All Authority is Given to the Risen Christ, Immaturity is Now the Rage & Jenkins Piece on Sovereign

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Started out with a brief study on Matthew 28:19 -20 and the incredible words of Jesus, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Do we really believe that? It matters. Then I looked at the plague of immaturity in Western culture, tying together three different threads in current events. Then I briefly looked at an RNS piece on the Sovereign group and my dear brother Mike O’Fallon. Visit the store at https://doctrineandlife.co/

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Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, and I am coming to you as you can probably recognize if you're a long -time
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Dividing Line watcher, viewer. Obviously, if you're a listener, it probably isn't gonna make any difference, huh?
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Anyways, from my home away from home, my home in July, this year going into August a little bit, in Evergreen, Colorado.
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I started coming up here, I think, in 2012, 2011, 2011, 2012, yeah, it was 2011, and then
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I started coming here, I think, in 2012. And since about 2013, it's been pretty consistent.
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And no, I do not own two homes, but I do have two homes, in the sense that the dear brother and sister that live here put up with me, and actually, they profess, anyways, to enjoy having me here.
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I'm not sure how that's possible, but I certainly enjoy being here, and Evergreen's a beautiful, beautiful town.
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Colorado's a tremendously beautiful state. Whacko's involved. It used to be a more conservative state than it is now.
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There was a bit of a takeover over the past few years, and not an overly, honestly done takeover, to be honest with you, but that's not what we're gonna get into today.
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The state remains beautiful, and just posted a picture
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I took a couple hours ago, three hours ago, up at Echo Lake. Got a 50 -mile ride in, got a big ride on Saturday, and that'll be coming back up later in the month, after we do some other stuff that we've got going on.
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So anyways, we've addressed a lot of topics from up here, and we wanna continue the program, and so, even while I'm away, and I will be speaking, by the way.
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I'll be speaking in Parker this Sunday. I'm doing a two -session presentation on the reliability of scripture.
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I believe we've put that in the banner ad rotation. I'm not sure. I'll watch the group chat thing to find out if that's the case, but yes, so it's up there, and that's not the same presentation done twice.
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That's two different presentations, so we'll do half of it, and then the second half. So I'll be down in Parker for that on Sunday morning, and then
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I'm preaching at Apologia the following Sunday. We'll be doing, finishing up First Corinthians chapter 11 on the
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Lord's Supper. And then the 28th,
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I'm not sure if we posted the information on that either. Again, I've been pretty busy today, but I'll be preaching up here in Colorado, and then at a
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Reformed Baptist Church down in, well, here in the Denver area, and then at a Reformed Baptist Church down in Colorado Springs, where we'll be doing a
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Friday night evangelism thing with Jason Lyle. I'm not gonna be able to stay because the next morning
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I've got a race three hours away, so I'm gonna be having to jet real quick, but then
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I'll be back at that church for Sunday morning, and that'll be in early
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August. And I'll also be in Boulder, and I need to get that information. I know that's not posted anywhere yet, but I'll be in Boulder the
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Wednesday before that. So yeah, I've got, this is, most people have told me
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I don't know how to do the vacation thing, or as those who overseas, the holiday thing, and that's probably true.
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I'm not good at that. You're gonna know something. I'm gonna be trying to do this, the whole program. I'm getting old, and old guys start slouching.
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They start, this starts happening, and I'm trying to fight it, but it is not easy to do, and you feel a whole lot better, and your back does better too.
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So yes, aging with Uncle Jimmy, that's sort of what we'll be experiencing for the rest of our lives,
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I imagine. Well, aging's not gonna stop. So anyways, that's what's coming up, and that's why we're, have a different background than normal.
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I don't carry swords or anything to put in the background, but we do the program up here in Colorado for a little while.
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There is a, you know, the longer
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I live, and the longer I am involved in ministry, the more often
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I experience situations where you look at a text of scripture, frequently a very well -known text of scripture, and you've talked about it, you've dealt with it, you've defended it, you've looked at it textually, as far as manuscripts, you know this particular group's use of it, and that particular group's use of it, and then all of a sudden, you get challenged to think about whether you actually really believe it, because the challenge comes from another direction that you, and you know what?
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When challenges come from fellow believers that you honor and respect, that changes everything.
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And it's one thing to be challenged when you're in defensive mode. It's one thing to be challenged when someone's coming after you, when you feel like you have to, you know, take a particular position, and defend a particular position.
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Your insight into a text is gonna be narrowed down to a defensive situation. But when you're interacting with other believers, and you're in the mode of, you know, this person or these people have done so much, and they have credibility in my mind.
