What Happened to Max Lucado?

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We got another short episode today. I think this is the third episode

I've released in the last four days. So hopefully you're enjoying these shorter, more frequent episodes. The reason for them is

I'm seeing articles and things I want to respond to that are short. They don't take me more than half an hour to talk about them.

And so today is no exception. I saw an article yesterday on Max Lucado and I guess he's gone kind of social justice.

He's a Christian author and a pastor. So we're gonna talk about that. I'm gonna read the article word for word. We're gonna respond to it.

First, I just want to thank you for praying for my father -in -law, Frank. He's out of ICU now, which is amazing.

He was on death's door a week and a half ago. I'm not usually very, I don't share personal things very often, but this was a scary moment for my wife and our family.

He's an elder at his church. He's kind of like an elder and the whole deacon board wrapped up into one person. It's a small church.

So just a lot of responsibilities he had that the church is now, people in the church are stepping up and doing.

And it's good to see the body of Christ coming together, but they still don't know what happened. He's on the heart floor and doing remarkably better, but still connected to catheters and things like that.

Still weak. So I just appreciate your prayers. Thank you so much for those who've sent support to us in the form of encouragement.

It does mean a lot. Now I want to get into a Bible verse before we start everything.

Let's talk about this passage. This is in Galatians chapter two, 11 through 14. Think with me as we read this about the

Galatian heresy. The Galatian heresy, meaning adding works to the gospel, adding these things that were unique to the

Jewish people were not, didn't apply to everyone in a moral way, but these laws that were unique to Old Testament Israel being applied now to Christians.

And not only that, but Christians told that they must, if they're truly a Christian, they must keep these laws.

And so this was a problem. The whole book of Galatians is written against this. And I'd like to suggest we're seeing something very similar in some quarters of the woke social justice

Christianity that is emerging lately. And it's funny, I saw it was,

I think it was Neil Shenvey actually defending the fact that he went to J .D. Greer's church.

Someone sent me some screenshots of him just defending it. It's a gospel centered church. J .D.

Greer and all, it's not just him, it's Tim Keller, it's Russell Moore. A lot of these guys, whenever you hear them say things like gospel issue, right?

Or Black Lives Matter is a gospel issue. J .D. Greer's even said the law, the law, the justice is actually specifically the word he used.

Justice is the first part of the gospel or the beginning of the gospel. And they really want to attach the gospel to social justice issues, right?

This is, whenever I hear that, I think about the Galatian heresy. I just think, okay, you're adding to the gospel then.

Because you're saying this is part of, what's the gospel? The good news that Jesus Christ has come into this world has taken our sin on himself.

We can be in a right relationship with God through what he's done. That's the gospel, that's the good news.

It's not good news when you start adding layers of works to the gospel and saying this is part of it.

J .D. Greer does this. He's done this on multiple occasions. He makes a habit of it. And so have many others.

Like I said, people that have been sucked into the more social justice -driven Christianity. Where eliminating hierarchies is part of the

Christian agenda somehow. And so, and that's a direct quote from J .D. Greer. The eliminating all hierarchies.

That's what Christianity, or at least part of what Christianity is about. So, I want you to parallel these things.

As we read this, realize, okay, some guys who were solid, right? Some guys, I mean,

Peter, he's an apostle, right? Guys who, they were saved, some of them. And they fell into this for a time.

Now, I don't think you can fall into heresy long -term. There's no way. Something's gotta give eventually, right?

And there's a whole different category for false teachers who truly are knowingly promoting heresy.

And there's some guys, I don't know where they line up today. I don't know. Are they a false teacher? Do they really understand what they're doing to some extent?

And they're knowingly promoting a false gospel? Or are they just deceived falling into this false gospel? Not realizing, but they're gonna wake up.

They're gonna realize, wow, there's an inconsistency here. And it's sometimes hard to tell. But the more time goes on, the more, the benefit of the doubt, you can't give it anymore.

It starts to move. You move the benefit of the doubt away from the individuals you were giving it to because you realize, wow, you've been corrected like 10 times and you've made this error over the course of years now.

And so it becomes difficult. And I'm very careful of trying to assume someone's a brother in Christ when they're promoting things like attaching works to the gospel in some way.

So as we read this, think about what I've just talked about. Galatians 2, 11 through 14. But when

Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the

Gentiles. But when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision.

The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.

But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, if you, being a

Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?

Okay, so what's going on here? A couple of things I just wanna point out very briefly before we get into the main issue we're gonna be talking about today.

Cephas is Peter, right? So Peter comes to Antioch and Paul opposes him to his face.

This is the way we're supposed to do this, by the way. That's why when people say like, John, you shouldn't be doing the kind of things you're doing online.

You need to privately go to someone. Well, in Matthew 18, that's when someone sins against you, and I agree.

But when it's not a personal sin against me, when it's false teaching going out to the church publicly, what did

Paul do? He went publicly to Peter, to his face. And the reason was because Peter stood condemned.

