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00:00

Non -rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!

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Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite? We're being delusional. Delusional?

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Delusional is okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional.

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So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me?

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Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies.

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Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.

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When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

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And it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills, and all the nations shall flow to it.

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And many people shall come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the

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God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.

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For out of Zion shall go the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

01:51

Hey guys, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. I am Jeff. They call me the

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Ninja. I know I messed the music up there, right? Is that what it was? Yeah. Music got thrown off there just a little bit.

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I didn't get the fade out. It's this mouse is so sensitive. It just throws everything off.

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So I'm Jeff, they call me the Ninja. That's Luke the Bear right there. What up? And that is Joy the Girl. Hello. Welcome to another episode of Apologia Radio.

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I want to encourage everybody to go to ApologiaStudios .com. That's A -P -O -L -O -G -I -A -Studios .com.

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You guys can get about at least 300 podcasts, radio shows, all kinds of programs up at ApologiaStudios .com.

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You can also get our television show, our after show and Apologia Academy. You can partner with Apologia Church in our ministry to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth and provide a defense for the biblical gospel.

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You can do that by signing up for All Access. When you sign up for All Access, you join believers from all over the world who are partnering with Apologia Church to communicate the biblical gospel all over the world, to reach people with the light of the gospel, to transform this world for the glory of Jesus Christ.

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And so you can do that at ApologiaStudios .com. And I want to say a big shout out to everybody who has been partnered with us for many, many years now, or many years.

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And I want to let you know that, well, I guess I'll give you, always give you the positive, amazing stories.

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Just got a message yesterday from somebody who was a Jehovah's Witness that came to Christ because they watched some content that we put up of our evangelism in Kauai to some

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Jehovah's Witnesses. And it was just a tremendous blessing to see God using this content.

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So you should just know it's not about just getting the content at ApologiaStudios .com. That's just to bless our ministry partners with.

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It is about all this stuff we put out all over the world that brings the biblical gospel into conflict with error.

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And so you're a big part of that. So I want to say thank you for all of that. So here we are, another episode of Apologia Radio, and we are having one of our very favorite people on today.

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It's Dr. Andrew Sandlin. You guys have seen him on Apologia stuff before. I want to encourage everybody to go to DocSandlin .com

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and check out some of Dr. Sandlin's content. He's the founder and president, Center for Cultural Leadership.

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And so welcome to the show, Dr. Sandlin. Thank you so much, Jeff. Appreciate Apologia. Everything you guys are doing, particularly your courage in these apostate times.

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They won't always be apostate. The king of God will advance. But thank you for being such a light. Appreciate you guys. It's an incredible blessing, brother.

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And I had a great time with Dr. Boot and Dr. Sandlin in Canada recently. We were working together and preaching together, teaching together.

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So that's part of the reason I wanted to have Dr. Sandlin on today because he gave an excellent, excellent lecture in Canada on Marxism.

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We are going to be putting that up. We actually did get that content ourselves. So that'll be up on Apologia Studios channel very, very soon.

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So it'll be right here on Apologia Studios on YouTube. So I encourage you to check that out when we drop it. But let's start it this way.

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Okay, so Dr. Sandlin, we're going to do cultural Marxism today, talk about Marxism generally. But I would love to have you talk to us about why does it matter.

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We live in a time where the, I would say, I don't think this is an overgeneralization.

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I think the most common mindset amongst Christians today in the West, in evangelism in the

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West, is the idea of cultural defeat. The church is going to go into the ground. Basically, we get defeated.

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And then Jesus returns to a defeated church. And then there's victory, you sort of at the end of time in that way. So why would we care,

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Dr. Sandlin, that abortion is prevalent in our cultures and societies? Why would we care that there's this creeping in of cultural

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Marxism? Why do we care that society is falling apart? I mean, isn't the world going to hell in a handbasket?

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Why bother polishing brass on a sinking ship, right? Yeah, well, yeah, that's a prominent evangelical view and has been for, oh, about 150 years or so.

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But it's utterly false. I mean, as we, I think, pointed out last time, and listeners can go back and listen in the archives, the

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Bible from Genesis 3 .15 gives us glorious promises about the advance of the gospel, the advance of the kingdom of God.

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This doesn't mean there won't be difficulties and hardships. Our Lord himself was, of course, nailed to a cross, but then, of course, he rose again, and he gave a great commission.

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And I don't have time to recount all of the promises, but the fact is the Bible lays out a victorious eschatology, and we

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Christians are a part of that. The problem with Marxism is that it is, in many ways, a secular, post -millennial eschatology.

