An Open To Beth Moore about Homosexuality with Michelle Lesley

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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All right, well, welcome to another Rapp Report. Today, we're going to talk about, well,

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Beth Moore. There is an open letter to Beth Moore that is asking her to answer some questions on the topic of homosexuality.

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Will she answer? Well, I don't know, but we're going to discuss one of the people who are the initial signers of this and discuss this letter, why it is so important, and that's what's coming now on the

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Rapp Report. Welcome to the

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Rapp Report with Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

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This is the Ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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Okay, as was mentioned, today we're going to talk about an open letter to Beth Moore.

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Now, let me just say that I know some folks are saying, wait a minute, Andrew, you have been discussing this issue of women in ministry, and it's a big thing that Beth Moore loves to talk about, and obviously we take a different view,

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Beth Moore and I, and some of you may be saying, well, you know, don't you think you should lay off? Well, there's nothing actually that I'm directing toward Beth Moore because of Beth Moore.

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It's just she keeps putting herself out there, and therefore we have to address it.

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Now, if you listened to my last podcast, Does God Allow Women to Pastor or Preach?,

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I've gotten a lot of flack from it. Now, here's the interesting thing, folks. There was nothing in that podcast except for the very end that mentioned homosexuality.

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Nothing. At the very end, I said that one of the reasons I think it's such a great concern is because I think allowing women, the arguments made to allow women to be at the pulpit on a

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Sunday service or to be pastors is to interpret from culture and not to interpret from the rules of interpretation.

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And once you open that door, you can't close that door when homosexuality comes in. I'm saying that to say this,

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I didn't mention things about homosexuality other than that, and yet I got so much hate mail for the issue of people saying that I was speaking against homosexuality, that I was speaking and being derogatory toward homosexuals.

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And I went, wait a minute. These two things have nothing to do with each other, supposedly, right? Wrong. This is the whole thing.

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The people who are supporting the women preachers are the homosexual community. Why? Because, well, because they know that that's where they can get the church to accept their views.

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Now, let me give you some positive though. I got this as an email, and this was one of the few positive emails that I got about that episode.

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We got a couple of them, but this one comes in, it says, I benefited incredibly from this podcast.

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It was the most organized and comprehensive yet concise treatment of the subject that I have come across.

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Before listening to it, I was not confident at all with my stance.

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Not only have I made up my mind on it, but I'm confident to discuss it.

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This is huge because I'm surrounded almost solely by egotarians most of the time.

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So, the last episode we did was beneficial to folks in helping them in defining this issue of whether God allows women to preach at a pulpit or pastor.

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However, one of the biggest known people out there that is doing this is Beth Moore. There was an open letter to Beth Moore specifically asking her to address the issue of homosexuality.

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I have with me one of the initial signers, Michelle Leslie. You can find, if you go to michelleleslie .com,

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and Leslie for folks is spelled L -E -S -L -E -Y. So, if you go to michelleleslie .com,

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you can see on Wednesday the 19th, an open letter to Beth Moore. Let me say this to you ladies out there right from the beginning before Michelle even comes on, please go out there and sign that.

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Read it and sign it. Let's get a lot of people out there signing that. Right now, as of the recording of this, there's 220 signatures of women, only women.

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But, we're going to be encouraging you throughout this podcast for you to go do that because it is something we really would like her to address and we're going to discuss why in a few minutes.

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Now, Michelle, you're a blogger and you blog specifically

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Discipleship for Christian Women. So, your focus has been on areas where you've done a blogging about, well, you've done blogging about women's role and you've done blogging about Beth Moore.

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So, what I'd like you to do first for our audience who may not know of you, I'd like you to first just introduce yourself, share with us how you got into blogging, what is the focus, how do you use this for discipling?

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Well, thank you so much, Andrew. Yes, my name is Michelle Leslie and I'm from Baton Rouge, and I'm basically, at least the way

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I think of myself, I'm basically just your run -of -the -mill Christian woman, church lady and all that. I'm married to my wonderful husband for over 26 years and we have six wonderful children that God has brought into our lives.

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I attend my church every week and I'm involved there. That is what

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God has called me to in this season of my life. In my leftover time, my spare time, I've been blogging for about 11 years and it has just brought me so much joy to be able to interact with Christian women and to help build them up and encourage them, point them back to scripture, encourage them to be active in their local church and encourage them to study

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God's word for themselves. It's just brought a lot of joy into my life to be able to reach out to Christian women that way.

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So as far as blogging as a form of discipleship, because with the technology changes that we've had,

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I mean, in first century times, they would never think of, oh, I'll write a blog as a way of discipling people.

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I mean, Paul wrote letters, right, John wrote letters, we wrote letters, but things have changed with technology.

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So being someone who's been blogging for a long time, how do you, basically what I'm trying to say is how you've seen that you've been able to make an impact on women's lives.

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I actually know for a fact, because we spoke beforehand, you and I have a mutual friend, someone we both know, and she's shared with me how you have impacted her.

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So I know from that side, but I want to hear from your side how you get to have that impact.

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I think what I'm trying to do anyway is when women come to me,

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I'm trying to be like a soccer goalie and kick them back into their local church and to get plugged into their local church and serve there and learn there.

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So some of the ways that I do that are, for one thing, I've got a resource set up for women who are not in a doctrinally sound church who are looking for a doctrinally sound church.

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I've compiled a bunch of search engines for doctrinally sound churches, and I've had my readers recommend their own churches and other churches that they know of that are doctrinally sound.

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We have hundreds and hundreds of churches there so that when women, maybe they've stumbled across my blog by accident.

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I call it providence. Some people say by accident. But they've come across my blog, and they've started reading some things, and they start looking at what's being taught in their own church and looking at what scripture says, and they start realizing,

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I've got to get out of this church. I'm not being fed the truth of God's word. I need to be somewhere that's doctrinally sound.

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Then we have a resource that we can give to them to say, take where you live and plug it into this resource and see if you can find some suggestions of churches that would be healthy for you to go to.

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That's one of the ways that I've tried to do that. We've got another resource that's fairly new there on the blog for biblical counseling.

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A lot of times women will write to me, a lot of them in a doctrinally unsound church or for some reason they're out of church right now or whatever, and they'll write to me with just these heart -rending problems in their personal lives.

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It's stuff that I would not feel it would be ethical for me to try to help them with through email, just because it's too much and too personal and things like that.

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Normally what I would do is refer that woman to her pastor and say, set up an appointment with your pastor for counseling.

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But because these women are between churches or they're in a doctrinally unsound church or whatever,

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I've set up this resource to direct them to biblical counselors. We're still building that one and working on that one.

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Another resource, also hopefully designed to build women up and to build their local churches up as well, is that I write a weekly

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Bible study. My Bible studies, having looked at some of the best -selling women's

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Bible studies that are out there on the market today, I think mine are a little bit different from those.

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Mine try to direct women back into the Scriptures, not so much to focus on their own lives and their own feelings, which is what

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I've found. When I look at some of those more popular women's Bible studies, they're very narcissistically focused.

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What I want to do is to direct women back into the Scriptures and study the Scriptures. You study straight from the

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Scriptures themselves. My Bible studies are designed to be almost training wheels for women who are coming off of the prepackaged

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Bible studies and they want to start learning how to study the Bible for themselves. The studies that I write show them how to do that, show them the questions they should be asking of the text.

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They're available for free for women to use anytime they want to. They're also available for churches to use for their women's

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Bible study groups or Sunday school classes and things of that nature. I've had women write to me and ask, we have this rehab group that we do at our church for recovering drug addicts.

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I'd like to use your study for that. Can I do that? Sure. I go to the women's prison every month.

