Alistair Begg Responds to Controversy / Phil Johnson Weighs In - Shepherds Conference 2024?

Hello, in this video we're going to be covering two updates to the Alistair Begg situation.

First of all, Phil Johnson has weighed in. Phil Johnson is John MacArthur's right -hand man.

So Alistair Begg is set to speak at this year's Shepherds Conference at Grace Community Church.

So it's good to know how the leadership of John MacArthur's Grace Community Church Shepherd Conference, how they feel about it.

So that's the first thing. The other development is that Begg has made a few public comments himself.

So this is the first time that he has said anything publicly before his representatives told

American Family Radio and they commented. But this time Alistair Begg actually got up in front of his church.

He didn't say much, but we're going to play what Alistair Begg said just this past Sunday.

So this is from Sunday, January 28th, 2024. Let's listen to what

Alistair Begg had to say. Watch. In the context of the evening, I want to do what

I'm not prepared to do this morning, and that is to acknowledge the amazing amount of traffic that there has been and noise on the internet in relationship to what

I told you about some months ago. And my colleagues felt it would be good if I said something about it.

So I don't want to do it now as it goes out into cyberspace, but I'm happy to do it. It's for our church family.

And I said jokingly to somebody, you know, making an attempt at compassion,

I ended up, you know, starting a massive fire. I would fully have anticipated some of the other things

I've said would be far more inflammatory than this. But we should have known that, you know,

Begg wouldn't manage compassion. So let's pray. Okay.

So as you can see, he didn't say all that much. If he spoke to his church that evening, that hasn't come out and been made public yet.

Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. We don't have anything. We don't have any reason to think things are going to change based on what his representatives told

American Family Radio. I mean, they said he's standing by his advice. So if he makes any more public comments or any public comments,

I suspect that he will defend his position that Christians can or should go to gay weddings, quote unquote, to show love and to build bridges.

And I know I had several commenters express their concern and they're like, well, that's language that Andy Stanley uses, you know, building bridges to the

LGBTQ community. And that bothered a lot of people, but we'll see what happens.

Maybe Alistair Begg, we're praying that he repents and recants.

So if he does say more, we will report on it. And this is the reason why

I'm doing several videos on this subject. Obviously, people are interested in it. That's one thing, but I really believe this could be a turning point within conservative evangelical

Christianity. Basically, when it comes down to the traditional

Bible -believing churches, if Alistair Begg is able to weather this storm and if other pastors, especially if other pastors pick up on this and they adopt this advice for their own, the results could be catastrophic.

Also, and that leads to another subject that I wanted to talk about, so -called

Christian cancel culture. Some people who are defending Alistair Begg, they're saying that, you know, you guys are just trying to cancel

Alistair Begg and how are you any different from the woke cancel mob?

You know, because they, they're out there canceling. And I said, it's totally different. Someone left that comment on my video and I said, this is totally different.

The woke crowd, when they try to cancel someone, first of all, Alistair Begg has not been canceled.

Alistair Begg is still the pastor of his church. I'm not trying to cancel him.

I'm not condemning the man. I'm simply disagreeing with him. But first of all, he hasn't been canceled. He's still the pastor of his church.

His elders still support him. I think from what I understand, they seem to agree with his advice.

So he hasn't been canceled. He's still the pastor of Parkside church. Like, like we just saw, he was in the pulpit

Sunday morning. So he has not been canceled. That's the first thing. Second, when the woke crowd, when they cancel someone, they cancel people for nothing.

They cancel people that don't even do anything wrong. More on that in a moment. But Alistair Begg, his comments were in public and they were clearly wrong.

As far as you say, well, he has been canceled. He was kicked off of American family radio. He brought that on himself.

He was given a chance to clarify or to recant.

And he chose not to. He brought that on himself. I mean, think about it. It's American family radio, a conservative

Christian radio network. And you're going to go tell people that, hey,

Christians should go to gay weddings. Of course, they're not going to like that. I mean, what do you expect? And here's the thing.

Alistair Begg knew that full well. When he made those original comments in his podcast, he prefaced his statements by saying,

I know that some people aren't going to like this advice. So he knew it and he knew that was going to cause people to stumble.

And he said it anyway. So he really brought it on himself. And again, American family radio, they gave him an opportunity to clarify or to recant.

And he didn't. So this is not him being canceled. Totally different.

When the woke crowd, when they cancel someone, they cancel people who don't even do anything wrong, right?

For example, in 2020, if you didn't support Black Lives Matter in spring, in the summer of 2020, a lot of people got canceled.

Why? Because you were accused of being a racist. Well, not supporting

BLM doesn't make you a racist. But that's how the woke cancel culture works.

Same thing with the Me Too movement, right? If a woman made an accusation, it's like the progressives and the liberals, all women must be believed.

So if an accusation came against Donald Trump, they automatically believed it. If someone, an accusation was made, they were canceled, you know, except if it's one of their people.

Of course, I think it backfired even on a couple of liberals. But, you know, that was the type of thing that happens within the woke cancel culture.

