Question and Answer: Seth Brickley, David Wheaton, Jeff Kliewer, Russell Fuller, and Jon Harris

Eureka Baptist Church iconEureka Baptist Church

2 views

0 comments

00:00
It's a logical question here, right? I mean, we don't, I mean,
00:05
I can tell you my view, but I'm the moderator, so I'll pass this on to you guys.
00:12
Where do you see this going? The present woke movement,
00:18
I mean, we call it the state religion. We were talking about that at dinner. It's really the state religion. Where do we see this going in the broader church and in our country and in the world?
00:35
This is for all of you. I'll go. Can you hear me? I've become quite optimistic recently about defeating the whole woke culture of death because the abortion holocaust is really coming from the left.
00:55
And the LGBTQIA movement really produces no life.
01:02
By definition. And you look at countries like France where for the first time they're not able to even reproduce to the level of keeping their society going.
01:15
I think 1946 was the last time they had such a low birth rate. Whereas Christians are more and more having larger families.
01:26
I think there's some signs, like at least where we are, and even though we're in very blue New Jersey, signs of revival, that the conservative churches are packed and the more liberal churches are dying.
01:38
I'm optimistic that we are going to see revival before the return of the Lord. But in any case,
01:45
I'm optimistic because, well, I'm pre -tread, pre, what do you say?
01:51
Pre -millennial. So either way we win because either Christ is gonna come back and rescue us while we're here battling, or we'll have some more victories until that time.
02:02
But I've become more optimistic that this culture of death will eventually peter out.
02:07
And we might have to fight another battle after that. But one of the theses of War -Torn Church is just that we've had battles like this every century now for 20 centuries.
02:18
And this will, I think, be the same thing. But maybe I'm naive. The pessimistic wing is over here.
02:30
At all. And he's more pessimistic than me, so I'll let him answer it.
02:42
Doom. At least in the near term,
02:50
I'm not as pessimistic, not as optimistic as Jeff. But look, the gates of hell will not prevail against the true church.
03:00
So with that, we have our blessed hope. Christ is the hope of glory. And so listen, the church is not gonna die out.
03:09
God will raise up fateful servants of his. And so in one sense,
03:15
I'm very optimistic. I don't mean to disappoint John here. But on the other hand, now let's get pessimistic for a second.
03:24
When you see a church denomination to start to accept the world's philosophies and so forth, well, wait till the next thing comes through and they're gonna accept that as well.
03:37
Once you break away from scriptural bounds, once you just start, what's gonna stop you from accepting transgenderism?
03:48
What's gonna stop you from, you know, stopping the next thing coming down? Because once you go down the secular path in the church, where's the end?
04:00
Well, we can sort of see it. The United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church USA. If we look at the mainline denominations, you can see a denomination that wants to go in those directions.
04:12
Churches that wanna go in those directions. We see their end, you see. So I'm optimistic, but at the same time,
04:20
I'm pessimistic. And I hope and pray for really true godly revival in some of these denominations and in these churches.
04:36
A lot of questions there. Yeah, yeah, we gotta get through them at some point, yeah. Name, sorry, yeah.
04:45
Name three to four good seminaries and a couple of good, maybe three or four courageous pastors.
05:02
Pastors thing is easier for me. So I'll just, I mentioned at the end of my talk that there's some younger guys who, can you hear me now?
05:10
There's some younger guys out there who I think are more courageous than perhaps the generation above them.
05:19
And so I think like Eric Kahn out in Ogden, Utah. You might not have heard of some of these names.
05:24
I think Joel Webbin down in Texas. I think Andrew Isker, who's
05:30
I think in Minnesota actually, just south of the Twin Cities. I think those guys are, those are just three guys that came off to the top of my mind as being very courageous, willing to say things that are gonna get them in trouble and take a shot at the woke movement.
05:46
As far as the seminaries are concerned, and by the way, Seth, I'm not leaving you out of this at all or Jeff, because you guys are both courageous pastors.
05:54
I just figured everyone knew that already. So I thought you meant three other courageous pastors. We've got two of the most courageous are right here.
06:01
But as far as seminaries, that's tough. Like I can't wholeheartedly endorse any seminary.
06:09
I've said that on my podcast. I've said, well, there's Southern Evangelical Seminary. They took a very hard stand against the woke movement.
06:16
They're the only seminary I know who did that overtly. Doesn't mean I endorse everything about them, but hey, they're one that maybe you should look into just because of that.
06:24
I know Appalachian Bible College was pretty, and that's not a seminary, but they were pretty overtly against the woke movement as well when it was going on, which
06:32
I think is a really good sign. I don't know, I tell people who are going to seminaries, no matter what the seminary is, that what they need to do is just realize no matter where you go, you're gonna run into it somewhere along the line, be prepared for it before you get there, and know what you want in seminary.