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We'd like to do a Bible study with them. Can we use one of your studies? Sure. One of the things that I'm trying to do is to help build up women in sound doctrine so they can study the

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Bible for themselves. Also, through making that resource available, to build up the local church and help train teachers in the local church.

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When you're teaching the Bible, here's how you do it. These are the kinds of questions you ask.

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These are the kinds of things you focus on in the text. My desire might be a little bit different from other bloggers, but my desire is to build up the spiritual health of the church and to build up the spiritual health of individual

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Christian women. I think you're asking about the electronic milieu,

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I guess. I think that's a good way to do it because it's handy. It's free. It's easily available.

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You can take it and use it in your own context, in your own church, and just do what is good and healthy in your own spiritual life and for your church as well.

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Well, I was glad. I quickly went out to check, and I was glad to see that you have my church listed there, the

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Master's Church of Buckeyes County in Richboro, Pennsylvania. So I'm glad that you have our church listed there.

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Good to know that I go to a church you approve of. Well, it's not really me approving of it.

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It's listed under Reader's Recommendations. Right.

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Let's talk in general about Women Pastors. I know I did a whole episode on it. It was kind of funny, son.

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You had said before we went live, I haven't read your blog articles, but I guess you and I kind of think alike because, son, you had said you didn't hear anyone else ever say, and I said

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I didn't know anyone ever said it. I thought it was original with me, and now I'm finding out maybe it wasn't because you've said similar things.

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So let's talk about women's role in general so the audience will know what your position is on the women pastors, women preachers.

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So let's start with that. What would be your position? Okay. My position,

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I guess, would be what they're calling right now hard complementarianism or I'm not sure about all the other terms that are floating around.

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Well, I kind of prefer complementarianism, and instead of softening complementarianism, let's soften the liberal view and just say it's ...

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Yeah, exactly. I said the same thing myself. Why can't they just be called weak egalitarians instead of soft complementarians?

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See, I like that. That's even better than soft. Let's call them weak egalitarians. That's a better title.

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Well, I would say I really don't even like surrendering the term complementarian to people who are trying to change it to mean something that it doesn't mean.

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So I want to just hold the line on saying I'm complementarian, and here's what biblical complementarian is.

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I don't want to add an adjective before it like I just was saying biblical complementarianism because that's redundant.

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But anyway, that's where I am. I am a complementarian, and for people who are not familiar with those terms, just briefly, a complementarian is someone who believes, as I do, that men and women are both created in the image of God, both valuable, both very special and loved by God, and very equal in salvation.

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There's no different kinds of salvation for men and for women. But also the fact that God has blessed men and women with different roles.

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Women have a very special role to play in the family and in God's kingdom, and men have a very special role to play in God's family and God's kingdom.

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And those are both equally valid and equally important. And we need to be sure that we are honoring

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God by filling out the role that he has created for us as women. It's an honor to fill out that role biblically.

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And then, egalitarians actually believe the same thing that we're all creating in God's image equally, but they do not believe that there are differing roles for men and women, that women can do anything in the church that men can do, and that women and men in marriage, that there's not the husband as the leader and the wife submits to her husband, but that they are both equal in marriage, in their roles.

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I'm not sure exactly how that works out in egalitarian marriages. I know it would cause a lot of conflict in mine, but that's basically the difference between complementarianism and egalitarianism.

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My position, which I...actually, let me back that up a little bit.

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The Bible's position, which I agree with, is that women are not to preach or teach to men, teach the scriptures to men, or to hold authority over men in the gathered body of believers, in the church setting.

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And that includes holding the office of pastor or elder or teacher or anything like that, as well as performing the functions of those offices, including being a guest preacher on a

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Sunday morning, or teaching a co -ed Sunday school class, or things of this nature.

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So that's...I believe that's scripture's position, and I support and believe and submit to scripture on that.

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You know, one of the things you said, I don't think that gets communicated well to people that disagree with you.

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You started off by saying, look, they're equal in salvation, we're equal in all these different ways.

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That's only one area. Exactly. You know, on my podcast last week,

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I ended up addressing the fact that that's what Satan did in the garden. It's like, oh, you can't have any tree.

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No, there's only one tree we can't have. But he makes that as if that's everything. Yes. And I've actually written an article very similar to that.

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I was telling you earlier before we got on the air that when I heard your podcast on women's roles in the church,

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I felt like you were reading my blog out loud, because you were saying all the same things that I had been saying.

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It was really interesting and really comforting to know that there are like -minded people out there.

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So yes. Yes, there's that one tree we need to stay away from, but there's dozens of other trees in the garden.

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And if we would just forget about that one tree that God has said no about and just go out into the garden and start pruning and fertilizing and harvesting from all these other trees, we wouldn't have time to worry about the one tree that God has said no about.

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Right? That's true. And I do feel bad for you, because if your brain works like mine,

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I'm sorry. If you think like me, that could be bad.

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No, let's just say great minds think alike. I would love to agree with that. My wife thinks that my mind is different.

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We had some Mormons over, which I just love. Okay, I admit, I'm one of these.

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I actually, the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed at my house. Their organizations don't let them.

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And somehow they asked if they could come over. I was like, yes, yes.

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I'm loving it, but these three girls, their heads are spinning when they come and they're just like, you know, they think they have these really great answers.

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And then I'm like, yeah, but, and I start explaining things and they're like, and my wife is like, he doesn't think like normal people.

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That's so funny, because the other day my husband was headed out and he said, the Mormons, he came back in and said, the

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Mormons are coming down the street. And I said, okay, I'm ready. And they skipped our house. So I don't know what's going on.

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And I think word gets out that people will witness to him or something like that. I don't know. Well, if you want,

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I mean, maybe this is the reason Jehovah Witnesses don't come by. So this is,

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I had Jehovah Witnesses when I moved. I had the first week that I was home on Saturday, 10 o 'clock, they came to the door.

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I loved it. I talked to them for a while. The next week I noticed that they went from my one neighbor's house, skipped my house.

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I was so bummed. I grabbed my New World Translation. I ran out to my neighbor and as they, as he's opening the door for them, and I came to find out that they actually went through my neighborhood every

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Saturday at 10 o 'clock because one of our neighbors, his sister was a Jehovah Witness. So she would send them all through our entire neighborhood.

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And so the neighbors were used to it. They told me, and here he is, he opens the door and like,

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Hey Pete, I'm your neighbor next door. Just moved in. They're going to lie to you about the Bible. I'm going to correct him. Go ahead. And they looked at me and I'm, what are you doing?

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I said, well, I'm going to correct you. The lies you tell, go ahead. They didn't know what to do. And so they left his house and they went to the next house and I start following him.

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They're like, what are you doing? I said, I'm not going to let you lie to my neighbors. And so the following week they skipped my entire block and all my neighbors were so glad they thanked me because they said that they've been coming through the neighborhood every single week.

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And then it came time for Christmas and I gave each of them a gospel message on CD, a book that shares the gospel in detail, a gospel track.

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They went, Oh no, we have one moved in. So, but yeah, you do that and they don't come visit.

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I get marked pretty quickly. I'm actually one of these people. I write the church, the ladder for the

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Mormon church. And I, I, I request a book of Mormon cause they would send missionaries. They used to, but they don't anymore for me.

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Such a bummer. Yes. Yes. So, you know, this has been though, a big issue, this whole thing of women preachers to take this role, take the position that you and I would take, that there are differences in areas that women can serve in.

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Somehow the culture seems to say that's, that's oppressing women to do that.

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The big concern I see with a lot of this is I see that so many people seem to be giving into culture and cultural pressure.

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So a question I want for you is why do you think so many people want to support the idea of female pastors or preachers?

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Well, the answer I give is not going to be very popular, but I always, when, when somebody asked me a question like that,

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I always like to get down to brass tacks and get down to the root of the issue.