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And I have to think about that for a while, but post -millennialism is a view, the language specifically isn't in the

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Bible, but it's essentially the view that coterminous with the present age will be the advance of the gospel, the promises of the word of God, like in Isaiah, others elsewhere, promises in the

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New Testament that we will live in one day a glorious gospel age when all areas of life, including politics, will be brought under the gospel and God's moral law.

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It doesn't mean every single person will be saved. It doesn't mean all sin will be gone, but it will be a glorious gospel kingdom age.

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Well, in many ways, Marxism is the secular version of that. It wants to take out

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God. It wants to take out the Bible, and it wants to offer promises based essentially on economics and culture that give us the perfect society, the utopian society here on earth, analogous to what the

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Bible promises, of course, without God and the Bible. So in many ways, going back to this evangelical view, the evangelical, we would call it pietistic in the worst sense, view of no victory, we only have to wait for Jesus to come back and so on, that particular paradigm is no match for a secular post -millennial vision.

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I think the reason that Marxism, in particular cultural Marxism, and we can define that a little more fully in a minute, it tends to be winning on our cultures because the

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Church has been so retreatist and so quiet. That's the reason, one of the reasons, certainly one of the main reasons, that Marxism and this cultural

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Marxism, because they do have a vision of cultural victory, and the evangelical Church, by and large, does not.

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Wow, that's powerful. That's good. That's a big thought. No, and I think that that's critically important to hang on to.

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It's just that point, Dr. Sandlin, about concern for this life in this world, right?

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That you have the secularists really investing themselves in the world itself, and obviously there's perverse examples of that and perverse presuppositions of that.

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They're not biblical, they're not righteous, they're not good. We don't want to highlight those things as those are supremely valuable things, but we're saying that they have an actual concern for this life, this world, culture, society, communities, here and now.

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At least they profess to have those presuppositions. So can you just talk for a moment in contrast about that, in terms of the

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Christian view of we want to escape this world. We want to get out of this world.

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This world is bad. This world is evil. You know, we want to get away to the better sort of spiritual existence out there.

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Yeah, you know, a man that I work with closely now passed away a long dead. Put it this way,

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R .J. Rischduny, he made an excellent point. He said the liberals believe in history, but not God. He says the fundamentalists believe in God, but not history.

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We need to believe in both God and history. The problem, I think, with too many of these evangelicals is their view, and this is on my mind.

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I've got to deliver a lecture soon on Gnosticism. I think they've been influenced by Gnosticism.

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For Gnosticism, essentially creation is inherently defective. So anything material, anything of this world, the human body, and the extensions of this world, the institutions like art and education and politics, all of these are inherently corrupt, not just that they're fallen, as the

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Bible says, and infected by sin, but inherently corrupt. And therefore, the only thing left is escape.

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That's what the Gnostics believed. Now, I wouldn't say that evangelicals have bought in hook, line, and sinker to Gnosticism.

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That would not be fair. But this Gnostic mentality has influenced them such that they don't recognize the value of this world.

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Now, here's something, Jeff, people don't understand. If you actually read the Bible, the Bible has very little to say about heaven and the afterlife.

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Now, it does say there is an afterlife. Thank God our eternal life will end with Him.

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But it will be, according to the Book of Revelation, as I interpret Revelation, on a glorified, resurrected earth, not up in heaven somewhere.

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So we have this sort of medieval idea, we'll all be floating around, you know, playing harps, and it's sort of the angels will be near us, and everything's ethereal.

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But in the Bible, there's a great materiality. God, it is true, is a spirit. He's not material, but he created a good material world.

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So faithfulness in Christianity is essentially faithfulness in this very material, corporeal, concrete world.

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There is another world, the world of God and the Holy Spirit, and let's be honest, the evil spirits, Satan and so on, and we're constantly having an interpenetration between those two worlds.

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But this world, this material world, is vitally important to God. And in fact, we're not being faithful Christians if we buy into a

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Gnostic view of essentially escape. Right, and just to highlight this for maybe people who are newer believers, maybe don't understand a bit of the church history here, where we've come from, the

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Gnostics were fought against, the earliest beginnings there of Gnosticism and the influence in the church, they were fought against in the very pages of the

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New Testament. And so we have the remnants of those debates happening in the New Testament itself, and we also, of course, have the glaring examples of the conflict between the people of God and Gnosticism in the second century of the church.

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So this is a very well -known worldview that has been an enemy of the

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Christian church and the people of God since the very, very beginning. But it's important to remember, Gnosticism is the oldest and the most pernicious and most resistant heresy in all of the history of the church.

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Use the term worldview. This is very important. Pelagianism and Arianism don't have time to explain exactly what they mean.

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Those are errors on particular, specific doctrines of Christology and salvation, and they are evil, but Gnosticism is an entirely alien worldview.

