Upcoming Debate Thoughts, Jesse Duplantis, Thabiti Anyabwile

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:28

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We're coming to you live from, well, Mannheim, Pennsylvania, actually.

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Stop that. I told you to stop. Cease. Desist. You know, when you click the stop button, it's supposed to stop.

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We're coming to you live from Mannheim, Pennsylvania. The conference begins this evening.

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I'm the opening speaker, so I've got a lot to do yet today. So I'm not guaranteeing a full hour. We might go the full hour.

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We'll see. But then tomorrow, I believe, if I'm recalling correctly, 3 p .m.

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Eastern Time. That'd be noon. Back in Arizona, on the West Coast.

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We will have the debate. I don't know yet. I hope to find out tonight whether the debate with Gregory Coles will be live -streamed.

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I'm sure the place has the capacity to do it. The question is whether the conference wants to spend that kind of money on live -streaming.

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It could be very expensive. I don't know. We'll find out. I hope it is.

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But if it isn't, obviously, it will be recorded and we'll get it posted as quickly as possible for you.

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And just a reminder, if you're not aware, the topic of the debate, the thesis of the debate, which

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I will be denying, is gay Christian a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's Church?

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So gay Christianity, Side B Christianity specifically, Dr. Coles is committed to celibacy, but also believes that he is a part of the

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LGBTQ community and that homosexual orientation, gay identity is innate and unchangeable.

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And so there you go. I could. I've got a really good idea where everything is going to be going to our afternoon.

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But my goal in it is a gracious but firm clarification of biblical categories and a warning to the church, because, man, evangelical churches are just falling all over this, because it gives them a way out.

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They don't have to take the unpopular position, but that the acceptance of psychological categories of identities, sexual identities that are innate and unchanging is unbiblical and devastating to those who actually desire a fundamental change.

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Now, Dr. Coles will say, I've always wanted, as a child, as a young person, I always wanted to change.

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So that's not that that doesn't fit me. But the point is, if you say that a homosexual orientation, he doesn't like the term homosexual, but what

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I grew up with, and it's accurate. If you if you tell the world that the gospel cannot change your desires, what are you saying about the gospel?

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What are you saying? And this could be the example that I use to the covetous person. The person who is always who is in a constant state of unhappiness because others have more or different things than I possess.

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There are people like that. There are a lot of people like that. And. Very good.

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There are a lot of people like that. And pastorally, we deal with people struggling with covetousness, greed.

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All the time. So what happens when you come across someone who says, well,

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I am committed. I believe that God made me as a covetous person.

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But I simply commit myself to not acting on my covetousness.

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But I'm going to live my life and I'm actually to say God made me this way. What do you do with that?

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Well, First Corinthians, chapter six, verses nine through 11 says such were some of you and covetousness is specifically listed.

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And so Paul believed that that could change.

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You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of Lord Jesus Christ, spirit of our God.

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So there you have what often is a settled disposition.

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In a person's life. Constantly looking at what other people have, desiring what other people have.

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Doesn't mean you act on it. But that's your orientation. And Paul says such were some of you, not such are some of you.

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So would covetous Christian be an appropriate designation? Because it is a mindset.

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It is a desire for something that God says no to. How is that different from homosexuality?

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The only way to make the argument for side B Christianity is to say the

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Bible's categories are insufficient. Paul didn't know what we know today. And that's the same thing the revisionists say about, you know, in the 1946 movie.

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I ran into a guy on Twitter and that was his shtick.

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That was his deal. Was you people are so ignorant. And this guy wouldn't know what the

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Greek or Hebrew terms were if his life depended on it. He is a YouTube theologian.

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He saw a video on YouTube and he knows everything now. But that's the revisionist perspective.

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Is that the writers of the New Testament simply didn't have the knowledge that we have today.

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And so we got to cut them slack. But that also means we have to look at what they gave us as being significantly less authoritative than the

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Christian church has always viewed it as. So what I'm saying is my hope for the debate is to provide a discussion.

