News Roundup: Our Daily Bread, NAE, CToday, Nazarenes, RCC, ELCA, & More

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We are live on the Conversations That Matter podcast. We have a big episode for you today.

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We're gonna be talking about a number of Christian organizations and denominations, tracing some of the compromise, refuting some of the compromise beliefs that we're gonna be talking about and hopefully giving you some encouragement for what comes next.

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It's all straight ahead on the Conversations That Matter podcast. Well, welcome, welcome, welcome once again.

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I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas season. I know I am. I had some snow this morning that was unexpected.

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I didn't know that we were gonna have snow. It snowed all night. And of course, tomorrow it's gonna be 56 degrees and the snow will be gone.

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But before it went away, I said, you know what? While it's here, let's try to take a walk. We have a local trail that they actually maintain pretty well.

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And so we took my little baby on a stroller and had a great time looking at the snow as it was already starting to melt.

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So as things progress, the weather's odd. It's been odd. I suppose when

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I was a little kid, it seemed like you would get blizzards in sometimes October and it would stay pretty cold in December.

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And yeah, maybe it's the global warming. Maybe that's what it is. I don't know. I was actually looking up, someone posted a picture online of the blizzard of 1977 that affected not only the

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United States and parts of Western New York and Northern New York, but also Canada. And incredible pictures.

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If you wanna get freaked out, if you're afraid of snow and blizzards and getting trapped, look up the blizzard of 77.

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It's insane. Of course, I wasn't here for it because I didn't exist yet. But I looked it up and during that ordeal, apparently on the

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West Coast, things were abnormally warm. So go figure, right?

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The climate does change and not always related to carbon emissions, but I do digress.

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We are enjoying the snow and we're hoping that we have a snow on Christmas.

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Michael says, how dare you, global warming. My apologies, by the way, to everyone who is waiting up. I had a few last minute details

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I had to take care of before the podcast. I do usually start, maybe

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I probably should change this. I usually do start somewhere in the zero to five minutes late.

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Sometimes I start right on time, but I do start usually around five minutes late or a few minutes late.

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And I've thought that that actually brings in more people. You're waiting. And I think other podcasts have intro videos and things that they play during that time.

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And I don't have that. Maybe I should have that. So that's a little bit of the reason.

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But this time, actually, I legitimately had some things I was trying to put together and I was having trouble putting them together, namely looking for a particular clip

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I wanted to play for you that I knew I saw and I couldn't locate it. And it took me like 15 minutes to find it.

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So I found it finally, and we're going to play it for you. But we have a lot of clips to play for you today. So I should probably stop talking and start playing the clips.

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Before we get into everything, which is gonna range, just so you know, from, I mean, we're gonna talk about, I had to clip it.

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We had more, there were more things that I could talk about, but I've been saving some of these things. So we're gonna talk about Christianity Today.

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We're gonna talk about the National Association of Evangelicals. We're gonna talk about the Church of the Nazarene. We're gonna talk about Our Daily Bread.

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What else? Man, the ELCA, we're gonna talk about them just a little bit. I thought about talking about a certain professor at Southeastern, but I decided, yeah, they've been getting enough pushback on X.

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I'm not gonna talk about them. They didn't make the cut. And it's rare for Southeastern not to make the cut on this podcast, but just not important, guys.

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It's just not important. We have other things to talk about. And of course, a lot to talk about moving into the next week as well.

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I got some shows prepared for you. By the way, I wanna say this. I need to say this because I don't say it enough.

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And I was listening to another podcast where the host does this, and I thought, it's just not me, but I should at least once in a while say what

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I heard them say, which is, if you like the podcast, go ahead and rate it on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Give it that five stars. Apparently, it does help the algorithm. And I think I'm just about at 1 ,000 reviews on iTunes.

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So if we're not there yet, push it over. Make it 1 ,000 by the end of the year. I'd appreciate it.

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The other thing is, if you wanna support the work that I'm doing, and there are some big projects coming up for next year, and we've done a lot this year, but we've got some big stuff next year, you can go to Patreon.

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And I'm looking into some alternatives for this, by the way. I just haven't found any. So if you decide to start supporting me on Patreon, then you will also get an announcement on Patreon.

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I'm not gonna drop Patreon, but if I find another in addition to alternative to it, because Patreon has dropped, apparently, some conservative folks, but I'm still safe and still there.

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And you can go to patreon .com. Right now, it's forward slash worldview conversation. And that's where you can find me.

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And it looks like this. And I really appreciate it. It does help me.

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So I figured I would just make the pitch during this Christmas season, if you think that the

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Lord is compelling you to help. And the work that I do, which a lot of it has been and still remains, identifying and refuting some of the error that we see in the evangelical church.

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A lot of that has been along the lines of social justice. It will continue to be along those lines, as well as liberalism.

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I do have another book coming out very soon. I made my deadline Christmas. Patreons all know this, because I already announced it.

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But man, should I sneak peek the title? Maybe I should. Maybe I should.

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It's gonna be called, this is the working title, at least, Against the Waves. And it's about recovering

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Christian order in an age of liberalism. So we're gonna talk about what a nation is, a call to masculinity, why we're in the place we are in the

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West on masculinity, and on not being able to define so many things. We're gonna talk about the creation order and some of the tools of resistance to some of the influxes of liberalism and social justice that we see and how we can put a stop to it.

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There's a lot of stuff that I'm covering. This is my first attempt, I would say, in book form of forming a real positive vision, because I've written books on social justice, which are more concerned with understanding and refuting that error.

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This is going to be more of a positive, there's gonna be a lot of refutation of error, but there's also a positive construction of here's in broad terms what a

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Christian should be working toward on a social level. And I think that's important.

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It's easy to snipe at things from a position of supposed neutrality.

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And I'm not neutral and no one's neutral on their vision for the good.

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And so I want to present to you what I think, at least in broad terms, it's not comprehensive in every way, it can't be, it's a book, but a broad vision for the good.

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And what I think is a biblical and rooted in creation, design, understanding of how to forge ahead in the midst of everything we have going on.

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So there's a few announcements for you. And like I said, I should probably stop talking.

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So let's play this clip. This is, we're still coming into Christmas.

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We're not quite there yet, but this is the best ranch dressing I have ever tasted. I would encourage you, if you're still looking for those stocking stuffers, get some of Lori's Lunchbox Ranch Dressing.

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And on the other side of this, we will start digging into our daily bread. Looking far and wide for the best ever ranch dressing.

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Conversations That Matter podcast to receive a free packet of their buttermilk ranch. Happy ranching.

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All right, check it out, lorislunchbox .com. We are gonna talk today, like I said, about a number of different organizations.

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And the first one I wanna talk about is Our Daily Bread. I've had this on my list for a while.

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Someone sent me, I think a few people might've sent me an article or it was a social media post actually that was put out there, now maybe it's two months ago, on a conference that Our Daily Bread was sponsoring.

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And it's a woke conference. It's a conference that was promoted by, or it actually was hosted by The Witness.

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And it's a woke organization. I'll show you here. I've talked about them before. It says the third annual

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Joy and Justice Conference 2024. And it's The Witness, the black

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Christian collective hosts them in Atlanta, Georgia. And this was actually, so it was more than two months ago. This was in October. Anyway, the important point of this isn't

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The Witness. That's a known commodity that Jamar Tisby works with them. In fact, he was speaking with them.

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The guy who wrote The Color of Compromise. And I've talked about that book and refuted, I think, what are some of the core aspects of that book in my book,

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Christianity and Social Justice. Anyway, the important thing is it is sponsored by Our Daily Bread Ministries.

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And I know a lot of you use Our Daily Bread. That's a popular devotional tool that people use because it has a scripture.

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It's very short and it usually tells a memorable story. And I don't want to say you shouldn't necessarily use it.

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If it's helpful to you and you want to continue using it, that's on you. That sounded pretty judgmental, didn't it?

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Like you're making a big error by doing this and it's on you. I don't mean it that way. Like that's between you and the Lord is what I mean to say.

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Maybe it is on you if you're convicted about it and you're doing it anyway. I myself have never used it. I've read it before, but I've never used it as a devotional.

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I rather go straight to scripture. That's me. I don't have a problem with devotionals, but it's shallow.

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It's a supplemental thing. It's not, I wouldn't want to make it my main course. If that's all you have time for and that's what you're, you know,

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I get it, I get it. But if you are paying money to this organization and especially if you're a church that's buying these things in mass to give to your congregation, and now is the time of year because New Year's resolutions are coming.

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Some people resolve to do their devotions every day. And this is one of the tools that's usually given out at churches say, they'll say, do the

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Our Daily Bread reading every day, resolve this year to do this. And I would encourage you, if you're someone who's giving them a chump of change, maybe reconsider this.

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And it's not because all the content is necessarily bad in Our Daily Bread, but, and it's not just because of this, it's because this is actually part of the pattern.

