James Cone Eulogized, Andy Stanley Unhooks the Old Testament, Open Phones on a Ton of Topics

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Hope you can hear us well today, see us well today. Rich is playing with stuff, so who knows what's going to happen with that. I can't show you anything today, that's broken for the moment, but I can play stuff for you.

I wasn't playing, I'm showing you something. Though, showing you Clementine's pictures from Facebook would have been sort of fun, because it's sort of like how most people look at me when I start explaining CBGM to them.

But this could be like seminary professors. It's pretty much the same look Clementine had in these pictures, but I can't show them to you. You can go look for them, something like that. Anyway, a few things to get to, and then we'll open up the phones, sort of how we've been doing things.

I don't know how many programs there's going to be between now and August. I forgot that I had said I'd be willing to do something, because I hadn't gotten final confirmation on it. I said, yeah, yeah, okay, and then I hadn't gotten final confirmation, so I didn't put it in my calendar.

Whoever keeps my schedule should be shot, and of course that would be me. I don't have a secretary, I don't have someone that does that stuff too much for me, and so I just got confirmation, and I'm excited about doing it.

I'm not going to mention it right now, simply because there are just so many people out there. The only life they have is causing problems for me, and so I'm just not even going to give them something to be doing, but I'm going to be teaching at a major university in June, and it butts right up against a trip to Dallas.

I'm going to be with Emilio Ramos at his church in the middle of June, and all I can say is I get like four days home after this next trip, and then I'm gone for a week and a half, and then I think I get 10 days home, then I'm gone for three weeks.

Just insanity, just craziness, but I'll be missing a lot of the Phoenix heat. I'll just come back for the worst of the Phoenix heat. I'll be here through all of August and preaching most of that, so yay.

I'm going to count the I'll be perfect and honest with you's on the DL today. You're welcome. What are some of my other favorite phrases? Dollars to donuts. I'll bet you dollars to donuts is a common one, and then there's another one that...

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah. Okay, yeah, but there's another one that I use a lot of, too, that people play games with.

Verily and sundry?

Various and sundry. Yeah, various and sundry is a good one. Yeah, various and sundry is a good one. She was probably typing it while you were saying it. Yeah, various and sundry. They're Midwestern stuff that I got from my youth, and that's just the way it is.

I love Milo Hotzenbuehler. Yes, I say that all the time. We need to have Milo back on. It's been a couple years since we had Milo on, so we'll have to see if we can... Because it's tough to get him, because he's a rock star, so it's tough to get him.

You know, I'm really glad to be sitting here and feeling okay, because I got my inoculations a couple hours ago from my trip to Zambia, and I'm now immune to everything. If it can kill you, I'm now immune to it, except for malaria, which you have to take those meds.

I'm really bummed, because the pastor of the church in Belfast, did I tell you about this? I was talking to him on Facebook, and he's like, Dude, I went to Zambia, and I couldn't even take it. It was so bad, I just had to risk malaria.

That's encouraging. I hope I don't end up... I suppose if it just gets really bad, you just bathe in insect repellent, and just hope for the best. We will see. Anyways, let's get to our stuff here. I'm going to get to Andy Stanley in a moment.

Race, Transgender Rhetoric, and the Politics of Oppression

I want to read something to you. And make some application here. I know this is going to... I'm reading somebody else, so this isn't me. I know this is going to get me in trouble, but it must be said.

What so many people don't understand is this. There is a kind of ideology and worldview that literally leads to the deaths of transgender people. When transgender people support or defend this narrative, it isn't just differing opinions.

They are fueling ideas that are killing people. They are supporting and helping fuel narratives that are literally leaving transgender people traumatized and oppressed. It infuriates me when I hear people say, Oh, you can't handle other transgender people who disagree with you.

It is so utterly ignorant, and it speaks to how little people understand the impact of ideas. I have no problem having other transgender people disagree with me, but when narratives are supported and defended by transgender people that are literally destroying the transgender community, I can't stand by.