So there's a love and a care here of some kind for Peter's own wellbeing.

For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. So he used to associate with people who were not

Jewish. And of course, what would this involve? Eating foods that were unclean, quote unquote, in the ceremonial law of the

Old Testament. But when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party.

So what's happened is he is fearing, out of fear, there's influential people that have come in, and side note here, a lot of woke guys will try to use this passage as, look, it's identity politics.

Look, it's Jews and Gentiles. It's racial groups. That is ridiculous. That's not the issue. They weren't looking at their skin color or looking at other external ethnic identity marks of some kind and saying, well, that's why we don't like these people.

It has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with the law. So when you hear people like Mark Dever talk about identity politics being at play in the

Council of Jerusalem, then realize he's not being quite honest with you about what, either he doesn't understand what identity politics is, or he doesn't understand what the

Council of Jerusalem was about. And so what we have here is not a racial, quote unquote, issue.

This is an issue of the law and religion and whether or not you must keep the law and to be a true

Christian. These are Jewish believers, quote unquote, coming in. And it's fear of them.

It's fear of these people that keeps Peter doing the wrong thing, not associating with the

Gentiles. The rest of the Jews joined him in the hypocrisy. So this is a leader. Peter's a leader, and people follow

Peter into this hypocrisy. Does this sound familiar? Does this sound like some of the evangelical, quote unquote, leaders today who start, because out of fear from Black Lives Matter or the popularity of social justice in the world or in their denomination or association, they're gonna just go along with this.

And now their whole congregations are following them into it. I know because I get the emails from people at these churches.

They feel alone, a lot of them. And they're not, but they're afraid. The other people at the church are afraid.

And so this is what Peter did. The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy. And the result that even

Barnabas, even someone really solid, you wouldn't expect this person. And this is really what I wanna emphasize. Someone you wouldn't think

Barnabas would be the guy. Come on, Barnabas isn't gonna fall for that. And yet he goes along with it. And a lot of you are discouraged.

You're thinking, how in the world can Christians who I've trusted, solid teachers of the Bible, I thought, how can they not see this?

This is what Phil Johnson asked to Al Mohler, to Lincoln Duncan, to Mark Dever. Do you not see this?

And of course, Al Mohler got very upset with him when he asked that question. But that's how you feel right now. Do you not see this?

This is what Paul did when he opposed him. Do you not see this? But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel,

I said to Cephas in the presence of all, in the presence of all, not privately, not behind the scenes, not you said something publicly that was in error and I'm gonna go correct you behind the scenes.

No, no, no. In the presence of all, think about this. Paul wasn't contradicting Matthew 18, guys.

I guarantee you that. In the presence of all, if you being a Jew live like the

Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? He's saying you're a hypocrite,

Peter. You're a hypocrite. You don't actually believe deep down that you have to keep all these ceremonial laws.

You don't live like that. You'll eat unclean things, but now you're living in such a, you're public face.

The way that you're behaving publicly out of fear is that you're insinuating and you're leading other people into believing that the

Gentiles have to live like the Jews in the church. We're seeing the exact same thing.

History repeats itself, guys, all the time. We're seeing a repeat of the same thing.

And I've talked about many men who have fallen, the mighty have fallen, but maybe they weren't so mighty.

Max Lucado is unfortunately now one of the ones that seems to be going down this path.

And are we gonna love him because he stands condemned perhaps? Are we going to correct him?

Are those close to him going to talk to him about this? Are we willing to do it publicly the way Paul did or do we just let this kind of thing slide?

Because well, he's been faithful in other areas. Or it would be not, it would be unchristian.

No, no, it is Christian to call these things out. Let's talk about who Max Lucado is.

Max Lucado is a pastor at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio where he co -pastors with Randy, I think I'm pronouncing this right,

Frazee from Willow Creek Community Church. So he's got a guy from Willow Creek there, which is interesting to me. That's Bill Heibel's church that, kind of this, you know, they were the church growth guys.

I don't know if Randy Frazee believes in that, but that's who he's co -pastoring with. He's authored 129 books and regularly appears on the

New York Times bestsellers list. That's a lot of books, guys. He's appeared on Fixer Upper. So my wife loves that show.

I'm sure she's probably seen him on there because I'm sure she's probably seen most of the episodes. Fox News, Larry King Live, et cetera.

So he's been all over the media. He's actually spoken at the National Prayer Breakfast.

He was America's pastor, according to Christianity Today Magazine in 2005, and he was named by Reader's Digest as the best preacher in America in 2007.

So pretty high accolades there. He's made it into the evangelical elite for certain.

I don't know if that you get more evangelical elite. So that's who Max Licato is.

Here's some things that are concerning as of late. This is 2020, and it seems like, doesn't it seem like everything's just coming apart in 2020?

Maybe things are just being revealed that we're already there. I don't know, but here's what happened. In, I think this was

January, I was looking at some articles. These two, I think I first found through Reformation Charlotte, but they had links to the primary sources or videos of primary source material.