06:49
Like if you're just going there because you want the certificate, don't go. If you're going there because you wanna get into academics, I would seriously pray about that and seek guidance as to whether or not that's the direction you want your life to go, maybe it is.
07:02
But I think you need to know what tools you want. So if you wanna go to seminary because I wanna know the Bible, and that means I need to know the languages, and I need to know maybe some systematic theology, you need to know some church history, take those core classes and use those things, but just be on your guard.
07:22
Okay. So here's a, this is a common one. You know, the question is,
07:28
I mean, the Christian nationalism question. It says, our pastor pretty much says keep politics out of the church.
07:41
Does not provide solutions to the problems of our day. And yeah, so in other words, pastor feels, kind of feels out of touch with what's going on in the world.
07:53
That's kind of how I would summarize it. And this person feels like if they address it, that they'll get shut down.
08:02
So how do you, how do we, what counsel can we give that person? I guess
08:13
I'll take a crack at that first. I also, I've been really influenced by John MacArthur just to the previous question.
08:20
And he has been, I mean, he's not no perfect man, but he's really stood up a lot. He's been sort of a bulwark against, even in COVID didn't shut down his church, that he's a very notable person who had kind of a,
08:34
I guess you could say a lot to lose from a standpoint of how well known he is worldwide. But I think he'd be another one.
08:40
The seminary he leads. Again, I agree with you, John, that you can't just probably wholeheartedly say this seminary is just great.
08:46
It's always made up of people. Just like Southern, there's probably really good professors there that are worth learning from, but then there are others, as you mentioned, that are not.
08:56
As far as the Christian nationalism issue, I think there's a couple,
09:02
I don't want to take two sides of the issue on this, but I think there is a responsibility for pastors because politics and civil engagement is a part of the
09:13
Christian life. We live in a civil society. I think there's a lot of room for pastors to be informing congregants about issues, even about the situation in Israel right now.
09:25
I've been, I'm not in every church. Of course, I'm in our own church, but it doesn't seem like there's very much talk about, I mean, as you talked about your eschatology,
09:32
I share that, premillennial. I mean, that's where things are gonna happen. That's where things are happening and we need to watch that part of the world.
09:40
And there is a blessing for blessing Israel. That doesn't mean we overlook everything we do, everything they do.
09:46
It doesn't mean that their rejection of Christ at this point should just be completely forgotten.
09:52
But I think there is a major place for pastors to be informing and helping their congregations know how to think with a biblical worldview about issues going on.
10:03
And so then when you get into the political realm, I personally do not believe there's any political solution that's gonna turn around this country.
10:11
It has to be spiritual. That being said, there's very much room for Christians to be involved in politics and to be engaged in politics.
10:19
I think it's a matter of priority. Where's our priority? I think our priority has to be in the church, our individual growth, our families, and so forth.
10:28
And there's an influence there that percolates out from there. And some of those people within our families or our friends who are influenced, who are led and called to go into politics could make an impact there.
10:37
But I don't know if I see it turning around from a standpoint of going back to some America where Christian values are venerated and so forth.
10:45
I don't see that happening, but I also don't see that as losing either. God has a plan for where He's going to the end.
10:52
He's not losing down to that plan. He's actually ordaining the way things, I believe, are going.
10:58
It's almost like He led Pharaoh into the trap of trying to rebel against Him and He's gonna be glorified in the way
11:06
He totally ruined that country when He brought the people out of Egypt. And I think it's the same way. He's just gathering the world into this globalized governance anti -Christ system you read about in Revelation.
11:19
And He will come, Jesus will return to judge and to reign and He will get the most glory. So we're just called to be faithful in whatever we're in the meantime, whether we're in politics or business or a pastor or a mom or a dad, be faithful now.
11:40
So the power of lawlessness is already at work among us, but He who restrains it will restrain it until He is taken out of the way.
11:47
And that restraint, I think, is the Holy Spirit working through the church. That's the salt and light that is restraining the work of evil.
11:54
So Hitler could have been the anti -Christ, but God used the church and especially
11:59
America and Russia also by providentially His design to restrain Hitler from taking over the world.
12:06
Right, but if a pastor in Germany is sitting back and saying, well, whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen, then he's not the instrumental tool in God's hand that he ought to be.
12:18
So while we do accept the sovereignty of God over these things, we have to encourage pastors to step up and speak when the culture gets more and more dark and it's gotten so dark in America.
12:31
So the pastors need to know what time it is, right? And if you're in a church where your pastor just doesn't say anything, doesn't speak because it's public issues or it's political, they don't wanna get political, you need to encourage them that anything they say, you reinforce and say, hey,
12:49
I loved when you addressed abortion today or whatever it is, be an encourager and also maybe network that pastor with other pastors.
12:58
So in South Jersey, there's at least 30 of us now after COVID that we realized if they ever locked down again for 15 months, it's not just gonna be a few churches here and there, we're all together gonna take a stand.
