Is Using Critical Race Theory as an Analytical Tool Biblical? A Discussion w/Andrew Rappaport.

0 views

In 2019, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution stating that it was acceptable for their churches to use Critical Race Theory as a analytical tool to disciple Christians. But is Critical Race Theory biblical? I discuss this with Andrew Rappaport from Striving for Eternity Ministries to see what have been the effects of adopting this analytical tool to interpret the world and what it will mean for the church. May this episode edify you and bring glory to God! To access the podcast, blog, and other resources go to the Thoroughly Equipped website @ ⁠ttew.org⁠ Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: https://www.facebook.com/TEWMelbaToast ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thoroughlyequipped316/ ⁠ Christian Podcast Community: ⁠ Christianpodcastcommunity.org⁠ Striving For Eternity Ministries: https://strivingforeternity.org/

0 comments

00:01
It seems like there are desires to take the convention in a direction that some of us don't want to go or at least are suspicious of.
00:16
Oh boy, here we go. I am Angela Um from Antioch Baptist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
00:23
I move that the convention adopt Resolution No. 9 on critical race theory and intersectionality.
00:30
4A, do you have an amendment to Resolution No. 9? Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I do. I'm Tom Askell, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida.
00:38
I want to express appreciation to Dr. Woods and his committee for the sake of what they've done.
00:44
But for the sake of our witness, I want to add strength to this resolution, make it clearer and more explicitly theological by offering what
00:53
I hope will be taken as a friendly amendment. So after the first whereas, I would like to offer whereas critical race theory and intersectionality are godless ideologies that are indebted to radical feminism and post -modernism and neo -Marxism and then add two resolves after the first resolved.
01:17
Resolved that we remind Southern Baptists that critical race theory and intersectionality emerge from a secular worldview and are rooted in ideologies that are incompatible with Christianity.
01:31
And be it further resolved that we repudiate all forms of identity politics and any ideology that establishes human identity in anything other than the divine creation in the image of God and for all redeemed humanity, our common identity together eternally united to Christ.
01:56
Is there a second to that amendment? All right, you may speak to it.
02:02
I just think it's important that we understand the origins of these two ideologies.
02:08
They do come from godless Marxism and we also ought to recognize the way that they are commonly used today.
02:16
Not by any members of our committee that has set forth this very carefully worded resolution, but we need to be aware of how these ideologies are being used in our culture and there are attempts to insert these ideologies in the false way of seeing the world into evangelical life and churches.
02:39
And so if we make it clear about their origins and reemphasize that we have our identity in Christ and Christ alone,
02:48
I just think it strengthens this resolution. I hope it will be received as a friendly amendment.
02:55
Thank you, brother. Do you want to respond, Dr. Woods? I appreciate the words and the sentiment of the messenger.
03:05
We will take this as an unfriendly amendment for this purpose. It is our aspiration in this resolution simply to say that critical race theory and intersectionality are simply analytical tools that are meant to be used as tools, not as a worldview.
03:25
And we would also say that in light of the time, we don't have an opportunity to talk about the origins as well as the implications of critical race theory.
03:38
When you begin to think about worldviews and philosophical constructs, the Apostle Paul appealed to the
03:45
Epicurean centralists. He appealed to the rationalists on Mars Hill, but that did not mean that Paul imbibed the views of the rationalists or the centralists.
03:56
When Apostle Paul quotes from Epimenides in Titus chapter 112, it did not mean that Paul believed that Epimenides' worldview was consistent.
04:06
What we're saying is that this can be utilized simply as an analytical tool, not a transcendent worldview above the authority of Scripture.
04:17
And we stand by the strength of this resolution. The idea that critical theory can be used as an analytical tool is really kind of short -sighted because there are a whole lot of core ideas that underlie critical theory that in order to use it, you more or less have to adopt those ideas.
04:42
So you have to adopt the idea for critical theory to work at all. You have to adopt the idea that everything in society is built around disparities in power, that basically power is the only reality in society.
05:01
You have to redefine sin to align with this issue of power and oppression.
05:08
Sin's more than that. You have to, along with this, assume that there is a lack of objective reality that is in fact accessible to us.
05:18
If in fact everything is determined by the hegemony or the counter -hegemony or whatever, there is no longer any room for objectivity.
05:27
There's no longer any way of reaching anything that we can actually claim as objective truth.
05:35
It basically undermines the idea that the universe has meaning. So you have to basically rework everything you think you know about theology in light of an ideology that's less than 60 years old.
06:22
Ladies, welcome to Thoroughly Equipped.
06:34
If you are new to Thoroughly Equipped, welcome. This is a podcast dedicated to women, to look at the false teachings that are coming into women's ministry and to combat them with scripture and good doctrine.
06:49
On this episode, I am laying a bit of a foundation or giving you a bit of a background into what's to come as we're looking at, which
07:03
I'm going to be doing, is looking at Be the Bridge Ministry, LaTosha Morrison's Be the Bridge Ministry, which is a anti -racist training ministry that comes into churches to train and disciple people on racial reconciliation, anti -racism, and to equip their people with a racial righteousness.
07:30
But before we do that, I wanted to expose and talk about how come all of a sudden we're seeing this explosion of this type of teaching entering into the church.
07:44
And one of the reasons why, let me go back a little bit about this.
07:52
There has been a liberal trend going through churches for a while.
07:59
A lot of what were solid churches, the Methodists, the Presbyterian, and churches like that, at one point held to very orthodox views, but eventually began to go more liberal in their ideologies and theology and belief.
08:18
And it was all kind of under this guise or what started with this idea of that the gospel and the kingdom of God were about changing social structures in society.
08:36
Making and bringing equity to all. That is, in essence, what the social gospel teaches.
08:46
That salvation is not just an individual salvation, but is a salvation of culture and a salvation of the world through social justice.
08:59
And in that became, was a lot of this cultural
09:05
Marxist worldview lens that there's the oppressor and then there's the oppressed.
09:13
And the kingdom of God would get rid of all oppression and all oppressive structures.
09:23
And the goal of the church was to bring in that kingdom. So it adopted a lot of Marxist ideas.
09:32
That's why we see these critical theories coming in. And specifically, critical race theory is one of the bigger ones.
09:40
Now, back in 2019, this is why this is important. I showed you clips where the
09:46
Southern Baptist Convention basically approved and gave license to people who taught critical race theory to promote it as an analytical tool.
10:00
So this opened the door for all pastors and ministries such as Be the
10:06
Bridge and the Gathering to promote critical race theory as a legitimate way to see the world.