So Max Licato on Jen Hat, he talked about Jen Hatmaker in January, 2020.

Jen Hatmaker promotes the gay Christian stuff, like overtly great gay

Christian stuff. And this is what he said about her. I think so highly of you. You energize me to listen to your podcast.

The other day I caught myself needing to get out of the car, but I was listening to your podcast and I just sat and I just sat and I just sat.

You make it so easy and delightful and yet profound at the same time. And I would, it's just weird to me if Jen Hatmaker is truly a false teacher, which

I don't know how you can say she's not. She's promoting terrible ideas, anti -biblical ideas.

Even if you enjoy, I'm trying to think of a scenario in which you're listening to someone you disagree with, but you enjoy listening to them.

That can happen. But when you do that, you're gonna add a lot of caveats.

You're gonna talk about how, we don't disagree or we don't agree on much, but I enjoy listening to you.

Or some kind of warning, knowing that you're an evangelical leader, knowing people are listening to you. I mean, this almost sounds like an endorsement.

And so anyway, he later said, there was a quote I had read where he said that Jen Hatmaker stretches him, which you could start to see how maybe that sounds like he's saying he doesn't agree with everything, but at the same time, that's really weak.

There's no opposing her to her face like Paul did with Peter, which is what, there should be some of that at least, you would think.

In May of 2020, this might've been April, late

April, I'm not sure, but the article was posted May 1st. He had, I don't know if it's his podcast or it was some outlet he was hosting.

Max Lucado was hosting this and he had his friend Stephen Ferdinand doing a talk.

Now, Stephen Ferdinand, he's prosperity guy, prosperity gospel. He's even promoted ideas that sound like modalism, so anti -Trinitarian, that's heretical.

And here's Max Lucado. Now, maybe he's not aware of all that, but you really should be aware of that with Stephen Ferdinand.

I mean, that shows some kind of a lack of vetting at the very least, but he says he's his friend, so he knows him on a deeper level than we know him.

And so there's an association here, which is just, it should at least make us question, scratch our heads a little bit.

Okay, Max Lucado, you're Orthodox, what are you doing sounding like you're kind of endorsing Jen Hatmaker or Stephen Furtick on some level?

Then there's this. Max Lucado attends George Floyd prayer vigil, calls on Americans to turn to Christ, June 3rd, 2020.

Now, what do we make of this? Because a lot of evangelical leaders have done this. This was the faith and works thing. It's a Black Lives Matter light kind of event.

Some Christians went to these Black Lives Matter events. Others are going to these Black Lives Matter light events that Christians are putting on.

And at best, Black Lives Matter is an overtly Marxist organization. They claim that. They say they're trained

Marxists. They're a secular religion. I explained this in two videos. You can go to Why Are All My Friends Marxist and Black Lives Matter in the

New Religion, two videos that I go through this. To put things in perspective, what would it be like if there was a cult that was holding events that were unique to that cult all over the country out of the blue?

And I don't know, pick whatever you wanna pick. Native American cult of some kind that's attracting new members to their cult to worship at their altar, and they are all about preserving the environment, okay?

Let's just say something like that is going on. It's overtly, it's a false religion of some kind.

Would we then in the midst of that wanna say, well, me too, we're gonna do the same thing, some of the same assumptions, but we're gonna just have the gospel and we're not gonna be violent about it.

We'd probably look at someone who wanted to do that and say, why don't you wait? Or why don't you, are you sure you wanna do this in the midst of the context of these

Black Lives Matter rallies in which they're demeaning the police and they're sometimes breaking things.

And not only that, but their philosophy is undergirding this or Marxist. You really wanna go that direction?

I remember years ago, I was in California for seminary and I had a college ministry background.

I wanted to find a ministry I could get involved with on a college campus. And I went to this ministry, it was CSUN and the guy,

Jesse Johnson, I still remember, I think was the name of the guy leading it. And I had asked him, I really wanna do evangelism here.

How can we do that? Is there an evangelism ministry? And he said, well, not really. We used to, but right now we're just inviting people to the group because we don't wanna be associated with the

Mother God cult, which is kind of the vernacular of the people phrase. But really, the cult is called the

Church of God. That's the name of the cult. But everyone calls it the Mother God cult because they believe God is a woman.

They believe Aung San Huung is Jesus. And he died in the 70s. It was Jesus' second coming. It is a South Korean cult.

I've talked to these guys for hours. No doubt in my mind, they are a cult. And the leader at the time did not wanna be associated with them.

So they're very aggressive, they're proselytizing tactics. And so he wanted to just stay away from that and try to,

I guess, figure out a more creative way of trying to get the message out to people of the true gospel. And whether you agree with that or not, which, and at the time

I really didn't, but whether you agree with that or not, there's a legitimate concern there of not wanting to be associated with this false religion.