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Yes. The entire view of the world is perverted, and that's why it's so dangerous. Yes. So, okay,

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I'll end it on this, and let's go back into Marxism for a second, Dr. Sandlin. So you are saying, and this is so crazy because it's such a shocker to people, modern evangelicals, you are saying that when the final judgment comes, we will be living together with God, heaven and earth come together again, on this physical earth in physically resurrected bodies.

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We're not going to be simply for all eternity disembodied spirits floating around in a gassy existence with fat babies playing harps on clouds.

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Yeah, that's interesting. That's more of the ancient pagan scholastic

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Greek view of anthropology. Now, I want to be clear, the Bible, it's not just as the materialists say, the humanists, that man is just blood and bones.

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That's, of course, equally wrong. The biblical view of man is that this other view, the spiritual, the so -called spiritual, the immaterial part of man is woven into the body.

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So the Bible does say, Paul says, I'm absent from the body and present with the Lord. But not fully, not entirely, and that's why the resurrection is so vital.

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Now, let's think about this for a minute, Jeff. God made man to be a body. We read that clearly in Genesis chapters 1 and 2.

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So humanity without a body is not humanity in full. And that's also true.

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Now, think about this. That's also true about the earth. Man without earth is not fully man. The earth was created for man.

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I mean, that's part of this dominion commission there in Genesis 1. So the notion that we would all be sort of flying around in some

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Hellenic Greek notion of a soul which is completely separate from the body and is meant to live separately from the body, that's an ancient

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Greek heresy. That's not a biblical view. In the Bible, we were meant to live as resurrected people on a resurrected earth.

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So when people say, well, this is the language which is not actually biblical. Well, you know, the good thing about dying is

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I can die and go to heaven. That's not precisely how the Bible says it. The Bible doesn't speak of dying and going to heaven.

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It does speak of being with the Lord when we die. But the big emphasis in the Bible is on the resurrection, which is obviously very corporeal.

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And the ancient Greeks hated resurrection. They hated the Christian faith largely because of this doctrine that they considered scandalous.

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Yes, so there you go. Some, I know, believers watching this right now are probably really having their wheels start turning now, going, wait, yeah, that's right.

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The Bible does talk about a final judgment, a final resurrection, a resurrected, renewed, restored heavens or earth itself.

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The creation itself is waiting for its release, for its bondage to decay.

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And all of that, you start thinking through those things. You start to go, wait, yeah, actually God is concerned with this life in this world.

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It's the physical and the material, the physical and the spiritual. Okay, so now back to Marxism.

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Dr. Sandlin, we are living in very peculiar times right now where you have now people heralding the goodness and the beauty of socialism and Marxism.

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And you have people now actually celebrating such a worldview. Of course, you see many of these platforms now that are very successful that are funded in large part by George Soros.

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And people like him that are actually propagating this worldview. And it's something people are biting down on, saying, yeah, maybe that is a good thing.

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We should do what Venezuela is doing. We should give it a shot. Okay, so let's talk about Marxism.

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What exactly is it? Yeah, so let's give a quick summary.

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So there's classical Marxism from Marx, and then there's the more recent cultural Marxism. Both are very dangerous.

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Classical Marxism is economic Marxism of the old Soviet Union, of Mao's China, and so on,

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Pol Pot. And it's essentially the notion that everything, everything can be reduced to economics.

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I mean, religion is just basically the upper classes employing a view of God so that they can subjugate the lower economic classes.

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And that's true of ideas and everything else. Well, because of that, Marx believed in socialism.

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Well, if everything's economic, then the way to make everybody happy is to make everything economically equal. Well, of course, we know that's false.

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Everywhere it's been tried. Everywhere it's been tried. It's been a spectacular failure. There aren't any exceptions to that.

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That's right. But it's just like it's a constant temptation because people, a lot of people,

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I mean, simple man, let's face it. We want things for free, and we want to have the good life without working hard for it.

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And we believe that we should have as much as everybody else. And we don't like the idea of God's providence, which means that there are particular stations in life.

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Some people are wealthy, and some are not. And you know what the biblical view is? We have to accept that. Now, we can work hard to make more money.

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There's nothing wrong with that. But, I mean, equality, this kind of Marxist equality is not a biblical notion.

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Now, we're all equally made in God's image. We're equally sinners before God. And salvation is equally available within God's elective purposes, of course, to anybody who believes.

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But that's not the equality, of course, that Marxism is talking about. It's essentially talking about economic equality, which is not really biblical at all.

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It's equality of results rather than equality of condition, which is the biblical view.

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Well, so that in a nutshell is the classical Marxism. So cultural Marxism is broader.

