Jemar Tisby, Woke Ideology, then Jeff Riddle’s “Shocking” Statements

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is Tuesday, second program in a row where we're going to be doing some responding to the current issues in our culture regarding social justice and the woke church movement and things along those lines.

Let's just dive into that. I do have another topic later on in the program. I want to respond to an article from Dr.

Jeffrey Riddle about shocking things that I said in our debate.

I'll tell you one thing that is interesting to me just in passing is I was just bringing the article up on Dr.

Riddle's website and one of his articles is providing Stephen Anderson's review of some of the material.

And I mentioned on Facebook last night that I have been informed that Stephen Anderson is a part of the

Confessional Bibliology Facebook group. I'm not sure what confession would be, what historic confession might be in reference to there, but evidently the enemy of my enemy makes my enemy confessional or something along those lines.

I don't know. But I just sort of figure if that's where you're going with some of your responses, that only helps me.

That's all there is to that. So anyway, we'll take a look at that. But I wanted to start off.

There are entire books coming out. We were sent a book by Scott David Allen, Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice.

There are books coming out, some that I've read. One coming out from a brother in California, I think is where he is.

I haven't seen it yet, but I read it a number of months ago. So we're slow at getting to these things, but we started responding.

I started responding in 2018. Others were way ahead of that. People are slow to see what's happening and things.

I certainly was. We're seeing it now. But one of my concerns, to be honest with you, is that then creates a bandwagon moment.

And I am concerned that we could end up with a situation where everyone's jumping on the bandwagon and, quote unquote, social justice woke church becomes the new thing that you just blast and say, we need to go get these folks, without having heard what the arguments are.

Then what happens is if you're in your own echo chamber, and we're all in echo chambers right now because of the election.

And let me tell you right now, you will not know who won on November 3rd or 4th or 15th or December 1st.

And that's just a given. You know why it's a given? Because a number of states, Supreme Courts, have already ruled that the mail -in ballots, which are the mechanism by which this election will be corrupted, in my opinion.

I started saying that in March. Mail -in ballots will be accepted,

I think, in one instance, at a major swing state for at least six days. One might be 10 days after the postmark.

Postmarks can never be faked, of course. So those states cannot possibly certify their results for nearly a week and a half after the election as it is.

The Founding Fathers never, ever envisioned anything like this at all. This was not what they had in mind.

Much of what we're seeing is not what they had in mind. And I don't know what the answer to that is, but that's not what we're getting into today.

The point being that we're going to be going into an extremely critical and, for those of us who like things not to change, stressful period of time in the future.

There's no question about that. So anyway, the point is we cannot avoid this.

You'd have to live in a lead mine. Some people don't even know why people say that. Lead stops radio signals, so you can't watch

TV or listen to radio. That was our old days. Yes, even wireless would not work in a lead mine.

We're all in that context. But here's the problem. If you haven't heard out the best of the other side, but you've jumped on the bandwagon that they're bad, and then all of a sudden you get hit either with a person who has and therefore can reproduce their arguments, or just get asked, would you just listen to this?

Would you listen to what this person said and respond to this kind of argumentation?

And then all of a sudden you discover, you know what? These folks have arguments that I didn't know about, and I need to reconsider everything that I've...

In other words, since your arguments against the position were not against the best expressions of that position, then when you see those best expressions, it can really throw you for a loop.

And we've talked about this for years. When we would prepare people to go to Salt Lake City, we would always emphasize the necessity to accurately represent

Mormonism, expect the best answers. When you get bad answers, you've got to be prepared for that too.

But if your presentation was aimed at the best, it should be able to handle the lesser arguments.

But if your presentation was aimed at the lesser arguments and somebody comes along that's much sharper, now your presentation is taken apart.

My concern is in listening to some... Not all. This is not a blank.

There's no blanket condemnations here, anything. I'm just simply warning against the possibility of getting on the bandwagon and not really knowing what the other side is actually saying.

And to know that, especially when we talk about the woke church, when we talk about Christians, and yes,

I believe they're Christians. One of the things that's really dangerous is when people decide that this is going to be the issue they're going to use to then judge the eternal state of everybody else.

As it is with so many things, you need to maintain proper theological standards.

If someone denies the doctrine of the Trinity, then you're talking about a foundational error that removes one from consideration of truly being in Christ.

You've got the wrong God. There's a vast difference between a direct denial of the doctrine of the

Trinity and someone coming along and saying, well, if you believe position

X, then that would mean you'd have to believe. And then you start going down a line, and the seventh point down means, and that might mean you don't really even believe in the doctrine of the

Trinity. You have to be very, very careful at that point, because you're assuming that you're thinking through the relationship of these positions is absolutely perfect, and you're assuming that the person is going to be perfectly consistent in their position.

I've never met such a person, and many times we need to be thankful for the blessed contradictions, the blessed inconsistencies in people's positions.

This is the problem of the hyper -Calvinist. This is the problem of the hyper -Calvinist who says, if you don't function on an acknowledgement of the specific divine election of individuals by God, that the number of the elect is fixed and known to God, if you don't function on the basis of that, then you don't believe, go down a few arguments, in grace at all, and therefore you fall under Galatians chapter 1.

We've dealt with that kind of argumentation before, and we all know people who don't believe in personal election, but do believe in grace.

Is it inconsistent? Yep, blessedly so, thankfully so. So we need to be functioning the same way here.

Some people say, yeah, well, this is all about politics, and this is all, well, it's not just about politics. There is a very, very intimate connection.

There's no question about it. But once it comes within the purview of the church, just this week, a very, very well -known individual in social media and in Southern Baptist life was making strong arguments that people promoting woke ideology should be disciplined in the church.

That requires serious consideration of exactly what woke ideology is and a serious understanding of how consistent the person is in the presentation of this.

I know a lot of people already who have been co -opted into a positive perspective of what this means as to justification and everything related to that.

And so do you just kick them out of the kingdom, I just automatically assume? No. So what we, my, again, my strong,

I don't have that, and so I very highly recommend to people that we focus upon the actual teachings.

So with that in mind, I have a brief clip here from Jamar Tisby. Now, Jamar Tisby would claim a reformed background for a number of years.

