David Platt and Pastoral Corruption

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Welcome, welcome, welcome. It is the American Churchman podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, and my co -host

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Matthew Pearson should be with us in a few minutes. We are starting a little bit late tonight, so thank you for your patience.

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We have a lot to talk about today, but I want to let everyone know before we get into the podcast that American Churchman is brought to you by truthscript .com,

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and we are dedicated to inspiring Christian men to embrace their divine calling. We explore a range of topics.

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Today we're going to be talking about ministry, mostly, and corruption in ministry.

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There's several examples lately of that, and it seems like there have always been examples of that, but what a surprise, right?

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Because there were examples of that in Jesus' time too, and the same in the time of the apostles.

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So nothing is new under the sun, and we're going to talk about that. We'll be taking your questions.

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If you have any, we are on X, we are on Facebook, we are on YouTube. You can get your questions in the live chat in any of those places.

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So before we get to the topic at hand, which is mostly going to surround David Platt and the documentary that was released last week, and then broadly speaking, pastoral corruption and that kind of thing, we are going through some of the attributes of God on this podcast, and today our attribute is the eternality of God, the eternality of God.

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Let me give you a few Bible verses on this. Psalm 90, Psalm chapter 90, verse 2 says, "...before

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the mountains were born, or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are

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God." Isaiah 40, 28 says, "...do you not know, have you not heard, the everlasting

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God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable."

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First Timothy 1, 17 says, "...now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only

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God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." Revelation 1, 8 says, "...I am the Alpha and the

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Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." And then lastly,

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Psalm 102, 25 through 27 says, "...of old you founded the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands, even they will perish, but you endure, and all of them will wear out like a garment, like clothing.

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You will change them, and they will be changed, but you are the same, and your years will not come to an end."

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We see this idea of God being eternal also reflected in some of the creeds.

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For example, the Nicene Creed says that there is one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

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And this element of God, this attribute of God, is at the root connected to the fact that He is the creator.

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He is the creator of the heavens and the earth, and like we just read, everything invisible.

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That includes the spiritual realm. God created all of it, so He is outside of His creation in that sense.

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This is a concept that is very hard to wrap your mind around because we are finite beings. We cannot conceive of an object that does not have a beginning, because everything that we know in our physical lives does have a beginning.

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We had a beginning. The things that we see, my daughter who was just born four months ago, she had a beginning, and God is different in that way.

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This is one of the attributes we call a non -communicable attribute of God. There are attributes that are communicable, like God is loving, we can be loving, we should be loving, we should be like God in that way.

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We are supposed to be perfect, like God is perfect, right? You can emulate God in these ways, but this is an attribute of God that we cannot emulate.

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And it looks like Matthew Pearson is actually popping in, so I'm going to put him on the stage. Hey, Matthew, how are you doing?

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I am great. How are you doing? My apologies for running late. No worries. Someone asked, where's

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Matthew Pearson? So here he is. I'm right here. I was assisting with a

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Facebook market deal, and I had to help somebody out, and the person who's coming through with the market deal did not bring cash after they were being late, so they go to the

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ATM. So a whole lot of stuff, but what matters is we've made it. We're here, so I'm excited. Cool. Well, we were talking about eternality and how

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God's eternal. I read some Bible verses. I read a passage from the

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Nicene Creed and was kind of wrapping up my thoughts. I don't know if you have anything to add to the discussion.

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Well, I don't know everything you covered, but I do have quite a few notes, so I could go over some of those.

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I'll just go over one section. Did you define eternality insofar as it's like an attribute?

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Because I joined, and you were talking about how this is an incommunicable attribute. So what was your definition,

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I guess? Poor listeners have to - I just said that God exists outside of his creation, and so it's a hard concept for us to understand, given that everything we know has a beginning in the physical realm, but God does not.

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So that's pretty much all I said. Okay. Yeah. Well, yeah.

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I mean, it reminds me of when we were discussing infinity last week, something which I included in my notes and which

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I mentioned last week when discussing infinity as a divine attribute is that infinity, when spoken of in relation to God, not being bound by time, this coincides with eternity.

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And if you want, in order to kind of wrap this up, since you've already gone over some of it, I can talk about the nature of time and how eternity relates with that.

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So in regard to the relation of eternity with time, I will mainly... I mean, this guy, as we're doing this series going over the attributes of God, I've actually found that Bavink is good on some things, other things

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I'm a little hesitant to use him on, but on the attributes of God, Bavink is just, he's wonderful. So I consulted him a bit.

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So everything you're about to hear me spiel is very Bavinkian. So I may just have direct phrases and quotes that are basically plagiarized.

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So this is not Matthew Pearson speaking, this is Matthew Pearson summarizing. But in regard to time in relation to eternity, time is not a substance.

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Instead, it is a mode of existing. So there's not like this thing, which we call time.

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Time is simply the mode in which you exist. So it's a temporal thing. So there's past, present, future.

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And the concept of eternity, in contrast to this, it bears three marks.

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It excludes a beginning, it excludes an end, and it contains a succession of moments.

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So I do this, then I do this, then I do this. There's a succession of events happening.

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That's how we define time and eternity, it excludes those things.

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So in order to affirm the eternity of God, we would affirm that God does not exist by mode of time, by virtue of his distinct nature, which has these attributes, one of which being eternality, which as you said, is incommunicable.

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So despite the fact that God, in a sense, God is a creator of time, he transcends time.

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Despite this, his eternity does not just transcend time, but it also is present and imminent in every moment of time.

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In sustaining and upholding all things, God, who is the cause of time, he still pervades time with his eternity.

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And that's why we can still call God, as the apostle Paul does, the king of the ages, because God, in being eternal, has dominion over time, being the cause of all time.

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And there's a lot more we could get into with time, I'm sure, or not with time, with eternity, but that obviously has implications for time.

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But one important thing to think of is the modes of relation in the Godhead, how the father begets a son, the son is begotten of the father, the spirit proceeds from the father and the son.

