the 21st century,

01:19:38

James Cone just died. He was still writing books in 2011. How can his racism not be called out?

01:19:50

These are the questions. These are the questions. Let me look really quickly here.

01:19:57

Oh yeah, this could take a while. Okay. Under the sources of black theology, the black community as a self -determining people, proud of its blackness has just begun, and we must wait before we can determine what its fullest manifestation will be.

01:20:14

Notice the idea of being proud, proud of blackness. Could someone else be proud of whiteness,

01:20:24

I wonder? Evidently not. Black experience. There can be no black theology which does not take seriously the black experience.

01:20:33

A life of humiliation and suffering. So every black life is a life of humiliation and suffering.

01:20:42

Are they the only people that experience humiliation and suffering? This is a very

01:20:48

American book. And even then, it's a very imbalanced

01:20:53

American book. This must be the point of departure of all God talk, which seeks to be black talk.

01:21:02

This means that black theology realizes that it is human beings who speak of God. And when those human beings are black, they speak of God only in light of the black experience.

01:21:10

That's dangerous. I consider that dangerous. We know that we can speak of God in a way that transcends the limitedness of our experience because we have the scriptures.

01:21:23

But Cone's view of scripture is vastly deficient, vastly deficient.

01:21:29

It is not that black theology denies the importance of God's revelation in Christ, but blacks want to know what

01:21:36

Jesus Christ means when they are confronted with the brutality of white racism.

01:21:42

The black experience prevents us from turning the gospel into theological catchphrases and makes us realize that it must be clothed in black flesh.

01:21:55

It must be clothed in black flesh. That's an interesting way of expressing it.

01:22:04

The black experience is existence in a system of white racism. The black person knows that a ghetto is the white way of saying that blacks are subhuman and fit only to live with rats.

01:22:18

Direct quotation from James Cone. The black experience, however, is about more than simply encountering white insanity.

01:22:31

It also means blacks making decisions about themselves, decisions that involve whites. Blacks know that whites do not have the last word on black existence.

01:22:38

This realization may be defined as black power, the power of the black community to make decisions regarding its identity.

01:22:44

When this happens, blacks become aware of their blackness. And to be aware of self is to set certain limits on others' behavior toward oneself.

01:22:53

The black experience means telling whitey what the limits are. That's the black experience.

01:23:00

Do I have to point out how absolutely antithetical to everything the

01:23:07

New Testament teaches about the relationship of believers in Christ this entire attitude is?

01:23:12

Do I even have to point this out? Or is it not just so startlingly clear that it leaves you going, he said that?

01:23:23

There are people calling this incisive theology? There are.

01:23:31

The black experience is the feeling one has when attacking the enemy of black humanity by throwing a

01:23:38

Molotov cocktail into a white -owned building and watching it go up in flames.

01:23:43

We know, of course, that getting rid of evil takes something more than burning down buildings, but one must start somewhere.

01:23:50

Being black is a beautiful experience. It is the sane way of living in an insane environment.

01:23:59

Whites do not understand it. They can only catch glimpses of it in sociological reports and historical studies.

01:24:11

Black theology focuses on black history as a source for its theological interpretation of God's work in the world because divine activity is inseparable from black history.

01:24:25

I want you to recognize it's already been blatant, but it's so blatant that sometimes we just recoil because, like, did he just say that?

01:24:37

But clearly, the Bible, all of Christian theology, for Cone, is to be interpreted through the lens of his extreme racism, his interpretation of American history, his interpretation of the centrality of the black experience.

01:25:02

He says that he experienced racism in his education, and I don't doubt that he did, but it clearly had an absolutely overarching impact upon the entirety of his interpretation of all of reality, of all of reality.

01:25:24

And if the Christian faith is a transcendent faith, if it is transcendentally true and is true for all people at all times, the transformation of it into a black liberation theme, the term meme didn't exist back then, but a black liberation meme, absolutely demands a fundamental redefinition of what the

01:25:48

Christian faith is, i .e. heresy. And that's what you end up with very clearly in Dr.

01:25:56

Cone's material. Although answers to these questions are not easy, black theology refuses to accept a

01:26:02

God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community.