And I wonder if we've lost some of that because this is the popular movement.

The world loves this movement. And trying to kind of ride their coattails, trying to somehow be like, we agree with you.

It's just, it comes off as you're endorsing the greater movement. And so if you're,

I mean, if you're gonna do something about injustice, then to be consistent, you're not gonna just pick

George Floyd. I mean, now that the autopsy report and the camera footage has come out, you're probably really not gonna wanna pick the

George Floyd situation. And again, I believe from the beginning, I still believe it was horrific to see what happened to George Floyd.

It's horrific to see what that police officer did. It was, I think

I had posted at the time within hours of seeing that video, how could anyone do this? This is either ineptness or this is police brutality.

I don't see an option. And I still believe that. I still believe that this was over the top.

But when you see the full context with the body cam footage that was just released, you see that a few things that were assumed at the beginning by many people were completely wrong.

I mean, this guy, George Floyd was lying to them from the beginning. He was resisting them the whole entire time.

There's no reason to think that this had anything to do with race. And of course the whole, it's just one big lie that this was just police that were racist, immediately tackling him to the ground to kill him.

I mean, that's the narrative that everyone seems to believe and that's what would spark these kinds of events. So when you participate in that, you're reinforcing that narrative.

And that narrative we now know is inaccurate. We also know that from the autopsy report, the guy was high and it looks like it wasn't even the knee of,

I forget the officer's name off the top of my head, but what we saw was not actually the actual cause of death.

Now, could it have contributed? I'm sure the stress of that whole situation contributed, but it wasn't because he couldn't get oxygen.

That wasn't the reason that he died. And so now that we're finding out some of these things, hopefully some of us are saying, yes, this was bad.

Yes, this was a policeman who either didn't know what he was doing or this was over the top.

But at least, hopefully we're also seeing that this isn't exactly what we were told at the beginning.

And to have entire events across the country that now are talking about systemic injustice and all these problems that America has, that America needs to rip down their history,

America needs to get rid of the police or at least reform the police, this is unmerited. And then

Christians get behind it. So I've waxed too long about this at this point, but you see where I'm coming from on this.

You see why I would scratch my head. And again, I'm not saying it's a sin to go out. There's no Bible verse that says it is a sin to go out and hold a prayer vigil for George Floyd.

There's not, but it's the impression, it's the optics of it. It's what are you trying to communicate to people when you do this in the context of what's going on in the country at the time.

Now, this makes it worse, in my opinion. He did this at a time when the church, and I tried to look this up as best as I could, the church was not meeting.

In other words, because of COVID -19, Max Lucado's church wasn't having services.

They were in internet services. They're still having internet services. And I put the

COVID -19 response here where they talk about this. You can go to their website, you can look at their COVID -19 response. Go to their videos from the past few months.

You can see they're online. They're not in -person gatherings. Now, put that in perspective.

Going to a worship service, having a worship service, nah, it's not that important because we can just do that online.

But we need to show up in person for the George Floyd prayer vigil, and our pastor,

Max Lucado, is going to speak at it. Does this just, what does this smell like to you?

I mean, it smells like hypocrisy to me. It smells like your priorities are in the wrong place. So I found that out.

Now, here's the article. So why did I bring all that up? I brought that up to just say there seems to be a slide in 2020 with Max Lucado, or at least there's revelations of some things that we didn't realize before that now we're seeing.

Here's what I saw, and we're just gonna read this. I'm gonna respond to it. Pastor Max Lucado asks forgiveness for Christian white supremacy,

San Antonio Report, August 9th, 2020. Realize, he's doing this at a time his church is not meeting in person, but there he is at an event where people are meeting.

Prominent local pastor and author, Max Lucado, got down on his knees Sunday in San Antonio to beg forgiveness for his and his white ancestors' acts of racism and inaction.

Now, this is written by the San Antonio Report. I've said this before, but when we hear the language of lament, we're just lamenting in our church.

We're having a lament service, because Christians who do that, they wanna get away from the word repent. They wanna say, well, we're not repenting, we're lamenting.

Because they know if they start doing the repenting thing, they're in trouble. They're playing with some biblical doctrine of repentance there.

But if they say lament, you know, they can kind of get away with it. Now, my point is the world doesn't see it that way.

The world sees it, it's repenting. Because what does he say here? Yeah, Max Lucado, he's getting down on his knees.

He's asking, he's begging for forgiveness. I'm sorry that I have been silent. I'm sorry that my head has been buried in the sand,

Lucado said. My brothers and sisters are hurting, and I'm sorry. I have made them to feel less than.

I did not help. I did not hear. I did not see. I did not understand. Now, what is it that he is not seeing what he's not understanding?

Now, article goes on, says, organizers estimated that roughly 3 ,000 people of all faiths of all faiths attended the emotional park and pray event at Freeman Coliseum Sunday evening to follow local faith leaders in prayer to eliminate racism and coronavirus.