He was J. Ligon Duncan's personal secretary, personal assistant. So you're talking about someone from the

RTS family who was one of the founding forces in what was called

RON, the Reformed African American Network, which is now The Witness, a

Black Christian collective. But you will still hear in the words of those folks,

I was listening this morning to Dr. Edmondson, a brilliant Black woman, speaking at Dort University, which historically

CRC reformed, closely associated with Calvin College.

So historically reformed. But you may be wondering why is it that our reformed institutions are now cranking out completely woke people?

Well, there's an answer for that. But these are bright, intelligent, well -thought -through people.

And if you don't realize that, your arguments against what they're saying are going to be fallacious.

They're not going to have the power they need. They're not going to have staying power. They're not going to have staying power.

This is a conflict that is not going to be over with after the election.

This is a definitional style conflict that we're dealing with.

And that means we need to be in it for the long haul, which means we need to have the best argumentation if what we're saying is truthful.

That's why I listened. And no, it didn't make me go faster. I've signed up to do it.

I'm finally going to get that marathon done. I'm not a good runner. I'm a good cyclist.

I'm not a good runner. But I've gotten past some issues that kept me doing more than half marathons in a good way.

And so I've just got to get it done. And so I was doing 12k this morning. And what was I listening to? Could I have gotten it done faster if I'd been listening to Skillet?

Yep, I would have gotten it done faster if I was listening to Skillet. But I was listening to Dr. Edmondson, and it was a well -crafted presentation that I fully understand that students at a college or university, especially students coming out of American educational systems, would find thoroughly convincing.

Thoroughly convincing. It wasn't convincing to me, because I see where the holes in the argument are and where external sources are coming in, and we'll take a look at that.

But thoroughly convincing, well -presented, and therefore our responses have to be up to the task.

And so that's one of the reasons we're taking a look at these. Now, the internet is now filled with woke presentations.

I remember a couple years ago, someone went through and put together, what was it? Three to five,

I forget, three to five videos about social justice and woke ideology in the

PCA. And they're fairly long videos, and I would imagine you could triple or quadruple that now quite easily from these individuals.

But we need to hear what's actually being said and respond to what's actually being said, not just to what we think is actually being said.

So here is a short clip from Jamar Tisby that I wanted to examine today.

Earlier, when I was defining the prophetic voice, I mentioned a kind of prophecy called a prophecy of deliverance.

I talked about Genesis 315, the offspring of the woman crushing Satan under his heel. And I said, test the spirits.

And the way to test a foretelling spirit is to see if it came true. Well, brothers and sister, that prophecy of deliverance prophesied all the way back in Genesis 315 came true.

It came true when Jesus Christ, the son of God, took on flesh and became a person and entered into our experience so that he could identify with us and express solidarity with us.

Jesus Christ announced his public ministry by describing his role as a prophetic foreteller.

He said that he was anointed by God the Father to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the

Lord's favor. That prophecy came true. And because it came true, you now who believe in Jesus enter into that prophetic role of foretelling the truth, even the truth about racism and white supremacy.

And on the cross, Jesus Christ tells those who have been bent low because of oppression, you can stand up straight.

And he tells those who have bought into the myth of whiteness and superiority that you too are in need of a savior.

If you have repented and believed this morning, then despise not the prophetic voice of the black experience.

Amen and amen. Now, that is a conclusion of a talk.

So, that means that there has been much that has come before this.

And by looking at the conclusion, it would be very easy to go, where did all that come from?

And that is the reaction of the vast majority of us. We are familiar with these texts and we have, of course, looked at that context in Matthew chapter 11.

Now, when John, while in prison, heard the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, are you the expected one or shall we look for someone else?

Jesus answered and said to them, go and report to John what you see and hear. The blind receive sight and the lame walk. The lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear.

The dead are raised up and the poor of the gospel preach to them. And blessed is he who does not take offense at me. As these men were going away,

Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John, what you got in the wilderness to see, a reed shaken by the wind, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you have

Jesus taking a catena of prophetic passages and in answer to John's concern, are you the

Messiah? Are you the expected one? Jesus goes to the prophetic fulfillment as answer to John.

Now, there's a lot out of John's sending his disciples and the fact he's in prison and all the rest.

I mean, that's a truly fascinating story and certainly one that we can get a lot of encouragement out of.

But the point is, here you have a text that is vitally important in the early church in light of the existence of John's disciples.

It is a text about prophetic fulfillment. It is a text about the fact that Jesus' ministry was prophesied of old.

It was a text being fulfilled in first century Israel. Hence, issues of the poor and those who are, the dead are raised up and lepers are cleansed, the blind receive sight and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

What is this about? This is primarily about Roman oppression.

It has nothing to do with race. It is purely political. It is not racial.

And of course, there is no biblical, historical, logical connection between anything here and a narrative of a black experience.

And yet, in the conclusion of the sermon, these things all come together and we are all left going, there seems to be an overriding narrative that is driving this.

But here's the problem. We hear orthodox statements, but then you'll get these passing words and applications that we go, and when we hear that over and over again, we begin to accept those associations.

If we do not stop and analyze carefully, the problem is many of us, when we listen to something, we take and we categorize it as a whole without analyzing the elements of its argumentation.

And in fact, in our day, many people would consider it to be either disrespectful, unkind, stilted, being picky, to stop and start a sermon and actually analyze the utilization of biblical texts.

It's none of those things. It's absolutely necessary. It's absolutely necessary. And so,

I want to point out a couple of places. It's only 90 seconds. That's why it's amenable to this type of utilization.

I want to stop and go, did you catch that? Where is this coming from?

Is this not something that needs to be challenged and considered and weighed in the overall, because see, you as a believer have a responsibility before God to analyze what is being said in light of its faithfulness to God's truth.

All other issues have to be put aside. It doesn't matter what color this man is. It doesn't matter whether he is a man or a woman.

Those are your only two choices, however. It doesn't matter what his intersectionality score is.

The issue is the faithfulness of the message to the truth of God.

That's why one of the most destructive elements of the woke church movement is ethnic

Gnosticism, standpoint epistemology, the idea that you don't even have the right to question the conclusions of the black experience if you are not black.

So, if a black person says the black experience is this, and then connects the black experience here to biblical prophecy, if you're a white person, you just sit down, shut up, and listen.

That's what you're told. I've been told that. We've all been told that.