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And it's, like I say, this is not going to be a popular answer, but I think the Bible bears this out that when, when you are of the world, you go after the things of the world.

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And Jesus has told us that the gate is wide and the road is narrow that leads to salvation.

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And there are, there are going to be many people who appear to be or proclaim to be

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Christians who are actually not genuinely regenerated. So I want to say this very carefully.

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I believe that many of the people who subscribe to egalitarianism and subscribe to the idea of women being pastors and ignore what scripture says or rebel against what scripture says,

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I believe many of those people are false converts. I, I am not saying, as I have been accused several times of saying,

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I am not saying that anyone who ever has an egalitarian thought cross her mind or maybe thinks for a few minutes that women should be pastors.

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I am not saying anyone who ever has a thought like that is unsaved. I'm saying that unsaved people gravitate to the ideas of egalitarianism and feminism and women pastoring because that is a worldly idea and they are of the world.

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There are other categories of people who fall into the egalitarian camp. The, the second, the first major one is, like I said, probably false converts.

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The second major category of people who might think this is a good idea is women who are biblically ignorant.

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And men too, but I deal with women so I tend to speak in terms of women. But they just, they don't realize that the

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Bible teaches against this or they have been, they have been told by other people who purport to be

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Bible teachers or Christian leaders that the, the, when the Bible says that women are not to preach to or instruct men in the scriptures or hold, hold authority over them in the church, that the

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Bible doesn't really mean that, that the Bible really means something else and that it's okay for women to do this now, that that was just for women in the

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Ephesian church or because of that culture at the time that, that first Timothy was written or whatever.

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And so they've either, they either don't know what the Bible teaches or someone has taught them incorrectly with or without improper motives.

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So I think those are the two biggest categories of folks who would support women being pastors as people who are not saved and are rebelling against scripture or people who are saved and just have been improperly instructed.

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Yeah, and you can't get around that what seems to be the driving force is culture over Bible.

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Yes. I mean, that's how they, I was just going to say what

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James says is that friendship with the world is enmity with God. And so, you know, you, you follow after your father.

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If your father is Christ, you will, or God, you will follow after him in Christ. If you are, you know, if the world, if, if, well, to put, to put it the way

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Jesus put it in John, if you are, if your father is the devil, you will follow after the devil.

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That's not Michelle saying that, that's the Bible saying that. And so it's really important for us to examine where we are spiritually, what, which direction we're going.

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If we're drawn to the things of the world, we're at enmity with God and, and Christians are by nature, not at enmity with God.

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We've been redeemed and reconciled to God and we are his friends and we are allies with God and we support him.

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And we, I mean, not that he needs our support, but I mean, we are on the side of the things of God. And so if we are holding worldly ideas about this or anything else, we really need to examine our hearts.

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And I'm including myself in that, that we're to, we, the way I explain it to women a lot of times is that we are slaves of Christ and slaves are not entitled to their own opinions.

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Slaves are only entitled to the opinions of their masters. And he is to control everything that we think and say and do and believe and our feelings as well.

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We're not entitled to have any kind of opinions or positions that are in conflict with the positions and opinions of our master.

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Yeah, because this is where I think really we have to deal with your, your way you lay this out is what we see every time we see false teaching.

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It is always man -centered always. And what I'm hearing from you is a lifting up of God, lifting

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God up on high, not lifting man up on high. And what we end up seeing, well, let's be specific, of people like Beth Moore is a lifting up of humans.

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Oh, it'll be sprinkled with spiritual language, but it's not really at its core lifting up God.

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It's actually lifting up people to get what God can give us. So, so, so let me do this.

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I want to, I want to get into this issue with Beth Moore. And she has a kind of response to you ladies, but not really.

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I want to, I want to go over that as well. So when we come back from a break,

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I want to, I want to talk about Beth Moore and the concerns that you specifically have um, with Beth Moore.

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So let's do that right after this break. Ding dong Jehovah's Witnesses.

29:03

Ding dong Mormons. Christian, are you ready to defend the faith when false religions ring your doorbell?

29:11

Do you know what your Muslim and Jewish friends believe? You will if you get Andrew Rappaport's book,

29:18

What Do They Believe? When we witness to people, we need to present the truth, but it is very wise to know what they believe.

29:25

And you will get Andrew Rappaport's book at WhatDoTheyBelieve .com. Are you just watching?

29:32

Do you enjoy watching movies? The special effects, the interesting characters, the great stories.

29:39

There's a lot to enjoy that comes out of Hollywood, but sometimes it's best to approach secular media with a healthy dose of critical thinking.

29:46

Join me, E Franklin and Tim Martin as we discuss our favorite movies and share critical thinking for the entertained

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Christian. So visit areyoujustwatching .com to subscribe and don't just watch.

30:00

All right, and that's a new podcast that we have on the Christian Podcast Community, one of many. It's a growing community of podcasts.

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I think we're up to like 10 or 12, so we are glad to have Are You Just Watching? And coming up probably next week,

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I will actually have E Franklin on. We're going to talk about media and movies, how it influences and how to think critically when you're going to a movie so that you don't get taken in by the messages that they provide.

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And so I recommend to you Are You Just Watching podcast. So let's talk Beth Moore. Now, are we trying to,

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Michelle, are we trying just to pick on Beth Moore? Do we have anything against her personally? Oh, of course not.

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I mean, she says that she is a Christian, and I don't have to take her word for that.

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I'm not saying just because you say you're a Christian means you're a Christian, but I have not heard her proclaim anything, at least with regard to salvation, that would contradict that.

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And so I'm going to extend the benefit of the doubt and certainly say that she is my sister in Christ.

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And you don't have things against someone who is a sister in Christ personally or anything like that.

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You're not mean to them and whatnot. So no, this is not anything about Beth personally.

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I think she's a very nice person from what I've seen. She's very affable. She seems to have a genuine concern for people to know

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Christ and to love Christ. And I think she really does care about many of the injustices that are going on in the world, and I commend her for that.

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And I think also you'll see one of the things that has pleased me so much about the open letter and the women who have signed it is that if you'll look through the comments section on that post, you'll see how many women are saying that they are praying for her and they love her and they want to see her stand on what's right biblically and do the right thing biblically.

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And that is our desire as well, if I can speak for the other ladies who are the original signers of the letter, is that we love

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Beth and we want to reach out to her and say, please help your followers and help our followers as well to understand where you stand.

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And in the process of showing us where you stand, take that opportunity and use your platform to explain to your followers what the

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Bible teaches regarding homosexuality and align yourself with what the

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Bible teaches about homosexuality. Because if the followers of hers that have contacted me are any indication, there are many of her followers who are homosexuals themselves, or who may are not homosexuals themselves, but who are homosexual affirming.

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I've had several of her followers like that contact me to defend her. And so these people need the truth of what

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God says about homosexuality and about every other issue as well. And so that's our desire is that she would steward well the platform that she has and steward it in a biblical way to boldly proclaim the truth of what

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God says and to be unashamed about that. So that's our desire.

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I'm not sure, we've gotten a lot of accusations about our motives for doing, for publishing this letter, and many of them assume the worst motives.

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And I want to make sure that that statement gets out there, that we do not have these awful motives that people are attributing to us.

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We just, it needs to be made clear where she stands on this biblically.

34:11

Now do you have concerns about Beth Moore's teachings? Not her personally, because unless you know her personally,

34:20

I don't, but I have concerns with her teaching. Do you have any concerns about her teaching?

34:27

Yes. It's kind of hard to give specific examples on a podcast, but I do,

34:35

I have an article on my blog about Beth Moore and the ways that she twists scripture and handles scripture improperly.

34:45

So that's one of the concerns about her. And I want to, I'd like to make another point clear, because a couple of readers have asked me about this.