At least 23 ,000 more were watching online. All faiths. So he's doing this.

He is repenting to, saying to an audience of not just Christians, presumably.

All faiths, so Muslims there, Catholics there, in the sense of Roman Catholics, so not

Protestants. I mean, are Mormons there? Like how far, how ecumenical is this event that he's willing to go to while their church is just doing online streams?

And there he is, he's standing up there. He doesn't have a mask on. He's reading,

I guess, from the Bible, but that's the picture. The Oak Hills Church Pastors Prayer comes amid Black Lives Matter protests and calls for racial equity across the nation.

Look, the world sees this. This is part of my point. If you think you're doing something different, we're

Christians, we're gonna get behind this. No, the world looks at that and they're saying, okay, yeah, he's saying he's sorry, and this is in the context of the

Black Lives Matter protests. Of course they're connected in the mind of people that are observers outside the church.

Lucado spoke candidly about the sin of racism in and outside of the church. Your church, your pastors have broken your heart by favoring one skin color over another.

Oh Lord God, have mercy on our souls. How dare we? How? That must nauseate you, oh

Lord, he said, adding that those sins extend to brown skin and that he himself has committed them.

So, so far we have nothing. We have no, it's just, you know, we don't understand, we're racists, the church is racist.

I mean, if you really wanna create a formula for making sure that young people leave the church, why don't you just say that we're just all a bunch of racists the church is characterized by racism and that's part of who we are.

You really wanna be part of that organization? Probably not. It's like the least tolerated, quote unquote, sin in America is racism.

So that's who we are. Now, so he's making all these accusations. Well, where's the meat?

Where's the proof? Well, here it is. The word wetback has found its way on my lips too, he said.

For that, I'm so sorry. So very sorry. Would you please, oh Lord, bring a new day.

Now, I remember when, so I was a teenager when this happened, but I remember

I had a thought about something my mom was, a dress my mom was wearing or something.

And I had a thought to myself that this particular dress didn't look as good on her as other things she had worn.

And so I decided to tell her that, right? And as a young teenager, you can imagine how that went for me.

And of course, I remember my father sitting me down and saying, you know, because I think my father was kind of like, look, you're gonna get into your dating years here and you can't do that.

Like, keep that to yourself, right? And so one of the things that I learned is that when you sin, you're sinning against someone, either someone who's a person or someone who is the

Lord, right? Or, and if you sin against a person, you're also sinning against the Lord. So you're always sinning against the Lord whenever you sin, but sometimes you're sinning against a person as well.

Now, here's the question. If someone doesn't know that you've sinned against them, right, they're completely unaware of it.

Is it your responsibility to go tell them, I had a bad thought about you? I mean, should you tell your friends?

If your friends knew all the thoughts you ever had about them, or even your wife or your kids, if they knew the thoughts that you had about them, or your husband or your parents, what would they think of you?

Would that be a cruel thing to confess those things to them and to tell them? Or would that be the right thing?

Now, if it's connected to, if there's a pattern of behavior and you're exhibiting that to them and they can see it and it's obvious and you're hurting them, then yeah, maybe it's appropriate to say, you know what,

I've harbored these feelings for a while, I'm sorry, because they're coming out and they're hurting that person. But if you're not hurting them, if they don't know and it's a fleeting thought and you get rid of it, or you said something to yourself, or you said something when they weren't present, and is that something you wanna bring up and tell them?

Because now they know that you've said it. Before they didn't, now they do. And think about your own life.

Go back and think about all the things you've said in the last however many years. If we were to have a transcript of everything you've ever said, everything you've texted, jokes out of context, jokes that were a little off color and you just didn't think them through and you said them, what kind of ammunition would we have to destroy your public character?

Probably loads of it. Probably everyone would be canceled. Every single person in the country, right?

If we could do that, if we had a trans, and now bring it to your mind. If you had a transcript of everything you've thought.

When Max Lucado does this, I think it's kinda, it's cruel in a way. I think that.

I just don't think there's not a reason to say, to apologize to a whole community of people, to a whole demographic.

Well, I said this about you guys once. Well, they didn't even know you said it about them. Well, now they do. Cause you're saying that you, so you're bringing up something that can cause potential hurt when you didn't need to.

You could have just confessed that to the Lord and moved on. You didn't actually sin against them in the sense, in a way that hurt them.

Now you're hurting them cause you're bringing it up. So to me, this actually is selfish when you do something like that.

This is kind of, look at me. Look, this is the pharisaical prayer.

Look, I'm confident enough to admit that I've said this kind of thing.

And now you're hurting people in your own confession where they weren't hurt before.

The article goes on. Car horns blared throughout the parking lot in support of his message. They were parked at least one space apart to ensure social distancing.

So they, I guess, couldn't figure out a way to do this for church. But they're doing it for this event.

And then it talks about this black pastor. According to the article, black pastor Dorian Williams, and he has a prayer of forgiveness.