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The idea of begetting something is, whenever we think of that, we think of a process which happened in the past, and then it culminates in a birth or something like that.

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So when we talk about the father begetting the son, because this is done in eternity, this is a logical ordering rather than a temporal ordering of things.

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So it's not like, okay, here's God the father, and then one day, he decided to beget the son. No, because in eternity, it's simply eternal present.

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And so Augustine, in expositing Psalm chapter two, he talks about how when he says, the

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Lord said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten me, that the today there is not actually a reference to a moment in time, it's simply an eternal presence.

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And when we say eternal presence, that's obviously analogous language because you can't really capture it. But yep, that's my spiel about eternality.

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That's why we say he's outside of time, not before time. Some songs will say that poetically, but this is one of the things that I think for apologetics purposes, atheists, they have a,

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I don't want to say they have a hard time, because they have every religion or view of the world has to have an uncaused cause at some point.

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So yes, either there's a God who is outside of time, or there's some kind of impersonal spiritual force, like some of the

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Eastern religions. Now, the Eastern religions, actually, they're interesting, because I think they are more similar to an atheist understanding where they might infuse it with this spiritual presence.

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But they also, like if you believe in reincarnation and karma, and those kinds of things, you believe that matter is eternal, it might be infused with something spiritual, but it's also eternal.

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But the atheist thinks that the material world is eternal.

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And there was a Big Bang. But before that, they don't really have any answers, they don't know, but all the stuff that was there for the

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Big Bang was there. And then some of them even think there was this, there's a sequence, it's cyclical, you just keep having

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Big Bangs, and then heat death, and then more Big Bangs. And so you have to at some point, though, find like the uncaused cause.

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And for us, that is God. And that's God's part of his attribute, by definition.

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And I think the difference with atheism, or materialism is that material things don't have that quality to them.

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That's why we call it, I said non communicable, would you say incommunicable? It's one of the attributes that God has it and nothing else does.

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We know material things do have causes, they do have periods in which they start to exist.

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So anyway, I think Christianity is on a more solid footing than atheism in that.

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Yeah, certainly. And the Eastern religions too. So I've always been intrigued.

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I asked a Hindu this once, and I couldn't really get him to engage with it, because I don't know if he understood the question, or maybe he was pretending he didn't.

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But I always have been intrigued by the fact that you have bad karma. That's like the main problem we have to escape is bad karma.

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And that's why we're in this world. That's why we're suffering. That's why we have all these bad things happen. But my question has always been like, where did it come from, though?

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Because if you have these sequence that go back to eternity, and like you were always something, you always existed, you're always part of the universe.

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Like, where did the bad stuff come in? At what point, if you started out good, if everything was good karma, where did the bad stuff enter?

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There's no explanation for any of this. But anyway, I'm getting into different territory now.

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So thank you. Thank you, Matthew, for that. We have an article that we're going to talk about today.

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Did you get a chance to look over this article, Matthew? Was this the David Platt article? Pastoral Corruption.

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Yeah. I was able to look over a majority of it.

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Yeah, I read it by Pastor Seth Brickley. He's actually on the board for TruthScript. And I just want to let people know before we even get into this, that the

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David Platt documentary, part one and two, they're out there. A lot of people, in fact, hundreds of thousands of people,

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I think at this point have actually watched those documentaries. And we'll take some questions.

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But tomorrow morning on my other podcast, Conversations That Matter, I am going to have some of the ex -members from the church answering questions about their experience at McLean with David Platt.

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So for those who are just completely in the dark and don't know, there were some documentaries released about McLean Bible Church and David Platt, who is the pastor there, and the experience that they had with Platt trying to essentially take over the church, replace leadership, gut the ministries, put new ones in.

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The numbers went way down. I mean, it's been a disaster for that church. They keep trying to make it out like this is such a great thing and everything's fine, but it's not.

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And there's some connections to the SBC and so forth. But with that said, the more specific things we'll talk about tomorrow.

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But for now on the American Churchman podcast, we want to have more of a thousand foot view and talk about this issue of pastoral corruption more specifically.

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So Pastor Seth Brickley starts off by referencing Jerry Bridge's book on Respectable Sins. And the premise is that there are certain sins that are respectable in the church in different eras.

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And you can think of like a good example of this today might be gluttony. That's condemned very widely, especially in churches.

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How many pastors probably have a problem with gluttony, but it's not, it's a respectable sin, right?

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And there's a lot of other sins that we could talk about there, but he talks about Steve Lawson.

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And I thought this was interesting to bring up Steve Lawson in the first paragraph because Steve Lawson lost everything.

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I mean, he has no chance of ever making a comeback. You know, even Mark Driscoll could make a comeback in a sense.

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He lost his temper and there was this whole podcast about the rise and fall of Mars Hill that was at Christianity Today, I think put out.

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So there were issues that were focused on, but at the end of the day that wasn't enough to hold him back from re -engaging in ministry.

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But for Steve Lawson, there's just no way. He had a relationship with a girl that was younger than him that he shouldn't have had that was as the church calls it inappropriate, but was really highly suggestive and adulterous.

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That's the biblical word for it. And there's no coming back from that.

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And this was, this was a sin that was when Steve Lawson did this just, well, when it was found out,

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I should say just a month ago or so, this was widely condemned. I mean, all this stuff was pulled immediately.

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It's a shameful thing. These ministries connected to him don't even want to talk about the specifics. And yet with David Platt, there's something different going on.

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And so Seth Brickley says that there is a certain level of corruption that seems to be acceptable in Christianity, broadly speaking, or at least in evangelicalism.

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He says this cancer found in churches all over America is corrupt pastors. America is flooded with such pastors, but they are in no danger of losing their positions.

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They are trained to look like real pastors. They know the Christian lingo. Many of them know the intricate ins and outs of theology.

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Many of them are good public speakers and do expository preaching. These men are great at sounding credible and humble.

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They are professionals. They are career men and know how to perform the job. Unfortunately, many congregants are not discerning enough to understand their pastors corruption.