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And that's really the point I want to make. And what I have to share with you is not necessarily everything there is to share on this.

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I didn't spend a whole lot of time, but I've just known for a little while that yeah, of course Our Daily Bread has some compromise.

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Well, what do you mean by that, John? Well, there's been subtle things like during the 2020 riots, they posted things like merciful

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God, please help me trust you to determine how justice prevails, right? Well, you think, well, that doesn't, come on, we don't know what they mean by it.

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Well, that's kind of the point. Like it's in a context and it should be assumed that, hey, this could be taken when everyone in the world is shouting about justice, how are they going to take this?

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Well, of course, there were a number of other things that were not as subtle that they put out there.

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And they seem to be pretty big on the BLM type woke stuff. Here's a few posts that I grabbed off of their ex accounts.

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Learn how you can be persevering, sorry, have persevering faith by reading the stories of black history makers in Tell the

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Story. This devotional features 40 scripture -based readings of strength and dignity that point to God's faithfulness.

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Now, there's a number of these kinds of things on the shoulder of giants for Black History Month, a reading plan.

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They have all these different special reading plans for special occasions and holidays and things, or I guess

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Black History Month isn't a holiday, it's a month of focus on black history. And I don't really have a problem necessarily with doing a devotional on black history makers necessarily, but you got to ask the question, why is it so lopsided?

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Why is it that this is explicit? And obviously they're not the organization that's alone in this.

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This is pretty much across the board. That's a special thing. You're not allowed to talk about white history makers though, right?

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Like not, you can't frame it in those terms. And this is something that you should probably ask more when you see advertisements for, even like when you turn on your channel streaming service or I don't know, like I was even looking at, trying to remember what website it was.

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It was purchasing gifts or something. And they had this whole section for, oh no, it was music. That's what it was.

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It was music. I had a free trial of the YouTube music thing. Something I wouldn't pay for, but hey,

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I'll do a free trial. And they had mood. And so I clicked on mood to see what kind of moods.

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And the very first mood is Black Lives Matter. I thought that's a mood. You know, the sad, anxiety, relaxation.

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I mean, these are moods. No, the mood is Black Lives Matter is apparently a mood now.

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And it's not only a mood, it is the first mood on the list of moods. And so anyway,

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I thought that that was interesting. And, oh wow, I'm getting a text as we speak live on the show and about, wow,

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Woke Preacher Clips has gone after Sean McDowell. So I guess this is a new clip and someone's just sending it to me.

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It's not for the show today. Maybe we'll save it for another show. But apparently Sean McDowell is saying that power dynamics reduce

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Bathsheba's agency. Okay, interesting. I don't know if that's Sean McDowell or his guest,

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Carmen, is it Imes? But yeah, all right. Well, that's not for today's episode, but someone just texted me that, figured you should know.

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All right, squirrel. Let's get back to what we were talking about. Black Lives Matter is a mood. I thought that's very strange, but this is just par for the course.

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It's like every organization just about of any renown, of any influence, the higher the level, the worse it is, that you subscribe to, that you purchase, you give them your money.

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I mean, you get entertainment or music or materials, whatever you order from them, whatever service they provide, they're pushing this agenda on you.

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And I don't like that, frankly. I'd rather not pay for that if I can avoid it. And so in our

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Christian organizations, how much less so should we put up with those kinds of things? And so anyway, there's an imbalance here.

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There's a focus. You have to ask your, why is that focus there, right? Well, as we get deeper into it, it becomes more obvious.

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Yeah, there is a woke thing going on. There's a social justice thing going on. They have podcasts.

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Our Daily Bread is a podcast. They're not just the little pamphlet that you read every day, but they had one in, they've had actually a few.

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One of them's more recent with Christine Edmondson. This was, I think, from this year.

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And then they had one with Christine Edmondson again from 2020, and she was with Razzleberry.

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Both of them very woke, like totally on the CRT BLM train as much as you can be in Christian circles.

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And Woke Preacher Clips has done a good job. By the way, Woke Preacher Clips just does a phenomenal job with their listening and finding clips and exposing.

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I mean, we don't have a lot of resources on our side of things. And for someone like Woke Preacher Clips who's not getting paid for it to put some of this information out there,

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I know for a while I was one of the only ones that was listening and clipping some of these things. And Woke Preacher Clips has been really,

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I shouldn't say the only because I'm sure there were others, but I was one of the more prominent ones, let's say, who was listening and clipping a lot of podcasts for my podcast, clips of other podcasts, other presentations from major Christian organizations on a regular basis.

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And they've come in and they've done a lot of that work. So anyway, they've shown where Christine Edmondson and Razzleberry have said some pretty woke stuff.

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Like Razzleberry thinks critical race theory is helpful. And Christine Edmondson basically just goes on the

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CRT train that if you wanna be faithful in your anti -racism, then you have this insurmountable debt you need to pay and do the best you can.

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She's pro -reparations, all of that. The episode, I think it's from this year that they did with Dr.

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Christine Edmondson is called Faithful Anti -Racism. So I haven't listened to it, but I would welcome anyone who wants to.

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Maybe Woke Preacher Clips can listen to it and take some clips from it. But I don't think I need to, to figure out what's going on here.

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And this is from our Daily Bread. Now, here's a bunch of, I thought this was interesting. I just, this is for curiosity's sake.

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I did a search, Juneteenth. I just wanted to see like, what do they say about Juneteenth? Do they celebrate Juneteenth?

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Do they have devotionals on Juneteenth? And sure enough, it's everywhere. Juneteenth is the holiday celebrating the freedom of our African -American brothers and sisters who were enslaved.

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Today is a moment that speaks to the progress of our country, but also the change is necessary for us to reflect the kingdom of heaven.

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Oh, wow. Okay, so this was a necessary change, I guess, to reflect the kingdom of heaven. And you have a number of other posts along these lines of Juneteenth.

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So I thought, well, if they're gonna celebrate Juneteenth, you know, they have multiple posts about it along these lines, then surely they have stuff about things like Veterans Day and Memorial Day and 4th of July.

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So I checked it out and there was nothing for Memorial Day. There was nothing for Independence Day. Oh, I spelled

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Independence Day wrong. Maybe that's why. Okay, wait, hold on. I spelled, I'm gonna take responsibility for that.

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Let me go back. Let me, in real time here, let's check our Daily Bread and make sure that,

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I know I checked it a few times. So I'm assuming the other times I checked it, I did not spell it wrong, but I'm just noticing this right now.

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Okay, independence, I'm gonna spell it right now. All right, let's see if anything comes up.

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Okay, there actually are a few things that come up here. Okay, not as many though. And these are not actually

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Independence Day posts. These are not related to Independence Day. That's interesting. There are no results for Independence Day.

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All right, so I was right. So disregard what I actually, what

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I showed you in my misspelling here. If you spell it right, you get the same results. They don't have results for Independence Day.

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Veterans Day, no results. 4th of July, one result from 2014.

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And they just mentioned it's a national holiday when outdoor grills are heated up. That's, okay, that's our

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Daily Bread for you right there. So if you were wondering, how could our Daily Bread do this?

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I mean, they're just biblical devotionals. That's all they are. They, stories that go along with them. They've been on this train for a little while.

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This isn't anything new, them sponsoring an event like this. And so, yeah, I would just encourage you maybe find something else, find an alternative.

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I don't know what alternatives are out there to be quite frank with you, because I've never been in that, I'm in the market for a devotional, but, you know,

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I read, I try to read daily. It's not always daily, but I do regularly read the Confessions by Augustine.

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I'll try to read something from classic Christian literature, along with, you know, a theological book.

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So I'm working my way slowly through this. The Messiah, the Prince, because someone gave this to me by William, is it

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Symington, I think is how you pronounce it. And then of course I read, I'm reading through Isaiah right now.

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So that's what I've been doing. But if you're not someone who does that and you needed a devotional, maybe find an alternative.

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That's my suggestion. And I'd be curious to see recommendations.

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If some of you out there in the chat have good recommendations for a good devotional. Like I said,

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I'm not against them. Someone says, Azure says there was a Christian shooting in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Okay, so I don't know about this. Let's see, looking it up, shooting reported at Abundant Life Christian School one hour ago, man.

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Okay, I have not seen this. This is the first I'm looking at it. So I guess

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I, yeah, let's, man, I don't want to look at CNN. We'll do Fox, I guess. Fox News has a breaking report here.

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Shooting leaves two dead, six injured. Two people were killed and six others were injured in a school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin on Monday with police saying the suspected shooter was found dead at the scene.

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During an update Monday afternoon, Madison Police Chief Sean Barnes said a teacher and his teen student were killed.

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Barnes added that two students are also in critical condition. Let's see, I don't know that we know anything else about this, but it was at a

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Christian school. Oh man, I'm not seeing any details about motive or anything like that.

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Just pray for them. Prayers requested. Today we had an active shooter, says the school.