Never in my life have I ever seen a white person say to me that I'm sorry, Williams said, pausing to hold back, then release tears.

That I'm sorry for what happened to your people and our ancestors were wrong. It is a new day in San Antonio. What's going on here?

You have, this is symbolic. You have, it's like the federal head, this black pastor forgiving Max Lucado, the white pastor on behalf of white people who are the oppressors and black people who are the victims.

And this ignores the complexity of history, totally. This ignores, just off the top of my head, how many quote unquote white people, people from Europe have come here since slavery was abolished in this country?

They don't have any connection to it. How many people who were here at the beginning of the country didn't have any ancestors who enslaved anyone?

Because it was the minority of white people who were able to even do that. How many black people in this country are descendant from slave owners, either in Africa or slave owners in the

United States? Because there were thousands in the South on the eve of the war who owned slaves, free black people who owned slaves.

So these lines are, I mean, like think about even this, even those who owned slaves, like Thomas Jefferson, I was just reading some quotes by him the other day,

Robert E. Lee, how many of those guys were in tough positions where it would be cruel for them, it would be a worse situation if they freed their slaves.

So they tried to practice, from what I understand, I'm not getting into the whole Jefferson situation in this episode and whether or not he, whether or not he did what people accused him of doing, but they, in essence, tried to treat their slaves charitably and that was the best they could do.

But at the same time, they didn't want slavery around. They wanted it to be gotten rid of through usually a progressive emancipation of some kind that wouldn't hurt the welfare of the slaves too much.

So how many people are like that, where if you get into their biographies and you start reading about who they were and how they treated their slaves and what they thought of the institution, it's not as black and white as people make it out to be.

All that to say, to then have this cartoon of the black person's going to forgive the white person, you have already bought into the assumptions of the critical race theory paradigm.

The new left critique, you bought into it at that point because that's what you're assuming. You're assuming the guilt is on this person because they're white and the innocence is on this person because they're black and that's why the white person confesses and the black person forgives.

It's not biblical. Every person is capable of racism and every group has had persecution against them and has been the persecutors at some time.

In your DNA, if we trace back your ancestors, you're gonna find brutes, you're gonna find saints.

You're gonna find people that were persecuted. You're gonna find people who were the persecutors. It's called human nature.

It's called total depravity. It's what Christians used to believe. So this is the situation.

We have to release white people from their sins that you did not commit, he said. What in the world does, hold on a minute.

We have to release white people from the sins they did not commit? Then what is there to be released from?

If you didn't commit the sin, then you don't need to be released from something. Like if someone said, I need to release you from the sin of stealing, though you never stole anything.

What does that mean? I mean, it's so blatant that they're buying into this. He's acting like no white person has ever regretted slavery or something.

Like just about every person in this country, I mean, the majority of people, myself included, think that slavery was a terrible idea and we're good riddance to it.

We're glad that it's gone. Doesn't mean that we don't have a, I have a, just like Booker T.

Washington did, I can see the providence of God in how he brought some people from a place where they would not have heard the gospel to a place where they had some access to it, however limited.

Doesn't mean I don't see the providence. I don't see that God is doing something in moving populations around, et cetera, but I don't know of anyone,

I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't say, yeah, that was a bad idea. That was wrong. Speaking broadly of the whole entire scenario that they wish that, you know, that scenario had not happened organically in the way that it happened.

But, you know, they're acting like white people have never done this. It's a new day in San Antonio. White people never cared until now.

And we're gonna release these white people from the sins that they did not commit. I know that's unpopular, he says, but God said, if you don't forgive your brother, who do you,

I'm not even reading this. He's forgiving them for things they didn't commit. Said, I'm not letting slavery send me to hell.

No longer will I walk around being angry and bitter at white people that I don't even know.

I feel like I have a right as a black man to be angry. Doesn't mean that we're not fighting for justice, but we are in bondage when you walk in anger.

And Carhorn's blasted in support of that. Well, I'm glad he doesn't want to have hatred in his heart, but he does not have the right to be angry.

And this may be unpopular for, you know, for me to say. The right to be angry, we just did a podcast, the last one on rights and responsibilities.

There are certain things you are responsible to be angry about, right? Be angry and do not sin. Righteous indignation over something that has taken place.

And sometimes you do need to be angry and you need to go do something about it because it's within your power to do something about it.

Abortion might be one of those things, right? You know, this is something that should make us angry. Right down the street, people are dying on a daily basis.

We should probably do something about that, right? We should probably try to get laws changed, convince women not to go into that clinic.

But when we're talking about things that happened hundreds of years ago, or at best, what, 50 years ago?

When we're talking about things like that, you can look back at history and you can say, man,

I wish that didn't happen. You know, an anger of regret, I guess. But if you're gonna personalize that and say that I just,

I'm bitter against these people that did nothing because they are downstream from that, and you're gonna, you know, be angry at white people, you got a problem, man.

You don't have a right to be angry at white people as a demographic for, and for even present things, like George Floyd, you don't have a right to do that.

