Darrell Harrison Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Darrell Harrison’s Background and Conversion

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I think we�re coming up on year eight, Monday through Friday, year eight. No wonder I�m getting grayer as the time goes on.

If you would like to email me, it is info at nocompromiseradio .com. If you�ve got a personal question or a private question, you can just email me directly, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. As you know, we have different formats for different days, and Wednesdays is when I like to interview people and talk about what the Lord has done through these people and in them, and it�s just interesting to me how God saves all different kinds of people in all different kinds of circumstances, in all different kinds of ways, but only through the gospel of a Jesus Christ who�s a representative and a risen substitute.

Well, since it�s Wednesday today, I have Darrell Harrison on the line today. Darrell, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Thank you, Mike. It�s an honor to be here, brother. Do you know what? I got to know you through Twitter, and all of a sudden, it was all these D .B. Harrison tweets from left and right and center, not politically and not theologically, but just everywhere I went, I couldn�t get rid of your tweets, and I thought, you know what?

I need to get to know this guy. Your Twitter description says, �Reformed, U .S. Army veteran, conservative, Liberty University, Princeton Seminary, blogger and host of Just Thinking On, the Bar podcast, tweets are mine, retweets do not equal endorsements, Atlanta.

Besides that, tell me something about Darrell B. Harrison.

Wow, Mike, man, I have to answer your question by saying I�m really uncomfortable talking about myself. I really am. I much prefer folks ask me questions and I just kind of respond to them, but. All right, well, let�s make it easy.

Were you born a Christian?

No. All right, well, tell me about your life and how God saved you. What were the providential circumstances through that?

Yeah, I will say this. Growing up, if I can go back to my earliest remembrances of my childhood, I always like to say that my mother wore the spiritual pants in the family. It was my mother who introduced me and my two siblings to church, God, the Bible.

Like every black household back in the �70s, you had this huge King James leather-bound Bible open to the psalms, probably, sitting in the middle of the coffee table there, in the middle of the living room, the family room there.

So, you know, I grew up with an awareness that there was a God, but I didn�t really get to know Him until I was in my early 20s. I spent about 26 years in the black church over on the west side of Atlanta where my parents went, their parents went, their siblings went, so it was sort of a generational representation in that church.

But one day it hit me that I wasn�t learning anything there. So I left there, and it was a church called Chapel Hill Missionary Baptist Church over on Northside Drive on the west side of Atlanta, right behind Morehouse College.

But I left there in my mid -20s, and the Lord had me go down and visit First Baptist Church of Atlanta, which is where Dr. Charles Stanley currently still teaches. I think he�s in his mid -80s now, but Dr. Stanley is still teaching there, and I ended up staying at First Baptist Atlanta for another 20-some odd years.

And it was under Dr. Stanley�s teaching that, number one, I first heard the Bible read from a non-KJV translation. Dr. Stanley reads from the NASB, and man, that blew my mind, because I didn�t hear any of those Bs, those Ls, Fs, and all that stuff that kind of make your lips sort of twist together trying to pronounce those words.

And I ran out, man, that very next day, that Monday after going to church on a Sunday, and I bought an NASB. It was a Riley NASB that I read for years. But it was after visiting, like most good Southern Baptist churches do, you know, you visit, you fill out a card, and then they�ll have somebody contact you.

Well, about a week after my visiting there for the first time, there was a black couple that came and visited me at my apartment on Campbellton Road, Deerfield Apartments on Campbellton Road. I�ll never forget it.

Husband and wife, they actually were in the orchestra at FBA, and they came and talked to me about the old Romans wrote, and talked to me about my sin, and if I were to die, would I go to heaven? You know, and I had to ask that question, �No, no, I wouldn�t.

So at my little dining room table that night, one night in February, I remember because it was very cold, I would, as a good Arminian would say, gave my life to Jesus, gave my life to Christ. But I ended up staying there for 20-some odd years, but I will give Dr. Stanley credit here.