01:26:10

If God is not for us, if God is not against white racists, then

01:26:15

God is a murderer, and we had better kill God. The task of black theology is to kill gods that do not belong to the black community.

01:26:27

And by taking black history as a source, we know that this is neither an easy nor a sentimental task, but an awesome responsibility.

01:26:38

We could say that the black experience is what blacks feel when they try to carve out an existence in dehumanized white society.

01:26:48

It is black soul, the pain and joy of reacting to whiteness and affirming blackness.

01:26:59

Reacting to whiteness and affirming blackness. Again, I just simply say, change the colors.

01:27:12

Change the colors. And see, some people say, no, you can't do that because you're the majority and not the minority, which means this is only relevant in one place at one time.

01:27:23

It's not transcendent truth in any way, shape or form, because there are people who have, my ancestors have been minorities at times too.

01:27:32

In different places, in different times, that's the reality of everyone. That's why this is such a short sighted perspective being presented by Dr.

01:27:42

Cone. Blacks need to see some correlations between divine salvation and black culture.

01:27:50

For too long, Christ has been pictured as a blue -eyed hunky. Black theologians are right.

01:27:57

We need to de -hunkify him and thus make him relevant to the black condition. All of this, and that's followed immediately by a

01:28:05

Paul Tillich quote. That's what's so odd at times about reading Cone. However, when we speak of God's revelation to the oppressed, the analysis is incorrect.

01:28:17

God's revelation comes to us in and through the cultural situation of the oppressed.

01:28:24

God's word is our word. God's existence, our existence. This is the meaning of black culture and its relationship to divine revelation.

01:28:35

I think it's important to catch that. Some religionists who have been influenced by the 20th century

01:28:44

Protestant theologies of revelation will question my discussion of revelation, that would be scriptural revelation, as the fourth source rather than the first.

01:28:55

Does this not suggest that revelation is secondary to the black experience, black history, and black culture?

01:29:04

Well, the very fact that he has to address this issue, I think demonstrates that he recognizes that he has utterly inverted the order of priority that historically and theologically has been given to scripture.

01:29:20

The weakness of white American theology is that it seldom gets beyond the first century in its analysis of revelation.

01:29:29

Well, that's interesting given that, well, what is white

01:29:35

American theology in the first place? The failure of white theology to speak to the black liberation struggle only reveals once again the racist character of white thought.

01:29:51

There is not in Cone's thinking any, well, this sounds strange, any gray area.

01:30:03

It's white or black and whites just simply lack the capacities that blacks possess.

01:30:09

Again, it's very extremely racist. Just reverse the colors and read it again and you'll go whoa.

01:30:23

From this, however, we should not conclude that the Bible is an infallible witness.

01:30:30

God was not the author of the Bible, nor were its writers mere secretaries. Efforts to prove verbal inspiration of the scriptures result from the failure to see the real meaning of the biblical message, human liberation.

01:30:42

Unfortunately, emphasis on verbal infallibility leads to unimportant concerns. Figured we needed to read that so you would understand how he could come to the conclusions that he does on so many of these things that is so far removed from anything even semi -biblical or orthodox or historical or anything else.

01:31:08

Whites who insist on verbal infallibility are often the most violent racists.

01:31:16

If they can be sure beyond any doubt of their views of scripture, then they can be equally resolute in imposing their views on society as a whole.

01:31:28

In fact, his condemnation, speaking of Luther, of the peasant revolt sounds very much like white churchmen's condemnation of ghetto rebellions.

01:31:41

I would say he's completely missing the central aspect of Luther's thought there, but though no one can be responsible for everything that is done in their name, one may be suspicious of the easy affinity among Calvinism, capitalism, and slave trading.

01:32:02

Capitalism, that's interesting. Black theology believes that the spirit of the authentic gospel is often better expressed by heretics than by the orthodox tradition.

01:32:16

Black theology is concerned only with the tradition of Christianity that is usable in the Black liberation struggle.

01:32:23

As it looks over the past, it asks, how is the Christian tradition related to the oppression of Blacks in America?