Before the event, Williams said that the event was organized to provide a sense of healing for people who have been longing for fellowship.

I doubt it promoted that. Let's see. So, Lucado echoed

Williams in his opening remarks. He said, maybe you thought you came to be entertained. Maybe you came to be preached to.

Maybe you thought this was a political gathering. I am so very sorry, but it's not. We're here to pray. And so, oh, here's interesting.

All right, in 2016, Lucado was one of the first evangelical pastors to criticize then -president candidate

Donald Trump. He made headlines in December when he adapted the story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus' escape to Egypt from the

Book of Matthew as that of a family on a journey through Mexico, fleeing violence from cartels. So, so here's the thing.

Oh, this is actually very interesting. Peter Rockwood, who attends Lucado's church as well as Cross Mountain Church, said he and his wife have been attending church gathering during the, attending church during the pandemic, but wanted to participate in this unprecedented gathering.

Oh, they have not. Okay, I think, I think this might be a typo. Sounds like they have not been attending church.

Maybe that's what it meant to say. Okay, but he's saying they wanted to participate in this unprecedented gathering of diverse, diverse faiths and backgrounds.

Okay, this is important. So, a member of Lucado's church is saying, we wanted to attend this event of diverse faiths and backgrounds, even though the church,

Lucado's church is doing live stream. He said, it's an opportunity to be in God's presence,

Rockwood said, before the prayers began. He's here among us. He's here among us, diverse faiths, and he's here among us, opportunity for God's presence.

Church is just live stream, can't go to church, but we're gonna attend this event because it's an opportunity to see God, even though there's people from diverse faiths.

What does that mean? Now, this is just a member. I'm not putting these words in Lucado's mouth, but I hope

Lucado reached out to this guy or someone from the church reached out to him and said, what are you talking about? Does it,

God's not, this is not a church gathering. Diverse faiths, of course, trying to make parallel the story of Jesus fleeing to Egypt, which was also part of the

Roman empire with someone from Mexico coming to the United States to politicize that is, that's what mainline denominations do.

That's what social gospel denominations do. That shouldn't be what

Max Lucado is doing. That shouldn't be what evangelicals are doing because they're not parallel at all.

And countries do have rights to have a border and protect their people. You can't protect your people without a border.

I didn't know that Max Lucado had done that. I'm finding this out for the first time. Let me give you a little bit on what's happening.

As this is, I think this is the same day, if I'm not mistaken, that this prayer vigil, or what, not prayer vigil, but this event that Max Lucado repented at for his white supremacy or racism, this was going on in Chicago.

Police shootings of Angloid man reignites political debate. 13 cops injured, two people shot.

Here's some pictures for you. This was written on the sidewalk, kill

Columbus. If you don't know, in Chicago, there's a statue of Columbus. Kill Columbus. And officers injured, 13 of them.

Here's pictures of, I believe this is Best Buy being looted completely. There's an aerial photo of it.

I mean, this is all over Twitter. Looters broke into Chicago mall and are looting the place clean tonight.

There's a guy who live streamed himself looting by breaking into an ATM. I mean, this is what's happening in Chicago as Max Lucado is up there repenting for his sin of racism.

Here's something else that just happened. Story was updated this morning. Wilson man wanted in fatal shooting a five -year -old apprehended.

Darius Sussman's, 25, was apprehended in Goldsboro by members of the U .S. Marshal Service, Carolina's Regional Fugitive Task Force, Goldsboro Police, and the

Wayne County Sheriff's Office. He was charged with first degree murder and was being held without bond in the Wilson County Jail. You know why?

The reason why is because he killed a five -year -old boy, his neighbor. He went up to him in the middle of the day, boy was playing, and he shot him in the head.

Just killed him right there on the spot. Imagine the roles were reversed.

Imagine it was a white guy who went and killed a black child. We probably have a few more best buys looted, wouldn't we?

Media would be going crazy. Well, this is a local story. This isn't a national story. There's a lot of little local stories like that that I've been sent over the past few months.

They don't make it into the big leagues, into the national news. You won't remember this guy's name.

I didn't even mention it, did I? Or I guess I did read it. His name is, let's see here,

Darius Sussman's, Sessoms. You probably won't remember that. You'll remember George Floyd's name, but there are people who die all the time and it doesn't fit the political narrative.

A lot of them have died in these protests. Doesn't fit the political narrative. You won't remember their names, but you will remember

George Floyd's name. Why is that? Because constant repetition by media elites.

And that is the narrative they want going out. Now, I wanna close this with a little bit of what

I think is my explanation. Might not be a thorough explanation in every way, but this is what

I think's happening. I do parallel this with what we just read about the

Galatian heresy and Peter going along. I think there's fear. People who are saved are going along because of fear.

I think there's people who are just following the leader who is afraid. The leader's afraid, but they're just following him because they think he's confident and knows what he's doing.