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They live godly lives. And you know what? They've done study in areas that I've not done study in.
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And I recognize that. And that's one of the things that you, you never want to get into being the
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Bible answer man, because there's nobody smart enough to actually do that.
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And once you start trying to do that, you will very frequently end up taking positions that you wouldn't otherwise.
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All of that to say, that I have dealt with over the years many, many times, the famous conclusion of the
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Gospel of Matthew. And I've had to defend it textually against one of those
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Pentecostals who tried to say it wasn't there. I've dealt with it with Jehovah's Witnesses. I've pointed out for Jehovah's Witnesses, they actually think that what that text is saying is baptize them in the name of Jehovah God, Michael the
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Archangel, in an impersonal active force. It's not what it's saying. So I've had to deal with it from a lot of different perspectives.
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And sometimes, sort of like James 2, you know, or the other one that immediately popped into my mind was dealing with Peter's words.
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Always be ready to give a defense for the hope that's within you. Okay, as I've confessed many times before,
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I love how many people say, I've never heard James White say he was wrong, why did he say he learned anything? I've actually confessed that many, many times, and we'll be doing more of that in the future,
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I'm sure. But I've confessed many times that that particular text,
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I had addressed it, talked about it, and it wasn't six, seven years ago that I actually heard what it was really saying and applied it properly from that perspective.
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And so the ending of Matthew, let's remind ourselves, let's just not assume that we've got everything memorized or something like that.
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But the 11 disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some were doubtful.
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And Jesus came up and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, and lo,
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I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Now, most of us have at least verses 19 and 20 memorized.
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Some might have even 18 memorized. Most people wouldn't have 17 memorized.
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Why? Well, when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some were doubtful.
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But some were doubtful. I love that that's there.
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When you read fake texts, we now, everybody knows about fake news now.
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When you read fake texts, you very quickly realize that there are certain things that authors that are trying to get you to believe something that really isn't true, they're never gonna say, because it would be against what they want you to do.
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And in this situation, when they saw him, they worshiped him. We would love that that would be the end, but some were doubtful, some doubted.
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And that tells us that even in the midst of all this, even in the middle of this section where Jesus is about to say what he's about to say, he knows that they are doubting.
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He knows that there are doubters amongst them. That doesn't stop him. He comes before them.
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He comes up to them and speaks to them and says, he doesn't start with some of you are doubting.
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Let me meet your felt needs. He says, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
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That's a pretty effective argument against doubt. I would argue that it would require the work of the spirit for you to really fully comprehend that, but it's an astounding statement.
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And in far too many, for far too many of us, certainly I will admit in my background, there was a functional disconnection between verses 18 and 19.
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There shouldn't be. We know what the great commission is, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptize in the name of the father, son, and holy spirit.
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The foundation upon which we are to do that is to be found in the fact that all authority has been given to Jesus.
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In heaven and on earth. Most of us don't mind the heaven part.
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It's the earth part that is very hard to believe. When you think about the stuff that we have to talk about on this program all the time,
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I think about what's going on in our culture today. We're gonna be talking about some of this stuff later on. You look at this and Jesus has all authority on earth.
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We're much more comfortable with a heaven and earth division. And it's much more comfortable for us to say that Jesus has all authority in heaven, but that he's decided to delegate things on earth so things are a mess.
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But I've had to start taking seriously what this text actually says.
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And I think it takes some real faith. I think it takes some real faith. Do we really believe this?
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I mean, I have a sermon that I give in a lot of different contexts based on First Corinthians chapter one.
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And it's the foolishness of the preaching of the cross and how Jews seek for signs and Greeks seek for wisdom, but we preach
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Christ crucified and that's a stumbling block to the Jews and it's foolishness to the Greeks. But to the elect, those that are chosen,
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Christ, the wisdom of God and the power of God. That's a fantastic passage, but it's saying something similar to what we have here.
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Do we really believe what Jesus says here?
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Or is it a stumbling block to us? Is it not easier for us to just spiritualize the realm in which
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Jesus has power and authority? Because things are such a mess down here, but he doesn't allow us to do that.
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All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Now that says a bunch of things about who he is.
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That says everything that needs to be said about the acceptance of Jesus's sacrifice upon the cross of Calvary, his reign in heaven, the identity as the
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Messiah, all of these things. All of that's important, but for us as believers, for us as believers who are, we have brothers and sisters right now absolutely under the iron hand of communism in North Korea and in China, under persecution in Muslim lands.
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We know all that and we're starting to see how that's gonna be happening in our own experience.