01:32:31

Now, some of you might go, hmm, there's somebody else like that these days. Yeah, the

01:32:36

Black Hebrew Israelites. They have a very similar focus on things.

01:32:48

Black theology must realize that the white Jesus has no place in the

01:32:55

Black community, and it is our task to destroy him. We must replace him with the

01:33:03

Black Messiah, as Albert Klieg would say, a Messiah who sees his existence as inseparable from Black liberation and the destruction of white racism.

01:33:17

The norm of Black theology must take seriously two realities, actually two aspects of a single reality, the liberation of Blacks and the revelation of Jesus Christ.

01:33:24

With these two realities before us, what is the norm of Black theology? The norm of all God talk, which seeks to be

01:33:31

Black talk, is the manifestation of Jesus as the Black Christ, who provides the necessary soul for Black liberation.

01:33:45

What does the name mean when Black people are burning buildings and white people are responding with riot police control?

01:33:53

Whose side is Jesus on? The norm of Black theology, which identifies revelation as a manifestation of the

01:33:59

Black Christ, says that he is those very Blacks whom the white society shoots and kills.

01:34:07

The contemporary Christ is in the Black ghetto, making decisions about white existence and Black liberation.

01:34:14

Of course, this interpretation of theology will seem strange to most whites, and even some

01:34:19

Blacks will wonder whether it is really true that Christ is Black. But the truth of the statement is not dependent on white or Black affirmation, but on the reality of Christ himself who is presently breaking the power of white racism.

01:34:33

This, and this alone, is the norm for Black talk about God.

01:34:41

Under the chapter God in Black theology, Black theology represents that community of Blacks who refuse to cooperate in the exaltation of whiteness and the degradation of Blackness.

01:34:56

Some of you have really gone after me because, from the start, what triggered me on all this is this whole idea of whiteness.

01:35:10

And many of the men that you're reading in writing for Reformed seminaries today use the term whiteness as if it actually has a meaning within the

01:35:24

Christian faith. It doesn't. Your sin has meaning, your sanctification has meaning, your adoption as a son or daughter of God has meaning.

01:35:36

Whiteness, Blackness, yellowness, greenness, these are unbiblical, heretical terms.

01:35:45

Really heretical when James Cone's using them. It proclaims the reality of the biblical

01:35:54

God who is actively destroying everything that is against the manifestation of Black human dignity.

01:36:02

Because whiteness by its very nature is against Blackness, the Black prophet is a prophet of national doom.

01:36:11

He proclaims the end of the American way. You wonder where Jeremiah Wright got this stuff? He proclaims the end of the

01:36:18

American way, for God has stirred the soul of the Black community, and now that community will stop at nothing to claim the freedom that is 350 years overdue.

01:36:30

It is God's cause because God has chosen the Blacks as God's own people.

01:36:38

I'm just reading it as it's there. That the God language of white religion has been used to create a docile spirit among Blacks so that whites could aggressively attack them is beyond question.

01:36:52

But that does not mean that we cannot kill the white God. So that the presence of the

01:36:57

Black God can become known in the Black -white encounter. The white God is an idol created by racists, and we

01:37:05

Blacks must perform the iconoclastic task of smashing false images.

01:37:14

If there is one brutal fact that the centuries of white oppression have taught Blacks, it is that whites are incapable of making any valid judgment about human existence.

01:37:26

Can I repeat that? In case there's any of you been going, well, you know, you're just, you're just cherry picking stuff here.

01:37:34

Let me, let me just... Incisive theologian, taken up his eternal rest,

01:37:40

Jamar Tisby. If there is one brutal fact that the centuries of white oppression have taught

01:37:46

Blacks, it is that whites are incapable of making any valid judgment about human existence.

01:37:54

The goal of Black theology is the destruction of everything white so that Blacks can be liberated from alien gods.

01:38:06

The God of Black liberation will not be confused with a bloodthirsty white idol. Black theology must show that the

01:38:15

Black God has nothing to do with the God worshipped in white churches, whose primary purpose is to sanctify the racism of whites and to daub the wounds of Blacks.

01:38:28

We've been criticized for going, you know, this sounds like it could become divisive.