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And this is the usefulness of debates, in my opinion, is that you've got the other side involved.

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So it's not just one side lecturing about something. It's both sides interacting.

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I want it to be respectful, gracious, yet firm and clarifying.

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That's my prayer. It takes two people to make a debate work in that way.

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And as far as I can tell, Dr. Coles should be cooperative in that effort.

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I do expect him to focus significantly more upon his own experience. And the

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Nate Collins, Preston Sprinkle, Gregory Coles perspective.

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And I realize for most people, these names aren't necessarily ringing any bells. And honestly,

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I've learned new names myself over the past two months because this field grows and develops.

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And I don't know if anybody can keep up with the amount of material being published.

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And I mentioned to a dear friend yesterday on the phone discussing this. I said,

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I think trying to keep up with everything that's being published would be spiritually damaging to anybody.

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The reading I had to do for the initial writing of The Same Sex Controversy, which I sadly found out yesterday, is currently out of stock at Bethany House.

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They tried to order them to have the debate and they didn't have any. That makes me wonder, to be honest with you.

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I'll have to contact Bethany about that. But just the reading

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I had to do back in 2000, 2001, just for that.

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And the amount of literature has exploded in the past 20 years.

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But even then, that was spiritually oppressive. It was spiritually oppressive. I don't know how anybody deals with this stuff on a regular basis.

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It's tough. So, now you know what my prayer for tomorrow afternoon would be, if you want to pray toward those ends as well.

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Beseech our Heavenly Father to give that blessing. Because it would be a blessing upon the

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Church, I think, to have that kind of resource available. But at the same time, we live in a day where so much of the professing

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Church has already collapsed on this. Again, professing and believing are two different things.

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Things are... it's a different situation. So, I wanted to... I saw this clip.

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Let me mention, I'm following Protestia. Some of you probably are familiar with that term and associate it with people from the past who are no longer associated with Protestia.

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Useful resource. It has become a really useful resource. I met one of the primary people who are still working with Protestia and trying to keep it viable in a post -J .D.

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Hall way, in essence. I had a nice conversation.

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I'm following them now. I even did the little thing where my browser will tell me when they post stuff.

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Because they really dig up some very, very interesting material. I don't always agree with the commentary, but generally, generally you do.

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And this one, I don't remember, honestly, whether this is woke preacher clips or Protestia.

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I was just looking at a Protestia thing, so maybe that's why I was thinking about it. But I wanted to mention that as well. If you have sort of avoided that source because of its history, you might want to give them another look.

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Because the folks there are trying to do something good. I don't play a lot of the wild and wacky

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WordFaith stuff on this program. We did years and years ago.

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I did some series, wow, a long, long time ago on the

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WordFaith movement and Kenneth Copeland and Hagen and people like that.

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I mean, Copeland's got to be getting up there. He's really got to be getting up there. I remember driving to school because of school construction stuff.

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I had to go a long ways to high school. I was supposed to go to Greenway High School. That was the closest high school, but they arbitrarily drew a line down a street.

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And so for my freshman year and half of my sophomore year, I had half an hour bus rides to and from school.

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And all the way down to Independence, it was a long ways from where we lived. And then

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I got my driver's license in the middle of my sophomore year, December of my sophomore year.

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And because of the fact that my dad was a manager of a radio station, we had something called trade outs.

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Where we would do advertising for a gas station, and then I could just go in, fill up.

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This would be worth a lot of money today. But back then, it was only 49 cents a gallon.

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But I could just go in and fill up the Brown Bomb. That's what we called it.

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It was a Brown Bomb. It was a 1972, so it wasn't all that old. It was a 72 Buick LeSabre, but it had been in an accident.

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It had a big old dent along the side. It was a beat up used car, but it had a

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V8, a Buick V8, that eventually we had to... Whoever we gave it to, we gave it to a friend of Rich eventually.