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It basically holds the cultural Marxist whole that everything should be equalized.

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Sex should be equalized, not just economics. Sex should be equalized. And condition in society should be equalized.

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And age should be equalized. Morality should be equalized. There shouldn't be one morality greater than another.

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Cultural Marxism is the war on all hierarchies, particularly white males. But essentially, cultural

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Marxism is an attack on privilege, just as the original economic

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Marxism was an attack on economic privilege. This is an attack on essentially all cultural privilege.

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And you know what God privileges? God privileges His Word. God privileges His Son. God privileges a society given to them, like ancient

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Israel. Though it failed, God privileged ancient Israel and His law. They hate that. So essentially they want to tear down this entire hierarchy.

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And for them, that's what statism is all about. And this is what some of our libertarian friends, though I generally agree with them, they don't quite understand.

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It's not just raw power that the culturalists mark.

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Raw state power. They want state power and money to create this perfectly egalitarian society.

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That's the problem. What does that mean? Not just financially, economic egalitarianism. But everything.

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So I'm sorry to interrupt you, Dr. Sandlin. I just wanted to make sure that we could explain that for people who may not understand what that means. What's that mean, egalitarianism?

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What's that mean? Oh, yeah, sorry. That's the – egalitarianism is the view of there must be the fair society.

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You know, quote, social justice has to be the equal society. Now, it's important to make this distinction.

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I said it before. The Bible teaches equality of processes. That is, if the playing field is the same for everybody, then it's fair.

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Now, cultural Marxists believe in equality of results. That is, they've got to rig the system in order that everybody else can get the same thing.

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So a good example of this would be like, well, if the Arizona Cardinals football team played a local high school team and beat them, you know, 76 to nothing, as long as the rules were the same for both teams, as long as the field was the same, as long as everything else was the same, the game was fair.

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But cultural Marxists would say, well, no, it can't be fair because, I mean, if you can't win by 76 points, then it'd be fair.

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There has to be some unfairness. Well, biblically, we read about the law of just weights and measures and so on.

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Biblically, it is fair if everybody operates by the rule of law, based on God's moral law. But cultural

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Marxists want to rig the law and get rid of God's law in order to create pre -established results.

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That's a good way to understand it. Okay. All right. So why is all this nefarious,

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Dr. Sandlin? Well, so I've got a two -part answer for that. Less important, though nonetheless important, is our country was founded by people influenced by Protestant Christianity, not all

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Christians, but influenced by Protestant Christianity, that believed in what we would today call classical liberalism.

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Now, that's not modern leftism. Classical liberalism, which grew out of Protestantism, is essentially the view that we should have the rule of law in society, we should have maximum individual freedom within the boundaries of God's moral law, that basically you're free to follow your own conscience.

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If you're a Christian, hopefully you are, but even if you're not a Christian, you're still free to follow as long as you operate within the broad boundaries of the law.

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The problem with cultural Marxism is it's eroding the foundation of our very nation.

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We see it working out right now as I'm speaking this, not sure when it'll be broadcast, but in the Kavanaugh nomination, people trying to subvert this process, a very fair process, but people trying to subvert it.

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So cultural Marxism is eroding the United States of America and our institutions in classical liberalism, taking away liberty again and again.

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But I would say that more importantly, it's subversive of the kingdom of God. Okay. And of course that's much more important than the

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United States is, because it's offering a secular social vision rather than the biblical, the

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Christian social vision. And it's sad, and we may talk about this more in a minute, to see Christians jumping on essentially the secular bandwagon and putting a nice little

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Christian label on it. But cultural Marxism is really a secular version of the good life.

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We're going to show you what the good life is, and the good life is getting rid of God and the Bible. The good life is getting rid of the

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Church of Jesus Christ, or at least the true Church of Jesus Christ. The good life is the egalitarian life, the life of absolute fairness, where if you want to be homosexual, have homosexual marriage, if you want to, you can live essentially any way you want as long as you leave everybody else alone.

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You're entitled to other people's wealth. The state is here to make sure that you are guaranteed to have a certain standard of living.

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Other people should pay for that because essentially you are entitled to that. And I could go on and on, but that is subversive of the kingdom of God, which teaches individual responsibility under God's authority.

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Okay. Very good. Guys? I'm just, I'm loving this. Yeah, it's great.

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Okay, so that would bring me to an interesting, I guess, let me do it this way.

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I'll ask you this question first, Dr. Stanley. I know you have to go soon here, but I'll try to make this quick. Should Christians be concerned with justice in the world?

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Should we be concerned about what happens in this world? Should we have some influence on all of this? You've already talked about God's concern for the world, the victory of the

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Messiah in history, His kingdom, His law, all those things. But when we think about these things, we see the cultural

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Marxists very, very concerned about what's going on here and now. And the complaint oftentimes is that Christians, you don't care about justice.