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All right. Pray for Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin. I'm sure we'll get more details in the coming days about that.

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Thank you for letting me know that, Azure. I appreciate it. All right, well, let's move on then.

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We talked about our daily bread a little bit. At least I've warned you that you might not wanna give your money to them as much.

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This is gonna be short, but Christianity Today. I noticed this because someone posted, I think

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William Wolfe was the one who posted this online. It's a screenshot from their podcast. I listened to about half of it, and it's so subtle, but I think it's worth mentioning.

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So the bulletin is the name of the podcast. It is sponsored by Christianity Today, and the title of the episode is called

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Neighborhood Threat, and they have these tanks coming down the street, and, well, it's very scary, right? Well, here's the description, and Russell Moore's on this,

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Beth Moore's on this. I think they had one other person. It might've been Mike Cosper, I'm not sure. They're all on this episode. So Beth Moore joins us to talk about the, quote, bad guys, unquote, of New York City.

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Now, who would those be, the bad guys in New York City? Elphaba, Daniel Penny, and Luigi Mangione.

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Now, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, yeah, Mangione. Now, Luigi Mangione, of course, was the one who shot the

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CEO of, was it UnitedHealthcare, I think, and, of course, is rightly in trouble for this, and there's conspiracy theories about it, and I'm not convinced by them at this point, but he's making a statement.

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He has his reasons for why he's doing this. So he murdered someone. Now, at least that's, based on the information we have so far, that's what it looks like.

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Now, to put Daniel Penny in that category, the same category, this reminds me of the

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Gospel Coalition, what they did a few years ago, when they put Kyle Rittenhouse in the same category as Dylann Roof.

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They take someone who actually murders people, who is in sin, violating, and then they compare that to someone who's defending himself or defending someone else, and there's no excuse for this.

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There's absolutely no excuse for this. Daniel Penny has been exonerated. Daniel Penny did not murder anyone.

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Daniel Penny was acting in self -defense. That's not murder, and more than self -defense, actually, even something more noble in a way.

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He's trying to defend other people, and to compare that to someone who, in cold blood, shoots the CEO of a company is just, there's no excuse.

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I don't have words, but that's where Christianity today is at, and that is where much of the modern left is at.

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They're at the same place. Beth Moore is at the same place, and for those who don't see it,

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I don't know what to tell you. I mean, this has been going on for a long time. They're showing their true colors. Believe them. Believe them when they show these kinds of things.

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Now, I wanna talk a little bit about the Nazarene, the Church of the Nazarene, and the reason,

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I'm not a Nazarene, but someone sent me a number of screenshots and information about this.

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I checked them out, and I know they had a guy named Jim Ord. I've talked about him before, who's been a problem in the

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Church of the Nazarene, and luckily, I shouldn't say luckily, in God's providence, of course, he was essentially defrocked or kicked out of the denomination because he was pushing hard for homosexuality and transgenderism and this kind of thing, and fortunately, the

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Church of the Nazarene still has some standards, but I remember when I went out,

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I think I did two podcasts on this, and I mentioned it in the last podcast, and I said, good for the Church of the Nazarene. I had some folks in the comments saying, look,

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I'm in the Church of the Nazarene. Don't get your hopes too high here. They've got problems, and good that they did this, but the foundation's cracking.

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Well, this may be some of the evidence for that, and I wanted to show you this. I'm told, of course, I'm not a

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Nazarene, and I haven't looked into the Nazarene denomination deeply, so I'm relying on someone else who's given me good information in the past, but they told me that this particular pastor, who is a pastor,

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Joel Tooley, at a Church of the Nazarene church down in Florida, that he is influential in the denomination.

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Now, one of the things I wanted to say about this, because I was looking online, and I saw, you know, Joel Tooley doesn't have a lot of followers on his social media, but you know, in a lot of these denominations, that's the case, whether it's the

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Church of the Nazarene, or even the Southern Baptist, which is the largest Protestant denomination, I'll sometimes talk about an influential figure who no one's ever heard of.

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If you look at the, what's the name of the denomination?

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The big denomination out in the Midwest, I'm blanking on the name now of it.

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I'm gonna be talking to some guys in that denomination in the next few days, too, so I don't know why I'm blanking on this, but anyway, denomination out there in the

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Midwest. They're big on washing each other's feet, and that kind of thing, I'm pretty sure. Someone's gonna tell me in the comments.

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Tell me what denomination, this is a quiz. I know what the denomination is. I'm just quizzing all of you. It might be a

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Brethren denomination. I'm thinking, is it the Brethren denomination? Anyway, smaller denomination, and they,

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I remember just from years ago, looking at one of their events, they had a speaker, he was woke, and I thought, this guy doesn't, no one knows who this guy is.

28:01

Well, he was big in the denomination. He was a mover and shaker, and that's just so common in these smaller denominations.

28:08

You have a denomination that may have thousands of churches in it, at the very least, hundreds of churches, and the people at the top can exert a lot of authority.

28:17

Think about that. I mean, you are putting out a message to all these churches, whether there's a strong hierarchy or not.

28:24

You're essentially giving them marching orders, and you can do it subversively.

28:33

You could do it under the radar. This is a big deal, and I realize this more and more. There's this great opportunity out there for people.

28:41

They really want to have an influence and make an impact. Doesn't really take a lot of work. You just have to, you have to get into these positions.

28:49

You have to, maybe it takes some work on the front end, but you have to go through the proper channels and get to a point where, it's not a point many people are looking at, but it has tremendous influence.

29:02

And so anyway, the Brethren Church, yeah, I don't think it's the Brethren. I don't think it is.

29:07

I'm trying to remember what denomination I'm thinking of, and it's slipping my mind, but Brethren Church would be a good example of it too.

29:16

So would the Methodist Church. So, I mean, there's so many positions even in the Southern Baptist that no one's ever heard of the people in these positions, but they exert tremendous amount of authority.

29:25

Cause it's a parallel kind of managerial kind of structure.

29:35

It's like a deep state. You have all these people who no one's heard of, but they're making curriculum decisions for the denomination, and that kind of thing.

29:45

Evangelical Free Church. I think that's the one I'm thinking of. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is. Okay, now that I thought of it,

29:51

Evangelical Free Church. Brethren, Evangelical Free Church. I don't live in the Midwest. So I don't, I'm used to passing when

29:58

I drive around and where I live now, which is very different than where I used to live in Virginia, where I was passing

30:04

Southern Baptist churches. Now I pass, I pass Dutch Reformed churches and Anglican churches and Methodist churches that pretty much all have rainbow flags.

30:14

And it's the saddest thing, or trans flags now, right? I saw one today. It's a Anglican church had two trans flags.

30:21

So one is not enough. They used to have a Ukrainian flag with the trans flag. Now they don't even have the Ukrainian flag.

30:27

It is two trans flags. And it's interesting in these New England towns, you will drive through a town and sometimes not see any of those kinds of symbols.

30:37

There will be no BLM stuff. There'll be no trans stuff except the church. The church is the one place you can almost every time find it.

30:44

I kid you not. Some of you think I'm joking. You think that's crazy. That is the Northeast for you. The center of religious activity is still the church in many of these towns, or at least the building that they call a church, but it is taken over by another religion.

31:01

So let's keep going. All that to say the, what denomination we're talking about?

31:07

The Nazarenes, Church of the Nazarene. And there are some Nazarenes by the way, because there are, Nazarene has,

31:13

Church of the Nazarene has a seminary actually in New York State, NIAC. A lot of NIAC folks go to the

31:20

Church of the Nazarene and serve as pastors and other things. But one of their main seminaries has decided to take on a climate change initiative.

31:35

So I was looking at that, and I thought we're gonna get back to Joel Tooley here, but I was looking at that, and this is recent, this is this month,

31:43

Nazarene Theological Seminary was awarded, and they're in the Midwest, I think somewhere, but they were awarded the climate change, climate science rather, and theological education grant by the

31:51

American Association for the Advancement of Science. The initiative aims to equip emerging and current Christian leaders with a deeper understanding of climate science and the tools to address climate issues thoughtfully and faithfully.

32:01

And so they're advertising this, they're excited about this, and in an article about it, they tell you who's in charge,

32:08

Dr. Josh Sweden, and professor of church history, and Derek Davis, associate dean of the academic programs.

32:16

And they want faculty forums to integrate climate science into coursework, they want the creation of a video resource for pastors, they want to distribute via NTS's Praxis platform, which

32:25

I think is their video platform. This is how things, by the way, get into your denominations. This is how it works. A special event on creation care in partnership with the

32:34

NTS, Grider Winget Lectures, meaning that you have this denomination that is being, they've gotten a grant, they've acquired a grant from a secular organization, and it's an organization that, they took the wrong side, as far as I could tell, on the

32:53

COVID stuff, they're pushing the climate change stuff, and they've given this seminary money, essentially, to push the climate change narrative in their denomination.

