The Goal of Progressive Evangelicals

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I'm going to answer a question, or try to at least, from a patron this morning on the end goal for progressive evangelicals.

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The end goal for progressive evangelicals. What are they trying to do? What is Russell Moore and Tim Keller and all the rest of them, what are they trying to accomplish by siding with or ingratiating themselves to the side of the aisle politically that wants to cancel them?

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Why would they try to have a partnership there? And this confuses a lot of people, I think, because they think, well, hold on, doesn't the

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ERLC and the Southern Baptist Convention have traditional views, biblical views on sexuality?

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If so, then that's way out of step with the Equality Act and the Democrats. And why would you then try to ingratiate yourself to Biden?

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And so some people have spun theories about this. Well, they're just trying to keep their enemies close, right?

00:52

It's a strategic thing. And it's about survival. They're trying to survive by showing their good will to enemies on race issues or something like that, on gender issues, so that when it comes to sexuality, then they won't be canceled.

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So it's kind of this mechanism for longevity and trying to maintain some kind of a platform or credibility in the eyes of the

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Democrats and the liberals, progressives, whatever you want to call them, the revolutionaries, as I sometimes call them.

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And I think there's some merit to that. I actually think that's probably the gist of it. There's other theories about maybe this is actually who they really are.

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Tim Keller really is a progressive. He really does believe what progressives believe.

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And he's been a wolf in sheep's clothing in the church for a long time. He doesn't actually believe the ethics of the

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Bible. And here, I'm just going to tell you what I think up front before we go through all this slideshow with all sorts of information.

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I think there's a mixed bag going on. I think there's enough room for people who are covert within the church.

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There's enough room for people who are trying to, in ignorance, honestly, stupidity sometimes.

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The word that Stalin uses, useful idiots, they're ingratiating themselves to someone that's going to harm them.

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You see this in abusive relationships on a micro level. People who are abused, wives abused by their husbands.

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Potentially, they can get into this situation where they blame themselves and they always are trying to prove themselves to their husband or something like that.

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It doesn't have to be wives and husbands. But whatever analogy you want to use on a micro level, you can see this in counseling situations.

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I think there's enough room for a lot of different explanations. Ultimately, though, I think the bird's eye view, the trajectory this is going, it's very similar to what happened in Germany in the 1930s and early 40s when you had a progressive wing called the

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German Christian Movement in the German Christian Church. You also had then the Confessing Church.

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The Confessing Church was largely filled with people who were pretty weak, honestly. They were affected a lot by Neo -Orthodoxy and Pietism.

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They didn't really fight the German government that hard. They were more concerned about ecclesiology.

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And so they just didn't want the German government coming into their church and telling them what to do. You got to take your Bible out and put a

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Mein Kampf there and put a swastika up. Hey, that's not your business government. That was kind of more their concern.

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And you have your Bonhoeffers and others who are a little more aggressive. But overall, that's the Confessing Church.

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Then you have the German Christian Movement. The German Christian Movement was a lot like today's woke church. They ingratiated themselves to the

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Nazis. They really did become apologists for the Nazis, justifying what they were doing, their policies based on twisted scriptures.

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They downplayed scriptures that would have contradicted the Nazis. They tried to take things out of their hymn book that would have been offensive to Nazi thinking.

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And so this is who they were. And so I see those two things working out themselves here.

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And I want to go through some examples of, I think, what's happening in the world, what the reaction is to that, why we're going down this path, in other words.

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And then what are some alternatives? Practically speaking, we don't want to fall into either of those pits.

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We want to be bold, steadfast, strong, trusting in the

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Lord, and have a full -fledged public theology to be able to deal with what's happening from a

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Christian standpoint and from an ecclesiastical church standpoint. So we wear different hats.

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We're members of churches. Some of those who are listening are leaders at churches. You're pastors. And then you're also

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Christians. So sometimes what you do within the church and what you do as a Christian can be a little different. And so I want to talk about that a little bit and how we approach this.

04:54

So let's go over a few things here in answering this. The times in which we live, the times in which we live, warning for those with kids in the room or if you're listening in the car, please, there may be a few things that I say that you may not want them to hear.

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You may want to just skip it forward 10 minutes, five minutes, probably 10 minutes to be on the safe side.

05:15

A few things I just want to show you and talk about real quick. Here's a headline I saw, a number of young Americans who identify as LGBT skyrockets.

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And this was on February 24th, 2021. And here's a quote, a Gallup poll release Wednesday discovered that self -identified

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LGBT people rose from an estimated 4 .5 % of the US population in 2017 to 5 .6

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% in 2021. Now I'm old enough to remember when it was less than 1%. It was very small. And this is growing.

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It's growing by leaps and bounds every year. And there's a lot of explanations for it. I think one might be a family breakdown and just not finding your identity in your family, coming from a lot of abusive relationships and relationships where mom and dad didn't get along.

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And there was, it just wasn't, it wasn't that traditional stereotypical family.

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It wasn't, you know, little house on the Prairie. It was it, and maybe no family is quite that, but it was definitely a, there was a, there was a dark side to it.

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And so there's a rebellion against that. And one of the rebellious things to do, if you want to separate yourself from that, from that family you grew up in that maybe you legitimately do have some bad memories with, or maybe you don't, maybe, maybe you're just going along with the narrative that's out there that, you know,

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I found a lot of people, young people just seem to believe that even if they had a great childhood, sometimes for some reason they're deceived into thinking it wasn't so good.