34:52

What if she, what if she does come out and make a strong black and white statement about, you know, the biblical teachings about homosexuality?

35:03

What if she comes out and she's a hundred percent biblical and right on that and firm and unashamed?

35:09

Is that going to change anything? Might that confuse some of her followers, if she does that, into thinking that she is a doctrinally sound teacher, since she's on the right side of homosexuality.

35:22

And I want to make clear that this, coming out and talking about her views on homosexuality, if she aligns herself with scripture, that would only be the first step in correcting some of the theological problems that she has.

35:39

It would be a wonderful first step, but it would only be a first step, because as I've just said, she does twist scripture.

35:47

She uses it improperly. She allegorizes scripture. She doesn't, she takes it out of context.

35:53

She believes in extra -biblical revelation, you know, God told me kind of things. And as we know, she thinks that preaching to men is okay.

36:05

She very brashly stated on Twitter, right before Mother's Day, that she was going to be preaching the

36:12

Sunday sermon at her own church. And she's done that plenty of times before, as she admitted herself.

36:19

She's preached, she's been preaching to men in churches and in conference venues for decades.

36:28

This isn't new. But she's now coming out and unashamedly saying it, at least.

36:34

So that's a problem that she preaches to men. And also that she yokes with false teachers.

36:41

I mean, she has yoked with Joyce Meyer. She has yoked with Victoria Osteen.

36:48

When I say yoked with, I mean partnered in ministry with them, which the Bible is very clear on that we are not to do in 2

36:57

Corinthians 6, 14 through 18, I believe it is. So she partners with all kinds of false teachers,

37:06

Christine Kane, and just many others. Her television show is on TBN.

37:13

So that is very concerning. And it's clear in the trajectory that she has been on over the 40 years that she's been teaching.

37:25

Her trajectory towards false doctrine has been very clear. And I believe that these false teachers that she partners with, associates with, unfortunately,

37:37

Proverbs says that bad company corrupts good morals. And I believe that it might not be

37:44

Proverbs. Don't quote me on that. It's somewhere in the Bible. It says that. But anyway, I believe that her associations with these false teachers, and one of the reasons that 2

37:53

Corinthians warns us not to be unequally yoked with people like this, is that it has drawn her away.

38:00

Just like Solomon's wives, all his many wives, drew him away into idol worship because of his yoking with them.

38:08

I believe these false teachers have had a great influence on her and have drawn her away further from the truth of Scripture.

38:16

So there are a number of theological problems with Beth Moore. And even if she comes out and strongly, in a black and white way, states what the

38:25

Bible says on homosexuality, that's going to be a great first step, but it's only going to be the first step in correcting the theological problems with her.

38:33

Yes, because there is a difference that we see, as we already said, between her preaching at a pulpit.

38:39

And let me quote you from a blog article that you wrote called Women and False Teachers, Why Men Don't Get It, and Why It's Imperative That They Do.

38:52

This was sent to me from your blog article, and it says, quote, There's at least one biblical issue women respond to differently at a core level of their spiritual

39:05

DNA than men do. And men, it's crucial that you get it on this one.

39:13

You're the pastors, the elders, the husbands, the fathers, the ones responsible before God for leading your churches and your families in doctrinally sound spiritual growth.

39:27

You've got to get this for the sake of the girls and women you lead.

39:35

Women respond differently to false teachers than men do. And ladies, we need to understand this about ourselves too, unquote.

39:45

Now, that comes across much stronger when it's a woman saying that. Yes, it does.

39:52

Now, I'm going to say that there, you know, that is a general statement. Okay. My wife, for example,

39:59

I joke with her, she thinks like a man. She's an engineer by trade. My wife has zero patience for false teaching.

40:09

I mean, zero. We were in a church, and they did a Beth Moore Bible study.

40:16

They were going through one of her books. And she came home, and she was like, Andrew, I don't know if I should, you know, what to do.

40:24

This is what was said. I want to check it with you before I say something to the ladies next week, because this doesn't sound right.

40:31

And I'm like, okay, well, let's read the context, make sure we're getting it right. And she's like, no, it isn't right. And so the next week she went and corrected them, and then corrected them again and again.

40:41

And eventually she said to me, she's like, Andrew, I don't want to go back to the ladies' Bible studies anymore. I'm like, well, why not?

40:47

It's good to have the fellowship with the ladies. She goes, all I'm doing is correcting this false teaching from this

40:52

Beth Moore person. And I don't feel like just sitting there. They need to just give this up.

40:58

She has like zero patience for it. Yeah, and I've heard from lots of women like that.

41:05

I even wrote an article about that, you know, when women have asked me, should

41:11

I go to the Bible study and correct the false doctrine, or should I just decline to go? And it kind of depends, you know, on what you're willing to do, what your nature is, and what the nature and dynamics of the group are.

41:24

And yeah, it can be a sticky situation to be in. But, you know, with a Beth Moore, I mean, the scenario

41:29

I gave you goes back about 15 years, 20 years. And so one of the things

41:35

I always look to do is to look at the pattern, look at the trajectory of someone's life when they're in public.

41:42

When you look at Beth Moore, do you have concerns with the direction in which she's taking?

41:51

Oh yes, very much, very much. When we are in Christ, and this is just a very general and broad statement, please understand that.

42:01

When we are in Christ, our trajectory is to become more doctrinally sound, more people who handle the

42:11

Bible better, people who know God and his nature and his character and what he has said in his word better, more holiness, more

42:22

Christ -likeness. And I see that what

42:29

I have seen over the past, like you were talking about over the past several decades, because I've been watching this, you know, since I was, you know, 20 years ago in a church where they were using

42:41

Beth Moore Bible studies, and I knew something was wrong with it then. But even then, we've seen since then that her trajectory has been to associate with more false teachers, to allegorize

42:55

Scripture more, to twist Scripture more, to preach to men more, you know, and that is the trajectory that she is on.

43:05

It's not, it's the opposite of what we would expect to see of someone who is growing in Christ and growing in holiness.

43:14

And I'm certainly not, you know, I'm not expecting her to be perfect. Nobody's perfect.

43:20

I mean, we all, I'm certainly, whatever room I'm in, I'm the biggest sinner in the room, okay?

43:26

And we all have our falls, and we all have our sins, but the overall trajectory is towards more holiness and handling

43:38

God's word better and these types of things. And that's not the trajectory we're seeing with Beth, because you didn't hear people calling on her, you know, 20, 30 years ago, why are you preaching to men?

43:52

Why are you hanging out with all of these false teachers? Because she wasn't doing that kind of thing back then, or at least she was doing it a lot less.

43:59

Now we're seeing that more and more, so. And that trajectory is what, you know, that's what we can go by, because then we kind of see the pattern.

44:12

She's not going in a better pattern or more following of God's word pattern, but following more false teaching patterns.

44:20

So after this break, I want to talk about this open letter, why it was necessary for an open letter to her.

44:27

So let's deal with that right after this break. The good news is Striving for Eternity would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks, teaching them biblical hermeneutics.

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to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. The Five Solas Podcast, a weekly podcast hosted by James Watkins that is dedicated to the reformed theological distinctives and their continued relevance for the church and world today.

45:12

Grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.

45:20

Join us each episode to discuss the truths of these foundational rallying cries of the

45:25

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45:40

Each week from the rich insight of Reformation Christianity, we will be showing all the manifold ways in which this material helps challenge and direct the current church in its life of worship and witness and confront the idols of our age with biblical discernment and a sound apologetic in a manner that is as open and transparent as possible, while challenging you to seek the glory of God in all that you do.

46:06

Sola Deo Gloria. Alright, Five Solas Podcast, another podcast of the

46:12

Christian Podcast Community. Great one with James Watkins, great material there. So, Michelle, it wasn't just you, there were several ladies who got together and put this out here, and it's actually on multiple websites.

