JD Greear on a Gospel Culture of Inclusion and Diversity vs Pharisees, Terrorists, and Racists

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Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We are going to have a hopefully short podcast.

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We'll find out by the end of it. Responding to some comments J .D. Greer, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, made earlier this week that were kind of controversial.

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He basically made a separation between those in the Southern Baptist Convention who want a gospel culture of inclusion and diversity, because that's what the gospel is all about, versus Pharisees, terrorists, and racists.

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Yes, these are his words, not mine. I'm going to show you some clips later on. I don't think I included the terrorist one, but the other ones are in there.

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We're going to examine this a little bit, kind of what he's getting at. The thing about J .D. Greer that I find dangerous is he oftentimes will use very biblical language, and he'll talk about something, for instance, the nature of a

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Pharisee. It can be very true, but then he will get you to go along with the political agenda he has by kind of assigning that, let's say in the case of a

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Pharisee, that description to the wrong party. So conservatives in the SBC who are concerned about critical race theory and think that it's smuggling in some very bad contradictory to the

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Bible assumptions, etc., those people are the Pharisees. So it's that kind of thing that ends up ruining a lot of what he says, and I'm going to go through point by point and show you kind of what he's doing and why it doesn't work.

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But a few announcements first, and thank you, by the way, to all those who support me, pray for me, to the patrons out there.

01:25

You make this possible, and I'm upping it a lot this year. So not everyone can see that yet, but there's a lot of pots

01:33

I got my hands in, and I'm excited about a bunch of them, and I'm going to share some of them with you right now.

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One of them is coming up, we have a conference I'm part of called The State of Our Disunion by The Truth Exchange, and the topic is social justice.

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It's going to drop in April. I uploaded the conference video yesterday, and if you are a patron, if you go to patreon .com

01:53

and you partner with me there, you got access to this already. You might have already seen it, and you also had access to download the document, which has many citations proving that social justice is a religion, just documenting that whole thing.

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If you're trying to explain to someone, hey, social justice is a religion, check this out. I mean, it's a great resource.

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So that's going to be dropping for everyone though in a few months, and then the other thing that's going on is we're still doing the beta testing for the

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Discerning Christians website. It's taking a lot longer than I thought it would, unfortunately, but we are making headway, and that's the encouraging thing.

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In fact, I'm going to put the link in the info section for the developer, the web developer. Craig is his name. You can email him, thank him for doing what he's doing.

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This is kind of a side thing for him. He's putting this together, but he's added some new features.

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We're not competing with Facebook, but he added some features that can further define what you believe, who you are on your profile, if you create a profile there.

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And then if you go and create a profile at www .discerningchristians .com and you come across suggestions or things that you think could be better or things you're confused about, just email him.

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The email is in the info section for this video. This is beta testing mode still, but look, it's really helping.

03:15

The feedback's really helping. What you guys are figuring out when you go on the website, and if there's glitches or anything, those things are helping.

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Once we get this where everyone understands it, it's user -friendly, we're going to launch it. We're going to put it in app form as well.

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That's the plan, at least. DiscerningChristians .com. This is something I'm really excited about.

03:35

This is going to be dropping soon. In the next few weeks, we're going to have the NeNe's Deli documentary dropping.

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I want to show you right now, this is a teaser trailer for the documentary.

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This is kind of what you can expect. I'll enlarge this so everyone can see it. Here we go. Why is

03:54

NeNe's Chicago's Best? What makes NeNe's truly Chicago's Best is our love for people and our love for our community. Every time

03:59

I come in, they treat you like your family. I like that they're so personable. It's like being in your family's house. Kewanee just makes this a really welcoming environment.

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We made a post saying, we believe all lives matter, because all lives are made in the image of God.

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And when I posted that, all hell broke loose. A popular deli in downtown

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Chicago is no longer in business after a campaign to destroy their business was launched when they didn't fully support the

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Black Lives Matter movement. And I let them know, if y 'all are going to come protest, we're going to come preach.

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Well, needless to say, I am very excited about this documentary. It is going to be great, guys.

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It really, really is. I'm trying to actually right now come up with a way to get

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Juan to come to Lynchburg. I was hoping to get him on Liberty University's campus, but they have COVID restrictions.

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So perhaps around Liberty's campus somewhere. But I want students, people who are young, a little younger than Juan.

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Juan's a young guy. To see, hey, here's an example of someone who took a stand. He didn't play dead and just meet all the demands of the social justice movement.

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He stood for truth. He stood for his Christian convictions. And he's still alive. He's more happy that he stood than he would have been if he had caved.

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And he has a joy of the Lord about him. And I really want people to be able to see this. So I just want to thank, first of all, all of you who donated to make this project possible.

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That's the only way this stuff happens. It is through donations. I'm not trying to make money on Juan's documentary.

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We're not selling it anywhere. We're going to put it for free online because we want everyone to see this. And so I'm just encouraging you guys who have given to that.

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It is not in vain. We're being as wise as we possibly can. And we're using these, what you've given for the best possible cause, and ultimately the cause of the gospel.

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Because the gospel is shared very clearly in this documentary. And it's coming soon.

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It'll drop publicly in the next few weeks. Like I said, we are trying to get him to come on campus for an event. So if you want to continue to give to help pay for that, you can go to the info section.

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We'll have the Give, Send, Go for NeNe's Deli there. Also all the social media links for the different places you can subscribe to Last Stand Studios.

06:51

And here's a little hint. You probably wondered, hey, who's that guy that you have there, that picture? I'll let you try to figure it out.

06:57

It's a hint on the documentary that's already being worked on. This is a little hint for what the subject of that documentary might be.

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Like I said, we're going forward. Whether the money's there or not right now in donations and stuff,

07:11

I'm covering this next one. We're going to do it. We're not wasting time.

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And we're being lean, mean, and what they say in the military, lean, mean, and green,

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I guess. We're being very frugal, but it's top quality stuff that we're trying to put out there.

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So check that out. Try to figure out who could that be?

07:34

What is that next documentary about? And I'll have more information on that, of course, as we go forward.

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So let's get to the Greer stuff now. Oh, before that, sorry, I forgot about this.

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One more update. I am writing a second book on the social justice movement.

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The first one, of course, Social Justice Goes to Church showed how this stuff got into evangelicalism. It proved that you don't have to be a

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Marxist per se, someone who reads Marx, to import this stuff. You can read someone who read someone who read someone who read someone who read

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Marx. And that's what's basically happened in evangelicalism. People who have read people who have read people who have read Marx.

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And it's not just Marx. Obviously, there's Foucault, and there's cultural Marxists that play into this as well, like Gramsci and the

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Frankfurt School. And then, of course, the critical theorists like Crenshaw Williams, etc. I mean, there's just a lot of streams converging.