10:14
That's what an analytical tool is, is a way to, it's a lens by which you see society and its structures.
10:24
And so by acknowledging that this is an analytical tool, a useful tool, they've brought it in and proclaim it as a good discipleship tool as a way to learn about social structures and especially racism in the
10:42
American church today. And so that's why ministries such as Be the
10:48
Bridge exist. Because it's seen as a legitimate way to disciple
10:55
Christians into racial righteousness. And many churches, because they don't understand critical theory and the presuppositions and the ideologies, any, yes, the theologies within it, they adopt it and bring it into the church.
11:14
And, and so the laity within it are becoming what
11:20
Be the Bridge terms anti -racist. We're going to look at anti -racism in the next couple episodes, because that's what they are.
11:27
A DEI training program into anti -racism. So for this,
11:35
I wanted to bring in Andrew Rappaport, who has done debates on critical race theory or against critical race theory, who goes into church through his ministry, striving for eternity.
11:44
They will go into church to help churches learn how to identify these teachings and then combat them with scripture.
11:54
And so I wanted to bring him in to talk about critical race theory, its use as an analytical tool, and whether it's biblical.
12:01
And the discussion gets very interesting. It does get into some political issues. But one of the more interesting topics that was brought up was the way he connected critical race theory and what's going on in our society today and the persecution that we're starting to see and its connection with the persecution of the
12:19
Jews in Nazi Germany. So hopefully this discussion is a blessing to you, helps you understand a little bit about critical race theory and its use as an analytical tool.
12:33
Of course, answer the question whether it's biblical or not. And then that way you can understand going in.
12:39
It's laid a foundation for you going into the next couple episodes to understand then what we're going to look at is extremely dangerous, an undermining of scripture's call for people to be impartial when critical race theory actually causes partiality.
13:00
And Be the Bridge is going to train you to do that. Be partial. So let's dive in.
13:06
This is my interview with Andrew Rappaport on critical race theory and its use as an analytical tool.
13:13
All right, Andrew, thank you for coming on to Thoroughly Equipped.
13:19
Again, you are just a great person, I think, that's helped me out in understanding what we believe, which is a great book, by the way.
13:29
Anybody listening should check that out and helping me understand just more about Christianity.
13:36
So I wanted to have you on to talk about what we're tackling here in this final session of the
13:47
If Gathering. So we've been looking at analytical tools that If incorporates that Jenny Allen has included in her
13:55
If Gathering and not just the If Gathering, but her Bible studies as well.
14:01
I'm hoping to help the listeners understand that analytical tools are actually being used and incorporated in church life and specifically discipleship.
14:15
And one of the biggest ones is critical race theory. And I know that a lot of people are kind of starting to tune in to what critical race theory is, especially among our reformed churches and stuff like that.
14:30
But it's sneaky. It's very sneaky. So I wanted to have
14:35
Andrew on to talk about critical race theory and analytical tools. So, Andrew, thank you for coming on again.
14:42
And will you just give a little background for those who haven't listened to you on my show before?
14:49
Tell people about yourself and what you do. Wait, they didn't hear me before? Well, I hope they have.
14:55
They can go back and binge every episode of Thoroughly Equipped, in my humble opinion. Why shouldn't they?
15:01
No, I have listened to every episode. But yeah, my name is Andrew Rapport. I am the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the
15:09
Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast you're listening to is actually a member. And I am the author of a book called
15:17
What Do We Believe? And What Do They Believe? So one's on Christian systematic theology, and the other is on systematic theology of the other world religions.
15:24
I travel internationally and speak. Um, yeah, from a Jewish background, that's going to play into as we talk about CRT.
15:32
That's going to actually play into that, because I'll give you some views that historical views that as someone
15:39
Jewish growing up after the Holocaust, there's a lot of parallelism there going on in America today and the
15:45
Holocaust of World War Two time period. So because people don't study history, we're doomed to repeat it.
15:52
Yes. So but yeah, I'm also the I also podcast myself. I have several of them.
16:00
My main one I do is Andrew Rapport's Rapport. That's one that deals with biblical interpretations, applications.
16:06
And we're going through a series called What We Believe, which is right now going through our doctrinal statement at Striving for Eternity, getting into details of why why write a systematic doctrinal statement?
16:17
What is systematic theology? Why would I look for when you are looking at a church's doctrinal statement?
16:22
What to look for? What's what's all that's behind a statement? And then we're also teaching theology throughout it. So we do all that in that series that we're doing right now.
16:29
And we're I also have Apologetics Live, which you're familiar with. I think that's how you and John Harris got connected was with my
16:37
Apologetics Live, which is live Thursday nights, 8 to 10 Eastern Standard Time. That is one where anyone can join.
16:44
Ask any questions. And as I say on that show, I can answer any question that anybody has about God and the
16:50
Bible. This is something I would do in New York City. I'd get up on my box before starting to preach the gospel and I'd say,
16:57
I can answer any question that anyone has about God and the Bible. And someone will ask me inevitably a really, really hard question that I have no clue.
17:07
And I go, I don't know. And they go, you said you could answer anything. I said, I did. I don't know is a perfectly good answer.
17:14
And you just see someone's mouth sit there open and their fingers pointing at me and they're like, oh, right.
17:20
Yeah. And the whole audience is now laughing. It helps to build rapport with the crowd. But I can't answer any question that anyone has because I don't know is a perfectly good answer.
17:29
Yeah, it is. All right. Well, thank you for that. You do quite a lot.
17:34
And I've, again, everything that you have done has really helped me so much in growing this whole, the whole community,
17:43
Christian podcast community has so many good podcasters on there that I just, you can binge it. It's wonderful.
17:49
I don't know if your audience knows you're actually now one of the administrators. We've pulled you in. They do not.
17:55
Yes. You're actually an admin at the Christian podcast community. So if you folks, if you wanted a podcast and you applied and got rejected, it's her fault.
18:04
It's not me, not me, not me. It's her. Yes. I have a little bit of favoritism. Yes, but okay.
18:12
So let's get into our topic today, which is analytical tools and critical race. Very specifically.
18:19
And I'm gonna let you know ahead of time, but the reason why we're looking specifically at critical race theory is because we're going to start looking at Latosha Morrison ministry, which is about racial reconciliation.
18:34
And so right off the bat, this is where I see and have seen this analytical tool come in to help bring what they would call racial reconciliation.
18:47
But first off, what is an analytical tool and what might be a problem with it?
18:54
Well, let me back up and give you a different way of that I believe is more accurate to what
19:00
CRT stands for, because you said critical race theory. Um, really what
19:07
CRT properly stands for is cultural racism training. Yes.