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And he talks about seeing Platt first at the Desiring God conference in 2011 and not suspecting any of these things.

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Matthew, did you ever see David Platt at a Christian conference or have you met him before?

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I never have. I grew up seeing like clips of him, but I never got too much into him.

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But growing up at a very large SBC megachurch, I mean, he was popular. His books would be put out there.

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Did you read Radical? I did not. I don't know how it was, but I always managed to avoid a lot of these really scandalous guys somehow.

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I never got too attached to any of them, but who knows what's in store for me. But I did hear a lot about him.

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I remember my high school pastor liked him a lot and my middle school pastor did as well. I was thinking about this podcast and you, and I was like,

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David Platt was huge. I don't remember when his book came out, 2009, 2010, 2011, somewhere in there.

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But 2011 at the Shepard's conference, I remember one of the distributors there, one of the vendors said that this was their top selling book.

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Shepard's conference is known to be more, I would say, reformed -ish.

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They're not your TGC type. They're more on the conservative end of the reformed movement. It was a big, hot item there.

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But I remember thinking 2011, how old would Matthew Pearson have been? I would have been 10 years old.

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Yeah. You probably missed a lot of the hype because you just wouldn't have been interested at that age.

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But for me, this was right when I was becoming an adult that this was popular.

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I think for guys just a little bit older than me, this was the book that defined the reformed -ish

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T4G, TGC movement. I haven't looked it up, but I would suspect this sold more than any of the other books, maybe with the exception of, if you want to count it,

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Desiring God, which was maybe a little before this movement, but helped jumpstart it. Francis Chan's Crazy Love is another book that might be, it came out around the same time, might be somewhat competitive.

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But this was big. And I was actually required to read this book when I went to Southeastern for my admissions class.

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So in 2014, we're reading this as part of our seminary level, which is embarrassing because it's on a seventh grade level, but we were required to read this for our seminary level class.

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So you haven't had to read this at all. You probably won't at this point. No, no. I can't see them assigning me.

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The only thing which I think was probably very popular back then that I get assigned to read is like Tim Keller books on like the city or whatever, which is kind of, if you go to a reformed university or not university, like seminary, then

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I guess that's kind of expected. I don't know, unless you go to Greenville, you're probably not going to be reading a lot of Keller at Greenville. Right.

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Yeah. It's just Southern Baptist more. And I've talked about Platt quite a bit on the podcast and without going into everything, he, uh, he, he had a very influential ministry for a long time and he was known as kind of like the missions guy and that propelled him to, uh, the position he had at the international mission board for the

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Southern Baptist, which is the highest level you can get in missions. He left that, uh,

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I want to say what, 2017 or so he left that position and said that it was essentially full of corruption.

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And what he said could, it's just so funny because what he said at that point about how he didn't like people jostling for career advantages and everything was image and he just couldn't take it.

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It describes, it has come to describe the way he operates according to the documentary at McLean Bible church.

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It's like he's writing about himself and, and he, I mean, he would have learned that's what he would have learned,

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I suppose, for his leadership style. Um, but anyway, the article goes on and, uh, let's see.

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Seth Brickley says, he talks about the documentary a bit. I'll let people go watch that themselves. We won't go over all that, but he quotes

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John 10. He says, he, who is a hired hand and not a shepherd who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and fleas and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

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He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. Uh, and Jesus is setting contrast to that in the very next two verses.

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I am the good shepherd. I know my own, my own, know me just as the father knows me. And I know the father and I lay down my life for the sheep.

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So before we get into a plat, the false teacher here, um, I want to talk a little bit about Jesus's teaching on this.

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Cause I was just reading in Mark chapter 11 this morning and family devotions, uh, about how, um, was it 11?

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No, it was, um, sorry, 12. I was reading Mark 12 about the vine growers, uh, the parable of the vine growers and how in Israel's history,

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God keeps sending them prophets. He eventually sends them his son. They will hurt them or kill them.

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And the son they kill in the story. And of course, Jesus is about to go through this. Uh, but you continue through the chapter and he talks at the end about the widow's might, which, um, is interesting because he says the chief, uh, seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets.

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Uh, this is what they love the spiritual leaders. He said, they devour widow's houses and for appearances sake, offer long prayers.

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These will receive a greater condemnation. And then he gives the story of the widow's might, how she gave what she had to live on all she had.

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And this was, I think in context, this is, an indictment. This is telling the spiritual leaders.

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You're asking her to give what she doesn't have. You're preying on widow's houses. You're devouring widows.

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That's what you're doing here. And it's evil, but you're able to put on a good face.

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And it's the same thing we have today. We have this in the prosperity gospel movement, but we also have it in this poverty gospel stuff, which

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David Platt is I think most known for. Uh, you have people who, who read his book, who are convinced after reading it that, and I've, I've seen,

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I've read things from people who have done this and actually people have reached out to me who have followed this. They'll sell all they have, or just about, you know, they'll go to the mission field, they'll move the inner city.

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They'll, they'll try to follow it. And they think this is part of living the gospel. That's what

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Platt calls it in the book, which I think you don't find that language in scripture. There's a lot of conflation of law and gospel in the book.

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And, uh, and what happens is their lives oftentimes are essentially ruined. They, they realize this doesn't work.

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They've delayed their life. If normal things that would happen with getting married and having kids and that kind of thing, at least in the stories I've heard, uh, they, they eventually come to find out that this was not what they should have done, but they were convinced that this was the

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Christian duty for them. And it's kind of like the widow who gives her last mite. It's not a positive example.

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So, uh, with that being said, um, I thought maybe we could talk a little bit about, uh,

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Platt's theology on this point and whether like what's expected of Christians, as far as, um, when you see someone come into your church who is asking you to give, to dig deep into your pockets, to give to the church, not say we should give, we should be,

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God loves a cheerful giver, but there, this is one of the red flags you see in scripture. This is one of the things that you see with Platt.

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You saw it in the documentary where he's talking about, you know, if we would just, uh, give more, they can just do so much more and it's all going to the great commission.