Tokenism kills. It oppresses. It fuels devastation within the transgender community because it vindicates oppression and marginalization. When transgenders side with the narrative of oppression against their own communities, it destroys.

This will be my last thread on transgender-related issues for a while, but before I depart from the subject, this is a point that needs to be made clear. I have not sacrificed and lost all that I have because of petty disagreements and differing perspectives.

The reason why I and many others have been willing to put so much on the line to discuss these things is because we see the deeper cost of not pressing against the ideas and even other transgender people who have chosen to press forward narratives that devastate other transgenders without their privileges.

Now, we have heard this kind of rhetoric for quite some time now. You can put transgender in there, and we are told that if you address transgender issues, if you say that there's anything wrong with transgenderism, you're going to kill people.

You could put the term homosexual in there. But the whole idea is to chill or to silence discussion of certain issues by saying that one side is literally killing the other. Not in the sense that anyone is taking a gun and going out and shooting someone, but the idea now is, well, there are things that you can say that will result in suicides, that will result in encouraging other people.

If you oppose homosexuality, then that might encourage someone to be violent toward a homosexual or any of these things. Now, what is never said is to put the word Christian in it. So no one ever talks about, well, if you say things like that, then you might encourage people to be violent toward Christians or something.

No, it only goes one particular direction. Now, what I just read, I edited. Because what I just read was a series of one, two, three, four, five, six tweets from Kyle J. Howard that were posted on May 7th.

And I replaced transgender people with people of color or race. But it was the exact same narrative. I said a few weeks ago, I said, what's odd is I get treated by those pushing the racialist agenda the same way that I get treated by those pushing the LGBTQ agenda.

They're using the same categories, the same forms of argumentation. They're chilling speech in the exact same way. They're drawing from the exact same well and playbook. And they are. There's no question about it.

Now, what's fascinating is that at the very same time, it's funny, it was Kyle Howard that said, I don't agree with James Cone. I don't buy into that type of thing. I come from a different perspective.

But just today, if you will go over to the Kingdom Diversity website at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, you will see a newly posted podcast. Cortland Perkins discusses the life of James Cone and his value for evangelicalism with Dr. Strickland.

And I'd like to just play a just a, you know, just a brief section here. There are a lot of people that said, yeah, come on. Cone was just so far out there. That stuff you read, he was very clearly a racist, very clearly, you know, just so far out there.

And just to remind you, in case you didn't catch, you know, previous stuff or you didn't hear that program, just one little quote from A Black Theology of Liberation by James Hal Cone. 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.

The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods. The god of black liberation will not be confused with a bloodthirsty white idol. 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.

Just one of many, many, many quotations that to any fair-minded, rational person are deeply racist from a black perspective. There is a tremendous amount of black racism. Can you imagine if you had someone saying something similar from a white perspective and that person died to hear podcasts being put up about how wonderful that person was in the modern context?

Wouldn't happen. Couldn't happen. But a black racist is lauded. Why? Because he was at Union Theological Seminary. If you don't know theological seminaries, you might go, well, theological seminary is a theological seminary.

No, Union is about as—. If Union were an aircraft, it would have two left wings. And as a result, as a seminary, flies about as well as an aircraft that has two left wings. And a left—the rudder always jammed to the left.

And only a left wheel. You're getting the idea. The prop only works on the left side. Not sure exactly the physics of any of this, actually, when you think about it. Exactly. That's the issue. Yeah, someone's telling me to bathe in deet.

Yeah, I get that. Anyway, this is just a brief section from the podcast that was posted today from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Let's just listen a little bit. We really hadn't seen someone who waves that banner, that vocational banner in African-American trappings.

And so he is a precedent for me personally, because he's the first one to sort of break through that barrier to be able to go into an environment where he was a minority and then still not lose the uniqueness of his cultural background in the process.

