Random Q&A

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October 2, 2018

Decided to do something more positive. Some Q&A! This is sort of off the cuff and rambling....but I hope you find it helpful.

00:08: Well, yesterday, things got a little bit heated. People were accusing me of all kinds of things, which, you know, it's okay.
00:14: It comes with the territory. I understand where that comes from. And here's actually a request.
00:19: If you're going to say that I've done something, I've slandered, I've misrepresented or things like that, you know, if you, if you claim to love me, which many of you people do claim to love me, don't just say
00:31: I've slandered and leave it at that. Why don't you reach out to me? Tell me how and exactly where I've slandered.
00:37: I mean, I don't want to be mean to people. I don't want to misrepresent people. So if I'm in the wrong, show me where I'm in the wrong.
00:44: Don't just say, oh, you're a slanderer, you're this and that. It doesn't help me at all. So if you claim to love me, like a couple of you brothers seriously do, you, you claim to pray for me and I believe you.
00:55: But if that's the case, and you're looking for God to change my heart, maybe he's looking to do that through you. So I would recommend if you don't like what
01:02: I'm saying, and you think I've slandered somebody, reach out to me. You don't have to even do, you can do it privately if you want to. I think that's best.
01:07: If you don't want to do it privately, that's okay. Just be very clear about the claims that you're making regarding me.
01:13: But anyway, like I said, I believe that you pray for me, I'd ask that you continue to do so even if you don't have the courage to tell me exactly where I'm wrong and things like that.
01:23: But anyway, I wanted to do something a little bit more positive today. And do kind of an impromptu
01:30: Q &A session. There's been a few questions that people have been consistently asking me and so I wanted to go ahead and answer those.
01:36: But where I wanted to start, though, is a little story. So the week after the
01:41: MLK 50 conference, I think it was like the very next week or maybe two weeks after I was in Florida, because my aunt had passed away, sort of unexpectedly, it was kind of a sad thing.
01:52: But anyway, we were driving from Lakeland to Naples, which is I think a couple hours of a drive.
01:58: And I was in the car with my brother and we were talking about the MLK 50 conference. We were talking about some of the presentations and one of the things that we noticed and we were kind of talking about was the fact that it certainly seems that the people who are against this racism thing, this idea of white supremacy or this idea of systemic racism or racism itself, and they're so vocal about how the church is racist and needs to repent.
02:22: It seems to me like they harbor racist feelings themselves. In fact, it kind of comes out sometimes.
02:29: We were talking specifically about the Matt Chandler speech and there were some times where he said things that were very questionable.
02:36: And it's like, you know, that's kind of racist. I know you're trying to fight against your racism, which is good. I'm glad you're not you're trying not to be racist.
02:43: But it seems to me that you kind of harbor some prejudice in yourself that you're fighting against.
02:50: Again, it's commendable to fight against it. But what it seems to me like what they're doing is they're assuming, well, I'm racist and I'm this great pastor, so I guess everybody else is racist too.
02:59: And so they're almost like projecting their sin upon other people and assuming that if they're if they're racist, then everyone else must be.
03:06: Liberals do this all the time. In fact, we're seeing this right now in the Kavanaugh thing. They're talking about how if he was a drinker, you know, he must have been a blackout drinker or aggressive drinker and things like that.
03:18: And the reality is that so many liberals are blackout drinkers or aggressive drinkers or sexual assault people.
03:26: And so it's so funny. You see Hollywood talking about how evil Kavanaugh is. Yet at the same time, they harbor sexual assault, you know, rapists all the time.
03:36: I mean, this is just this is just something that's part and parcel of their worldview. And so the reality is that they think, well,
03:43: I'm I get blackout drunk all the time. I, you know, grab and feel up women all the time.
03:48: I guess everybody's doing that. And it's just not the case. Now, there's actually some people are admitting this. My brother's reading a book put out by the
03:55: PCA where people admit that they were racist for years. This is Tim Keller's book. And in this book, he admits that he was a racist.
04:03: And I think that what's happening with him is that he's got a guilty conscience. And so he is, you know, trying to stand out against racism, but he's doing it in all the wrong ways.
04:11: Here's he talks about this is on this is like in the introduction. He says that let's see here.
04:20: When I went to seminary to prepare for the ministry, I met an African -American student who befriended both my future wife and I. He gave us gracious but bare knuckled mentoring about the realities of injustice in the
04:29: American culture. Quote, You're a racist, you know, he once said at the kitchen table. Oh, I know you don't mean to be and you don't want to be.