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We find out now, oh no, it's going to all these other things that David Platt cares about. He's actually living in the suburbs in this really nice house.

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There's exorbitant speaker's fees, apparently that he's receiving for some of these, or at least radical as organizations receiving for some of these, uh, services and so forth.

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And so, so what do you do when you see that sign? That's one sign, um, that Jesus talks about and David Platt demonstrated.

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And I think for me, at least, uh, that a red flag goes off in my mind. Um, we give to the

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Lord, we give to his mission, but when you see people that are so focused on that and you see people who want you to give not just sacrificially, but to the point of impoverishment and they value that and they, they say, and they merge that, especially with like the

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Christian message of the gospel. I, I say run, something's wrong with that. That's you're getting close to actually the prosperity preacher type mindset, which

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Platt condemns, which is funny, but he still has some of that. Um, cause he's not saying you're going to get a new car, right?

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He's not, he's the reward is a reward, but he's still saying you need to dig deep.

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And, uh, and so, you know, I don't know, what do you do with stories? I don't know. I'll pitch it to you, Matthew, since, um, you haven't talked in a while and I'm just going on here, but you know, what do you do with the stories of like the rich young ruler?

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Cause Platt uses that in his book quite a bit. Uh, the rich young ruler comes to Jesus. Jesus says, Hey, go sell all you have give to the poor.

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That's Jesus instruction. And Platt universalizes that and says, Hey, that's all Christians. Basically. I don't know.

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How do you take that? Well, something that came to my mind, uh, when you're going through, uh, this kind of theology is it's really interesting because you actually see quite a bit of this in the early church, like after the apostolic era with the rise of, um, with the rise of Christian monasticism, you'll see people who become bishops.

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Uh, so I think of someone like Ambrose who has a very large estate, but once he becomes a bishop, something really funny about him becoming a bishop within the span of eight days, he was baptized, ordained a priest and then ordained a bishop.

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So that's kind of something funny to know. But, um, he, he sells everything that he owns, like all his estate.

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And, um, but the thing is, is the context in which that's occurring, what you have to realize is it's not all about monetary wealth.

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That's not really why he's getting it up. It's because when you become a bishop in this context, and you're overseeing all these churches, uh, and you have an estate where, what do you have on an estate?

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You have large amounts of property. You have a lot of slaves. You have a lot of people to look over. Uh, it's sort of like, there's this idea that you can't really take care of everyone.

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So you have to focus on that, which is your duty. And if you're a bishop and you have to oversee a diocese of various congregants and be a pastor, not only to the people there, but also to the priests, then that's, it makes sense in that context to do that and to give things up for that.

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Uh, and I mean, even the Reformation saw the abuses of monasticism that came about. Uh, and so that's something that is important for evangelicals to realize is that you come from a tradition which emerged out of a recognition of monastic abuse.

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And so to kind of return to that is not good, but even when you look at the early church and you see how they did monasticism and the selling of goods, a bishop who did that, it makes sense why he had to do that.

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And it was more so it had to do with oversight than just things like wealth. Um, and something also to consider, uh, behind like this idea in principle, there's nothing wrong with just, if you have a lot of wealth and you want to give it up to serve the church, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that in principle.

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The thing you have to consider though, with the early, when you look at the early church, when this happened is they always had a large support network.

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They always had means of staying afloat in our day and age. That is not always the case.

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If you are a person with a family and you decide to give everything up and you don't have any means to take care of them, that is not, you know, selling everything for the kingdom of God, that's endangering your family.

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And according to the apostle Paul, that makes you worse than an infidel. So think of this, you, you want to, you may want to use the early

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Christian monastics as your example. Well, guess what? First off, number one, many of those guys that became monastics were single.

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They didn't have a family to look over. That's not what they had. Number two, even those who were married were still able to support their family through funding from the church.

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Uh, and I just don't think those support networks are there. And again, I go back to the whole Protestant point.

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I think that a lot of evangelicals need to look at their roots behind why it is they rejected many of these monastic forms, realizing that, uh, that wealth is not inherently wrong, that if you steward your money well, you can see it as a gift of God as a blessing.

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Uh, so I think that's important. Um, and again, like you were mentioning with the rich, young ruler story, uh,

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I don't know if there's a basis to universalize that story. I think that if you use that, uh, to contradict what the apostle

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Paul says about providing for your family, then that is not good. Um, but yeah, uh, and I think a lot of this can also, uh,

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I remember the article that mentioned how Platt didn't really, uh, it seems like Platt didn't really know his congregants very well.

30:02

He was mainly just a teacher and, uh, something, something about these pastors and the, sorry,

30:09

I'm, I'm super focused on the early church because there's so many parallels here between what's going on, because I can,

30:15

I imagine that a lot of these evangelicals that took like one pictures, patristics class before like, oh, well, don't you know about monasticism?

30:22

So I figured like they touched on that, but when you look at the early church, uh, the, the people that were in charge knew their congregations very well.

30:31

Uh, did they have like some like celebrity preachers? Yeah, sure. John Christofferson was a celebrity preacher in some sense.

30:37

Augustine was too. That's just how it worked. But nevertheless, they had congregants that they deeply cared for.

30:45

And I think that sometimes putting these burdens on people, such as, um, any claim that Platt put on has a connection most likely to not knowing your congregants well enough, not knowing their particular circumstances and situations.

31:02

And I think that when looking at this information, that's something that's important that we have to evaluate. Yeah, it's, it was irresponsible and, uh, people are posting some verses.

31:11

I actually pulled up a few Proverbs 13 22 says a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the wealth of the center is stored up for the righteous.

31:21

So there are these wisdom principles that, uh, include storing up your wealth and making sure that those who you have responsibility toward are able to access it for their own betterment.

31:34

And of course it's all a gift from God, but, uh, this, this is, would that contradict, you know, go sell all you have.

31:40

You have, um, first Timothy six 17 instruct those who are rich in this present world, not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.

31:52

So the admonition there from Paul isn't, Hey, go sell all you have rich people. It's don't put your trust in the riches.