I don�t know that I would today describe him as an expository teacher, but he was more expository than I had ever heard growing up in the black church. I wouldn�t say, you know, not trying to be disrespectful to any local black church or the historic black church as an entity, but generally speaking, in most black churches, you�ll get a lot of homiletics, but you don�t get much hermeneutics.

But it was under Dr. Stanley that I started to catch on to, �Well, wait a minute, these words don�t necessarily mean what they mean in English. There�s sort of an underlying meaning to them in the Greek and the Hebrew, and you have to understand context, you have.

So it was in my mid -20s that I was saved, and the Lord�s been sort of feeding that desire that I think I�ve always had since I was a little kid to know about God, to know more about Him, and that road has lately, over the past three to four years, exposed me to Reformed theology, where I have sort of, in listening to, man, just brilliant theologians like John MacArthur and R .C. Sproul and others, reading some of the early Church Fathers like Augustine and those folks, and God, just through those people, has given me a deeper theological understanding of His Word with respect to doctrines and the distinctives between biblical theology and systematic theology, so that now, yeah, I would consider myself a Reformed Christian and a Calvinist, if anyone wants to put it in those terms.

So that�s kind of a brief overview of where I�m coming from and how God has worked in my life up to this point.

Amen. Thank you, Daryl, for that. Just one minor correction or comment. Number one, you don�t know cold. As I�m up here in the Siberian tundra. It was actually snowing yesterday. And Daryl, the other thing is, you were talking about black churches, and maybe there�s a lot of emotion and a lot of passion, but they don�t really know what they�re passionate about, and all of a sudden now you go to First Baptist Atlanta and there�s more Bible teaching.

I think maybe modern evangelicalism says, you know what, let�s kind of, you know, let�s get out of the black church context, the stereotypical black church context, because it is hyper-emotional, and let�s move over here to learn and to grow.

I�m obviously for learning and growing in grace and knowledge of the truth. But do you think, and even as we talked about before the show, there�s something to be said for a man who stands in the pulpit and is just fired up and preaches with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And so I think white church, evangelical church, we can learn something from the black church when they are really passionate about their subject. It�s almost like, let�s put the two together so we have both as what Lloyd-Jones called �light that is, what the text says and means, and then how we deliver that, �heat.

Do you think I�m right or do you think I�m wrong?

Preaching With Both Light and Heat

Yeah, I think you�re right. I like how you put it, Mike. Let�s put the two together. Okay, let�s put the two together. And that�s not necessarily to say that even that should be a template, because I think it�s important for each of us as Christians to operate within the giftedness that God gives us.

So I�m not suggesting even in putting the two together that we go out there and just try to force something that doesn�t come naturally to us in white churches or black churches. But I will give you a very recent example of how I think putting the two together is very important.

I was at my mother�s. My mother still is a member of Chapel Hill Missionary Baptist Church to this day. And I was at her church a couple Sundays ago. I surprised her there by showing up there. My mother�s a great singer.

I�ve always loved hearing my mom. My mom has sang gospel since I can remember. So when I find out that my mom is singing, I try to go and hear my mom sing. So I was there to hear my mother sing. She didn�t know I was there, but the pastor gave a very animated sermon.

A young pastor, brother�s probably in his early 30s. The majority of that congregation is probably in their late 70s, early 80s. A very disparate congregation, generationally speaking. You�ve got the very old congregants and then the very young congregants.

But this brother gave a very impassioned sermon. But as I�m sitting there after he�s done preaching, you know, when you attend the black churches long enough, the service becomes predictable. So you know at what time you�re going to reach that climax in the sermon where everybody�s going to start shouting and then the organ�s going to start in sync with what the pastor says.

You�ll hear the organ sort of emphasize what the pastor�s saying. But apart from the emotion and energy that went into the sermon, now comes the part where, quote unquote, the doors of the church are open.