46:27

The original signers were Susan Heck, Debbie Kiespert, I don't know her yourself,

46:37

Martha Pierce, Elizabeth Prada, and Amy Spearman, who I know. So, looking at that, you guys put this together, put this out there together.

46:46

It's on several websites. I think yours is the only website where ladies can actually sign it. So, going to michelleleslie .com,

46:54

look for that letter so that ladies, you could go there and actually sign that letter, add to the 220 other females that are out there that signed it.

47:04

But what is this letter about? Why did you feel that it was important to make this public, to be a public letter, an open letter to her, to make a public position on this?

47:17

Well, there are a number of reasons for that, and I'd like to address that, too, because I've had a couple of people say, well, why didn't you go to her privately, like Matthew 18 says to do?

47:29

Well, for one thing, Beth's public remarks are not the same thing as what

47:36

Matthew 18 deals with. Matthew 18 deals with sin in the local church, where you have access to that person, and the sin has been against you personally.

47:46

It's about disciplining the person in the church and bringing that person to repentance and reconciliation with the church.

47:57

If you have to go through all of the steps of church discipline outlined in Matthew 18, then the person is excommunicated or disfellowshipped from that local church.

48:09

So, that's not what we're dealing with here. I would ask, why hasn't the pastor of her own church taken her through the steps of Matthew 18 and called her to repentance and gone through those steps?

48:24

But that's not within my purview. So, we can't go through the steps of Matthew 18 because we don't have access to her, and that's another thing.

48:35

One of the reasons that this needed to be done this way is that several of us have, when

48:44

Beth Moore has come out and said various things, especially when she came out before Mother's Day and said that she would be preaching, we have tweeted questions to her and they have been ignored.

48:57

People have asked me, why didn't you just send her a letter or why didn't you contact her privately?

49:02

Well, I have tried doing that in the past on more than one occasion. One time, one of her secretaries,

49:09

I believe it was a secretary, emailed me back and defended Beth and also wanted to talk to me on the phone.

49:17

I got the impression she didn't want anything in writing to email back and forth with me.

49:24

So, that was one response. I've tried other times to email privately and ask a question and I've been ignored.

49:33

That's not just my experience. I've heard a number of people say that that has been their experience as well when they have tried to go to her privately and ask questions like that.

49:44

I heard from a lady this morning who signed the letter who knows

49:50

Beth personally. As many people know, Beth Moore started out decades ago teaching an aerobics class.

49:57

That's how she started out in teaching. This lady was in her aerobics class when there were only two of them.

50:04

So, Beth knows her personally and has known her for all these years. You can read the comment in the comment section on the letter.

50:12

She said that she has attempted several times to contact Beth privately about the false doctrine that she teaches and about various other things.

50:21

Beth has ignored her. I'm not sure what people expect.

50:26

We have asked questions of her publicly on Twitter. Many of us have attempted to contact her privately.

50:34

Even someone she knows well from many years. Those questions or those emails have gone ignored.

50:43

Someone that works for her emails back and defends her. There's the other aspect of Beth Moore is probably the best known

50:55

Southern Baptist in the world. She's sold through Lifeway. Everybody who's in leadership in the

51:02

Southern Baptist Convention at the national level knows her and knows what she teaches. None of those leadership, apparently, at least not in any meaningful way.

51:12

None of them have approached her and rebuked her for the things that she teaches that are unbiblical or the things that she does that are unbiblical.

51:22

I mean, it's possible they've gone to her in private. If that's the case, that hasn't changed her in any way.

51:30

No one that I know of has made any statements about that they have gone to her in private and tried to correct her and that she received correction or that she rejected correction.

51:42

All I can assume is that no one in leadership has gone to her and talked to her about these things.

51:47

These are avenues that people have tried to contact her privately, that people have tried to talk to her on social media, that as far as I know, no one in Southern Baptist leadership has either talked to her or has made any headway in talking with her.

52:05

In addition to that, she has not voluntarily, of her own volition, come forward and said what she believes on the subject of homosexuality.

52:15

At least she hasn't done that in many, many years. Those are the avenues that other people have asked.

52:23

Why don't you just let her say what she wants to say when she's ready to say it? Well, she hasn't done that.

52:29

Maybe the leadership in the SBC should approach her. Well, they apparently haven't done that or haven't been effective.

52:35

Why don't you contact her privately? We've tried to. We've been ignored. This was really, as far as I can see, an open letter publicly.

52:44

This is the only avenue we had left. People are questioning why do an open letter? Well, we've tried these other things.

52:51

They haven't worked. What do you want us to do? If anybody has a better way of handling this, please let me know.

52:59

We've tried all the ways that people who object to the open letter have suggested and that none of them have been effective.

53:07

What else do you want us to do? That would be my question to people who object to the open letter format.

53:13

The reality is, and if people go back to a previous Rap Report podcast,

53:19

Justin Peters and I were in the Philippines. We came back and we did an episode answering our critics. It's the same thing that every false teacher does is say, well,

53:27

Matthew 18, why didn't you go privately? One of the things Justin said that's kind of interesting is most of these churches that tell you you have to practice

53:34

Matthew 18 for quoting what people say in public, they don't practice Matthew 18 in their own church.

53:42

But when it's in public, you don't have to go Matthew 18, especially if you're, we were quoting people and they're like, well, you have to go.

53:52

Well, the fact is, and I just actually answered someone last night, someone sent me a message, why didn't you go to the pastor of Victory Christian Fellowship in private?

54:01

And I said, we tried. We tried to contact all the churches that we mentioned in our

54:07

Discernment Conference, but they rejected it or their secretaries rejected or whatever, but we did try.

54:14

We even tried after one of the pastor of this Victory Christian Fellowship, his son blasted

54:20

Justin and I on Twitter and we said, we get back at the airport from Cebu Wednesday night, can we meet?

54:29

He said, no, I won't meet with you. Okay, then don't say that we didn't do, we did everything we could.

54:34

But the reality is, as I said to this one person, when all we did was quote them, if you say that we did something wrong, the only way it could be wrong is if the quote itself is wrong, right?

54:50

Otherwise, like, all we did was quote them. If we're saying what people, if people have a public ministry and we're responding to what they say in public, we can do that because they've already made it public.

55:02

So, this is asking her to take a public position. She kind of responded the next day.

55:08

This was her response on her Facebook, and so, it's clearly, it's from the

55:14

Living Proof Ministries with Beth Moore, but who runs that, who knows? But it says from Beth.

55:21

So, it's clearly this is from Beth. And it says, this is what it says, quote, beware of Bible beaters void of the

55:29

Holy Spirit. Okay, I got to stop there. What is she immediately saying? She's saying, whoever she's speaking to, but we think it's the people, you ladies who put this letter out.

55:40

She's questioning your salvation, void of the Holy Spirit. See, Bible beaters, void of the

55:47

Holy Spirit. So, I guess right off the bat, it's okay for her to say people are not saved and to question their salvation.

55:55

But if you did that, you were actually already said that people are saying that you're questioning her salvation when you clearly have not been, and you've even said that here.

56:06

Right. So, she's the one questioning people's salvation. So, let's be clear with that.

56:11

For any of the Beth Moore supporters, Beth is the one questioning people's salvation. And basically,

56:17

I guess the standard is if you disagree with her. I think she set herself up as the standard because Scripture doesn't support her claims.

56:25

That's the whole issue. I mean, in my last podcast on does God allow a woman to preach or can a woman preach?

56:32

The issue is God does not allow this. He forbids this. So, there's no way around that to say that God's going to support it.

56:43

So, now she questions people's salvation. But she goes on and says this, quote, where the

56:48

Holy Spirit goes, the Holy Spirit shows. Okay. Now, I got to stop there.