32:00

And that's something that Jesus does talk about. It's hard for a rich man to go, uh, to enter the kingdom of heaven because of that trust he has in himself, that pride.

32:10

And if you look at the story of the rich young ruler in Mark 10, I just pulled it up. He says this, um, teacher,

32:17

I have kept all these things from my youth. Uh, and many of them are the 10 commandments, adultery, stealing, all these kinds of things.

32:22

And Jesus said one thing you meeting the rich young ruler, not everyone, but you lack go and sell all you possess and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me.

32:36

Uh, but he was deeply dismayed by these words. And why was he dismayed? It says he owned much property. This was something that Jesus, uh, was saying to this specific person.

32:45

That was his specific problem was he had all this wealth and it was an idol to him.

32:51

And so Jesus, it's a, uh, it's a sniper. It's not a shotgun.

32:57

He's focused on this one guy and his problem. And many of the disciples who follow Jesus were in this same kind of boat where they had been fishermen or engaged in some trade and they left it all behind, follow

33:09

Jesus. And then they were dependent on what was Judas. He was the one who kept the money for the poor.

33:16

They were, why did he have money for the poor? Because people were giving contributions to Jesus to fund the work that he was doing with the disciples.

33:24

So, um, so he would have been living with Jesus. There, there was this net there, there was a safety net there.

33:30

And there's, there's a safety net in our lives too, when we follow Jesus, when he wants us to give up things.

33:37

And sometimes he does want us to give up, uh, lots of money, but you can't universalize this, which is my problem with the book radical.

33:45

One of the problems I would say, uh, with the book radical, um, there's, there's a lot of comments.

33:51

Let's we're going to leave the comments that we're only about half an hour in. So, um, keep, keep, you know, asking questions.

33:56

We'll come to them hopefully in about 15 minutes or so. Uh, let's keep going through the article though, because, uh,

34:01

Seth makes some pretty good points here. Um, Seth says he has a heading here and he says Platt, the false teacher, the evidence in this film shows that Platt wanted to turn his strongly conservative church into a progressive one through the implementation of a gospel of social justice as false gospels always do.

34:18

This teaching brought serious problems to the church. Uh, and if you watch the documentary, you'll just see some crazy things.

34:25

So, you know, quotas on the praise team, uh, this one woman who sang saying, well, I, I couldn't sing as much anymore.

34:31

I wasn't supposed to be up there. It looked bad to have white people up. I mean, it was down to that kind of stuff that was going on at that church and congregants, you know, accused of being racist.

34:44

Uh, I remember it's really no different than Platt at T4G and what was it? 2018 or 19,

34:52

I think if I'm not mistaken, where he got up there and he basically just said, Hey, this place is too white, you know, and the implication being, you know, we are failing to, uh, in, in our duty to look like the church in revelation.

35:08

I got a spider. You can probably see it coming right in front of the camera. It's so weird. All right.

35:13

Bye spider. Um, but he said that, you know, we, we don't look like we should look in if things were basically that you're in sin because you're here and you're white and you're not, where are the black people?

35:26

We're doing something wrong. Where are the people of color? Like where are the black people? Where are the black people?

35:32

Where, where did they, why don't, I mean, he should have asked himself, why aren't they attracted to hearing David Platt? That's the question he should have asked himself.

35:38

You know, he's the headliner. I mean, it's not their fault. Maybe, maybe he can, uh, yeah, nevermind.

35:44

He could, he could like use their language. Well, I don't know. Maybe he just, he could, he could pull it more. Yeah. He needs to spend more time in like urban context or something.

35:52

And then theobonics. Yeah. Oh my God. That was an actual proposal at a church that I went to a nine marks church.

36:02

Yeah. I was, I was a member there years ago and they actually had an evangelism guy who was doing theobonics and going into the, you know, ghetto areas,

36:09

I guess. And like, you know, that hits another story, but like the hook was, Hey, like you don't like the police and we think the police are a problem to come to church.

36:18

Like that kind of thing. Yeah. The police killed Jesus, you know? Right. Right. Oh gosh.

36:24

Jesus was an immigrant. I'm holding my tongue. Well, Platt Platt's been on this train for a while.

36:30

I remember I did a whole episode. I might have done like two of them on his book in 2020 that he put out right before that election on voting.

36:38

It was horrible. It was basically as I was, I was, I finished the book. I just thought, okay, so this is a justification for Christians to kind of like minimize the life issue and then, you know, vote for the candidate who's going to be bad on that issue.

36:53

The candidate who's worse on abortion, you're justified in voting for them because maybe they'll be better on immigration or something.

37:00

But what's funny is when the Republican party now is a little bit softer on abortion, all of a sudden they're talking points is what everybody was using against them before.

37:10

And now all of a sudden abortion, it's a big issue. Now, all of a sudden, conservatives have not been wanting a Roe v. Wade ban.

37:15

Uh, they've Roe v. Wade overturned. They actually have been wanting a national ban. That's, what's been happening the whole time, obviously.

37:22

And so now since Trump's not doing that, Oh, now you can't vote for him. But then it's like, you go back a few years, you know, there's freedom of conscience to vote for, for Hill dog, this freedom of conscience for Obama, you know, and it's, it's pretty ridiculous.

37:34

Like how the, how the standards shift. I have, I, of course I have a degree of respect for the people who have been saying that.

37:41

And for that reason, they'll still be consistent and try and say, you can't vote for Trump. I think it's absurd. I think it's ridiculous.

37:47

I don't think you should do that, but I, we can at least respect the consistency. But for those who now all of a sudden switch up and set up this imaginary standard because they clearly just dislike

37:58

Donald Trump, that is where I get a, I get a bit frustrated with that. Yeah. Yeah.

38:04

I did a podcast just for people who are curious about this three years ago. Now is

38:09

David Platt a false teacher, uh, conversations that matter on YouTube. If people want to go check that out.

38:15

And, uh, I make the case that he is, and it's, it's really because of this conflation of law gospel.