So here�s the invitation to be saved and give your life to Christ. And man, just like I remember as a child, here�s the usher walking up and down the aisle, his arms spread open wide, wearing his white gloves on his hands.

You know, there are two chairs set out in front of the pulpit there for anyone who wants to come and give their life to Christ. And that goes to my point earlier. So you get the homiletics. You�re going to get the style of preaching, man.

It�s definitely attention-getter. But what I was missing and what I was so disheartened about is that there was no exposition of what salvation is, why you need Jesus, what is sin, what is salvation.

What will it mean if you do rise up from that pew and walk this aisle and sit in one of these two chairs? Is it just that I�m going to give you my name and contact information? Are you going to tell me the gospel and why the gospel is true above and against all these other worldviews?

So, you know, you put it very well, brother. Let�s do both. But we can�t. One of the things we can�t do is continue with this one way or the other approach.

The Gospel’s Content and Its Proclamation

Talking to Daryl Harrison today. If you want to ask Daryl any questions, he�s got his blog and you could probably email him if you go to his blog at justthinking .me. Daryl, I look at 1 Corinthians 15, and if I just read it with the Greek but put it in English, he says, �Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I gospeled to you.

The ESV says, �I preached to you. But literally, it�s, �The gospel I gospeled to you. Now Paul says in 2 Timothy 4, �Preach the gospel. That�s a different word. That�s to herald. Here, Paul is saying, �Listen, the good news is such good news that the way we deliver the good news is important.

Now, we don�t have to pick one or the other. I mean, if we had to, we would say it�s content over delivery. But since the content is so wonderful, our presentation and our proclamation of the content needs to mirror or to echo that content.

So in other words, I think to myself, if I really have good news, and I do, sinners can be reconciled to God, peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, then I should say that in a way that emphasizes good news.

So I�m not going to get up and say, you know, I�ve got really good news for you, and then I�ve got a frown on my face because I would betray the message with the messenger. So as a preacher, I try to say, I want to echo what the text says.

And so there, I think, you know what? People get excited about their children, about a football team, about a nice meal, whatever it is, and their face shows it. But then when they get up in the pulpit, maybe they�re nervous, maybe they don�t want to fumble with God�s Word, but it seems to me, Daryl, lots of people just get up and then they�re just monotone, or for the sake of argument, close to monotone when they�re delivering good news.

I just wish more people would say, I don�t care how I look, I�m just going to go for it.

Yeah, I think that�s awesome, and I think, you know, you take a guy like Spurgeon. I�ve seen, you know, renderings of Spurgeon and whatnot. I don�t think Spurgeon�s the kind of guy who got up in the pulpit caring about how he looked.

I mean, from what I read of him, he�s probably one of the most on-fire, if not the most on-fire preacher to ever preach the gospel. You know, maybe a Jonathan Edwards you might want to put in there.

But I think a lot of a primary contributor to a lack of that replicating the joy or the goodness of the good news in the pulpit comes from the fact that I think a lot of churches are not operating on the model of that mission being their primary mission.

You�ve got a lot of churches here operating on a business model where, you know, they want to preach, have the gospel proffered in such a way that it seems inviting to people, it seems relevant to people.

We want to bring people into the church, so we don�t want to, you know, cast anybody away. We don�t want to make anybody feel self-conscious or fearful when they come into our church. So the gospel is sort of packaged in a certain way so as to make sure none of those quote-unquote �negative� things come to fruition.

And I think when you operate a church or when a preacher steps into the pulpit with that mindset, it�s kind of at the expense of what you were just talking about, like exhibiting in your outward appearance the joy, the most joyful news you could ever utter from your lips, that there is good news for sinners.

But the way we operate many churches today kind of get in the way of that because, let�s be honest here, pastors are trying to keep jobs. Pastors are trying to appease certain segments of their community or even, let�s narrow it down, certain segments of their own congregations that they don�t want to upset for fear of being voted out.