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I think we had to take it out in the desert and shoot it. Because that motor would not die.

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It only got, when it was tuned up and had fresh plugs and stuff like that, it got about 12 miles to the gallon at best.

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Normally more like 10. The sad thing is, it was...

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My truck gets better mileage pulling... My 6 .6 liter turbo diesel truck gets better mileage pulling an 11 ,000 pound fifth wheel.

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I got in that old thing. Yeah, here comes Signal. No, no, no.

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No, no, no. Rich is trying to argue with me about my own car.

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I'm not sure what he means by 455 Wildcat. I can assure you, I know what was in the

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Buick LeSabre. We were poor as church mice when my wife and I got married.

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And I did buy a Ford Thunderbird that had a 450 in it.

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That thing was huge. That thing was made out of metal. I don't know what it weighed. It was utterly indestructible.

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My wife even to this day says she enjoyed driving it because she wasn't afraid of anything around her. Because it was a real car.

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And it got about eight miles to the gallon too. But the Buick LeSabre, the brown bomb, had a 350

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V8. I know that. I worked on it. There's no question about it.

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And if you're thinking it was a 455 Wildcat, you are in error. And there's nothing you can do about it because you don't have a microphone.

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And you can't break in and anything else. So, anyway. Oh, he's saying, okay.

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Oh, believe me. I do know this. Anyways, all this to say,

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I started driving to school in December of my sophomore year. And I'd normally just have,

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I mean, I didn't even have a cassette tape player in the car. It just had an AM FM radio.

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I think I eventually had one put in once I started working that year. So, I'd literally have a cassette tape recorder from Radio Shack on the seat next to me.

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I'd listen to the Imperials and Christian music and stuff like that. But once in a while,

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I'd turn on the local radio station, the local Christian station. And normally during my drive to school,

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Kenneth Hagen would be on. And I just, you know,

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I wasn't any expert in anything yet. I was a sophomore in high school. But man, I could tell when somebody was out to lunch.

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And it was fascinating to listen to this guy and what he believed.

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What he'd teach and all the rest of that kind of stuff. So, not much has changed.

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I mean, it was obvious back then they were just making money off of people. And they still are.

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And I feel sorry for simple -minded religious people. I won't necessarily say

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Christians, though I'm certain there have been Christians who have been taken in by these folks. Who just give away their money and these people burn it.

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And they brag about how many millions. I think one guy recently, I saw someone claiming they had burned through two billion.

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And that was other people's money given to them to do nothing. So, we did do stuff.

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We did some series on, you know. It's been so long ago that I wouldn't claim to be able to do these series again.

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But the sources that these people drew from. And their heresies regarding who

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Jesus was and what happened after his death. Did a lot of that kind of stuff. So, when this clip showed up.

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And again, the more I think about it, the more I'm thinking it was. Let me see here.

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Because it might actually show this. Back up.

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Oh. Back up. It was Protestia. Okay. It was

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Protestia. I was able to go far enough to see Protestia posted this.

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But this is Jesse Duplantis. I don't remember him back in my high school years.

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He certainly looks old enough to have been around. He probably was. But what these people say.

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What they get away with. Is just truly astonishing. It really, really is.

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And so, if you didn't see this. I thought I would play this.

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Just to remind you of the fact that much of what calls it.

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Because the world would look at something like this and say this is an evangelical. And that's why that term doesn't necessarily have a whole lot of communicative value to it.

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But here's Jesse Duplantis. And let's just take a look at what he has to say.

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And just prepare yourself. We have been taught for millenniums and centuries.

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How bad our flesh is. And we thought if we would beat it to pieces.

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Subject it hard. That God would be pleased. Yet the Bible said present your bodies a living sacrifice.

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Okay. What does that have to do with what you just said? Present your bodies a living sacrifice.

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That means denying the flesh. Taking up your cross. What does that have to do with the biblical testimony?