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And so in this next book, what I'm doing is I am defining what social justice is, and then providing a response, an apologetic response, biblical response, two chapters in already,

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I've written a history of the social justice movement. And there's nothing like this, by the way, that I've seen, at least this is tight, it will show you chapter and verse, here's where all these streams came from.

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And then chapter two, the social justice religion. Also, I think pretty tight. And I'm just going to continue on hopefully have 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

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I don't know how many chapters, but I'm working on it. And, and just a big thank you to all of you who have supported me.

09:00

Go to patreon .com. If you want to support that way, there's other ways as well. But that's the main way a lot of people support what

09:06

I'm doing. And if you go there, you'll get this slideshow, you'll get my updates, I try to post all my slideshows there for people if they need them, it's easier to communicate with me if you have questions and stuff,

09:16

I tend to be a lot more responsive on Patreon just because my time is limited. So those are some of the benefits.

09:24

But I just want to just say I appreciate it. Thank you. You've made this all possible. And it wouldn't be possible without people like yourself.

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So let's let's turn to Greer now. Here's some of the here's the headline here.

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SBZ Executive Committee. It's from their plenary session one on Monday, February 22, 2021.

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Monday night, Greer made some comments and basically separated gospel culture and inclusion and diversity from the

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Pharisees, the closet racists, the Neo Confederates, he even said terrorists at one point in the speech, which I didn't include that clip.

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But he said all this stuff. And we're going to go through the video, just point by point. And we're going to play it.

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And I'm going to give you some thoughts on it as we go through it. So here we go.

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If I can figure out where the play button is. There we go. I want to talk for a few minutes tonight about leading in the midst of a crisis, though,

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I will have to tell you quickly to to get rid of the surprise. I'm not primarily talking about COVID -19 fissures and failures and fleshly idolatries.

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COVID did not produce these crises. It only exposed them. No desire to see our doctrine change.

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No desire to see or exchange our mission. We are not at our core a political activism group.

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Now, let me stop there. So he's presenting this as there's idolatries, fissures, there's a separation going on.

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He's acknowledging it, which is a good thing, because for a while, what we were told is that the SBC is so united.

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There's no, I mean, I think even Greer said this after the 2019 convention, we're gospel centered, gospel above all united.

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People say that there's all these problems. Those are those evil discernment bloggers. I mean, this is the rhetoric that I heard a lot of back then, a lot of, even from people who are now fighting the social justice thing, would call me crazy that there's no separation going on.

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And I could give you names. And now everyone's got to admit, yeah, there is.

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And that's exactly what a number of us said, like in 2017, 2018, I was saying this, that there's no way

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I'm sitting at seminary thinking, there's no way that there's not going to be a split. There has to be a split. And there, even the conservatives that are fighting this now, a lot of them thought, no, we can navigate this somehow.

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No, you can't. The way to navigate it is you have to stop the social justice side from gaining an entryway.

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And that's not what's happened. There's no negotiating with them. It's a totalitarian religion.

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You can't negotiate with them. They don't stop until they completely win. So Greer is acknowledging this.

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Now, interestingly, before this, he actually says that he had seen this in 2018. We had seen that this inevitable separation was coming in 2018 as well as strife or whatever.

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And it's interesting because in 2019, he was saying the opposite. He was saying, no, we're united. So, which is true,

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I don't know. But Greer says he sees this coming. And then he wants to make it clear that, hey, we're not changing doctrine here.

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Baptist faith and message, inerrancy goes through a list. Of things, if you watch the full video, these things are all important,

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Christology. And the question though becomes, through whose lens then,

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Pastor Greer, through whose lens do we interpret the Baptist faith and message or the

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Bible or any of these things? Do we use the black experience to do it? Do we do it through the white evangelical lens?

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Do we do it through straight ways of looking at the Bible or homosexual ways?

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Or do we go to, you know where I'm getting, where I'm going with this, what I'm getting at.

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Do we use standpoint epistemology to approach this? Or is there something objective about the Baptist faith and message?

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You can sink your teeth in and drill down and say, this is exactly what it means. And there is no changing.

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It is very clear. When J .D. Greer has been asked to comment on the Baptist faith and message, for instance, when

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Dwight McKissick and Tom Buck disagree about what it means about women preachers, let's say, Greer sidesteps it generally.

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He doesn't want to directly talk about it or provide definition for what it exactly means.

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So that's why it's useless to have a constitution in the

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United States. It's useless to have a statement of faith or any of those things if people don't actually believe in objective reality and the importance of interpreting things in light of objectivity, in light of authorial intent, using a grammatical historical approach.

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You can assume that all day that you have this great document, but it really matters the presuppositions that you have before you approach that document.

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And if you're subjective and postmodern, then it doesn't really do us any good. And that's part of the controversy going on right now in the

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SBC, is why in the world do we need to diversify our libraries? Why do we need to rip down all hierarchies?

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To kind of quote J .D. Greer there, to deconstruct, I think is what he said, all hierarchies.

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Does the Bible whispers about sexual sin? I mean, who gets to determine that?

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How do we make that kind of a determination? Platforming minority voices and the importance of that.

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Why is that so important? Why are their voices so needed? These are things J .D. Greer has been involved with. And so he's bought into this to some extent, but then he wants to turn around and act like the

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Baptist faith and message is this objective standard that unites everyone. It's just simply, you can't have both. And so that's a little deceptive.

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And it's Greer's political motivation in my mind. He's going to talk about this. He says they don't have a political agenda, but it's his political motivation that gets him in this spot where he's bringing in ideas that will undermine very

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Baptist faith and message he says that he cares so deeply about. Yes, we love our country and we recognize some of the unique gifts that God has given us in the

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Republic that we are a part of, but God has not called us to save America.

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Let me stop there. So Greer said, we're not a political organization.

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God has not called us to save America. Now it's interesting to me, NAM, and I don't remember the exact, you can look it up. I'm sure

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Capstone Report has this published somewhere. NAM gave a lot of money to political lobbying last year.

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The ERLC, obviously very involved in political things. So from the left, and so mostly from the left, they have,

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I mean, they're pro -life too as well. So it's not completely of the left, but they definitely lean very strongly left.

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So what exactly, what is Greer exactly saying here? Where, so is there gospel -centered politics?

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Is there, does Greer want to eliminate the ERLC? Does he want NAM to stop engaging in political lobbying?

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Here's the question I have. Is it the job of the

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Southern Convention to defend the family or to save the family? You say,

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I mean, not technically, I guess their job is to preach the gospel, right?

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But what about what the Bible says about family and the importance of family? Should the

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Southern Baptist Convention support the family? And I think Greer would say absolutely yes. So the family, but not the country.

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What about the ERLC and what they do? What about Christian liberty, being able to function as a Christian in the state?

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Should that be something that Christians are engaged in? Well, that's, I think Greer would say, and many others who are in the

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SBC, well, that's protecting our rights to preach the gospel, to defend the gospel, et cetera. And you'd be right. That's the relationship.