So there�s a lot going on in churches today that I think prevent pastors from preaching the gospel in a total state of unconsciousness. And what I mean by that is just not caring at all about how you�re perceived, but just focusing on the fact that, you know, man, woman, boy, girl, this is the good news for you that will keep you out of hell for all of eternity.

So I think you�re right.

Social Justice, Sin, and the Meaning of Unity

Daryl, when I look at your blog, and you�ve told me you think you�re a better writer than speaker, but you�re such a good speaker. At least you�ve got a good cadence and radio voice, so I don�t know what you look like, but you�ve got a good radio voice.

But if your writing is better than your speaking, then I want all the listeners to go to your blog site as well. Now, I just pulled it up, and these are some of the latest articles that you�ve written, and so one of them is called �Why Racism Isn�t Wrong� with quotes around racism.

�On Social Justice Protests and Our Misguided Quest for Unity, the Struggle for Social Justice is a Struggle with Ourselves and Seeking a Social Savior. So you obviously are writing about some of these social gospel, social justice issues.

Tell our listeners what the issue really is, and why are you so passionately writing about the subject?

I�ll tell you what, Mike, this is going to sound like a really funny answer, like I�m trying to avoid your question, but I�m really not. That�s all right. So when someone asks me, �Daryl, what is the issue

Well, you know what, I don�t know. I don�t know what the issue is, and the reason I say I don�t know is because those who are advocating for social justice, they don�t know what the issue is. One of the frustrating things for me, as one who considers himself as one who�s on the front line of this whole social justice discourse that�s going on right now, is that the term social justice is not being definitively framed within an objective context so that it can be defined.

Everyone who�s out there right now who considers themselves even remotely a social justice advocate can�t define the term. Everybody�s got a different agenda. Everybody�s got different definitions, different contextual, excuse me, paradigms of what social justice is, and you bring up my blog, which I appreciate you doing.

I think the past six articles that I�ve written have been on, in one way or another, on this whole social justice issue, not because I�ve wanted to write about them, but because I�m trying to give a gospel-centered perspective on the myriad issues that are being sort of rolled up under the social justice umbrella, and to sort of let people know that what you guys are really talking about is the innate sinful condition of mankind.

But that�s the issue that it seems that everyone wants to avoid here. So you take, for instance, the piece that I wrote titled �On Social Justice Protests and Our Misguided Quests for Unity. Just to give you a little back story on that article, Mike, I came across a piece where I think this was maybe on a Tuesday or something where I wrote the piece.

So it was a Sunday after all these NFL games, and this was the weekend where you probably had the highest number of NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem was this particular Sunday, maybe about six, seven weeks ago.

So my righteous indignation was so piqued after seeing that, that I wrote this article on �Social Justice Protests and Our Misguided Quests for Unity. I wrote that article at my office, at my desk, on my lunch break, probably within one hour.

Now normally when I plan to write a piece, it could take me up to three or four weeks to write a piece, but I was just so upset. Not necessarily at the taking of the knee, but what them found in me was that they don�t know why they�re doing it.

And that�s why I titled the article �The Misguided Quests for Unity �unity� in quotes, because nobody can define what type of unity it is they�re pursuing. So again, to answer your question, I don�t know what the issue is.

I mean, I know what the issue is. The issue is sin. But even beyond that, that there are Christians and non-Christians alike, but speaking of that, I don�t want to leave Christians out of this because they�re involved as well.

For the Christians who are seeking what I call this sort of egalitarian nirvana whereby social justice, as they term it, I�m an advocate whereby the Bible speaks of justice in two terms. There�s justice and there�s injustice.

God doesn�t use adjectives to define or to distinguish what types of justice. But for those who are seeking this sort of egalitarian nirvana in this life, forget it. Forget it. The fact that there�s injustice at all should point us all the way back to Genesis 3 and what God did in Genesis 3 to remedy what Adam and Eve did in Genesis 3.