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That yes, our flesh is evil. And you have original sin.

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And you have total depravity. There's not things they really believe in. But it's just so common.

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They claim a position of authority. And then they think they can just simply quote any

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Bible verse they want. And just expect people to believe whatever it is they're saying. And that's what you just said that you heard people.

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Amen. Present your body a living sacrifice. How is that relevant? They don't have to worry about how that's relevant.

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That doesn't really matter all that much. And that's very, very, very troubling.

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Christmas is not a time factor. It's an eternity factor. Christ in us is the dwelling place of God.

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The place of revelation. The meeting place of God and man.

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You want to know where God and man meets? Right here. Even with my red shoes on.

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What you think of them Santa Claus shoes? Ain't that something? Get a shot of that.

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Praise God. So when you see that, God and man meets inside of you.

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Okay. First of all, Rich used to have those shoes.

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You did. You did. You had a pair of shoes like that. You're going to rue the day when you gave me full power.

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Because you can't defend yourself now. There's nothing you can do. You can get back at me when I get home.

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But there's nothing you can do about it right now. It's not connected up. You can't get in.

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So yes, Rich used to have those shoes. I'm not sure when he gave them to Jesse. But there you go.

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But here you have, and there's some Christmas lights in the background. So obviously this was from back around the holiday.

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And you really start getting an idea of just how categorically heretical the word faith movement is.

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When they confuse the unique aspects of the Incarnation with themselves.

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The sinless Son of God, fully God and fully man, does not cease to be

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God. Obviously, and here we go again, as everyone has to affirm, there are certain aspects of the

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Son's glory that are veiled for the purpose of fulfilling His ministry.

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His glory is only fully seen in the Mount of Transfiguration, briefly. But He's absolutely unique.

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And never does anyone in the New Testament make the category errors that these people make.

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To where, hey, you're just like Jesus. We are said to be in Christ.

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And therefore, through our participation with Him, graciously adopted as sons of God, that does not make us little gods like these people frequently do.

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But it does give us the opportunities that adoption provide to us.

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But there is a massive category error in the thinking of the word faith movement.

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And so this is where God and man meet. In you? No, in Christ. In Christ.

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Now, as long as we are in Him, then all those benefits of grace are given to us.

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That never changes the focus that there is only one God -man.

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And there is only one place where God and man meet in fullness.

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And that is in the God -man, in Jesus Christ. And all the stuff about Christmas and everything else doesn't change any of that.

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And He doesn't dwell in an ugly place. Let me say it again. Christ in us is the dwelling place.

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Christ in us is the dwelling place of God, the place of revelation.

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The meeting place of God and man. Ooh, isn't that something?

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And the Word was made flesh. Why did God want to get inside of us?

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Because we were just that good. When He created us, He never wanted to become an angel.

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Think about that. He never wanted to become a seraphin. That's the winged. Six wings.

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He never wanted to become an archangel. He never wanted to become anything

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He ever created until He created us. Now I'm all shocked, make somebody mad. Why?

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Because we were perfection. Yeah.

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Well, we were made good.

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But here's what happens when you don't have sound theology. God doesn't believe in original sin.

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He doesn't believe in total depravity. And so, even as we were made, we remained creatures.

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Now, we are made in the image of God. It is the redemption of the creature made in the image of God that glorifies the triune

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God. It's all about God's self -glorification. It's not about us. And it's not about us being perfection.

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You won't find that anywhere in Scripture. That is a... I don't know.

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These folks must not read Jeremiah, for example. Some of the most soul -searing, convicting passages of Scripture that demonstrate the human condition found in the book of Jeremiah.

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They just must hop through it, and find a verse here they can twist, and then get out of it as quickly as possible.

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Because you can't walk through Jeremiah and think that this kind of foolishness means anything at all.

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But there you have word -faith foolishness. At his best.

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Let us make man in our image. What's a man? What is man that thou would mindful of?