38:21

Um, you do see hints of it in radical, but I think his T4G speech was especially potent in this regard.

38:29

Some of the quotes from that, uh, just you're, you're left thinking, what do you think the gospel is then

38:35

David Platt? Um, the gospel's purpose is like diversifying the room and where we haven't achieved that.

38:41

So we don't really have the full gospel. We have like a partial guy, like what, what is it that we have exactly?

38:47

And of course the gospel is the power of God to salvation. It's what Christ has done for us. It's not anything that we can achieve.

38:54

It's not go, the gospel is not go and sell all you have and give to the poor. That's not the gospel. Um, but David Platt has been influenced and he was influenced from an early stage.

39:05

I know, um, you know, he, he read, I, you know, I should have probably had this conversation before.

39:10

I know Tom Buck wants to talk to me about, uh, divided by faith and how like Mark never gave that to David Platt and that influenced him.

39:17

But I know even, I think before that, this guy named Ron Sider who wrote a book in the seventies called rich Christians in an age of hunger, he was influential on David Platt and Russell Moore.

39:30

And I write about this in my book, uh, social justice goes to church. And that book is basically, it's like straight up Marxism.

39:37

I like Ron Sider tried to say it wasn't, but you read the book. It's it's you're guilty of racism or, you know, basically the equivalent of racism because you benefit from global trade patterns.

39:48

Like that's what the book teaches. And David Platt was influenced by this. And you can see hints of it in radical when you read it.

39:56

So, um, this is the kind of guy they got. I don't know if they knew at McLean they were getting this kind of guy, but that's the guy they got.

40:03

So we had this certain theology, but then, uh, Seth Brickley goes on and he says that it was, it was worse than that.

40:11

It wasn't just that he was a false teacher. He was a deceiver. Uh, he, and a lot of this comes down to whether or not

40:18

McLean was affiliated with the Southern Baptist convention. And they were, they were affiliated with them and they tried to hide it because that went against their church constitution.

40:28

And it was clear that Platt was involved in the transfer of several million dollars between McLean and the Southern Baptist convention.

40:33

All of this happened without the congregation's knowledge or even much of the board. Uh, there's a crazy thing.

40:40

I think it's in part two of the documentary. Um, it might be where you have an elder who had a,

40:46

I believe a financial role on the elder board. And he's saying, I didn't know about any of this. These were different line items that they created.

40:54

These, they cook the books. That's what they did. And Platt covered up all of this. And of course, in part two, they also talk about, uh, even they get into a little bit of an abuse situation at church that Platt did not handle well.

41:07

And, um, and this is, this is the guy they have as a pastor there, but again, Steve Lawson, Steve Lawson's a problem.

41:15

Uh, and he is, um, I noticed a lot of these, you know, quote unquote, I don't even know what to call them.

41:21

Uh, bloggers who are very, they're watchdog groups, right. And, and people who fancy themselves kind of like on the train watchdog types,

41:30

Karen swallow prior was one of them. And, uh, I I'm trying to think like,

41:35

I think that the Roy's report was another, these, these, these kinds of like outlets. They were very concerned last week while all the

41:41

Platt stuff is dropping about this quote unquote, MAGA youth pastor, whatever that is, some, some no -namer like at some church in Ohio, I think it was

41:50

Michigan or maybe it was Michigan who had, he had been on stage, I guess, once with at Liberty university playing a song and Jerry Falwell jr.

41:58

Was there. And so was Donald Trump jr. And there was a picture. I definitely don't want any more

42:05

MAGA youth pastors. I don't even know what that is. Like what, where do you find the

42:11

MAGA youth pastors? Where can I hire one? Nevermind. Yeah. Where can you find one to lead your, no, like, like I guess

42:17

Liberty university, but they were very up in arms. Like he apparently did some bad things and legitimately, but like, he's doesn't have any influence.

42:25

He doesn't like, but then here's David Platt and he's not going to be targeted in the same way.

42:31

And that's what Seth predicts at the end of this is basically like, look, if you expect, uh,

42:36

David Platt, not to be given a pass, what are you thinking? Like, this is very different.

42:41

Like this is a respectable sin. This is, he's part of the good old boys club and they're not going to do anything about it.

42:48

And that's like an unsettling thought thought. Uh, and that's kind of the situation he implies at the end of this article, that that's the corrupt

42:55

Jewish leaders at Jesus time. That's the situation that they were in. They were, uh, involved in promoting themselves.

43:02

Uh, they wanted to be known in the marketplace. They wanted the chief seats. They wanted the prestige and the money that came with their position and the control.

43:12

And they were, I mean, Nicodemus deviated from them, but he couldn't even show his face in the daytime with Jesus.

43:19

He he's doing this at night because the in -group preference they have is so strong for their particular guilt.

43:26

And it's just like the managerial elites today in the church of which David Platt is one, there's too much riding on it.

43:32

Um, someone even commented earlier, Platt is, oh yeah. TGC just announced Platt is one of their keynote speakers for their next conference.

43:41

So, um, yeah, don't expect justice in all things, uh, this side of heaven.

43:47

And, um, but look, look out for these markers. So one of them being, you know, dig deep, give, this is part of the gospel.

43:54

Uh, what are some other things, Matthew, that you can think of for people to watch out for? Uh, yes,

44:00

I, I'd, uh, noted this earlier, a few minutes ago when you were talking about this, but the idea that like, um, with the confusion of law and gospel, but almost seeming like one of the gospel implications is, you know, multiculturalism or diversity.

44:16

Uh, first off, it's just, that's obviously not what the gospel is, is necessarily that it now we do as Christians affirm that the

44:26

Christ church is Catholic. It is universal, which means it's not restricted to the people of Israel, nor to become a part of God's people.

44:34

You don't have to become an Israelite such as was the case in the old covenant. However, it extends to all nations and in the kingdom of heaven, uh, in the heavens, every tongue tribe and nation worshiping before the throne of God.

44:45

This is in the ecclesiastical sphere that then Catholic nature of the church does not eliminate or destroy human civic particularities.