So again, it�s not that I want to write on these issues. It�s just that circumstances and situations have called for it. But it�s frustrating out there because everybody�s talking unity, unity, justice, justice, equality, equality.

Number one, that�ll never come to fruition in this life, and then number two, you can�t define it. Nobody�s defined what it is.

Race, Reconciliation, and White Privilege

Well, I encourage our listeners to go to JustThinking .me. Excellent writing by Daryl. Daryl, I�m just going to throw out a couple terms and whatever you want to say in response to them, kind of a knee-jerk response or just a reaction that�d be fine by me.

Racial reconciliation. Oxymoron.

Okay, why? Because there is no such thing as race, number one. And then number two, reconciliation is a heart issue. It has nothing to do with the level of melanin you might possess. So, you know, using the term �racial reconciliation�, I think I wrote a piece on my blog that deals with that as well.

I think it�s titled �Races Don�t Reconcile Hearts, Stu. So the very term �racial reconciliation� is a non-sequitur, because there is no such thing as race. God creates ethnicities. He does not create races.

And reconciliation, to whatever extent it is either desired or pursued, intrinsically says that there was a state of conciliation that needs to be restored. And any state of conciliation that needs to be restored is going to originate out of the heart.

It has nothing to do with the color of someone�s skin. So that�s why I think the very term �racial reconciliation� is an oxymoron.

Well, you know what, Daryl? Very insightful. And I would just add that there is racial reconciliation in the Bible, and it�s called the Tower of Babel. Ah, there you go, Steve. There you go. They all got together and reconciled, and so you can have reconciliation with each other, but not with God.

But if you have reconciliation with God and from God, then it�s easy to reconcile to other people.

Exactly. And isn�t that what Trying to find the right word, but he begs us. He begs us. Isn�t that what he does? He says, �I beg you to be reconciled to God.

Amen. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Exactly. There you go. Well, I was talking to Kofi a while ago, and I said, you know, 1 Timothy chapter 2, there�s one God and there�s one mediator between God and men. And then he could have said the Jew Christ Jesus.

He could have said the olive-skin Christ Jesus. But he says the man Christ Jesus. And we are either in Adam, the first man, as unbelievers, or we�re in the last man. And so if you�re a man, there�s another man who came and did what the first Adam didn�t do and couldn�t do.

He lived the perfect life that we, every man, every woman, is required to live. And he dies on the cross for our lawlessness, and then he�s raised from the dead. And so when I think about race, I think, you know, I know you don�t believe in race, but if I had to say, yes, there�s race, there�s just one race.

It�s the human race. It�s human beings, men and women, who are image-bearers made in the likeness of God. Let me give you another word to throw out, and you can tell me what you think about it since that last one was so fun.

�White privilege.

White Privilege, Human Responsibility, and Biblical Categories

I�m here. I�m here. I mean, I think �white privilege� is, that�s the fad term of today. That�s the fad term of today. And let me say something here, since this is no compromise radio, I�m going to go ahead and say something that I�m not going to compromise on, and that is that when you hear that term �white privilege�, you know, see, I can remember when �privilege� was �blessing.

See, I remember a day when, man, you know, if you were able to do something, or if you�re able to afford something, or you�re able to take a trip somewhere, you go, �Wow, God�s really blessed you. You know, now all of a sudden it�s �privilege.

I mean, listen, here�s the thing. With �white privilege�, it�s a fad term, and the frequency by which it is used is two things. Number one, it assumes or presumes upon all white people that they have an advantage over, in most cases, black people.

By virtue of their ethnicity, they have an innate advantage, primarily economically, socially, and otherwise, but especially economically and socially, an advantage over black people. And number two, in using that term, it sort of puts black people in this sort of righteous category, because we�re all victims of those white people who, by virtue of being born white, have an advantage over black people economically and socially, and they use that advantage to hinder and prohibit black people from attaining to a similar station in life.