33:05

And this is just, this is what Megan Basham talked about in her book, Shepherds for Sale, right? She said, of course, this stuff's going on.

33:10

Now, the thing about the Nazarenes is they've been doing this for a while, and that's where I want to talk a little bit about this particular pastor,

33:18

Joel Tooley, who I'm told is somewhat influential, even though I thought he didn't have that big of a following. He's on the evangelical immigration table, he's the lead pastor of First Church of the

33:29

Nazarene in Melbourne, Florida, he's an immigration advocate, according to the evangelical immigration table, and if you just look at him up online, there's a number of stuff about him.

33:39

There's an article from as early as 2017, where it says, pastor busted after making misleading

33:46

Trump rally claims, where apparently Tooley had talked about there being an angry mob at a Trump rally that he went to, and apparently that wasn't the case, but he's on the immigrant question, the

33:58

Haitian immigrants, this is from this year, he is encouraging people to vote in a pro -immigrant way, whatever that means.

34:07

We are mobilizing Haitian American communities to find every eligible voter to get registered to vote, and they're not eating the dogs and cats, none of that's happening.

34:17

Well, it's him and his wife, I guess, who have the ministry website, so I'm not bringing his wife into it, he's made her part of the public, or she's made herself,

34:26

I don't know, part of the public face of this, but they had a walk that they were part of, let's see, it's a immigration and children's rights walk, the goal is to collectively walk the distance that many children walk, 1 ,500 miles, from Guatemala to the

34:44

USA. Okay, well, and they encourage you to, this is sponsored by Mosaic Compassion, which is a

34:55

Nazarene refugee ministry, and they have their election guide, they posted, from World Relief, these organizations are so connected so often,

35:04

World Relief is the organization, Megan Basham talks about them in her book, that took a lot of money from the government to resettle refugees, and that's one of the reasons they were opposed to Trump, because that would be bad for business, and this is, the organization,

35:16

Russell Moore and David French recently said, you gotta pray for them, because the Trump administration is gonna be bad for them, so there you go, that's what's going on, that's been going on in the

35:26

Nazarene denomination, so here's some, I don't know if we're gonna go through this, but some other things Joel Tooley talks about, and it's no surprise,

35:33

Joel Tooley conflates what he's doing with the immigration activism, he conflates it with the gospel, of course, and why wouldn't he, right, and recently talked in glowing terms about Tony Campolo, Tony Campolo, who is against the, well, he would say he's for the authority of scripture, but he doesn't believe in the inerrancy of scripture,

35:59

Tony Campolo, who's on board with the social gospel, who normalizes LGBT stuff, that Tony Campolo, he died recently, and Joel Tooley had something to say about that, and really eulogized him, and what does he say in this?

36:18

That Tony Campolo was pegged as dangerous and conservative theological circles, and I later realized the category dangerous often meant threatening for those who were on the receiving end of the prophetic voice of the church.

36:27

Campolo put into question someone's choice to buy a brand new luxury vehicle with the knowledge that children were starving in the world, and I guess that was his problem, according to these folks, his famous sermon story of throwing birthday parties for hookers at 3 a .m.,

36:42

I will credit Dr. Campolo as the chief amongst those who have helped position my heart for the long, narrow, bomb -laced road of prophetic imagination.

36:52

All right, well, he says, for every

36:58

Sunday at Melbourne, First Baptist, sorry, I'm so used to saying First Baptist, First Church of Nazarene, when we were invited to the table of the

37:06

Lord to participate in the Eucharist, okay, we're talking about the Lord's Supper here, our pastors invite with the question like, who amongst us is hungry for wholeness?

37:14

Who amongst us is thirsty for grace? Who amongst us feels unworthy? Come, come to the table prepared for us. Yesterday, I spontaneously asked, this is this year he said this, asked some friends who just recently became a part of our community to help serve.

37:27

After the initial shock of being put on the spot, they came, one of the pastors guided them through the basics of serving.

37:33

A people who approached the table, we serve without distinction, break the bread, okay. He says, a man began to weep as I went to assist him, he said something like this,

37:43

I feel so unworthy of this. It reminded me of a quote that Pastor Bruce Barnard shared from Rachel Held Evans.

37:48

Wow, Rachel Held Evans, another heretic. But here it is, ready? This is a quote that Joel Tooley shared.

37:55

The gospel doesn't need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors and shouting welcome.

38:04

There's bread and wine, come eat with us and talk. This isn't a kingdom for the worthy, it's a kingdom for the hungry. During our worship gathering yesterday, the

38:11

Holy Spirit of God was so beautifully present in every element of this very Holy Communion. So his view on the

38:17

Lord's Supper here, what's missing from this? What is missing from this? It should jump out at you as something very obvious.

38:26

Repentance, repentance is missing from this. And it always is in the social, their repentance is often like repent for the political positions you've had that are not in keeping with leftist orthodoxy, right?

38:36

And that repentance means you do your penance, which is you start voting the right way or giving your money to the right causes. But as far as like personal internal sins that you commit, those are not stressed.

38:49

Those are very much downplayed. And the gospel in this sense, it doesn't keep out the wrong people.

38:56

It's not, well, yeah. I mean, if what you mean by that, I suppose is like, it's a family of sinners, saved by grace committed to tearing down the walls.

39:05

Well, what walls are we talking about? Throwing open the doors, shouting welcome. Okay, welcome on what basis though? It's the basis of Christ.

39:11

It's the basis of what he's done. Jesus sacrificed, Jesus committed a great work. He died on the cross, paid for your sin.

39:18

If you are one of his, he defeated death. He lived a life that you weren't able to live.

39:26

He imputed his righteousness to you. It's all Christ. That's what the gospel is. That's why it's good news. It's not about shaming people who aren't as open as they should be or too against the immigrants who come here because they believe in policies that would seal the border and that kind of thing.

39:43

Joel Tooley though is, he's a tool. He's a tool for the left in the Nazarene church. He cloaks his leftism in theological language.

39:52

He loves to quote heretics. This is a guy, if you're a Nazarene, you should probably look into him more. And if he's having an impact in your denomination, that's not a good thing.

40:02

Now the Nazarene, I'm gonna say this again. This is, this in addition about the Nazarenes. The Nazarenes apparently in this seminary in particular have been championing not just the climate change stuff but the critical race theory stuff.

40:15

I'm curious what all they've been pumping in there but the climate change stuff is what we're focusing on.

40:21

So I wanna show you this. This is from 2021, how to be pro -life and how to pro -life and clean energy.

40:30

That is the name of the presentation from caring for creation and clean energy as a matter of life, Dr. Jessica Mormon, PhD.

40:37

And this is what she had to say for Nazarene Theological Seminary. They are the ones who actually sponsored this.

40:47

And I have the, here it is. You today on how to pro -life and clean energy and essentially coming at this issue as a matter of life, coming at caring for creation, coming at clean energy as a matter of life.

41:07

Clean energy and caring for creation is critical to our discipleship process, how it's critical for advancing life, partnering with Jesus in his call and mission to bring abundant life.

41:23

We see that our redemption is, or the redemption of a fallen creation is tied to our salvation in Christ.

41:32

We see the promise that Christ is reconciling all things to himself, both in heaven and on earth, and that God's gonna make all things new with the coming of Christ, the new heavens and the new earth.

41:47

And so we see this call all throughout scripture. Here in the US, it turns out that race is one of the most significant predictors that a person will live, near contaminated air, water, and soil.

42:01

And there was a really eye -opening study that came out in 2019 of looking at pollution exposure by different ethnicities and races relative to how much pollution they were able to produce.

42:19

And that's what this graph is showing, that relative to the average of what each group of pollution that they produce, found that Latino Americans are exposed 63 % more than the pollution they're responsible for.

42:38

For black American communities, exposed 56 % more. And then for white non -Hispanic communities, exposed to 17 % less of the pollution that is produced in those communities.

42:53

And so I think as we look at this and think about the implications of this, what really jumps out to me is that this is just simply unfair.

43:04

And so also as we think about healing and reconciliation in our nation, dealing with this inequality and pollution exposure as well as production is something that we can't ignore as well.

43:24

And then just to quickly look at climate change, what we find is that climate change also impacts these vulnerable populations more than, they're more at risk for the impacts of climate change.

43:39

And again, it's the same story, different song that children, the elderly, pregnant women, and the poor people of color, people with chronic illness, disabilities of low income and low wealth are most severely impacted by the impacts of climate change.

43:58

My PhD advisor, Kim Cobb, she started a student carbon reduction challenge, which essentially went out, what they did was they identified where they could see some energy savings that would reduce carbon, save energy and save money.

44:18

And so simply by raising the thermostat during the summer at one company, they saved 32 ,000 pounds per year of carbon and save $5 ,000.

44:33

You can see even more here at a synagogue, changed out all of their bulbs to be

44:41

LED, saved nearly half a million pounds of carbon and $65 ,000 a year in cost savings that they would recoup from that.