01:38:36

Let me read this again. The God of Black liberation will not be confused with a bloodthirsty white idol.

01:38:42

Black theology must show that the Black God has nothing to do with the God worshipped in white churches, whose primary purpose is to sanctify the racism of whites and to daub the wounds of Blacks.

01:38:59

The refusal of Black theology to put new wine in old wineskins also means that it will show that the

01:39:04

God of the Black community cannot be confused with the God of white seminaries. He wrote it.

01:39:13

He wrote it. Isn't it ironic that it's the seminaries they're now being used to disseminate not his specific categories, but those who've been deeply influenced by?

01:39:30

I'm sorry, this kind of theology is not reparable. You can't go, oh, he's got some incisive thoughts.

01:39:38

We just need to sort of pull back just a little bit. The entire foundation of Cone's thinking and theology is not

01:39:49

Christian, my friends. Is that not obvious by now?

01:39:57

The refusal of Black theology to put new wine in old wineskins also means it will show that the God of the

01:40:02

Black community cannot be confused with the God of white seminaries. With their intellectual expertise, it is inevitable that white scholars fall into the racist error of believing that they have the right to define what is and what is not orthodox religious talk.

01:40:16

Because they have read so many of their own books and heard themselves talk so often, it is not surprising that they actually believe most of the garbage they spout out about God.

01:40:27

Well, there's actually parts of that that are true in many liberal seminaries, but it has nothing to do with color.

01:40:37

If whites were really serious about their radicalism, he does mention liberal whites who talk about racial reconciliation and race issues.

01:40:49

If whites were really serious about their radicalism in regard to the

01:40:54

Black revolution and its theological implications in America, they would keep silent and take instructions from Blacks.

01:41:02

I was basically told this yesterday on Twitter. I don't know if you saw that, there was one guy on Twitter who said, just shut up.

01:41:09

That's happened. Well, right before the program started, there was another guy. Just don't talk about this anymore.

01:41:17

They would keep silent and take instructions from Blacks. Only Blacks can speak about God in relationship to their liberation.

01:41:26

And those who wish to join us in this divine work must be willing to lose their white identity, indeed, to destroy it.

01:41:36

Now, I have to wonder if the term had existed, which it didn't at this point when this book was written, if the term privilege wouldn't have been used there, rather than white identity.

01:41:55

Because Blacks have come to know themselves as Black, and because that Blackness is the cause of their own love of themselves and hatred of whiteness, the

01:42:09

Blackness of God is the key to their knowledge of God. Because Blacks have come to know themselves as Black, and because that Blackness is the cause of their own love of themselves and hatred of whiteness, the

01:42:29

Blackness of God is the key to their knowledge of God. The Blackness of God and everything implied by it in a racist society is the heart of the

01:42:39

Black theology doctrine of God. There is no place in Black theology for a colorless

01:42:46

God in a society where human beings suffer precisely because of their color.

01:42:52

The Black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles Black self -determination by picturing

01:43:00

God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes

01:43:11

God's experience, or God is a God of racism. Because God has made the goal of Blacks God's own goal—that's backwards, by the way, in case you are just reeling from all this—Black theology believes that it is not only appropriate but necessary to begin the doctrine of God with an insistence on God's Blackness.

01:43:47

Again, switch the colors, and it's astounding. It's astounding.

01:43:56

It's repulsive. You won't hear that, but somebody's got to say it.

01:44:04

The Blackness of God means that the essence of the nature of God is to be found in the concept of liberation.

01:44:10

Now, by the way, let me stop for a second. Liberation theology, real popular in the 60s, obviously clearly influencing

01:44:21

Cone, though he creates his own wildly racist, strange,

01:44:27

Americanized version of it. In case you haven't noticed, there is a much more famous liberation theology proponent around these days.

01:44:38

His name is Pope Francis. Go back, read his earlier writings from South America.

01:44:48

He is a liberation theologian, and you can hear this in his talks and his speeches.

01:44:58

He's a liberation theologian. Doesn't fit with historical Catholicism, which is why he's so odd, but he's a liberation theologian, and that's what you're reading here.

01:45:12

Taking seriously... Now, listen to this. Listen to this, folks. Please, please, please listen to this.