So in using the term �white privilege�, it puts white people over there in that category there, and accuses them, tries them, convicts them, and sentences them all in one fell swoop. And then at the same time, it puts black people over here as these collective victims of that, quote-unquote, �oppression��that�s another word they like to use�of that oppression, as if we don�t contribute in and of ourselves by our own decision-making, by our own sinful acts and actions, to whatever socioeconomic state we might be in.

So whenever I see that term used, and I see it a lot, I just have to kind of shake my head. There�s a lot wrong with that term, and I don�t buy into that at all.

Amen. See, that�s why we have you on No Compromise Radio. I just was looking at Ephesians chapter 2, and Darrell, it�s fascinating to see Ephesians. Of course, it breaks down, like most Pauline epistles, the bulk of the early part.

Here�s who you are in Christ, this is what God has done, indicatives, and then it talks about the response to who God is, and that is a bunch of imperatives in chapter 4 and 5 and 6. But the first imperative in Ephesians is a very interesting one.

I love to ask people the question, what�s the first imperative in Ephesians? And they tend to think it�s maybe Ephesians 4, walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. It�s actually 2 .11, �Therefore, remember.

That�s the imperative, okay? So, in light of predestination, reconciliation, sealing, dead in trespasses and sins, by grace you�ve been saved, all those great verses in chapters 1 and 2. Then he says in 2 .11, �Remember.

What are we supposed to remember? �That at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ.

And then he gives the list. And so, when I think of categories, sometimes I think of the biblical categories. Jew, Gentile. And last time I looked, the German white person that I am, and then other black people, they are both Gentiles.

We�re all Gentiles. If you�re not a Jew, you�re a Gentile. And we are to remember that this is what we used to be, but we have the great God, Christ Jesus, who himself, 2 .14 says, �is our peace, who has made us both one.

And as a pastor, I despise church splits. I despise heresies that split people off. I hate divisions. And this language of white privilege and other kind of racially charged language, it does nothing to unify the church, to strengthen the church, to say we both have access.

No, now we have separate groups. And therefore, as a pastor, I hate this kind of language, because it doesn�t help the church, it hurts it. Thoughts?

Yeah, you, uh, I�m sorry, Mike, go ahead. No, no, thoughts on that? Yeah, um, you, I mentioned a couple minutes ago that we are creating the image of God. And one thing that hurts me to what you were just saying, and I think it was very well put what you just said, one thing that hurts me is that, you know, I�ve said often to folks that I�ve talked to about these whole racial issues and issues of justice and whatnot, you know, leave it to sinful human beings to take what is an expression of the creative genius of God in creating us with our varying ethnicities and varying levels of melanin, skin color, leave it to sinful human beings to use those attributes which Acts 17 says God created deliberately to demonstrate His glory, leave it to us to use it as weapons against each other.

We have these categories, as you were just talking about. There�s a hyphenation for everything now. Everything�s got a hyphen. Uh, you know, so, you know, you wake up every morning, here�s a new category, here�s a new hyphenated term that you have to use, you know, or you�re not woke enough, you know, so that�s the new thing now, you know, you got to, you can�t just be Christian, you got to be woke and Christian and in tune with all these social justice elements of Christianity today, so but leave it to sinful human beings to use God�s creative genius as weapons to divide us, compartmentalize us, segregate us, and yet we have the nerve to think that we have the capacity within ourselves to unify ourselves to one another.

I mean, it�s a joke. It�s a sad joke.

That is so true. If it wasn�t for the grace of God and Christ Jesus, the powerful one to build the church, I mean, we�d be lost if we�d have to try to figure it out ourselves. Darrell, I have been across the world.

It�s hard to believe that I�ve been to some of these places, but I think about worshiping with Christians in Poland, and everybody�s white, whiter than I am probably. I�ve been in India where people are, you know, their skin color is darker than mine, but we wouldn�t call them technically black.