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We're being shoved off into the Christian ghettos. We know, we are literally listening to major presidential candidates who if they were to get their way, would silence, would end programs like this.
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We would not be allowed to discuss these things. We would be precluded from doing any of this.
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And we know that. In light of that, how can we then say that all authority has been given to him?
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That's gonna impact how we view our mission as believers when persecution comes.
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When the state says to me, you shall not act as an ambassador for Christ to bring his authority to bear in our culture.
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You will not tell people what Jesus taught. And you will not tell people that Jesus has the authority to tell them how they are to live because he left behind an empty tomb, which verifies the fact that he actually made them.
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You can't do that. What will we do in that situation?
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What can we do? What must we do? If we have accepted a spiritualized bifurcation of Matthew 28, 18, to where only the first part is real and the second part is put off to some other day, right before the earth sort of just gets wiped out or whatever else it might be, that changes everything.
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It changes everything. And I really think that it is the development, the coming forth of this clear and obvious anti -Christian attitude on a radical level.
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I mean, the Lord is really withdrawing his hand of restraint.
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And you're really seeing, now, by the way, it's not the first time
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God's done this. I imagine my fellow pastor
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Jeff will be addressing some of this very soon. But if you do any historical reading on the character of Nero, Roman emperor,
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Nero, Caesar, the worst that we can think of today is nothing compared to this guy.
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I mean, if that wasn't a demonized man, I don't know what a demonized man would look like. The things that he did, the level of debauchery that that man represents, oh, wow.
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It is astonishing. It truly, truly is. So we've seen evil in the past.
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We're seeing it again. We tend to define our situation as always the worst situation, probably because we don't know a lot about history and don't care to know a lot about history.
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But just you and I, as believers, do we truly believe that all authority has been given to him?
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And what then does that mean? That's why we need Hebrews 11. That's why we need to have a solid understanding that Jesus is
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Yahweh in human flesh, that what he did in the
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Old Testament is consistent with what he does in the New Testament. So we don't end up being red letter
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Christians or people like that. And once we understand these things, then we really need to consider the traditions we've been taught.
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And we need to consider what this means as to how we are to live our lives.
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And if Christ calls us to do these things, will we be willing to do so?
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That is truly the question. So anyway, just a little bit of thought from Matthew chapter 28.
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It's all authority has been given to me in heaven and earth. When you know that, it vindicates
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Jesus's messiahship, son of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, everything.
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It's vital, it's important. And so I just remind you of that importance.
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Let me see here. So let me string together a couple of things that you would never expect to be strung together because I think there is a connection between them.
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I am, along with all the rest of you who have seen this, just thoroughly disgusted.
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At the videos that are appearing on the internet of people contaminating food products.
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Have you noticed stuff like this happens cyclically? Remember when people were eating Tide Pods? I'd rather these morons ate
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Tide Pods personally. That's sort of a survival of the fittest type thing there.
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Natural selection, if you wanna eat Tide Pods, Hostel Vista, baby. But this is just so disgusting and so vile and so evil that in a healthy culture, in a culture that is intent upon actual progress, not a progressive culture, we've redefined that word too, but in a culture where there is respect and where you understand the responsibility you have toward other people, the people around you.
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These people do not want to have to be concerned about the purity of the food that they buy, but they're willing to put other people in that situation.
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These types of people in a healthy culture would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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This would be absolute assault and you would lock these people up. Well, what you do actually, what would be far better is to basically put them in a situation where they have to make amends.
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And so live on absolute minimum sustenance and work like anything.
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And what they earn beyond their minimum sustenance goes to whoever's been hurt.
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Or if you can't identify a specific person, then toward the society as a whole, that's what would be going on.
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And if someone is hurt or killed by something, but then there you go, you've got murder and you do the right thing.
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The very fact that there are people, for example, stupid enough to eat
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Tide Pods, or in this case, narcissistic enough, self -centered enough, childish enough.
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Narcissism and childishness are, they go together. Do we all understand that? I mean, is that pretty straightforward?
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A child when they are born is the essence of selfishness.
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I mean, the baby cries because the baby wants. You begin to see maturity when you start seeing people giving of themselves to others, putting others in front of themselves.
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That used to be the case. We have multiple generations now in our culture where that's no longer the case.
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It's all about your autonomy. It's all about you. It's all about remaining an infant well into your adult years.
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That's what we are facing today. And there's a reason for it.
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This stuff that these people are doing is stupid, and it's irresponsible, and it's childish.
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And calling someone childish is a meaningful insult. It is an insult, an appropriate one.
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It should shame someone to be at a certain age in life and still acting like someone who's seven years old.