Because prior to him, there probably was a couple of people who are black and white spaces and theological spaces, but they were so forced by the dominant culture to lose the uniqueness of their African-American-ness in that environment.

Their writings and their engagement almost just parroted the dominant culture. So he's really a precedent to me about, okay, this is how you exist in those spaces without losing who you are. Now, what I find so concerning about this is, how did he maintain his culture by being wildly racist?

I don't understand. How is that a positive thing? I mean, I'm not going to go back and read all that stuff again. It was depressing to read all of it, but you can read it for yourself. It's right there in print.

It's available to all of us. The gentleman mentioned, I would disagree with him about the atonement and about his view of scripture. Yeah, and the Trinity and the deity of Christ and the resurrection of Jesus.

The man was not a Christian. If you call that kind of teaching Christian, then Muslims are Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses are Christians and Mormons are Christians. We're all, everybody is, just let's not even worry about this whole idea of, well, he was a systematic theologian.

Well, he read systematic theology. I'll grant you that. But wow, when you compare a B .B. Warfield with a James Cone, not even on the same planet as to communicating Christian truth. And I've not had anyone argue against this from a meaningful perspective.

In other words, saying, oh, here, here is where he accurately. I mean, when you identify the Holy Spirit as Blacks violently revolting in the inner cities, the Black God, the Blackness of Jesus. What can even be said in response to him like that?

And this is what's coming out of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Troubling, very, very troubling indeed. So there is a, there continues to be a lot of stuff there. You're grabbing a microphone?

Yeah, I'm grabbing a microphone. I didn't get a chance to share this with you yesterday or today. But I was having a conversation with a local pastor who's been listening. And he said this whole thing has troubled him greatly.

And the most of all is that it has caused him to have a lens now when he walks into his church that he did not have before. And he said, this, he says, I feel dirty. This has scandalized me because now I'm looking for things in my congregation, which is a mixed congregation, that I never, ever considered before.

But now because of the things that these people are saying, and the responses that we're being forced to have to formulate and give.

You're running a filter, even as you're preaching and teaching.

I'm walking in, and these people that I love so dearly that I've come to know so well, I'm looking at them in a way that I believe is so sinful. Because I've been forced to have to see something through this lens.

I'm not sure what, in a way that is so sinful.

Well, in other words, he's noticing color. He's noticing the distinctions on the outside when that was never his paradigm before, ever.

Nor should it be, but there's no way, there isn't any way to avoid it. Once you are, and that's the whole purpose of this. That is the whole reason for it, is it is destructive of the unity of the Church.

And it forces you into a paradigm of constant filter running. And yeah, it's extremely problematic, and I understand that. And I'm sorry, believe me, I'm still learning lots of terminology. For example, my daughter put a post up on the Sheologians page about allyship.

Allyship. And I guess that's the new, well, I remember when Kyle Howard said last year, and I hadn't seen it until I was following tweets back on another subject, when he said last year that I am not an ally.

Well, okay, I understand, but now there's a word allyship. And I guess it's prominent amongst the ladies. And this discussion is going on amongst Christian women as well. Some of you saw the, was it TGC that was having the women's thing, and they were going to have a breakout session, a session only for women of color.

And a bunch of people jumped on that and said, excuse me? You can have a melanin meter at the door? I mean, how do you, is there a way, is there an app on the iPhone that you can put it up to someone and they pass or don't pass as far as sufficient amount of melanin?

You could do that with an iPhone, you really could. The camera is quite excellent, so you probably could come up with a way of doing that. But what if they put makeup on? Are you a woman of color if you're using makeup?

That's a question. Anyway, there was such a pushback on it that they went, oh, no, no, okay, all right, never mind. Everyone's welcome, everyone's welcome, because everybody has a color. And this is such an American thing.

It's an American thing in this particular embodiment. You go to other cultures, and unfortunately, the people who are pushing these paradigms will just shift the words. They'll just shift to whatever color or ethnic group or whatever you want to make it.