That is extremely dangerous and must be rejected by any faithful follower of Jesus.

You don't do that, but that's what we're facing. So, let's listen to it again.

Only 90 seconds, but this time I'll stop and start. Earlier, when I was defining the prophetic voice,

I mentioned a kind of prophecy called a prophecy of deliverance. I talked about Genesis 315, the offspring of the woman crushing

Satan under his heel, and I said test the spirits. The way to test a foretelling spirit is to see if it came true.

Well, brothers and sisters, that prophecy of deliverance prophesied all the way back in Genesis 315 came true.

Okay, and how many times have we said it is key to any person who claims to be a prophet that there has to be accuracy in what the prophet says.

That's exactly what you have in the law in Deuteronomy. If you say it's going to happen, it doesn't happen.

It's a false prophecy. So, that is a true statement. And the protevangelium of Genesis 315, key biblical concept, key biblical fulfillment, very, very important.

So, we're sitting there going, yeah, yeah, I'm hearing this. It came true when

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took on flesh and became a person and entered into our experience so that He could identify with us and express solidarity with us.

Whoa. Stop the bus for a second. Is that why

Jesus became flesh? That He could identify with us, express solidarity with us?

That's the language of America at the beginning of the 21st century.

That's not the language of historic Christian theology. The reason for the incarnation,

I mean, if all that means is that Jesus truly had to be manned to give that perfect life in behalf of His elect people,

He truly had to enter into, He had to be made like His brethren in all things.

Hebrews 2, Philippians 2, great. But express solidarity is a phrase that is freighted with meaning in the current situation.

The woke church is demanding that whites, whatever that means, we don't get to have any distinctions, it's just whites, that whites must express solidarity with the black struggle.

Whatever the black struggle is. And so this idea of expressing solidarity, again, if all that means is

Jesus had to be truly human, had to have that perfect human nature, had to be truly the

Incarnate One, Sarxageneta became flesh. Okay.

But often they will use terminology, and we'll see this in looking at some written material, where the terms have multiple meanings, and especially meanings that have been particularly crafted within our current context to carry a particular part of the argument that could not otherwise be carried successfully.

Jesus Christ announced His public ministry by describing His role as a prophetic forth teller.

He said that He was anointed by God the Father to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the

Lord's favor. That prophecy came true. And because it came true, you now who believe in Jesus enter into that prophetic role of forth telling the truth.

Okay. You, by believing, enter into that role,

Jesus's role? I wasn't exactly sure.

Again, this is a conclusion, maybe more careful exegesis and foundation had been laid for this someplace else.

But just in what we have here, you have this assertion that when you believe in Jesus, that you enter into this prophetic role.

Now, I do believe that the bride of Christ in proclaiming the lordship of Christ, there is a prophetic element of that.

When you say that when you do it, Paul did on Mars Hill and say, God has set a day where He is going to judge all of mankind by the man whom

He raised from the dead. That is a prophetic announcement on the same level as Jonah saying to Nineveh, you are overthrown.

You're going to be destroyed. God's judgment is going to come upon you. That is a prophetic statement.

I don't know the same category as what was just mentioned.

But so you stop that and you go, okay, exactly what do you mean by this prophetic ministry, so on and so forth.

In the truth about racism and white supremacy. Okay. So there, now that obviously comes from earlier in the sermon.

So some connection had to have been made in regards to what the nature of prophetic teaching is.

And so you have the insertion of racism and white supremacy.

We know that these terms have become so completely overused in our current setting in the

United States that you almost don't even hear them anymore. And one of the main problems is that you have the accusation today that a major portion of the population is guilty of racism and guilty of white supremacy because they breathe.

Not because of any words, actions, attitudes, heart issues, nothing.

You exist, therefore you're a racist. You exist, therefore you're a white supremacist.

And we know that this is the end of any meaningful prophetic preaching. This is not how the prophets preached.

They never were themselves racists in that category.

So they dealt with people groups, but they were political people groups.

They were religious people groups in the sense of those who worship a particular god.

The Egyptians had all of their different gods, and so the Egyptians were dealt with as a group, but there were all sorts of different ethnicities represented by the worship of those gods.

So today, we have a very racist, in the old meaningful definition of that word, that is general statements made based upon a person's ethnic origins that has nothing to do with their character, their intentionality, their own personal history, what they have and have not done, how they have and have not acted, their feelings toward others, their actions toward all that stuff is irrelevant.

That's just put off to the side. Instead, we have this overarching concept of white supremacy that is just simply utilized as the mayonnaise condiment of current cultural argumentation.

Just slather that over everything and cover up any holes in your argumentation by just simply making accusation of white supremacy.

And while that was found in a going back years, it really has exploded into our vocabulary only in the past number of years.

I mean, only a couple years ago, if I had heard someone use the term white supremacy, I just automatically would have gone, was

KKK having a having a rally someplace? The weirdos in the pointed hats figured they'd pretty much gone the way of the dodo bird.

But no, now it's everybody and it's everywhere and it's constant and it's and it's and there you go.

And so racism and white supremacy all of a sudden appear in the middle of a text that you just go, but that's not what

Jesus was talking about. But like I said, this is the end of a sermon, so maybe it functioned in that way.

I don't know. Have we lost Mr. Pierce? Oh, okay.

Well, am I able to continue? Okay. All right. And on the cross,

Jesus Christ tells those who have been bent low because of oppression, you can stand up straight.

Oppression of what? Oppression of what? We need to be very, very careful.

The primary application of the message of freedom in Christ was freedom from the oppression of Satan and sin and death.

Now, if you want to try and make the argumentation that the primary gospel message of the early church was one of political rebellion, of saying to slaves, rise up and kill your masters, good luck making that argument.

That wasn't what the church did. That's not the apostolic argument.

But when people hear someone like Jamar Tisby talking about oppression, it has now been redefined in unbiblical terminology, in completely unbiblical terminology, to where the oppressors are of one color and the oppressed of another color.

The problem is the actual gospel message is for every person of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

And so, to bring in the categorization of oppressed and oppressors from current political argumentation, rather than the context of the prophets, of the gospel, of the early church, is where you start getting complete redefinition.

That's why you have that Bishop Talbert Swan, is that his name? Who can just simply engage in racism that any grand wizard of the

KKK would go, hey, that guy knows how to do it. Yes, that's how we do it. That's the same level of just rabid black supremacy racism.