19:13
I think I agree with that completely. Much better definition. It really is what we're looking at. They're, they're teaching racism to the culture.
19:20
They're training people to be racists and how they do that. Well, you redefine what racism is.
19:26
It's no longer about favoring someone because of the color of their skin or disparaging someone because of the color of their skin.
19:35
It has to do with their economic status. It has to do with really their political views because you get folks that are black that run.
19:48
We saw this when, when you had a black man running as the governor of California during a special election and they called him a white supremacist, but wait, he's black.
20:01
Like, like those seem like they're opposite. No, because it's about the ideology. It's not about the favoritism shown to a group of people based on the color of their skin or be more proper, more scientific, the amount of melanin in their skin, because we all have color.
20:20
We're all colored. It's just how much melanin we have or don't have. And you'll see that this is something throughout the world.
20:27
You have places in Africa where they are show racism toward people that are too dark or not dark enough.
20:34
So this is a reality that is part of the sin nature within human beings.
20:41
So what I think when we talk about it, critical race theory is the idea of,
20:50
I mean, critical theory is this idea of an ideology to evaluate basically the way society works and gets along on an idea of equity, not equality.
21:05
And this is going to come into the analyst tools because, and you have to understand the difference between equity and equality, because this is what the tools try to work.
21:13
They're working toward equity. So what is the difference? Let's say we were going to have a race.
21:23
Equality means that we all start at the same starting line. You're not held back because you don't have enough money.
21:32
You don't have the right color skin. You don't come up from the right family, whatever. You're not held back. Everyone starts at the same point.
21:40
Equity is that everyone has to finish at the same point. So equity would be that whoever is coming up, the first one, they got to stop before the finish line to wait for everyone to catch up so they all could go past together.
21:54
That would be equity. Now, equality is possible. Equity is not.
22:01
The reason I say that is in America, for example, if you're born in America, I'm just going to use this as an example, you're born in America and you're the right age, any
22:10
American -born citizen. Oh, wait. After Obama, I guess we can say people that aren't born in America.
22:17
But OK. But before Obama. But any
22:22
American -born citizen can run for president.
22:29
That is equality. So therefore, you can run.
22:35
I can run. Trump can run. Biden can run. Anyone can, as long as they fit the criteria.
22:41
Equity would say we're all the president of the United States. Every one of us.
22:47
That's a good analogy. Well, that's the point is we can't all be the boss.
22:53
Go to your job and try saying we have to have equity. We're all the boss. Twitter tried that when Musk bought out
22:59
Twitter. They made demands on him like, how dare you take away our free food that you give us, breakfast, lunch, dinner, wine, drinks, making us work 40 hours a week.
23:11
You can't take any of these benefits. And he was like, oh, there's the door. You're not the boss because they actually believed in equity.
23:21
So to lay the ground rules for the analytic tools that we're going to discuss, you have to understand that they're looking to find a way to measure that everybody's crossing the finish line at the same time.
23:35
That's the goal. Yeah. And with that, what you end up seeing is it is an impossible goal, but that's good.
23:44
That's what they want. Why? Because the goal will never be reached. So you always need the people pushing
23:51
CRT. You need them. You need to empower them. Do they really care about these things?
23:58
No. You want evidence? It's called Black Lives Matter. Yeah.
24:05
Which raised $2 billion for the people that ran it and did nothing for the communities they claimed they were trying to help out.
24:15
In fact, the community suffered over $2 billion of insurable damage during the
24:21
Black Lives Matter riots and was not replaced. Companies went belly up. Black -owned businesses gone.
24:29
Black people that worked in stores like Walmart and others no longer having jobs because those stores left.
24:36
So the Blacks they say matter, well, the only Blacks that mattered for Black Lives Matter were the three founders that bought millions of dollars of homes, plus other things, spread money around to where they wanted.
24:49
And meanwhile, were being sued by individual chapters of Black Lives Matter because they weren't getting the money.
24:55
And now I believe Black Lives Matter is, or at least part of the, I know the individual states have already filed for bankruptcy, but I think the organization is basically going belly up now.
25:05
So good. Yeah, it would be. But the reality is that what you see is that they make the claims for an impossible goal so that you always have to keep them having all the power, the money, the prestige, everything that they want, but the people that are supporting it, they never benefit from it.
25:26
Yeah, because one of the things I have noticed how this kind of sneaks in is because I've been thinking about this as I'm going through Be the
25:37
Bridge, you don't hear these terms power, oppression, and the typical critical race theory that we hear proponents speak out in the wider world, like in the news and media and stuff like that.
25:58
But what you do see is this, they take the term, something like that, like power, but they make it white superiority or white, and they won't say white supremacy because it has a bad background, but white privilege.
26:15
And so Be the Bridge and David Bailey's other, his ministry, I can't ever pronounce it right, and I can't think of it right now, always has this underlying presupposition that there's a white superiority and that white superiority, that they get certain privileges more than the colored people do.
26:40
And I mean, when we're actually looking at society, especially American society, we make up 70 % of the population, right?
26:48
I mean, whites are the majority. So then it's like you said, they want, then the minority wants the same outcomes that the majority would have.
27:01
And we want them to have the same equal opportunity, but not everybody, like you said, is going to come to the same ending.
27:11
Their behavior, their choices, their moral standing, all these things, their background, their family background, even their environment, these are all going to have, these are all going to present, what's the word?
27:27
I can't think of it, but they're going to have an effect on the outcome, right?
27:35
But so tell me then, since I totally agree with you that it's, what'd you call it?
27:45
Not critical race theory, what did you call it? Cultural. So that presupposition that everybody has to have equity, everybody's got to have the same outcome.
27:59
I think it sneaks in by racial reconciliation because it has that presupposition that there is a white superiority in the church.
28:12
And then you're going to see that clearly when I start to show you from Be the Bridge, where that comes from.
28:19
So, so then why then are, why do you think the church is using these things to, to bring in racial reconciliation?
28:31
Well, it sounds good. This is the thing you always have to remember. All this stuff sounds good. They always craft it in superior sounding language and people, do we want to see an end to racism?
28:47
Yes. How do you actually do that? You end all racism. You're never going to end racism with racism.
28:54
You can't say, well, we're going to favor blacks because they were disparaged years ago and ignore history.
29:02
When we talk racism in America, for example, people ignore the fact that it was blacks that kidnapped blacks in Africa and sold them to whites.
29:12
They forget that the first slave owner in America was black and owned another black man.