13:11
And so you've gotta find those networks. And I think TruthScript is gonna be key in doing that on a more national level.
13:17
Because if you have that church finder, where's David? If you get that church finder operational, then we can know how to find those churches and network together with those who are taking a stand.
13:31
So if a layman is in a church, pastor is not really interested in that, shuts them down, does that person leave?
13:44
Me, I guess that's for me. Possibly, but it really depends on the situation.
13:51
So it's hard to know. I get these questions all the time and it's hard to know without knowing more about the situation.
13:57
So it's like a general matter of prudence and advice. I would say that it's similar to what
14:02
I said in the first talk about institutions. Like if you try to bring up an issue that's a legitimate issue, hey, the
14:08
Lordship of Christ is overall, we're supposed to discipleship. It's not just evangelism, it's discipleship that Christ called us to do.
14:15
That includes ethical issues that are presented in scripture. You're not doing that. They apply to the situation that we're all talking about outside of church.
14:22
Why don't we talk about it in church? If there's no response to that, or if you're shut down and you reach a point of no return where you're just saying, okay, this is,
14:29
I can't get anywhere. This pastor just refuses to take a courageous stance on biblical truth.
14:35
And yeah, you do find another church or you look around, but I don't think you just do that. Like I don't think that's your first move, right?
14:41
So you start out by taking your stand on scripture. Like if you think there's an issue that the
14:48
Bible addresses, it's not being addressed. Like find those passages, show your pastor, hey, I'm looking at these passages. This is what the
14:53
Lord's showing me. And I think maybe this is something that we should address because this is a challenge that a lot of people are experiencing, not just myself.
15:01
And see what happens. Start there. So I don't know where this person who asked the question is in that process, but I think that you possibly could get to the end of that process and determine it's better to leave for the sake of you and your family.
15:16
This one's denominational. So when a local church leaves an association, does that church become vulnerable to corruption?
15:29
Is there benefit in association with other like -minded churches? And then what advice would you give to a lone church to help avoid theological drift?
15:45
I think associations are healthy. You have a good association with strong pastors.
15:51
We can sort of keep each other in line. And so I think it's a very positive thing that churches in town, if you have a church that's encouraging either heretical doctrine or immoral practices, it's good for the other churches to sort of put that church on notice and so forth.
16:11
So I think associations of local churches is,
16:16
I think, a very important thing. There's two things I'd say to that real quick. Number one is the farther you get up in an institution, the more pressure there is to conform to what the elites want you to do.
16:27
So local associations, I think, are measurably more important than national or international associations.
16:33
In the SBC, what we've seen, and I'm sure it's happened in other denominations, is they've consolidated. A lot of these local
16:38
Baptist associations have been kind of gutted, and their funding has been transferred to the
16:45
North American Mission Board. And so it just feeds kind of like this bigger association. And you want there to be more, you want there to be local associations because there's more accountability in that.
16:55
You know the people that you're with and that kind of thing. I can't remember the second point
17:00
I had, but I think it was good. I don't remember what it was though. Yeah. Let me ask about that too, because some of us that look at the
17:08
SBC have never been a part of it, never been in an SBC church. But the SBC is basically a parachurch, right, of local churches.
17:17
And so when you get into a parachurch situation, it doesn't have, it seems like God designed the church to have the authority structure of pastors and elders and so forth, qualified pastors and elders and so forth.
17:30
And when you start getting beyond that into an institutional organizational means, lots of time and energy and money is spent.
17:38
And it seems like it can turn into what it has at the SBC. And so I'm wondering whether it's,
17:44
I'm not saying it's wrong for there to be an association or a denomination by any means, but I think it's parachurches are fraught with drifting more than a sound local church.
17:57
Well, I think that's true. One of the things here, I just realized, even in this room, it's a small conference.
18:02
This is a parachurch kind of, it's hosted at a church. But we came from different churches, there's people represented from different churches, we're networking, what's going on?
18:11
There's associating going on. Like this, that's what naturally happens and hierarchies naturally emerge.
18:16
And so that's, I remember my second point as you were talking, which is that, like even with John MacArthur, who you mentioned earlier, he's not part of a denomination, but you can't tell me that he's not a parachurch.
18:25
You can't tell me there's not an industry built around John MacArthur. He's got, there's a hierarchy and a clout that he has over a lot of churches that associate with him, that go to conferences where he is and stuff.
18:37
And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but the more it happens naturally, the more it happens with local associations and built in trust and of course, around leaders that actually have solid virtue and character, the better.
18:52
And the worst, when you have, the situation in the SBC is bad because you have like a bunch of elites, really whoever shows up at the convention, and now we know a lot of them are paid to show up by North American Mission Board, making decisions for the whole denomination about who their favorite guy is that no one knows about and no one cares about.
19:10
So like, that's a different situation in a sense. And it's the bureaucracy and managerial elitism that we kind of see in the federal government and the deep state.