56:54

I did an Apologetics Live last night with Justin Peterson. I just laughed at that line. I don't know about your thoughts, but it doesn't even make sense.

57:04

It just rhymes. Right. This is what we get from her.

57:10

It's not actually when you think about it, where the Holy Spirit goes, the Holy Spirit shows. Well, does the

57:16

Holy Spirit actually go anywhere? Well, no, because he's omnipresent. He's everywhere present.

57:22

He doesn't go anywhere. He is everywhere. So, it doesn't even make sense.

57:29

But this is the type of stuff that you get from Beth Moore, which isn't doctrinally sound, doesn't make sense, but it rhymes.

57:36

So, you think it sounds good. Where the Holy Spirit goes, the

57:41

Holy Spirit shows. Right. And I would say, look, the Holy Spirit shows us in his word of which he is the author.

57:49

He shows us everything that we need to know. So, if the Holy Spirit is showing us through his word that, you know, what is clear about homosexuality and that women should not be preaching,

58:01

I mean, there you go, Beth. The Holy Spirit has shown you. Well, and I think she tried to say the same thing you just did, but she left out the word of God because this is what she says.

58:11

She says, if the fruit of the Spirit is not evidenced, they can hang

58:16

Bible verses on their limbs all day long, but something's still wrong with that tree.

58:22

Jesus said, you know a tree by its fruits. We are called by God to be people of both word and spirit.

58:30

Yes, yes, we diligently study the scriptures, pour over them in our lives, but if we do not have the love of God in us and evidence through us, we are no different than those

58:43

Jesus called out in John 5, 37 to 42. Here's the thing

58:48

I see with this. When the word is clear and she's in opposition to it, she doesn't recognize that the fruit she's bearing is bad and she's the one that's hanging

59:02

Bible verses and scripture on the tree, but she, you know,

59:08

Justin had said something on Apologetics Live that the rare times when she does bring up Bible verses, and she does, he says 99 % of the time they're out of context.

59:19

Right, and so regarding this supposed response, people have just noted the timing sort of coincided with the posting of the letter.

59:32

You know, I kind of want to give Beth the benefit of the doubt. It could have just been a coincidental thing that she posted this post because she gets a lot of people calling her to account for various things from various areas, and this post is so vague.

59:52

It doesn't mention homosexuality at all. It doesn't say I'm answering the questions of, you know, the people that have written this letter.

01:00:00

It is so vague it could be about anything, and my reaction to it is that it could be something she was just thinking of that morning and happened to post it on the same day that we posted the letter or that it was posted on my site anyway, or she could have been thinking about something completely different or who knows, but my thought is if you have to analyze a response like this so deeply to try and figure out if it even is a response to these very clear questions, and I mean the people can see in the the questions are very yes and no, black and white questions.

01:00:42

Do you believe homosexuality is a sin? If you have to delve that deeply into what she wrote that might or might not be a response, it's not a response.

01:00:51

Well, I don't consider other people might consider that her response to this, but I don't see how it can be when it doesn't even address the topic of homosexuality.

01:01:02

It does lead us into something that we see with every false teacher. For whatever she's responding to, it's playing the victim card.

01:01:09

It's victim status to get your supporters to get out there and defend you, and whatever it is, it could be something totally unrelated to this, and people might be making that connection, but it does show us that she does the same thing that every false teacher does, play the victim card, pretend like you're being attacked instead of just addressing what scripture says, and I mean if someone comes to me with something,

01:01:33

I'm going to say, okay, let's look at what scripture says. This is what it says. Let's deal with it. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but that's what we don't see here with her.

01:01:42

We see the victim card being used. Now, let me really quick read the five questions that you guys asked of her in public for her to ask, and I want to ask you after that,

01:01:53

I want your opinion on what do you think the dangers are with her on this issue, but the five questions you guys asked her to address publicly.

01:02:01

Do you believe homosexuality is inherently sinful? Two, do you believe the practice of homosexual lifestyle is compatible with holy

01:02:12

Christian living? Three, do you believe a person who dies as a practicing homosexual but professes to be a

01:02:20

Christian will inherit eternal life? Four, do you believe same -sex attraction is in and of itself an inherently sinful, unnatural, and disordered desire that must be mortified?

01:02:35

Five, why have you been so silent on the subject in light of your desire to quote teach the word of God unquote?

01:02:44

I think those are very clear questions that could be asked, and there should be clear answers.

01:02:50

So, why do you think that there's dangers with her on this issue that it needs to be addressed in an open letter?

01:03:00

I think there are several reasons for that. One of them I kind of touched on a little bit before is that many of her followers don't know the answers to these questions, and she owes it to people who follow her.

01:03:15

I mean, whether she chooses to answer this letter or not, she owes it to her followers to be very clear on this issue because many of her followers, at least the ones who have contacted me, are either homosexuals themselves, and I don't mean all of the ones who have contacted me,

01:03:33

I mean some of them. They're either homosexuals or they do not understand clearly from what they've said to me.

01:03:41

They don't understand that the Bible says this is a sin that needs to be repented of, and that people who willfully and unrepentantly walk in sin, whether it's homosexuality or anything else, but we're talking about homosexuality right now.

01:03:56

People who walk in willful, unrepentant sin are not Christians, whether it's homosexuality or any other sin or any other multitude of sins.

01:04:07

When someone is saved, they receive a new nature, and that new nature is, like I describe sometimes, it's a new want to.

01:04:18

When you're genuinely regenerated, you want to obey Scripture. You want to please

01:04:24

Christ. Certainly we sin and we fall, but our desire is to repent and to do what is pleasing in the eyes of God and to love

01:04:34

Scripture and embrace it and to submit to it and to grow in holiness. Someone who is exhibiting the opposite of all of those things still has the old nature, a person who doesn't care what

01:04:47

Scripture says or twists it to try and fit his or her own sinful lifestyle or things of this nature.

01:04:56

That person still has the old nature, the old man, and has not been converted, because when we are converted, when we're genuinely born again into the family of God, God changes us just as fundamentally as if he changed a cat into a dog.

01:05:14

You don't have the nature of a cat anymore. You have the nature of a dog now, and that's how I illustrate it sometimes to people.

01:05:22

That's one thing. She doesn't have to answer to us, but she does owe it to her followers who need to know this information.

01:05:31

Another reason that they need to know that the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin and that people who die in willful, unrepentant sin, whether it's homosexuality or anything else, those people are not going to Heaven.

01:05:47

Those people will spend an eternity in Hell. It is not loving to coddle people in their sin so you don't hurt their feelings here on Earth and then watch them slip into an eternity in Hell.

01:06:01

There are very real people with real souls who follow her whose souls are in danger of an eternity in Hell.

01:06:11

If she is a Christian, never mind being a Bible teacher, this is incumbent upon all of us as Christians, it is her duty to share the gospel with those people and make clear to them that sin is sin and sin must be repented of, that they cannot stand before a holy

01:06:30

God in willful, unrepentant sin. She owes it to the souls of the people who follow her to make that clear.

01:06:41

Another reason that is important to me and I believe if I can speak for the other ladies who are

01:06:49

Southern Baptists because I'm Southern Baptist and some of them are Southern Baptists as well, some of the signers of the letter.

01:06:56

This was not brought out in the letter, this is just something that has been on my mind. Beth Moore is probably, as I believe

01:07:04

I mentioned before, she is the best known Southern Baptist in the world. She has more influence on more people than the

01:07:15

President of the Southern Baptist Convention, all the entity heads of the Southern Baptist Convention, all the missionaries in the

01:07:20

Southern Baptist Convention, all the pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention. She has the most influence of any person in the

01:07:28

Southern Baptist Convention. Now the Southern Baptist Convention has made homosexuality a litmus test for whether or not churches can be in friendly cooperation with the

01:07:41

Southern Baptist Convention. If you are a church who supports homosexuality or a pastor who says that it's not a sin and it's okay, your church is in danger of being removed from the

01:07:53

Southern Baptist Convention. That has happened a handful of times over the past several years that churches have been removed for standing on the unbiblical side of homosexuality.