29:18
So it's, it's not something that is clearly racial lines, but the real thing is they're not looking to solve the real problem.
29:28
They're making excuses. And okay. It's race. Look at the, look at the percentages.
29:34
How many blacks are in prison? How many blacks are in college? Well, okay. Why is that?
29:40
Because we have a culture now that has told blacks, you can't do anything without the white people in government.
29:49
You need them. You're so dumb and stupid. You can't do anything without a handout. That's what the
29:56
Democrats have been telling blacks for years. Yeah. And unfortunately people actually are believing that.
30:01
And so they think they have no choice other than getting handouts. And this is the problem that we end up having with this is you have to recognize the fact that when we look at these things, there's not just one thing at stake.
30:18
There's, there's a lot at play. The real issue that you're going to see, and this can be shown very easily through years of study in every culture, the breakdown of the family will always cause whether white, black, any, anyone in between will always cause problems in school, your education, your ability to get jobs.
30:41
You're more likely to make bad choices in life, end up in jail. Right?
30:47
So that's like the number one issue to be resolved. Now, the blacks used to have the strongest family. They are very strong because when persecuted, they had to stick together.
30:56
But the U .S. government in America decided to bring drugs in to pay for their wars overseas.
31:03
This was started in Nicaragua, you know, thanks to, I think it started under the Carter administration, but what ended up happening?
31:10
They were funding drugs. Where are they going to put the drugs? Oh, we'll put it in the black communities, destroying the black family.
31:15
Oh, right. Because the quickest way to make, we want fast money, be a drug dealer.
31:20
And that became the job opportunity for blacks. So is that encouraging a lifestyle that is going to lead to what a biblical family of biblical structure, the way
31:32
God ordained it? No. So you have the breakdown. They're not looking to solve that.
31:38
In fact, when you had a black man, Bill Cosby, have the nerve to stand up and say these things.
31:45
I remember that canceled. Yeah, that was a while ago. Yeah, a long time ago.
31:50
And what he was saying seems like simple compared to what's being said now. Like it has changed so much in 20 years.
31:57
Remember, Barack Obama was supposed to solve all the racism in America, just electing him. But what you get into power with, you stay in power with.
32:04
And so he got elected because of because he was half black. He wasn't the first black president, folks.
32:10
He was more white than black. Just keep that in mind. He was raised by his white mother and grandparents. He never knew his black father.
32:18
He had to be taught this. And this isn't me saying it. Read his own book. That's where I got it from. His mother had to teach him what it meant to be black by taking him to the library and reading a bunch of books on the black way of life.
32:29
He didn't live it. Neither did his wife. But they claim it. Right. And so but they claim this racism and he can only stay in power by continuing that racism.
32:39
And that's why you see that it has gotten worse with his election. Now, all of that to say we have to, if we're really going to look to a solution, got to get to the root cause of the problem.
32:49
No one's looking to do that. These tools aren't looking to do that. So why does it affect the church? The same reason it is much easier to say that we're doing evangelism and going and bringing food to the homeless than it is to actually share the gospel with them.
33:04
Feel better about yourself and you don't feel any rejection. So it feels better to say, look, we're trying to solve racism.
33:11
That's a good thing. The church wants to end racism and should want to end racism. But are we actually doing that by using these analytical tools to say, well, we have to do reparations.
33:22
We have to do make sure there's a certain number of of blacks that are represented in every church. I mean, there are churches that are trying to say that you have to have a certain number of blacks that are on as pastors.
33:34
Well, now, are you going to take the best past someone who's qualified to be a pastor? Well, not if you have a requirement that you have to have X number of blacks.
33:41
You may take someone that's not even safe because you need to have X number of blacks in the church and then you need someone to be on the board.
33:46
And we need that. So someone has to be on. In fact, California just had passed a law that every nonprofit has to have a specific percentage of minority and minority includes blacks, also homosexuals.
34:02
So I'm sure transgenders all of it. And so you if you don't have someone that fits that category and you're a church,
34:11
California is going to start requiring that. Yeah. Now, it sounds good to say we want to end racism, but we have to be honest about what the cause is of these things.
34:24
Well, the cause of racism is called sin. That's the cause. Can we get rid of that?
34:29
No. Can we legislate sin out of existence? No. So we're not going to succeed by saying,
34:38
OK, we're going to use some legislative means or put requirements in place that actually end up being racist because that's what they do.
34:48
Your affirmative action was just overruled by the Supreme Court because it is racist. It says you have to have quotas, a certain number of blacks.
34:55
So we talk about white privilege. Well, you know, we're seeing right now someone who's black or homosexual can kill people and they don't get in trouble.
35:04
But a white person, I mean, a black guy in New York can threaten people's lives. And a white guy who accidentally kills him, he was trying to restrain him.
35:14
You know, there were even blacks there that were being threatened and said, and we're helping this white guy. But only the white guy is arrested and now on trial for murder.
35:22
Well, I don't know about this. Oh, you don't? OK. And he he's a military.
35:30
He had the guy in a chokehold to restrain. Oh, no. OK, I do. OK, I don't know the full details.
35:37
OK, so wow. And so he even even the people on the eyewitnesses were there said he was a hero.
35:45
He saved their lives, threatening people's lives, said he didn't care if he died, didn't care if he went to jail. But that guy who died is now a hero, even though they're like saying, oh, he was just, you know, this guy who mimics, you know, does the dance dances of Michael Jackson for money.
36:01
He was he was harmless. He was threatening people's lives. He was harmless. He's got like I forget if it was 40 or 70 arrests.
36:08
I mean, the guy was a pretty big criminal. Yeah. You know, this is not someone that would be a hero, but because of color of skin, the narrative.
36:19
And remember, this is what I keep saying on my podcast. Truth doesn't matter. Theology doesn't matter.
36:25
Narrative matters. That is the motto of today's generation. Yeah. The narrative is he's white.
36:31
It must be racist. Yeah. Even though there were blacks also trying to hold this guy down once the the the white guy had got him into a hold.
36:39
Right. OK, now. Did he plan to kill him? No, but that's their claim. Their claim is just because he's white.
36:45
Well, you have plenty of people who are black who are killing whites because they're white and they're saying that. They're not suffering any charges.
36:53
In fact, they could take their their car, drive it into onto the sidewalk to run over a bunch of whites because they're white.
37:00
And he can even say beforehand he's going to do it on his on his Facebook page. And they don't think that's hate speech or racism or anything.
37:08
In fact, he should be let go. It was just an accident. You know, this is what you have.
37:15
So because the rhetoric is getting ramped up. People want to say they want to be part of ending racism and because the culture is saying this is the way to do it.