And then there are people who are real heretics who are, they're combining religions and they know they're doing it.

And where does Max Lucado stand in all this? I don't know. There's some real red flags in his ministry right now.

And I really, we should pray for him. We need to pray for him. Hope that he's Peter in this situation, that he's just been, that he has not actually, he's not in heresy because he's not saved and he's pushing a false religion, but this is a very temporary thing and he's gonna realize it and he's gonna snap out of it.

And if he doesn't, that tells you something about him, unfortunately. I've started to realize that the battlegrounds in the whole political religious debate, because these lines, this is a political religion.

I keep, if I don't get anything else across, I really hope you all understand that the Black Lives Matter stuff, even the

COVID response, this is the politicizing of religion that we're dealing with where government is the great equalizer.

Government is God. We pray to government. We look to government and go watch the video,

Why Are All My Friends Marxist? And I explain this in more detail. But the lines seem to be not between conservative and liberal.

That's what I used to think. And that is a legitimate line, but I think the lines are actually more between populace, populace, so the people, the working class, and elites.

Now, obviously there is a whole spiritual war where the lines really are between kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, right?

Sin, the world, and God. That's always been the case. But those things, this new false religion seems to be taking a greater hold in elite circles.

For whatever reason, elites, this is the popular thing to do. And the realization that I've had, and I think many of you are now waking up to, is how many of your pastors want to be in good favor with celebrity pastors, popular

Christian organizations. They look at their heroes. They look at the David Platts and the Matt Chandlers and the

Mark Devers and the Tim Kellers. And I mean, that's who they wanna be. They wanna be in their favor. And how many little pastors dream about that kind of thing?

I think we're finding that out more and more and more. The pastor's job is to guard and protect, watch over the souls of his congregation.

That's the role of a pastor. It's not to be vying in a new hierarchy where they climb the ladder to social success and represent their religion somehow in the public square.

And a lot of pastors seem to wanna do that. They wanna be community organizers, not pastors. And it's a quest for fame, for approval.

And Max Lucado is not immune to that kind of thing, especially someone who's in the big leagues like himself. You can imagine probably most of his friends.

I don't know who his friends are, but if they're in the evangelical elite strata, then that's who he's talking to, and they're all going the same direction.

And they're parroting what secular elites are saying, because ultimately they want to be in good graces with the secular elites.

This is the lie. This is the danger. And I hope you're waking up to it.

Someone who's not focused on feeding their sheep says they are, but they really have their eye on something else.

And I'm starting to wake up to this a little more. I've been waking up to it for the past few years, but I'm seeing it now on full display.

I think this is the reason for the social justice movement in Christianity. Of course, we could talk about other reasons.

We could talk about what's coming, perhaps. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself and have this video canceled, but in a geopolitical sense, what's coming, just go look up at the

World Economic Forum. Go look up what they're saying right now. Do you think evangelical elites and elites in general know what's coming?

Possibly. Know the kind of technology that exists right now? You think they know what kind of information could be coming in the fourth industrial revolution and what kind of controls that will give the government?

I mean, if I were them, I would want to be on the right side of that. I wouldn't want to be on the wrong end of a police state like we've never seen it in the sense of a surveillance state.

So that could explain some of it. And I'm not getting all conspiratorial here. I mean, these are actual things that you can go look up what

I'm talking about at the World Economic Forum. It's all there. I'm not looking at any fringe websites or anything like that.

They're trying to explain it. I'm just saying, what's the paradigm that you have to explain why so many evangelicals who seem solid for so long are falling, how the mighty have fallen?

What was in their heart all along? I don't know. I don't know. And I'm with you guys. I'm with you who reach out to me and ask me, why is my pastor saying these?

I don't always know the answer to that. I don't know what's in everyone's hearts, but something on a massive scale is happening.

And we're seeing Max Lucado, and what he's doing is one example of that, buying into these assumptions. Racism is just specific to whites somehow, that whites are in the place of the oppressor, that we need to publicly even acknowledge thoughts that we've had or things that we've said that didn't hurt anyone.

We need to publicly acknowledge those things. Then now we're hurting people by doing it. But we need to come clean with everything in a public venue of some kind.

I'm kind of concerned that privacy is going out the window, and privacy is important. We need privacy.

We need to be alone with our thoughts at times. And not everything that you have needs to be shared. This is one of the dangers of social media, is the idea that everything should just be public.

So I just wanted to share that with you, somewhat of an explanation, and respond to what

Max Lucado said. Lots more coming, guys. I appreciate all of your support. And as a final thing

I wanna just mention, go check out Russell Fuller's Theology Classroom. I've been promoting this. He's not paying me to promote this or anything, so it's not because I'm having some benefit given to me, it's because I actually respect

Russell Fuller, and I think you'll benefit from his seminary level education, his classes that he's offering now.

So go check that out. I'm putting a link in the info section. God bless you, and keep on fighting the good fight, even when you feel alone.