44:51

If you wanna look up the Bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, that has a lot of, a long list of Republicans as well as Democrats who have, in one way or another been willing to raise their hand and say that we recognize this as a problem.

45:15

And there's some great, I can send along some great quotes with that. Things from even like folks like Lindsey Graham. So I've always find that those are handy to have on board.

45:27

All right, quotes from Lindsey Graham. Great to have those quotes on board because that'll convince them, right?

45:33

That you're not a leftist or trying to push a sort of a socialist scheme on them or I don't know, go in the social justice route or defending cap and trade or any, cause

45:44

Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham is there to assure everyone that he's a Republican and he's conservative.

45:50

Of course, Lindsey Graham's a rhino and that organization she just mentioned, the Bipartisan Organization for the

45:57

Environment is also with a bunch of rhinos and it's, they do support things like cap and trade.

46:04

And it's, this is the point I wanted to make. The reason I played that whole clip, starting from the beginning, at the beginning of the clip, she makes her theological points.

46:13

She says that this is part of the kingdom of God. This is the responsibility that Christians have.

46:21

We should care about this issue. If you're a Christian, don't stop paying attention. This is for you.

46:27

This isn't just a political thing, right? It's a pro -life thing. That's the whole premise. It's part of the pro -life movement. And then at the end, you find out what she's actually talking about.

46:36

She's talking about disparities equal injustice. Therefore, we must do something about this.

46:43

And she's talking about policies like reducing carbon and organizations that push cap and trade.

46:50

So it always comes down to this. There's some leftist policy at the end of it that you have a responsibility as a

46:56

Christian to support. And if you don't support it, you're not pro -life or you're not supporting the gospel or you're not trying to be part of the kingdom of God or something along those lines, right?

47:05

That's the justification for it. So this is not just...

47:13

One of the things, I'm gonna mention this because I didn't play it, but one of the clips from that particular talk, she talks, she quotes

47:19

John Calvin. She talks about reformed thinking and it's just bland statements about caring for the environment.

47:28

They weren't intending to support any of those policies. But I thought it was interesting because I'm used to critiquing reformed evangelicals because that's often what you get in the

47:38

Southern Baptists. The younger people tend to gravitate towards that. And by younger, I mean, millennials who are 40 years old now because I don't know that the

47:45

Zoomers, I don't know where they're at with this, but it doesn't seem to be a big issue for them. But those who were being platformed like 10 years ago and they don't have any replacements for them 15 years ago, they're all neo -Calvinist essentially.

48:01

They're Kuyperian, maybe they just sprinkle a little bit of Edwards in there. And it's,

48:07

I've dealt with this stuff in the past. And this is a Nazarene University, which they're not supposed to be on that train at all.

48:14

I just thought it was interesting that I started hearing that language. I'm like, why would they be quoting John Calvin? That's interesting. But it's the same garbage that you'll get from the

48:23

SBC. It's the same garbage that Southeastern was putting out there and we had

48:29

Brian Sussman on the podcast. Check out the podcast I did with him. And he's written some books on this, debunking a lot of the claims that you just heard.

48:36

But the point I wanted to make isn't even to debunk the claims, just to show you that, again, the theological justification that is being used to pump in the leftism.

48:48

And this is happening at the, one of the major, if not the major Nazarene seminaries, you know, schools, and it is now being funded by an outside group.

49:02

And this is with the intention of making its way into your church. This is where pastors are trained.

49:07

This is, I'm assuming they probably make some of these lectures and so forth available for those in the denomination.

49:14

So what do you think's happening? This is where some of your funds are going as well.

49:19

And if you're a Nazarene, then you're gonna want to think about this. And I don't know what the mechanisms are in the denomination for holding these places accountable, but you need to think about it.

49:29

And anyway, look into it. So I wanted to sound the alarm on that a little bit. Next, I wanna talk about, let's see, we have the

49:38

National Association of Evangelicals, the National Association of Evangelicals, and some clips that woke preacher clips put out there.

49:46

And he has the question, is this from November of 2020, or is this from November of 2024?

49:52

And the answer is 2024. This just happened. But it sounds like it's from 2020. I want you to listen to some of this.

49:58

The Federalist Papers summarizing the relationship between the states describe the importance of justice in social terms.

50:06

In fact, it said, the sword would chastise atrocious breaches of moral obligations and social justice between the states.

50:15

So in the founding of our nation, there was this deep sense that social justice would be a part of how we would navigate differences between the states.

50:25

Catholic thinkers, since the mid -1800s, as they were trying to process the impact of the

50:31

Industrial Revolution, described social justice as the values necessary to hold together a society.

50:39

But what about biblical definitions of justice? That's exactly what we wish to pursue in our conversation today.

50:47

So I'd like to invite Dr. Mark Young, President of Denver Seminary, to come on and to give us a welcome and his own perspective on this matter of beyond social justice.

51:02

Walter, thank you so much for inviting us to co -host this event with you. I think it's very important for us to begin by saying at Denver Seminary, particularly through the work of one of our presidents, many, a long -serving president,

51:17

Dr. Vernon Grounds, we've made a commitment to social justice through the years, sometimes at the cost of some pretty severe criticism from colleagues and denominations around us.

51:28

I think it's sad that in the white church in particular, we make progress in this arena and see it as a part of the way the gospel is to be framed, the way the gospel has implications to change societies.

51:40

And then we get pulled back into these old debates where justice remains locked out of the gospel or separate from the gospel.

51:51

And so I pray that during this time together and in generations and in years ahead, that old push and pull where we make progress and then we're pulled back into old individualistic ways of thinking just of the gospel as a salvation or ticket to heaven.

52:09

I hope that's going behind us. I don't know how much I agree with Thomas Jefferson on, but one quote that we are probably in agreement on is one where he says, indeed,

52:21

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice cannot sleep forever.

52:29

Now, my guess is President Jefferson may have been thinking about the fact that he owned dozens of enslaved people of African descent, that he participated in egregious sexual sin with some of those individuals.

52:43

And he began to have an understanding, although I think we could debate whether or not he would have fallen into a camp of orthodoxy in his

52:53

Christianity. He did get a glimpse that there is this Christian God who is just.

52:58

We have to understand that we have to stop fighting for controlling the narrative of pain.

53:04

There had been a couple of studies the early turn of the century from Berlant, Gross, and Hoffman as well that honestly began to leverage this idea that we mobilize pain to establish authority.

53:14

And so literally to be very candid, it's about communicating the most traumatic story, the most amount of suffering personally that has been enveloped, not ancestral, but personally you have the most clarity and you have the most credible voice when it comes to this particular topic.

53:29

So to be very honest, let me decide, or let me give a definition of trauma. Trauma is a stressful and dangerous event that can cause lasting negative effects on a person's physical, mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing.

53:41

That's trauma, but that word has been reduced. It's been watered down. It's been redefined. So when a person who is privileged, and again, this is not just in the context of racial, if we're going to Galatians 3 .28,

53:52

it's race, it's class, and it's also gender. These are realities. So a person who is privileged in any of those spectrums or all those spectrums simultaneously, your position considers trauma as misery, adversity, and unhappiness.

54:07

Doesn't fit the definition in most cases. But for those who are marginalized, defenseless, they're muted, to them, trauma is that stressful and dangerous event that causes long lasting negative effects on a person's physical, mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing.

54:22

So when a person who is marginalized communicates their pain, their experience, it is often, in my experience, now

54:29

I'm speaking anecdotally, it in my experience, I have seen it fact -checked and dismissed in order to be decentered so that the person who is privileged in that environment,

54:39

I did this, I suffered through this, I've experienced this, to which in their mind, they have established themselves as the voice of clarity.

54:48

They are the voice that is the most authoritative and now they can push that person back on the margins and then life goes on for them.

54:57

But for the one that is stuck there in the margins, now there is a new layer of pain, a new layer of trauma, and moving on is not going to be as frequent to which then the response is often, what's wrong, get over it, keep it moving.

55:11

And a slew of Bible passages about slothfulness and laziness could be communicated. So what

55:17

I'm saying is that the beautiful work that needs to take place is by acknowledging that we do have pain and there's different layers.

55:25

But that pain is something that needs to be pursued with healing and application by rightly dividing the word instead of weaponizing the word of God.

55:35

And at the same time, not playing victimization cards, but at the same time, acknowledging,

55:40

I see you as a whole human who has been holistically traumatized and hurt and the work of discipleship, the beauty of -

55:47

I can't take much more, I can't take much more. Oh man, this is the guy, this is DA Horton, I think, right?

55:53

Yeah, this is a guy who wrote the gospel book that the church I was attending in North Carolina when

56:00

I was in seminary, First Baptist of Durham was using in their evangelism department to basically do this theobonics thing.

56:07

And crazy stuff, man. This guy is just, he's out there.

56:13

You know, we're not playing the victim card, but the whole narrative is that these victims have a special understanding that if you are in the oppressor class, if you have privilege, you can't possibly...