37:27
This is what they're saying. So let me give a analogy, historical analogy in world before World War Two in Nazi Germany.
37:38
You had Adolf Hitler who made his way of getting elected was to get.
37:45
Basically, all the factions within Germany together by focusing on one enemy, what enemy?
37:52
Well, it was the enemy that had a lot of money, but kind of stayed out of politics, didn't really get themselves politically active.
38:00
They focused more on their family, on raising their kids, handing off the money to the next generation, and it was the
38:07
Jewish people. There were also the gypsies. Gypsies were known were a problem there for stealing and things like that.
38:14
And he started with this idea of creating a superior race. What was popular then? Oh, is this this topic of evolution?
38:21
Well, he took evolution and what was understood at some
38:27
Darwin's actually Darwin's cousin who taught that evolution could be we could manufacture this, we can engineer this so that if superior races of people were to mate and we restrict the inferior, we can have a superior human race.
38:42
Well, that's exactly what Hitler latched on to and created the idea of creating a better society.
38:49
That was his argument. You look at what he was doing when he first got into power, using the
38:55
Jewish people as the scapegoats, eventually taking their money away from them, eventually sticking them in camps, taking their businesses.
39:02
But all this pressure was put on to the Jewish people and people, a lot of people knew it was wrong at the time.
39:12
But who is going to speak out against it? Because if you did, you were going to be in that same boat.
39:18
Yeah. Be in our day and age canceled. OK, and so it was an economic terrorism or economic cancel culture.
39:26
The same we have today. And so there was pressure put. You had they had control of the media.
39:31
They had control of a private army that reported actually two armies, two police groups that worked directly for Hitler under two different men in his inner circle is kind of interesting how he structured it.
39:43
But he had the police structure. So you could they were the ones that were over any other police. And so you end up seeing that he had he had control where people were afraid to speak out against them.
39:55
That's terrorism. But that's what he did. And what ended up happening was people would actually buy into not really buy into it, but go along with it to for the betterment of society, even if they knew what was going on and wanted to reject it.
40:11
It was still a matter of they're looking to buy into the talking points.
40:17
And the one thing that amazes me with all the study of the Holocaust was how many people in the
40:25
German society said this couldn't be happening because we're too civilized, because we're a civilized nation.
40:32
These things, it's not possible to have happened. We would not discriminate that way.
40:38
We do that. We wouldn't be killing millions of people just because they're born of who they're born.
40:43
They're born Jewish. That wouldn't happen. But it did. I mean, you can see the videos of people that marched in.
40:49
They marched people into that lived in the surrounding areas after the Holocaust was over. And they're they're giggling and laughing as they march into these different concentration camps.
40:58
And then you see him walking out completely somber. Yeah. This was happening in our backyard. And so I say that because it's the same terrorism we have today.
41:07
OK, I'm going to get you in trouble. It's your podcast. Black Lives Matter and Antifa are a terrorist organization or organizations.
41:18
Why? Because they make everybody afraid to if they're going to speak against them. If you speak against them, you're going to be canceled.
41:26
That is for a specific purpose to drive fear into people. That is the definition of terrorism.
41:32
Now, in our culture, everyone redefines terrorism. They redefine racism. They redefine the terms so that we don't have it mean what it means, because if we have what it means, well, then it doesn't sound good.
41:43
The narrative doesn't work. And Andrew, didn't I mean, I'm sure you've done way more study on the
41:50
Holocaust than I did, but I didn't before the Jews got rounded up, their own businesses got trans ransacked and they took stuff away from the
42:03
Jewish community. And I mean, we see very similar. Well, it starts even before that.
42:09
So there's the pressure was put. You couldn't have Jewish people in positions where they can influence society.
42:16
So they couldn't be politicians. They couldn't be judges. They couldn't be lawyers. They couldn't be teachers because they could teach the next generation to be removed from those sort of things.
42:23
Now go back to Bernie Sanders saying to someone that's there before the Senate about being a judge.
42:29
And he asked because that person is an evangelical Christian that said that Christianity is the only way.
42:35
And he said, so you're saying Muslims are wrong. Now, I would have responded saying, well, the Muslims say we're wrong. You say we're wrong,
42:42
Bernie. But what is it? He actually said that someone with Christian values does not have a right to take a position as a judge.
42:51
Yep. Same exact behavior. So so restrict them from certain roles. What does it do when you put all this pressure on them?
42:57
They had to be they had to wear the Jewish star to identify that they're
43:04
Jewish. Their businesses had to have that so that you knew that you knew not to do business with them.
43:09
That made it harder for them to be able to make a living. Same thing with Christians, right? Now we have
43:15
Christians that are, you know, be getting sued if they don't make cakes or do websites the way certain people want.
43:22
So it's the same behavior. They're going to make them. It's an economically hurt them. Well, what we saw in the
43:28
Holocaust, as you're always going to see as you keep giving blacks extra privileges, this is the reality.
43:35
You are going to see a white supremacy rise up, not because there's a bunch of racism in America.
43:41
You're going to see it because people are going to get fed up with, well, hey, these people can get into college where I can't their their bills get paid.
43:48
I mine aren't. They can murder, rape, pillage, carry guns. But, you know, a white guy can't and people are going to see that injustice.
43:57
Right. And they're going to rise up. But but that rising up is going to be seen as a white supremacy. It's going to be a self -fulfilling prophecy, just like it was in Nazi Germany.
44:06
So what happened? Jewish people rose up eventually. There is a politician gets a high ranking politician gets murdered.
44:13
That was enough for them to crack down. Now, here's the reality. They crack down in such a way that in one night they were able to to go in and shut down like almost every
44:25
Jewish business and get every Jewish person like in a single night. Yeah. They had this planned for months.
44:32
Yeah. It wasn't something it's kind of like the argument that if you if you remember
44:37
American history, we had the Occupy Wall Street movement and people said, oh, that started on a Thursday night Facebook post and everyone just got spurred on and they went to the streets.
44:45
And then it spread across the country. Well, I know for a fact it didn't start at a
44:51
Facebook post on that Thursday night before because I was invited to the meetings three months before I was part of the
45:01
Occupy. Not that I endorsed it, but I was learning what what they were about. And so that whole movement, they claim,
45:08
OK, here's the day we're going to do it. And they put the post out. But they were well organized before. Same as Nazi Germany.
45:13
They're well organized before. They put the pressure and they just have everything waiting for someone to fight back.
45:19
And as soon as they do, boom. Exactly like January 6th in America, people got fed up with what they saw as a stealing of election, whether true or not.
