Keller's Inverted Teaching (And Some Nonsense From Mika Edmonson)

AD Robles

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April 7, 2022

00:00: Alright, well, let's get started for today. First of all, before we begin, let me just say this.
00:07: If you were praying for me last night about my fever and my headache, I appreciate it. I had a fever and a headache for like three days, and last night when
00:15: I gammed for prayers, it was pretty brutal. I was actually starting to get a little bit scared, how awful
00:22: I was feeling. Like I said, it was just a headache, it was just a fever, but it got intense last night, and then it just broke.
00:30: So I appreciate the prayers. I feel pretty much normal right now. My temperature is slightly elevated, and I have a slight headache, but it's definitely,
00:39: I'm almost 100%. No question about it. So thank you for your prayers, and I just, you know, I would ask for continued prayers that this continues to be not a problem, and all of that.
00:49: Let's jump right into it. Yesterday, I did that quick two -minute video about the
00:55: Tim Keller tweet. It's just a horrendous tweet by so many measures. We're going to go into it a little bit more today.
01:02: By the way, somebody commented on that. I said, let me see if I can destroy this Tim Keller tweet in two minutes flat, and they said
01:07: I failed because the video is two minutes and 19 seconds. But I started my timer after I finished reading his tweet, so my response to the tweet is less than two minutes, so there you go.
01:20: In any case, I just wanted to do this one. You know, a lot of people will say, hey, you know, your tone is the problem.
01:27: Like, you're putting people off by your tone, and I've always said that's actually not the case.
01:33: It's really just the content of what I'm saying. Here's a good example of how I know this. This is
01:38: Neil Shenvey. Nobody would accuse Neil Shenvey of having a bad tone. If anything, his tone is very passive, you know,
01:45: Mr. Rogers -like. You know, a lot of people that agree with me on a lot of things don't like Neil.
01:50: I like Neil. I think he's got a lot of good things to say. I question his—I think sometimes he's a little bit naive.
01:57: I think he's very naive, actually. However, no one would ever question his tone. And here's
02:02: Neil. Neil actually responded to the same Tim Keller tweet that I responded to, and his response was,
02:09: Pastor Keller, do you really believe that your church and ministry for the last three decades has failed to preach and practice the message of Jesus, or are you referring to other churches?
02:17: Now, this is a little bit of that naivete that I was talking about. Of course he doesn't mean his church. He thinks his church is doing it right.
02:25: In fact, he exempts his church and he exempts anyone that's kind of buying into the Gospel Coalition agenda right now.
02:31: So I actually tweeted at Neil. I said, Neil, don't worry. He's exempting himself and all the other Gospel Coalition churches, and probably he exempts you as well,
02:39: Neil. But as nice a guy as Neil is, as nice as his tone is, look at this guy,
02:47: Luke. Luke Stamps. This is the Professor Luke Stamps. Why don't you guys tell me about Luke? This guy's a real character. Here's Luke Stamps.
02:54: So sick of the tribalism. Every interaction is so blooming predictable. So Neil asks, look, in my opinion, this question doesn't need to be asked.
03:07: This is like, it's a legitimate question, but it doesn't need to be asked. Everybody knows the answer. Of course he's exempting himself.
03:13: He thinks he's Confucius. He thinks he's King Solomon. But Neil asks a legitimate question.
03:20: Instead of doing what a crazy person like I would do, and just assume that I already knew the answer, Neil's actually taking the time, and he's got the right tone, and he's humbly asking a question.
03:31: But to Luke, even challenging him is enough. How dare you? You can just hear it. How dare you question him?
03:37: I'm so sick of the tribalism. And so Neil is a very patient man. If it was me,
03:43: I would have zinged him right then and there. I don't know how I would have got him, but I would have got him. I would have got him. He would have got got.
03:49: In any case, but Neil's very patient, and he says, Luke, can you help me understand your concern?
03:55: I asked a question precisely because I found the original tweet vague and unhelpful. You know,
04:01: Neil, I got to hand it to you. It was vague and unhelpful. I agree. And Neil's here.
04:06: Neil's just he's just giving people the benefit of the doubt. You know, Neil's a good guy. I like Neil. He's given
04:11: Tim Keller the benefit of the doubt. He says like maybe maybe he didn't mean to make it vague.