56:26

It's rigid. You know, this is the thing too. I wanna point this out because I'm gonna be talking more about the woke right stuff later this week, this ridiculous notion that there's this woke right.

56:35

And that's one of the things that they like to point out, is that, well, you say there's oppressors, John. Like, you'll say that there's this regime.

56:43

What does that mean? This network of organizations and industries that are opposed to Christianity, let's say.

56:54

And you're saying they're oppressors. And here's the thing, they're legitimately are oppressors and legitimately are oppressed people.

57:02

Look in the Bible, look in history, that stuff happens. But that doesn't motivate every human action.

57:08

And it also isn't something that you can determine simply based upon something is like, you know, you line up in some kind of a intersectionality strata.

57:22

And so you have the white privilege, even though you grew up in Appalachia in a place where seven of the 10 worst diseases are more prevalent.

57:29

You have least access to the hospitals and school and education than anyone else. And, you know, you're impoverished.

57:35

And it just, it doesn't add up, but that's the way the... It's the ideological component to wokeness that's the problem.

57:42

It's the fact that they have given up the ability to actually identify oppression because they are so reliant on this abstract principle that they've adopted, this binary abstract principle that will always in any situation put the white

57:59

Christian heterosexual man in the most privileged spot, which means the least oppressed, which means the least knowledgeable.

58:06

And they always put the person who's the opposite of those things in the absolute most oppressed spot, which means they have superiority in understanding how to navigate oppression.

58:18

So it's this rigid ideology. And that's been the problem with wokeness from the beginning. It's not the fact that they think that there's oppressors and there's oppressed.

58:25

Every political movement has to guard against threats from oppression.

58:31

That's the whole point of politics in a way. I mean, like there's threats out there and you don't want to be the slave of another country, for example.

58:39

You know, China could invade us and do so. We want to protect against that, right? So even liberals have to believe in some kind of, that there's a threat out there and there's potential for oppression.

58:50

I mean, they scream about it all the time. You're suppressing my individual rights with your policies. You want to ban things like pornography and that's going to suppress my rights or abortion and that's going to suppress my rights, right?

59:00

So they believe in oppression. They just, they think that they don't think in group terms, even though they do.

59:07

And they think that they don't. They think only as the individual against the collective.

59:14

That's how they conceive of themselves. It's not possible in a political setting to complete. You can't do that completely.

59:21

That's not even something. To do that is not to engage in politics, to say that there really aren't any groups that are interested in oppression.

59:27

But anyway, back to what we were just watching. What you just heard from DA Horton is completely rigid. And the guy before him, who was that?

59:34

Let me get back to the video here. Let's see. We had, we had

59:42

Christina Edmondson. By the way, we were just talking about her earlier. Weren't we? I was saying, look, that's who Our Daily Bread keeps interviewing.

59:49

And you can determine whether or not she's a great interview. All right, Mark Young. Mark Young basically just spat it off, heresy.

59:55

Got to get rid of this individual gospel. Got to get away from that. And the gospel is more than that. It's this collective thing, which is how they always try to justify their social policies.

01:00:04

All right, I can't stand the DA Horton stuff. I think that's the rest of it is DA Horton. We're not even going to listen to the rest of it.

01:00:09

But this is the National Association of Evangelicals. You think that people like Harold Ockenga, Bob Jones Sr.

01:00:16

are probably rolling in their graves, seeing the organization they formed in the 1940s going down this road.

01:00:24

And they've learned nothing since 2020. This is the organization that's supposed to represent evangelicals.

01:00:30

It's the National Association of Evangelicals. And if they do, we're in trouble. If they do.

01:00:36

Okay, let's keep going here. I think since we're about an hour in,

01:00:41

I want to try to get through this. All right, I was just going to let you know about this. This is not necessarily a huge breaking news thing, but this individual,

01:00:53

Nadia Bowles -Weber, recently in November, there was a story about, this is local, this is to Cleveland, Ohio.

01:01:01

She was speaking at some university in Cleveland. And she's a best -selling author. They're really excited about having her.

01:01:07

She's kind of a big deal, I guess. She goes around and she speaks. She's kind of like a motivational speaker. But here's the thing, here's the kicker.

01:01:15

She is an ordained Lutheran minister. And I don't know if the person who sent me this was concerned because she's coming to their area or what it is, but she's often described as a bold, candid, unconventional, professionally direct thinker.

01:01:31

And yeah, she's speaking at this university. And her talk is, let there be snacks and sex in songs, finding a defiant hope in what makes us the most human.

01:01:43

Oh, that sounds great. Now, here's the thing that I wanted to share about her. Do you remember from, oh goodness, maybe three, four, five years ago,

01:01:54

I don't remember. It was a while ago. There was a story about this motivational speaker who had women send in their purity rings and she melted them down and she made, it was like a statue or something and dedicated it to Gloria Steinemann.

01:02:10

You remember that? That was Nadia Bowles -Weber. That was

01:02:15

Nadia Bowles -Weber. And she has divorced her husband. She talks about having sexual relationship with her boyfriend.

01:02:23

They're not married. She has had, in the sculpture, I don't even wanna describe you what the sculpture was.

01:02:30

It was in the shape of a female organ of a certain kind. And she has just kind of been a

01:02:42

Lutheran minister. Now you say, what denomination? Well, it's the ELCA. It's the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

01:02:47

And they have not just made her a minister, not just allowed her to operate as a minister in the church, but she is, in addition to that, a pastor of, what do they call it?

01:03:00

Public witness, pastor for public witness in the denomination. They want her to be the face of the denomination.

01:03:08

This blows me away. This is the denomination Tim Walz was part of. I mean, he's running for president. He's saying,

01:03:13

I'm a Lutheran, right? Well, that's the kind of Lutheranism he's part of. And I have actually gone to an ELCA church once.

01:03:19

It was a few years ago. And in the prayer, I remember them talking about, they were praying for all the port cities that would be overrun by water and flooded because of climate change.

01:03:29

I mean, that's the ELCA. So in case you think that you're in the Nazarene denomination and it's getting really bad, it could be worse.

01:03:36

You could be in the ELCA. You could be in the ELCA. Now on that vein,

01:03:41

I wanted to step outside Protestantism real quick. And I don't have anything comprehensive set up for this.

01:03:48

I was just gonna mention it kind of in passing that it was

01:03:55

Pope Francis recently. Let's see if I can find it. Here it is.

01:04:01

LGBTQ plus Jubilee year pilgrimage is a reminder of how far we've come.

01:04:08

This is from New Ways Ministry. The news that the Vatican has included an

01:04:13

LGBTQ plus pilgrimage event during the upcoming Jubilee year of 2025 touched my heart deeply because it brought back memories of another

01:04:21

Jubilee. So this is from someone who's in favor of this kind of thing. Okay, he's comparing it to another thing that wasn't sponsored by the

01:04:33

Vatican, unlike this one. Jubilee of 2025 will open its doors to the first pilgrimage dedicated specifically to gays and LGBTQ people, an absolute novelty unthinkable until a few years ago as a result of pastoral attention that extends to the milieu usually considered marginal.

01:04:52

Listen to that word marginal. It's so often used to describe people who are going to, the very next thing after you hear the word marginal is platform.

01:05:01

They're a platform. They're front and center. They're focused on, we need to listen to them. They need the stage.

01:05:06

They need to write books so we can read them. They need to be in the hierarchies above us because they're marginal, right?

01:05:12

It's always the argument. They're marginal, therefore they should be in charge. Anyway, an absolute novelty unthinkable.

01:05:20

Like I said, okay, the historic Baroque church of the Gesu has promoted welcoming LGBTQ plus pilgrims, their parents, workers, and all those who gravitate towards these rainbow associations.

01:05:30

The pilgrimage will be entitled Church Home for All LGBT Plus Christian and Other Extensional Frontiers.

01:05:37

The event has the support of Pope Francis. So that's the point, really. I don't know if I need to read anything more about this.

01:05:46

Pope Francis is supporting this pilgrimage. Now this is weird. And this is the thing that the, so I noticed, the reason

01:05:53

I noticed this was because there's someone I'm friends with on X, not on X, sorry, a Facebook, who's a trad cat, they call him, right?

01:06:00

He's a traditional Catholic, believes in the Latin mass. There's a few people still out there like that. And doesn't like Vatican too.

01:06:08

And the last time I talked to this guy, Pope Benedict was still alive and he was saying, Pope Benedict's the real

01:06:13

Pope, Pope Francis is not. Well, I don't know what you say now because Pope Francis is the only one still alive.

01:06:19

But he doesn't like Pope Francis at all. And he was going nuts on his

01:06:24

Facebook, not like legitimate, he had legitimate concerns, but he was going like, he was amped up about the fact that this was happening and criticizing it.

01:06:34

And I just want to make an appeal to all the Catholics who are listening out there. Guys, I know there are a few of you who listen to this podcast.