04:35: But you are. You really can't help it. And then he tells him why he thinks that.
04:41: And he says at the end, we agreed with him. Tim Keller was a racist. He's admitting this.
04:46: And he thinks because he was a racist, every white person harbors some kind of prejudice as well, just like him.
04:53: And that's just not the case. I've met. I mean, I believe you, Tim Keller, that you used to be a racist. I believe that, you know, many of you that say that you used to be racist used to actually be racist.
05:03: But I think that there are white people out there that aren't racist, that grew up not being racist. And so, you know, whatever.
05:12: That's just an opinion of mine. We'll take it. Take it for what it's worth. So let's start answering some questions. The first question that I got is from actually someone in my church.
05:20: And she was asking what level of involvement should we have changing the government for the better?
05:27: Right. As far as justice is concerned. And she was responding to a thing about Tim Keller, Tim Keller and his article, his recent article says that we have like an obligation to be involved in the political process.
05:38: If we love our neighbor, we have to be involved in the political process. And I don't really agree with that 100 percent.
05:44: I mean, I think that depends on who you are. My answer to this woman was that, you know, if you're a stay at home mom and you're taking care of your kids, you know, how much, how involved are you going to be in the political process?
05:55: I think it's probably wise not to be too involved. You've got other things that you got bigger fish to fry, in other words.
06:01: And in the Bible, you know, the Bible has government structures that are not necessarily civil government.
06:07: So there is a church government, you know, so there's a civil realm. There's the criminal justice realm of government.
06:13: There's also the church government. That's a separate sphere, completely separate sphere. Obviously, God is over both.
06:20: He gives both, you know, the church and the civil government, their marching orders. You also have the family government.
06:26: And so your household, you know, the wife, the dad, the kids, they have a governmental structure, too.
06:33: And that's also under God. God tells you how to organize that as well, much to the chagrin of a lot of feminists out there.
06:40: Also, you've got self -government. You're supposed to govern yourself. These are four spheres of government, according to the scriptures, and all of them are under God.
06:48: So God gives the civil government, their marching orders, the church government, their marching orders, the family government, its marching orders, and you, your own marching orders.
06:57: And so if you're a stay -at -home mom, chances are you're going to be much more involved with your family government and your self -government than you are with church government and civil government.
07:07: Same thing with fathers, actually. I mean, you're spending most of your time at home. So if you're a family man or a family woman and you're not like a business owner, you're not a police officer, you're not a judge or something like that, there's a good chance that most of your government changing, your justice that you're going to be doing is going to be close to home, right?
07:27: Your local community. If you're an elder, it's different. I mean, you're obviously, you still have to govern yourself.
07:34: You still have to govern your home. You're still in charge of the home, but at the same time, you have other obligations as well.
07:41: You're involved in church government as well. And I think also elders do have a responsibility to speak prophetically to the nations at large.
07:49: I think Paul, when he had an opportunity to speak to Governor Felix, he spoke to him about the gospel. He spoke to him about self -control, the coming judgment, righteousness, things like that.
07:58: And so I think that is an obligation for elders. So elders in the church have more of an obligation to be involved in the political process in some degree.
08:06: If you are a congressman and you convert to Christ, or you're a judge and you convert to Christ, you have a much clearer responsibility to govern and to rule according to godly principles.
08:17: That is very clear. So it kind of just depends on who you are. If you're a business owner, yeah, you're going to be involved in the political process a lot more than a stay -at -home mom.
08:26: I mean, it's just that simple. It makes perfect sense to me. Tim Keller thinks that you have an obligation.
08:32: In fact, he thinks that it's potentially even an outworking of the gospel itself, maybe even part of the gospel itself.
08:38: And I don't think that that's actually accurate, because if it's part of the gospel itself, then it's part of the gospel at all times and all places.
08:46: There are situations where you're a Christian and you just have no impact on the political process at all, and that's not to your shame.
08:53: It's just how it is, you know what I mean? So do you have to vote as a
09:00: Christian? No, you don't have to vote as a Christian. In fact, I don't vote out of principle. For myself,
09:05: I personally, if I were to vote, I think that that would be a disobedience for me against God.
09:11: I don't say that for you. I mean, you want to vote, that's up to you. I have reasons why I think
09:17: I can't vote, but I don't apply them to you. I realize that they're controversial. But anyway, so yeah,
09:23: I mean, you're involved in the political process is different depending on who you are. I mean, it's just that simple. But again, everyone's involved in God's government in a variety of different ways.