The whole thing is to divide people. It's to divide people, and that's got a basis in other things. So allyship, so if you're not woke, you're not a part of the allyship. This is going to come to a head next month.

It's going to come to a head next month because there has already been an announcement that there is going to be another resolution. Resolutions just accomplish so many things, but there is going to be a resolution introduced at the Southern Baptist Convention, which does make mention of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.

On April 4th, 1968, affords our nation and our churches an opportunity for reflection, repentance, and renewed resolve toward racial unity. But there also are such phrases as our associations of rightly disfellowshipped churches that insist on excluding from fellowship anyone on the basis of race or ethnicity.

And then you have toward the end that we maintain and renew our public renunciation of racism in all its forms, including our disavowal of any attempt to distort or misappropriate the Bible to justify this evil.

We confess before the watching world that ultimately is only through the power of the gospel. And that we declare our abhorrence for any cooperating SPC church that tolerates or advocates racism. And so the question has gone out, how are you defining racism?

Because I've been accused of it. We're already seeing people who will not accept the racialist lens and the racialist agenda that was promoted at T4G and the MLK 50 thing. So people who say, excuse me, exegetically, when we go to Ephesians 4, we go to Colossians 3, there's problems here.

No, no. Is that racism? So is this going to be used to talk about the abhorrence of any cooperating SPC church that tolerates or advocates racism? I don't know if there is a plague of SPC churches in the South that won't allow black members.

If there is, that would definitely need to be addressed without any question. But what does racism mean? I think there needs to be a definition of what that means. Because we're seeing that term, it's used as a blanket insult of anyone who will not buy neo-Marxist phraseology in oppression, marginalization, all the standard stuff that is part and parcel of this movement.

There is tremendous reason to question the utilization of it today and the motivation for it. Is that now racism? It needs to be defined. It needs to be defined openly, I think. So it'll be interesting to see what's going to happen with that and with who's, you know, Danny Akin is one of the people that's promoting it, as is Dwight McKissick.

So obviously those are two people very much in the racialist camp promoting the racialist lens as a necessary aspect of Christian unity. So it will be very, very interesting to see what will come up from that.

The Old Testament, the New Covenant, and Andy Stanley’s View of Scripture

Now, switching gears. How long ago was it that we played the Andy Stanley sermons? Seems like it was about a year ago. As you get older, that time goes by real fast. And at that time, you know, we were talking about his views of the inspiration of the Bible and the unity of Scripture.

There isn't much new in this, but it does once again illustrate that theology matters. And really, in a sense, this is just another example of the reason that we do meaningful exegesis, the reason that we study backgrounds, the reason we study biblical languages, is to give us as many tools and options as possible to filter out our own unbiblical lenses.

We all have unbiblical lenses. When we are raised within a particular context, we are given a set of lenses by that context. And every serious believer is called to examine those lenses. And some people say, you can't examine your lenses.

Yes, you can. If the Scriptures are what the Scriptures are, and the Spirit is who the Spirit is, yes, you can. And the reason that we study the languages and study backgrounds and do things like that is not, as some people say, to reinforce those lenses, but to give us the tools to identify them and to seek to have godly lenses, the appropriate lenses that would be given to us.

This goes back to Dave Hunt saying to me, James, I have no traditions. Yes, actually, you do. And if you don't recognize that you have traditions, you are probably a person who is going to be in tremendous slavery to your traditions.

And when we look at where Andy Stanley is going, I tweeted this morning after starting to read some of what he had said about unhooking the Old Testament from Christian experience. I said, it's not going to be long.

It's going to be five years. He's going to be sitting around sipping coffee with Peter Enns. And then someone sends me a tweet where Peter Enns had tweeted to him about one of his sermons. Hey, that's really great.

So it's too late. They're already sipping lattes at Starbucks. So I listened to this and I want to just play a few sections because what we hear in Andy Stanley is what happens when the foundations start breaking down.