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And so he can believe that. The Southern Baptist can function that way. They can give all sorts of money to political lobbying, but at the same time, it's not their job to save America.

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Now, I think there's a true, in one sense, there's a truth in this and that that's not the primary purpose of the convention to save America as a political organization.

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No, but in the same way that the ERLC is supposedly supposed to be defending religious liberty, you would think that there's sort of some overlap there that, yeah, it's not that that's the primary objective, but yeah, we really want to save America.

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We really want to be able to keep these freedoms for our children. We really want to be able to preserve the

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Christian elements that were there at the beginning and assumptions and keep that going. So it's a curious thing to say, because what he's doing is he's saying there's this big deep fissure in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, and somehow it's related to this. Somehow there's a group of people who think it's the Southern Baptist Convention's job to save America.

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Who are those people? Who are you talking about, J .D. Greer? You're saying there's a problem somewhere, and it's somehow related to political action.

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What kind of political action? Who are you talking about? So in the political category, he has, I think what he's saying is, and we'll see that as we continue,

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I think a little bit, it's the right -wingers. It's the people who want to save America, to make America great again crowd, that kind of, those kind of guys.

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They're the ones causing contention. There's a problem. They're on one side of this chasm, but that's not the

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ERLC. That's not NAM political lobbying, and that's not the diversity and inclusion he's about to talk about.

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So why arbitrarily say, there's this one group that wants to save America, and they're in the wrong.

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They're causing division. They're part of this split, but there's another group that we can fund, that we can get behind, and they're involved in politics, but that's okay.

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And the reason I think is, is because he doesn't categorize it as political, and you're going to watch the move here. Here's what he's going to say.

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Change that we needed, if you want to call it that, was cultural. There it is.

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Cultural. Cultural. Greer is saying, well, it's not political. Don't do a political thing.

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Do a cultural thing. Now, what is that? Okay. So there's this category that Greer is creating here called gospel culture.

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I don't find this in the teachings of Christ or the apostles. Of course, they taught about the one and others, and how to treat other believers, and what it would look like to be commuting together, obviously.

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But if you look at culture the way I think scripture looks at culture, which is people, boundaries according to Acts 17, right?

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Borders. You have the customs. You look at the Old Testament nation of Israel.

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There's certain customs and attachments to the land. Very important attachments, by the way. That's what the year of Jubilee was really about.

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The social justice warriors want to make it all about. It's about some equalizing, egalitarian thing.

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No, it's actually about making sure that the ties to the land stay there with the people who are supposed to be tied to that land more than anything else.

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But you find culture as represented in the nation of Israel to be this kind of organic thing.

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So you can't, with abstractions, just completely define it. It's something that you recognize it when you see it.

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I mean, we think of this even today, when you think of someone who's from the South, or from the North, or from the Midwest, or from California.

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We'll say California, since that's where I was born. Someone's from the Valley of California talks a certain way.

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Like, that's the Valley girl talk, when they use that word over and over.

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They pronounce some of their vowels a little bit differently. They have their values system. The way they think about things is a little bit different.

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It doesn't mean that truth is subjective at all, which is what the postmodernists want to say. Everything's culturally determined, and it's reduced it to some power connection or something.

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No, it's not a power dynamic thing. There's objective truth, obviously, but there are different flavors.

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We live in a world of diversity. God created it that way. In fact, he made it more diverse when he separated the peoples at the

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Tower of Babel. He did not intend for the church to then come in and just, we're going to create this monolithic gospel culture that somehow replaces all of that.

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In fact, at the end, they always like to quote Revelation and talk about every tribe, tongue, and nation.

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The reality is, there's still every tribe, tongue, and nation. They don't give up all those distinctions when they're worshiping

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God. There is no monolithic gospel culture that replaces, let's say, your love for your country.

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It's okay. Greer says even, I love my country, but there's a sense in which you don't want to love it too much.

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If you do, you get into idolatry. Then, well, you're contradicting somehow the gospel. We just don't find that term in scripture.

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We don't find gospel culture. I think this is the mistake of the neo -evangelicals and the

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Southern Baptist Convention right now in general, and most every ministry. Their way of engaging, cultural engagement, that's the buzz term.

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The way that they do want to do it is they want to raise up these metropolitan international globalist leaders.

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That's what globalism is, monolithic culture trying to erode all the local attachments, etc.

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They create leaders that are going to be suited for that in their mind. That's the way you want a gospel -centered way to do it or whatever.

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Then, what they end up doing is they critique the culture or engage the culture from this kind of outside the culture.

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Here's the culture, and they're outside of it looking in, trying to then penetrate it, to then change it, to make it this gospel culture, gospel -centered more.

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This is what Tim Keller is all about. They have this almost neutral position at which they vantage point to look at culture, to be able to then infuse it, to change it, to tweak it artificially.

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It's very artificial, but it doesn't take into account the fact that culture is organic. Culture is actually not something you can just manufacture.

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You can destroy culture. You can get rid of things, but you can't just manufacture your own culture.

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I should probably do a podcast on this sometime and talk about it a little more. Essentially, I think that's what the

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Southern Baptists are trying to do. They've been on this track, I think, for quite some time, and I think a lot of other denominations.

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Instead of viewing the church as actually not only—the church can actually be two things, the visible church on this earth, or local churches,

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I should say. Local churches can be part of the universal church, part of the kingdom of heaven, part of the eternal realm, and there's an eternal significance to them.

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They can also be local churches in actual communities that are tangible with customs and ways of talking and ways of thinking and ways of doing and habits and ways of dressing and language.

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Those two things can be true at the same time. Looking at the church as part of culture, embedded within it, and influencing it from the inside rather than on the outside, trying to then do this cultural engagement thing.

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Probably a lot more I could say about that, but I think that's what Greer—that's the path Greer's going down here. That's why he has two different categories.

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One is political. You've used the political as it's embedded, it's part of a culture, and that's not what

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Christians are about. Christians are to create this alternative culture that then engages the world, and the world sees it, and the world's like, oh my goodness, that's so good.

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That's just not the way it works. It's not going to work long term. It hasn't been working. The Southern Baptist Convention is bleeding members and churches because of this kind of thing, in part.

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It's just not the way people are. When you have a strategy that is set for an artificial world that doesn't exist, then it doesn't work in the real world.

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Some people will think I'm being a little harsh here probably, but I think that's what Greer's ultimately doing. That's why he can criticize anyone who wants to be involved in politics in such a way that it incorporates the

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Southern Baptist Convention while protecting the ERLC, while protecting NAM's lobbying, and then while saying that they're doing that under the umbrella of cultural engagement as if it's something different.

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So be careful of those categories. Try to get behind. Take two steps intellectually back and get behind what these people are saying.