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You don't care about these things. It's these liberal millennials and cultural

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Marxists. They care about the world. They care about people in the world. You Christians don't. You just want to escape. So should we care about justice in the world?

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Should we care about just weights and measures? Is that something that we are concerned with in a new covenant under the rule of Jesus?

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Or is that just an Old Testament thing, like God's specific case laws and concern for justice in the world?

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Should we actually fight in this battle, or is this something we shouldn't care about? Yeah, great question,

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Jeff. Yeah, and sadly, that criticism of secularists in too many cases is on target.

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Christians are really, as the old adage, so heavenly minded, they're no earthly good. So let's take the expression that's really prominent today and has been actually since the 60s, social justice.

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That's an interesting perversion of a term. It actually was developed in the 19th century by a

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Roman Catholic, and its use then was essentially pretty correct, basically a biblical understanding.

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A good way to understand and answer your question is to replace the word justice. You know, justice has kind of become one of those what

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I call jello words. You know, it's kind of, you can mold it and put it in a word and it can mean anything. In the

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Bible, the term justice is equivalent to the term righteousness. In fact, in the Old Testament, it's translated that way in many cases.

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Now imagine, imagine, Jeff, if instead of using the word social justice, we started using the word social righteousness.

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Well, the liberals would fall off their chair, of course, because righteousness, when we hear that word, that implies a religiosity.

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That implies a God. That implies a revelation. That implies an inflexible standard.

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And frankly, it is, because in the Bible, righteousness is adherence to God's character revealed in his law.

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So in answer to the question, should we be interested in social justice or righteousness? Well, of course, because we're interested in reflecting the character of God.

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When we pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it's in heaven, we're really praying for social justice understood as social righteousness.

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The problem with the leftists is not their concern with social justice per se. The problem is they don't believe in God's standards of social justice or righteousness.

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They believe in culturally Marxist standards, which is essentially everybody has to be the same. If somebody wants to be a homosexual, that's okay.

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Christians shouldn't worry about it, even if we don't like it ourselves. We shouldn't be concerned about it in society. And abortion, well, that's just sort of a woman's right.

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We have to kind of protect it. It's true reproductive justice. Don't you love that language?

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Reproductive justice. Reproductive justice. So let's put the word righteousness. Reproductive righteousness. Well, the Bible does indicate reproductive righteousness, which is that children are a blessing.

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And to intentionally harm them in the womb is, if you harm them to kill them, that's murder, for example.

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So, yes, Christians must be concerned about, in fact, more than we have been, in social justice.

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But not if we put it in the apologetic quotation marks, social justice as leftists understand it.

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So we can't have a theology of escape. We can't have a theology of liberal social justice, but a theology of biblical social justice or social righteousness.

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Social righteousness. I love that. Isn't that powerful? Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I actually listened to you recently, given that exact conversation.

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Important stuff. I don't want to take over this. Do you guys have anything you want to fill in here real fast? I was just going to say, just kind of add to what you were saying earlier when you asked that question.

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I think, and Andrew, you kind of touched it a little bit too, but just the fact that I think as a whole, the church in our culture has, with the abandonment of the culture and the waiting to be raptured off, we have also abandoned the issues of social justice that we should be concerned with.

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And like you said, we should have a biblical view of that social justice or social righteousness, as you're saying.

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But yeah, I think the reason we're in the spot we're in is because the church as a whole has completely abandoned these issues altogether.

28:21

You're right, Luke. Let me add something. Here's a little pernicious thing. Here you have groups that essentially don't believe in biblical social justice.

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They're essentially, let's use the language, a retreatist, a pietist. The view we're talking about is sort of the evangelical aloofness, right?

28:39

Yeah, that's a good word. So they've often said, no, we're not interested in social justice. That's getting away from biblical emphases.

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That's wrong, but that's what they say. We need to get back to just preaching the gospel, though they don't really understand the fullness of the gospel.

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But that's their view. Yet we're seeing something very ironic happen today. And even groups with which we would tend to agree on a number of issues, at least before, like the

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Gospel Coalition. So all of these people who held this privatistic view, this truncated view of the gospel, now it's just amazing.

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We turn around and we see that they've become infiltrated by people who say, no, that's not right. We do believe in the gospel and in social justice, but of course, it's a leftist version of it.

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So we learn an important lesson here. Quote, social justice will somewhere and always get its revenge.

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If we don't stand up for biblical social justice, this sort of privatized view of the faith will not long survive.

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And eventually we've been infiltrated by people who at least recognize that the faith, even if it's a perverted version of the faith, must apply in society.

