Evangelical Immigration Table, Weird Stuff at SWBTS, & Keeping Youth from Going SJW

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. Things do not slow down.

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I was planning on taking a little break from the podcast for two weeks, working on some final papers for the graduate program

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I'm in, and it's not going to happen. I woke up this morning. I thought, man, there's a few things I really need to address. Some of them

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I'm going to address kind of briefly. I was asked to talk about Mercer Moore's comments at the National Immigration Forum, which was

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I think like a week and a half ago now. And then the statement that came out of the Evangelical Immigration Table, and I will talk about that a little bit.

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But there's some really crazy stuff coming out of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary lately, and there really needs to be more,

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I think, investigative journalism. I'm going to just show you what's publicly available that I'm aware of, and then

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I'm going to let you kind of make your own conclusions, and the story I think is going to be developing.

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But there's some stuff going on that just something's not right. And you'll understand what I mean when

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I get to it. A couple other smaller items interspersed throughout the discussion today. And then last but not least,

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I am going to show you a big portion actually of a speech that I gave at the

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Stand Against Marxism Conference about a month ago in Iowa. Now, I haven't been given permission to give you the whole video or obviously the whole conference, but it is $19 .84

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if you want to purchase that video. And if you become a patron of mine, like even for a dollar a month, you can become a patron of mine for $12 a year if you wanted to, and you will get a code that lets you just watch the whole conference for free without paying the $19 .84.

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So there's that. But I'm going to show you a big part of that speech, and the speech is about something that I'm passionate about, which is

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I don't want to just expose and then point the finger and say, well, that's just socialistic and end of the discussion.

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You lose because I got to show that you're a socialist. And I know that's how some folks operate.

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And I mean, look, I'm helping out as much as I can with the Enemies Within the Church project, and their whole deal with this is this is

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Marxism in the church. And I would agree. It is Marxism, what's going on with the social justice movement.

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But I also realize that there's a lot of, I mean, the vast majority I think probably of young people who are attracted to this have some semi -legitimate reasons, at least, for being attracted.

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It doesn't mean it's right. It just means that they're motivated by, they're taking advantage of really by a sense of compassion.

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And that's being used then to get them to adopt some really horrible beliefs that ultimately at the end of the day are going to do the opposite of what they probably think they will do.

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And they'll have a detrimental effect on the oppressed groups that they want to help. And so anyway, all that to say,

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I want to explain why young people are attracted to it. And then what can parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles do about it?

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Because I've gotten that question quite a few times from older folks who don't understand who just say, well, what's going on with my nephew?

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I really would like to help. And so I give some pointers for that.

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And so without giving you the whole speech here, I'm just going to play a big portion of that speech for you.

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And I hope that'll bless you as we try to engage with people that are close to us over the holidays.

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It's part of the reason that I'm putting this out, because I know for some of you, you're going to have young people in your family to your house and you're going to be sitting down sharing meals, talking, and maybe you don't do that on a normal or regular basis.

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And so this is an opportunity to get to know them. And those discussions might come up, especially if they're going in the social justice direction, you may have to navigate some of these things.

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So anyway, I'm going to put that out there for you. I'm also going to show you some promotions that I'm doing for the month of November and December.

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So this is also right before Christmas. And there's some books that you can get, and I have different levels for if you want to support me on Patreon, you're going to have some opportunity to get between one and three books, depending on how much you want to give, if you want to do that.

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And then last but not least, there is another opportunity to give to the

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Enemies Within the Church Project, because we are doing a super important project. And I'm going to tell you what that is.

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So how is that for a preview? I mean, I've only gone almost five minutes into this video and all I've done is preview.

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So let's actually jump into some stuff here. Number one, National Immigration Forum. And Russell Moore was there, and there he is in a picture, if you're watching, speaking to Michael Ware from the

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AND Campaign, Democratic operative, talked about him in the last video. And he's speaking to a left -leaning audience.

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This is Soros Money's National Immigration Forum, and he's saying, an evangelical Christian who despises immigrants is an evangelical

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Christian who is self -defeating and self -loathing, because most of the body of Christ on earth right now, not to mention heaven, is not white, not middle class, not

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American, and doesn't speak English. And all God's people said, what in the world are you talking about?

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I mean, look, I've been to Master's Seminary, to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Liberty University.

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I've been involved with four different college campus outreaches. I've been in a number of churches. Never met anyone who said, you know,

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I despise immigrants. You know why? They're not American. They're not white. Don't speak English. They're not from here, and I'm a racist.

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Never happened. Maybe Russell Moore knows that guy. If he does, I'd love for him to just say, you know,

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I know a guy who thinks this, or a girl. But what he's doing here is strategic.

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He's speaking to a left -leaning room, and he's saying something that is vague enough that when we hear it, we think, well, he's not talking about me, because obviously, look, we fund missions.

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We're evangelicals. We believe that heaven's going to be diverse. So it can't be us he's talking about, but clearly, he is talking about at least what he thinks is a significant portion of evangelicals.

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So who could they be? Well, to the room he's speaking to, who are on the left, they're going to hear that, and they're going to think, oh, yeah, those are the

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Trump voters. That's who he's speaking about. They're the ones that despise immigrants. Bruce Ashford calls this the ethno -nationalists, right?

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This is what the idolatry on the right, the ethno -nationalism. And so if you are for a strict border, and you think that illegal immigrants should be deported, and you think maybe maintaining

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American culture or the commonly shared values that have existed in American culture traditionally are important, and you think mass immigration undermines those things, that's the kind of thing that gets you labeled,

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I think, as someone who despises immigrants. If you think it's someone else, you've got to tell me, or Russell Moore needs to contact those of us who are conservative, because I'm not the only one to hear this and think, he's probably talking about me.

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He's probably putting words in my mouth, claiming that I'm a racist because I think the things that I just shared that are conservative policies on immigration.

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And American Family Radio, I think, I was sent a link from them about a week ago, they really took

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Russell Moore to the woodshed for this, and rightly so. So I'm not going to spend a whole lot more time on that.

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But he also said, and I'll just say this briefly, when it comes to politics driving faith, that makes the gospel in a different religion, and it's a very dangerous sort of situation, not just for the republic, but also for the church.

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Who does that? Who lets politics drive their agenda instead of the

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Bible? Yeah, that would be the ERLC. So look, again, who is he talking about here?

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He's obviously not talking about himself, right? I mean, he's literally sitting in a room full of left -leaning people as a representative from evangelicalism to talk about a political issue.

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So he's not talking about himself. He thinks he's not driving, politics isn't driving the ERLC. So who is it?

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What group is it? He's not specific here. And that's part of the problem is if there's just a lot of really, really definite, positive, hardcore moral language, outrage even, and it's really black and white, the way

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Russell Moore talks, but then he's vague when it comes to the specifics. Very passionate when it comes to the feelings and the outrage, and we need to have, you know, we need to treat everyone like they're in the image of God.

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But then when it comes to the specifics of who or what he's talking about, doesn't really give him. So that was the

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National Immigration Forum. Let's talk about the evangelical immigration table, shall we?

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They came out with a statement about, I think it was the same day as when

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Russell Moore was talking or the next day, but essentially it is a path to restitution -based immigration.

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And you can go sign this. And as a little aside here, I don't know if you've noticed this with a lot of the evangelical statements.

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Someone needs to do a study and find out if there have been more of these statements since the election of Donald Trump.

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But they tend to be very vague, and they tend to be all about moral posturing without a lot of specifics. And I remember the first time

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I saw this, it was one, or I noticed it, I've seen it before, but there was one that just clicked in my head.

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It was unifyingleadership, I think, .org or .com. It's on the Wayback Machine now. But it was this statement against the alt -right.

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And it was authored by some folks at Southeastern. I won't say who. But it was one of those vague things.

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I read it, and I was like, what is this even talking about? You kind of got the sense after reading it, like, okay, racism is bad.