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If you're 27, but you have the emotional maturity of a seven -year -old, there's something wrong with you.
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And I'm not talking about something you should go get drugs for. It's something you should go to the
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Marines for. You need discipline, not drugs.
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So let me connect that to something else. I posted a,
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I don't remember if it was a tweet or on Facebook or maybe both, I don't remember, but just a brief statement.
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On behalf of my fellow Americans, I would like to apologize to the rest of the world for the behavior of the women's, well, in the rest of the world, it's football, okay?
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Which is the proper description. The American women's football, or as we say in the
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United States, soccer team, that unfortunately won the World Cup yet again, and has been since then acting, personal story here.
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I played Little League before we moved out to Arizona. So I don't know how old
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I was, but that was the big thing back then. Things have changed.
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Now it's playing basketball, but especially in Pennsylvania, there were ball fields everywhere and go to see the
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Orioles play, et cetera, et cetera. The first year we wore black shirts, second year we wore red shirts,
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I remember that. It was the Allentown Little League, that's what
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I was a part of. And that first year, I was on a team that stunk.
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I don't think we won a game. I don't, I think we went through the entire year and we did not win a game.
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And normally we would lose. It wasn't like we were close. Normally we would lose just really badly.
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And today people will tell you, oh, we can't let people do that. They need to get a participation trophy. No, you know what?
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I'm glad we lost every game. Because the next year, I went to the
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All -Star game. I got hit with a pitch. They thought it was actually a hit. It actually hurt my thumb.
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It pinched a nerve in my thumb and I was out of the game. But hey, I went to the All -Star game and I was a pitcher and I was a catcher and we won a bunch of games the second year.
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And those games meant so much more because we had lost all the games in the previous year.
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Or I had been on a team that lost all games in the previous year. It meant something. It was a part of growing up.
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Same thing with this bullying stuff. I'm sorry. I was bullied all the time. I was a late bloomer.
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I was stuck in, I remember being stuck in a trash can head first in high school as a freshman.
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And I'm not sitting here going, all my problems are due to that. No, you grow up.
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You learn from it for crying out loud. You use it to become a better person. I learned how to talk my way out of things.
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I really did. Oh, it's just, we have lost basic how to grow up stuff.
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We've become snowflakes and it's destroying us. Well, back to the little league.
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Here's a reason for all this. When you won, there was a specific protocol as to how you were to behave.
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Teams lined up, shook hands with everybody. You shook hands with the coaches. You were supposed to behave in a particular fashion.
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You didn't go over in front of the stands and strike poses and I'm so great and I'm so good.
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You would have been kicked out. And yet I was watching a video of this
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Rapinoe woman with the purple hair. I've seen a bunch of videos of her just behaving like a five -year -old.
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She has the maturity of a five -year -old. She really does. And then there was another one I just saw today.
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She has the trophy and she's standing there saying, I deserve this,
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I deserve this. Now, as you know, she is a lesbian and she promotes lesbianism.
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And what you see here is the basic reality that homosexuality, male or female, is immature.
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It is an immature behavior. It's a narcissistic behavior.
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You are in love with a mere image of yourself. You desire a mere image of yourself. And what we are being told is you must celebrate this.
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Did you all see, let me bring it up here. There was an article that was posted, a 100 easy, this is from vice .com.
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Okay, I'll tell you something right there. 100 easy ways to make the world better for trans people.
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Now, who wouldn't wanna do that? Me, me. I do not believe it is loving by any definition of the
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Christian faith to seek to make the world a better place for trans people.
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Because if you'll just stop for a second and think transsexuality, transgenderism requires a fundamental rejection of the categories of creation that Jesus operated upon and taught was the very will of God.
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Therefore, it cannot lead to human flourishing. And if you actually love people, you will not be suckered into, and that's what's happening.
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We are being suckered into this by the abuse of language. You will not be suckered into believing the world's hype on this type of a subject.
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So making the world a better place for trans people is not something that we've been called to do.
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We are to make the world a better place by proclaiming the kingdom of God.
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You make it a better place for yourself by submitting to the king of the kingdom of God and obeying his commands, which includes not being transgender or homosexual or violating the concept of marriage as he laid it out.
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That's how you become a part of the kingdom of God. That's part of being the kingdom of God. Remember when we were just looking at Matthew 28, baptizing them, teaching them, whatever
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I commanded you, that's what being a disciple is. So here's this article, 100
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Easy Ways to Make the World Better for Trans People. Listen to what this says.
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This is number 17 of the 100. If you are called out for being offensive, do not argue.