It is your mere Christianity concept joined together with a deteriorating view of Scripture. The result ends up being a way off base view of God's law, a form of antinomianism. And of course, he was exposed to antinomianism in his days at Dallas.

This was back in the days of Zane Hodges and Norm Geisler. When we hear what Andy Stanley does with the Scriptures here, the eisegesis that he presents is very much on par with the outrageous eisegesis of James 2 from Zane Hodges.

I mean, you really have to work so hard to get James Chapter 2 to basically say the opposite of what James 2 actually says. Well, that's sort of what ends up happening here, too. So I'm going to play this a little fast, 1 .2, so we can get through it a little bit quicker and we can get to the phone calls when we open the phones here.

But let's listen to some of what Andy Stanley had to say.

See, when you read the Old Testament, when you read the Old Covenant, when you read the story of Israel, when you read the prophets of Israel, you don't see much of this. It's I will if you will, I will if you will, I will if you will.

That was God's contract with the nation. We believe it is through the grace, but here's the subtle part. We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, this is so big, that we, we Jews, are saved just as they are.

Now, what's troubling in all of this is because Pastor Stanley does not differentiate between ceremonial law and the moral law, does not seem to recognize that the New Testament writers fundamentally assume the continuing validity of moral law.

It is just a given. When Paul writes to the Corinthians, they're supposed to know that incest is wrong, even though there's nothing in the gospel accounts about that. For what reason? Because it's said specifically in Leviticus 18 and 20 to be wrong.

It's a given. The moral law remains in effect. It's what defines the sexual behavior of Christians, etc., etc. That's gone in Stanley's understanding. That is completely rejected. And here the idea is, well, you don't see in the Old Testament much about the grace of God.

But, man, I'm not even sure, what do you do with chesed? What do you do with the fact that chesed, God's loving kindness, which is His grace, His covenant faithfulness, is used more times in the Old Testament text than agape, love, is used in the New Testament.

What do you do with that? It is a horrifically imbalanced view of what is there, and it's inexcusable with our New Testament insights to miss the beauty of grace that's found in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, in the prophetic promises of the coming of the Savior.

It's just, it's hard to hear that kind of thing coming from a pulpit, something I've been fighting against for so long.

Letting go of and setting aside the traditions, the scripture that we grew up with.

Now, notice what he just did. Letting go the traditions, the scripture that we grew up with. Those are two different things. Those are two different things. Jewish tradition and the Tanakh are not the same things.

I mean, what is amazing here is the utter lack of careful, consistent distinctions that must be made to build a meaningful New Testament theology in regards to its relationship to the Old Testament. It's astounding.

Letting go of and setting aside the traditions, the scripture that we grew up with. It took him 20 years, but Peter finally figured out that Christianity was not Judaism. 2 .0. This was not an add-on.

It was a stand alone, say goodbye to the past, new.

Say goodbye? I mean, you want absolute disjunction. This is absolute disjunction. What happened to fulfillment? What happened to a meaningful interpretation of telos as Christ, the end of the law? Telos is not end as in this, it's fulfillment.

It's as in goal. But this is complete disjunction.

Jesus was not an and. Jesus was an instead of no mixing and matching, no blending, no little bit of Jesus, no little bit of Moses. It was Jesus only, the law of Moses, God's covenant with Israel was a means to an extraordinary end.

Now, again, I think a lot of this goes back in some ways, but now it's taking on even more ominous shades with a move to the left. But it fits with the antinomianism of Dallas back in the day, the anti-lordship stuff.

You know, when you can have Wilkins presenting the stuff that he presents as if that's sola fide. Faith without repentance, faith without lordship, faith without change. You can see where some of this actually is coming from, but taking on a new form.

And abstain from sexual immorality.

Okay, now here he's talking about, okay, so what does James do? He says, you know, abstain from blood, things strangled, offered and sacrificed to idols. And rightly says these were things that were meant to promote unity within the church.