19:19
So that's what you don't want. So I think like an organic getting together, that's what we want to see.
19:25
Yeah, the Southern Baptist Convention, it was formed for missions and for education.
19:32
And as a principle, that's a pretty good principle. So we want our churches to sort of pull together resources for missionaries, for education, things of that nature.
19:43
But as the bureaucracy builds within an organization and the money, those things are, they take over.
19:56
And so in the Southern Baptist Convention, the tent gets, oh, very wide.
20:03
We'll broaden the tent all the time for money purposes. You know, as long as we can bring in the money.
20:09
And all of a sudden money is now, that's when things get out of, out of.
20:20
Right, yeah. So we have a question here about deconstruction. Define deconstruction. I'm answering a lot of the questions.
20:30
Does someone else want to take that? Well, that's the opposite of construction, right? That's my definition.
20:39
I'm a simple guy, okay, just. I should take that one. So you construct a faith, you built it on a foundation of the gospel, believing the gospel, and then block by block, it's grown with certain doctrines and you develop a biblical faith or a biblical worldview.
20:57
Deconstruction is just basically the opposite where you start questioning and doubting everything. And pretty soon you believe none of what the
21:04
Bible teaches and you've made up your own religion. And I think that's about as simple as I can answer it, but maybe one of you can add.
21:14
That's pretty good. Yeah, yeah. Here we go, are we satisfied? I'm actually gonna say, so Adam Wallace, my dear friend in the back there.
21:23
So you went to a church in Nashville. So he's in Nashville, he goes to this church, doesn't know anything about it.
21:29
He and his wife are on vacation. And it was a deconstruction sermon where the guy was talking about his faith journey and how he deconstructed.
21:40
And it was like he had reached this certain level of spirituality and he thought it was a good thing. And really what it was is he just walked away from the faith.
21:48
So churches, they're not real churches, of course, they're actually out there and it's really frightening.
21:57
Okay, so David Wheaton, here's a question for you here. So two in a row, yeah. And I think
22:03
I know who asked this question. We have a guy in our church who's really passionate about this. Regarding Romans 12 one and the man boy,
22:10
Daniel, what should a Christian look like physically in your mind? I think
22:21
I know what this is referring to. We did a radio program about two weeks ago on Romans 12 one and about the body.
22:30
You know, what is the call for us to steward our physical bodies? And I think there is a call there.
22:38
And I think a lot of, there's the verse that the bodily exercises of the little prophet, but I don't have the rest of it memorized, but your spiritual life is basically a priority.
22:50
That's true. But God has given us a body. There's a physical body, we aren't just a spirit.
22:57
That's that we see created us, he owns us. When you become a believer, your body is the temple of the
23:03
Holy Spirit. That's a place of worship. Not to take things into our body that would harm the body or have things come out of our heart that would be a bad representation of who we represent,
23:15
Jesus Christ. And so from a physical care of our body standpoint, I think there's two ditches on this.
23:23
There's obsession with our physical bodies. And you can be obsessed with your body image and how you look and trying to do things for yourself and exercising all the time.
23:31
This is a young lady we had in the program who was obsessed about it, it was an idol to her. She was exercising constantly.
23:38
She talked about having to take a fast from the gym. I mean, who wants to fast? I mean, I fast from,
23:43
I don't even want to fast from food, let alone the gym. So anyway, so there's that ditch. And then the other side, there's the,
23:50
I think maybe more common, perhaps, is the neglect side where we think it's of no importance.
23:56
It's sort of like the Gnostic idea that only the spirit's important and the body is unimportant, what you do with your body.
24:03
And so I do think, and I was talking to someone, I'm not sure if this person answered the question, he was mentioning that, you get someone who's a
24:10
Christian who's preaching or telling you to be disciplined in one sense in your spiritual life and you can see that they're likely very undisciplined in their physical body life.
24:22
And I think there's a conflicting message there. Now, that's not to say that Christians need to be triathletes like you,
24:29
Seth, you're triathlete, right? He's a runner. But I do think there's a lot of room because you can serve the
24:37
Lord better when your body's healthier. So the three things you can think about are how you move your body.
24:44
Don't even consider it exercise, your body's meant to move. Number two, the nutritional aspect of it, eating good whole food and that whole industry in our country.
24:52
I've had to really change a lot of things because of heart heredity in my family. And just you begin to learn more about the whole food industry.
25:00
It's like a lot of it's really bad. And then third is the rest, the recuperation aspects.
25:06
If you focus on doing those well, I think that we all can probably improve on all three of those things.
25:12
And Seth, didn't you run like a 402 mile at one point or 406? Yeah. And he was number 12 in the world in tennis.
25:20
So I'm just sucking in right now and puffing up my chest. I heard you play college basketball.
25:27
What about you, Russell? I'm 64 years old.
25:32
I'm just glad to be here. Okay.