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This is not a debate. Apologize. Take a moment to reflect.
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If necessary, leave or give the space over to those you have offended or upset.
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See, the truth content of what you said is irrelevant.
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It doesn't matter whether you've spoken truth. It doesn't matter whether you said something that is necessary for the advancement of the health and proper behavior of a society, does not matter.
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As long as a trans person says you have offended them, you've offended them, and therefore you're wrong.
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Truth is irrelevant, has no meaning. No society can exist in the world that God created on this foundation for very long before it will be conquered from the outside because it's collapsed from the inside.
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So listen to that again. If you are called out for being offensive, do not argue. This is not a debate.
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Apologize. Take a moment to reflect. If necessary, leave or give the space over to those you have offended or upset. What's the next one?
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Never try to argue with a trans person that something isn't transphobic.
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When I read these, my honest reaction, this was written by a seven -year -old.
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This is how seven -year -olds reason because the world's still about them. Now, if you're raising your seven -year -old well, there will be periods of time when they realize everything isn't about them, but that's still an act of maturity.
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It's coming down the line. This is the most childish, irresponsible.
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There is no way to show respect towards someone who would say, you know what? If a trans person says that's transphobic, don't argue with them because they're always right and you're always wrong.
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How do you build airplanes living in a world like this? I don't wanna get into an airplane that's been designed by someone who would actually look at that and go, well,
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I don't know, that doesn't make sense. No, there are certain rules this world operates by, not only in the physical realm, but in every other realm too, because, well, it's been created by God.
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There's some others, but those two, those two, this is all part of a spectrum.
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This is all something that is connected together. Yes, believe it or not, this
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Vice article is directly connected to people licking ice cream in stores and to female football players who are promoting lesbianism, demanding that everyone celebrate them.
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Everything's about them. By the way, the way that she has behaved, I think is absolutely reprehensible, reprehensible to her teammates.
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I mean, just, wow, I feel sorry for them.
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I really, really feel sorry for them too. But it's all connected together. It is all this, we are autonomous creatures.
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We are not living in the sight of God. God, there will be no judgment. There is no objective truth.
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There is no revelation as to how we're to live. And so it's all about me, me, me, and therefore
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I can demand that anybody celebrate me. That's just simply what they've got to do.
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It's all there is to it. And once you embrace that, once you embrace that, that society is absolutely doomed.
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Now, my hope is that as it all starts coming apart, because this is all meant to, this is back in college when
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I was having to take chemistry, which I hated, partly because my chemistry teacher was really bad.
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Super smart, but he couldn't explain anything to anybody. There were certain substances, you could add other substances that would break down the bonds that held something together, so it just dissolved.
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This rebellious attitude, which lies at the heart of everything we're seeing going on right now, the whole, if you watched the socialist candidates, and that's what they are, the socialist candidates, a couple of weeks ago, and if you do some, as Dr.
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Moeller puts it, worldview analysis on anything they said, it is designed to dissolve the bonds that hold any healthy society together.
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That's what it's designed to do. And we as Christians recognize why. You're living in God's world.
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You're made in God's image. Look at all, every element of this agenda.
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For example, honoring language. We're made in the image of God.
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God has spoken to us, so we are to honor his words. We are to honor language.
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We are to honor the meaning of words. What are we doing today? Redefine, we're redefining words so fast,
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I can't keep up with it. No one can. And the idea is to keep doing that long enough that the next generation, next generation, next generation doesn't believe that there is any type of objective meaning to language.
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And so they will be able to be manipulated by anybody. Once you control the language, you've got control over it.
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It's theology, theology matters. And this is a theological issue that is taking place.
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It truly, truly is. We need to do worldview analysis.
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And that worldview analysis is very, very important. So let's do some language and worldview analysis as well.
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I was asked, it's before I came up here, so a couple of days ago, I was asked about an article that appeared on religionnews .com,
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RNS. It's not long, it's about a 10 minute read.
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And I was asked to comment about it because I was mentioned in it briefly.
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And yeah, it's still up there. I'm just double checking, making sure that nothing major has changed.
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And had been contacted by the reporter, writer, author by the name of Jack Jenkins.
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I had not returned his call. I was packing and getting ready to leave. And I was already aware of the fact that this article was in the works.
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Basically what it is, is it's a sort of a, you could do a study quite honestly in how the media today utilizes language, utilizes what is and what is not said to communicate a message without doing so overtly.
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That's why I said, if you have a society where people do not honor language, do not are not critical thinkers, not critical in the sense of critical theory, critical in the old sense.