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Don't just go with them in this stuff. Question that. If I was going to ask

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J .D. Greer about this, I'd just be like, so why is it wrong then for the ERLC to be involved in trying to preserve religious liberty or for NAM to be lobbying?

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Why would that be wrong? How is that not trying to somehow—I mean, does not that have the side effect of also helping save America in a way?

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Even though that's not a primary thing, isn't that a secondary kind of benefit there that we like, that we've always been for?

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Why is that a bad thing? And then I would probably also ask him then, what is culture to you?

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Define culture. What is cultural engagement? What is a gospel culture? Where do we find this in scripture? What do you mean by that?

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Yeah, the gospel can—gospel changes cultures as people, you know, they get the blessings of God and they, you know, follow the commands of God as a result of being transformed by God.

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Of course, we can see the gospel goes into a culture, and when it's introduced and people receive it, it will have the effect eventually of changing that culture.

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But that—what is a gospel culture? So, just a few thoughts there.

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Now, he's going to go into, I think, more defining what that means to him, and it's going to include racial inclusion, diversity, all that kind of stuff, the stuff that the social justice movement is very big on.

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But first, he's got a word of warning about, you know, the bad guys, and so I'll show you that.

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The Pharisees who resisted Jesus, we know more than any other group in the world, had correct doctrine.

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It was their spirit that Jesus said disqualified them from the kingdom of God. They weren't content with what the

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Bible said, for example. They weren't content with how exactly the Bible said it, so they created what has come to be known as a hedge about the law, conflating the traditions of men,

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Jesus said, with the commands of God. They said that they believed in the sufficiency of the scriptures, but they demanded uniformity in word and deed beyond what the scripture required, equating, again, to use the words of Jesus, their traditions of men with the commands of God.

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It's not that their traditions were bad. It's not that they were devoid of wisdom or that they were incorrect.

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It's that they equated those traditions and that wisdom with the authority of God himself, and so,

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Jesus said, laid on men's shoulders heavy burdens. Jesus said that the

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Pharisees focused on the more minute parts of the law while ignoring the weighty parts.

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They strained at a gnat, he said, and swallowed a camel. What does that look like today?

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Well, let me state this very clearly, as clearly as I can. Critical race theory is an important discussion, and I am all for, as I hope you would be, robust theological discussion about it.

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For something as important as what biblical justice looks like in the world today, we need careful, robust,

28:54

Bibles -open, on -our -knees discussion, but we should mourn when closet racists and neo -Confederates feel more at home in our churches than do many of our people of color.

29:07

Okay, let's stop there. That was a big chunk, and let's analyze some of what he just said.

29:14

So, there's some boogeymen out there. Pharisees. He later on says terrorists, but he says closet racists, neo -Confederates.

29:21

These are the bad guys, and I'm going to go through, I think, what he's talking about there, what he means, but I don't know how he could be more tone -deaf because the

29:31

Pharisees, he's absolutely right. That's why he's so dangerous. He's absolutely right about what he says about the

29:37

Pharisees. They strained at gnats, they swallowed camels, right? But that's what J .D. Greer's doing. That's the issue here.

29:44

You have an agenda right now. I mean, there's a pastor in Canada right now in prison, Coates, because of the

29:51

COVID nonsense and how the Canadian government is reacting to him worshiping. I mean, the

29:58

NeNe's Deli documentary that's coming out shows what Christians have had to face and endure as a result of the

30:04

Black Lives Matter movement, and there's a lot of examples of this kind of thing, but Greer and those in the

30:11

SBC who are pushing the woke nonsense, in my opinion, to them, those are gnats,

30:22

I guess, because they don't talk about those things. They don't focus on them. They won't call attention to them, but then if something happens like George Floyd or Breonna Taylor or something like this, before any facts come out,

30:38

J .D. Greer is already making a video about how it's time to just mourn and to lament and to listen and all these kinds of things.

30:47

That's what Greer does, and you don't even know exactly what happened yet, but you're already jumping to these conclusions.

30:58

The hypocrisy is astounding to me, because that's exactly what they do.

31:03

They're welcoming in this false religion, standpoint epistemology, which is a form of postmodernism.

31:10

It's what it is. They're bringing in Marxist tools of social analysis, critical race theory.

31:16

These are threats to the authority of Scripture. Really, it's just even more fundamental than that.

31:24

They're threats to the nature of revelation. They're threats to biblical justice, threats to just Christian metaphysical assumptions themselves, what the nature of reality actually is.

31:36

Greer can just welcome those things on in, and those aren't as important as diversity and inclusion, which is what he's about to get at in this particular speech.

31:46

I agree with him about the Pharisees. I just think he's got the roles flipped. He's in the camp of the

31:52

Pharisees, because he's adding to the law. Where does it say in Scripture that the focus of the mission of the church is to be diverse, and that's what

32:00

Christians should be focusing on? Yeah, that's the result, is that you're going to have a diverse church and revelation.

32:06

Is that the mission, though? Is that we're supposed to do something extra to gain that? We're supposed to have this focus and emphasis on it, or are we just supposed to preach the gospel, eliminate barriers that could be unnecessarily offensive?

32:21

Unnecessarily is a very key word in that. So that's the thing.

32:27

Greer is, by welcoming all these political things into his church, and he says they're not political, he's again categorizing those as just cultural things.

32:34

That's just part of my gospel culture. But the people who want to make America great again, those would be the political guys, which were not part of that.

32:41

It's the category distinctions that he's making here. This is what we're seeing play out. This is why we're seeing divisions.

32:47

It's like, how come you can bring all the leftist stuff in, and that's somehow gospel -centered, but if I love my country and I don't want it to go down the tubes,

32:56

I'm somehow idolatrous? He's assigning the term pharisaical to the wrong people.

33:05

Then he brings in other things. He says, well, basically our churches are more welcoming to closet racists and neoconfederates.

33:10

Later on, he uses the term terrorist. And who's he talking about here? I want to challenge you a little bit to think of this step—again, take two steps intellectually back and try to assign—just guess.

33:26

That's the first thing to do is just to kind of try to figure out, based on good assumptions, not just a blind guess, but just guess, who could

33:33

Greer be talking about here? Pharisees. These are people that are somehow trying to add extra rules in concerning critical race theory.

33:45

They're concerned about it, but their concern is so much so that they're adding to the law of God by saying critical theory is forbidden or something.

33:55

So those are the Pharisees. You have the closet racists.

34:04

Who would those be? I don't know. So you have those who are concerned about CRT, then the closet racists.

34:11

He's continuing the same trajectory here. It's the same group, right? So the Pharisees and the closet racists are the same people.

34:17

Closet because they don't want to admit, I guess, that they're racist, but that's what they are. I don't know.

34:23

We don't have any examples from him of what that means, other than they are concerned about critical race theory. So that's all we're left with.