45:28
Listener, you can make that decision. But the reality is, if you compare what happened in this country with the
45:33
Black Lives Matter riots for a year and a half, where cities were being burned, where court houses, state houses were being overtaken and no one complained.
45:42
In fact, they encouraged it and said, we have to let them continue it. And then you have a bunch of police opening the doors, letting people into the
45:50
Capitol building, taking selfies. There were some that did damage, but you had 800 ,000 people outside and a couple hundred that came in.
45:58
Yeah, it's actually a mostly peaceful protest because even the couple hundred that came went in, very few did.
46:03
They have a couple dozen that did damage. But what did they do? They tried to instigate it as they move the gates and let people get close.
46:11
And then they shot him with tear gas, trying to create an instance where they expected what Black Lives Matter would have done.
46:16
There would have been rioting. They didn't have that. So what they have to do, let people in the building because it was all staged.
46:21
It was it was staged as part of a insurrection, which did happen. But it wasn't the
46:27
January 6th people that are in jail. It was our own government. Right. And so that's my opinion.
46:34
But but I mean, but this is the historically what you're seeing is the same things. It's repeated.
46:39
It's repeated in you have the same thing. If you want to study in Mao, you want to study Stalin. You want to say what happened with Cuba, with Castro.
46:47
You want to study what happened in Venezuela. This repeats over and over again. And this is how you close an open government.
46:54
And that's what we have going on. And the CRT, cultural racism training, is being used to do that.
47:00
They have tried many things. They have tried they tried pushing communism that failed in America.
47:07
They've tried racism that failed. They tried, you know, green going green and everything's about the environment that failed.
47:15
It was homosexuality that actually seemed to start working. And now what you have is homosexuality by itself.
47:23
That's an activity you do. That's something a choice you make. So what they've done now is they've tied that to racism.
47:30
Yeah. And critical racism or well, critical race theory is including things like homosexuality, transgenderism, and they have to push the envelope.
47:41
I mean, you have homosexuals now that are getting upset with the transgender movement because it's pushed the envelope so much.
47:48
Yeah. They're saying, hey, this is not what we signed up for. Like, you've taken over our, you know, into son, morphing its son completely different.
47:57
So now we look at that and say, OK, we're in a church. Can the church really align itself with this kind of agenda?
48:07
One that is inherently, well, let's use a different word, systemically racist.
48:13
Yeah. Can we work with a system to end racism with a model that you first have to presume racism among people?
48:24
Yeah. And say that certain people are guilty. By privilege, right?
48:29
By privilege, because you're white in America, therefore you're guilty. Well, my family's never owned slaves.
48:37
In fact, in Russia, being Jewish, they were the slaves. In fact, my people, the
48:44
Jewish people were slaves in Germany. My father was alive during that time.
48:51
So just a generation ago, the reality is that when you look at any person, the color of their skin and automatically make judgments about them, knowing nothing about them, that's racist.
49:03
Yeah, exactly. And that's what they do. You know, now, if they get ahead of Clarence Thomas, they say, oh, well, he's not really black.
49:13
You know, they'll sit there and say someone like that, oh, he's the face of white supremacy. What? A black guy is the face of white supremacy?
49:22
So, you know, this is what we end up dealing with now. Why is it so dangerous for a church?
49:27
Because it's antithetical to the church. The church is about true reconciliation. That everyone, black, white, free, slave, back in the first century, men, women, everybody comes to Christ the same way.
49:42
There is complete equality in the church when it comes to Christ. Who can be a church member?
49:49
Whosoever believes, right? That's who can become a church member. That's who is the church.
49:54
It's not restrictive. And so this is the thing that we end up seeing. And what is so sad is that the church in their desire to fit in with the culture, because I think there's a lot there that they want to fit in.
50:11
There's also, look, I mean, so let me give you the most famous Nazi alive and that has never been prosecuted and has still continues believing the system that he held to, you know, back under Germany, George Soros, Jewish, by the way, but what did he do?
50:36
He worked with the Nazis. His father, you know, they just worked with them, even though they're
50:44
Jewish and were able to survive. But guess what? They're still continuing that same mindset.
50:51
George Soros affects the elections here in America more than any one individual. And, you know, he's lived through what should warn him about this, but he doesn't.
51:03
So, I mean, this is what you end up seeing. So, I mean, I point this out to give kind of the history, but also the danger to the church, because what happened to the
51:12
Jewish people, many Jewish people thought very early on, if we just get along with Hitler, he won't persecute us.
51:19
Oh, he's just going to take the Orthodox. But guess what? After he took the Orthodox, who did he come for next?
51:26
Oh, you liberal Jewish person, you were next in line. Yeah. And that's what you end up having is, you know, there's an analogy,
51:35
I forget how it is, but, you know, they come from, they came for the Gypsies and I said, oh,
51:40
I'm not a Gypsy, so let them take them. They came for the Jews. And while I wasn't a Jewish, so let them take them.
51:46
They came for, you know, and just go through each of the groups. And then when they came for me, there was no one left to fight. Yeah. Well, that's basically what you have happening.
51:54
You have the church destroying itself because a lot of the church, by the way, there are rumors that George Soros has been funding some of the
52:02
Southern Baptist Convention to push the, you know, all this woke ideology. And so there is this, you know, it seems that, you know,
52:11
I haven't been able to see doc, you know, there's some claims, but if true, it would sure make sense because, you know, these big organizations of Southern Baptist, it's all about money.
52:22
So you get someone like a George Soros through some, you know, he likes to create all these different foundations and then that way it sounds really good.
52:28
And so, and funds it and then starts influencing. And once they start getting the money, they want more money. They don't want that money to stop.
52:34
So, okay, well, hey, this sounds good. Yeah, we'll push this. We'll push racial reconciliation. And the church starts doing this now, by the way,
52:42
Melissa, I think I've shared this with you, but maybe your audience doesn't know. This is one of the few times the church was ahead of the curve.
52:49
I mean, usually the church is following culture, but back in, oh, whenever it was, they had the
52:55
MLK 50. After that, many of us saw the issues. I've been saying it for near three decades that there would be another
53:04
Holocaust in America, but it won't be the Jewish people. It will be the church people have been thinking I'm nuts for 20 years now.
53:11
In the last 10 years, they're starting to say you're a prophet. No, it's history repeating. Yeah, but we got together, many of us and put together a statement called the statement on social justice in the gospel.
53:24
And you can go search online and see the statement. You'll see, you know, all the people that signed, I think, tens of thousands of people have now signed it.