44:59

And to try and say that it does, does not demonstrate that someone has actually thought through things.

45:06

It demonstrates that they're adopting the spirit of the age. And ironically what they, yeah, you

45:12

MAGA Christian, you MAGA mom with the Donald Trump banner in your profile picture. Yeah.

45:17

David Platt thinks you do political idolatry. Well, guess what? He, if he is the one who sees the gospel as,

45:23

Oh, well the gospel necessitates having a multicultural church, a multidiverse church. No, you're importing something entirely foreign, which is in total alignment with the spirit of the age.

45:34

Cause that's what we're under. We are on the West is under civilizational threat where we're being eliminated and he, the theologians are facilitating this.

45:45

They're helping this go on about, and they're using theological terms as a garb. They're using ecclesiastical spiritual truths to this, to dissipate the temporal and the civic realm.

45:58

And it's ridiculous. And to be very frank, it is political idolatry.

46:04

This is taking the spirit of the age, modern politics, and making this the standard of Christian orthodoxy.

46:10

And you have to push back against this. You must resist because these people, they'll talk sweet, they'll talk nice to you, but they shove these, these horrible ideas down and down your throat.

46:21

And then they say, yes, this is what Christianity teaches. It's a lot like Stephen Wolf tweets this out every few months.

46:28

And it always just, it always makes me laugh. It's some variation of this. He's like, what a coincidence that the timeless politics of Jesus just so happened to align with 21st century liberalism.

46:39

It's just, it's so interesting how that works. It's like, finally, after all these thousands of years, we finally made it.

46:45

Praise God. I for one feel blessed to live in an era where I know that because of the timeless politics of Jesus, I can have taco trucks right next to my apartment complex.

46:56

It's wonderful. I'm happy. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just glad to know that. John, you're muted.

47:05

Sorry, I was coughing. I still have my cold. So I popped a cough drop in. Anyway, I don't know if you saw this.

47:11

This is, David Platt's featured in this little thing I made. This was like a month ago, but see if I can upload it.

47:19

It was just showing like these guys, David Platt included, who say like, you've got to go to the foreign mission field or live in a diverse area and where they actually live.

47:29

Oh yeah. It's a problem when Christians of the United States are the most resistant to refugees in our communities.

47:34

God's brought people from those places to our doorsteps where we live. All right. I mean, hey, there's some truth in that, but this is what David Platt said recently.

47:42

This is where he lives. It's a very white area.

47:51

I'll just tell you that much. Very affluent. And it's like that for all these guys.

47:57

I got Danny Aiken in here and JD Greer and Owen Strand. Yeah.

48:03

It's like, why are these guys so concerned about racial diversity living in these deep, deep white areas?

48:09

I just don't understand it. It was like that when I was at Southeastern too. I don't know. When I went to school there,

48:14

I was like all these guys living, like Wake Forest is so white and they all went to like the whitest churches, live in the whitest neighborhoods.

48:22

And then we would go to school in our classrooms, surrounded by white people, hearing about how all these disparities were the result of racism.

48:31

It was our fault and we needed it to be diverse. It's just kind of humorous looking back at the whole thing.

48:36

Yeah. All right. So let's get to some questions and let me know if you specifically want, if you have questions for Matthew or me, otherwise it'll be whoever gets to them.

48:51

This one's for me. How's the new mommy and daddy going? Good. Good. We're enjoying Anna. She's a blessing.

48:56

She doesn't cry much, which is weird. I don't know what we did to deserve such a good baby. So thank you for your prayers and support there.

49:04

Speaking of flap in the SBC, what denomination are you again, Harris? Okay. That's for me too. I'm in a non -denominational church currently.

49:11

I was in the SBC for about a semester and I left that church and I haven't been back since.

49:18

Actually, well, he didn't ask you Matthew, but you're in the PCA, right? Yes, I am. Okay. Platt came to Falls Creek summer camp in 2005, was just an emotional, as emotional back then as he is now.

49:30

That's kind of his MO. I bet you, if you looked at David Platt's videos, because you can do this on my videos, if you have account access and you can see the demographic breakdown, how, what percentage do you think are women watching those videos?

49:44

I would say seven, 80. Okay. No, 8%. No, I think, I think more women watch

49:50

Platt. You think less? Oh, I was talking about your videos because you were talking about - Oh, mine. Yeah. No, it's overwhelming.

49:57

Well, I don't want to say overwhelming, but it's definitely tilted towards men. My audience, David Platt's audience,

50:03

I think is probably way tilted towards women. Just my - I mean, that's how most of evangelicalism advertises nowadays.

50:11

It's always advertised for women primarily. I mean, you even see us with things that Crossway puts out.

50:16

So that makes sense. Yeah. And like all the films they put out too,

50:22

I was noticing like the pure flicks type stuff. Every time there's a new evangelical movie, like why can't we make a movie about David Livingston in Africa?

50:30

Or I don't know, some war movie or something. Like it's always - All right. Mr. Harris is old. Thanks. Matthew Pearson's bringing the young people out.

50:41

All right. D Triff says, absolutely correct. Platt's comment sounding like the prosperity gospel

50:46

I spent many years to see by those charlatans and I recognized it immediately. Do we have evidence of his big house in the suburbs?

50:54

This is a huge problem, hopefully for obvious reasons. Yeah. Yeah. There's evidence of that. I know,

51:00

I think Protesti has even put out an article. I don't remember. It was Capstone Report. I know there's specifics on that and I've seen them before.

51:09

First Timothy 618, commend - Oh, this is actually evidence and reasons. This channel actually was featured, the guy behind it in the

51:16

Platt documentary. He was an ex member of the church. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.

51:23

Paul didn't say sell everything. Yep. Yeah. I think we read that verse earlier. Let's see here.

51:31

Who else do we have? I bookmarked here. There's more comments coming in.

51:36

Have you seen - While you're finding one actually, or you already found one, but I'll just say it anyways. Something important to think about is that sometimes if you have wealth, it actually enables you to do good to others.