I�ve been in Zambia where I�m the only white person in the congregation, and I can honestly tell you, and it�s the grace of God in my heart that I�m able to say this, but those were some of the most precious times for me because I realized, okay, not only will the food be really good afterwards, but the worship with people who don�t look like me, but we�re, see, what we�ve done is we�ve so gone inside of ourselves in Curvus Dei and curved in on ourselves as Luther would call it, quoting Augustine, that we don�t think about the object of our worship, and that is the God-man.

And what do we know about Jesus? Well, physically, what do we know about him? Well, we know he was circumcised on the eighth day. We know he had a beard, and that was plucked out. Isaiah talks about that.

We know he didn�t look like his father because he didn�t have a, you know, he was a stepfather. He looked like his mother. He was Jewish-looking, but the text doesn�t say anything about his looks. Actually, if you look at the Bible, you�ll see a lot about Absalom and how much, what he looked like, Saul, a little less about David.

But the ultimate David, the ultimate king, we just know about his person. We don�t know about skin color or this, that, or the other. It�s so ridiculous. And so, I just think to myself, Darrell, correct me if I�m wrong, but it is what the world does and what a sinful heart does with these different skin colors when it should be something, I mean, what it does with it, it makes it, like you said, into a weapon.

And what it should do is, hey, praise God. We have been redeemed along with a lot of other tribes and nations. And Psalm 117, it�s just not Israelites who are saved. I mean, if I was God, maybe it would only be Israelites.

Well, I guess it would be no one because they�re all wicked. But now, this is a joy. So, the world says, �Divide. And I say, this is what gives me maybe the most joy, that I sing every Sunday praises to Jesus with Puerto Ricans, Indians, blacks and whites, and anybody else who wants to say, �You know what?

I�m a sinner saved by grace. Isn�t that the right way to think about it?

That is the right way to think about it, but the reason we don�t think about it that way is because we�ve forgotten what Christ came to do anyway. So, we�ve totally forgotten that, see, what this sort of social justice, this activist Christianity is doing today, Mike, it would have us believe that the Gospel�s primary purpose is to make this world better, that Christians should be working to make this world, quote-unquote, as the old song used to say, �a better place.

No, that�s not why Christ came. You know, one of my favorite texts in sort of thinking about this topic, which I�m, you know, again, on the front lines, I�m talking with people almost every day, is 2 Peter 3 .13.

It says that we are looking for a new city, a better city, where righteousness and holiness dwells. That means that that�s not here. That�s not in this life. So, we must remember, we must recall to ourselves, we must sort of reclaim an awareness of why Christ came, and why Christ came, what does Paul tell Timothy?

�Christ Jesus came to save sinners. That�s why he came. You know, I like to say that Christ came to save sinners. He did not come to save society. He didn�t come, but there are those who would have us believe that the Atonement has a temporal purpose as it relates to, again, bringing forth this sort of egalitarian, it�s almost an egalitarian eschatology that people have of the Gospel, that the new heavens and the new earth are going to come, that this old earth is going to be transformed into the new earth.

But that�s not what the Gospel is for. So, we have forgotten purpose for why the fundamental purpose for why Jesus came. And I think that�s where it all starts. We�ve got to recapture an accurate theological understanding of the purpose of the Advent, as we come into Advent season here, why did Jesus come?

And we have to remind ourselves of that every day, because that message is being completely lost within this sort of activist Christianity that�s going on right now.

The Army, the Church, and One Mission

My name is Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. You�re listening to Darrell B. Harrison. If you want to follow him on Twitter, it�s at capital D underscore B underscore Harrison, or you can go to his blog, JustThinking .me.

Darrell, I know the church isn�t the army, but the army, I�m sure, when you were in it, tried to make sure you guys had not little pockets of, �Oh, you guys are all from Mississippi. You hang out together.

All the guys from New York now, you hang out together. You short guys hang out together, and tall guys hang out together. Those with an accent, this, that, and the other. Didn�t they try to say, �You know what?