53:30
But you'll see that the initial, well, there was the initial, there were initial 75 of us that petitioned
53:38
MacArthur to get behind it. He got behind it. And there was then the initial 19 that did the draft work and the rest of us that reviewed it.
53:46
So you'll see the, you know, the 19 and then the other signers, the initial signers.
53:53
But we did that back in 2018, I think it was when that came out, maybe 17. I forget who did that.
53:59
And you didn't hear about critical race theory in publicly being discussed until Donald Trump in 20, was it 2020?
54:13
Was it? Yes, it was before he was out of office. It was during, you know, while COVID was going on that he finally woke up to what was actually going on.
54:21
And he started putting it, you know, saying, OK, you can't teach critical race theory and enter any federal government aspect.
54:28
So, you know, we basically put a complete stop to it, which, you know, you have, you know,
54:34
Biden just reversing that day one because they needed that. And so this is what we end up seeing.
54:40
This stuff is going to be the, you know, a great damage to the, to the,
54:47
I'm going to be very specific in my language here, to the local visible church.
54:53
What do I mean by that? A little bit of a theology lesson here, Melissa, for the listeners. We speak of church, we can speak of two different ways, the invisible and the visible or universal and local.
55:04
So the universal or invisible church is made up of all believers everywhere in the world throughout time.
55:10
Anyone who's actually was converted to Christ and in Christ, that is the church. But we see another church, a local or visible church, that place you gather every
55:20
Sunday that's made up of believers and unbelievers. There's unbelievers sitting in church. They think they're believers. But they're, they're members and they attend and they, some people you can't tell, they seem like they have the works, but they're not believers.
55:34
They're going to hear from Jesus, Matthew 7, 21 to 23. You know, I've done many great works in your name, Lord. And he's going to say,
55:40
Department for me, you who practice lawlessness. So you end up having that. So all of that, we end up realizing that when we look at the local church, it is going to be greatly damaged and has been.
55:51
You saw it when Black Lives Matter started their protests. There were churches that got along fine and then split overnight.
55:58
Yeah. People that were leaving churches that were throwing pastors out because they wouldn't, I mean, I had it where we had people that stopped showing up to church because I wouldn't speak out against, you know, the crime of George Floyd dying from a fentanyl overdose because that's what he actually died from.
56:16
The fact that they had to get a second autopsy to say something different should tell you that it's about the narrative, not the truth.
56:24
Right. And so as we look at that, this is all about running a narrative. And we had people that left our church, refused to come back to church because we wouldn't speak out against it.
56:34
Well, I don't speak out against anything in church services politically.
56:40
I preach the Bible and I preach the next text that comes up that week because I go verse by verse.
56:46
So I'm going to deal with, if I, if I come to something that deals with racism,
56:52
I'll cover racism when I get to that in the next verse. Right. This is the thing you had, you had division within the church over this whole thing.
57:03
And it happened overnight, which, which says that there was a bunch of training that was going on, a bunch of people that were being indoctrinated for years through businesses, through their, the fortune 500 companies that Barack Obama was subsidizing them to teach all this stuff.
57:20
Okay. And what about school systems you think? All of that. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's been even longer.
57:25
If you want to study the history of Dewey, John Dewey, that was his whole goal. His whole goal was to, he knew he wouldn't live long enough to see the end of capitalism, but he set in place everything that was necessary to do it.
57:36
And he, and he was open and honest about the game plan and people still follow him going, no, this won't bring about what he claims.
57:43
What? Like when, when people say, when they honestly tell you what they're planning to do to destroy you, believe them.
57:50
They're telling you they're, they're, you know. Yeah. Do you, my question in regards to that too, do you think that, because my studies on the social gospel and then towards social justice, that really, really opens the door to critical race theory so very easily.
58:09
And I think you see more like you knew that this is a kind of a progressive idea, right?
58:17
This, cause I think progressive Christianity is just all about making everybody equal. You have egalitarianism and they allow transgenders and homosexual pastors and priests and stuff like that.
58:30
So you, you understand it's a more liberal lean, but this slow progress into regular churches, like seeker sensitive churches, because of the pragmatism that secret, secret sensitive churches incorporate into getting more people in.
58:49
It makes sense. Then you start the world wants justice. You start preaching that justice is part of bringing justice as part of the church's responsibility.
59:00
And then that opens the door wall. Then how do we get racial reconciliation?
59:06
How do we pursue justice and critical race theory and other critical theories are there? Basically these analytical tools are just ripe and there, because the belief is scripture is not enough.
59:19
It's not sufficient. And we need sociological sociological studies, psychological studies, all of this to be incorporated to help us, you know, all truth is
59:32
God's truth. God's truth. So we can use this to help us bring justice because ultimately that's the claim, right?
59:40
For critical race theory is that this is how we pursue justice. So first off, let's deal with progressive
59:48
Christianity is not Christianity because culture is God, not
59:53
God. Culture is the interpreter of God's word, not the
59:58
Holy spirit. And so, no, I don't think progressive Christianity is Christian. So when you use these tools to promote this progressive
01:00:07
Christianity, it's, it's no different than affirmative action. You have to have a certain number of people that are
01:00:13
X to be, to fit the matrix that they have so that you're, that the tool plugs in to say, okay, you get the check
01:00:24
Mark. You're now. Okay. You think that's okay. So that's a little bit of a pragmatism and you're saying, are you saying that like a, you need to have certain amount, like affirmative action for a certain amount of elders that are a black elder, a homosexual.
01:00:39
Okay. Or even in the congregation. But there's going to be other things when it comes to the congregation, you have to have a certain number of X.
01:00:46
Okay. When you, when, I mean, if you're going to be the Southern Baptist, if you want to be a part of the
01:00:51
Southern Baptists that we need to have a X number of people that make up these churches.
01:00:59
So if you start applying these tools there, what it does is if you want. So let me explain how denominations work.
01:01:07
I didn't quite, cause I'm not non -denominational. And so, but I was at a church.
01:01:12
I used to preach at this Lutheran church and, you know, several times a year and they, basically their denomination went progressive and promoting homosexuality.
01:01:25
And they said, well, we're pulling out. And the denomination's response is, well, then we're taking the building.
01:01:31
So because the denomination buys these buildings and then holds it over people in New York city, can they afford to just give up a,
01:01:38
I think it was five or $6 million building. It may have been more. I think that may have been just the church, but they had a parsonage and housing for people there.