25:44
When we are physically fit, we can do more for the kingdom. I mean, if we're always sick,
25:52
I mean, yeah. So with so many denominations moving away from orthodoxy, this is a good
25:57
Jeff question because he's such a positive guy. The 26 page hit piece against you, it didn't come out that way.
26:05
But how do we keep from throwing these denominations under the bus? Sure, there's people who think that I did that through the denomination under the bus.
26:17
But a slap from a friend is better than a kiss from an enemy. A prophetic rebuke has the intention of leading towards repentance.
26:30
I think that it is okay to speak the truth, right? Paul even said to the Galatians, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?
26:37
So a lot of this has to do with what's in your heart. It's hard to know what's in somebody's heart, right?
26:43
But you have to guard your own heart and make sure it remains pure because it's easy to get into war mode where you're just battling.
26:52
But you have to remember that you're fighting for something and across this country, I still believe that a vast majority of evangelical free and Southern Baptist folk just love the
27:03
Lord and love his word. And there may be this like intelligentsia in the woke leadership that has an agenda to move it to the left, but the people don't want that.
27:13
So you have to remember you're fighting for your, was it your grandparents that were at Medicine Lake and their legacy and for so many free church people who want to stay faithful to the word of God.
27:26
So it's keeping your heart pure and remember what you're fighting for. How do young people who have not grown up with healthy traditions or cultures obtain them to get away from individualism?
27:43
That sounds like a John question, yeah. So I don't know if I put this on Twitter or not.
27:50
I'm trying to remember if I told someone this or if I put it out there, but I know I was having a conversation the other day about how there just aren't really communities and maybe there's exceptions.
27:59
I'm sure there are exceptions. Maybe this is one of them actually, but there's not a lot of communities that have a healthy, robust tradition going back to generations past because it's been, you have so many factors against it, really much of them coming from the liberal order that I described earlier, but you have entertainment industry, you have mass immigration, you have the way that the government even like,
28:25
I guess handles or prevents small businesses and things that involve voluntary associations from forming and so, and I could go on, but there's just a number of things that prevent or at least impede what
28:40
I would consider to be organic communities. And organic communities and the natural relationships, organic communities tend to produce traditions and ways of living.
28:49
And so when you're living in an area for a long time, your grandparents were there, their grandparents were there, there's a certain level of trust that's built up and there's kind of like all these unspoken rules that develop that help human flourishing.
29:02
And so like you, you might like, for example, have like a pasture land that you use as a common pasture and everyone's cool with it and no one has a problem because this has been a tradition for a long time.
29:12
So there's a lot of things like that. Most of them we're unaware of, but they get super destroyed in the modern world through technology and all kinds of different things.
29:25
And so the question is someone who is young and I know of several young guys especially like this.
29:31
I mean, this is like a tidal wave of young guys who like generation Z, who think they've been kind of like deprived, that there's this rich heritage and they're looking at like Eastern Orthodoxy now, they're looking at Roman Catholicism, they're trying to go to other places to find, to tap into something that's real because everything in their world just seems fake to them.
29:52
And so it's a really good question. It's a problem that I wish I had more time to answer.
29:57
The simple short answer I'll give is like it definitely starts in the home. You have to cultivate a family identity
30:04
I think. You have to know who you are as the father especially before you can lead your children in this way and it starts at a young age.
30:12
And that would include like what kind of family's activities you do, what kinds of like devotional time around the table.
30:18
I mean, even that like cultivates a sense of tradition. Just the way you treat each other.
30:23
I mean, there's so many things that people from stable households have an advantage of in this but then it extends out to the community.
30:29
And so I've noticed one thing. Parents, this is just my own observation but parents who have homeschool kids, some of them go off the deep end because they've been so sheltered.
30:40
It's a shock wave when they go to college, right? And I'm sure your book's probably about that in some way or at least addresses it.
30:46
There's other parents though who like, I was in a family like this where, hey, we were in soccer, we were volunteer fire department, we were in Boy Scouts, like we were involved in our community, we're invested in the people around us, we learned to love actual tangible real people and that builds trust, that cultivates a richness and I think a cultural embeddedness.
31:07
And so this starts at your church but I think it goes beyond that and so it's a matter of getting involved, really.
31:14
So there's so many more things I would like to share but we'd be here forever, so. Yeah, thanks,
31:19
John. So David, here's a question for you. Did King Darius, I pronounce it
31:25
Darius, is that correct? Hebrew scholar, okay. Yeah, okay.
31:31
Did King Darius become a true believer in God? I didn't get that far in Daniel, actually.
31:39
No, I think I'll yield my time to Russell on that one.
31:45
I think you probably did but you probably would know better than I. I don't know the answer to that and the one they really debate is
31:53
Nebuchadnezzar and some of his, so there are a lot of folks who believe that Nebuchadnezzar actually got saved.