04:17: Maybe he didn't mean to it to be unhelpful. So let me let me get to the bottom of this. He put a little sleuth cap on, you know, he got his magnifying glass out.
04:25: He's going to try to find the jewel in there. So he just Professor Keller, Pastor Keller, he says,
04:32: Pastor Keller. And so he goes, I found it the original tweet vague and unhelpful, but I didn't assume anything negative or say anything snide.
04:39: I asked for clarification, which Keller himself often urges us to do. So Neil is like Neil is bewildered.
04:47: He's like he gets he gets zinged by Luke Stamps. How dare you? How dare you question him? Who are you?
04:53: And and so but and so but Neil's patient. He's God bless him. He's patient.
04:59: He says, look, I found the original tweet vague and unhelpful and I want it. I want to be helped by it.
05:05: I like Keller. I want his wisdom to help me. And so I want to ask a question to maybe hopefully clarify it.
05:12: And he didn't say anything negative or snide. He's right. He just asked a question. He asked for clarification and then he points out, you know,
05:20: Keller often tells us to do this instead of jumping to conclusions. He says, you know, love believes all things.
05:26: Just ask a question. And so Neil asked and Luke, how dare you? How dare you? Anyway, so Luke doubles down.
05:34: He goes, I've just heard this song and dance before. Hold on. I misquoted him. I've just heard this song before.
05:41: Quote, you critique the church. Are you talking about your church? It's stale. Well, Luke, was he or wasn't he?
05:49: It's the question is still legitimately posed and nobody's answered it. Was he talking about his church or other churches?
05:55: Was he talking about every church or some churches like we don't know? It's not stale if it's never been answered. But Lucas, how dare you?
06:02: How dare you? Why don't you guys tell me about Luke?
06:08: You should have told me about Luke a long time ago. Anyway, and then Neil, he just says,
06:14: OK, but I'd gently suggest that there's some irony in multiple people making nefarious assumptions about how
06:20: I'm making nefarious assumptions. I'm hardly a Keller reply guy. That's he's talking about me. I'm the
06:25: Keller reply guy. I've only interacted with him a handful of times, and I often tweet him favor favorably.
06:33: Why did he capitalize tweet? Is that how it works? Are you supposed to capitalize tweet like that? That's weird.
06:40: That's weird. So Luke, Luke responds, he goes, fair enough. It was the third or fourth reply
06:45: I saw to this killer tweet on my timeline. None of the other replies or questions were surprising. That's all. So he just got he just got all flustered.
06:53: He just got there's too many replies. And he just had to warrior. He just had to white knight for Tim Keller. Luke stamps.
06:58: Oh, how dare you? How dare you question him? In any case, I thought that was funny because, Neil, listen, if somebody responds to something that I post negatively,
07:07: I can understand that because I post negative things about Tim Keller and then you respond negatively. I can understand, you know, you're responding in kind.
07:14: I get it. Right. How dare you? How dare you, A .D.? But but like, but the thing is, it's not how
07:21: I sound, though. That's the thing. It's what I'm saying. See, I'm a lot more direct than Neil. And I don't
07:26: I don't I listen. Listen, with Tim Keller, he's done this so many times and we've covered this before that I don't give him the benefit of the doubt anymore.
07:35: He knows he's being vague. He knows he's being unhelpful. He seeks out to do that. He stirs up division intentionally.
07:43: He seeks to be unclear intentionally. That's his goal. Right. So so I don't give him the benefit of the doubt.
07:49: Neil is, in my opinion, he's a little bit naive. Right. So he so but it doesn't matter the tone, though.
07:55: You see, that's the point. The tone makes no difference. You can be the nicest guy in the world with the with the most eloquent tone.
08:02: And still, Luke Stamps is going to be how dare you? Anyway, so so let's let's talk about this a little bit more.
08:09: I did the video. In fact, I'll post that video at the end of this one in case you didn't see it. Had some killer music.
08:15: But but let's think this through for a second. So Jesus is teaching consistently attracted the irreligious.
08:22: Now we've we covered that that actually isn't the case. It attracted sinners. Irreligious and sinners are not the same thing.