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It was terrible. They're victims. And so that narrative, I think just reinforces that thinking in people that even had good childhood.

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Sometimes no matter what you think about, if you start focusing on the flaws and blowing those up and making mountains out of mole hills, you can, you can kind of make an origami.

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You can make anything you want out of that. And so some, sometimes I think people are, young people can do that as well. So whether someone comes from a good family or not so good of a family, there is this pressure

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I've seen and this trend to try to derive meaning from another, a substitute family, which is what

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I think the LGBTQ community, how that's how it's often referred to as a community is.

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I mean, what, what does a lesbian have in common with a transgender or someone who's bisexual, right? The only thing they have in common is they're against something really.

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The, the LGBTQ plus IA. I mean, there's all sorts of new letters arising in that, that, that acronym.

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And that's really what holds them together. Is there, they're in opposition to something that that's, I mean, think about it.

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What, what do, what do these people have in common with each other? So, so they're rebelling against something they're coming together saying we're not that, and we're going to find somehow identity within a place to belong within this new community.

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And some people will say that they found it, or they, or they think they think they found something better than what they grew up with or what they were used to, or what's traditionally put out there.

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And for thousands of years have been put out there as the norm. And and here's just some signs of it that some young people are going this way.

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Now, I must say having known some of the people that have come out of this they, they realized it was a lie or they realized they were deceived.

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They, what they thought that was so bad that they were leaving that wasn't actually as bad as perhaps they thought and what they were coming to wasn't as good as what they thought.

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And they, they, they realize over time others, I think just, they, they stay in this kind of thing because they, it's sometimes it's all they know.

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Sometimes they, they're just, you know, the alternative, the traditional biblical family is so vilified.

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They just think it's a horrible thing. A lot more I could say about that, but it's, it's a sad reality that we're living in a country in which the, the, you know,

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James White calls it the culture of death because it cannot produce a life. But the culture that is against the traditional family, against moms and dads coming together, forming a family and, and that being the norm that, that, that group of people are, they're, they're becoming more and more prevalent.

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And so 5 .6 % now, according to this Gallup poll. Now here, here's a train station in Canada.

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This is not the United States, but I just saw it on social media. Someone had posted it. They were in Canada and you can see it says the sex you want take pride in the sex you want.

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It's exactly what I've been saying, deriving meaning from what, from, from sex, reducing relationships down to sex.

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And, and of course there's a place there's something very, your identity is very much, sex is very much a part of that.

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God, God made people differently and with different, a different telos based on their sex.

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And this, this messes that all up. This confuses that. But, but they're trying to take that the pleasure.

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And you see this, this picture of these three people, racially diverse, finding pleasure in each other, three people.

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This is, I mean, it's very offensive, but this is publicly displayed at a train station in Canada.

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It's called thesexyouwant .ca. Selfish, you know, you're confusing.

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And of course this, this is supposed to be diverse because they're racially diverse. You're ethnically diverse.

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You have a black guy, you have someone who's in between, I don't know exactly what ethnicity they're trying to portray there.

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And then a white guy. And, and the thing is it's actually not diverse because it's three dudes.

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Diversity would be a man and a woman, right? That would be diversity. That would be difference coming together, which is how

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God intended it. This is not diverse. And don't, don't let these people tell you that they're diverse. They're not. This is sameness.

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And, and, and I'm just giving you some, some signs of the times. This is where things are going.

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And I think the people in progressive evangelicalism, I think Russell Moore knows about this. I think he sees it. I think he's been hedging and preparing for, for this for a long time and trying to secure his place with a platform.

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That's what I believe. I'll give you some evidence. I think at least some, some, some clues that could lead to evidence of that.

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Here's some, some more, some legal changes. So you have cultural changes. You have some legal changes. Pastor arrested for lockdown violations in Canada.

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Many of you know about that. Merrick Garland vows to fight discrimination and domestic terrorism, extremism as attorney general.

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And we know what this means. This isn't a radical Islam, right? He's talking about radical quote, unquote,

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Trump supporters. You know, he's talking about proud boy type of groups and he's going to fight discrimination.

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I know some other articles talked about, he wants to, to get racial equity. He wants to fight for that.

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And then you have the house poised to pass the sweeping LGBTQ rights bill. The and of course this is a little old.

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The house did pass it. And now as I'm recording this, the Senate is considering it. So that would be the equality act.

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And of course this has great ramifications. Churches would have to hire people they disagree with on a theological level.

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And it's so much more than that, but it's such, it's, it goes down to the very DNA of our culture of Western civilization itself.

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And you have, here's out magazine recently, this gay throuple won the rights for all three to be legal parents.

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Congratulations to these dads who are known as daddy, dada and papa to their children. Pray for these children, three dads, right?

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And we were told in 2015, now that's a slippery slope when you say that we're going to have polygamy or something like that.

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No, it's not. It wasn't. It was actually, it was not a slippery slope because all people were doing was pointing out the fact that if you don't have a definition for marriage, this is what happens.

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Anything goes, right? Any relationship could be called a marriage. And, you know, and here, here you have three guys that are adopting a child and it's now that that's legal.

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So again, more signs of the times, churches labeled as white nationalists.

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Here's an interesting, someone had sent me this, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which during the

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Obama administration and now the Biden administration, I believe is now again, informing the federal government, Department of Justice on quote unquote, hate groups, et cetera.

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And of course that, that hate group label gets broadened and broadened and broadened. It started with, you know, it's like neo -Nazis and Klansmen, but now,

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I mean, they've gone after, you know, like focus on the family, I believe, or an organization like that.