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We don't want that. It's like, okay, good, yeah. The only specific was, well, Donald Trump should get rid of alt -right people in his cabinet, and he should try to bring about racial reconciliation.

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And it's like, who from the alt -right was in Donald Trump's cabinet, first of all? Maybe Bannon?

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But he wasn't even in the cabinet when they drafted this statement. So it was like, who are you talking about?

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And it just seemed like it was all about showing the world, hey, look how tolerant we are. And, look, we don't really agree with everything necessarily going on with the president, right, and the negative rap he's getting for his insensitive tweets and so forth.

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So we're going to make this statement. But there was no specific tweets brought up. There was no specific policies forward.

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It was just fluff. And then a lot of these statements are that way. And I've noticed this over time.

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So I tried to break this one down into specific policies because maybe it's because I'm a conservative, but I really like just, like, give me the nuts and bolts.

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That's what a preamble is for. When you want to give the purpose for something, give a preamble. This is the principles that we're drawing from, the reason.

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And then if this is a political statement you're trying to make, give us the nuts and bolts. So here are some nuts and bolts.

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Governments should not violate the unity of the family. Oh, by the way, this is all driven by biblical principles, even though there's no, like, actual policies with Bible verses attached to them or anything.

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But that's what they say. So governments should not violate the unity of the family, which is probably a reference to the controversy a couple months ago where Trump's keeping kids in cages.

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Oh, my goodness. And it turned out, no, actually Obama had been doing the same thing, and this wasn't even keeping kids in cages, and this was part of the vetting process because there were people trying to smuggle or trying to come here and claim asylum, and the kids that they said were theirs weren't even there, so he was trying to sort that out.

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And anyway, all of that. It seems like they're taking more the left -leaning kind of position on this already by blaming the government for separating children, which

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I don't know, you know, why aren't the people who actually come here, why don't they get some blame for that? They don't have to go through this.

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They don't have to, like, let their kids be separated. They could go back to the country that they're from, but the government is responsible for that.

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It's appropriate for citizens to encourage our government to treat these vulnerable groups with fairness and compassion. Now, this is really, this is that language

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I was telling you about that's fluffy kind of, but it does mean something. Compassion is great, right?

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We see that in Scripture when a leader has compassion, it's something that should be cultivated, like true compassion.

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Even in a civil leader, you know, compassion is a good thing. However, the government's role is not to be compassionate.

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The government's role is to bear the sword. It is a ministry of justice, not a ministry of grace. And this conflation between the government's role and the church's role is something

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I see constantly in this woke stuff. We're supposed to be fair, and it's usually, that's another word that's not good to use, and I'll tell you why.

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Because that's the very question at issue. One side thinks this immigration policy is fair.

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The other side thinks this immigration policy is fair. It's not enough to just say, well, things should be fair. Right, that's what we're already discussing.

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So it's fluff, but it's a virtue signal. It's showing that we are virtuous. We are, we want fairness.

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It's showing, you know, we are compassionate, even though that's not within the purview of the role that God gave the government.

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So we're getting off on the wrong foot here. But God delights in redemption.

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Again, that's not the government's role to be interested in that kind of thing when those who have violated the law are able to be restored, right?

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Well, anyway, there's some thoughts that I have about prisons and good behavior and those kinds of things, and I'm not against all that, by the way.

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I don't like prisons to begin with. I don't think that's necessary. That's not even a biblical concept. But this idea, once you start going down that path of it's the government's job to just be nice to people, and you've opened a can of worms, and the socialists love that can of worms, by the way, because you know what's really nice is just to take other people's money and give it to voting constituencies.

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But anyway, I digress. We support a process of, here's the meat. We support restitution, not amnesty, where violations of law is admitted.

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So here's what they're saying. They should pay illegal migrants. They don't use that term, obviously. They should pay significant fines and penalties over seven years, and there should be a pathway to legal permanent residency, and their kids should be able to come.

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Okay, so they don't give any specifics for how much money or any of that, but they're saying it should be restitution, and that's not amnesty.

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They're very quick to say that. Now, I will hasten to remark restitution, properly defined.

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The actual definition is returning to the status quo. So if you came here illegally, you'll leave and go back to your country.

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Don't shoot me for saying that. I'm just giving you the definition. That's what technically restitution is. So this whole statement makes absolutely no sense.

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If you really want a statement on restitution, it means returning things to the status quo. What they're trying to say is, well, restitution in this case would be, you know, there's an alternative.

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You can pay a fine, and that will make up for it. And there's a few things

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I want to say about this. You know, number one, what's the incentive for an illegal migrant to come forward and pay a fine?

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Usually they're here to work or to get money somehow, and if they're okay, if all they have to do is wait until the next

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Democrat gets in office, and then they don't have to worry about ICE coming. I mean, they just live in a sanctuary city, right, like Los Angeles or something.

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Why would they ever come forward to pay money? They don't need to. You're not going to get a line of people coming.

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Now, let's say you did get a line of people. Let's say everyone's coming forward, and millions of people want to be part of the

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United States of America, and they're going to pay over seven years. That will back up your immigration process.

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And you know who that will affect? The legal immigrants who did play by the rules. And this is personal for me, because I know a number of folks who have come here from other countries who've waited years, who've paid significant amounts of money, who've had to hire lawyers, and they go through a class, a naturalization class, which, by the way, that's not even talked about here.

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I'm going to get to that in a minute, but they go through a class, and they're proud to be American at the end, usually. They understand the founding principles of this country, speaking

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English, all of that. They want to be here, and they contribute, not just financially, right, culturally.

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And that's the other thing I wanted to say, because it's not fair to them. You want social justice? That ain't justice, right? I want to say this.

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It's not just about financial concerns, and it's very disrespectful to treat conservatives like their cultural concerns aren't important.

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You just pay a fine, and yeah, it's a done deal. Listen to me for a minute on this.

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If these evangelical leaders get their way, they won't have institutions to go to. Well, how can you say that,

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John? Because at the end of Obama's administration, remember what he was doing? Remember what the

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Department of Justice was doing? They were forcing public schools to use civil rights legislation to make sure that boys and girls could go in each other's bathrooms.

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You don't think they're going to pick up where they started? You don't think that's going to bring the hammer down on Christian institutions? And you don't think that the illegal migrants who come here are overwhelmingly going to vote

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Democrat? You just set yourself up for a permanent Democrat majority. You can kiss ideas about ending abortion bye.

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I mean, that's what you're essentially looking at, and those are legitimate concerns people like myself have.

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We also have cultural concerns. We think that the founding generation wasn't perfect, but they actually had some pretty good principles.

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And we think, George Washington said in his farewell address, he said there's really three things that he said kind of kept the nation together as he saw it.

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One was common language, which most of these illegal migrants do not have.

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One was a common religion, a general kind of Christianity, which some of them have

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Catholicism. Some of them probably don't. I mean, it's all of South America, just about.

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I'm not saying every country, but a good portion of South and Central America. So I'm not sure what all the religions that are being brought in are.

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But the other thing, I mean, look, in this country, we don't even have, obviously, we do not have a one religion anymore, which is part of the problem.

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Because general principles that come from Christianity being commonly shared are one of the key things that has made

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American culture the way it is. But the other thing was a common heritage, right?

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English, Scottish, mostly, but Western Europe, this heritage that brought in the ideas that made

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America what it is. I don't buy this whole propositional nation business when people say, oh, America's just founded on, it's an idea, it's not even.

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No, America's not an idea. America wasn't a new blank slate that a bunch of people, the founding fathers got together and said, well, we're just gonna form

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America. It's never happened in the history of the world. There's some unique things that happened here, but you know what? They all have a history and an origin, and they came from the areas where these people came from.

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They came from England, primarily. And so one of the things George Washington points out is that that's one of the things that unites

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Americans. Our diversity doesn't actually make us strong. What makes us strong is having diversity, but also holding commonly shared values with one another.

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All right, that was a long, long speech by myself. I'm sorry, but I needed to explain that when someone comes over here, there's a naturalization process for a reason.