01:06:40

Maybe it's because you live in America and Protestantism and what I talk about affects you so much just because you live here or maybe,

01:06:47

I don't know, maybe you feel a shared camaraderie. I've argued in the past that I think

01:06:53

Roman Catholic theology at its base is much different than Protestant theology. There's a reason there was a reformation.

01:06:58

And of course the most important difference is a soteriological one regarding the difference between imputed and infused righteousness.

01:07:06

And I do believe you get this wrong and it is the difference between heaven and hell. You're either trusting in the merits of Christ or you're trusting in the merits of your own merits plus the merits of Christ and the way that the church administers them and the hoops you have to jump through to get there through the church.

01:07:25

And I realized some of you, you put this into a different, you frame it in a way that is friendly to justification by faith.

01:07:36

And there's some rogue priests out there that apparently are friendly to justification by faith. So I've heard, but anyway, all that to say, there's this real weakness.

01:07:45

And if you're in the Catholic church, I actually know of a Protestant who has done this. She still might be doing this.

01:07:51

You stay in the Catholic church because you want to be salt and light. You still think there's hope to reform or whatever.

01:08:00

Where's your hope right now? I'm just saying, because people will say to me, this is, I guess, a scratch

01:08:06

I need to, or an itch I need to scratch. People will say to me in the Catholic church, yeah, you got your J .D.

01:08:12

Greer's though. You know, you got your David Platt's. You got your Tim Keller's. Right, but they're not the Pope.

01:08:17

That's kind of the point. Like we can have people like that who wherever they're at with the

01:08:25

Lord, they can operate in Protestant circles, but they don't have binding authority.

01:08:31

And I realized, yeah, unless the Pope speaks ex -cathedra, or ex -cathedra, however you pronounce it, he doesn't have the same binding authority.

01:08:39

All right, got it. But how long are you going to put up with a Pope that endorses stuff like an

01:08:47

LGBTQ plus pilgrimage? I mean, this is from the top of the organization.

01:08:53

You don't get any higher than this. This isn't like some kind of a, you know, in a decentralized setups, you have a rogue church somewhere doing something.

01:09:02

This is characteristic of the whole organization when you have the Pope doing it. He's literally the Pope. I just don't know how you put up with it.

01:09:10

That's my, I guess my question. I'm thinking out loud here, but if you're Catholic, you're Roman Catholic, how do you think about this?

01:09:17

How do you survive this? There was an argument that was happening online. I think it was regarding justification by faith or Mariology, I can't remember.

01:09:26

And somehow I got pulled into it. And all I did, I didn't even engage in an argument. I just posted a picture of Pope Francis.

01:09:32

Cause I was like, I don't think I need to say anything else. This is your organization. And for all the critiques of Protestantism that you guys are, everything

01:09:40

I just showed you, right? I just showed you so many different examples of Protestantism going amok.

01:09:46

And, but, you know, in all these different examples that I'm showing you, it's in a very decentralized system.

01:09:55

If you even want to call it a system, it's none of these people that I've talked to you about have any binding authority.

01:10:02

None of them have gotten to where they've gotten because I had a direct participation in getting them there through some ecclesiastic hierarchy.

01:10:12

There, maybe if you're a Southern Baptist, you know, or in one of these denominations maybe, but it's their influence is, might be big in certain areas, but it's not over the whole entire movement.

01:10:26

Whereas the Pope, that's exactly what it is. And I see a big difference there.

01:10:31

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe some of you guys have answers for this, but I haven't heard a good one. There's still plenty of faithful Protestant churches out there.

01:10:41

And they have the ability to be faithful and they can easily dismiss some of the stuff the same way the apostle

01:10:46

Paul dismissed false teachers. It's like, well, they're part of a different religion. They claim to be part of our church. They claim to be

01:10:51

Protestant. They're just not. Do you do that with the Pope? How? How do you do that with the

01:10:56

Pope? That's my curiosity, okay? So I'm just throwing it out there. All right. I had to scratch that itch.

01:11:02

Thank you very much for allowing me to say that. All right. I think that's about it for the stuff I wanted to go over as far as the denominational stuff.

01:11:09

A few closing thoughts, and then we will end the podcast here. I asked about organizations that are helping in Lebanon.

01:11:17

Right now in Lebanon, there is a, there is a potential genocide on the horizon for Christians.

01:11:25

And in Lebanese Christians, I think, I am not, I'm gonna just confess to you.

01:11:31

I am not very familiar with the kind of Christianity that exists in Lebanon. I'm assuming it's some form of orthodoxy.

01:11:37

I'm not exactly sure, but there is a large group of Christians. And I believe whether or not their organizations are corrupt there's probably a number of actual converts to true

01:11:48

Christian. They're trusting in Christ for their salvation. And they understand him to be the second person of the

01:11:56

Trinity, the son of God. They're baptized into him. I have no doubt there are brothers and sisters of ours in this country.

01:12:03

And we've just seen a complete destabilization with the, in fact, the

01:12:08

Center for Baptist Leadership did a great podcast on this, but the ousting of Bashir al -Assad, not a good guy, but someone who was protecting the

01:12:16

Christians there. And now the Christians, they're gonna probably try to have to side with the Kurds somehow and find some areas where they can locally survive.

01:12:24

But you have Muslim militants now controlling the country, gaining control of the country, I should say in real time.

01:12:30

This is not good. So I have not had time to vet any of these organizations. I don't know.

01:12:36

There's a few organizations that have been sent to me, but I wanted to let you know about one organization called heartforlebanon .org.

01:12:42

I don't know anything about it. So listen, I'm not endorsing them, but I'm saying this is maybe a place to start and look.

01:12:50

Someone asked me if there were any Christian organizations bringing Lebanese Christians here to the

01:12:56

United States. My understanding is that's not an option for Lebanese Christians. They have to go to other countries. So it's weird.

01:13:03

I know you can have people from the Muslim world come here and Haitians come to little towns in Ohio, but apparently that doesn't exist for Nigerian Christians under persecution or Christians in Lebanon.

01:13:15

So, or South Africans who are experienced or other Christians persecuted throughout the world.

01:13:21

So hopefully some of that changes under president Trump, but for now, I don't know of organizations that are necessarily involved in this stuff.

01:13:30

And so if you have, you can still reach out for me, let me know if there's good organizations. But one of the organizations that someone sent me, actually a few people sent me, they said, you should check out

01:13:38

Heart for Lebanon. So I'm just letting people know who care about this, maybe check them out. I don't know if they're good or bad, but Heart for Lebanon, maybe that's an organization to look at.

01:13:48

Another, before the closing monologue, another thing I wanted to just let you know about, Christianity and the Founding Conference coming up April 25th through 27th in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, that's near Harrisburg.

01:13:58

You're gonna wanna sign up for that. We have a steal price. I mean, 30 bucks is incredible to come to this conference.

01:14:04

So check it out, Christianityandthefounding .com. And then, like I said at the beginning, if you wanna support what

01:14:11

I'm doing, you can go to patreon .com forward slash worldview conversation, or you can actually go to my website, johnharrispodcast .com.

01:14:23

And if you go there, there's a donate tab. So I appreciate it. And no worries if you can't, if you have the ability to even just,

01:14:32

I would say, give a rating to this podcast as we come to the end of the year, that would be very helpful.

01:14:38

So I appreciate that. I wanted to let you know about this article for the closing monologue here.

01:14:45

Christopher Rufo, this is by Glenn Elmers in Chronicles Magazine, but Christopher Rufo had, he made a statement the other day.

01:14:54

And I thought that this was incredibly naive, but Christopher Rufo has been working hard on trying to eradicate some of the social justice stuff in Florida, especially.

01:15:05

And he tries to expose stuff. He does some good work, okay? And after the Daniel Penney verdict, he said that, let me see if I can find the exact quote.

01:15:16

Where is it? Okay. I can't find it.

01:15:27

I can't find it in the article. I should have had it highlighted. So I remember though the substance of it.

01:15:38

He basically said that we're done with the woke stuff, that at least, you know, like the

01:15:46

American people have turned a corner on this. Why can't I find the actual quote?

01:15:51

Okay, here it is. I found it. Rufo jumps to an unwarranting conclusion. He says, Americans are finished with the failed regime of the left.

01:16:01

And today he said, marks the end of an era. BLM, which seemed unstoppable four years ago is finished.

01:16:07

A brutal and stupid decade for moral and judicial corruption has come to a close. Now, I wanted to say, given the benefit of the doubt here, maybe this is propaganda.

01:16:16

You know, you make yourself, it might be a self -fulfilling prophecy to say, wokeness is done,

01:16:22

BLM is done, it's gone. And then it looks like it's not popular anymore. That's so last year.

01:16:28

That's so lame. It's not the new thing, which I would argue is a liberal tendency, unfortunately anyways, to be about the shiny new thing.