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I think it was focused on the family. They're going after a church right now in Michigan though. They put them on this hate list,

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Charlotte, Michigan. And it's because the pastor wrote a blog that really it was based on just that.

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The pastor wrote a blog and here's what the blog said. I'm going to give you some quotes from this. Now he uses some language that might, might be considered antiquated.

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And I don't think I would have phrased things the way he phrases it, but just think, do you think that this merits someone being put on a hate list with neo -Nazis?

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He says that for the past 1500 years or so the white race, as it has been shaped by the

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Christian faith, that's key, has been clearly without dispute superior. Now, again,

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I wouldn't phrase things that way. I don't think that is, you know, what does he mean by race?

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I think he's using antiquated language there, you know, or the sense of race that used to be the definition before Darwin, that races are peoples and European peoples because they've been shaped by the

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Christian faith have a superiority. Okay. What kind of superiority is he talking about here? Well, he says the legal system of white men was superior to the legal system of the non -Caucasian.

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They were superior because those legal systems were based on God's law. So the pastor had said this in a blog, and this is getting him put on the same list with Klansmen and neo -Nazis because he's pro -white apparently.

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But if you, if you actually read what he's saying, he's, what he's saying is that it's only because of the

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Christian faith that Europeans have been more advanced technologically, legally, their culture has certain boundaries and respect.

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I mean, respect for women and even the way women dressed, et cetera, in order to protect them gentlemanly.

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Well, I was going to say gentlemanly behavior, which now is kind of on the, on the ropes.

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I'm not sure exactly if it exists in certain parts in the South. You'll still see it somewhere where men, when men get up for a woman or they, they, preference to a woman, open doors, walk on the side of the street where the traffic is to, to shield them from any, that kind of thing.

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There's still a sense of that in some places, but that's being eroded. But all those things came from a culture that, or it's really not a culture.

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That's why, that's why I don't like the saying the white race or something. I get what sometimes people are trying to say there, but it's actually, it's a bunch of different cultures.

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It's a bunch of different races, if you will. It's, it's people, what does someone in Germany have in common with someone in England?

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Well, quite a bit, but there's quite a bit they don't have in common, but both cultures have been shaped by Christianity. There's no doubt about that.

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Even, you know, Italy is Catholic, but there, there's been a sense in which some, some biblical principles, you know, have shaped

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Italy. And so Europe as a whole has been shaped by Christianity and that's made a difference for a long time.

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Now we're, we're at a time now where we're running off that inertia and that inertia is starting to slow down.

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We're, we're heading towards a time when I, I, I think that we may be surpassed by China, frankly.

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And it's, it's, I think it's due entirely to that. It's, you know, why study science?

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Why, why did that, why did the Renaissance take place and the interest in the arts and these kinds of things? In large part, it's because of, there was a

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God of order. You know, why, why even, if life is meaningless, if there's no order, if there, there is no

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God that's upholding the universe, why even go down that road? Why, why try to increase technology? Why care about other people?

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Why have, why sacrifice? Why have delayed gratification when you could have it now? So why is your husbands and wives safe for their children?

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Well, Proverbs talks about that, right? These are things that were ingrained in, in Western culture because of Christianity.

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And I, I really think that's what this pastor was trying to communicate, even though I, the way he communicated it, the, some of the phrasing he used opened himself up a little bit to criticism, but a

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Klansman, a neo -Nazi? No, that's not what this is. In fact, it's the opposite.

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He's not, he's saying it's not because of their genetics. It's not because they're white. He's saying it's because of Christianity. This wasn't controversial even,

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I'd say 25 years ago, this would not have been controversial. Now you're, you're, you know, this, this

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Overton window has shifted and that means you're a Klansman. Here's some of the social justice reaction, right?

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Just a little, some samples here. You got Max Lucado apologizing for a sermon on homosexuality from like 10 years ago.

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He said what the Bible said, and I was apologizing for saying what the Bible said. You got, um, here, someone sent me this from mid -America, not mid -America.

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I gotta be careful here. Midwestern, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, uh, from the Sword and the

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Travel Bookstore. Black History Month. This was in February. Sent it to all the students.

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Here's what you gotta be reading. And look at the books, Reading While Black, right at the top of the list. Standpoint Epistemology, Postmodernism.

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It's the critical race stuff right there. Um, you got Jacob Denhollander, uh, saying on Twitter, um, that, uh, basically saying that James Coates, this gentleman in Canada who is a pastor who went to jail for holding church, that it's not really persecution.

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And there's a whole host of people on Twitter that were progressive evangelicals saying this isn't persecution. It's not persecution.

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This is the reaction that we're seeing. And it's on, it's on like every issue. Uh, apologizing, uh, trying to side with the zeitgeist of the age as much as possible.

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Uh, when there's persecution, downplaying it. It's not, and I'm not, it's separating themselves. I'm not part of those guys.

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Yeah. Maybe there's some bigots out there, but that's not me. I'm, I'm not trying to defend any LGBTQ people.

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I'm not trying to, uh, you know, be a white supremacist by claiming that Christianity has had a great impact in Western culture.

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And that's a good thing. I'm not trying to, um, I I'm not, I'm not, you know, bucking the

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COVID laws because to, to meet for church, because well, that would be wrong. I'm not like those other people, those other bigots, but I'm still a

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Christian, right? That's, that's the play. Here's a statement that came from some SBC students, uh, recently.