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And to just bypass that, it's not even in this. That's concerning to me.

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Do you even care about those values? So let's move on to the next section here.

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So they also say that we encourage fairness to taxpayers by requiring that all immigrants be self -sufficient, work, pay taxes, be productive.

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That is what we call a pipe dream. Think about it this way.

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The immigration system is already burdened. You got people with upward mobility, with disposable income, paying massive fees, waiting long periods of time, years, to become citizens of the

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United States, right? These are legal immigrants. And somehow you think that folks with bottom -level jobs in construction and agriculture are going to somehow be able to offset the cost that it would actually cost taxpayers to pay for new immigration workers to get this done.

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Yeah, it's not happening, not happening. We encourage our government to establish a secure border and efficient and orderly process of immigration.

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Yes, yes, a secure border would be really nice. I don't know what that looks like in the minds of those who sign this.

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An efficient immigration system would be killed by the rest of this plan, but secure border? Yeah, I mean, look, credit where credit is due.

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I'm not sure if that's a bone to throw for conservatives, but hey, deporting all immigrants here in this country illegally is neither feasible nor morally just.

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So if someone broke into your house, hypothetically, and said, well, I live here now. Best case scenario,

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I work here, but I get to use the facilities, right? I live in your house now. Let's say they bring 10 friends with them.

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Your house can't even keep that many people. It's not made for that, but yeah, we're going to stay here.

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Would it be morally unjust for you to throw them out? No, it wouldn't. Why? Well, it's your house, right?

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You get to make the rules. Not everyone can come in, and you get to figure out within God's responsibility he's given you what makes sense for you and your family and your house.

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Same thing is true for this country. Look, if you want a secure border, the best way to undermine that is just to say, well, once you get here, you have to stay because it's morally unjust to throw you out.

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You can have the most secure border you want. People are going to find a way around it if there aren't any penalties for breaking the law.

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So once you get past the border, it just means, well, seven years, and I got to just jump through a hoop, and I can become part of it.

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This is not feasible. Whoever wrote this was not thinking through policy, and I don't think it was meant to be a policy plan.

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I think it was meant to morally posture evangelicals to show that they are nice people, and they should be well -loved and liked.

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So enough about that. Let's move on to the next topic, which is

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Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. This is probably going to be talked about more after I make this video.

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I think this is the tip of the iceberg. I could be wrong, but Adam Greenway is pictured here preaching at FBC Naples two weeks after the leadership there excommunicated a number of the members for voting against Marcus Hayes, who was a black guy for senior pastor.

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He was a candidate, and a portion of the church voted against him, hundreds of people, I believe, and it's a big church, and it was like 11 % or something voted against him.

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So you're talking a significant amount of people, supposedly 10 ,000 people in the church. Anyway, they were told that their vote in the statement that the church put out to the

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Baptist press, I think it was, that they were racist, and so a bunch of them were excommunicated from the church.

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It wasn't even church discipline. And I don't wanna get into that whole situation because, and I'll just say this now,

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I am going to be going down to Naples in a few weeks to interview some folks from FBC Naples.

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And I will take this opportunity before I get to the rest of what's going on at Southwestern to ask you if you would prayerfully consider either donating to my

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Patreon account, or better yet, donate to the Enemies Within the Church film. That is a 501c3, because it's going through Cornerstone World Outreach Church.

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You can donate through them. Go to enemieswithinthechurch .com. You can donate. And that will help pay for the film crew and everything else we need to get this interview done.

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But yes, I'm gonna be talking a lot more about this situation.

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Right now, just it isn't the time for it. But I know that's a big announcement. But if you could help financially, it would be greatly appreciated.

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I know Judd would appreciate it. So anyways, if you want to be part of that, you can. Let's talk about, though, more about Southwestern.

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So Adam Greenway is the president. He's preaching here at Naples right after that situation went down. And he's not responsible for that, obviously.

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But the greater Baptist world was condemned. I mean, J .D. Greer, they condemned FBC Naples.

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Not the leadership there, but these supposed racist individuals who voted against Marcus Hayes. And so Greenway didn't, you know, when it was brought to light, and it has been now many times, that this wasn't, there hasn't been one example of actual racism.

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I emailed the church weeks ago. I know others who have. I haven't gotten any evidence. I mean,

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I don't hear any of the Baptist leaders, including Greenway, saying this is wrong. No, Greenway's there in their pulpit and commending them.

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You can listen to the sermon. Not for necessarily what they did, but just, yeah, it's a great place to be.

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And, you know, he's fine being there. Now, May 12th of this year,

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Adam Greenway said, he's with Ed Young, and he says, a second Baptist church where Ed Young preaches, it's diverse and multicultural.

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And that's a good thing, right? And I think that is a good thing, actually. I'm not going to go on an Ed Young tangent. But look, church,

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I think, should reflect the community. They shouldn't make it the goal to be diverse. That'll just happen as God calls people.

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But that is a fine thing. Now, the reason

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I'm bringing this up is because you need to understand, as I move forward, that Adam Greenway, I don't think he's a racist.

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I mean, I don't know his heart, but I don't think he's a racist. He likes multiculturalism. He likes diversity.

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I don't think he's like a white supremacist kind of racist, right? I don't think that. I need to say that very clearly.

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And here's another, maybe you could call it an evidence of that. He wants to show people his,

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I guess, anti -racist credentials, his inclusion, his multiculturalism. October 31st of this year, it's

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Reformation Day. He goes, this is my thesis for the Southern Baptist Convention. The time has come to finish the shift from confederate culture of our origins to a global vision of ministry, mission of ministry, embracing all peoples.

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Without distinction, we are with Christ after the lost, not the lost cause.

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Ooh, pithy, right? The only problem with this is, number one, it is completely untrue.

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And I'm gonna show you that real quick. I'm gonna show you this book because this is one of the promotions for November and December.

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Any amount on Patreon, if you subscribe to support me, you will get this book for free.

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And there's actually two other books you can also get, which I'll announce later. But this talks about the formation of the

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Southern denominations in the 1840s through the 1860s. And this is a quote.

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This is from William Johnson, who's the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He says, we can never be a party to any arrangement for monopolizing the gospel.

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Any arrangement which, like that of the autocratical interdict of the North, would first drive us from our beloved colored people of whom, beloved colored people, of whom they proved that they know nothing comparatively.

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And from the much wronged aborigines of this country. That's indigenous people.

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The much wronged? It's a Confederate guy. And then cuts us off from the whitening fields of the heathen harvest labor, which would be missions.

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So we can't be part of the North when they're keeping us from missions. He says that the

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North could be their beloved brethren, their old co -agitators in this cause of world missions.

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And the new goal though for the SBC is to extend the Messiah's kingdom and the glory of God until the deserts of the unconverted human nature rejoice and blossom as the rose.

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Yeah, I mean, I think those Confederates who were, you know, this is before the Confederacy formed, but SBC formed a few years later.

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They were Confederates. William Johnson was with the Confederacy. I mean, don't they just sound like they're so against a global vision of missions and ministry and embracing people?

29:34

I mean, oof. I mean, this is ridiculous. And Adam Greenway should know better. If he's got any kind of Southern Baptist or Baptist history course that he's taken, if he's got a professor on campus that teaches

29:47

Baptist history, I mean, he's a president of a Southern Baptist seminary. He doesn't know the history? Now, look, you know, anyone who studies this, they're well aware of the mission board in Boston and how the mission board in Boston violated the rules of the convention and wanted to exclude any missionary who owned slaves from the funds.

30:10

And that was part of the contention. And I may do an episode at some point just about that whole situation and why

30:16

Southern denominations were opposed to the idea that slavery was a sin in and of itself, which really became the theological issue.

30:26

It wasn't really even slavery that was the issue. It was immediate abolition and that being morally imperative and this being justified biblically.