34:29

So if you're concerned about critical race theory—but he just said that if you're concerned about it, that you—approaching the

34:35

Bible and trying to understand what the Bible says is fine. So who is he talking about? It's intentionally vague, but you get the message.

34:41

That's what postmodernists—I hate—it's like, ah, this kind of communication I hate because it's not clear.

34:47

It's hard nailing the jello to the wall, but you walk away with an impression afterward. You're kind of led down this garden path into thinking that there's—that the group that is closet racists and Pharisees and neoconfederates, it's all the same group, and they're concerned about critical race theory, and then you're going to start assigning that to, well, that's

35:04

Tom Askell. Well, that's the Conservative Baptist Network. That's—I don't know who else is in the

35:09

SBC that's, Rod Martin, whoever. These are the bad guys, and their problem is they're adding to the law of God.

35:18

The neoconfederate thing—I mean, this is—again, he's taking the terms that the social—the critical theorists and the

35:26

Marxists—I mean, the term neoconfederate really was popularized by the

35:31

Southern Poverty Law Center as a way to go after groups who valued their

35:36

Southern heritage, and it's a way to try to tie the clan and stuff to groups like Sons of Confederate Veterans and those kinds of guys.

35:44

So the question is, if you're concerned about critical theory, and if you honor your confederate ancestors, if you think that they shouldn't take down the monuments, that there's actually something valuable that they were fighting for—their hearth and their home and these kinds of things in defense of their homeland—if you think that there's a sacrifice and something worthy there, if that's who you are, you're against the destruction and the vandalism and the outright revolutionary lawlessness that we've seen against these things.

36:15

If you're against that, are we to think that you're this horrible Pharisee, neoconfederate?

36:21

See, that's what we're left with, and the reason I'm challenging you to think through who we might be talking about is because who else are you going to be thinking about?

36:30

And I realize, look, Founders Ministries—I think he's got them in the crosshairs here a little bit—because Founders Ministries, the term

36:35

Founders itself, the Founders were confederates. Of course, Founders Ministry isn't—they're not choosing the, you know, whereabouts the founders of the

36:43

Southern Baptist Convention because of their ties to the Confederacy. No, they're about them because they're their ties to the 1689

36:49

London Baptist Confession and their commitment to orthodoxy. That's why Founders has the name

36:54

Founders. Founders doesn't even really talk about any ties they would have had to the Confederacy. But yes, they were.

36:59

They were confederates. The Founders were confederates. So I think that must be who Greer's going after here. And, you know, he's talking about SBC churches, so who else?

37:11

I mean, who else could he be? I mean, some people say, oh, he might be talking about you, John. Well, I'm not even in the SBC, so it's not me.

37:19

And I don't feel comfortable in SBC churches most of the time. The ones that I've been to,

37:25

I jumped around a whole bunch of them when I was in Wake Forest, or some are calling it now Woke Forest. And I had to land outside of an

37:32

SBC church because finding one that wasn't woke in some way was downright impossible, just about.

37:39

All right, let's keep going here. I'm hoping that you're at least seeing the insinuation, who he's assigning the blame to.

37:48

Now, on the other side of that, real quick, I should mention this. On the other side of that chasm, right, you have Founders Ministries, right?

37:54

You have the Conservative Baptist Network. On the other side of that, who are the other guys? Who are the Dwight McKissicks, the

38:00

BD Annabouillez? He's still in the SBC, right? Charlie Dates just left, but the people like that.

38:08

Who are the other guys? Linton, who's running for SBC president, Matt Hall, Jarvis Williams, I guess,

38:18

Walter Strickland, certain professors at SCBTS who are pretty woke.

38:25

Those guys are the ones that are actually the fairest. They're the ones that are actually bringing in extra stuff from sociology that does not come from scripture, and then making that gospel issue, making that gospel culture, making that somehow related to the gospel, so you must follow it.

38:41

And so they're the ones that are perverting the gospel, basically mimicking the

38:47

Galatian heresy. And the ones who are opposing it, the Ascols and the Conservative Baptist Network types, the

38:53

Founders Ministry types, they are the ones trying to preserve the gospel. So that's really what you have. But he twists everything into trying to come up with all these pejoratives from the left to assign to those who are preserving the gospel, and then he doesn't go after at all the people who are on other side who are actually the actual

39:13

Pharisees. It's projection. It's terrible communication.

39:18

It's vague enough, but it's intentionally vague, in my opinion. He's getting across what he wants to get across.

39:25

All right, let's keep going with this, if I can here. Story. Reflecting on it later,

39:45

I realized that I learned that story with the emphasis on the wrong syllable, because what you had in that story is always, for us, a focus on why

39:55

Jesus was driving them out or what he was angry about. It was the money changers, and they were using the temple to make money with the application that you shouldn't sell things in the church lobby, because that makes

40:05

Jesus angry, and there's probably some truth in that. But what we overlook is that the real meaning of that story, what

40:12

Jesus himself said was the meaning of it, was not so much what they were doing, but what they were obscuring.

40:19

It's funny. J .D. Greer talks about obscuring with his vague communication. Anyway, the gospel writers point out that the place that they had set up these tables was the court of the

40:28

Gentiles. The one place that God had set in the temple for the outsider to come in and to be able to see and to understand the uniqueness of the

40:39

God of Israel and what he was doing. He said, my house is supposed to be a house of prayer that is accessible for all nations.

40:49

You have turned what was meant to be a portal for the outsider and to make something accessible to the outsider as a place of convenience for the insider.

40:58

And Pharisees just didn't think about that anymore, and so it didn't bother them when they obscured or they made it difficult for the outsider to come and hear the message.

41:07

They were more concerned with preserving the purity of the nation than they were in bringing in the outsider.

41:14

All right, there you have it. There you have it. So there's the parallel. The Pharisee is more concerned with the purity of the nation than bringing in the outsider, and he uses

41:24

Mark 11. Well, it's actually in all four gospels, the account of this.

41:30

We're going to read the one from Mark 11. I think the one from Mark 11 actually is the only one where it gives you the full quote of Isaiah 56 -7, and I'll just read that for you.

41:42

Isaiah 56 -7, and I'm going to read it in, see,

41:49

I'm not going to read it in the NIV. I have it pulled up here on the computer. It won't let me read it on anything but the

41:57

NIV, which is okay. It's okay to have an NIV, but I prefer, all right, New American Standard.

42:03

It says, Even those I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer.

42:09

Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called the house of prayer for all peoples, all the peoples.

42:16

So he's saying that, I mean, there's almost a parallel to Revelation. Tribes, tongue, nations, all peoples.

42:25

All peoples are going to be accessing the truth of God, worshiping him together, this kind of thing.

42:32

Okay, so Jesus quotes this. We see a good example in Mark 11 when he drives out the money changers.

42:40

Here's what he says. I'm in Mark 11, chapter 11, verse 15. Then they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers in the seats of those who were selling doves.