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And they basically, I'm going to just summarize this for you. They, they made a statement publicly, which takes some work.

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You got to put it online, et cetera. And they said that the statement that was made last, uh,

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I think it was late fall by some, uh, Al Moeller and Danny Akin, and some of these Jason Allen, Adam Greenway, these guys who run the seminaries, they had said, basically they rehash resolution nine in a way they said,

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Hey, we're, we're, we affirm the Baptist faith and message. We don't affirm critical race theory. Right. But they never specified really.

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They didn't say the analytical tools thing that resolution nine says, but they never condemned resolution nine.

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They never outright went against resolution nine or gave any clarity. So these students issued this declaration.

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Basically it's an ultimatum saying, Hey, we think there's a place for critical race theory. That's basically if you read the whole thing, that's basically what they're saying.

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And you know, it wasn't good what these seminary heads did. I mean, they're to the left of Danny Akin and they're, they're making this, this statement.

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And so you got pressure from the left. I mean, a lot of us think, that, you know, some of these, especially in the

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Southern Baptist convention, you know, you got conservatives putting pressure on Al Mohler. Yeah, there are some, he's got a lot of pressure from the left guys.

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And it's hard if you're, if you're someone who tries to play politics and you, you do this, you see which way the wind blows to try to make your determinations on what you're going to say.

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If you're a calculator, if you're a pragmatist, if you're someone who's an opportunist for yourself, then that's a very challenging situation to be in because you have two diametrically opposed positions and you want to be liked by both.

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How do you do it? It's very hard. It's very hard to straddle that fence. Gospel coalition last year posted an article on the great reset.

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Let me summarize it for you. There are those who are against their great reset and they're wrong.

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They're the pessimists. There are those who are for the great reset and they're also wrong. They're the utopians. There's this third way that's biblical, which can take parts of the great reset and then other parts, maybe not so much, but it's not specific on exactly what that would look like, what parts are good, what parts are bad.

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And, and of course the great reset is just going to fizzle out eventually. Anyway, it's a fad. That's basically, if you want to read the article, that's what they're saying.

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Well, that's just naive. The great reset is not a fad. This is, this is global fascism on a scale we've never seen before.

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And, and it's something that, you know, imagine these guys, I'll just give you an example.

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Imagine they were in Germany in the 1930s. Imagine they were there saying, well, you know, there's some good points to this, to what's happening around us.

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You know, whether they were in the Soviet union, there's some good points to this that Christians can so get behind.

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And there's other things that we're cautious about, but we can't tell you because we're going to be vague about it. I mean, that, that's, that doesn't, that's useless.

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That's useless. How in the world are people to, to know what to do when the horn or the bugle is creating an uncertain sound?

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And that's what we get from the gospel coalition on something as fundamental as the great reset. And I've talked about it before. This is not good.

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This is the tower of Babel 2 .0. And we're going down that path. So what's the answer?

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Why are these evangelicals in name? That's what they call themselves. Why are they going this way?

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Why is Russell Moore going this way? Well, here's an example of why I think Russell Moore is trying to ingratiate himself to the state for power.

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Moore welcomes white house, faith -based office, February 21st, 2021 from the Baptist press. Let me read you a quote from Russell Moore.

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Biden has established the white house office of faith -based and neighborhood partnerships.

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Now, what's, what is it supposed to do? I'm going to read you. He, it's supposed to, according to the executive order, preserve the constitutional commitments of guaranteeing the equal protection of the laws and exercise of free religion and forbidding the establishment of religion to do what?

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Well, to focus on the COVID -19 pandemic, the economic recovery, systemic racism, historically disenfranchised communities, pluralism, and global development and humanitarian work.

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Now, this is the kind of thing that under George W. Bush, which was less, it wasn't, it was tame, right?

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Compared to this. This was where the refugee resettlement stuff started and you had evangelical organizations all for the refugee resettlement because they were getting all sorts of money for it.

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And now we are not just having the refugee resettlement. I mean, who are the historically disenfranchised groups?

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You don't think LGBTQ plus is going to be part of this? If you don't, if you don't think that, then you're naive. Joe Biden said that the transgender rights is the number one civil rights issue of our time.

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Systemic racism. What is that going to look like? How's the church going to help with that? They're going to get, they're going to partner with the government to help with it.

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This is the formation of an established religion. You have an established religion in the state and this is the state church coming together.

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And here's what Russell Moore said. I'm going to read you the quote. Almost all of us agreed that the office is an important point of connection between the government and communities of faith that should exist.

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And that faith based office should be reinvigorated and led by those with clout in a presidential administration with credibility and to the outside world.

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I'm grateful to see that president Biden is reestablishing this vital office. That's what the statement he issued. He's so grateful that a president finally with clout in the outside world is in office and he's leading this.

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Gives you a window into Russell Moore's soul. Remember what he's been saying about Trump the last few weeks, months, and even years.

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And now look at what he's saying about Biden, someone who is aggressively against the things that Christians stand for.

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And Russell Moore is, look at the words he has for him. Russell Moore is not on your side.

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And I, and look, it's the RLC is not on your side. And those who put him in power and support him and do not speak against him are not on your side and they're not on God's side.

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I'm going to be blunt about it. That's the truth. And Al Mohler is one of those people. I'm sorry.

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All he's pretty much everything he said publicly about Russell Moore has been positive.