30:36

That was really more, it was an argument over biblical authority, which is why the subtitle of the book is

30:41

The South Stand for Biblical Authority. So you can get that. You can donate a dollar a month and you can get that for free.

30:48

I'll ship it to you on Patreon. But all that to say, I took that opportunity to plug that, that little promo.

30:58

But he's trying to say something here about present circumstances. I mean, he was inaccurate about history, but this isn't about history.

31:05

It's about present circumstances. And I'll say this. I was attracted to Southern Baptist Conventions why

31:12

I went to Southeastern because of men like Paige Patterson, Al Mohler, even Russell Moore. That's a story for another day. But I met

31:18

Paige Patterson about maybe 11 years ago at an Evangelical Theological Society meeting. And he was presenting on the conservative resurgence.

31:26

And I mean, Paige Patterson just, he seemed like this manly guy. He's like the cowboy hat of the

31:32

Southern Baptist Convention. I remember he walked in, he had cowboy boots on. He, I mean, he was just, the way he talked about the

31:39

Southern Baptist Convention, you just, he's just a man's man. Like we're, you know, we're gonna beat him kind of thing.

31:44

And we did, and we had victory. And I sense compassion as well.

31:49

I didn't, it wasn't like he was just a manly, you know, emoted just masculinity, but I mean, he's a big hunter.

31:55

He's, and he talks about it. He mentioned that the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the truth, was, you know, existed in the

32:05

Confederate States and he didn't apologize for it. He didn't start to try to backpedal and, you know, heap burning coals of indignation upon anyone who would think that might be an okay thing, or maybe there's a heritage there that maybe even part of it could be, you could be proud of.

32:24

No, he seemed like he was kind of proud of some of that. He knew where he was from and he liked where he was from. And, you know, there's stories about him when he was at Southeastern.

32:32

He drove around with his, in his pickup truck with his dog out the window, his hunting dog. Like that's the kind of guy he was.

32:38

And I'll tell you what, that is an embarrassment to the current crop of preachers, that this is not the kind of leader they want to create.

32:47

They don't want more Page Pattersons. You know, he, even his, the things that he said about, that he apologized for, which some of them were a little off color about women, it reminds me of an older generation that wasn't as sexualized as our generation, where you could say things, an older guy could say things about a younger woman looking nice and it would be, it would be complimentary.

33:12

It would be flattery. And I mean, I know this just from reading books on history, especially if you get back into the 1800s.

33:18

I was reading a book about John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay. And they were, you know, they were just, even as married men, there was almost like an art of flirtation that wasn't necessarily sexual.

33:31

It was just, there was strict societal boundaries, but you could say things that today would be taken sexually because everything's sexual.

33:40

So the Page Patterson is not, he's more in that era than he is in this era. He's just cut from a different cloth, guys.

33:46

And that could be right or wrong. I'm not making a moral judgment on that necessarily. I'm just saying that's who he is.

33:52

And that's not a popular person to be in the Southern Baptist Convention right now. It's kind of like the problem

33:58

Roy Moore had. It's too easy to paint those guys as something that, you know, they're probably not.

34:06

And so anyway, Greenway is saying, we're switching things up, we're changing.

34:13

And I wonder whether he's talking here. And the reason I wonder is because of things I'm about to share, but I'm wondering if he's talking about Page Patterson.

34:19

He's saying, Page Patterson represents the Confederate history. That's the Confederate Southern Baptist Convention, right?

34:26

And that's what we're actually getting away from, right? It may be because his historical point makes absolutely no sense.

34:36

He preached at FBC in Naples, as I said, November 6th, November 12th. And it is where things get kind of weird.

34:44

I'm gonna actually come back to this, but I'm just gonna mention it first. Benjamin Cole, who's a Baptist blogger, releases this letter on Patterson.

34:53

And Patterson's a racist, supposedly. I'm gonna show you that in a minute. And then November 16th, this professor at Southwestern, Robert Lopez, who

35:00

I interviewed months ago for this program on homosexuality, he tells some really interesting things going on at Southwestern that I'm like, wait a minute.

35:11

Something is not adding up here. You can't be concerned about diversity and multiculturalism, and you wanna get rid of whatever

35:17

Confederate culture means, and then you're firing your minority and your women staff, and your curriculum is dumping multiculturalism, literature, and so forth.

35:30

There's something, something's off. So I'm gonna talk about that too. But then one of his professors tweets out,

35:38

Malcolm Yarnell, about we should have hiring diversity, which also seems to contradict what's going on at Southwestern.

35:45

So I'm gonna take you through this step -by -step, at least the information that's publicly available, and I'll let you be the judge.

35:54

Here's one of the most important pieces of this chain, and I found out about it right before I was gonna make this video, and so I didn't include it in the list there.

36:03

But Dwight McKissick, he's one of the wokest guys in the

36:08

Southern Baptist Convention, and I'm sure proudly so, he doesn't mind. But he says, yeah, he's encouraged and optimistic about Adam Greenway's vision for Southwestern, and because he wants to accommodate a big tent theory,

36:22

I guess, on theology. And this is back in February, he's saying this.

36:28

So Dwight McKissick, one of the wokest guys in the SBC, he's really encouraged about Dr. Adam Greenway. Well, then

36:34

I saw this. October 20th of this year, incredible sermon from Dr.

36:39

Adam Greenway. So this is nine days before his, Dr. Adam Greenway's Confederate tweet.

36:45

Incredible sermon from Adam Greenway on three things the Lord requires, Micah 6. His treatment of justice in the text was impactful and powerful, really ministered to our congregation.

36:54

Okay, if Dwight McKissick thinks that Adam Greenway is right about justice, and Dwight McKissick is like the king of social justice, maybe

37:03

Kyle J. Howard has that, the prince of social justice in the Southern Baptist Convention.

37:08

I mean, he's really big on social justice. Just read his stuff. He'll proudly tell you he is. What does that mean about Adam Greenway's position on social justice?

37:18

I started listening to Adam Greenway's presentation. It is online, it is available. And I will put the link in the info section.

37:27

I didn't listen to the whole thing, but in the couple minutes I listened, he did what

37:33

I have heard a lot of other evangelicals do, take a passage that just talks about justice and then launch into, without exegeting the passage really, he's launching into applying it.

37:45

And part of applying it was the word Southern is offensive. That word, that word Southern. You gotta be careful with that word.

37:52

You know, there's a legacy there. He talked about police shootings. He apologized.

38:00

Like, this is five minutes of me listening, guys. Like, I did not listen to this whole sermon. I heard him, he apologized on behalf of Paige Patterson.

38:08

Now, he didn't mention Patterson by name. He just talks about predecessors who didn't understand justice.

38:14

He apologizes. It's interesting. It's really interesting. And I would encourage someone to go out there and listen to it and make a transcript or something because I was looking online because I was like, is

38:27

Adam Greenway a social justice guy? Like, where's he at? And then I saw this sermon. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, he definitely is.

38:33

He definitely is. I mean, that's who he is. And if he means what he says in that sermon. Now, given all of this, given all of this, tell me if this makes sense.

38:47

Robert Lopez says, and this is a, I'm gonna put this in the info section as well, this blog he writes.

38:55

It's an article. He says, by spring 2019, Southwestern put forward a curriculum stripped of any creative works, except of those that could be situated as case studies for theologians and philosophers.

39:08

Literary interpretation classes are eliminated. Fine arts class eliminated or required. Sorry, they're not required.

39:15

Fine arts classes. English majors were not only required to do academic research writing, but a new freshman requirement was meaning, vocation, and flourishing.

39:24

That's a new class, meaning, vocation, and flourishing. And critical thinking worldview, new rules also meant that freshmen could not enroll in language classes.

39:33

Great ideas courses would teach students through literature. So it's, I guess, a survey course on some

39:39

Western literature. But I guess that is, so they took out a bunch of courses that actually were literary and multicultural.

39:51

I mean, you think learning a language, that's multicultural, right? They took out a bunch of that stuff and they added in like fluff.