How does that happen? You allow this kind of redefinition to go to its nth degree.

That's what you've got in James Cone. That's what Cone has given to us. Now, Jamar Tisby is not going to want to, though he's clearly been influenced by Cone, there are many other influences that counterbalance that in certain areas.

And so, he doesn't speak that way, at least openly and publicly, yet I've certainly seen a lot of movement, a lot of movement over the past decade, and maybe that's where it'll go.

I don't know. I have to hope that it won't do that. I have to pray that it won't do that.

Because, I mean, that guy, that quote -unquote

Bishop, wow, there you go. But this is where you have to really consider the words, because if you're just going with the flow, if you're letting the emotions go, if you're letting the cadence of the preaching go, then you're going to hear that phrase oppression, and then that phrase, and you accept it here, and then the next time it's going to be tweaked a little bit farther, and a little bit farther, and a little bit farther, until it's taken on a meaning that no biblical writer could have ever even begun to conceive of.

That's why you have to stop and start, and you have to analyze, and you have to listen.

And he tells those who have bought into the myth of whiteness and superiority that you too are in need of a savior.

Now, the myth of whiteness, I don't even know exactly where to go with that, the myth of whiteness.

Obviously, in my opinion, this concept of whiteness, white supremacy is so malleable, so disconnected from any meaningful data, and once you separate it from the actual actions of human beings, it becomes a theoretical chimera.

It's a fog. It's a mist. It is a worthless, empty concept.

And so, as Christians, we just go, let me look that up in my concordance.

Whiteness, whiteness. Well, there's something about leprosy. I don't think that's what they're talking about. There's a lot of good stuff about, you know, white is snow and stuff like that.

I don't think that's what they're talking about, at least not yet. Well, they do around Christmas time. There are people that think that Christmas is racist, too.

But there ain't nothing in here that corresponds to some concept of whiteness.

You can't define it. Those of us who would be considered, quote unquote, white,

I mean, you've got that one guy. Who's that one guy with BLM or something like that who's actually white, but pretends he's black?

Oh, he's all over the place. I mean, but he's actually a white guy. And, you know, many a summer,

I'll actually be darker than him, but he's a BLM guy. So, the whole thing is stupid. Those of us who would be called white, despite our last names, we make distinctions between ourselves all the time.

I mean, that used to be in the earlier days of the

United States, where there was so much true ethnic animosity.

I mean, when I was a kid, what kind of jokes were popular when you and I were kids? What was the one group?

Pollocks. Right? Pollock jokes. You haven't heard a Pollock joke, and most of you don't even know what one is.

All over the place. Now, blonde jokes are still funny, but that's another issue.

Oh, Italians? It depends on where you were and what group you were in. But, oh, yeah, every group has experienced that.

The Scotch, the Irish, it doesn't matter. But the only people who didn't experience that were the Brits, because they were one of the first ones there.

Of course, then they lost the war, but that's another issue. So, the point is that this whole idea of whiteness, white people make distinctions all the time.

But based upon what? Well, sometimes based upon ethnicity. Not so much anymore. We got past it.

That's a good thing. That was a very positive thing. Being undone right now, dragging us back into those days, but that was actually a good thing.

I mean, it was Archie Bunker. He would do Pollock jokes all the time.

I mean, can you imagine most modern, super sensitive, politically correct people even bringing up a single episode?

They'd just be rocking back and forth going, I can't believe these people once lived on earth.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. That was the 70s, man.

That was, yeah. So, things have changed. Anyway, the point is this whole idea of whiteness just doesn't click with most of us.

And it's not because of your ethnic Gnosticism. And thankfully, there's many a

Black person, many a Hispanic person, many an Asian person who is well aware of the fact that within their communities, you've got people that are hardworking, trustworthy, and people who are not.

And they make the same distinctions. And we need to make those distinctions based upon character and action, not upon pasts, however far back you want to go.

60 years? 100 years? 160 years? 200 years? 500 years? 1000 years?

How far do you want to go? Who makes these rules up anyways, as to how you're supposed to define these particular groups?

So, this whole idea, what is the myth of whiteness? I don't have a clue. And neither does anybody else.

Because there is no such thing. It is a myth. That's right. But we're not the ones that bought into a myth of whiteness, or especially white supremacy.

The whole concept within the church, you have to go, where are you getting this?

Don't talk to me about some postmodern sociologist someplace who's come up with this stuff.

You're in a church. You're standing behind a pulpit. You're talking about the prophetic ministry of Jesus.

Get it out of here. It ain't in there. That's the point. Well, I can cram it in there.

That's the point, too. Because if it is not positively rooted in the necessary exegesis of the text, and that's why

I did find interesting, even though I, again, was very impressed overall with the presentation

I listened to this morning. At one point, I caught this attack upon, well, we have the right hermeneutics.

And they were using that. The primary emphasis of the talk was about George Whitefield.

And Whitefield's movement over his life into what this woman would define as a very sinful attitude on Whitefield's part.

And via Whitefield, so we're going 250 years into the past here, via Whitefield to a statement to Reformed evangelicalism as a whole.

And one of the statements was that these people, these

Pharisees, in essence, will defend being on the other side of where she wants you to be by reference to their hermeneutics and their exegesis and things like that.

There was a subtle knock at that, which often is then joined with what we're hearing in every, okay,

I won't say that. That's always a dangerous word. In almost every seminary in the land today. And sadly,

I would say, I would be surprised if it's not in every Reformed seminary in the land today.

And that is that you need to give place to other voices.

And the presupposition is that there is a special kind of knowledge that can only be obtained experientially that is necessary to the proper interpretation of the written

Word of Scripture. And we're not talking about the Holy Spirit here. We're not talking about the presence of the

Holy Spirit. We are talking about an experience based upon ethnicity.

The terminology will be voices. We need to hear the voices of brothers and sisters from all around the world.

And doesn't who would want to argue against that? Who would want to argue against the idea that you want to hear the voices of brothers and sisters from around the world?

That just sounds so warm. It's like not liking Eminem's or Hershey's Kisses.

There's something wrong with you if you don't like these things, okay? They're just to make everybody feel good and fat.