51:47

My parents themselves have been able to help out many people in my life, especially my former roommate actually, because they had a certain amount of money to be able to assist and thus they were able to show

51:58

Christian love and charity and hospitality by virtue of wealth. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

52:05

I'm thankful for rich people that use their wealth for the right reasons. Absolutely. We have, oh yeah, actually

52:13

Anita Smith posts that I guess... I mean, for that area, this isn't actually that...

52:21

Platts, he has a $1 .1 million home. Okay. I mean, for that area, that's what upper middle class maybe at this point, but the problem...

52:30

Yeah. Well, he's in a very expensive neighborhood. Fair enough. Here's the thing

52:36

I was going to say though, because someone already said too that they don't have a problem with having a nice house. Yeah, I don't either.

52:42

Absolutely not. That's fine. I want to have a nice house. The problem is that Platt advocates that you shouldn't live in the suburbs in your nice cookie cutter house, that you should be in poverty, that you should be in inner city work.

52:57

You should be across the world spreading the gospel to these foreign places. You shouldn't be living in this comfortable cushioned environment, but that's where he chooses to live.

53:06

That's the point. Okay. Have you seen YouTube channels that are changing the narrative from David Platt is evil to the corporate megachurch structure is evil?

53:15

That's a takeaway I've definitely seen. I mean, there's stuff to be said there.

53:22

There's a scale problem in megachurches where you have pastors who don't always know their sheep, but the thing is that if you're trying to blame it all on that structure, you'd be woefully wrong.

53:33

And the evidence for that is that Lon Solomon did well above the point that David...

53:40

He was just a successful pastor compared to David Platt. We'll put it that way. And it was a bigger church, much bigger when

53:48

Lon Solomon was there. David Platt has shrunk it quite a bit. Where is Platt now? Has McLean Bible Church responded?

53:54

David Platt did make a statement last Sunday. We're going to play it tomorrow morning on the Conversations That Matter podcast,

54:01

Lord willing. Why didn't the documentary cover why the board retired Lon Solomon from the pulpit?

54:06

It'll all seem suspicious. We'll talk about that tomorrow as well. So stay tuned for that. 10 AM tomorrow on my

54:13

YouTube channel. I'm sorry you're not getting questions here, Matthew. No worries. Let's see.

54:21

All right. That's pretty much it for the questions and comments, it looks like. This is...

54:27

So next Tuesday would be our next podcast. That's election day, isn't it? That is election day.

54:34

And I wanted to discuss this with you before, but I actually may not be able to make that podcast because I will be at a little event.

54:41

We'll see. I may be able to, I may not. I wanted to discuss it with you before, but yeah. So I'm excited for the election.

54:48

I'm very excited. All right. We'll talk about it. We might have to take a break from the podcast next week.

54:53

I'm not sure. Cause I'm going to be traveling. Okay. And I'm going to be, I'm between two different places and both places have election parties.

55:01

I'm like, is this a, like, does everyone just have an election party now? Is that like a thing? I don't remember that being a thing.

55:08

I just, I got invited to one and I'm just like, absolutely. Me and a bunch of, me and a bunch of guys are going to get together and it's going to be a fun when, uh, when, uh, you know.

55:17

What's your prediction? Oh, he's going to win. You think that they're going to actually allow him to ascend to the presidency?

55:26

Hmm. Well, I don't want to get you banned. So for the sake of safety, I think that the electoral process will be very smooth because nothing ever happens.

55:34

They will, there will be a peaceful transfer of power and Trump will be inaugurated and it's going to be yeah.

55:41

I hope you're right about that. I have my suspicion, like I'm traveling, so I'm like kind of nervous about if he does win,

55:49

I got to go through like, even coming back through like Western Pennsylvania and Western Virginia, I'm still have to go through like Charlottesville and Harrisburg and Scranton.

56:01

I don't know. I'm just, I don't know if we're going to be in like civil war. I don't think so, but you're going to have some riots.

56:07

Hey, remember nothing ever happens. Nothing ever happens. Nothing ever happens. Always happens.

56:14

Yeah. I think, I think Trump's going to win too though. I agree with you there. It seems like he's got so much momentum at this point that it would, if they rigged it in these swing

56:24

States, it would be so painfully obvious and maybe they're okay with that. That's the thing. That's what I don't know. Like, are they just, but they seem demoralized.

56:31

That's the thing that encourages me. Like Kamala Harris, just did you see that she was caught in a hot mic like two days ago with the governor of Michigan?

56:43

And she was saying, she basically was like whispering to her over a beer. She's like, we're having a lot of trouble with the men.

56:52

I didn't hear about that. No, but good. You should be, you don't represent us.

56:57

You don't. So yeah. Yeah. All right, everyone. Well, we're going to end the podcast a little early.

57:05

I guess we're at 57 minutes. I hope that was helpful. Come on out tomorrow for the podcast and oh, just for those who want to, if you go to johnharrispodcast .com,

57:16

I'll just plug this. I'm going to be speaking outside of Louisville, Kentucky on Saturday. So we'd love to see you there.

57:22

You can check out my speaking engagements and sign up for, it's called the strong pillars conference. And it's just me.

57:29

I'm going to bring my guitar though, Lord willing. And I'll do a few songs. Have you seen my song, Matthew, the one

57:34

I just put out there? I haven't. I'll have to give it a listen. You haven't seen it? No. I thought you were my friend.

57:41

You'll have to send it in the group chat again. My dad, I showed it to my dad because it's like a country song.

57:49

It's anyway, you'll see it. My dad, after it's done, he goes, the boomers are going to love this. Yeah. You're a boomer whisperer.

57:56

That's good. I'm a boomer whisperer. You might not. I don't know what the Gen Z -ers going to think, but I like,

58:01

I like some good country. I like Colter Wall, you know? Oh, well, yeah. He's pretty legit.

58:07

Yeah. Yeah. All right. With that said, go listen to Colter Wall. We'll talk to you later, guys.