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I mean, he was the one that, that set Russell Moore up to become the head of the RLC. He was known as someone that was,

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Russell Moore was known as someone who was protected by Al Mohler, loved by Al Mohler at Southern Seminary. Just in 2018,

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Al Mohler even was just hoping for many more years of Russell Moore being in charge of the RLC. It's on Twitter.

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He tweeted it out publicly. And I know some of you are going to say, I've been in the room with Mohler and he said he has concerns about Russell Moore.

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Did he say him publicly? This isn't to get down on Al Mohler. I'm just saying that it's shocking that there's no one of a high stature in the convention.

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Hardly. There are some now you have some people running for office that they're, but they're not, you have like Randy Adams and Mike Stone now are starting to say some things, but they're you know,

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Randy Adams, I believe does work for or did work for NAMM. I'm not exactly clear.

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I think he still works for NAMM if I'm not mistaken. But you know,

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Mike Stone's not drawing a paycheck from the Southern Baptist convention. I mean, I'm talking about the people who really do work at high levels in the convention, the seminary heads,

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Kevin Eazell, the head of NAMM, IMB, you know, they're not saying anything about this.

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And you gotta wonder why not, at least not publicly. Now here, here's some, here's other political movements.

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If you heard Trump's speech at CPAC, the guy's going, I mean, he's fighting.

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He is not, his rhetoric at least is. And he's, you know, he he's fighting these guys.

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He's talking about Judeo -Christian values. And also, I mean, he's, you'd think what he's saying is much better for Christians than anything

27:28

Joe Biden is putting out there. So you'd think that Christians would want to rally behind that.

27:36

Interestingly enough, there's a nationals movement. There's also a populist movement and the slide didn't come out well for some reason, but it's

27:42

Southern Republicans now support secession by 50%. Some poll that was taken recently. And in other parts of the country, it's, it's different percentages.

27:49

That was the higher, highest percentage was in the South. But why, why not get behind either of these movements?

27:56

These are other political movements. I mean, no one's putting money into a localist movement, nullification or secession or anything like that.

28:02

No one wants to do that in big conservative or big evangelical spaces, places.

28:08

I use spaces. That's a woke term, isn't it? See, see how much it's even affecting me and woke evangelical organizations.

28:15

They're not, they're not doing this because that's kind of fringy. Right. But this, these are tools that the founding fathers allowed.

28:22

And I mean, we seceded from great Britain, right? These, these are things that are, that should be at least looked at to see if we can preserve some liberty in states where people share those kinds of values.

28:36

And that's not even a thought to, to most Christians and big conservatives. So I'm just pointing out that there are other movements to get behind right now.

28:46

And instead of helping the person who's going to eat you, which is what these evangelicals are doing.

28:53

Now, before I get here, cause I, I want to talk about some, some warnings for actual conservative evangelicals to put a cap on this.

29:03

I do believe that the main reason that the, the progressive push has been so aggressive in evangelical circles the last few years is because they know at high levels, they know the great resets coming.

29:16

They know what the, the progressives have planned in the United States and they want the church to survive.

29:21

They want their institutions to survive. And so they're playing ball and they think that if they go along that they will be remembered and that they will be thought of well.

29:31

And so they'll have this capital. I mean, Jonathan Lehman talks about this all the time, this, this capital, you know, you got to invest it.

29:37

And that's not even a way that Christians should probably think about our convictions. Like as if, well, we're going, you know,

29:44

I understand there's hills to die and there's hills not to die on. But when it comes to basic things like meeting for church or not, that's a hill to die on.

29:51

It's not like, well, we're going to use our, we're going to, you know, somehow get some creed credence with the world because we didn't meet for church.

30:00

And now that they're asking us to hire LGBT people, we, they'll give us a pass because they'll remember that we were, we worked with them on COVID or something.

30:09

I mean, that's not how it works. That's so naive. These are totalitarians, their religion's totalitarian. It wipes out everything.

30:15

And you're constantly going to be pushed. The Overton window guys, you're going to be pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed farther and farther and farther left until there's just nothing left to negotiate.

30:25

And so I think it's a foolish strategy, but I do think there's also some people at high levels who believe in this.

30:32

They think the great reset's going to be a good thing. And it's a race to the top of the hill who can control conservative evangelicalism as they, whatever that is now to navigate this great reset and to come out on top somehow at the end, there's no way to come out on top.

30:48

You have to fight it. You have to fight it. Uh, it's, it's similar to trying to in Germany, trying to say, we're going to outlast the

30:55

Nazis somehow. No, you're not. Uh, you, you know, other armies can come in and they can, you know, devastate your country.

31:03

And, and, you know, that's going to what that brings, uh, that brings the end of the Nazis, but it's not something that, um, you know, you can just think that you're going to be able to survive politically in, uh, and outlast in that sense.

31:17

I don't think, I don't think that's just even a, that's not an option. You have to fight it right now. And there's no better time than right now.

31:24

Uh, the longer you wait, the more of the tentacles get into everything and the harder it is. So, um, that's, that's what progressive evangelicals are doing now.

31:33

Um, conservative evangelicals, um, Michael O 'Fallon, who is the president of sovereign nations, uh, which is,

31:40

I mean, he's the guy that was behind the Dallas statement, uh, host the, you know, the website where that is, uh, got the conference together for that.

31:47

He's, uh, hosted a lot of the conferences that you've seen where you see Bodie Bauckham talking about social justice and stuff.

31:53

Most of that is like sovereign nation stuff conferences that Michael O 'Fallon has put on. He's got a podcast called, um, the causes of things.