42:54

Of course, they were selling them because they were going to sell to sacrifice and they were marking them up.

42:59

They were selling them at exorbitant fees, trying to make money there, and he would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple.

43:07

And he began to teach and say to them, Is it not written, my house shall be called the house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a robber's den.

43:16

And the chief priest wanted to destroy him. So this is the scenario here.

43:24

Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers in the seats of those who were selling doves. So those who were doing currency exchange, someone had come from another nation, they had a different type of currency, they were pilfering, taking more than they should have for the exchange, and they were using the worship of God to benefit themselves as a way of personally profiting.

43:45

They were creating a barrier between people in worship, and this was absolutely wrong.

43:51

And Jesus calls them out for it. And so they're thieves. That's what they're doing.

43:56

It's a robber's den. He's calling them thieves. And that's the issue here. J .D. Greer wants to put the emphasis in this text on the idea that because it should be for all the nations, they're somehow being very,

44:11

I guess, pro -Jewish, nationalistic here or something like that. Well, the truth is they are taking advantage of people from other nations who had to travel.

44:19

And that was just the circumstance of it. It wasn't because they were racist or anything. It was because of the circumstances of having to travel, needing places to stay, needing to exchange currency, not being able to take sacrifices with you on a journey.

44:30

So you had to get them there. And so if there's discrimination going on, it's discrimination not based on race or ethnicity.

44:40

It's discrimination. It's actually just taking advantage of someone because they're literally at an economic disadvantage.

44:48

And you can provide a service, and you're providing it in a way that benefits you immensely.

44:58

But the main thing here is you're preventing them from worshiping God. You're being a barrier between them and God.

45:04

And that's the issue that Jesus had there. It's not the way the temple was supposed to function. So Greer makes this all about somehow nationalism,

45:15

I guess, and being somehow a racist, I guess, in some way, or just not wanting other people around that aren't like you kind of thing.

45:25

And I'm sorry, this isn't, that dog doesn't hunt. This scripture, that's not what it gives you.

45:33

I don't even know what to say. I mean, is Jesus upset that they're being a barrier to people from other nations and saying it's important that people of other nations come and they worship?

45:45

Yes. But it's not because they're too pro -Jewish or they don't like people from other nations because their skin is different or something like that.

45:53

So Greer, in my opinion, is going farther than the text honestly allows, should allow you to go.

46:00

And then he's using this to draw a parallel for today. So today, this kind of thing is happening.

46:07

So who is he talking about? Again, these Christian nationalists, these people who they care about their country. That's what he said earlier.

46:13

So is this the MAGA crowd? It's the people who are concerned about a fraudulent election maybe?

46:19

Or they're concerned that, I mean, talk about swallowing, sifting out gnats and swallowing camels.

46:26

I mean, are they concerned about maybe what's happening to the Equality Act and what's happening to women's sports and Green New Deal and all this kind of stuff?

46:40

I mean, because those are kind of like some big things that are changing, not just the church, but they're changing everything in the culture, including the church.

46:47

And they're going to have some great consequences, including religious freedom and religious liberty.

46:53

So those are important things. And these aren't things Greer talks about. Greer minimizes them.

46:59

I mean, wouldn't those be the camels you need to probably say something about? We got a new priesthood popping up, a secular priesthood that wants to push

47:05

Christianity out. And there's people that don't want that to happen and they want to save their country. But they're the ones somehow that are the money changers.

47:13

They're the ones that are trying to somehow prevent others who are diverse and different from,

47:19

I guess, worshiping God. Let's keep going here. Great Commission Baptists, we will continue to do whatever it takes to make sure that people of color know that they are not only welcome and safe in our convention, but are an essential part of our future.

47:40

We're not going to show people who love this country, they're not an essential part of our future. But people of color are an essential part of our future.

47:51

Do you hear almost the self preservation in this? This goes back to something I remember years ago.

47:56

I had a friend who was on the Southeastern Society and he told me that in a donor meeting that the provost,

48:02

Bruce Ashford, who was the provost at the time, came in and basically gave this presentation that we need to do this kingdom diversity thing, which was a lot of liberation theology and critical race stuff, because the future of the

48:13

Southern Baptist Convention is diverse. The old white guys are dying and we need to bring in minorities to be able to save the

48:19

Southern Baptist Convention, and that's why we're doing kingdom diversity. That's, I think, the intention behind a lot of this.

48:25

There's a sort of pragmatism that we got to go along with this or else we won't have a convention anymore.

48:33

That's called institutionalism. God's going to build his church. You just got to be faithful. Faithfulness doesn't mean gimmicks.

48:42

Let me give an example here. The American flag.

48:48

I remember a few years ago, maybe a year ago actually, I was going to the gym and there was two people in the gym.

48:54

One had American flag shorts and someone else comes in and basically says, why are you wearing that? Don't you know that that's a racist symbol?

49:02

All right. I just remember thinking, man, like, you know, because I remember in what, 2015 when the

49:10

Confederate battle flag came down from the South Carolina, the memorial in South Carolina.

49:16

Some people predicted at that time that it wouldn't be long until broader

49:22

American symbols and figures and stuff would also be targeted. That's been exactly right.

49:28

People mocked it. Donald Trump said much the same thing about the monument thing. People mocked that and said, it was, you know, how weird that was and, you know, it's wrong.

49:36

And now it's all, of course, it's all been proven true and we're just going to see more of it. Here's the thing about that though.

49:43

And this is why I want to use the American flag as an example. My grandfather fought in World War II. I've got an uncle that served in Vietnam. And a lot of people, especially from military families,

49:52

I mean, they value that flag. And it's not because it's a piece of cloth. It's because of the sacrifice that was made serving under that flag.

49:59

It's because of the experience of relatives in their family or they themselves.

50:08

And I don't want to cede the definition of that flag to someone who wants to misrepresent it, who doesn't understand it, who wants to tear it down.

50:17

They don't get to define that. That's not their, you know, that's not, you know, their flag to define.

50:24

But what they've done, those people, many of them neo -Marxists, they've conditioned a number of people, my age and younger especially, into thinking that there's some kind of a racist element to that flag.

50:39

And so would, here's the question, this is what I want to ask. Would you, let's say on the 4th of July, would you go out and fly a flag in front of your house?

50:50

You're a Christian. Are you not supposed to do that now? It could offend some people. It could be a barrier to the gospel. Well, is it really a barrier to the gospel?

50:59

I mean, a lot of things offend a lot of people. We're in a culture now that's perpetually offended by just about everything. Does that mean we are somehow now, we have to go along with appeasing every single person who's enslaved and being the victim of those who would claim that they're offended by everything?

51:15

Or do you use that as an opportunity to educate that person on what the flag actually means and what it represents?

51:21

And maybe they're the ones that need to be charitable to you as well, knowing that, hey, you don't view this as a racist symbol because it's not.