39:57

They added in like meaning, vocation, and flourishing, which by the way, someone's got to find out. Like someone's got to look into this.

40:03

It sounds like this is like a Kern Family Foundation thing. I mean, I saw this at Southeastern where the curriculum changed and you got like Kern Family Foundation and Acton and some of these big groups will come in and give grants and Southwestern needs the money.

40:20

And then curriculum comes in. That's kind of social justice -ish. But anyways, the last thing here is the one that raises your eyebrow the most.

40:29

26 professors fired in 24 hours. Greenway told us this was due to budget cuts, but then turned around and hired at least six new professors, all white from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

40:38

So his point is that this guy is Greenway and Southwestern, they're saying that they're multicultural, that they're for inclusion, that they're gonna get rid of the

40:48

Confederate history. And man, we apologize for my predecessor and police shootings.

40:55

It's horrible. And like, this is all like going on apparently. And at the same time, there's all this firing going on as well.

41:07

Now, I'm not saying like, look, I think that the person who does the job the best should be the person that gets the job.

41:14

Like, I don't think you should be hiring or the best fit is the person you should hire.

41:19

I'm not for affirmative action at all. And maybe Adam Greenway has some justifiable reasons to fire the women and minorities he fired.

41:28

But that's the same line of thinking that was rejected at FBC Naples, right?

41:36

Because the guys there that didn't vote for Marcus Hayes, they were concerned that he would change the way that the

41:43

Bible studies were done, that they wouldn't have Bible study leaders, they'd have facilitators. They had a lot of other concerns that no one brought up the fact that he's black as a concern.

41:52

They didn't think he had the minimum experience that was required. So those were actual issues.

41:59

But we're told, no, that's racist. And the Southern Baptist Convention leadership just kind of circles back and says, yeah, that's racist.

42:05

Well, how come what Adam Greenway is doing is not racist? Hiring a bunch of white guys and firing minorities.

42:11

Why is that not racist? Now, I verified this because I was like, I'm not going out there and making a video if none of this is true.

42:18

And I did get it verified. Here is, and we're gonna go back to that.

42:24

Let's see. Here is a list of minorities and women that are no longer at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

42:36

The following minorities and women were on 2018 faculty listening at SWPTS and no longer appear on the current

42:42

SWPTS list. So these are people that were fired after Patterson left. Here's a list of those who are directly terminated, demoted and or eliminated by program elimination.

42:55

And you can look at that. Look at all the names there. I count 13, 13 names.

43:10

And you have the new hires and I have pictures of them here. At least 10 of them came, at least 10 new faculty were hired and six of them came from Southern.

43:21

And I don't know if you noticed something that they all have in common. They are all male and they are all white.

43:27

Now that is not a problem in my book. You can have white men. It's fine with me. I don't mind.

43:33

As long as they can do what you're hiring them to do. But I thought that's what we were supposed to be against.

43:40

I thought we were supposed to be against hiring white men and getting rid of minorities. I thought Adam Greenway was on the woke train with the speech he gave.

43:49

I think it was at Dwight McKissick's church, but this sermon that Dwight McKissick is praising. How does this add up?

43:55

How come we can condemn Naples, but this is fine? There's a double standard going on here.

44:02

Now I wanna show you this. Malcolm Yarnell teaches. He's a professor. He's a white man at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

44:08

And he said on November 16th, not too long ago, what if from now on, every

44:14

Anglo male candidate for an SBC entity leaders role were to refuse appointment, of course, only as their conscience leads until a more diverse leadership representative of our desire to reflect the redeemed gathered around God's throne were installed.

44:28

And this is from, this was on Twitter, but there was a petition that went out, which was, you gotta read it.

44:34

I'll try to put that in the info section as well. But, you know, it's basically saying like, you first,

44:40

Malcolm Yarnell. You're an Anglo male. Why don't you step? Why don't you be the first one to retire?

44:46

You know, it seems like your facility, your institution you work for is busy hiring all these white guys, getting rid of all these minority and women.

44:53

Why don't you step down? So there's, at the time I took this, 293 people had signed this petition to let go of Malcolm Yarnell, which is kind of funny to me because it's like, you know, take your own medicine, practice what you preach.

45:07

I don't think he will. But, hey, if he does, then, you know, but here's the thing. Like, is he, does he have a problem with what he sees going on at Southwestern?

45:15

I don't know. But you'd think that would be like ground zero for what he's talking about. Now, this is all important.

45:25

This is all stuff that I'm bringing up because of this. Benjamin Cole, the

45:30

Baptist blogger on Twitter, released this on, this letter. He's apparently in the archives.

45:36

He admitted this on Twitter. He's in the archives at Southwestern, at Southeastern, at Southern, and he's, at least at Southwestern, he's going through stuff on Paige Patterson.

45:47

He's looking for, for things that he can find that, and some of the stuff that I've seen, he keeps releasing and saying,

45:54

I'm releasing documents. And then it's like something usually stupid or, but this was one that got a lot of traction.

46:00

This was, this, this email that Patterson had written, or a letter, back in 2012.

46:08

it was at a time when Fred Lutter, I believe that's how you pronounce his name. He was going to become, or had become,

46:17

I guess, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. And Paige Patterson is talking about this with Jimmy Draper. And he's saying to him, saying, look,

46:25

I, here's the, the passage in question. It says, among many of the ethnic groups, there were not so many of them who understand the issue involved and seriousness of them.

46:36

And he's talking about inerrancy and doctrinal stuff. Under Fred's leadership, it would be possible for us to slide back towards where we once were, where we once were as white people, by the way, where we once were means not diverse, where we once were means before the resurgence.

46:52

He's saying that ethnic churches don't always value theology and don't always understand the inerrancy debate as much as he thinks that maybe they should.

47:05

And he doesn't want to see a return to that. But he says, in any event, I am still glad we elected a black president and specifically

47:13

Fred. He's glad we elected a black president. Now, look, is that racist to say,

47:20

I'm glad we elected a black president. It doesn't seem racist to me, does it? No, no, it's not. But he made the mistake apparently of saying, well, ethnic minorities don't have, generally, they're the groups that they associate with, the churches and so forth.

47:39

They're, they don't understand the inerrancy debate quite as much. So, so that was what became the issue was that Paige Patterson is racist.

47:49

And, and I'll show you that. This is Danny Akin. Oh, I'm grieved.

47:54

No excuse, no excuse. Fred was fully capable of making excellent appointments. Pastor Steve Gaines, who was a former, former president of the

48:01

SBC. I'm deeply grieved over this letter. It's racist and beyond excuse. We denounce all forms of racism.

48:07

J .D. Greer. Yes, Danny, me too. Bottom line is current president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Bottom line is for years, we have failed to heed the warnings of our brothers and sisters of color to benefit from their wisdom.

48:18

Some of the most faithful and gracious leaders I know in our convention, our brothers and sisters of color, exercise in gospel faithfulness, and so forth and so on.

48:26

So, so this is what's being said by a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, current president of Southern Baptist Convention, and the current president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

48:36

And I couldn't find it, but I had seen that Al Mohler also chimed in and said he wasn't surprised that Patterson had said this. And, and look, this is the thing, guys, like this is a private letter.

48:47

And I don't know about you. Sometimes you say things in private letters you wouldn't normally say out there. You would phrase it differently.

48:53

Page Patterson, as far as I understand it, he was glad that a black person was elected president. And he thought that with a majority white denomination before the resurgence, it did not value inerrancy.

49:05

And he recognized that there was a tendency. He didn't say it was that black people didn't know theology or they weren't capable of knowing theology.

49:13

He's just saying there's a tendency in black churches or institutions, or he even doesn't say black, he says ethnic, to not understand that debate or to not value that debate as much as they ought to.

49:26

that, I don't understand how that's like textbook definition of racism. Like, I, you can't like say that and then follow up with, and I'm glad a black guy's president of the

49:38

SBC and be a racist. And, and when I first saw this, I was like, there's, come on, like that can't be like Patterson's whole view of this.