32:02

Uh, he's, he he's done a lot behind the scenes, especially. And, um, and it was interesting to me to see him put warnings like this.

32:11

There's a number of them on Twitter. I'm going to read you these and, and it sounds very harsh at first. I'm warning you here.

32:16

It sounds harsh. I want to examine them though, because I think it'll give us some insight into kind of what the reaction should be.

32:23

If it's not going to be the woke evangelical reaction to the great reset, what should ours be? He says on January 22nd, 2021, the non -woke reformed evangelical church is harmless, toothless and completely oblivious to what is happening around them.

32:39

Very few have any idea what they, what the actual adversary is. And those that do don't have the courage to do what is necessary to preserve the church.

32:49

Scary guys. He said this on February 14th, 2021, the Christians dedicated to defeating social justice without naming names.

32:57

Only the issues are men that have made the modern reformed church, some strange unholy idol carved in their own image and frozen in some idolized idealized vision of the reformed church circa 20, 2005.

33:11

These men and women resemble a spouse scorned by consistent, unrepentant, repeatedly repeated infidelity who even though the cheater has been confronted, keeps on believing that the cheating spouse will come to their senses and recommit to their vows.

33:26

And as the deceptive shepherds of worldly woke guide the church into becoming the mirror image of the world, and the world becomes the new church of vengeance, the winsome non -woke will understand when it's too late, that they fail their flock, the gospel and their savior.

33:43

And these men and women seem to be oblivious of those that the woke shepherd of the resentment gospel continue to deceive, continue to create almost

33:53

Christians undiscovered and destroy church after church across the nation. All for the sake of being quote unquote, winsome.

34:01

He said that February 14th, 2021. Now remember, Michael is a guy who knows, he knows the who's who of reformed conservative evangelicalism.

34:09

He knows these people. He was on the board for the gospel coalition. I even believe he's rubbed shoulders with them and he's paid them and they paid him.

34:17

And so he's a business guy because he has another company which I believe is called, I think it's called just Sovereign or Sovereign Events, where he puts on events and conferences.

34:25

And this is what he's saying. I want you to hear this one last quote, February 24th, to prevent the birth of horrible ideologies in the church, it is important to understand how both the celebrity pastor industry and the establishment echo chambers contribute to the harboring of horrific ideas and the protecting of men and women that forward these concepts.

34:48

There needs to be recognition that the current reformed evangelical structure or reformed mafia, as I termed this movement in 1999, needs to be ignored.

34:56

The larger, needs to be rethought, sorry, needs to be rethought as it was the lesser known watchmen on the walls that first tried to warn and were summarily ignored the larger well -known established ministries that this wicked ideological tsunami was being propagated by the very men that they were partnering in ministry over the last several years.

35:15

We were ignored, doubted, shunned until the middle of 2018. And even during then, still doubted and pursuing the wrong path to understand the why.

35:23

And sadly, they still don't understand the why or even worse, they know the why, but are afraid to pull back the proverbial curtains to the horror that awaits.

35:32

In other words, there is no long game. There is no preserving the institutions. If the current passive path is pursued, we will lose everything quickly and the remnant will need to continue on in the shadows.

35:43

You don't want catacomb Christianity again, trust me. Now, he said that February 24th. I realize this sounds doom and gloom, but I think

35:50

Michael, he sat in on world economic meetings. He knows, he seems to know politics and he knows reformed evangelical

35:57

Christianity. And this might seem harsh to some people. What I want to say about this is ask yourself a question.

36:06

This is the only thing I really want to say in regards to certain ministries.

36:12

I'm not going to name, go through ministries that I think he's talking about, or I probably could, but I think this would be much more helpful to just think through this question.

36:23

Ministries that you're donating to or pastors that you're listening to from ministries. So we're really talking parachurches here, not just churches, but parachurch ministries.

36:32

What resources have they put out on this issue? And number two, what names have they named and gone after?

36:43

Those are the two questions I want you to ask yourself. What resources have they put out? So books, resources for Sunday school or small groups on this issue about social justice gospel, on relationship of church and state, on,

36:55

I don't know, you know, have they tried to approach the COVID stuff, approach the issue, the

37:03

Black Lives Matter issue? Are they putting stuff out on this? And I talked last week about, I said, look, Bode Backham is having a book come out, but why has it taken so long?

37:12

Why the delay? I mean, three years ago, I thought apologists are going to have a field day with this and there was nothing. And the ones that did were generally siding with the woke people, or if they weren't, what they were doing was they were trying to spin some kind of like a third way where, well, we know that critical race theory is wrong, but we're not doing any of that.

37:30

And Christianity is not doing anything. You know, we're not going too far here. Southern Baptist Convention is certainly fine.

37:36

Southeastern is fine. You know, and they were just using that, their apologetics platform to shield people in the convention.

37:44

So I come back to my question, I return to it. What ministries have put out actual material on this?

37:53

And what ministries have named names at their conferences? The minute the people that they platform, have they named the names?

38:01

And I mean, how many of them have named Al Mohler specifically? So look, this guy, let me, let me off the top of my head.

38:08

Let me just give you a few things, right? Al Mohler, right? This is just off the top of my head. I could probably mention much more. What about the reparations thing?

38:15

The grant that's only for people of a certain ethnicity at Southern Seminary that was set up because of historical wrongs or something like that.

38:23

What about the apology for denying such a thing as the homosexual orientation?

38:33

What about saying multiple times that racism is perpetual, that it won't be, it will be in the

38:41

Southern Baptist Convention until Christ comes back, that it's infecting every American institution?