08:29: Right. Irreligious don't have a religion. They're against religion. You know, that kind of thing. Sinners could be religious, but they're sinners.
08:35: Right. And they understand that they're sinners and all of that. And so his his teaching attracted sinners.
08:42: That's true. And somebody else told me, and this is a pretty good point, that, you know, really, a lot of times it was when it comes to the irreligious and just the general masses, it was the it was the miracles that attracted them.
08:55: It was the miracles. You know, he feeds the 5000. He heals people and things like that. And then he starts to talk about some of his teaching.
09:02: You know, you got to drink my blood and eat my flesh. And that actually repelled the same people that were attracted.
09:09: And so, Tim Keller, because he's committed to this binary Bible, believing religious people are bad.
09:15: He just ends up lying about the Bible. And I think he's doing it intentionally because his mission is to make the
09:21: Church of Jesus Christ look as bad as it can possibly look. That's his mission in life.
09:26: And it's really sad. It pains me to say it. I know it doesn't seem like I'm pained, but I've come to terms with this a long time ago.
09:33: You know, when I was when I was in the process of coming to terms with this, it was it was painful. It was painful. But I'm beyond that now.
09:39: I put that pain in the past. Right. And so here's the reality. So the irreligious people that were attracted by the miracles were often repelled and repulsed by the teaching.
09:50: So it's not even true. The first sentence isn't even true. The first part of the sentence. By the way, there was a guy,
09:56: John Carpenter, who said, Oh, this it's I understand what you're saying. It's a little vague, but it's basically true.
10:01: No, it isn't. It's not basically true. It's not even almost true. So the first part of the first sentence isn't true.
10:08: And then, of course, the Bible believing religious people of his day. He's talking about the Pharisees. He's talking about the lawyers.
10:14: They taught the Bible. Yes. And they knew the Bible. Yes. But did they believe it?
10:21: No. That was the whole point of Jesus's teaching. They did not believe it.
10:26: You see, these irreligious that he's talking about, the sinners, they're not irreligious, they're sinners. They knew about the
10:32: Messiah and they believe they believed in the Messiah. Right. That was the people that were attracted to his teaching.
10:38: They, you know, not the ones that were like the miracles. And then then skedaddled when he started teaching. There were a good amount of those.
10:44: But the people that were attracted to the teaching, they knew about the Messiah and maybe they didn't have a memorization of the of the
10:51: Pentateuch. They didn't memorize it. But they still knew the story. Right. They knew the stories. They knew that they probably celebrated the
10:59: Passover and things like that. They were religious. Right. This idea that they weren't religious is just insane.
11:05: But but then but then he said, then the Bible believing religious people of his day were offended. And that's actually not true at all.
11:12: They taught the Bible. Yes. And they use the Bible to teach their traditions and their etiquette rules.
11:18: Yes. But they did not believe it. They did not believe in the Messiah. And if they because if they did, they would have believed in Christ.
11:24: That was the whole point. But they didn't believe the Bible. Look, you know, even the parable of of of of Lazarus, Lazarus.
11:34: Right. You know, they have the law and the prophets. Let them believe them. If you won't believe the law and the prophets, neither will believe if someone comes back from the dead.
11:42: That's the point. That's the point. They didn't believe the law. They didn't believe the prophets. So the first two parts of this sentence are both incorrect.
11:53: OK, they're both incorrect. And so if the first sentence is incorrect, the second part of the sentence has no hope, but let's read it anyway, just because I think it's worth thinking through what this would mean.
12:04: Right. So, however, our churches do not have this same effect, which can only mean one thing.
12:11: Our preaching and practices are not declaring the same message that Jesus did. You see, what he's saying is you don't have the gospel.
12:19: Our churches don't have the gospel because you're not attracting pagans and you are attracting people who believe the
12:25: Bible. Now, again, we've already pointed out that the way he's said this, the first sentence is all wrong.
12:32: Right. But let's just take it at face value for a second. This is a very good practice, by the way. I've mentioned this before.
12:38: This is something that I do when I'm reading an article that I that I have a feeling I'm going to disagree with. I try to take every sentence as truth and then see if it all holds water.
12:48: Do you see what I'm saying? Like like I know the first sentence is not true, but let's take it as truth. Jesus attracted irreligious while offending
12:55: Bible believing religious people. And then he says, since we don't do that, then that means that we're not teaching the right message.