01:08:06

So they've made it a litmus test for churches. Lifeway has also made it a litmus test for its authors.

01:08:14

We have seen in just the past few years that when Jen Hatmaker, who's mentioned in the letter, made her statements that homosexuality or homosexual marriage can be holy and that practicing homosexuals can be

01:08:29

Christians and church members and things of this nature, Lifeway pulled all of her materials from their shelves.

01:08:36

A couple of years ago, Eugene Peterson, the author of the Message Paraphrase of the

01:08:43

Bible, he came out, I believe it was in an article or something, and he made some statements that suggested that he was in favor of homosexuality and thought it was fine and whatnot.

01:08:55

Lifeway said, we're going to look into this, and if this is true, then we're going to pull his stuff off the shelf, including the

01:09:03

Message. Now, he came back the next day and recanted what he had said, so Lifeway didn't pull his stuff.

01:09:09

But we've seen how the Southern Baptist Convention has made where you stand on homosexuality a litmus test for whether a church can be in cooperation with Southern Baptist Convention and whether authors can be carried in Lifeway or not.

01:09:23

Now, Beth Moore is the best -selling author that Lifeway has. She brings in probably more money,

01:09:30

I mean, I don't have stats on this, I'm just looking at the evidence. She probably brings in more money through Lifeway than any other author or any other conference speaker.

01:09:41

Why should she not have to answer these questions? Why should she not have to make it clear where she stands on homosexuality as the best -known, most visible, most influential, highest money -making

01:09:55

Southern Baptist in the world? Why should she not have to answer these questions? Why has someone at Lifeway not had her answer these questions?

01:10:05

That's what I want to know. So that's another aspect of it for me and for other

01:10:11

Southern Baptists. I've had a couple of people say, what business is this of yours? Well, if she's my sister in Christ and she is the best -known

01:10:19

Southern Baptist in the world and I'm a Southern Baptist, that makes it my business. It makes it the business of every

01:10:25

Christian who is influenced by her, every church that uses her materials. It makes it the business of Lifeway who carries and supports and endorses her materials and the

01:10:36

Southern Baptist Convention. So, like I said, she's not under any obligation to me or any of the other signers of the letter, but she is under obligation to Southern Baptists everywhere, and she is under obligation to the people who follow her.

01:10:54

So that is why it's important that this issue be dealt with and that it be dealt with publicly.

01:11:03

So one final question for you. Do you think she'll respond? No, I don't.

01:11:11

Her pattern in the past has been to ignore things like this and wait for them to blow over, and this will blow over eventually.

01:11:19

I mean, that's not a secret. You can't keep up a fever pitch of things like this forever. I don't intend to be still doing this 10 years from now and have the same intensity of requesting that she respond to this 10 years from now.

01:11:35

So that has been her pattern in the past, is just to ride out things like this and wait for them to blow over, and it seems to work for her.

01:11:43

If she does answer, I expect her answer to be an obfuscation, something possibly as vague as the post you were reading a few minutes ago.

01:11:56

She has been very vague. I wrote about this about a year ago when she was making accusations of sexual misconduct about some unnamed people, leaders and pastors and things like this.

01:12:12

That's another thing. Beth Moore has published an open letter herself. Last year, she came out with an article called

01:12:19

An Open Letter to My Brothers, and it dealt with the sexual abuse issue in the Southern Baptist Convention.

01:12:25

So it's not like Beth Moore hasn't published open letters either. I don't believe that she's going to respond to this, but if she does respond to this, her pattern has been to be very vague.

01:12:38

I would expect it to be an answer that would be vague and obfuscating, and an answer that could be interpreted either way depending on what your mindset is.

01:12:51

It could be interpreted one way by people who support her, and it could be interpreted another way by people who are calling her to biblical account for these things.

01:13:00

So that's my expectation. Well, I think in not answering, she's saying a lot.

01:13:07

Because scripture is very clear on this, and if she gives no answer,

01:13:13

I think that actually is an answer. Because I think, as I said to her, I tweeted it out to her, and I said,

01:13:20

I understand that answering this puts you between friends and truth.

01:13:27

And I think that's the issue she has. Because you're mentioning there's an association with her in every

01:13:33

Southern Baptist. Because she's making an association with her and people that support homosexuality.

01:13:42

So because of her connections and her relationships, she has relationships with Word of Faith, NAR, homosexuals, those relationships have to be questioned.

01:13:55

And I think, look, ultimately, she's not accountable to you, she's not accountable to me, she is accountable to God.

01:14:02

And God is not going to be impressed with your platform. God's not going to be impressed with how much money you made, with how much you sort of got the message out there, because her gospel message isn't all that clear.

01:14:18

So it's like sprinkling scripture in different places. God's not impressed with that.

01:14:23

Not when you have attempted to be corrected over and over again, and just don't care.

01:14:31

You're going to do your own thing. And because, yes, it may benefit her now, but it's not going to benefit for long.

01:14:40

Even if she is a believer, I don't know, I don't know her. Love believes all things, so you want to believe that.

01:14:47

But as Mark Arthur says, time and truth go hand in hand. And what we're seeing in her trajectory is she is associating more and more with people that we'd put in the camp of unbelievers.

01:14:59

And therefore, at some point, we're going to have to start to question whether she was ever saved.

01:15:04

Not because we want to, but I don't believe that someone that, as she herself says, if you have the

01:15:12

Holy Spirit, you can see by the fruit, we're seeing bad fruit from her. It can only lead us to believe that she doesn't have the

01:15:19

Spirit. It's the only conclusion I could come to if she continues on this path. I hope she would repent from it.

01:15:26

Is there any other things going on? Anything you'd like to share with the audience before we close out? I would just say,

01:15:35

God, so many things come to mind that I could say. I would just say first to Beth, if I could speak to her.

01:15:47

I don't have anything against you. I love you. I pray for you.

01:15:52

Many of the ladies who have signed the letter have been saying that they have been praying for you and that it's their desire to see you align yourself with Scripture and to help your followers to understand the truth of what

01:16:08

Scripture says. God has allowed you to have a huge platform.

01:16:15

Our prayer is that you steward it well and use it to stand on God's word.

01:16:22

I would say this to just anyone, any sister in Christ of mine, any anonymous person like a lady in my

01:16:30

Sunday school class. I would say the same thing to myself. We have to be sure that no matter what it costs us, we're standing on Scripture and we're submitting to Scripture and obeying

01:16:43

Scripture and doing what it says to do, no matter what the cost is.

01:16:48

I know and I feel compassion for the fact that to stand on God's word in this issue would come at a high cost for Beth.

01:16:58

I am not discounting that and I have compassion for that. I can only imagine what it might feel like to go through something like that as a result of standing on God's word.

01:17:11

But pleasing God and obeying God and aligning yourself with God and His word is so much more important than the praise of men.

01:17:23

Beth has mentioned before that we need to stop being so addicted to the praise of men.

01:17:31

I just pray that she would hear herself saying that and that she would apply that to herself as well.

01:17:38

The smile of God is so much infinitely more valuable than the applause of men.

01:17:46

I know it would cost a lot and I feel for her that it would cost a lot to stand on God's word, but that is what

01:17:54

God has told us to do. That's what He's called us to do. We're not to be friends with the world.

01:18:01

We are to be friends of God. Jesus said

01:18:07

He came to separate a mother from her daughter, a mother -in -law from her daughter -in -law, and the members of a man's own family, own household would be his enemies.