49:46

Like there's, there's gotta be, there's gotta be examples of Patterson saying other things that show that he's not racist.

49:53

And sure enough, there are. Sure enough, there are. And some people took to Twitter to point them out.

49:59

Here's a guy, Z Scott Coulter, says for the record, Paige Patterson is not racist. During his life in ministry so far, he led an

50:05

African -American church while their pastor was ill for several months. Wow. So he has some firsthand experience.

50:12

He endured confrontation with the KKK over leading an African -American to Christ in Mississippi while in seminary.

50:17

He hired the first African -American professor at SCBTS, hired the first African -American Dean at SWPTS, who was removed from their position.

50:29

One of the guys that had the first, first Dean at Southwestern is then demoted by, by Greenway.

50:36

First African -American Dean. Issued a degree, an alumni award to African -Americans. Let's see, under missions to Madagascar.

50:47

Scholarships for minorities. Emphasized diversity. Worked with others to be, to get

50:54

Frank Luter to become the first African -American president. Shepherded African -Americans. Advocated for a statement on race to be included in the

51:02

Baptist Faith and Message 2000. I mean, it goes on and on and on.

51:09

In 2018, 29 % of the faculty were minority and women. Wonder what that is now.

51:15

These are just off the top of his head, he says. Here's someone else. It says, this is a student.

51:22

Puts pictures of him. He's black and there's Paige Patterson hugging him. He says, he graduated.

51:27

He says, a racist person will not give a big bear hug publicly to a black African student like me. Paige Patterson and his wife, they loved everyone.

51:36

They prayed for those, persecuted them. They have no racism issue. And so this is just resounding.

51:43

This is a rebuke to these guys. This is a rebuke to these guys. What are they trying to do?

51:49

What play is this? I mean, you'd think Danny Akin knows Paige Patterson. So what's going on here?

51:55

What's the give? So this letter is released.

52:01

People get outraged about it. And of course, the Baptist blogger, he's saying that, he said, he says, do black men have a greater propensity for black backsliding?

52:18

You know, that's what he, that's what he takes away from Patterson's letter here. Then Paige Patterson releases this.

52:24

This is a statement from, this is an email from Benjamin Cole, the Baptist blogger.

52:30

And this is in 2017, two years ago. It says, Paige, I followed the unfolding drama.

52:36

And while you and I have, and will likely remain, maintain our differences, this side of heaven,

52:41

I want you to know that I understand, perhaps better than most, how these sorts of things can give a completely distorted impression and create collateral damage and pain.

52:49

On the issue of race, your consistent witness is untarnished. I'm sorry, this has created a headache for you and your faculty.

52:57

If, if ever given the opportunity, I would defend you all the way and repudiate those who might attribute to you and your institution that you lead with racist motives.

53:10

So this is what Benjamin Cole told Paige Patterson back in 2017. And now in 2019, he is leading the charge to try to show that Paige Patterson is a racist.

53:21

This is why I'm saying, I don't have all the answers, but something's in the water. Something's going on here. What's going on is a question that I can only speculate on.

53:31

But there's a lot of hypocrisy, a lot of contradiction. And I think y 'all ought to know this.

53:37

This is all publicly available. This isn't, you know, I didn't have to go behind closed doors to find all this stuff.

53:46

So that's what's going on at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I wanted to close with this.

53:54

I made a poll and I screenshotted earlier. Oh, one last thing I should probably say about the

53:59

Baptist blogger, Benjamin Cole. He seems like he's pretty tight with Adam Greenway.

54:05

In fact, the last tweet that I saw before is a tweet this morning from the Baptist blogger is he is sending

54:11

Adam Greenway personally. I think it was Christmas lights. And you know, if you just look on the

54:17

Baptist blogger's Twitter account, you can see him and Adam Greenway seem like they're pretty good friends. At least he references

54:24

Adam Greenway quite a bit. So put that out there. For what it's worth, this is a poll

54:29

I did. I said, who would you rather have, Albert Mueller or Jordan Hall as president of the Southern Baptist Convention? If you had to choose, if you were forced to choose, some of you may not want either.

54:38

So Albert Mueller, this is 668 votes. 63 % voted for Mueller.

54:44

37 % voted for Jordan Hall. And J .D. Hall, he's the president or the director,

54:51

I don't know, founder, I guess maybe would be the better word, a pulpit and pen. And the reason I did that was because I see

54:56

J .D. Hall as kind of, he's like a Trump kind of guy. Like he's just kind of like, he'll go in there and do some chemotherapy.

55:02

So he's kind of brash and sometimes, he's told me this himself personally.

55:09

He's like, yeah, sometimes I don't have much of a filter and that's who he is, but he can't stand the woke stuff.

55:15

So I was just, I'm trying to test like where are people really at? Like how serious do they think this problem is?

55:21

Like, and do they think Al Mueller's gonna address it, given his track record at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary?

55:28

And maybe I'll do another episode where I'll talk more about his track record, but I'm gonna put another poll out there and you can go to my

55:35

Twitter profile and you'll see it. And I'm gonna ask, who would you rather have, the winner of this poll,

55:41

Al Mueller or Tom Askell? Which one? And I'd be curious to see the results.

55:46

And maybe once I get those two results, I will evaluate, I mean, I know this isn't scientific, but talk about kind of where I see people, why

55:55

I think people think the way they do about the Southern Baptist Convention and how bad a shape it actually is in, where people see it and what reality is.

56:07

So this is just a fun thing. Last but not least, let's talk about an announcement here.

56:14

So if you're a Patreon supporter, thank you so much. Man, it just really means a lot.

56:21

You've helped me do podcasts, do research, do speaking. Some of the benefits that you get are you get promos.

56:29

Everyone who is a current patron of mine is able to get this book.

56:34

I've sent it to a number of you. I've gotten some feedback on it already. It's short, but there were kind of like three social justice movements in American Christian Church.

56:44

And I've kind of, I've gotten a book that talks about all of them.

56:50

And I've made those books the bonuses if you become a patron.

56:57

So the first one obviously is the Sacred Conviction book. The second one that you can get, and in order to get this, you have to become a $15 a month supporter or more, but you can get

57:08

Christianity and Liberalism by Jay Gresham Machen. And for $30 or more, you can get a

57:15

Francis A. Schaeffer trilogy, three essential books in one volume. And I do believe

57:21

I have, yes, I do have that here. So that's a little thicker.

57:27

And I'll show that to you. So you can get this. This is three books of his.

57:35

God Who Is There, Escape From Reason, He Is There and He Is Not Silent. And he was kind of the thought leader of the religious right in a way.

57:46

And then if you do $30 or more, I'm gonna give you all three of those. So you get

57:51

Christianity and Liberalism, you get Sacred Conviction, The South Stand for Biblical Authority, and you get a Francis A. Schaeffer trilogy.

57:57

So we're covering the North -South split over the Northern social reform movements. We're getting the modernist controversy and we're getting the religious right and the controversies with that all taken care of there.

58:12

And the other thing you get if you're a patron is you get more accessibility to me. You can message me more freely.

58:19

I'm more likely to respond. You get updates. I put an email out every time, or an update when

58:24

I do a video. And there's a lot of bonus material. One of the things that you're gonna get if you're a patron this month is my extensive paper that I wrote on Martin Luther and whether he was responsible at all for the

58:39

Holocaust. And I may do an episode on it at some point, but you're gonna get the actual document with the sources in it because you're a patron.

58:47

So you're gonna be getting that information. And so there's things like that that will benefit you,

58:53

I hope, and make it worth your while to support what I'm doing. And again, I will say, if you can support

58:59

Enemies Within the Church with this project we're doing going down to FBC Naples, that would be very greatly appreciated. I think that's a really big deal.

59:07

So to close everything out, I am going to play for you. This is a clip from the Stand Against Marxism conference about a month ago, and I hope you enjoy it.