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That's why he said, present your bodies a living sacrifice. Why? Because I live in there. What?

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That's not what Paul was talking about. It's not even close. It's not even the same zip code.

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Because I'm living in there? I mean, look, there is an amazing element of the

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Holy Spirit of God dwelling inside believers. That is amazing.

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Amazing condescension on the part of the Spirit of God. To dwell within human beings who still have abiding sin.

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I mean, only possible because of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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It has nothing to do with us being perfection. It has everything to do with God's condescension. Nothing to do with what these guys are talking about.

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And hopefully you can see just the breadth of the destructiveness of the conclusions of this kind of eisegetical pick a verse here, pick a verse there.

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Don't worry about exegesis. Just quote something and hope enough people say amen that you get away with it.

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Just think of the impact of that kind of thinking and how it damages the

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Bible's teaching about how we're to live the Christian life. How we're to understand God's purpose. How we're to endure suffering. That's why you're not supposed to endure suffering.

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Suffering isn't for us in this life. That's the word faith garbage again. But it's really hard to have any type of respect whatsoever for these people because the damage they do.

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Truly amazing. Truly amazing. So quit thinking you're bad because you're not.

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God don't live in the ghetto of mankind. So there you go.

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You're not bad. You're not bad. I can't help but think of that incredible paragraph in the eternal marriage manual from the

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LDS church because there's a lot of connections. The level of heresy of Mormonism and the level of heresy of the word faith movement.

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And there's that one couple sentence paragraph that I've pointed to many, many times.

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You were never created and you cannot be destroyed. You are an eternal being.

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That was the Mormon assertion. And here you've got, you're not bad.

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And you think about Paul's, the depth of Paul's recognition of his own sin outside of Christ.

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The fact that Christ is his all in all. That the only righteousness we have is a righteousness that comes from Christ.

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And these men have no concept of that. And you know, when you're bragging about how many hundreds of millions or billions of dollars you burn through, your conscience is pretty much seared anyways.

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So it's not overly shocking or surprising. But what astonishing heresy is to be found in the word faith movement.

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It really is amazing. Evidently he thinks you a mansion. Uh oh, not a trailer.

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It ain't nothing wrong with a trailer, but a mansion. And begin to understand my human life began.

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See, let me say again, when Jesus was born, the possibilities of human nature began to be realized.

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Now how did that happen? In Christ, we breathe a new air. What happened?

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We have crossed the new boundary line. So I'm going to say something shocking.

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When you see me, you see the father, you see the son, you see the

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Holy Ghost, you see God incarnate. It's called incarnation. Okay.

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Yeah. When you see me, you see the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.

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It's called incarnation. Um, is it any wonder that those who have been raised on this kind of teaching struggle massively to have any knowledge at all of what the

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Bible says about suffering, about what Christian duty is. Um, they have no foundation to actually engage with the key issues of our day, uh, with abortion and, and everything that comes along with it, because they've been given this twisted, perverted view of things.

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It truly is amazing to listen to this kind of stuff. Now I have another video here, and I'm not sure this one's going to work quite as well.

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Um, now that I'm looking at it, I got it to work earlier, but I'm not sure how this is going to work.

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Some of you know that, uh, I have the distinction of having once spoken at a conference with the

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BD Anya Wheelie. If I recall correctly, it was 2008. I know it was in Canada.

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I think it was Toronto. And, um, at that time, there were no social justice issues.

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Um, you hadn't had Trayvon Martin. You didn't have, uh, any of that stuff that started, you know, what, about six years later that began the woke divide.

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And both of us were dealing with the subject of Islam.

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And so we spoke on Islam, and we complimented each other's presentations.

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And, you know, when you had the Q &A, then we're answering in the same way. And there was, there was great unity because we were focused outward and we were focused on what united us.

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Uh, now you listen to the BD and, you know, all of us are addressing topics today that we did not address in 2008.