He's correct about that. But then, and sexual immorality. And now you've got a problem. How do you define that? How do you define that? How are you going to define sexual immorality?

And abstain from sexual immorality. Now, if I were to hand everybody a three by five card, and I were to say, tell me what you think this means or what this means to you. How many different answers would I get?

About as many answers as there are cards, right?

So, yeah, the idea is, well, this is a, you know, sexual immorality. It's just vague. Unless you like read James or read Peter or read Paul, where they consistently in all of their writings draw directly from the moral law, quoting from the Greek Septuagint to define these things. Then it's not ambiguous at all.

But that's not what he does. That's not what he does. It's amazing what he does here.

This was a this is so important. This was a general call to avoid immoral behavior, but not immoral behavior as defined by the Old Testament or the Law and the Prophets. Why? Because they didn't have one.

They weren't Jewish, but as defined by they didn't have one.

Which is why all the apostles kept writing to all their churches quoting from it. I'm just I'm sitting here going, what is he talking about? What do you mean they didn't have it? The Greek Septuagint was the Bible of the early church.

The New Testament is filled with quotations of it. What do you mean they didn't have it? That's what planet has this theology landed from? I'm just.

Or the Law and the Prophets. Why? Because they didn't have one. They weren't Jewish. But as defined by the Apostle Paul who had been teaching in Antioch for two or more years.

What do you think? What scriptures do you think Paul was teaching for two years in Antioch? What do you think? How central? How central to the teaching of the Apostle Paul do you think the Greek Septuagint was?

Can we determine that?

Yeah.

Look at his sermons. And look at his epistles. And it's quoted all over the place. Quoted all over the place. So if that's the means by which we can determine how central that was. What was he exegeting?

What was he teaching? Oh, but you can't exegete or teach the resurrection and the life of Jesus from that. You can the prophetic passages as he did so often. I'm not saying that's all they had. There is the work of Jesus, but there is a perfect consistency between these things.

And do you know what the Apostle Paul consistently tied sexual behavior to? Not the Old Covenant. Not the Ten Commandments. The one commandment that Jesus gave us. That you are to treat others as God through Christ has treated you.

So when Paul talked about relationships, he said stuff like this. In your relationships to one another, in your relationships with one another, have the same attitude as Christ Jesus. Any questions? Kind of covers it, doesn't it?

That is the section from the Carmen Christi in Philippians 2. Where Paul is exhorting the Philippians to act in humility of mind toward one another. He wasn't addressing sexual immorality. What kind of outrageous eisegesis is that?

Is there no one there that can say, excuse me, Andy, but that's not what that was about. And here's example after example after example after example where Paul did exactly what you said he didn't do.

Now, maybe you figure that people are listening to you are never ever going to question you, but how do you do this? Stunning. Absolutely stunning.

The Apostle Paul was explicit and specific about teaching on sexual immorality, but he did not tie it to the Old Testament.

Yes, he did. Ask the Corinthians. Ask the Ephesians. Ask in any instance where he is addressing this issue. How about his vice list? He has lots of vice lists. Oh, he uses, oh, well, wait a minute, Romans.

Oh, but that's drawn directly from the Greek Septuagint. And that's from the Old Covenant law. Oh, you see what he's doing here. And again, it's the error of the anti-lordship, anti-repentance folks is he's putting the idea of ceremonial law and ceremonial fulfillment of the people of Israel.

And that's not how you get saved. He's conflating all that and forgetting that God has revealed his law. And there is a moral law and that Paul says that is a good law. It's good and righteous. And the fulfillment of Jeremiah 31 in the New Covenant is the writing upon their hearts of God's law.

What law would that be in Jeremiah 31? But this is in the New Covenant. What law is written upon the heart? Oh, it must be Jesus' law. And it's, you know, think of others as, be like Jesus. Okay, there you go.