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And that's what we're seeing today, I think, in groups like the Gospel Coalition. Often, actually, also the PCA, though many fine folks in there, and sort of the racial tensions in the

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PCA and so on. Same kind of thing is happening. Because they have retreated, there's a vacuum.

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We hear the expression, you know, that nature pours a vacuum. Well, I've come to say grace also pours a vacuum.

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If you don't believe in the grace of God applied and the justice of God applied in all of life, eventually a wrong form, a twisted form of social justice will enter.

30:15

That's what I think we see happening. That's right. Nailed it. Okay, so last thing, and I know you've got to get going here,

30:20

Dr. Sandlin, so I appreciate so much your coming on today and spending this time with us. So there was a recent statement put out.

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It was the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. And you guys can all read that at statementonsocialjustice .com,

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statementonsocialjustice .com. Dr. Sandlin, you signed this statement, and I want to just talk to you in terms of just quickly addressing this.

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There are sort of two directions people go as they've looked at this statement and they've criticized or made comments on the statement.

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On the one hand, you have people ultimately, I think, that are falling into a lot of this cultural

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Marxism and things like that, and they have sort of a wrong way of looking at justice or social righteousness. Their complaint, looking at the statement, is you guys don't care about justice at all.

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You don't care about these issues. You're not willing to address them. You're putting them, you know, you're just trying to tuck them under the rug.

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You know, you're not really listening. And so that's the one complaint. On the other hand, this is the interesting thing.

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There are Christians that hold to a more, I think, biblical, historic view of culture and society and the kingdom of God.

31:28

You have people that would call themselves post -millennialists that are actually complaining, saying, well,

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I don't think that I can't sign this statement because I don't believe it goes far enough. I mean, it minimizes the language that I would want to see take place in saying things like, you know,

31:41

Christians should have some effect on the culture. But, Dr. Sandlin, you and we here at Apologia Studios believe it's ultimately through the kingdom of God, the preaching of the gospel, regeneration, new hearts and all that.

31:54

It's not going to be some effect on the culture. We believe, 1 Corinthians 15, that Jesus is putting every enemy under his feet.

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And after every enemy is under his feet, then death will be put under his feet. But that's after everything's put into subjection to him.

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So Jesus wins, not just at the end of the world and the resurrection, but in history through his conquering kingdom and gospel.

32:15

So there are people that hold our perspective that would say, hey, I don't think this statement goes far enough. What would you say to that? Yeah, no, good point.

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In fact, one of our scholars didn't sign it, but Dustin Messer wrote a fine article. I'm particularly sympathetic to that second objection.

32:28

I don't, in substance, disagree with it. The reason I signed that statement is because it was a powerful declaration against, quote, modern social justice, modern egalitarian social justice, and cultural

32:42

Marxism. Yes. I think the statement is much stronger in its denials than in its affirmations.

32:47

Okay. So I agree entirely, it did not go far enough. It doesn't have a full -orbed understanding of the gospel.

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It was put out by John MacArthur, who I think in many ways is a good man, but I think he himself has a rather narrow, and has had.

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His dad was a fundamentalist, good, faithful. On the fundamentals of the faith, Australia is narrow.

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But on some of these other issues that are close to the fundamentals, like the fullness of the gospel,

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I think there's something wanting. So I think that statement is wanting. So I wouldn't fault anybody who didn't sign it.

33:20

I certainly would fault those leftist social justice warriors who opposed it, because they saw who it was attacking, of course.

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But I certainly wouldn't fault those who don't sign it, because it didn't go far enough. I signed it because I think it was a good, in a basic sense, a good, sound repudiation of the social justice and cultural

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Marxism that is infecting the church. But I agree, it does not have a full -orbed view of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And I guess from their perspective, it wasn't intended to do that. No, that's right. And so that's the point.

33:55

The main issues that you are concerned with, and many, many men and women are, is these fundamentally necessary responses to the social justice warriors, the cultural

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Marxists, and all that's infecting the church. That needs to be upheld and heralded. Those things are very, very important, and critically important today.

34:18

And you mentioned it, Dr. Sandlin, and I know we didn't plan on talking about this, but I'll at least highlight this. There has been some very troubling things coming out of major organizations that were historically solid, things like the

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Gospel Coalition. You have things being said by them that are, honestly, terrifying to me.

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Very Marxist. They're absolutely Marxist, and I've written on that online.

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I think under the guise of opposing racism, and all of us oppose racism, it is a terrible sin.

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I hope I don't have to spend five minutes. Of course that's true. Yes. But under the guise of opposing racism, it actually becomes a form of racism or racialism, which cultural

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Marxists love to do. I didn't mention this. Cultural Marxists, like all Marxists, believe progress comes only by conflict.