32:01
Of course, others don't and we can say the same about Darius. What is the correct application of Matthew 18 in reference to public issues?
32:28
I think Matthew 18 would have a general equity to it even if in a public situation where I tried to contact,
32:37
I think I named like 30 people in Woke Free Church. I did try to contact a number of them and had opportunities to do that with some but I think the difference between Matthew 18 and Galatians chapter two which is where Paul rebukes
32:54
Peter to his face and in the presence of everybody has to do with whether there's a relational difference there in Matthew 18, you're kind of in a church context and the discipline gets progressed from he won't listen to me, the individual then you bring witnesses who would have been able to speak to this and then finally to the whole church.
33:15
If you're not in that church context then you end up like this John Lindell guy who is trying to church discipline
33:22
Mark Driscoll for speaking out at his men's conference about a sword swallower who did some weird stunt and it's just this weird drama and the issue here is you're too far removed from it.
33:35
You can't exercise church. You can't pull off a Matthew 18 situation in this big public.
33:43
We're having a giant national debate about wokeness and social justice versus biblical justice and to try to implement
33:51
Matthew 18 in that context is just completely unworkable and it's not the intent of Matthew 18.
33:57
Russell Fuller, did you contact John Piper before today? No, I did not.
34:03
When you write something for the public it's fair game in my opinion that you can respond publicly as well.
34:13
Now if it's something within the church, if there's something in private conversation then yeah and if I've personally offended him or something like that then yeah we'll try to work that out privately.
34:27
We'll try to do those things but if he made a public teaching that is not consistent with the word of God I think it's fine to publicly correct that teaching.
34:37
Okay. So here's a question here.
34:43
What evidences do you have of these quotes and interactions that ostracized you from the
34:53
Southern Baptist Convention or the EFCA? So this is Russell and Jeff. Are there any evidences of fundamental
34:58
Baptist becoming woke slash liberal? I can answer the
35:06
EFCA side of it. EFCA and socialjustice .wordpress .com shows all the evidence.
35:13
There's a website that in their own words what they've said including the 26 page report against Jeff.
35:20
I mean you can see more. Let me just tail on that for one other thing. The whole point of writing a book was so that I would force myself to quote everything exactly, publish it and put the evidence in writing so that that would be interacted with.
35:34
Instead what happened was they invented things that I never said. You're referring to a 26 page document where they would say things like, well
35:43
Clewer has concluded that any conversation about race or social justice is not allowed in the church.
35:51
But I never believed that or said that. It was just an invented quote and there were just a number of cases of that.
35:58
So yeah, the evidence is all documented in the actual book, in the series of books and that's why
36:04
I published works so that it would be something that's falsifiable or testable.
36:10
Not just subjective opinion or I think this is woke or not. It's what was said.
36:17
They're actual quotes. So yeah, how about you for your? Within the Southern Baptist Convention I did see a document that was written fairly recently.
36:25
It's on the website of the Conservative Baptist Network and I would just Google that and maybe put in social justice, other words like that and see if you can find it.
36:36
I don't know the exact name of the document. But you can just in some ways go to YouTube and search for like wokeness in the
36:48
Southern Baptist Convention, critical race theory in the Southern Baptist Convention and John Harris will pop up and you'll see all the evidence right there.
36:56
No, I'm kidding. But you'll see the professors themselves teaching these things, okay?
37:04
And there's many, I mean, you could watch this for hours and hours, for days.
37:10
You could watch professors of Southern Baptist professors teaching exactly what we're talking about in their own words, okay?
37:24
Several questions about Israel and I'm just gonna generalize it.
37:32
Should we support Israel and why? Go ahead, you go first.
37:43
Yes. I believe that this is, God has reconstituted
37:50
Israel in the promised land in 1948 and this is God's plan.
37:56
This is, I read it from Romans 11, 25 and following. There is some interpretive issue there, but to me it seems clear that this is
38:02
God's design that He's brought them back. Yeah, I completely agree. I think absolutely we should support
38:09
Israel, but what does it mean to support? I think that's a key definition you have to make and I think as Christians, you go back from Genesis chapter three and God says to Abraham, those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed.
38:25
Clearly, God's chosen people. He chose them for His own purposes through whom He delivered the law and the prophets and then bring the
38:33
Messiah. I don't know how you interpret Romans nine through 11 any other way that somehow the church has replaced
38:41
Israel. I can't interpret the Bible that way or even in Revelation. Just all the references to the
38:49
Jews and what's going on in Israel in Revelation. So yes, we need to, I believe the
38:54
Bible, it's not my opinion, I believe the Bible teaches that we should be supporters of the
39:00
Jewish nation in Israel. Again, they are enemies of the gospel for our sakes at this point,
39:05
Scripture says. So that's not to say that some of them who reject
39:12
God aren't doing unimaginable or terrible evil in the world. I mean, Karl Marx, George Soros, many people within our own government, they're
39:22
Jewish and they're working against their own God's cause for the Jews. So it's not to be that we just have to turn our minds off to that.