01:18:18

And so if we're expected to follow Him at the cost of even our closest family and friends, we're certainly expected to follow

01:18:26

Him and obey Him and align ourselves with Him, even at the cost of strangers on the

01:18:32

Internet that follow us that we don't even know. And so I would just say that the ladies who put the letter together and I, we're concerned for her followers.

01:18:46

I'm concerned for the Southern Baptist Convention and the way that she influences it, but we're concerned for her soul as well.

01:18:56

The pressure that she is feeling right now, it's not hatred. It's not people being ugly to her.

01:19:04

It is the blessing of God calling her to repentance. The Bible says the

01:19:10

Lord disciplines those He loves. And if she is a Christian and He loves her, He is disciplining her to bring her back into alignment with His word.

01:19:19

And that would be my desire for anyone who has strayed from God's word and is in any sort of position where He needs to discipline them is that they would heed the loving discipline of the

01:19:33

Lord and submit to it and be in obedience to God and His word.

01:19:40

So that is our approach, if I may speak for the other ladies.

01:19:46

That is our approach. That is our mindset. We have nothing against her personally. This is not a malicious attack.

01:19:53

We are not attempting to trap her. I mean, how could you be trapped as a Bible teacher just to answer some simple questions about something the

01:20:02

Bible is extremely clear about? This is not, you know, this is not we're trying to trap her into answering complicated questions about eschatology or to properly exegete the prophecies in Daniel and Revelation or something that's a lot more difficult like that.

01:20:18

We are concerned for her soul as well as the people who follow her.

01:20:24

And I know she may not believe that. I know her followers will probably scoff at that. But that's just the truth.

01:20:31

And I think that's evidenced by, you know, what I'm saying and the number of women who have said they're praying for her and things like that.

01:20:37

So and then one more thing, I would just, something I try to drive home every time

01:20:43

I'm interviewed to the ladies who are listening, please put all the prefab studies aside and just pick up God's Word and study it for yourself in a systematic way.

01:20:54

Start at the beginning of, pick a book of the Bible, start at the beginning of it, study it all the way through to the end.

01:21:01

If you don't know how to do that, I've got a resource for you on my blog. Just go to michellesleslie .com,

01:21:07

click on Bible Studies, and I'll teach you how to study the Bible for yourself so that you don't have to worry about whether the study you've from LifeWay or wherever, whether it's teaching you the truth of God's Word or not.

01:21:20

You don't even have to rely on me to teach you. You can read the Word of God and study the

01:21:25

Word of God for yourself and know the truth of what it says. So ladies, please be good

01:21:30

Bereans, be good students of God's Word. Get into a local church that is doctrinally sound.

01:21:36

Sit under good preaching and get plugged in and invested to your local church where you can serve and lead the other ladies in your church to sound doctrine as well.

01:21:48

So I guess those would be my closing remarks. Well, I appreciate you coming on. This went really quick.

01:21:56

I feel like we only touched the surface. We'll have to have you back and have more topics of discussion.

01:22:04

I really appreciate I appreciate you being on and what you're doing for the Christian ladies out there.

01:22:10

For my listeners, for Rappaport listeners, I want to give some closing things. I want to thank all of you.

01:22:16

We've become the number two podcast in the Philippines for Christian, well, not just Christianity, but for religion and spirituality, which is the largest category that there is by far, like twice as large as the next largest category is religion and spirituality.

01:22:31

And we hit number two in the Philippines, maybe because I was down there preaching, but that was really cool.

01:22:40

We've hit the charts in America. They basically look at these charts and they only compare where you are, but there's over 700 ,000 podcasts and about half of them are in religion and spirituality.

01:22:55

So that's pretty neat. And so that's because of you guys. So thanks for spreading the word of the

01:23:00

Rappaport. Please do so. Please share this with others, encourage them to subscribe. If you're getting value out of this, please share it with others.

01:23:08

We've dealt with the issues of, well, women's roles, and that seems to be a sticky thing that a lot of people have been getting upset with.

01:23:17

Maybe it's fitting that what I've been doing this past week on my daily two minute podcast is to be doing a topic of encouragement.

01:23:25

So Monday through Friday on that shorter two minute version, the Andrew Rappaport's Daily Rappaport, it's been two minutes of trying to encourage you to encourage others.

01:23:34

Strange concept, I think, for Christians, but I think it's biblical. And so we hope that you're subscribing to those.

01:23:42

Check out all the podcasts at the Christian Podcast Community. We've got a growing number of them. And I want to also encourage you guys, if you care to help us out at Striving for Eternity, to continue doing these podcasts, continue promoting other podcasts and helping them out.

01:23:59

The community is a community. We are trying to get Christians to help one another, to produce better podcasts, not just in their content, but also in their theology.

01:24:12

And so we work together as a team to work with one another. It's really encouraging to see that. And that's what we're doing.

01:24:19

If you want to help, I can tell you what you could do. You could go to strivingforeternity .org slash donate.

01:24:26

And I'm going to tell you what you get if you become a monthly supporter, some gifts that you get. If you give as little as $2 a month, you'll get a copy of my book,

01:24:35

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01:24:47

Trinity, to a lot of different things. It is the only book I know that's not at a seminary level that's really geared toward answering the question of textual criticism.

01:24:56

Is the Bible reliable? It's the number one issue that comes under attack from people on the streets when we evangelize.

01:25:02

I encourage you to get that book, that chapter alone. But $2 a month gets you that.

01:25:08

$5 a month will get you that book plus What Do We Believe?, the book I wrote on world religions where I take

01:25:18

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01:25:33

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01:25:43

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01:25:51

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01:25:59

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01:26:14

My chapter on there dealt with open air evangelism, basically trying to explain how to go about doing that, and so a lot of different tactics that you can get in there.

01:26:25

Good book to have. The nice thing is every chapter is short. We were limited to 3 ,000 words.

01:26:32

Any chapter could be read in any order, so that's for $25 a month. If you give $25, we actually give away $25.

01:26:42

If you give $25 a month, what we're going to seek is a missionary that we could donate both equipment and hosting to so that they can, instead of writing a missionary letter, they can have a better connection with their church by actually doing a podcast, and they would be able to share with their supporting churches as things happen.

01:27:04

So we think that would be a better way of using the technology for missionaries, but they can't afford it.

01:27:10

So if someone donates $25 a month, we're going to be looking for missionaries that would want to partake in that.

01:27:16

So if you want to support more, we won't turn it away, and we'll give you the four books anyway, but what you go to support is you support the

01:27:24

Christian Podcast Community, you support the seminars that we put on. One of the things with Striving for Eternity, we prefer going to smaller churches, to churches that can't afford to have speakers come out.

01:27:36

That's what allowed us to go to the Philippines. Justin and I were able to go to the Philippines. They could not afford to pay for us to fly out there.

01:27:43

We went anyway because of supporters. So the more supporters we have, the more places we can go.

01:27:50

I'm being asked to go to Japan to prepare them for the 2020 Olympics. If we have the support, we will fly out to Japan so that we can train people to evangelize at the 2020

01:28:01

Olympics. That's something you could be part of. So that's just something to think about. Michelle, I greatly appreciate you coming on.

01:28:09

This discussion was just wonderful, a needed topic, and I do pray that she will respond.

01:28:16

I agree with you, I don't think she will, but it is an important topic that we have to address.

01:28:23

Yes, I agree, and I would just like to say may God be glorified in this.

01:28:28

This isn't about Michelle or any of the other ladies who wrote this letter, and ultimately it's not about Beth either.

01:28:34

Our goal as Christians is that God be glorified and that sinners be redeemed. Amen. This podcast is part of the

01:28:42

Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org