01:45:21

Taking serious... Now, this is... See, this is one of the reasons I ended up at Fuller Seminary.

01:45:30

Poor as a church mouse, couldn't do anything else, only game in town, but this doesn't surprise me because I've heard all this before.

01:45:42

Listen to this. Taking seriously the Trinitarian view of the Godhead, Black theology says that as creator,

01:45:51

God identified with oppressed Israel, participating in the bringing into being of this people.

01:45:58

As redeemer, God became the oppressed one in order that all may be free from oppression.

01:46:06

As Holy Spirit, God continues the work of liberation. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of the creator and the redeemer at work in the forces of human liberation in our society today.

01:46:19

In America... You ready? You sitting down? In America, the

01:46:26

Holy Spirit is black persons making decisions about their togetherness, which means making preparation for an encounter with whites.

01:46:41

Incisive theologian. It is the

01:46:53

Black theology emphasis on the blackness of God that distinguishes it sharply from contemporary white views of God.

01:46:59

White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God because their satanic whiteness, that's what it says, their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity.

01:47:14

That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality.

01:47:22

White theologians... Let's see, where'd this thing go? There it is. White theologians would prefer to do theology without reference to color, but this only reveals how deeply racism is embedded in the thought forms of their culture.

01:47:42

There you go, folks. There you go. Those who want to know who

01:47:47

God is and what God is doing must know who black persons are and what they are doing.

01:48:00

He finishes that paragraph with an italicized line, We must become black with God.

01:48:11

We must become black with God. This question always amuses me.

01:48:17

Well, let me... Actually, I got to back up here. It is to be expected that whites will have some difficulty with the idea of becoming black with God.

01:48:27

The experience is not only alien to their existence as they know it to be, it appears to be an impossibility.

01:48:33

How can whites become black? They ask. This question always amuses me because they do not really want to lose their precious white identity as if it were worth saving.

01:48:44

They know, as everyone in this country knows, blacks are those who say they are black regardless of skin color.

01:48:51

I'll read that again. They know, as everyone in this country knows, blacks are those who say they are black regardless of skin color.

01:49:01

In the literal sense, a black person is anyone who has quote, even one drop of black blood in his or her veins, end quote.

01:49:11

But becoming black with God means more than just saying, I am black. If it involves that at all, the question, how can white persons become black is analogous to the

01:49:21

Philippian jailer's question to Paul and Silas, what must I do to be saved? The implication is that if we work hard enough at it, we can reach the goal.

01:49:35

But the misunderstanding here is the failure to see that blackness or salvation, the two are synonymous, is the work of God, not a human work.

01:49:50

It is not something we accomplish. It is a gift. That is why

01:49:56

Paul and Silas said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Becoming one of God's disciples means rejecting whiteness and accepting themselves as they are in all their physical blackness.

01:50:21

This is what the Christian view of God means for blacks, incisive theologian, incisive theologian.

01:50:35

Black theology cannot accept a view of God, which does not represent God as being for oppressed blacks and thus against white oppressors.

01:50:43

Living in a world of white oppressors, blacks have no time for a neutral God. The brutalities are too great and the pain too severe.

01:50:49

And this means we must know where God is and what God is doing in the revolution. There is no use for a

01:50:55

God who loves white oppressors the same as oppressed blacks. We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and to go the second mile.

01:51:05

What we need is divine love as expressed in black power, which is the power of blacks to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal.

01:51:15

Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject

01:51:22

God's love. But according to black theology, it is blasphemy to say that God loves white oppressors, unless that love is interpreted as God's wrathful activity against them and everything that whiteness stands for in American society.

01:51:40

Everything that whiteness stands for in American society. To be

01:51:46

God, God must protect both the freedom and the structure of human behavior.

01:51:52

Do you hear that? One of the most anthropocentric views of God I've ever seen.

01:52:00

God's love is incomprehensible apart from blackness. This means that to love blacks,

01:52:07

God takes on black oppressed existence, becoming one of us. God is black because God loves us, right?

01:52:16

You're all sitting down? Let me read this sentence again. God is black because God loves us and God loves us because we are black.