59:18

Christian conservatives, I want to encourage you to view this moment as an opportunity to offer a real, positive, biblical, loving alternative to the hatred and rage that we see around us.

59:31

Our goal today is for you to walk out if you're better equipped and encouraged to fight this battle wisely and biblically.

59:38

Two years ago, when I was still a student at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, the monument debate was in full swing.

59:46

And there was a mob of more than 100 people from socialist groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, the World Party, and Industrial Workers of the

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World. Trevor can tell you everything you want to know about all three of those groups, I'm sure. They went to Durham, which is near my seminary, and they ripped down a monument and vandalized it.

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And there was a similar effort after that at a nearby college town at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to take down another monument.

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And the police opposed this and it resulted in a sit -in. And I thought, what better place to engage culture?

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I mean, I can go there and talk to liberal protesters about Christianity, and they have to listen to me.

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Think about it. If they leave, their sit -in's over. If they stay, they hear me talk about Jesus.

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It's a win -win, right? I thought about asking folks from Southeastern to come with me, but they probably would have joined this social justice warrior, so I didn't do that.

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I went alone. And it was a very hot day, so I brought 40

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Gatorades with me. Not for me. It wasn't that hot. It was for all the protesters to give to them.

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And there was two students, protesters, I'm not sure if they were students or not, but they saw me coming with these

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Gatorades, and they said, thank you so much. They took the Gatorades, and they thought I was part of the protest, too.

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And so I got into the inner circle, and I asked, I said, who's in charge of this?

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I want to talk to them. And so I sat down with the person who was running this.

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There was about seven people around her in this circle. I said, man, I'd like to have a conversation with y 'all about what you're doing here, why we're doing this protest.

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And she said to me, and I wrote this right after it occurred.

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This is almost an exact quote. She says, of course, discussion is what we're all about. She probably ate those words later.

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And with an air of genuine curiosity, I asked why they were protesting. And they said that they opposed racism.

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The statue was of a young student going to war with the caption, to the sons of the university who entered the war of 1861 to 65 and answered to the call of their country and whose lives taught lessons of their great commander that duty is the sublimest word in the

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English language. That's what it said. And this display, according to them, caused discrimination, intimidation, and trauma for students as they walked to class.

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So I tried to build a bridge, being the moderate, winsome guy that I am. And I invited them.

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I said, why don't we take this protest down the street to Planned Parenthood right now where three times as many black babies as white babies are being killed, according to the latest statistics.

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And you can imagine the reaction. I don't think he's with us anymore. So I probably talked to about 30 students or more during the next three hours, having conversations there the entire time.

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There were no conservatives, no Christians. It was just me. And after we were done, we had talked about American history, why there was evil in the world, the message of Christ.

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No one refused the tracts that I gave them. Two students even thanked me at the end for taking the time to share a different view with them.

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They had never met a conservative. The conservatives that they thought, the Christians too, were portrayed on CNN.

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They had never met a real, live conservative who was willing to articulate an alternative viewpoint.

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I don't believe. I want to encourage you today that you as a

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Christian with the power of God and scripture can do a lot more than you think you can. Simply by exemplifying true love, love is the key here, through listening and gently caring for those genuinely deceived by social justice.

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You know, God says in Proverbs 419, the way of the wicked is like darkness. They do not know over what they stumble.

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And when we see people trying to tear apart the fabric of Christian civilization, we have a righteous indignation.

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And that's justified. But we should also take pity. Naive social justice warriors are destroying the foundation that has allowed them to be lifted from poverty, enjoy civil liberties, and benefit from national security.

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It says in Mark 6, when Jesus went ashore, he saw a large crowd and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

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And he began to teach them many things. Most of today's major evangelical leaders are not like Jesus.

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They are cruel. They are not taking the opportunity right in front of them to offer an alternative from this hopeless philosophy.

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They refuse to gently but firmly explain the areas of scripture that contradict culture.

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They won't do it. I received a message the day after I visited with the protesters and it reads, thanks for talking with us yesterday.

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I see now that an evangelical viewpoint seems to be an anchor for you. I grew up mostly in the

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Presbyterian church but my dad's death changed all of that. Long story. She posted on her social media account that day, today a

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Baptist seminary student showed up. Many of us talked with him. He just sat down with us and I'm glad to say there was no ugliness whatsoever.

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I'm not sure his mind was changed and I don't know if anyone's mind can be changed by a few hours of conversation but I know that communication and listening are at the heart of true healing.

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Think about that word healing. Healing from what? This was sent to me from the person who yelled in my face, the most aggressive protester during my whole encounter there.

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I only went for one afternoon. Imagine 100 Christians from the local area went for 20 afternoons.

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Not to vent or troll but to stand and preach or sit and talk. To my knowledge, no one else did something similar.

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Even though this is in the Bible Belt, there's plenty of churches around. Unfortunately, most churches have caved to the same social justice.

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I remember a Quaker congregation while I was there showed up to support the social justice warriors and recruit them to sing hymns which

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I don't think any of them did. There was churches there donating food and beverages to the protesters and this is a group the very next year with Antifa operatives who would overwhelm the police and vandalize public property.

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So they fed and encouraged bad behavior but you know what they didn't do? They never addressed deeper spiritual issues.

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Offending a holy God who is pure in justice who knows every thought that they'd ever had and will judge them someday but offers a way to be forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ.

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Didn't offer that message. Christians are abandoning their primary spiritual mission to further a false earthly gospel.

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They are recruiting woke students with the message we're just like you.

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Isn't that what the Southern Baptist Convention is doing? Isn't that what CRU is doing? Isn't that what the Gospel Coalition is doing?

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Instead of making the glorious gospel of grace through faith their chief message evangelical parachurch organizations denominations and churches are telling the world we're just like you.

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You don't like President Trump? Neither do we. Two years ago when I was at Southeastern in one semester three statements against Donald Trump or the alt -right either originated in or were signed by seminary professors and administrators at the seminary.

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You know how many were originated at Southeastern in the eight years of Obama? Zero. Not one.

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Tell me which man did more to publicly threaten the church's mission and politically erode Christian morality? Yet silence.

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Why? You want homosexuality? So do we. As long as it's a fixed innate orientation just don't sexually act on it.

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We just exposed three top crew leaders for teaching this exact idea both in evangelism and at staff conferences.

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You want illegal migration? So do we. We'll even twist what scripture says about aliens and strangers and confuse the role of civil and ecclesiastical authorities to do it.

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Judd and I interviewed a member of a Southern Baptist church in North Carolina under the shadow of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary where I went and they were taking church money and giving it to illegal migrants to help them financially encouraging them to stay.

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Now, I have no reason to believe that's unusual because I just did a whole video about a month ago on Russell Moore's teaching on this very same topic.

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Ideas have consequences. The sheep will go where the leaders lead them. You want to tear down this country's history?

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So do we. And we'll hold conferences like the Liberating Evangelicalism De -Centering Whiteness Conference just held in Chicago which was financed in part by the

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Freedom Road Socialists. I don't know if Trevor knew that. He talks about them a lot.

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You did? Yeah. That just happened. Or you could go to Thabiti Anabwile's Just Gospel Conference sponsored by the seminary

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I went to among other evangelical groups. And they will teach you the best way to slander heroes of the past who aren't here to defend themselves.

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You want reparations, socialism, and quotas? So do we. Gospel Coalition will push articles after article in front of your pastor to guilt him into supporting redistribution schemes because of inequities in this country.

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You don't like the patriarchy? Neither do we. We'll platform women at every level in our denomination as long as they don't call themselves pastors.

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We'll use the Me Too movement and unproven allegations to missile leaders in our denomination. And I'm looking at you

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Southern Baptist Convention. From an outside perspective it seems the winds of culture are stronger than the fortitude of the church.

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Why are we babes tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine? Where are the leaders? Why am

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I standing here? You couldn't have told me in January I'd be standing here talking about this. Filling a gap because other

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Christian leaders who should be standing here aren't. Am I missing something or do we still worship the sovereign king of the universe?