13:04: Right. That means that we're not teaching the right message. Now, think this through for a second. Right. What is your what is your rock?
13:12: You're right. What is your rock? What is your foundation? You know, you're walking down and here's your anchor right here.
13:18: Right. And you go to the right and you get pulled back to your anchor. You go to the left, you get pulled back to your anchor.
13:23: Right. What is the anchor? Right. Well, any any Christian worth their salt knows that it should be the word of God.
13:29: Right. So if you want to know if you're teaching and doing the right things, you should you should consult that word.
13:36: Right. Your practice and your preaching ought to conform to the word of God. That's what the anchor ought to be.
13:43: Right here. He's saying, look, if it doesn't attract irreligious and offend
13:49: Bible believers, you have you don't have the right message. So what's the rock there? What's the foundation?
13:55: What's the anchor? It's people. It's people. In particular, it's the pagans.
14:02: Right. They need to be attracted by what you're saying. And so if you're veering to the right, but the pagans aren't attracted, well, you better change that message.
14:09: You're veering to the left. The pagans aren't attracted. Well, you better change that message. Right. And so how is this not just a very complicated way of saying change the message, change your practice until the world loves you and receives you as their own?
14:25: How can you avoid that? How can you avoid that if you take this tweet at face value? This is a nonsense tweet.
14:31: But even more than that, let's take a trip into Tim Keller's fantasy land. I saw I forget who who commented this.
14:39: I think it was Andrew. Shout out to Andrew on my YouTube channel. He said this, and it was such a good point.
14:46: He says, let's take a trip into Tim Keller's fantasy world. He said, so I'm an unbeliever.
14:52: And then I hear that very attractive message that Tim Keller's preaching and I'm attracted to it.
14:57: And so now I'm like, oh, cool, Tim, that's great. Where'd you get this message? And he's like, well,
15:02: I got it from the Bible. And he's like, oh, great. Oh, cool. You know, I believe that Bible now.
15:07: So in Tim Keller's fantasy world, you now have made a convert. He believes in Christ.
15:13: He believes in the scriptures. But now that message that you're preaching better start offending him, because if it doesn't offend him, then you are not declaring the right message anymore.
15:23: You see, it's a twofer, right? You can't just attract irreligious. You actually also have to offend
15:28: Bible believing people because otherwise, if you don't do those two things, then that can only mean one thing, that you're not actually preaching the right message.
15:36: You're not actually doing the right practice. So there's so you got it. You got it. You got to attract irreligious, but you also have to offend religious.
15:45: So attracted, attracted, attracted. I'm an unbeliever, an unbeliever. Now a believer. And now I have to be offended. And if you're not, then you still need to adjust more.
15:54: How does this not automatically make you go further and further left, make you compromise more and more and more?
16:01: It has to. It has to. Just by the nature of the way he says he set this up. This is intentional, guys.
16:08: This is intentional. I hate to break it to you. Listen, a lot of you guys still like Tim Keller. I hate to break it to you.
16:13: This is intentional and it's an intentional way to try to get you to compromise more and more and more.
16:23: The Bible's not your foundation. The reactions of the pagans are. The Bible's not your foundation.
16:29: The reaction of the pagans are. Because until the pagans are all attracted and the religious
16:34: Bible believers are all offended, you're not doing your job Jesus like enough.
16:40: This is this is inverted, guys. This is inverted. I hate to say it that way because that makes it sound satanic.
16:49: But quite frankly, it is satanic. This isn't true. This isn't even almost true.
16:54: But I mean, luckily, none of this is true. Like even the first sentence isn't true. So the whole thing isn't true.
17:00: But let's just say we believed it. Let's just say we're in Tim Keller's mind. We believed it all because I assume he believes this.
17:07: This is inverted. This is inverted. You're not going to you're not going to be protected from from from being cast to and fro from every wind of doctrine.
17:19: You're never going to be protected this way. In fact, in that scripture, it talks about how we don't have to be children anymore, tossed to and fro every wind of doctrine.
17:28: This is what I said yesterday, guys. It's Big Eva never grew up and and takes that not growing up.
17:37: And it says that's the ideal. You should not grow up with us. Right. You should not grow up with us.