51:29

Now, that being said, take that into the church. Would you in the church display an

51:35

American flag? Let's say even, we'll up it a little. We'll say it's a revival service or something.

51:42

You're trying to bring people to a central location to hear the gospel from the community and it's a college town. Do you put the

51:47

American flag prominently in your church? Now, I'm not saying it's a sin to do that, but is it, this is more like a practical reality, a wise thing.

51:57

Is it a wise thing to do that? Probably not. And does it mean that you're the barrier to the gospel?

52:03

You're putting a barrier there. No, not necessarily. The barrier isn't the flag. It's not the piece of cloth itself that is serving as the barrier.

52:11

The barrier is the conditioning that this person has in their mind. The lies that they believe is the barrier. So you want to get rid of those lies.

52:19

But those lies could end up being a barrier if they're triggered, to take a social justice word, by that symbol.

52:28

And if all they're thinking about is how horrible that symbol is, and they don't want to listen to you because you're associated with that symbol, then

52:35

I think there's a practical consideration there in your capacity as a

52:40

Christian who's doing evangelism in a church. Probably not the wisest thing to do.

52:46

But I recognize that people are not just Christians. People, that's a primary identity for Christians.

52:53

I get it, but you're more than that. And you are a member of a culture. And there isn't a gospel culture that just erodes everything else.

53:00

And you are, and it is perfectly fine on the 4th of July, or, you know, any day of the year, really.

53:06

But I'm speaking that day specifically because it's the day we typically use the flag to honor veterans, etc. It's perfectly fine to go ahead and to participate in that kind of thing.

53:16

And so I think J .D. Greer, though, I'd be curious, you know, I would ask him, so what is it that you're talking about?

53:23

What are these barriers that are existing here that are keeping, that make black people feel like they're not valued?

53:29

Like they, or any minority, that they can't come in? And why is that?

53:34

And if those barriers are there, why is it that this is like basically messing up the future of the convention?

53:42

Do you think that God can't preserve his church? We got to do something extra to do it?

53:47

Does this, because it's not, let's just face it. It's not about taking, putting a flag in your church or not. The issues we're really talking about here go way beyond that.

53:55

It means basically like doing these platforming of diverse perspectives things and implicit bias training.

54:02

And, you know, ways, I don't know, trying to de -center quote -unquote white worship, you know, hymns and these kinds of things and implement more like hip hop and this kind of stuff, which

54:15

I'm not saying all of that's wrong. It's not all wrong to have diverse music styles. The music in your church is probably going to reflect the tastes and the interests of your church and the cultures of your church to some extent.

54:28

And that's a whole nother discussion. I'm, I have my own thoughts on music, but it's, you know, to do it for that reason, to do it for the reason that because you're trying to attract people, you're trying to be diverse.

54:41

That's the reason that you're implementing these things. That's the reason that you're not going to quote from this theologian, but you're going to quote from this theologian.

54:52

That's the reason that you got to change the whole style of the church and the way that it looks and the way you dress around.

54:58

I mean, this is what the seeker sensitive guys were doing back. However, many years ago in like the nineties and early two thousands, it's the same kind of thing.

55:06

Like, Oh, the future of the church is it's going to be the young hit people. What do we got to do, man? We got to change our music.

55:11

We got to change everything about our church. We got to make sure that, you know, we're not offending them by mentioning certain sins too harshly that they're involved in.

55:21

We got to just like, that's the same thing. It's the same mentality. There's a little bit of that pragmatism.

55:26

I sense overall. And I think it's coming out a little bit here in JD Greer. So I think we're on the homestretch here.

55:32

Let's finish this. Listen, I made diversity a goal question. The scripture make diversity a goal or is diversity a result of something.

55:43

It's a very key thing. It's a result of something. That's the answer. Diversity is a result. You have revelation seven is there's a result is there's a diversity sharing the gospel.

55:52

It's not a goal. One of my goals coming into this office, not because it's cool or trendy or woke, or it's just what you talk about.

56:01

It's because in the last 30 years, the largest growth that we have seen in the Southern Baptist convention has been among black

56:07

Latino and Asian congregations. He just, this is so hysterical to me. I'm not doing it because it's trendy.

56:13

Here's the trend over the last 30 years. Really? So you're not doing it because it's trendy, but you're now citing the trend.

56:19

Okay. They are a huge part of our future and praise God, brothers and sisters, the

56:26

Gentiles in the analogy are coming to faith. You've got to be kidding me. You've got, he did not just say that he did not just say that.

56:34

So, so, so the ethnic groups he just identified are the

56:40

Gentiles. So who are the Jews? The white people, the white people are the Jews to whom the promises are given the

56:45

God's chosen people. Those are the white people. How is this not racist? I just, to me, that's, that, that should be offensive.

56:56

Why is that not offensive? Um, all right. Our leadership needs to reflect who we are and who

57:04

God is making us. James said something that explained the rationale that he used. We ought not make it hard for Gentiles who are coming to God, brothers and sisters.

57:18

I wish I could write some version of that statement over the doorstep of every Southern Baptist church in America.

57:23

We ought not make it hard for Democrats to come to Jesus. We should make it hard for Republicans to come to Jesus or blacks or Latinos or Northerners or Southerners.

57:38

At the end of the day, if we're a people who puts the gospel above all, what it means is that we turn to the gospel that has been given to us and say, how do we make it easy for policemen and school teachers?

57:52

Because our gospel is too precious and our mission too urgent to let anything stand in our way. You know, what makes it hard to come to Jesus?

57:59

The gospel. I mean, from the sense that it's offensive to the world, to those who love the sin, the flesh, and the devil.

58:10

The gospel is pretty, you know, that's, yeah, I can repent of my sin, and only then is the good news of Jesus Christ.

58:20

Like, I have to trust in this guy? I can't trust in my works? I don't know, man. Like, it seems like it's a pretty hard barrier there for people coming to Jesus.

58:29

I mean, what's he talking about? What does it mean that you're making it harder for Democrats to come to Jesus? What does that look like? You don't talk about abortion in church?

58:36

You don't talk about, you're soft? You say things like the Bible whispers about sexual sin? I wonder where I heard that one.

58:46

Listen, here's the problem with all this. The barriers between—the Democrats have adopted a civil religion of sorts.

58:57

It's a woke religion. I don't know how else to say it. It's got its own priest, its own way of looking at scripture, its own everything that parallels

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Christianity just about. Its own Augustinian framework of repentance and penance and future reward.

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And it's a false religion that they're buying into. If you're really buying into the Democrat platform and the direction they're going, the

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Great Reset stuff, then that's where you're going. So there's no way that you can keep from offending them.

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Just preaching the whole counsel of God offends them. Preaching the whole counsel of God is going to offend a lot of Republicans too.