But that's the idea. But the assumption under that is that there is that if I come to this with the

Holy Spirit of God and a true desire to understand this and to hear

God's Word, I can't do it without other voices.

Not that you need to do it in the context of the church. Not that there's much that we can learn from those who live before us.

I believe all those things. And I have been so blessed by insights from church history and from other cultures.

I have traveled the world. I may never get to do it again, but I did it for a long time. And I truly was benefited by getting to see the world in other places and to see that America is not the center of all things, okay?

That's all a benefit. But that's not what's said here. What's being said here is that there are experiences of particular groups that you must access to fill in what is lacking in your ability in dwelt by the

Holy Spirit and engaging in rigorous exegetical examination of the text.

You still can't get it unless you have all these voices. May I point out that that means no one in history until the past 50 years could have figured all the

Bible out at all because no one could have all those voices. It wouldn't be possible. And there's no one who actually does this.

There's no one who actually does this. Amongst orthodox believers, amongst reformed black men like Jamar Tisby, I really don't think he's putting out much of an effort to make sure to get

Tibetan, Chinese, and Vietnamese interpretation every time he's doing exegesis of the text.

I really doubt that. I really don't believe that. So there's an inconsistency here.

This standpoint epistemology, this idea that I have access to particular levels and kinds of knowledge that you can't because of your ethnicity, very dangerous.

And yet it's behind what you hear. And it sounds so good.

But we've been teaching on this program for decades, decades, that you must analyze the foundations of the arguments that are being presented.

You cannot allow yourself to be first moved by the emotions. God made emotions.

Emotions are good things. They are proper things. They are important things. We want people to be emotionally committed to the truth, but the truth has to come first.

That's why the spoken word comes first. That's why the preaching comes first. That's the supremacy and primacy of preaching.

That's the presentation of the Logos Tustaru, the word of the cross. You have to have the foundation to know what you're committed to and then let the feelings flow, but they must always be subject to and analyzed by that revelation that is found there.

Truly important. It's really important. So we're almost done here. 13 seconds.

That's pretty close to almost done. If you have repented and believed this morning, then despise not the prophetic voice of the

Black Experience. The prophetic voice of the Black Experience.

Now, the biblical terminology is to not despise the spirit of Jesus, prophecy of Jesus, has nothing to do with the

Black Experience and to associate some concept of Black Experience.

And if this was another nation, how about white experience when whites are minorities?

How about the Asian experience when Asians are minorities? Isn't the Black Experience different when the

Blacks are minorities in an Asian place than in a Caucasian space? There are all sorts of minorities, but the scripture does not identify the spirit of the prophecy of Jesus with a minority group.

And once you begin to make those kinds of connections, that's where the true disturbance of the nature of the gospel takes place.

That's where it takes place. And it is not always stated real clearly, and that's troubling.

It should be stated clearly. You can go ahead and take that down. But it's found in the language, and we have to hear these things and have to respond to those things.

I didn't expect to take that long. I was going to get to the

Christianity Today article. Once again, this is by Christina Barland Edmondson.

And as I mentioned, I have a presentation also done by the same individual from Dort College.

That's what I was listening to this morning. And we will get to it.

And I think it's important because it touches on some other aspects. Let me just...

I read a paragraph to you last time. Let me just read you one other paragraph. Well, actually, let me skip down.

She specifically went after, and she talked about the issue of Donald Trump and voting for Donald Trump, and she brought up Al Mohler.

And of course, terminology, well, here, spiritual violence against Black Americans in the political sphere means disparaging and minimizing the faith of Black Christians, appealing to the notion of a singular

Christian worldview. There isn't a singular Christian worldview.

No, not from this perspective. The Christian worldview itself is multiple and variegated because of standpoint epistemology.

It has to be. Something about the seminary president Al Mohler stated in a room filled with white men.

How do you know that? There were no women there.

It was all just white men. We're the only people in the room. Filled with white men that a vote for Trump in 2020 would be most in line with the

Christian worldview. Now, let me just stop for a second. I listened to the briefing, and I was especially focused when, a few months ago,

Dr. Mohler came out and he said, this is not an election about individuals.

This is not an election really about Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, who's the real, obviously, the real candidate.

This is a worldview election, more so than we have ever faced in history, and he is exactly correct.

It's hard for me to even talk to someone who doesn't get that because that is so obvious. The events of the past few years, and especially this year, have made that very, very clear.

But what he stated was that we are faced with the difference between a fundamentally

Marxist view of the world and man and life. So abortion, marriage, sexuality, gender, humanity as a whole, whether humanity has transcendent value that is rooted in our being created by God, or whether we are fundamentally pawns of the state because our individual lives have no transcendent value.

Therefore, the only way to root value is in the decree of the state. Those are about as different worldview positions as you could possibly come up with.

And he said, as a result, this is a clear decision.

I think he's exactly right. Had nothing to do with all I just think Donald Trump is the greatest presidential candidate ever.

I sure don't. He doesn't either. I don't want to speak for him, but I can assure you, he doesn't either.

This has to do with issues of worldview. So here, Dr. Edmondson puts

Christian worldview in scare quotes, as if there could even be such a thing.

Moeller's statement went beyond the partisan and political. Actually, if I stop right again, the grounding of it was neither partisan nor political.

It was theological, resulting in a political statement. His statement was theological, true, with significant implications for the unity of the church in America.

Yeah, that's true as well. As president of the flagship seminary for the largest Christian domination in the

United States, his religious endorsement of a highly controversial president, he actually endorsed the

Republican platform over against the Democratic platform. Known for racist and sexist rhetoric and actions mattered significantly.

Now notice, she's focusing upon that which Dr. Moeller did not. It's misrepresentational, but there's nothing uncommon about that.

Christians debate the appropriateness of religious leaders speaking so openly about their personal support of candidates. So I just sort of stop and say, excuse me, but the black church has been doing that for about 60 or 70 years, openly and without any apology whatsoever, and primarily for Democrats.

I just say that in passing, and it's true, and you all know it's true. And the necessity of other

Christians to fall in line. Well, necessity for what?

For consistency? So we can still have churches? So we can still have freedom to preach the gospel maybe?

So we don't all end up in the same gulag together? And you go, oh, that's crazy.

That's only crazy because you don't read the history from less than 80 years ago. That's the only reason it sounds crazy to you, because it's already happened on this planet from the same people that are trying to do it now here.