17:43: You see, this is childish, but it's beyond childish because childish makes it sound too undangerous.
17:51: Right. Because children act like children and it's OK. They're children. But this is dangerous. Like if you adopted this approach into your preaching and your practice, you would you would be you would be gone within a year.
18:06: You'd be completely apostatized within a year. You don't do that because you know this is insane.
18:12: But you see, the thing is, nobody has the guts to call this insane. When I say nobody, I know tons of people do.
18:18: But what I'm saying, none of his friends do none of the no evangelical leaders do. Like who's going to be the one to say,
18:25: Tim, you're out to lunch on this. Kevin DeYoung. This is this is insane, Tim. You could say it in a nice way if you want to.
18:31: Look, even Neil is understands this is not helpful. This is vague. He's saying in a nice way. Who's going to say in a nice way?
18:37: Who's going to break ranks with Big Eva? This this is just this is inverted, guys.
18:43: It's inverted. In any case, I got one more that I thought was pretty funny as well.
18:50: Here is Mika Edmondson. Mika Edmondson.
18:56: It's the same kind of thing. This is this is the this is the the M .O. of Big Eva.
19:02: They're just speaking and they're everything is crafted to sound profound. But it isn't profound.
19:09: It's nothing. Listen to what Mika Edmondson says. This is a pastor. My goodness gracious. This is a pastor of of of people.
19:17: This guy has souls that count on him to to shepherd them in life and to and to offer them counsel.
19:25: And God bless those people. Seriously. Here's what
19:30: Mika Edmondson says. We're called to be Christ's witnesses in culture, not
19:36: Christ's warriors in culture. We're called to be Christ's witnesses in culture, not
19:43: Christ's warriors in culture. And it's like this is just, you know, if you want to have the formal fallacy, this is the distinction without a difference.
19:53: There is no difference between these two when you actually break down the components of what a witness does in certain situations and what a warrior does in certain situations.
20:02: This is just this is just nonsense. And it's attempted to make conservatives look bad while liberals look good.
20:09: That's what it's all that's what this is all about. It's just to get you to say to anyone who's a conservative, they're culture warriors.
20:16: Anyone who's liberal, they're just being a witness for God. Can I get a witness, y 'all? Can I get a witness, brother?
20:23: That's what it's trying to do, right? And Wilk Preacher Clips instantly saw, I mean, everybody instantly saw.
20:28: This is so transparent these days, right? It's witness when I paint cops as murderers.
20:34: It's culture war when you notice many teachers are groomers, right? Yeah, teachers who are teaching your kids to explore their sexual identity.
20:42: They're grooming your kids. That's culture worrying. Don't do that because CNN doesn't like that.
20:48: But but when I say, you know, no justice, no peace. And we need to get some reparations up in here. Can I get a witness?
20:55: That's what that is. It's witnessing. It's not it's not it's not warriors witnessing. And that's that's instantly obvious.
21:02: Now, if you think we're being uncharitable, let's just let's just take this. Let's just take this a little further.
21:09: Because instantly somebody goes, what about that armor of God stuff? That certainly seems like like a warrior.
21:16: You know, to me, this is Patrick White. And I don't think Patrick White was trying to do a gotcha here. But I mean, maybe he was.
21:22: I don't know. I don't know, Patrick White. But Mika response to Patrick White. I want you to hear this because this shows you the mentality that I just told you, right?
21:32: Wilk Preacher Clips instantly saw it. I instantly saw it. So he says, what about the armor of God?
21:37: That certainly seems like, you know, warrior stuff, right? And Mika goes, really great point, brother.
21:44: He says the one attacking weapon in the armor is the sword of the spirit, which is
21:49: Paul's description of the gospel. Every other part of the armor is protective. Our one weapon is the gospel of peace, which fits us to be witnesses or heralds of peace.
22:01: Okay. So this is very interesting because there's a few different aspects of this I'd like to explore.
22:07: I could do a whole video on this one. But the first thing is, obviously, the warrior language is all throughout the
22:14: Bible, right? It's not just the armor of God and all of that. So he's pretending like that's not there.
22:20: It's all there, right? But listen to what Mika Edmondson just admitted here.