And the result is no one has any earthy idea of. Track with me for a second. In five years or less. How is Andy Stanley going to stand against the tide of the LGBTQ flood? The redefinition of gender. How's he going to stand?

He has no grounds. Knox, stop tweeting me. That's what's going on there. Anyway, that's not tweeting. It's in channel, but I don't know how to turn that off.

Sorry about that.

Anyways, let's press on here. Oops, got to go here.

The Old Covenant, the Old Covenant law of Moses was not the go-to source regarding sexual behavior in the church. More importantly, and perhaps more disturbingly, if that's a word, or offensively, the Old Testament, or the Law and the Prophets as they called it, was not going to be the go-to source for any behavior in the church.

Now, to make this point, because this is so important, originally in my notes, I was going to put a screen up here that said, in other words, that means thou shalt not obey the Ten Commandments. But I knew someone would take a picture of that.

And it would define me for the rest of my life. So I'm not going to put it up there. But I want you to hear me say it. Here's what the Jerusalem Council will say to the Gentiles. You are not accountable to the Ten Commandments.

You're not accountable to the Jewish law. We're done with that. God has done something new. Besides, he would say to them and he would say to you, thou shalt not obey the Ten Commandments because those aren't your commandments.

Yours are better.

Which is why nine of the Ten Commandments are repeated in the New Testament Scriptures, is because they're not relevant anymore, maybe. This is what happens when you can't tell the difference between not trimming the corner of your beard and not committing adultery.

When you can't differentiate between ceremonial and moral, absolute insanity follows. And that's what you have here. The Scriptures that the New Testament Church held to, the only Scriptures they had, were actually being told were irrelevant.

They didn't matter. They could not provide any type of ethical or moral foundation for the Church. Now, this is a wildly unique perspective outside of Martian and the Gnostics and people like that. But as far as within Orthodoxy, way, way, way, way out there.

Everything's new. And finally, 20 years after the Resurrection, Peter and James and John and Barnabas, they detached the Church from Judaism. Not because there was something wrong with Judaism, but because Judaism, the law of Moses, was a means to an extraordinary end.

Besides, the Old Testament prophets predicted it. Besides, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said, I've fulfilled it. I've landed that plane. I've completed that assignment.

Now, Jesus said that anyone who teaches you to ignore these commandments, to break these commandments, is the least in the kingdom of God. And each one of these apostles that allegedly were disconnecting the Church, you know, Judaism in the sense of Pharisees or something, fine.

That's different. Again, no proper distinction is being made here. The very essence of the preaching and teaching grounded in God's revelation in the Tanakh, in the Torah, the Nevi 'im, the Ketuvim, the Law, the Writings, the Prophets.

Actually, it would be Prophets, Writings, there. But that is the essence. And that's the essence of what the early Church was studying, proclaiming, the foundation of the Gospel. It's all there. And here we're being told, nope, nope.

Took them 20 years, but they've finally unhooked the wagon. As if up to this point in time, they had had this sort of mixed idea. Yeah, God is having to deal with Peter and others with visions and stuff to get them to see the prophetic reality that, yes, the Prophets had said that what God was going to be doing was going to be for the whole world.

But they were getting over tradition. That's not getting over Scripture. If you can't tell the difference between the tradition and the Scripture, you've got a serious problem. I've only got a couple more quotes, so let's go ahead and open the phones at 877 -753 -3341.

877 -753 -3341 is the phone number to take your phone calls today on the program. I got, like I said, a couple more quotes from Andy Stanley. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. Let me get back to the right screen here.

And two more quotes.

Because many have lost faith. Many have lost faith because of something about the Bible or in the Bible, the Old Testament in particular. Once they could no longer accept all the historicity of the Old Testament, once they couldn't go along with all the miracles, once somebody poked a hole in the Genesis creation, you know, myth, once all that went away, suddenly their house of cards faith came tumbling down because they were taught it's all true, it's all God's Word, and if you find one part that's not true, uh-oh, the whole thing comes tumbling down.