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Why are his representatives so afraid? For the past hundred years we have watched institution after institution shift from God -centeredness to man -centeredness.

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The shift in Christian denominations produced the North -South splits of the 1830s and 40s. The shift in higher education produced the modernist controversy of the 1920s.

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The shift in national government produced the culture wars of the 1980s. And every time this shift occurs from a theocentric, so God -centered, to an anthropocentric, man -centered view two competing

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Christian groups always emerge. So you had Southern denominations and old school Presbyterians versus Northern social reform movements.

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You had fundamentalists on one side and liberal social gospel proponents on the other. You had the moral majority on one side and the evangelical left on the other.

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Ron Sider and Jim Wallace have been pushing the narrative you're hearing now from Tim Keller and Russell Moore since the 70s.

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Ron Sider's book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger was used as curriculum at Southern seminary before the conservative resurgence in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. So this isn't new. It's just repackaged. A mission for the church that centers on man's present social condition rather than his future eternal state will always fall into heresy.

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I'll say that again. A mission for the church that centers on man's present social condition rather than his future eternal state will always fall into heresy.

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In the modern world there is no respectable place for an institution concerned with souls eternity permanence and transcendence.

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If a pastor wants respect in this world he focuses on man's temporal needs mimicking a therapist or now a community organizer which is exactly what they're cranking out.

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We're just like you. A church that is completely conformed to the world though will die.

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And we've seen this play out over and over again in church history. There's nothing unique the church offers when someone can just go down the street and get a better version of the same thing.

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If you want to pursue social justice why join a church? Why not join the democratic party? Make that your religion.

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Christian we offer something the world actually needs. We've given it up.

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We've put it in the back in the periphery not at the center. So why are young Christians turning to social justice?

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There's more than one answer to this question but I want to give you a few things to think about. Anthropologically humans are sinful humans can be envious and want revenge.

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Social justice allegedly punishes those with more privileged power and resources. So on one level it's not any more complicated than that.

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It's dangerous boxing people in but as I look at interactions especially on Twitter between Kyle J.

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Howard and Jim Artisby I would put them in this category. It's pretty simple it's just envy it's revenge.

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Morally speaking millennials by and large have been raised to hate their own heritage their country their family in many cases are topics of derision and scorn.

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They bear the guilt of their past sins and they want to be free of this legacy. So social justice offers a way to pay for their sins and be free of the legacy their parents gave them.

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And I would put Matt Chandler and David Platt in this category to some extent. There's a white guilt perhaps of some kind motivating them to go along with this.

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Culturally speaking social justice is in fashion. Most humans follow orders and don't need more justification than that.

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That's a lot of the seminary students I think that I was classmates with. Historically speaking there are a lot of broken and bitter people using social justice as a way to find meaning in an otherwise purposeless life.

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This is the point I want us to focus on the most. When I was at the protest one of the male social justice warriors was trying to justify abortion.

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And he asked me what if I go out one night get drunk forget about protection and have sex with a girl I don't know.

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I don't want her to be punished with a baby. And I responded and I said well there's a better way.

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My wife and I are Christians. We chose to abstain from having sexual intercourse until we set our marriage vows a year ago.

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Now it's over three years ago. If we had an accident our child would be born into a stable home with two parents who loved each other.

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Now you've got to understand the situation here. I'm sitting in this circle of social justice warriors and they're all

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I'm the only conservative. So they're all trying to get my attention. So they're talking over one another and I would just point at the one that I was allowing to speak at that moment.

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So it's weird. I was kind of like in control of the conversation even though I think they all hated me on some level.

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And everyone stopped. When I said that you could just be married everyone stopped and looked at me like I had three heads.

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No one said anything. There was silence. The only time during that whole conversation I can say there was silence. The look in the young man's eyes told me he had no idea what

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I was talking about. The very concept of a loving family was foreign to him. Social fragmentation characterizes the modern age.

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Children who grew up in broken families with no place to call home because they moved around so many times having no positive traditions, values or identity passed down to them through parents or church are left as wanderers.

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And you see the bumper stickers, right? Not all who wander are lost. We are proud of being wanderers.

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Whatever little shred of stability they find in the media and school tells them that the world's problems are caused by rich white

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American men who often resemble the fathers who didn't love or care for them. They may be surrounded by material blessings of the

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American dream but they resent it because it does not replace what they are truly missing. So what happens to a group of people stripped of identity and purpose?

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They will seek to find it somewhere else. Social justice pretends to offer these things.

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I protest, therefore I am. My parents may not think much of me but the world thinks

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I'm a hero. I may not have a place I feel is home but I have a space in which

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I'm safe. There may not be a God who cares about me but the government will take care of me.

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Last week I visited the church I grew up in in upstate New York. It's called Grace Bible Church in Wappingers Falls and it probably has about 150 people on a

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Sunday morning and I realized something that I hadn't really realized before. Of the 15 or so millennials not one of them is a social justice warrior.

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And I got to thinking why is that? I had my answer. Most of my friends in the demographic were fans of Matt Chandler, David Platt, John Piper, to some extent

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Tim Keller. And most of them come from broken homes, many from poverty. They live in a progressive area.

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They are the prime demographic social justice warriors would try to appeal to and recruit.

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Yet during MLK50 and the Together for the Gospel coalition conference last year they all immediately rejected the social justice narrative they heard coming out of the mouths of their theological heroes.

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And I hadn't started my podcast yet. I didn't live in the area so it wasn't my influence that caused any of this.

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So what was it? Unlike their families that little church was a place, a place, a real tangible place, not a space for them to belong.

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And there's a heritage and an identity that they can call their own there. Most stay in the area and those who leave are generally trying to get back.

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There's a community there of people of all ages, colors, cultures, classes, and backgrounds that genuinely love each other.

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The people that come to that church do so because they love the gospel. It's the most multi -ethnic church

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I think I've ever been in and no one was ever trying to use social justice to make it that way. Evangelicalism broadly speaking tries to redefine itself every 10 years.

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I think we still have the same paint job 20 years ago, some of the rooms there.

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There's, it's not in a strip mall, there's no brand, it's just a church. No changing fads, people aren't in style, pastor doesn't try to dress in style, they don't try to use cool words, but what they do have is love.

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A transcendent standard of theological truth is preached and studied within the context of the community of faith.

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Older men disciple younger men, older women disciple younger women and it's organic and I'd like to suggest to you that millennials are looking for a transcendent community, they want belonging.

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Why do you think gentrification is happening? Trying to get away from the strip malls and the advertising, they get bombarded by advertising, they're looking for something genuine, something beyond them, something that will last.

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These have all been taken away from them in modernity. Many evangelicals are fleeing to the liturgical churches because of this.

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I've seen someone who was going down the social justice path join the church and do a complete 180. Now I'm telling you that without the subject coming up, young people can spot the error in that church for some reason.

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They just know it, you didn't have to tell them. And I think it's because social justice is built on envy and it appeals to broken people who have never truly learned to love.

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In the context of a properly functioning biblical church, it's hard to harbor resentment against people you know and love.

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When you have a rich person who's discipling you, it's hard to hate rich people. When you have someone of a different skin color and they're helping you with something, it's hard to hate them.

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James 4 says, what are the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is it not the source of your pleasures that wage war on your members you lust and do not have, you commit murder, you are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

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That's a social justice movement. And this is my answer for those who have asked me, what can

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I do about my son, granddaughter, niece, nephew, random wandering millennial? You can model the stability, truth, belonging, respect, and love found in Jesus Christ.

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First Corinthians 12 .13 says, for by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit.

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That's what you can do. In your local community, not going to social media, not saying not to do that, but not primarily going there to vent frustration, but looking at the real people around you.

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And I've seen this done by older folks in the college campus setting, and it works beautifully. So that's my encouragement.

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I hope this starts a conversation about further what we can do about this, and I appreciate you having me.