38:46

I mean, Al Mohler said all this stuff. He hasn't apologized for it. None of it. He hasn't retracted any of it.

38:54

What about, what about the fact of Al Mohler and how quickly he jumped on the whole issue of voter fraud and how quickly it was there?

39:05

There really isn't any voter fraud. Trump's irresponsible, blaming Trump for everything that happened on January 6th.

39:11

What about the people Al Mohler's platformed at Southern Seminary? Jarvis Williams, Curtis Woods, I mean,

39:18

Matthew Hall, all people that have promoted critical race theory to one degree or another. What about the fact that Mohler has never really taken any stand against Russell Moore?

39:28

He platforms the guy. He speaks, whenever he's spoken publicly, it's positive about him.

39:35

I mean, you're getting the point, I hope. I hope it's, this is starting to make sense.

39:41

How come no one's called him out publicly for any of this? How come no one's even questioned it? And when

39:47

I say no one, I'm exaggerating. I'm sure there are people who are. Maybe, hey, look, if the ministry you're thinking of has done this, then praise

39:52

God, if they're in the SBC, right? I know not everyone's aware of everything in that particular denomination, but use whatever name you want.

39:58

Tim Keller, you're in the PCA. Okay. Does the ministry, the PCA ministry that you're giving to, have they gone after Tim Keller?

40:07

Have they stole the truth about him? Are they putting out books and materials on this issue? Or are they doing this?

40:14

Are they going after prosperity gospel people? Are they going after charismatics? Or if they're charismatics, are they going after cessationists?

40:20

Are they going after things that are unrelated to this? Hard. Naming the names. We don't have a problem naming

40:26

Joel Osteen. We don't have a problem, you know, going after people in the prosperity gospel.

40:32

Sure. Benny Hinton's, you know, terrible, you know, quote unquote. I mean,

40:38

I can give you clips after clip after clip of people in that world doing this, but will they lift a finger to go after this issue?

40:46

And there was a quote in Votie Bauckham's book by Charles Spurgeon, which some people attribute to Martin Luther.

40:52

I think Spurgeon, I don't know where it came from, but Spurgeon said it, where he said essentially that if you are defending the

40:59

Christian faith at every point at which the devil is not attacking, you're not defending at all. You have to defend it at the point in which the devil's attacking.

41:06

And it's perfectly fine to go after the prosperity gospel. We have to, but that should not be the, if you're a ministry, if you're a para -church ministry, then you're presenting yourself as dedicated to biblical exposition or dedicated to apologetics, dedicated to preaching, whatever the case may be.

41:24

And if you don't have a problem going after prosperity preachers, but you don't lift a finger to go after, to name the names of social justice preachers, then what does that say about you?

41:34

Where are you? The church needs men. The churches are being split and ravaged over this.

41:40

There's so many Churchill's people out there as a result. I'm just challenging you, think about this.

41:46

Think hard about it. Call the ministries you're donating to. Ask them, hey, where's your resources on this?

41:52

I was wondering, you're in the SBC and you're an SBC ministry, where have you called out

41:58

Russell Moore? You pick the name you want to pick, but I'm just wondering, where do you guys stand on this?

42:07

Because they're all going to say they stand, they're against critical race theory. They'll all say that. But when the rubber meets the road, are they identifying the wolves?

42:16

When the rubber meets the road, are they putting out material on this or are they writing another book on, not that it's wrong to do, but are they only putting out things on,

42:25

I don't know, church ecclesiology or something when the churches are in desperate need of understanding their relationship to the state?

42:33

So that's a challenge I have. And I say that as a result of reading some of this.

42:38

Here's just some thoughts I had as I was going over this. Possible weaknesses in the winsome coalition building approach.

42:47

Think of high school girls for a minute and how there's the cool kids group in high school, right? And then how do you compete with the cool kids group?

42:56

Well, you form your own cool kids group, your own club, right? And that's kind of like what we typically think of children doing, but it's not something that's just children.

43:04

I mean, adults do this on a higher level. And I wonder whether or not some of that is happening where it's like, we're not going to talk about what those other, you know, what the cool quote unquote girls are doing.

43:17

We're not going to talk about gospel coalition people and what they're doing or desiring God people or nine marks people, but we're going to build our own thing.

43:25

And we're not going to talk about them because we want to be winsome and we want their people to like us, but we're hoping that people like us.

43:32

And here are the critiques or the cautions I would have. I think this has the potential to be too centralized.

43:39

So if you start, like, it's going to be our brand, our conference, our, our people, our little, our niche, our, you can, you can end up getting way too centralized because once your organization's taken down by the state or whatever, it's, it's done.

43:54

It also has the potential to be too personality driven. If you have a guy or two guys or three guys, or a group of guys that like, these are the guys, and you're not willing to kind of you're not willing to, to reach across to other denominations that might not share your views, let's say on cessationism or continuationism.

44:12

But you're not willing to partner with them to defeat this beast. Cause, cause, Hey, they're brothers in Christ.

44:18

You just have this disagreement. You know, if you're making these secondary disagreements barriers, I think it just has a it becomes way too specific and personality driven.

44:29

And, and this is something, you know, like who, who would you platform, right? Thinking practically about this?

44:35

Well, why not? Like someone like Juan Riesco, why not have him for a conference, right? Talk about his experience with Nini's deli and stuff.

44:41

I'm just shocked that no one really, who knew about it and wanted to pick up on it. Why not, you know, platform a small, smaller pastors who have had experience really dealing with this and are willing to talk about it.