39:30
But generally speaking, we want to support, I mean, who is the greatest being against the
39:38
Jewish nation? Is Satan. Do you wanna be on Satan's side and support those who oppose the
39:44
Jews? I mean, I don't. So we do need to support them, I think, in ways, yet without overlooking the fact that everything they do isn't always right.
39:53
Every decision they make isn't always perfect. And so, but we do support their right to exist in that land.
39:59
We do know that God has a future purpose for them and that's going to happen. And we better be on the right side of supporting that purpose because ultimately when we're supporting them, we're actually supporting what
40:10
God has for them. Tomorrow at the end of our service,
40:19
Trevor Rubenstein is an ethnic Jew. I asked him what tribe he's from and he's like, we can only trace it back to the
40:27
Levite. Aaron, right? That's the only DNA samples that they can trace.
40:35
But yeah, so. Oh yeah, sure. Amen. Amen.
40:56
Yeah, and I'll just put a plug in here. So Trevor, he's with Chosen People's Ministries.
41:02
He lives in St. Louis Park. A very large Jewish population in St. Louis Park. That's a western suburb of Minneapolis.
41:09
And so if you're looking for a guy to support who is evangelizing the
41:14
Jews, he's, I can't think of anyone better than Trevor. That's why it's really incredible what's taking place on the college campuses now.
41:24
If you think about it, you know, Israel in the southern part of the country was attacked by Islamic militants.
41:33
I don't even call them terrorists because, you know, one man's freedom fighters, another man's terrorists. They're Islamic militants who just wanted to indiscriminately kill as many
41:41
Jews, civilians there, as possibly kill 1 ,200. Okay, so Israel responds as any kind of normal nation would do, trying to go in and decimate their enemy in Gaza.
41:53
And who do the professors and university students side with? No doubt by professional agitators, by the way.
42:01
They're sending people into these campuses who professionally have been trained how to do uprisings and protests and so forth, granted.
42:09
But who do they support? I mean, they support Hamas, the Palestinians, and so forth.
42:15
And it's truly a very, very dark moment, I think, for our nation, that there's been this level of support for Hamas and the anti -Israel side of things.
42:31
You have anything to say? Yes, I support Israel. And I just wanna, he made a quotation about their enemies for the sake of the gospel, but they're beloved for the
42:39
Father's sakes in the eyes of God. And remember, the gifts and callings of God are without repentance.
42:47
And that refers to Israel in that context there. And remember also, we're not to boast against the branches, talking about the natural branches.
42:57
So as Christians, we are very indebted to them in many ways. And our spiritual heroes, who are they?
43:03
You know, they're the Jews. And so, you know, the Bible is what I'm talking about. And so, and I'll just talk personally.
43:11
I've gone to two Jewish schools. I have a couple of degrees from Jewish schools. And I just owe a lot to these fellows.
43:17
And I tell you, I've been richly blessed by the Jewish people. And so I am a big supporter of Israel, just like what was said.
43:28
In other words, if they do wrong, I'm not gonna support that. But I think
43:33
Israel is a pretty good nation in this dark world.
43:40
And I think it's important that we understand, obviously, we wanna see them come to Christ.
43:47
That's exactly what we want. And the Bible talks about what will their salvation be, but the riches of the world, you see.
43:56
And so again, I think it'll be a great blessing when all Israel shall be saved, as the
44:01
Bible talks about. So I look forward to that day. Again, if they do wrong, that's one thing, obviously.
44:07
But I support Israel. Okay, let's wrap up with this one.
44:13
So November's coming. We say this every four years.
44:19
It's the biggest election of our lifetime, right? But it really, I mean, it's, we might be on the point of no return, who knows.
44:26
But so do we support
44:32
Donald Trump? Do we, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:39
So let's close with this one. Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah.
44:45
I mean, let's just leave it at that. I mean, how do we view the Republican Party? I mean, we know how we view the
44:51
Democratic Party, right? I mean, that's not an option. How do we view the
44:56
Republican Party? How do we view Donald Trump as we look ahead to November? I don't want four more years of the
45:06
Republican, or the Democrats securing permanent majorities because of illegal immigration so that you will not have any opportunity for pro -life legislation or anything else that you believe in, which is what will happen.
45:17
So we don't have options we don't have. There's really only one option, in my opinion, and that's Donald J. Trump.
45:24
Trump 2024. Trump is not the perfect candidate, but he's the best one of the choices that we have.
45:35
So I will vote for Donald Trump. For sure. I wish he would take a stronger stand on life.
45:44
What he's saying is, I'm just gonna leave it in the hands of the states, but you have to understand that on the other side, they're wanting to kill babies right up to the point of birth and maybe days beyond birth.
45:57
So they're actually trying to initiate federal legislation to do that. Kamala Harris was just talking about that.