My concern, while subtle, knocks at the door of spiritual violence.

Spiritual violence. By saying one's Christian worldview leads to reelecting Donald Trump in 2020, stop, my

Christian worldview does not want to see Marxists taking over the

United States government and doing what they've already openly said they're going to do in creating a one -party system with no opportunity for getting rid of them.

That's what we're talking about. We are talking about the Equality Act. We are talking about forcing churches to either close or hire transgender children's workers.

We are talking about the end of any type of abortion ministry by pain of imprisonment.

We're talking about the end of freedom of speech. We're talking about forced sterilization of eight -year -olds.

We are talking about godlessness on a level that is astonishing. But you never get to talk about that part.

It's always Donald Trump. My concern, while subtle, knocks at the door of spiritual violence.

By saying one's Christian worldview leads to reelecting Donald Trump in 2020, Moeller asserts that faithful Christian theology applied to politics must draw the same political conclusions as most white conservative

Christian men in this country. What does the color have to do with anything? Why is there such a focus?

You see, when I think about this, color has nothing to do with it. I know plenty of black Christians who are well aware of how their community has been absolutely demolished by the leftists in our country and who want nothing to do with any of that.

So why is, we're not the ones that keep bringing up color. This is the group that has voted and will likely vote for Trump in large numbers again.

And of course, we sit over here and say, that's right primarily because I can't vote for communists.

I can't vote for forced sterilization of little boys and girls. I can't vote for transgenderism.

I can't vote for abortion up to the time of live birth. I can't vote for the profaning of marriage.

There are plain biblical mandates here. Has nothing to do with Trump.

I can think of dozens of candidates I would rather have, but they're not there.

They're not there. That's the kind of stuff we're gonna be looking at. Sorry, I wasn't going to go into that, but I just started.

The point is that it goes after Mueller and it's the standard ploys of the left.

I turned the radio on long enough to hear one of those democratic senators. I won't mention which one because I would get in trouble.

Why would anyone want to serve in the highest offices of the land today?

Remember the Kavanaugh stuff? And now here is this woman, obviously extremely brilliant, and obviously far more brilliant than any of the people on the other side of the room, enduring.

I don't even know what to say. How can we expect the best and the brightest to even want to endure the kind of mindless drivel flowing forth from the lips of United States senators?

It is amazing. Okay, sorry about all that. Um, let me get to the other topic that I already said that we would be dealing with today.

I apologize for... I expected to get a little bit farther than I did, but I didn't.

I apologize. Yeah, I'll admit that I didn't see this live, but when

Judge Barrett held up the blank sheet of paper that just simply says the

United States Senate on, it's just a notepad that obviously was passed around. I wonder if anyone sanitized that.

Anyway, that has now already been turned into about 47 ,000 different memes replacing the notepad with Doug Wilson's book and all sorts of things like that.

It's, yeah, we can expect that. Okay, total shift here.

If you want to stretch and grab some potato chips or something like that, total shift in where we're going.

I'll be done by the bottom of the hour. Well, Lord willing. I'm not sure that I...

What? What's that? What's that, Rich? I have witnesses that can tell me what you actually said, actually, so you better...

That's when you're gonna call Jeff? Okay, all right. Jeff isn't feeling well today, so we had a leadership retreat, and evidently,

Kelly and I, being the oldest people that were there, have the widest range of immunity to things.

Everybody else is passing... The kids were passing everything around, and now the adults have picked it all up, and it's lots of fun, so that's a shame.

Well, I might have. I just hope that you're not immunocompromised, so there you go.

All right, on October 7th, so a little while ago,

Wednesday, October 7th, Dr. Jeffrey Riddle posted debate follow -up to two most shocking things said by James White in our debates.

So before I look at what Dr. Riddle considers to be so shocking, let me say that I think the most shocking thing that Jeffrey Riddle said in the debate was that the early manuscript tradition of the

New Testament is insufficient for the reconstruction of the text of the New Testament, which means since, as even

Bart Ehrman says, we have far earlier attestation in the New Testament than any work of antiquity, that means we cannot reconstruct the text of any work of antiquity whatsoever.

There is a level of agnosticism and skepticism in Dr.

Riddle's position that is stunning and is not held by the vast majority of secular scholarship.

The vast majority of secular scholarship will tell you, oh no, we know what the New Testament said, we know what Plutarch said, we know what

Suetonius said, we know what Pliny said. Do we have questions about particular variants here or there?

Of course, the earlier the manuscript tradition, the better, the earliest we have is the

New Testament. So, but to make the kind of statement, to continue to express the kind of purposeful denigration of one of the greatest gifts that has been given to the church today, and that is the papyri, the earliest manuscripts that we have of the

New Testament. When I think of P52, only a few, a couple dozen words written on two sides, a small fragment, what does it demonstrate?

That the Gospel of John, as the Gospel of John exists today, was in circulation and being copied in the first portion of the second century.

Now, Dr. Riddle doesn't deal with agnostics and skeptics and atheists and so on and so forth, and so that doesn't matter.

In the confessional bibliology Facebook group, they don't have to worry about taking the faith out to the world, they're all just in this little huddle, and so we've already got all of our

Bibles and so we can come up with theories that don't have to be defended out there in the mean, nasty world.

And so, I get that, I don't ever want to be a part of that, and I would encourage you not to be a part of that, because that's not what the confessions actually lead us to believe, but there are people like that.

But for those that actually deal with attacks upon Scripture, that kind of information, those treasures that have been given to us, to denigrate that kind of stuff is shocking, it's destructive, it's absolutely reprehensible, and I would warn pastors, when you see people getting into this kind of stuff, you're going to have problems.

Because, you know, I've said for years, if you see somebody carrying Gail Riplinger's book around, you're going to have a problem with that person.

King James -only -ism splits churches. That was the first thing that got me interested. As a teenager, my parents came back from Tennessee and were telling me about this

King James -only movement and how it was destroying churches. That was a while ago.

No one's called me a teenager in a very, very long time. And so, this movement has the same mindset.

It seeks to express itself in a more scholarly fashion.

So, instead of King James -only -ism, it's TR -only -ism. Well, we want to go with the Greek, you know, of course. But the mindset's the same.