44:53

So what I'm, what I'm not saying is that it's wrong to have someone who's well -known as a pastor. That's totally fine. What I'm saying is you want people who are good at engaging this issue to talk about this issue.

45:04

And if you're not, then, you know, maybe step aside and let someone who is, because this is the issue right now, that's ripping churches apart.

45:11

This has a potential that this strategy, this winsome coalition building approach also to be too centered around piety and ecclesiology.

45:18

And I've noticed this many conferences from non -woke conservative evangelicals have a tendency to be about things that aren't other than the social justice stuff, a whole conference on the role of the church or whatever, but it's like, okay, well there's some helpful things maybe there, but there's an elephant in the room.

45:35

And this is what the, unfortunately, this is exactly what I saw in my study of the confessing church in Germany.

45:43

They had the same problem, the same weakness. And then it is also this winsome coalition building approach when you're trying to be, you know, outdo the gospel coalition by being a better gospel coalition, right?

45:56

It assumes the perpetuation of religious liberty, like, hey, the state's just going to let us keep going this way.

46:01

Well, look, I think the gospel coalition was set up and some of these other organizations that are more going the woke path, they're going to keep bending.

46:08

And if you're not going to bend, you're going to be taken out. So what's the alternative, John? I mean, you're criticizing here, but what are you going to offer?

46:16

Well, here's what I think. This is my strategy, my mind. I'm spitballing. The alternative I think is a grassroots localist approach.

46:23

Sure, have conferences, but have a bunch of them all over the country that are small, local pastors, find the funding to do this kind of stuff.

46:30

I've talked about this before to people who have money. I'm like, why don't you fund smaller endeavors?

46:37

Like fund a curriculum to go out there. It's just small churches. So you have, you know, thousands of people across the country or hundreds at least who understand this issue and can equip their people.

46:49

It's harder to take out that many people. It's easy if you have just a few people you got to vilify. Robust public theology, do conferences on the role of church and state and Black Lives Matter and how to respond to social justice and the history of the social gospel.

47:02

And, you know, there's so many things. Be Orthodox, but also big tent.

47:09

So hey, welcome people in who are Orthodox Christians to have events about this.

47:16

They may not agree with, you know, your version of, I don't know, baptism or cessationism or something, but this is a beast that needs to be killed.

47:24

So it's okay to partner with those people to do that purpose. We're not talking about being in the same church together.

47:29

We're just talking about conferences and partnerships with books and sharing resources and that kind of thing.

47:35

Be practical and educational. You gotta get these books and these resources and these videos into the hands of laymen.

47:42

That's the only way. You can't just, it can't be so highbrow. It's gotta be, you gotta get in the hands of laymen.

47:48

And that's what I've been trying to do. That's why I have this podcast. That's why I'm writing a second book now. And then fifth, build trusted sources in public realms outside of ecclesiology.

47:57

In other words, not just have pastors being platformed, but you need to find people who are Christians preferably.

48:05

I think, I mean, since there's some overlap here with political issues, there's a political religion we're facing.

48:13

Sometimes I think conservative evangelical Christians are going to be listening to some voices that might not even be evangelical, but they're just telling you the truth, let's say about COVID or about Black Lives Matter or something.

48:25

There's really nothing wrong with that. But I specifically would love to see Christians who love the word of God, have the gospel, who are in these other realms, in politics, in the medical field, being platformed at these places to speak because we need their knowledge.

48:41

We need to know how the word of God applies to a field they know very well. And I just think it would be helpful.

48:47

I'm not saying it's necessary. I mean, pastors have the word of God, and if they study what's going on around them, they should be able to apply it.

48:53

But I think it's good to have people that are specialists in these areas. So that's just my thought.

48:59

Those are the alternatives. That's my two cents. So to sort of sum everything up here, woke evangelicals, they're ingratiating themselves to the state to become a state church.

49:09

That's what they're doing. A lot of conservative evangelicals right now, in my opinion, they're way behind the ball, and they're not getting resources to the people that need them, and they're unwilling to name the names, many of them.

49:21

I'm not saying anyone in particular. Again, diagnostic questions. Ask about the ministry. Think about what have they produced, how they named names.

49:29

You may want to even reconfigure your giving if they're not willing to do that or if they're not doing it. Give to a ministry that will because that's the big issue right now, guys.

49:38

And then I think third, just my advice, if there's anyone listening out there who has the resources, who's part of platforming

49:48

Christians, putting conferences on, any of that stuff, I would just suggest going through the practical things

49:54

I just laid out and thinking through, okay, how can we best equip laymen? How can I reach out to people who aren't necessarily part of my reform tribe or my charismatic tribe and get them to share resources there, form those alliances outside of that bubble?

50:12

How do we try to ensure that we have laymen in every church hedging against this?

50:20

So those are my thoughts. I hope that's helpful for you guys. This was in response to a message or a question that I got from a patron.

50:30

I want to say finally, though, at the end of this, that next week, I've seen this already, by the way, but the documentary on Nene's Deli is coming out and you're going to want to subscribe to Last Stand Studios on YouTube.

50:45

I can guarantee it moving forward because there's going to be a lot of other stuff, but it's good, guys.

50:51

It's really, really good. I can't say enough about it. You're going to want to share it with your friends.

50:58

Pray that people would watch it. People would come to know the Lord. There's a gospel message.

51:05

We really want to see fruit borne by this. So I appreciate all your support. Hey, God bless and have a good day.