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It's in the old sense of critical, making proper category distinctions, understanding logic, you know, the old stuff that believe it or not, we used to teach called rhetoric, which included debate.
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When you live in a society where that is a good thing to do, this kind of an article would be recognized very quickly by someone doing worldview analysis because of how many times it utilized language to try to communicate something without just directly arguing the point.
41:26
So basically what the article wants to do is the article wants to continue the hysteria that began to develop about two years ago on the term nationalism.
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I remember when that first started happening, I was like, well, there's something wrong about thinking that your country is a good country and you wanna keep it that way.
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Yes, there is, that's now, now we have Christians saying the very same type of thing, that yeah, that's a bad thing.
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And so, you know, I remember watching the
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Olympics that Bruce Jenner was in, remember Bruce Jenner? He's still around. And everybody was like,
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USA, USA, USA. And then, you know, the hockey team beating the
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Russians and the Canadians. It was like, wow, it was awesome, that's wonderful.
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And now today, it's like, can't do that. Can't talk about nationalism. Now you have to have open borders, which is insanity.
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I have not yet talked to a person, I'll be honest with you. I have not yet talked to a single person where I actually could do something more where you could actually sit down and talk for more than 240 characters.
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Who could even begin to make either a cogent, secular argument for open borders, or especially to a
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Christian. I mean, let's look to the word of God. Let's look to how the word of God dealt with nations and let's deal with judgment of nations and God setting borders up and stuff like this.
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And then just simply on a functional basis. Every single program that the socialists were promising to everybody during those debates requires you to have some idea who the citizens of your nation are so you can tax them out of their shorts.
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You get rid of borders and you can't do any of that. It is insanity on the most basic level.
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And I'm just telling you, I've tried to talk to people who take that position and there is not the slightest bit of logical, rational thought going on there to even begin to interact with.
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It's just, well, it sounds good. This is, you know, it just makes me feel good. And that's the whole thing, feelings.
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It's all about feelings. That's what childhood is about. And you have to get past the feelings to do what's right in light of what's true.
44:18
So anyways, the thing in the article basically is, it's talking about Michael Fallon and the
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Sovereign Group. Now, most of you know that Michael is a dear friend of mine. Mike knows things about me that a lot of other people don't know.
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And thankfully, I know just as many things about him. And we've had experiences that I'm not gonna go into now.
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But we've been, I've told the story before that it was Michael who called me in the late 90s and wanted me to come out and do a conference on Roman Catholicism.
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He had been converted out of Roman Catholicism and Billy Graham had come in and he was really troubled about some of the stuff that he was seeing and he'd run into my stuff.
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And so he wanted me to come out and do a conference. It was at the Southern Baptist Church there in Florida.
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And he added at the end, and at the end of the conference, we would take you and your wife on a cruise.
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Well, at the time, my little office was next door in Rich's house. And so I remember walking home and Kelly had gotten home from work.
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And so I told her about this phone call. I didn't know who this guy was, but it says, and he said at the end, we can go on a cruise.
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And Kelly's response was, we're going on that cruise, whether I have to speak at that conference or not.
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This is my wife. My wife's not a public speaker. So that was her way of saying, we're going.
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I had no idea. I did not realize that that was something she really, really, really, really wanted to do.
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I'm not sure. The funny thing is Mike knows exactly how many cruises I've done since then. I think
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I'm around 18, but that started something because there was no sovereign back then, but we did a,
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I think we did it the next year again. That's when we had the debate with Roberts and Janus, sort of debate with Roberts.
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The self -moderated debate with Roberts and Janus. Oh, there's so many stories. Anyway. And that started developing stuff that led to the creation of Sovereign as an organization, grew out of working with Alpha Omega Ministries.
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And now they just, they run everything. They don't, but they could. They just do all sorts of stuff.
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And so we've done lots and lots and lots of cruises with Mike and Mike has done lots and lots and lots of cruises with other people.
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And he has non -religious clients and he's done all sorts of stuff. But he, what he loves doing is sitting on the deck.
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This is something we developed first cruise doing theology talks late into the night or sometimes early in the morning.
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He's not so much the early morning and I'm not so much late at night, but anyway, that's another story.
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So anyhow, most of you have seen Mike's been involved with G3.
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You saw the debates that we've done there. He's one that made the Trent Horn debate happen, the
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Anon Machine debate happen. And then you've seen him moderating Bart Ehrman and John Dominick Crossett and John Shelby Spong.
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Most of the big debates, except for some of the Roman Catholic ones that were earlier on before.
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Well, those are the ones that led to him knowing who I was. Mike's been involved in all that stuff and personally making this stuff happen.