09:33: Either it's self -government, family government, church government, or civil government, or all four or a combination of them.
09:40: So anyway, that's my first answer to a question. OK, number two, two or more witnesses.
09:47: So yeah, this is something that's come up a lot. You know, these people say, well, Adam, if you're saying that two or more witnesses are required to establish a criminal matter, then rapists are going to get away with it because nobody rapes in front of an audience.
09:59: And if you say that, then murderers are going to get away with it because sometimes there's only one witness. And this is this is
10:05: I mean, I hear that criticism. I do. But you have to understand that this is God's standard, not mine.
10:11: This is God's standard, not mine. Number one, I would say that you don't need to have eyewitnesses necessarily.
10:18: And we have forensics now. We have different streams of evidence than we used to have. So we can apply the general equity of the law and say, well, if you don't have two eyewitnesses, but you have
10:27: DNA evidence, you have videotapes, you have cell phone pings, you have all kinds of things. Maybe you can establish the matter a different way.
10:35: I think that's legitimate. But the reality is that you don't think God understood that maybe somebody might get away with it in Old Testament Israel.
10:45: Someone might get away with rape because there's only one witness. Someone might get away with murder because there was no witnesses because the only witness was murdered.
10:53: You don't think God understood that? And then yet God still established this as his justice. Now, as Christians, so if you're a pagan, if you're a secular person watching this video, that's not going to satisfy you, because at the end of the day, if somebody gets away with it here on earth, this is all that matters to you.
11:08: It's all or nothing here on earth. And so you want to set up a situation that people won't get away with things on earth because that's all there is.
11:16: But if you're a Christian, you need to understand this is part of your worldview. Nobody gets away with anything. If a rapist gets away with murder here on earth or rape rather here on earth because there wasn't two witnesses or there was some kind of issue with the investigation or things like that, the rapist doesn't get away with it.
11:33: The rapist doesn't get away with it. God is a perfect judge and God will repay.
11:40: You see what I'm saying? Vengeance is God's. That's what the Bible says. And so we can take
11:46: God's standard of two or more witnesses. We can apply it today. And if somebody gets away with something because of that high standard of evidence, which it is, it's an admittedly high standard of evidence.
11:56: But this is this isn't God's intention. He's taking into account the fact that people are sinners and there could be false witnesses or there could be political reasons or racial reasons to want to want to convict somebody of a crime.
12:09: So he wants to make the standard so high that that won't happen. But if somebody were to get away with it, they wouldn't really get away with it because God would judge them eternally for that crime.
12:19: And so if Judge Kavanaugh gets confirmed, but he really actually did rape people and things like that, and he doesn't get ever prosecuted for it.
12:27: Well, Judge Kavanaugh is going to have to face his maker one day and answer for that and answer for his lies and answer for his perjury and all of those things.
12:34: That's just the reality. That's what Christians should believe. If you're a pagan, I don't expect you to think that's convincing at all.
12:40: But I don't care if you think it's convincing at all. It's not my problem. You're the pagan. You're the one who needs to bend the knee to Christ.
12:45: It's just that simple. And so for Christians to sort of overturn God's standard of justice like Kyle Howard was yesterday and say, well, it doesn't really apply.
12:54: We want to love the victims of rape. Well, first, you got to establish that they're victims of rape, number one.
13:00: And number two, God's love is never one at the expense of another. So in other words, you can't love victims at the expense of the accused.
13:08: It doesn't work that way. God's love is for both. You have to love your neighbors, not just your abused neighbors, not just your oppressed neighbors.
13:16: What we saw yesterday with Kyle Howard was Kyle Howard applying critical theory, and he's saying, well, you got to protect the accuser.
13:22: You don't have to protect the oppressed. And that's just not the case. Two or more witnesses is required to protect the oppressed and the accused.
13:30: You see what I'm saying? The oppressed and the oppressor. Because we know that people were violating two or more witnesses in Emmett Till.
13:37: People were violating two or more witnesses down in the deep south. And so for Kyle, that's not a problem, obviously.
13:44: Yeah, you need to have more witnesses in that situation. But that's because he's applying critical theory. The oppressed get more benefit of the doubt than the oppressor.
13:52: And that's evil. That's partiality. And that's incorrect. That's Kyle J. Howard telling people to break the commandments in certain instances, but not others.
14:00: And that's wrong. I mean, that was the big thing about yesterday. So my thing is apply the two or more witnesses standard across the board to everybody without partiality.
14:09: That is required by the scripture. It's very clear. All right. Third question.