01:16:34

But this is just lame and old and tired. The thing is though, it's not true. It's just not true.

01:16:40

And I just showed you evidence even from Christianity that this is not true at all. This stuff is drilling in deep. There are some organizations that have reversed some course on this.

01:16:48

There are some victories. I know like Robert E. Lee High School and Stonewall Jackson High School were named, their names reverted back to their original names in the

01:16:57

Shenandoah Valley. I just found out about that earlier in the year. Okay, great. But there were hundreds of monuments taken down.

01:17:03

You know, it's like a little bitty thing. You look at the fact that Tractor Supply or whatever company, they're not gonna do the

01:17:12

DEI thing anymore. Okay, great. How many companies are doing it though? I'm grateful for the little victories, but every time

01:17:19

I turn on my television and I look at the commercials, it's a woke fest still. Total woke fest.

01:17:25

You see homosexual couples prominently displayed. It's still, if it's a white guy, he's the doofus or he's in the background somewhere.

01:17:33

I mean, it's just the way it is. We have swallowed the woke stuff.

01:17:39

It's in our system and it's still poisoning us. And Christopher Rufo is wrong. And I don't want

01:17:44

Christians to become complacent about this. You need to still hold the organizations you're in their feet to the fire.

01:17:50

They may not be advocating it as loudly in a policy kind of way, or I should say in a loud kind of way to the masses because they know it's not as popular as it once was, but it's still, the elites still believe this stuff.

01:18:04

They're still drilling in deep on it. They're still putting it out there and it's still affecting your organizations. And so what are you gonna do about it?

01:18:10

That's the real question. Are you gonna let the rot continue or are you gonna put an end to it? Some people have put an end to it where they live and work.

01:18:18

I was just talking to a guy that I know personally who was having issues at his job and he is fighting it.

01:18:26

He is fighting it. You're giving him a hard time for being a Christian and he's pointing out the hypocrisy that look, you got

01:18:32

LGBT. You're saying this is offensive, but you got LGBT groups at work and it's fine if people identify themselves in that way.

01:18:40

Why is my religion a problem? And it's making them back off. You have to raise a stink about some of these things or else you will lose the freedoms that you have.

01:18:51

You will lose the ability to operate as a Christian and do so in a public way. And so I just wanna encourage people, don't let up the fight, keep going, keep going.

01:19:01

This stuff is still out there, it's still happening. And this is gonna be our whole life. It may not always be this particular fight in this particular way.

01:19:08

It's gonna take different forms, but there's always a side. There's always an evil side. The devil's always looking for ways he can make inroads.

01:19:16

He can deceive people. His goal is to destroy people. He wants to take away from the glory of God.

01:19:22

He doesn't want justice. And he'll do it in a way that sounds like he does. He'll do the very thing he's saying that he's not doing, or he won't do the very thing he's saying he's doing.

01:19:33

That's how the devil works. Good is evil, evil is good. Everything's turned upside down and he's going to be subversive about it.

01:19:42

He's going to come at you in ways that aren't always obvious. You should know what's going on in your denomination or any organization you're part of.

01:19:49

You should know in general what's going on. Your local town, anywhere you're invested, that you want to spend part of your life, that your money's going towards, you should probably know a little something about it and know where your leverage is, what ways that you can...

01:20:06

You may have to know his limitations, but what ways in the limitations you have, can you be salt and light?

01:20:11

Can you push back against these evil things? That's the real question for a Christian living in 2024. And it's the same question for a

01:20:17

Christian living in year four or a Christian living in year, the

01:20:22

Lord, Terry's, 3024. It's the same question. And how do you be faithful to your master, the

01:20:30

Lord Jesus Christ, who is not only your savior, but he's the creator. This is something that I think is not emphasized enough.

01:20:36

And the Jesus is Lord or Christ is King stuff helps center this more. We need to really center that language because it's good language.

01:20:44

He is the King. He rules the world. And he didn't just come and die and pay for your sins.

01:20:51

As amazing as that is, and as important as that is, and you need to repent and trust in him.

01:20:56

He actually designed the world that you live in and he wants it to function in a certain way. He has rules for it.

01:21:02

He has ideas for how it should go. And he's designed it to go that way. And you should be reinforcing those things, not tearing them down and not giving to organizations that tear those things down.

01:21:13

If you can avoid it, that's something you should endeavor to avoid. At all costs. So wanted to share with you that.

01:21:20

Now, one thing that you can do constructively, okay? This Christmas season, if you are buying books, if you are purchasing books for anyone, for yourself, for,

01:21:30

I think this is great for kids because oftentimes who do we purchase books for? Children. But if you have an avid reader in your house, who's an adult, this is also a good source.

01:21:41

But Mudhead Mama has curated books. And I just talked to Michelle, who runs

01:21:48

Mudhead Mama earlier this week. And we were talking about Amazon and these other organizations that they take your money.

01:21:57

And yes, they may provide a service. I'm not saying you can't use Amazon. In fact, I just saw Amazon is donating a million dollars to Trump's inauguration.

01:22:05

Go figure that one out. But they don't have necessarily your best interest at heart as a Christian. And we need competitors.

01:22:12

We need organizations that will curate books. We don't have the time to do everything. And so to save time, go to an organization that's already done some of the work for you.

01:22:20

It filtered out the bad books. They have good books. That's what Michelle's done at Mudhead Mama. And you can purchase them there for a good price.

01:22:29

And so anyway, check it out. Go to mudheadmama .com. I wanted to play this little video for you.

01:22:34

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01:23:40

We'll get to some questions and then we will end the podcast today. There are a lot of questions or statements at least coming in, a lot of people weighing in on the

01:23:51

Catholic stuff. I don't know if I want to talk about that. I just, I need to get it off my chest because I see these smug

01:23:59

Catholics sometimes online saying, you Protestants. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Look at your Pope. Do you know how to contact

01:24:06

Daniel Penny? That's a question I can't, no, no, I do not. I haven't looked into it either.

01:24:13

This is interesting. Christopher Rufo is woke, but he is right about this one. Anti -gay race communism is now easy and risk -free.

01:24:21

I mean, he's liberal, I would say, in his sentiments. I wouldn't know, I don't know if I call him woke. Anyway, I said mudhenmama, right?

01:24:33

Did I say, someone's saying I said mudheadmama instead of mudhenmama. No, I was trying to say mudhenmama.

01:24:38

All right, other, if you have questions, let me know.

01:24:44

When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, he didn't throw open the doors of the upper room and shout all are welcome. The meal was for his disciples and only his disciples.

01:24:51

That's a good point. Nazarenes used to be fundamentalists back in the first half of the 20th century.

01:24:58

The liberal creep began in the 80s. You know, many such cases. I like how

01:25:04

John Harris's concern here is heresy as if that is the worst thing this says about evangelicalism.

01:25:10

I don't know what the point of that is, but yes, heresy is a big concern for me.

01:25:17

The theological stuff, I wouldn't do this podcast if it wasn't for theological threats, to be quite honest with you.

01:25:23

There are threats to civilization that you have in some of the things I've played for you today directly, and that's enough to be concerned.

01:25:32

Leftists are going to destroy civilization if they get their way. There's no question about that in my mind.

01:25:37

Wherever they are, they destroy. And just like the devil destroys, they destroy.

01:25:43

But I think, and I think it is a heresy actually at the root of it.

01:25:51

But I think the corruption of the gospel specifically, that heresy, if you want to call it the

01:25:56

Galatian heresy in a different form, that has motivated me more than anything else to expose this stuff because they want to cram their political philosophy and issues into the gospel and make it incumbent on Christians to follow it because that's faithfulness to the gospel somehow.

01:26:13

That is like 90 % of the time, that's what I see from these guys. And I just think it stinks.

01:26:18

I think it's terrible. I think that it's a deception and it's the path to, honestly, it's the path to hell if you really take it to its logical conclusion.

01:26:27

Like you don't have the gospel unless you do this work somehow. So yeah, I'm concerned about heresy and I don't apologize for it.

01:26:35

All right, so do oppression only target people of color and not people with an absence of color? Obviously oppression, yeah, the

01:26:44

DA Horton's point is ridiculous. Of course, people who look like all kinds of different people are oppressed and different times in history, different circumstances, of course.

01:26:55

This isn't unique to one group or another. At least, you know, talking in ethnic terms here.

01:27:06

I think that's it. All right, well, I will end the podcast and we will go from there.

01:27:13

There's, you pray for me. There's a number of podcasts I'm recording this week and I have made the determination that I'm going to finish the book, my next book by the 25th, by Christmas.

01:27:24

I want it done. And so I've been working hard on that. So just pray that I'm able to be efficient and I have enough material for a book, but I do need to arrange it and organize it.

01:27:36

And I've, about two thirds of it is already organized. I just got to organize the end of it. I have the whole books there.

01:27:42

It's all ready, but I need to be efficient with my time and I need to get this done.