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Preaching the whole counsel of God is going to offend all kinds of people in all kinds of places, but you just do it.

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You just preach the whole counsel of God. So the focus here is on not trying to offend so that you can save your convention, when the focus should be on just preaching the whole counsel of God and let the chips fall where they may, and not unnecessarily offending.

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Unnecessarily offending would be something extra that is not mandated in scripture, that is not part of scripture, that does not come from a tradition that derives from scripture, that is just outside the scope of the

01:00:07

Bible. Let me give you an example. I've heard in Jamaica. I worked with a guy from Jamaica, and it's rude to sit on someone's bed if you're in Jamaica.

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Now, I used to be a repairman, and I did go into a lot of houses from people who were from Jamaica.

01:00:27

One of the things I did was I would measure the dips in mattresses years ago.

01:00:35

Now, if they were from Jamaica, would I sit on the bed? Now, if I had to, I have to do what

01:00:40

I need to do. But being aware of that cultural rule or just it's part of their code of civility or whatever,

01:00:51

I'm going to try to avoid doing that. If I ignorantly do it, I'm sorry I didn't know. But that's just one example of something that, okay,

01:00:59

I can change my behavior on this if I know that that is something that offends Jamaicans. It's not necessary for me.

01:01:08

It's not part of the counsel of God that when I do this particular thing, I have to sit on the bed when

01:01:13

I am taking my measurement. I mean, this might sound like a stupid example to some of you, but I think it gets to the heart of what the difference here is.

01:01:21

I don't compromise Scripture to appeal to Democrats. That's the real issue here.

01:01:26

I don't compromise any of that. J .D. Greer is not saying to compromise, but the question then becomes, what is he saying?

01:01:33

What is it? Identify it specifically. What is it that's causing such an offense that people who are minorities don't feel valued?

01:01:40

What is it, J .D. Greer? What is it that you're talking about? Because all I'm seeing are people who are coming in offending the

01:01:48

Orthodox Christians by imposing all this critical race junk and soft -peddling

01:01:55

LGBTQ and Great Reset COVID craziness. Those are the people coming in, adding extra things like the

01:02:03

Pharisees would do to love your neighbor means you have to wear a mask, this kind of thing. And then they're telling those who are offended by that, that they need to go pound sand because they're the ones that have the problem.

01:02:14

That's what I'm seeing, J .D. Greer. So what reality are you living in? I'm without words.

01:02:22

I just think the hypocrisy and just the danger that this man is, in my opinion, it's just off the charts.

01:02:34

Whoever becomes the next SBC president, if they're anything like Greer, even a softer version of Greer, then they just let this stuff continue.

01:02:42

And they believe in these kinds of categories. It's over, guys. I don't know how else to say it to you. It's over.

01:02:49

The SBC needs stage four cancer now. They have stage four chemo for cancer now.

01:02:57

And it's going to take someone who is going to hit it out of the park, who's going to identify these things by name, say who are causing the problems, what they're doing.

01:03:09

And if it's more of the same, if it's more of a J .D. Greer approach, I just don't know how the

01:03:14

SBC continues as a Christian organization because everything's flipped on its head in this. And it's the way of becoming a

01:03:22

Pharisee while accusing everyone else that's trying to prevent you from doing it, of being Pharisees. So there you go.

01:03:28

There's my analysis of J .D. Greer. I know some people probably think I'm a little harsh on that or something, but guys,

01:03:33

I really am passionate about this. It's not because of the SBC. I'm not in the

01:03:39

SBC. I went to an SBC school. I was in an SBC church as a member for a short period of time.

01:03:45

I have a heritage that's SBC that goes back a long ways. It's more just because I see this everywhere in evangelicalism.

01:03:52

And we got to expose it. We got to fight it. And I'm putting a lot of effort into things that hopefully will do that.

01:03:59

But ultimately, the battle belongs to the Lord at the end of the day. We have to trust him that he's going to build his church despite whatever efforts.

01:04:07

I mean, all we can do is the filthy rag thing, right? We can give God things that would never be able to save us if Christ had not intervened and saved us.

01:04:20

But he does require us to obey him. He does require us to stand for truth, and that's what we need to be doing.

01:04:27

So one thing I wanted to mention, some prayer requests, actually, a few things, if I may.

01:04:34

Oh, before I do that real quick, I just wanted to mention this. Here's Capstone Report, Reformation Charlotte, and Protestia.

01:04:42

These are reactions I thought, though. I'm going to just read you the two headlines here. SBC president J .D.

01:04:48

Greer compares conservative critics to terrorists and Pharisees. Capstone Report. He's right. That's what happened. Reformation Charlotte, J .D.

01:04:54

Greer says he'd rather unite with those who pervert the gospel than those who defend it. And I think that's exactly right, too. You're seeing through the charade of, oh, it's the racist versus the inclusive people.

01:05:05

Nope, that's not what it is. And then, of course, we have this. This is hysterical.

01:05:11

If you can watch, you can see it. I'll try to describe it if you're listening. But the Protestia put out this. It's J .D.

01:05:17

Greer as Jesus in the temple with a whip, and he's going after all the discernment bloggers. And that's,

01:05:24

I just thought that is so, that is just, it's so clever because he's, you know, he's saying we need to be diverse, and he's the one that's not being diverse.

01:05:42

He's driving people out. He's the one that's not being inclusive. It's just, he's so tone deaf.

01:05:48

It's like the things you're complaining about, that's what you're doing. You're driving the conservatives out of the convention because of this kind of thing.

01:05:56

So I just thought it was really shrewd, and I just want to give them some credit for that because I thought it was a good, little good comic there.

01:06:01

So the last thing that I wanted to ask you to do is to pray for three individuals. Votie Bauckham's one of them.

01:06:07

Many of you are aware of his heart condition, and he's at the Mayo Clinic, as I understand, and getting treatment.

01:06:15

The other one is Pastor Coates, who is in jail in Canada because he decided to go to church and to worship.

01:06:26

Pray for that. That is persecution, by the way. And then the last thing is, I'd ask you to pray for someone else.

01:06:32

I got this message last night. The person, his name is

01:06:37

Craig, who does the web development for Discerning Christians, the website, said that his pastor, Craig Johnson, has

01:06:43

COVID, and they're so weak that him and his wife both have it. They can't even talk to their kids, and he is, he has diabetes.

01:06:53

A young man, only in his early 40s, and I've never met him, but I that's such a sad thing.

01:06:58

Please pray for him as well, Craig Johnson. So I appreciate y 'all listening, and I got some more material coming out.

01:07:06

We're going to be pumping out a bunch of things over the next few days, and looking forward to that. And we will persevere through all the the wokeness and the

01:07:17

COVID nonsense and everything else going on right now, because we know who's ultimately king, and that's the

01:07:23

Lord Jesus Christ. And he has eternity set, and it is secure, and nothing's going to be changing it.