14:15: It says this. It says, oh, this is something that came up with the Tim Keller stuff. Bible doesn't talk about whether or not the government should be big or small or whether or not the government should redistribute wealth and things like that.
14:28: And so therefore, you can have those opinions and still be a faithful Christian. The answer to that is absolutely not.
14:35: Absolutely not. You know, I always find this so interesting. I find this interesting with people who think you shouldn't sing the
14:40: Psalms and people who think that the Bible doesn't talk about government and things like that. I find it like so much of the scripture is dedicated to showing you what justice is, according to government.
14:51: And then there's got this big, gigantic book of songs in the middle of our Bible. And we're saying that, yeah, don't don't sing them.
14:59: Don't look at that Old Testament stuff about justice in the government. I just I often wonder, like, what are these people thinking?
15:06: You've got this big book of government that shows you no in no ways redistribution of wealth.
15:12: In fact, the Bible calls high taxes oppression. And in the Bible, high taxes is way less than we pay right now.
15:19: The reality is you are oppressed if you live in a Western culture. Tax wise, you're oppressed.
15:25: And that's biblically speaking. I'm not talking about critical Marx Marxist critical race theory definitions and cultural
15:32: Marxism. I'm talking about what biblical oppression is. You are oppressed. So here's the thing.
15:39: People who say the Bible doesn't talk about whether the government should take your money and redistribute it aren't they don't know what they're talking about.
15:46: It absolutely does. The Bible says clearly you shall not steal. And then it defines what stealing is.
15:52: And so if you're one of these people who says, well, the Bible doesn't really talk about that, I urge you to reconsider. The Bible has huge books with many verses that talk exactly about this.
16:01: And as I've said many times, it's not one to one because we're not Israel. We don't take Israel's law and make it our
16:07: Constitution. What we do is we apply the general equity of that law because that is how we define justice and we apply it to today.
16:15: That's how you do it. Tim Keller's flat out wrong about it. And he's breaking not only the law of God, but he's also against his own confession of faith when he says that the
16:25: Bible doesn't have answers to these questions. My opinion is Tim Keller is a socialist and he wants to defend his socialism and he wants to provide cover for other socialists.
16:33: That's my opinion. But the reality is that he's absolutely wrong. The Bible does talk about what is a just government and what is an unjust government.
16:43: And the reality is people like this know this. Otherwise, they wouldn't be for social justice. They think the
16:48: Bible teaches social justice. I say it doesn't and we can go to the Scriptures to prove it. Where do they go to prove it?
16:54: The Scriptures and they selectively misread verses and they misapply them.
17:01: And so they're doing the same thing. They're theonomists in all the wrong ways. You know what I mean? And the reality is they're not applying the general equity correctly.
17:10: We can talk about that general equity, but don't pretend like the Scripture doesn't talk about these things because it either does or it doesn't.
17:17: And you're saying it does over here with social justice, but it doesn't when it comes to socialism and Marxism. That's a lie.
17:23: That's inconsistent. I think most people can see that. Anyway, the other thing.
17:29: Oh, this is the other question that came up. People were talking about my criticism of Kyle Howard and saying
17:35: I was uncharitable about his ideas of two or more witnesses. And I said that he was sneaky. I said that he was manipulating people.
17:43: And I do believe that. I stand by that. I'm not going to retract that. And people were saying that's an uncharitable view of what he said.
17:49: I said that he is telling people to break the commandments of God. And he is. I'm standing by that as well.
17:54: And people say, well, that's uncharitable. Well, here's the thing. Two or more witnesses is such an obvious standard that if you get that wrong, then there's really only a few options.
18:08: So in other words, two or more witnesses as a standard of justice is in the Old Testament and it's in the
18:13: New Testament and it's never revoked and it's never changed and any of that. In fact, yesterday, if you watched my video, which
18:19: Kyle did not, he responded to my video, but didn't watch it. Pretty typical, not going to lie.
18:27: But anyway, if you watch my video, even Christ applies two or more witnesses to himself. He applies two or more witnesses as a standard for his own testimony.
18:35: He says, if I'm testifying about myself and that's it, don't believe me. It's not valid testimony. But there's another who testifies about me.
18:44: There's two witnesses. So he says, believe me, it's valid testimony. So anyway, Christ applies it to himself.
18:50: Other people in the New Testament apply it. The Old Testament applies it. It's an easy standard to meet. So the question is this, if you don't apply that correctly, what's the issue?
19:01: I can see three options, three options about why you're not applying that correctly. Let's take it out of yesterday's controversy for a second.