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That's their dialectical materialism, which I won't get into. But essentially, that's why they're constantly stirring up conflict.

35:14

Well, the best way to solve, and I'll quote, the problem of racial reconciliation in the Church is, be the

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Church. I mean, Paul says it in the Book of Ephesians. He's broken down the middle wall between Jew and Gentile.

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So the only color that's important in the Church is red, the red blood of Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters loving one another and caring for one another.

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In the wider society, what's important is equality under the law. I talked about that. Equality of processes.

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And that's fair whether you're white or black, Asian, Hispanic, or whatever. These other issues to try to manufacture, to try to produce a sort of respect and talk about white privilege and all of that is really to undermine the rule of law, which is basically treat everyone fairly under the rule of law.

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That's in society. And in the Church, of course, you have the blood of Jesus Christ, which brings us all together.

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So I think that it's sad because I've appreciated much of the Gospel Coalition in the past.

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And some of the folks, not all, but some of the folks in the PCA with the Revive, what was it, not

36:19

Revive, but Revoice, something like that conference. I think that's at its roots, at its roots, all of this is culturally

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Marxist. And to me, I tend to have more respect for the just secular cultural

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Marxists like Marcuse and those that follow him. At least you know where they stand.

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But to take cultural Marxism and to put a nice little Christian bow on it, that really is reprehensible.

36:44

It is reprehensible. Very, very. Well, Dr. Sandlin, as always, it's a privilege and honor to have you on.

36:51

Hey, where can people go to get your stuff? I want them to start listening to you and to start downloading all your material.

36:58

You've written some excellent, excellent books, but I want people to get connected to you and to really start digesting some of your very helpful teachings.

37:04

So where's the best place? Yeah, thanks so much, Jeff, for giving me that platform. So the website for Center for Cultural Leadership is easy.

37:11

Christian Culture, written all, actually, solidly is one word, ChristianCulture .com. And then my blog is

37:16

DocSandlin, written solidly, dot com. ChristianCulture .com, DocSandlin .com. You can get all the articles, web articles and books and booklets and audio and all that stuff.

37:27

So quick question, to help people with this discussion, we want this platform to be something that's a blessing to the people of God. You guys who are all watching live right now, we don't want this to be a one -shot deal.

37:36

We want you to be able to get more and digest and think through these things, and then to have a Christian, gospel -centered influence in all these areas.

37:43

So, Dr. Sandlin, what would be a good book that you would recommend that really engages this issue in a very helpful way?

37:51

Yeah, you know, I would think, you mean A Cultural Marxism, is that right? Yeah, just in general.

37:57

What would you say? Or maybe recommend two or three books to get a full context. What would you say? Yeah, I would say on Cultural Marxism, a wonderful book by the

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British conservative Christian, Roger Scruton, S -C -R -U -T -O -N, called, let me see if I get this right,

38:12

Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands. I know it's kind of a mouthful. Yeah. But again, if you just Google his name, go into Amazon or whatever,

38:19

S -C -R -U -T -O -N, that would be good on the issue of Cultural Marxism. On the gospel itself, you know, just off the top of my head, because I was reading a new book of his,

38:30

I would get the little book series by Joe Boot, you mentioned on, I think, gospel truth and gospel culture, and I think he's got one or two more,

38:38

B -O -O -T, because those are a little short, sort of bite -sized views of the gospel.

38:46

So, I mean, those are two of the ones. If you want to really get, I would say that the meaning of the gospel, as far as biblical words, you can't do any better than a book by Leon Morris called

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The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, or the popular version is simply called The Atonement. It's meaning and significance.

39:03

Those books are just great. They are the best. Oh, my goodness, yes, those are excellent. So, Dr. Sandlin, love you, brother.

39:09

Look forward to having you on again and doing more with you. I love you guys. You mean a lot to me. God bless you.

39:14

Keep on the firing line. Thank you, brother, so much. Talk to you soon. Bye -bye. All right, guys, so let's wrap up the show.

39:22

Final thoughts here. And I think I was thinking the whole time, I do want to ask you. So, you and Summer did a show on Sheologians.

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Guys, everyone go to Sheologians .com and pick up the episodes of Sheologians with Summer and Joy.

39:35

You can also go to ApologiaStudios .com. You can click on the Sheologians link there. But you guys did a talk on the statement on social justice and the gospel.

39:43

So, when you're reflecting on these things after doing that show, you did it with Tom Askle. So, what are your thoughts in terms of...

39:53

I think that if you don't want to sign something, that's fine.