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And so I don't know how many years ago it was, wasn't all that many years ago.
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Mike really started focusing in upon what was going on socially.
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I remember in 2016, I had a wonderful kidney stone. He visited me in the hospital and he gives me this book.
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I mean, it's like, you know, that thick. And so it was definitely in 2016, 2015, somewhere in that area, he really started becoming more focused on this type of stuff and it wasn't my area.
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I've been dragged kicking and screaming into some of it and he's responsible for some of that.
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There's no question about that. I've had to learn stuff from him.
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I've had to learn stuff from Summer and I'm open about this.
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You know, it's amazing when you say I've learned from other people. We live in a day when people think that if you take a position of leadership as a teacher, professor, author, apologist, minister, whatever, that you should never admit you learned from other people.
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I'm scared of the people who never say who they learned from. Those are the ones you gotta keep your eyes on. But I've learned from Mike and I've learned from Summer.
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When I first ran into intersectionality, I was like, Summer, what is intersectionality?
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Because I knew she was already dealing with all this type of stuff. So anyway, this article is basically a hit piece on Summer.
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And if you read it, you will find quotation marks everywhere.
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Sometimes they're actually being used appropriately as in what someone actually said. A lot of other places, all they are are scare quotes.
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And unfortunately, a lot of people don't know how to recognize the difference between the two. And basically, it's seeking to marginalize, to say these people, they're weird out there, when what's really going on is that what
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Mike has done is he has really created a platform for serious interaction and debate, which of course, the people, the quote unquote progressives today, they don't want debate.
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They do not want two sides to be heard. They only want the other side to be heard. And if you're a conservative
50:29
Christian, you're just to be silent. We saw that in the Vice article I was just reading. So despite the fact that he has almost single -handedly shown the way how to do these types of debates, the idea is that these people are going off and they're warning about all this stuff that's going on.
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And in fact, that's exactly what we are doing. We are warning about all the stuff that's going on. But the way the media handles that is they try to make the people going, hey, wait a minute, that's not how we've ever done things before.
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Let's have a debate about this. They try to make those people look like they're weird. So you'll stay away from them.
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So you will not be involved with them. And there's subtle utilization of not only language, but there's also a tremendous amount of utilization of, you know, quote, the rent -a -scholar.
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The rent -a -scholar. And it is also really weird. These guys just, they don't know what to do with Calvinism.
51:41
Have you noticed that? I mean, it's not difficult. It is not difficult to accurately represent what reform theology actually teaches.
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But do you ever find secular people or people who are religious, religion writers, they're the worst.
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They're the absolute worst at it. It is so strange.
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They obviously wish to pick a certain element of things.
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There's really not a meaningful representation at all of reform theology or an understanding of what those issues are.
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But I'm looking for, you know, talk about Tom Askell here.
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During his talk, delivered in front of a sovereign nation's backdrop, Askell railed against what he described as the creeping influence of progressivism within evangelical
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Christianity, likening it to a demonic assault. Look, if you can't see what the intention there is, you're not listening, especially if you know
52:55
Tom Askell. Why utilize that kind of language? Because you're trying to communicate something by that kind of language, rather than say,
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Dr. Askell presented strong biblical argumentation for what true
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Christian justice would look like over against the perverted version of it that is now being promoted.
53:19
That takes too many words and it doesn't really get you in. But yeah, here's the brief reference to us.
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Alvin and Megan Ministries head, James White, who identifies as a reformed Baptist theologian, has also spoken at sovereign events.
53:37
He frequently decries intersectionality, an idea often invoked by liberals to describe the overlapping concerns and experiences of oppressed populations as a threat to a
53:47
Christian way of life and criticized what he called the woke church movement. Well, okay, factually true.
53:56
RNS asked White for comment and was able to speak to him before press time. Now, when you call it the day of press time, that's probably gonna happen.
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But the idea is not, these folks have serious concerns and engage in serious biblical exegesis and have taught history for longer than I've been alive.
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That guy's been alive. No, that's not gonna show up in stuff like this.
54:25
But there was one quote here, and it's, and then, of course, the graphic Jordan Peterson, a controversial
54:32
Jordan Peterson, controversial psychologist, Jordan Peterson, and blah, blah, blah. And it's always fun when they end up in the room with Peterson and watch him take him apart.
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I'm trying to find, I'm sorry, I should have marked it. Oh, okay, here, the thing about Peterson, check this out.
55:01
Vermeerlin noted that White's and Askell's criticisms of social justice, postmodernism, critical race theory, and other topics closely match ones articulated by Peterson.