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Uh, that's necessary. Nothing can be done about it because things have changed.

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You can't ignore what happened between about 2014 and 2020. The growing divide, the 2018

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Martin Luther King stuff. Um, you can't ignore all that.

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And then the exacerbating events of COVID and what has happened from 2020 onward.

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And I, for one, am saddened by these divisions. Scripture says they're necessary.

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Um, but that doesn't change the fact that I miss the harmony and unity.

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And in fact, what it does is it makes me all the more thankful for the harmony and unity that I still have with men that I worked with, not only in 2008, but much earlier.

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Um, one of the things I was looking at on my phone was a text message that I had just gotten in reference to, yeah, the debate coming up tomorrow.

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And, uh, it's from Jeff Neal, my dear co -author of the book.

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It's not, it's not out of print. It's just not in stock at Bethany House, unfortunately. And, uh, he just remembered that the debate was coming up.

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And so he, um, was texting me to say he'll be praying for the event and stuff like that.

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So those relationships you have that have lasted for decades. I mean, he and I became friends in the 80s.

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So, um, 80s does not feel like that long ago for me.

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But it's, it's getting to be a while, a while back. We're getting a little long in the tooth. And, uh, uh, so those relationships are great.

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So I do mourn the unity that we had in reaching out to Muslims.

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But you listen to where Thabiti is today and am I talking about things differently than I once did?

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In a sense, I wasn't really thinking about these categories.

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We weren't forced until, uh, the woke movement to really start thinking through, you know, what was the foundation of the unity that I had with Thabiti?

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Thabiti's a black man. Didn't really even register with me as being relevant to the fact that he and I were both reaching out to Muslims.

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Anything like that. Now, today, you have to think about all that stuff. And you have to factor all that stuff in because that has become the very essence of things.

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And so, woke preacher clips, um, track down some, some stuff from Thabiti.

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And I hear guys talking about on the sort of white evangelical side talking about how nervous they are about the social gospel.

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I'm like, you're making enemies of something that doesn't have to be enemies, right? But I can't,

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I can't stop it once I click it. So, um, all right, so what

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I'm going to do is I'm going to click it, and then as quick as I can, I'll find a way to make it full screen.

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But you'll just have to listen to the part you just listened to while I'm trying to get it full screen. Then I can shift over to it.

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I don't see any other way to do it. But it's in a tweet. And so it's, I don't know, it's just the way it is.

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I'll do the best I can here. All right. When I hear guys talking about on the sort of white evangelical side talking about how nervous they are about the social gospel,

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I'm like, you're making enemies of something that doesn't have to be enemies, right? Yes, we must come to Christ in repentance and faith if we are going to be saved.

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That's the solution to one question, but we have to sort of give attention to other issues and questions for which individual conversion is not the answer.

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We have to make public policy. We ought to make just public policy. We have to distribute resources.

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We ought to distribute resources in a just and accurate way. Now, there's a whole bunch of debate we can have about what justice looks like, and I don't pretend to have the answers to that, but it seems to me to be a significant category mistake to always sort of default to questions of individual accountability for God, to God, in the context of salvation as a way of just sort of waving away not only historical, but present injustices that are cultural and systemic and broad scale that need redress if we're actually just people, because a justified people ought to be a just people too.

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Okay, now, what's interesting to me is that unless I'm mistaken, and I could be,

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I think that was Preston Sprinkle in the center, who if you don't know who he is,

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Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender, I think is the name of it.

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Dr. Coles is one of his people there. In fact, if I'm understanding things correctly, they're based in Idaho, and Dr.

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Coles moved out there from the center. So that's what

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I think is going on there. But I could be wrong. I didn't say that specifically, so maybe

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I'm in error about that. But it wouldn't shock me, because this is the genre that we're dealing with here.

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And when he's talking about, when he makes the statements that he does about social justice and redistribution, you hear him saying what he would have said, what would that be, 15 years ago, about the need for personal commitment of faith to Jesus for your personal salvation.