01:52:30

Incisive, theologian. Incisive. Almost done.

01:52:40

I've got to get done because I'm getting sick of reading it myself, but I already had to mark all this stuff before.

01:52:48

Certainly if whites expect to be able to say anything relevant to the self -determination of the black community, it will be necessary for them to destroy their whiteness by becoming by becoming members of an oppressed community.

01:53:01

You hear echoes of this in some of the stuff that we've been hearing recently. This is where the ethnic

01:53:07

Gnosticism intermixes here. Whites will be free only when they become new persons, when their white being has passed away and they are created anew in black being.

01:53:21

When this happens, they are no longer white but free and thus capable of making decisions about the destiny of the black community.

01:53:32

The free person in America is the one who does not tolerate whiteness but fights against it, knowing that it is the source of human misery.

01:53:44

Whiteness is the source of human misery. Incisive, theologian.

01:53:50

Because sin is a concept that is meaningful only for an oppressed community as it reflects upon its liberation.

01:53:59

It is not possible to make a universal analysis that is meaningful for both black and white persons.

01:54:07

Did you hear that? There's been so many that you probably stopped listening, haven't you? Listen again.

01:54:13

Because sin is a concept that is meaningful only for an oppressed community as it reflects upon its liberation.

01:54:21

That's a lie, of course. But it is not possible to make a universal analysis that is meaningful for both black and white persons.

01:54:32

I don't know what Paul had in mind when he said all of sin falls short of the glory of God, but he just didn't understand.

01:54:42

This means that whites, despite their self -proclaimed religiousness, are rendered incapable of making valid judgments on the character of sin.

01:54:52

Evidently, that's only something that blacks can do. This means that whites are not permitted to speak about what blacks have done to contribute to their condition.

01:55:01

They cannot call blacks Uncle Toms. Only members of the black community can do that. For whites, to do so is not merely insensitivity.

01:55:11

It is blasphemy. Whites cannot know us. They do not even know themselves.

01:55:18

If we could just get concerned whites to recognize this fact, then we blacks could get about the business of cleaning up this society and destroying the filthy manifestations of whiteness in it.

01:55:34

The black community is an oppressed community, primarily because of its blackness. Hence, the Christological importance of Jesus must be found in his blackness.

01:55:41

If he is not black as we are, then the resurrection has little significance for our times. The definition of Jesus as black is crucial for Christology if we truly believe in his continued presence today, taking our clue from the historical

01:55:58

Jesus, who is pictured in the New Testament as the oppressed one. What else, except blackness, could adequately tell us the meaning of his presence today?

01:56:08

This just must be really so confusing for anyone who's never had to read

01:56:13

Tillich and liberals to have even the context. I mean, it's so far out there anyways, but any statement about Jesus today that fails to consider blackness as the decisive factor about his person is a denial of the

01:56:31

New Testament message. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveals he is the man for others, disclosing to them what is necessary for their liberation from oppression.

01:56:40

If this is true, then Jesus Christ must be black so that blacks can know that their liberation is his liberation.

01:56:48

The black Christ is he who threatens the structure of evil as seen in white society, rebelling against it, thereby becoming the embodiment of what the black community knows it must become.

01:56:59

The black Christ is he who nourishes the rebellious impulse in blacks so that at the appointed time, the black community can respond collectively to the white community as a corporate bad n -word.

01:57:13

He didn't use the n -word. He used the n -word. I mean, he spelled it out. Lashing out at the enemy of humankind.

01:57:25

This is Dr. Cone. There are a number of other books.

01:57:30

I have other quotes. I'm tired of reading them. But if your traditions, what you're trying, what you feel is absolutely necessary for you to accomplish in this life or racial justice or whatever else, if there's anything in the way of you being able to see not only how obviously, deeply, and offensively racist this man's thinking was, but likewise, how utterly and completely heretical and separate from anything even close to a

01:58:22

Christian message this man's writings were, then you need to really consider what you are thinking and what you are doing.

01:58:37

That's why I have simply asked, asked a simple question.