And once someone buys into this, in my experience, the vast majority of instances, they will spread that kind of hyper -skepticism and divisive understanding throughout the congregation.

So, be aware that that kind of thing is out there.

It is. So, that was what I thought was the most shocking thing, was other than the demonstration, beyond all question, of the double standards, of the fact that the argumentation for Mark 16, 9 through 20 is not the argumentation for Ephesians 3, 9, and the fact that I point out, if the data was exactly 108 degrees opposite for the longer ending of Mark, it would not make a bit of difference to Dr.

Rayl's position. None. It doesn't matter what the data is. It doesn't matter what the manuscripts are. We could have stopped all textual critical studying in 1633.

Once the Elsevier brothers published that thing, that was it. There was, don't worry about all those catalogs, all those manuscripts, the papyri, the unseals, it doesn't matter.

And not a one of the originators of the TR would have ever dreamed of that.

Neither Erasmus, Stephanus, or Bayes, none of them would be associated with this movement at all. At all.

They would repudiate it. But their authority is, of course, cited, just as none of the

King James translators would ever embrace King James -onlyism. So, that being said, what were the two most shocking things?

The first shocking thing, the first shocking statement, was in response to an odd question that Dr.

Rayl asked me, and that is, do you think that whoever wrote The Longer Ending of Mark was orthodox?

Now, of course, from his perspective, Mark wrote The Longer Ending of Mark. I don't think Mark did that.

That's, in essence, the definitional of the position that I had taken, though I was surprised at how unclear

Dr. Rayl was, even during cross -examination, as to what my position was.

Nobody else seemed to be confused, but he did seem to be confused. And I had said during my opening statement that if you stand in your head at 3 o 'clock in the morning facing north, you can interpret

The Longer Ending in an orthodox fashion. Maybe he didn't understand what that meant.

Some of you don't remember, I remember so very clearly. My parents had, it was a dark brown plastic thing, had a dial on it, and it had the two things coming up out of it, and it's connected to the back of the

TV. And you would have to turn that thing to get the right reception when you change channels.

And, you know, sometimes it worked best when you were staying there holding it. If you put it down, it didn't work, because it was using you as an antenna.

Some of you young folks just do not understand any of this, but this was in the days of broadcast television.

And the point was that I can see how you can try to come up with an orthodox reading of, for example,

The Longer Ending of Marks says Jesus appeared in differing forms, heteromorphic, differing forms to people.

Okay, you can try to come up with an orthodox way of interpreting that, but that's not really an orthodox statement.

And then this whole thing he came up with, this is a great argument for cessationism.

Whoa, man, I hope Michael Brown doesn't hear that. Because, oh goodness, it's really bad.

Especially because the text says, these signs will follow those who believe. Well, that's just about the apostles.

You mean the apostles hadn't believed yet? I mean, it's just standing on your head to try to find some way to make all this fit.

And so I specifically said, The Longer Ending of Mark isn't all that many words.

It's not like that's a real nice long exposition of his theological positions, whoever it was.

But no, it doesn't strike me if you just look at that one thing, if that's all you had to judge somebody with.

Looks like someone who didn't know a lot about the New Testament or was going on oral traditions and only part of them didn't have reference to the rest of the

New Testament, possibly. It may have been written around the same time as the Shepherd of Hermas or the Epistle of Barnabas, and there's some weird stuff in there too.

And so I'm just sort of like, this is pure speculation. I've never made a claim that I know who wrote it.

I don't know when it was written, other than it was written very early. So yeah, no, there's some weird stuff.

He who believes and is baptized shall be saved. Doesn't fit with the rest of New Testament theology and things like that.

Well, that's the first shocking thing, absolutely shocking. And it even puts an exclamation point, it's an unorthodox corruption.

Well, yeah, I think the most consistent reading exegetically, and Dr.

Riddle failed miserably, I think, to provide. I mean, he suggested an orthodox reading, but it wasn't a consistent orthodox reading.

And this thing about the apostles completely failed. He was just wrong. That's indefensible. That was an indefensible assertion.

It says, these signs will follow those who believe. The disciples already believed, so that ain't them.

So anyways, that was shocking. Such a view destroys not only any understanding of the integrity of Mark's gospel, oh yeah, but the entire doctrine of providential preservation.

We might have expected such a statement from an unbelieving liberal, but from an evangelical apologist? What's the connection?

There is no connection. It's all in the fervid mind of the

TR -oneliest, because it has nothing to do with the integrity of Mark's gospel whatsoever.

It has nothing to do with the entire doctrine of providential preservation, unless your idea of providential preservation is that anything that claims to be scripture is scripture.

And so, we might have expected such a statement from an unbelieving liberal, but from an evangelical, empty verbiage that has no meaning.

These are the words of a person who has no argument, has no argument at all. So, the second shocking statement, and this one,

I'm glad I've got 14 minutes or a little bit less to use, has to do, once again, with the mindset that if you don't embrace

TR -onelism, then the Bible could change completely tomorrow. It could become a story about space goddess and Kolob tomorrow.

It could become something completely different tomorrow because of singular manuscript fun.

Dr. Elijah Hickson had already corrected Dr.

Riddle on this issue. He's been corrected a number of times, but will not accept correction in this area.

And I had explained it as well when, I think, on the first night, one of the questions during the

Q &A from people in the YouTube channel had basically said, well, because I had made the statement that if 10 manuscripts of the entire

Gospel of Mark from AD 95 were discovered tomorrow, and they were notarized, and we knew that's where they came from, and they contain all the

Gospel of Mark. Now, that's not going to happen. Be wonderful. Be awesome. But that's highly unlikely.

If that type of a thing had, if it would take place, and the longer ending of Mark were to be found in those manuscripts, that that would be a vitally important piece of information that would have to be taken into consideration and would probably, since there would be 10 of them, would probably mean the longer ending would be accepted as Markan by the vast majority of people who would engage in what's, you know, the production of the critical text.

So, in other words, we are evidence -based.

We're looking at the New Testament and specifically the Book of Mark in history because that's where it came from.

It didn't drop out of heaven on a golden tablet. There wasn't an angel, Moroni or Nephi or whoever it might be, that dropped it off.