Like people aren't even guilty. There's no proof they even did anything wrong and they got canceled. Alistair Begg made these comments in public.

So it's a totally, totally different situation. But for the people who are upset that maybe someone like myself or critiquing

Alistair Begg, I like Alistair Begg. I don't have anything. I don't hate Alistair Begg. There's one video.

Why do people hate Alistair Begg? Nobody hates Alistair Begg. Here's the thing.

If somebody does something sinful in public, the biblical thing to do is to go to them and try to get them to change, try to get them to fix it.

And that's what people are doing because they actually love and care about Alistair Begg. They realize that this is bad.

It's not just bad for him or his career or something like that. This is bad for him, but it's bad for the church.

I think it's bad for his soul. This is not good. Somebody asked me, did you reach out personally to Alistair Begg?

Well, yeah, I did, but I don't expect him to respond to me.

There's a guy, Justin Peters. Justin Peters knows

Alistair Begg personally, or at least they have met. My channel, as of now,

I have 11 ,000 subscribers. Justin Peters has like 230 ,000 subscribers.

Justin Peters is very well known. He's met Alistair Begg. Justin Peters has spoken at the

Shepherd's Conference, which Alistair Begg is going to speak there in a little over a month. So my point in bringing up Justin Peters, he wrote

Alistair Begg a letter and Alistair Begg has not even responded to Justin Peters.

So he's not going to respond to me. But people who reach out to Alistair Begg, myself,

Justin Peters, anyone else, we do it because we care about him. Nobody's trying to cancel Alistair Begg.

But when a minister, here's the thing people need to realize. When a minister says something on the internet for the world to hear, and he's saying it as a pastor.

I mean, pastors are leaders. Pastors influence other pastors.

They influence the flock. His advice now that Christians should attend gay weddings and buy the couple a gift.

This could be a sign that we have reached a turning point. You don't know what will come from this.

Maybe it'll all blow over in a month or so. Like I said, he's speaking at the Shepherd's Conference at John MacArthur's church in like March, first week in March, something like that.

He might get disinvited. We know how Phil Johnson feels. Maybe Alistair Begg will repent before that.

Maybe he'll get disinvited. Maybe he'll go and get confronted like Al Mohler was confronted in 2019 over social justice issues.

Who knows what's going to happen? Maybe it'll blow over soon. I highly doubt that because like I said, in a month, he's speaking at ShepCon and it's going to come up again in a month,

I think. But I really believe this could be a turning point. Here's the thing.

If you go down this road and you give this advice and this becomes just standard for evangelical

Bible -believing pastors to give this kind of advice, my friends, we've crossed a line, a line of compromise that we're just not going to be able to come back from.

The world, we see what the world is doing. They're just pressing forward. More pressure, more pressure.

It's getting more extreme. They're not going to relent and back off anytime soon.

So if Christians are caving right now, what does that say for the future?

So in conclusion, this is a big deal and it took Alistair Begg and these comments to kind of bring this issue into the forefront where now everyone's talking about it.

Should Christians go to these, you know, weddings, which they're not really weddings, obviously, it's the whole thing's an affront to God.

And if you go and you buy the couple a gift, I mean, you're a partaker of, of those evil deeds.

And if the pastor is saying you should do it, I mean, yeah, this is a really bad situation. Like I said,

I think this could be a turning point. That's why you're going to continue to hear about it going forward.

Unless Alistair Begg repents and recants and then the conservative

Bible -believing Christian world rejoices and then we can finally put it behind us. But unless that happens, yeah, it's not going away.

My name's Michael Grant. Thanks for watching. Until next time, may the Lord be with you. Have a great day.

If he's wrong about something he believes as a bedrock of his worldview, but even on something so basic as the fact that there are objective differences between men and women, you have a six -foot -one muscular swimmer with a square jaw and an

Adam's apple and male reproductive organs, completely male genetics and zero female characteristics, and he's dominating women's swimming events, and there is not a single outlet, media outlet in America that will say that he's a man.

He's not a woman, and they all use masculine or feminine pronouns when they write about him.

It's cruel and it's uncharitable to speak the truth about this man. That's what is believed today.

There are hundreds of social and political issues that affect all of our lives that the media and others in positions of power refuse to deal with truthfully, and if you do speak the truth about any of these sacrosanct matters, you're going to be scolded, and sometimes even by fellow

Christians, you will be scolded as uncharitable or overly harsh, unloving.

Love and truth are commonly pitted against one another, and most of us have been influenced to one degree or another by the belief that love and truth simply don't play well together.

The question often arises, does charity obligate me to give honor and cooperation to people who hold or who propagate false and deadly belief systems?

What do I do with people like that? You're aware, I'm sure, of the current controversy surrounding a well -known and generally orthodox pastor who advised a grandmother to attend her grandson's wedding to a transgendered individual and said, even take a gift out of the fear that the grandson might think that she's judgmental and uncharitable if she didn't join the celebration.