55:11
Catch this last phrase. Who is known to be especially popular among young White men.
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How did you figure that part out? What studies did you do? Are you saying that he's not popular amongst young Asian men or young Black men?
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What, how did you figure this out? That's the question, like it's, you've got to recognize that that is part of the purposeful nature of these kinds of articles.
55:50
And so there was a statement, social justice is the popular thing now on college campuses, and that represents a threat because it means people that don't look like me and don't think like me might be in charge of me.
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Okay, this is Robert Flory, Senior Director of Research Evaluation at the University of Southern California Center for Religion and Civic Culture.
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Believes O 'Fallon and other leaders who support sovereign nations feel their place in society is at risk.
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So see, we can't be motivated by a desire for the promotion of the kingdom of God.
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We cannot be motivated by a worldview that says that embracing all of this movement, the social justice movement and critical theory and intersectionality and all the rest of this stuff is destructive to our society.
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It's destructive to human relationships. It is destructive to the future of our children and grandchildren.
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And therefore we want to present the Christian alternative, which is the only alternative because we live in God's world, no.
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You've got to come up with a new reason why they're really doing this. And the elites know what the reason is, see.
57:05
It doesn't matter what we say. It doesn't matter what the quotations are. You can always rent an expert.
57:13
And of course, when you do so, you don't put when talking about Tom Askell, his degrees, you don't put how many books are written, how many debates are done over how many decades.
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No, no. We're just the weird Baptist people. But this guy, he's senior director of research evaluation at the
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University of Southern California Center for Religion and Civic Hub. You puff the stuff, see. Beliefs of Fallon and other leaders who support sovereign nations feel their place in society is at risk.
57:43
And that's what this is really about, is that these are white cis -gendered men. And so they're accustomed to their privilege, you see.
57:53
And so you don't even have to use the words specifically, but you introduce it.
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You don't prove it. And you don't even defend the idea that you're actually going against what they themselves said and have said in published works or whatever else it might be, but you put it out there.
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So it's this Richard Flory that says, social justice is the popular thing now on college campuses. And that represents a threat because it means people that don't look like me and don't think like me might be in charge of me, he said.
58:31
That's the most crass way to put it, but I think that's really what's underneath all this. You see, elites like Flory have to reject that this is a clash of worldviews because the last thing they want is for any interaction between worldviews to actually take place.
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And so the whole purpose of the article is to seek to marginalize without actually having to interact with, without actually having to do that dirty thing called dealing with truth.
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And we're gonna see more and more and more of it. And given the next generations are not being able to do that, are being, they're not only not being taught how to think critically, unless we're doing it at home, and that's why they're gonna stop homeschooling you for a while, but they're actually being taught the opposite of critical thought and clear thought.
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They are being taught to emote rather than to think.
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They don't know history, they don't know logic, they respond to any challenge as if you're offending them.
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In other words, they're still seven -year -olds. And seven -year -olds can be ruled over by people who know how to use language.
01:00:00
There you go, there you go. So does that mean I'm going to ride my bike off of a cliff?
01:00:08
Nope, because all authority in heaven and earth has been given to my Lord. And he has used that authority to destroy nations and cultures in the past.
01:00:20
And he may be doing it again. But you know what? That doesn't mean that his throne is gonna be overthrown.
01:00:28
I'm called to be faithful here, now, where he's placed me. And I have to put in his hands.
01:00:38
And where else would you rather put, who else's hands would you rather put in? Really is the question.
01:00:44
So anyways, thank you very much for tuning in on the program today.
01:00:49
Lord willing, we'll be back. I don't know when we're gonna be back. I'll be honest with you.
01:00:55
I'm traveling, and Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, we're recording, might be able to do something on Friday.
01:01:03
Obviously, if big things come up, then we fire this up wherever I am and do what we can.
01:01:11
But right now, it's gonna be Travel Day Monday, recording Tuesday, Wednesday, Travel Day Thursday.
01:01:17
It's looking like maybe something on Friday, and I don't even know about that. So we'll see.
01:01:23
Keep an eye on the blog. And by the way, I remind people about the blog, because I'm gonna be using it much more in the future.
01:01:33
Because I just know that that's gonna be necessary. And necessary for you to know where it is, because it's gonna take some effort for them to shut that down.
01:01:46
It's easy for them to get us off of YouTube and Facebook and Twitter, do that real fast.
01:01:55
When we have to move to alternative platforms, at least the blog will always be a clearinghouse for the information to go out to.
01:02:02
So aomin .org, keep an eye on that. And thank you, Rich, for putting all this together.