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But that's not enough. We need to make public policy, et cetera, et cetera.

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You're hearing that all over the place today, aren't you? You're hearing a lot of people saying that, but from differing perspectives.

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And the first thing that crosses my mind when I hear someone saying something like that is what's the presupposition here?

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What foundation is he functioning on? And the answer to that question, as far as I can tell, was not how does the church glorify

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God through obedience to his will? How does the church speak to the issues that Jesus would be concerned about?

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Or is he simply saying, Jesus would be concerned about our social justice issues.

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And then you turn Jesus into a social justice warrior and things like that. But from a biblical perspective, from the

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Bible's perspective, the Jesus revealed in Scripture, not the

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Jesus that we create that looks just like our favorite social justice warrior.

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The real issue that should be being asked, and this continues to be a relevant issue amongst

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Reformed people, amongst conservative evangelicals, how is

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God to be glorified in everything that we are facing within our culture today?

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That's not an easy question to answer always. And I at least appreciated that Thabiti said,

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I don't necessarily have the answers to what that looks like. But you're functioning as if you do.

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But I appreciate the willingness to say, but there's stuff I don't want you to ask me. That's how you get around people asking you the questions you don't want to be asked in front of a camera with a microphone in your hand.

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But all the conversations going on, whether it's, sadly, it's no longer including people like Thabiti.

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We have fractured so much. And people point to that and go, this is exactly what they wanted. And I go, yeah, it is.

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I would agree that this is what was wanted in the sense of breaking up any type of consensus that could function politically.

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I get that. But at the same time, are we going to make the same accusation toward the apostles?

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Look at all the divisions you're creating, Paul. You're writing Galatians. John, what are you doing?

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You're alienating a large portion of your group by what you're writing, by calling them false

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Christs and antichrists just because they don't agree with you on the nature of Jesus having a physical body.

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I mean, aren't there more important things? It would be easy to criticize the apostles.

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And everybody who takes a stand that causes division says,

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I'm taking a stand because I'm standing for biblical truth. Everybody makes that statement.

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The question is, have you invested enough time and effort to be sure that really is what you're doing, or is it just your tradition?

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You're uncomfortable with the questions that are being asked. I mean, wow. I think of myself in the early 1990s.

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And if I had run into anybody asking the questions that we have to be asking today and discussing the issues that we have to discuss today,

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I would have been extremely uncomfortable with something like that. And I just think a lot of people still are.

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Christians tend to... I get my comfort zone. I get the things I like. And don't mess with my blocks.

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I don't want new stuff. And I don't want to be forced to deal with quote -unquote new stuff.

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I think that's where a lot of people are. And instead of listening and going, yeah, you know what?

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Things are changing so rapidly that we really need to be thinking through stuff that not only is uncomfortable for us to think through, not only may require us to make sacrifices and changes we don't want to make, but we may have to admit, you know, the positions

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I've held in the past had a lot of holes in them. And I didn't know it because we were living in that wonderful period of neutrality with the world.

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And we limited warfare with the world to just spiritual areas.

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And we didn't really recognize that the world so hates our message that it will do everything in its power to shut us down.

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And we just didn't think that could ever happen, especially here in the United States, because we've got the Constitution. The Constitution is a piece of paper.

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And the words written on it have to be interpreted. They have to be interpreted by judges.

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And those judges are giving clear and shockingly, shockingly clear evidence of their willingness to pervert the meaning of those words.

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And so that Constitution cannot defend itself. That's why John Adams said what

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John Adams said. And I've said it, I've read it so many times, I'm not going to read it again right now. But I think you need to have what he wrote written down someplace and look at it weekly, maybe daily, just to remind yourself, yeah, it's wholly inadequate for an immoral and godless people.

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There are certain assumptions that it requires of us, that a secular, a truly secularized society cannot come up with.