God gave it to us in history, and that's how he transmitted it in history as well. On the flip side, if there were 10 notarized

Gospels of Mark discovered from AD 95, and they all ended at verse 8, that would have no impact upon Jeffrey Riddle's position because the manuscript evidence is irrelevant.

The early church fathers are irrelevant. It doesn't matter. That's what

I was illustrating, was that one of us is concerned about the text in history and one of us isn't.

That's all there is to it. So, in light of that, in the cross -examination or in the second debate,

I asked JW something like the following. Yesterday, you noted that if there were papyri discovered to contain the, it says

TE, but it's LE, long writing of Mark, then you would embrace it. I assume the same would apply with Ephesians 3 .9.

Does this mean that you're ultimately not completely sure about whether or not it is right to reject the authenticity of the

TR of this passage? He agreed he would be willing to shift his view on these texts given proper evidence.

So, in other words, ours is an evidence based understanding. However, Ephesians 3 .9

is not in the context of the long writing of Mark. The idea that these folks have is that we're just sitting waiting around for some new manuscript and then we will just make that manuscript the standard of all things.

That's not the case. This has been explained to him. He will be willing to hear.

That's not the case. There is no evidence that Ephesians 3 .9

was a textual variant in the first millennium of the Christian experience.

None. So, that's not going to happen. The long writing of Mark, there's tons of evidence that it's a textual variant.

Jerome, Eusebius, all show it's a textual variant. They say in their days that it was a textual variant.

The long writing itself displays the signs of a textual variant. There are all sorts of variants within the variant.

Within those 12 verses, the text is corrupt. There's all sorts of different readings. Such is not the case in Ephesians 3 .9.

So, no serious scholar is going to try to parallel the two. They're in different categories.

Completely different categories. But that's what you have here. I then asked him, does this mean that every verse in the

Bible is up for grabs, at least theoretically? No, it does not. No one who does textual critical study in any meaningful fashion would accept this kind of argumentation.

This has been explained not just by me. I know Dr. Riddle does not like me, doesn't even want to use my name, and he's not going to listen to a word

I have to say. Okay, fine. But Elijah Hickson has explained this to him.

If he had listened carefully to what Peter Gurry was saying to him, that was explained to him. I think anybody who actually works in this field would explain the same thing to him.

And if they all explain it to him, is he going to reject all of them? It seems so. It seems so.

This is not the case because there is no evidence of variation.

The papyri almost never introduced to us a variant that was not already known from the later manuscript tradition.

They shed a lot of light on key textual variants, but they rarely introduced brand new stuff that was not represented in the majuscules in the later tradition in the second half of the millennium or beyond that.

So there is no reason to believe, and no one functions on the basis of believing.

In other words, even agnostic textual scholars have a higher view of the quality of the

New Testament manuscript tradition than Dr. Riddle does, much higher view.

So this idea that, well, we're going to find manuscripts that just have complete corruption, that's what the

New Agers say. The New Agers are the ones running around saying that the original

New Testament had reincarnation in it, for example. It was taken out of the Council of Ephesus. Okay?

It's the very fact that the manuscript tradition is utterly opposed to that level of corruption that Dr.

Riddle seems to dismiss because Dr. Riddle doesn't deal with New Agers. He's not dealing with that kind of stuff.

He does not defend the integrity of Scripture against anybody but fellow Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians.

That gives you a very, very narrow spectrum from which to be working.

After a good bit of tap dancing around the question, I wasn't tap dancing around anything.

I'm a Baptist. I don't tap dance. JW was never able to name any specific passage about which he might have confident certainty.

So once again, this is exactly what you have in King James onlyism.

You will trade truth for certainty. The truth is God transmitted the text of the

New Testament in history. You trade that away. You come up with a new inspired text from around the time of the

King James translators into the beginning of the 17th century. You make that the standard and say,

I'm certain even though I have zero evidence that that's what Athanasius had when he defended the deed of Christ, I don't care about Athanasius.

I don't care about the Council of Nicaea. I don't care about any part of church history up until Martin Luther.

Ah, maybe I'll go ahead and toss a crumb or two to Wycliffe while we're at it, but let's just be honest.

We're Reformed. It's the Reformation. I confess that just makes my skin crawl.

Really does. I mean, for all my love of the Reformation, for all my love of preaching from Luther's pulpit, deep breath, deep breath, be careful what you say.

There are a lot of Reformed people that are idolaters about the Reformation. Absolute idolaters.

The very fact that when I was in Germany, when I led our group in our

Reformation tour before the 500th anniversary, the very fact that I was one of the few people that the tour people had ever had over there,

Christian church history professors that told their entire group, by the way, most of the men we're going to be studying would not have extended to us the hand of fellowship.

In fact, some of them would have had us drowned. Some of them might have thrown us into a hole to die.

The very fact that there are, there's clear evidence that the

Reformers held certain views on certain things that we would go on today shows that we have turned the

Reformers and the Reformation into an idol. When you don't tell the truth about it, you end up creating a caricature, a cartoon.

And when you turn the Reformation somehow into this magical time, where the printed edition of the

Greek New Testament becomes the new inspired standard, and therefore we can have certainty.

Well, there you go. You've got your certainty. It's not truth, but you're certain of it. You're certain of it, and you're not the only people who do it.

You get angry when I point out to you, I've seen this attitude before. The Muslim with the

Quran, the Mormon with the Book of Mormon. Hey, if you disassociate your text from history and turn it into some newly inspired thing where you can't defend it, and it just simply has to be accepted, what is the difference?

There is no difference. And that's what really, really angers you. And that's why the confessional bibliology

Facebook group is going to be hopping tonight. And that's fine.

What? Oh, yeah. So, it's interesting.

Shocking statements from me weren't shocking at all. It was just saying the New Testament was given to us by God in history.

What he said was, we don't know what the New Testament was unless there is some providential re -inspiration of the text during the

Reformation, which because we all know, the Reformation was all about that. Luther would look at this and go, what are you people talking about?

Don't have a clue. Don't have an idea, but that's where we are. Okay. Alrighty. So, there you go.

There's the program for today. My plan is to be with you again on Friday, and I will seek to get at least the

CT article, the rest of the CT article at that particular point in time, as well as other things that are relevant because something tells me something will happen between now and Friday too.

It seems to be what's going on these days. But I appreciate you taking the time to listen today. Hope it was useful to you.