46:05
So in order to save babies' lives, I think we do vote for Donald Trump.
46:13
I would love to know how Jesus would vote if he lived in our culture. I really would.
46:18
I see it as, from a Christian standpoint, the Democrat Party has really given over to complete ungodliness and everything else.
46:26
I think that's not an option. We live in a two -party system, so one of these candidates is going to win.
46:34
I personally am actually pessimistic about Donald Trump winning this time, even though he should win.
46:42
I mean, there's been such a bungling of incompetence. I mean, it's a farce at this point, honestly, what's going on with this administration.
46:50
You have someone who's not even cognitively capable of running the country, but I think that's very useful for them, by the way, because you have a bunch of people behind the scenes who aren't seen, who are running things.
47:00
I think President Obama has had a lot to do with what's going on right now. But anyway, back to that, before I go off on that little rant.
47:07
So one of two candidates is going to win because of a two -party system, so it's going to be Biden or Trump. I'm not optimistic that Trump is going to win just because of election integrity.
47:17
I mean, does anyone really believe that Joe Biden got 81 million votes, the most in history of our country?
47:25
I don't believe that. And so what has changed this time to change that dynamic?
47:32
Who was it, Stalin or Levin said, and it's not who votes, it's who counts the votes. So anyway, so there's that element, but from a standpoint of just purely looking at Trump, I think
47:45
Christians can look at this two ways. You vote for Trump because it's the pragmatic thing to do.
47:52
He's not super pro -life. He's more pro -life, of course. He's not on biblical morality and LGBTQ issue.
48:00
He's not super solid on that either, but a lot of other things he did, leading to the judges, overturn
48:07
Roe v. Wade, what he did in Jerusalem, moving the Capitol there. I mean, he's done a lot of incredible things.
48:13
Economically, what he did for the country when he was, I mean, we were energy independent. He was cutting off Iran.
48:20
He got out of the situation with the green, not the green you do, but the
48:25
Paris Climate Accords, all that kind, so he did some incredible things. That being said, from a character standpoint, the man is a complete narcissist.
48:35
He can never get out of his way, and I think Christians can go for Trump, like all, as you guys said,
48:43
I probably will likely vote for him, but I also, because we get this question in the radio issue from time to time too, and it's like,
48:50
I think you have to leave room for Christians who say, my conscience doesn't allow me to vote for such a man, and I don't try to convince someone the other way when they do that, because you don't wanna override someone's conscience, so I don't think
49:05
I gave a really super definitive answer, just some things to sort of think about when we think about the upcoming election, but I certainly hope the
49:10
Democrats do not win. It would be horrific, even more horrific for this country. Yeah, I know.
49:20
Yeah, it was just, Trump had all these rallies where it was just packed, and then
49:26
Biden, one guy said he yelled at eight cars and they called it a rally. I mean, it was during COVID, and yeah,
49:32
I mean, he ran a basement campaign. Yeah, so, yeah, we shouldn't be afraid to say,
49:39
I mean, it was a stolen election. I mean, we shouldn't be afraid to say that, and I share what
49:46
David said. We would like to be pleasantly surprised in November, but I'd be surprised.
49:54
If it was a fair election. She's gonna win, I missed her optimism. Here we go. Let's go. There we go, yeah.
50:00
So anyway, okay, so we're gonna wrap this up. I'm getting cues, you gotta shut this down.
50:05
So yeah, thank you, and yeah, so thank you so much for coming. I know some of you just came for today, and we just wanna say thank you for being here, and I hope it's been a blessing to you, and we're so delighted that you came here, and we trust that the
50:20
Lord will use this in your life to encourage you, and so we do have a fire going outside.
50:27
If you wanna stay around and fellowship more, it's just a little ways that way, other side of our church lawn, and yeah,
50:37
I wanted s'mores, but that got shot down. I'm kidding, and then tomorrow, some of you will be back, 8 .45
50:49
in the morning. John Harris is gonna be talking, and then we're gonna have our service at 10, and Jeff Clewer is gonna be preaching
50:57
Romans 12, one and two, so looking forward to hearing from him as well, and so we just wanna say thank you, and we'll close the night in prayer.
51:07
Father in heaven, we do thank you for this time. Thank you for each of these speakers and their willingness to block out time from their busy schedules to be here,
51:14
Lord, to bless the people who came, and I'm so grateful for them, and Lord, these are trying times, and we've talked about this throughout the whole conference today.
51:27
We need wisdom. We need discernment. We need courage. We need to fear you above all, and I pray,
51:37
Lord, we pray that this room would be full of people who live courageous lives for Christ's sake, and that it becomes contagious in their homes and their communities and their churches, and that what's taking place here this weekend would be used far more than we could ask or imagine, to your glory, and so as people head away, and we ask for safe travels, and we look ahead also for tomorrow for your blessing upon that time.