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You don't have to. And I know that there are a lot of well -meaning, well -intentioned people that didn't sign it, and that's fine.

40:07

I also know there are just as many trolls and people that want to just be angry about everything. And why didn't they invite me to write this statement?

40:15

Right, right. But, I mean, Sheologians signed it because it's a statement.

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It says it right in the name. It's a statement. It's not a plan of action necessarily.

40:31

It's not, okay, and now here are the next five steps that we're going to take to do better. It's not the 1689

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London Baptist Confession of Faith. Right. Or the 1646. It's a response. There is this uprising in our church, which you just heard described by Andrew Sandlin.

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And it is a response by the church also to say, this is what we affirm.

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This is what we deny. And I agree with what's in there.

41:01

Ultimately helpful. Yes, especially in this area. And I think that it's important that we make statements like this.

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It's something that you don't see all that often in our current society is people coming together.

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Like when you think of the statements made, you think of like church history far, far back. But we should be doing things like this more.

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When issues come up like this in our society, we need to get together and say, no, actually, this is what we believe.

41:30

You don't come at me, especially because there's so much information just running around all over the place on the internet.

41:35

So being clear and concise in this day and age is very important.

41:42

Now, I'm not saying every statement written by people I agree with just gets a free pass and I'll sign it.

41:48

Right. But it is important, especially now where you have like basically the place right now where Christians talk about what they believe is the internet.

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There's all these different opinions and there's all these arguments and there's these people that want to have good conversations and engagements.

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And then there's people that don't know how to even do that. And there's people that just want to be mad all the time. And so I just I think that in terms of clarity, this is something that we should be doing more often.

42:23

So I was thinking that that's why I wanted to talk about it. This probably hits really close to home for you.

42:28

I mean, obviously, being an apology of church, apology of studios, we're always trying to engage as cultural issues and false teachings and false gospels.

42:35

But we're also trying to engage in a lot of these cultural issues to bring the light of the gospel into those areas and also contrast the perverse notions of law and justice and righteousness in our day with biblical law, justice and righteousness.

42:48

So we're already a part of that. But on Sheologians in particular, this is why I think it's interesting for you. And on Sheologians in particular, you guys are constantly addressing sort of the fallout of a lot of these perverse ideologies and worldviews.

43:03

You're talking about feminism a lot. You're talking about intersectionality. You're talking about cultural Marxism and ideas and these sorts of things.

43:10

So I thought in particular, it hits close to home to you because that's kind of you guys, your emphasis. You're really trying to engage these issues that are having real life, like physical.

43:19

This is happening here. It's impacting us. It's not just sort of a theory up here. Someone's, you know, in a coffee shop with their finger to their lip, you know, sort of sipping on coffee saying,

43:28

I think this is a good idea. No, it's actually now invaded the church. It's in the Christians' heads. They're putting hands and feet to these ideas.

43:35

And of course, in the culture at large, it's already been going. So I just thought probably why it hits close to home.

43:42

Yeah. I think that, you know, we all have our areas that we would seem to be more called to.

43:49

You know, it's not that we're not called to the other areas. It's just that we have a certain burden for certain areas.

43:57

And even since we started Geologians, you can see we have witnessed like we,

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Summer and I discovered this interest and this love for this certain group of people. And then even since then, we've seen it start to come into the church.

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And people are just, you know, people, I don't know exactly what exactly what it is would take an entire episode to describe.

44:20

But people are just jumping on to whatever they think sounds good to them, whatever their church is talking about.

44:29

And so I think that it is important that we have something that's clear to refer back to just because there's so much conjecture and so much.

44:39

And it's so it can be so hard to communicate over the Internet. And this is where SJWs communicate. I'm sorry, but on the

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Internet. And so I just I think that it is important. The statement is important in and of itself just because of what it is.

44:51

It is a statement. It is us saying here's what we you could you can you can throw an insult at me and say

44:59

I believe something. But I sign this. This is what I believe. Right. Oh, no, but you believe this and this.

45:05

You believe that women are are not equal to men. Right. No, no, no. I signed this. Yes, I don't believe that.

45:11

Yeah. So like it's just I and I like it just for its clarity.

45:16

Yeah. Well, I was thinking, too, that when we we were trying to encourage you guys and we were all prayerful over theologians, there was this little period of time before that we're really, you know, trusting

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God to make this happen and that it would be a blessing to the church. I think like if we can circle back and think about what was happening around us at the time, we knew that these things were a problem and they needed to be addressed.

45:36

But it's amazing. And just what two years. It is it is launched.

45:41

Yeah. Like beyond where you would see people on the outside is obviously it's a false teacher.

45:47

Obviously, this person's completely off now and just a short period of time. We're seeing an infecting solid.