01:58:42

Will those people who promoted the idea that white evangelicalism needs to admit its guilt and engage in evidently regular acts of penance for all the ills that our ancestors did, even if they weren't here, will those people who presented that idea have the temerity to come forward and say, no one rejoices at the death of James Cone, but it must be understood that what we are trying to bring into the churches today utterly repudiates what

01:59:43

James Cone actually wrote. We will not call him an incisive theologian. We will not direct people to his writings because they weren't just divisive.

01:59:56

They were violently so. Will they do that, or will we get what we got from Jamar Tisby just today, past 24 hours?

02:00:12

That's the question I've asked. Kyle Howard has said, I don't embrace black power theology.

02:00:19

Good. Do you condemn it for the racist drivel that it was and is while you're being so hardened?

02:00:30

Did you hear what I just said? I spent an hour on quotes. I mean, that is unbelievable, what we just listened to.

02:00:44

It's so unbelievable. I think a lot of people are like, you're making that up. No, might make as a state a lot of money, but y 'all can just go find the books yourself online,

02:00:55

I suppose. Not making up any of it. And if after that many minutes of reading, reading paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, if you're still going, yeah, but over here he said something nice.

02:01:08

Well, I'm sure that Arius's songs, three out of the four stanzas were quite fine.

02:01:18

That's the whole reason I brought this up. Cone's death gave us an opportunity to go, hey guys, guys who are assuring us, oh yeah, we're still, we're not trying to bring in anything new here.

02:01:31

This is just stuff that we should have done all along and we're not, yeah, sure, it all sort of, you know,

02:01:38

MLK 50 and stuff like this. And yeah, there seems to be real evidence, especially among Southern Baptists, anybody who criticized the

02:01:48

MLK 50 thing, if they were actually worked for the SPC, wow, they get slapped down fast.

02:01:55

But you know, we're not trying to do anything strange here. Okay. Reassure the rest of us who don't buy these categories and have serious biblical problems.

02:02:06

We've presented those biblical problems, haven't gotten any meaningful exegetical refutation of what we've presented back, but help us to feel a

02:02:19

Address James Cone. Address these quotes. Address some of the worst of them.

02:02:25

The destruction of whiteness. Whitey. Can't even say anything about sin in the black community.

02:02:34

The Trinity, the Holy Spirit, black people fighting for their liberation. That's what the

02:02:40

Holy Spirit is in America today. Not where the Holy Spirit is, what the Holy Spirit is. How about addressing some of this stuff and make us feel a little more comfortable that you're all willing to say, this stuff is false, wrong.

02:02:55

We repudiate it. Don't even bother reading this stuff. How about that?

02:03:01

How about that? It's a nice step. Instead, what we get are incisive theologian and his entered into his eternal rest.

02:03:18

Well, okay. There you go. So on Thursday, we'll open the phones and who knows what will happen then.

02:03:31

I've lost talk about. There's all sorts of neat stuff going on. I've only got the

02:03:38

Thursday will be less than two weeks before an incredible trip that has absolutely positively nothing to do with anything that we covered in the past two hours.

02:03:52

Nothing. So I'll be honest with you.

02:03:59

Unless there's a reason to do so, I don't have any desire to revisit any of this in the near future.

02:04:10

I've got other things to be dealing with. It would be wise if I took time to explain indulgences to you and the basis within Roman Catholic theology.

02:04:20

I also wanted before I leave to at least do one more CBGM presentation and introduce you to what's called pre -genealogical coherence.

02:04:30

We're doing one little baby step at a time. That would be a whole lot more enjoyable for me.

02:04:36

I didn't like reading this stuff and I didn't like having to read it to you. But when you hear the echoes, the categories in what's being presented in ostensibly reformed context today, do

02:04:59

I want to be doing this? Nope. Nope. I mean, I've got all the wrong last name for even being involved in any of this for crying out loud.

02:05:12

But I guess the reason that we have been involved with it is that we don't have the political connections and interconfusions that keep us from saying what needs to be said.

02:05:33

Because I think anybody who can read the stuff I just read and go, oh, well, incisive theologian, there's a problem.

02:05:40

There's a problem. Big problem. Alrighty. So, Lord Willen, we will see you on Thursday.