19:09: Let's just say you said that the Bible does not forbid adultery. And you know what? If I want to go and have sex with another woman, it's okay.
19:17: Let's just say you said that. Let's just say the Bible does not condone that. And you make arguments for that.
19:23: Most of us would be like, you know, it's so obvious that the Bible does condemn adultery that you would be in sin if you cheated on your wife or your husband.
19:32: What are the three options about why this person's doing this? The first option is he's an idiot. That's the first option.
19:38: You're saying that the Bible does not condemn adultery. You're probably an idiot. You probably don't know how to read.
19:44: You're an idiot. That's the first option. Not very charitable to assume somebody is an idiot. The second option is that they're pure evil.
19:52: So in other words, you could say, well, the reason why you read the Bible and you say it doesn't condemn adultery is because you're evil and you want to do evil things and you want to spread your evil far and wide.
20:01: That's an option. I don't think that's very charitable either. So the first option is if you think the
20:08: Bible is not clear about something it is clear on, you're either stupid or you're evil.
20:15: The third option is you're manipulating what the scripture says in order to achieve what you think is a positive goal.
20:24: You think you have a higher goal and you're manipulating what the scripture says in order to, you know, kind of push that forward.
20:31: And that's what I said about Kyle Howard. I think Kyle Howard thinks he's doing the right thing. I don't think he's evil. I don't think he's an idiot.
20:37: I think he's actually quite smart. But what I think he's doing is he's saying, you know, we need to love women.
20:43: In fact, he said this many times on Twitter. We have to love people. We have to love women. And so therefore in his mind, it's okay to relax a biblical standard and teach others to do the same in order to achieve the greater goal of loving women, especially women that have been sexually assaulted.
20:59: In fact, his tweets that I examined show that he says we need to love women who have been sexually assaulted.
21:05: We need to tell them they matter. And therefore we can relax the standard of two or more witnesses.
21:11: That's what he's doing. He's manipulating the situation, manipulating the scriptures, twisting the scriptures in order to accomplish what he thinks is a higher goal.
21:21: I think that that's what's going on with Kyle J. Howard. And so I think out of the three options that that's the most charitable.
21:27: He's not an idiot. He's not evil, but he is manipulating things for what he thinks are good reasons.
21:33: We see this all the time with the social justice people. Lots of people are twisting the scriptures. Tim Keller twists the scriptures to accomplish his higher goals.
21:43: We even saw this with Platt. We even saw this with Matt Chandler. They're twisting the scriptures. Ray Ortlund did this.
21:48: He twisted the scripture with Moses saying how he gave up his privilege and that's how we know we should give up.
21:54: That's a twisting of the scripture. I mean, let's just be honest. But he does it to accomplish a higher goal. I don't think he's evil.
21:59: I don't think he's an idiot. I think he's manipulative. That's what I think. And so you say
22:05: I'm not charitable for calling him manipulative. Well, sorry, I'm not going to call him stupid and I'm not going to call him evil, but I am going to call him manipulative.
22:12: I realize that that's a serious accusation and it is a serious accusation. I mean, if someone were to say the
22:18: Bible doesn't condemn homosexuality or adultery, I'd say the same thing. You're being manipulative or you're evil or you're stupid.
22:25: But I mean, two or more witnesses is not really debatable. It's all throughout the Old and New Testament. It's not even one of those things where you're like, well, the
22:32: Old and New Testament doesn't repeat it. It does constantly. And so what do you think about Kyle J.
22:38: Howard? Do you think he's an idiot or do you think he's evil? Which one's more charitable? I mean, that's that's what
22:44: I'd like to know. I think he's manipulative and I think he's doing it because he thinks he's got a good cause. He thinks we should love victims of sexual assault.
22:51: And in order to do that, we need to bypass this biblical standard of evidence. I think that you cannot love people by breaking the commandments.
22:59: You cannot love your neighbor by breaking what the commandment of love your neighbor means.
23:04: And in order to find out what the commandment of love your neighbor means, you need to look to the scripture. You need to look to the Ten Commandments.
23:10: You need to look to the case laws. These are things that Kyle attempts to do, but he does not know how to do.
23:16: I mean, he just doesn't. He thinks he's a teacher of the law, but actually he's breaking the law and teaching others to do the same.
23:23: I think that's manipulative. And I think that that's a very dangerous precedent to set. Anyway, I hope this was helpful for you.
23:30: I hope it was more positive. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I'm sure people are still going to be mad at me, but that is okay.