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And so from Adams' perspective, that's the end of the Constitution. So where are we today? Where are we today?

50:19

Why do we have the government doing what the government's doing? Why is it that ever since Biden entered the

50:29

White House by whatever means he did, I refer to it as the regime rather than the administration.

50:36

Because administration assumes a continuity. There's no continuity.

50:43

This is a monoparty. This is a group that wants to establish unending rule unfettered by the

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Constitution. And they are going, they are, how did we get to drag

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Queen's story out? How did we get to celebrating the things that we now celebrate? Well, there was a path and there is an intention and it is the culture of death.

51:18

Writ large, secularism cannot, once you rebel against the source of life, what else do you have left?

51:26

What else do you have left? You've got to become a devotee of the culture of death and that's what we see all around us constantly right now.

51:34

It is everywhere. So anyways, I mentioned, wasn't going to commit to go to a full hour, just wanted to cover the things

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I wanted to cover. No reason to stretch just simply for the fulfilling of time.

51:49

But again, we're on the road. And diesel fuel's pretty expensive right now.

51:57

So if you want to help us to continue things and to do maintenance, looking at a front end alignment coming up,

52:05

I think, oh my goodness, the construction zones are hard on any vehicle.

52:15

The road surfaces, wow. So obviously diesel fuel, maintenance, things like that, you can help us to keep doing this.

52:25

I'm sitting in the studio and so far it's holding up pretty well.

52:33

The lights are doing great and the cameras are surviving, getting bounced around because we put them into a drawer and it's got all that packing stuff on it.

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So they don't seem to be bothered by it at all, which is good, I suppose.

52:50

And the background sort of stayed in there. There's some places where it's going, but I don't know.

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We'll see. We'll see what cold weather brings and stuff like that. But we're here in the unit.

53:07

The unit requires repairs as well. Once we get home, it goes straight into, in fact, we'll be getting a new roof.

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Not the inside part, but warranty work on the roof when we get back.

53:22

And hopefully it'll be done before the next trip in December when we head to St.

53:27

Charles. And then it looks like we're going to be in Kansas City. There may be another, someone else has contacted me.

53:33

I haven't got back to him. I will get back to you, don't worry. Just really busy this weekend. May do like two stops on the way back in December.

53:43

You got to have the stuff up there working. Just like you have to have the stuff down there working.

53:49

So there's cost to it. So you can help us continue to do this. AOMin .org Go to the

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Donate tab and you'll see the travel fund there. That's how we pay for all this fun stuff.

54:03

And all that green goo that I pour into the tank. And either slowly at the car lanes or much more quickly at the diesel lanes.

54:14

All depends on what's happening. I had some real interesting experiences on the way out. But you can help us with all of that.

54:22

And of course that would help as well because we have our 40th anniversary celebration coming up as soon as I get home.

54:27

We're going to be getting together with folks that we've been working with in ministry for years and years and years. But I've got to get back there.

54:35

So don't forget next week if you're going to G3 make sure to come by the booth. Say hi to the guys when

54:41

I'm not there or when I'm there. I'll be at the Alpha Omega booth. I'm at the pre -conference.

54:47

I am scheduled for at least one hour at the GBTS Grace Bible Theological Seminary a booth on Friday after I speak on Friday morning.

54:59

And I normally hang out for a while with Jeffrey Rice at the Post -Tenebrous

55:04

Lux Bible rebinding booth as well because I'll be speaking from a

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Bible that he rebound. And maybe I can after I speak go there and people can take a look at it and stuff like that.

55:18

The Hebrew text that he bound for me. I've shown it to you. It's in the other room. I was here I'd hold it up but it's in the other room.

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So look forward to seeing you at G3 and then in Baton Rouge on the way home.

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A two -night conference on the reliability of scripture. And exciting stuff.

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Pray for traveling mercies. And we will see you the next time on the dividing line.

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Let's play the bye -bye music. We'll see you next time.