22:26: Listen to what he admitted here. He said, the one attacking weapon is the gospel.
22:33: That's what he said, the sword of the spirit. And he says that it's the gospel. Again, remember, we're believing everything he says here.
22:39: That's how we're approaching this. The one attacking weapon is the gospel.
22:45: Every other part of the armor is protective. Okay. So where does reparations fit into that?
22:54: Where does all this stuff, the justice stuff fit into that? If it's just the gospel, right?
23:00: Because if I'm not mistaken, Mika has talked about how those just preach the gospel folks as that's the enemy.
23:09: That's the half gospel. That's that gospel that doesn't do anything. It's like, okay, so which is it, right?
23:16: Is it the only offense we have is the gospel or is it not? Is it the gospel and reparations?
23:23: Is it the gospel and reparations? Is it the gospel plus centering black voices, elevating black voices?
23:29: Is it the gospel plus believing all women and elevating the black women? Which is it, right?
23:34: Or is it the fact that it's witnessing when you do it and evil mean warring when we do it?
23:42: Which, by the way, I don't take offense to that. I don't care. Listen, I'm all about witnessing and warring.
23:49: It's totally fine. I know you guys think I should be offended by that. I'm obviously not. But the point is you don't even make any sense to your own.
23:58: Again, even if you're saying we shouldn't be warriors in culture, okay.
24:05: But then you instantly admit we should with the gospel. I agree.
24:12: What's the problem? You see, but the thing is I think that there's other tools at play there as well.
24:17: I think that the gospel and regeneration is what transforms a culture. But I also think that there are things that we can apply in our own life according to the law of God, in our churches according to the law of God, in our civil governments according to the law of God that we should implement in every area that we have influence.
24:35: You see, God gave us that word and we're to use every part of it.
24:41: Every part of it. And so I don't even buy into your paradigms here.
24:47: But the thing is like you're just a mess here. I mean, look at this. This guy turned you into a puddle of goo with one sentence.
24:55: You instantly backtrack. But then you also reveal how much of a hypocrite you've been this whole time.
25:00: So your only weapon is the gospel even though those guys that say just preach the gospel, they're demons in any case.
25:08: I hope you found this video helpful. I'm going to put the two -minute Tim Keller video at the end here because I think the music is killer.
25:16: Anyway, tune in next time. God bless. Tim Keller is not as smart as you think he is.
25:32: He is good at rhetoric, but he does not have even a basic grasp of a lot of things.
25:38: Here's an example. Let's see if we can take this down in two minutes flat. Jesus' teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the
25:47: Bible -believing religious people of his day. However, our churches do not have this same effect, which can only mean one thing.
25:54: Our preaching and practices are not declaring the same message that Jesus did.
26:00: Now, even just at a basic logic level, obviously, it could mean other things as well.
26:05: He says it can only mean one thing, that we don't even have the same message as Jesus, and that's just simply not true at all.
26:11: It could mean that the context has completely changed. It could mean that irreligious people of our time are different than the people he's talking about here.
26:20: In fact, it's interesting how he completely misses the whole point here. He's saying that he attracted irreligious people while offending
26:29: Bible -believing religious people, and his proof text for this is Luke 15, 1 and 3.
26:36: Let's go to that real quick. Notice it doesn't say irreligious there.
26:47: It says sinners and tax collectors. Now, what he wants to do is he wants to make it seem like people that have no religion, people that reject religion, atheists, pagans, things like that, are what the
26:58: Bible's talking about. It is not. Those people had a Jewish worldview, so they believed in the Lord.
27:03: They were sinners, yes, but they were attracted to the message of Jesus saving them, the Messiah.
27:08: They knew about the Messiah, so they weren't irreligious. He's wrong about that. And then he says he offended the
27:14: Bible -believing religious people of his day, so he's contrasting non -religious people to religious people. Religious people,
27:20: Bible -believing, bad. Non -religious people, good, in this story. And the reality is that that's not how
27:25: Jesus describes the Pharisees. In fact, he says that they actually don't believe. They're actually lawless is what he says.
27:32: So he's got it all twisted here. The context is all wrong, and he does this, basically Big Eva's whole purpose at this point.
27:39: Anything to paint the church in the worst possible light, that's what they'll put out there. French is doing this,