01:01:47
So it was a big set of buildings that they had. Turns out in their case, they discovered, oh wait, they owned the building because it was previously a different,
01:01:57
I think it was Baptist before, and they sold to the Lutherans or gave it to the Lutherans. And so the
01:02:02
Lutherans, that local church owned it. And so they were able to say the denomination, see ya. But if you have a
01:02:08
Southern Baptist in there, they own your building and they're going to say, they say, well, look, you're going to, you're going to do this to fit our analysis.
01:02:16
We have this tool. And if you don't think you're out of the Southern Baptists, and if you're out of the Southern Baptists, we take your building and we're going to put someone else in there.
01:02:25
And suddenly you're out of a church building. A lot of churches go, oh, we can't handle that.
01:02:30
Yeah. And this is specific because back in 2019, the Southern Baptists ruled that it was okay to use critical race theory as an analytical tool.
01:02:40
Correct. Okay. And if they use that tool, they could then say, well, you're going to be out of the convention because you don't fit our tool.
01:02:49
And now, oh, you're going to be in a situation where, you know, you lose your building or you lose whatever.
01:02:57
If you're a missionary, you may have to come back because you don't get the support anymore. So, okay.
01:03:03
So let's, I want to apply this to make it practical for women who are listening. This affects your, this is going to affect your church, and we already see it.
01:03:12
And I'm sure some people listening to this have already heard the racial reconciliation and definitely it's been brought in through women's ministry and certain discipleship tools, such as Be the
01:03:25
Bridge and stuff like that. And If Gathering, which I am not,
01:03:31
I think it's non -denominational because it reaches mostly from what I have seen
01:03:36
Calvary Chapel, which is not, well, there are denominations on their own, but you see it all through Southern Baptists as well.
01:03:46
So in practically looking at this, if you think that your church is not going to be affected and you're listening to this, most likely it is.
01:03:56
Somehow it's going to come in and touch you. And even if it's not through your church, now
01:04:03
I'm showing that you, since if you are connected with the If Gathering or your church and your woman, a woman discipling you is connected with the
01:04:14
If Gathering, it's coming in through even a totally separate parachurch ministry. So it's infiltrating that way as well.
01:04:22
So, okay. Now, what are some, okay, so they use the term going woke, right?
01:04:30
We wouldn't use the term going woke, but wokeness, being woke, if you do a study on that, but maybe what
01:04:38
I should ask you is what does it mean to go woke first? And then I talk about how it might come in, woke language might come in through women's ministry.
01:04:47
I want to tie that in together. Yeah. So being woke is the idea waking up to realizing that there's a systemic racism in the country.
01:04:54
That's the idea that they have. So just so I'm putting it down to my mentality is if you're a white woman, going woke would opening my eyes to one, my white superiority, and two, my maybe oppression from patriarchy and stuff like that.
01:05:17
Correct. But you also have to recognize that, oh, because you are Christian, you lose all of your status.
01:05:25
Is that because I am superior? If he makes me even more superior? If you're a Christian, you're more superior than anyone else.
01:05:31
Okay. That's the idea. So what you have is if you're a white woman, because you're a woman, you should get extra points.
01:05:39
This is what's called intersectionality. They would argue that you would get extra because you're oppressed because you're a woman, because men oppress you.
01:05:48
Well, the reality is that once you're a Christian, they go, okay, that's all gone.
01:05:54
Like a Christian just... Okay. Here's something too. And Just Be the Bridge opens up the very first chapter.
01:06:00
She tells white people to just shut up and listen. She doesn't even say shut up, but she's like, we have to be humble enough to just let everybody else speak.
01:06:08
If you're a white person, you'll let the colored people speak and you just listen. So I think that's a little bit like that.
01:06:17
That's your standpoint epistemology and your intersectionality saying that these people, because they're colored and they're more oppressed, you have to be quiet because you hold all the superiority.
01:06:32
So it's now time for you to shut up. Yeah. And for the Christian, the claim is, well, every
01:06:38
Christian has all the superiority because this is... Yeah. They're trying to force... I mean, we're supposedly trying to force our religion on people.
01:06:45
I don't remember any law that requires everyone to go to church on Sunday. I don't remember the law.
01:06:52
And for years, abortion was illegal and that homosexuality is legal. If we were a
01:06:59
Christian nation... It would still be illegal. Yeah, exactly. So I hate to apply actual critical thinking to these discussion because I know it breaks down once we do that, but yeah.
01:07:15
So, but that's the reality is you have to realize that I do use the term woke.
01:07:22
I think that people wake up to what really is going on with CRT, that it is cultural racism training.
01:07:30
And when they wake up to that and realize that's when they really wake up. The true way we wake up, though, is we wake up to our sin nature.
01:07:37
We wake up to the fact that we're dead in our sins. We are not in a right state with God. And when we're really woke, it's when we wake up to the fact that Jesus Christ, Almighty God came to earth as a human being, died on a cross as a payment for our sin that we could be set free.
01:07:52
I was woke. I woke up to the fact that I was a sinner deserving God's wrath for eternity and God made a way of escape.
01:08:00
God paid the fine that I owe. That is what biblical wokeness would be.
01:08:06
And that's not the message being preached by churches, by the if gathering. It's not a message of where we can all be one in Christ.
01:08:14
We can all come to Christ and live. No, they're teaching. No, you can't.
01:08:20
You need these analytic tools to be right with your neighbor. Right. Well, go through the scriptures and see what does
01:08:28
God say more is more important being right with God or right with your neighbor? Well, the first and greatest commandment is love the
01:08:34
Lord your God. And second is love your neighbor. So loving your neighbor comes second in God's mind.
01:08:39
In fact, he even says if you don't love him, he it's better that you don't have your family members.
01:08:46
He's going to cause division with your family even because it's more important to be right with God. So you've got to make the decision.
01:08:53
What's going to be more important being right with God or right with men? The big, the easy way to understand the difference between CRT and the biblical gospel is the biblical gospel says we got to get right with God, biblical wokeness, spiritual wokeness versus being right with men.
01:09:08
Which is being in the world, not of the world. Right. Yeah.
01:09:14
And it speaks against it. And that's why I say you can't, you can't marry this with the church because it's antithetical to the
01:09:20
Bible. Yeah. And that's funny that you mentioned that because I was reading Washington Gladden and I forget what the title of the book was, but he clearly states that we can judge our
01:09:32
Christian, our walk with God, basically by how our relations are with men.
01:09:38
And, and that's just not biblical. It, it, it shows, yes, that we have a fruit, but love for God comes first.
01:09:48
If you make our relationship with man, the standard, then you're basically exalting men.
01:09:56
You're going to do whatever you can to reconcile with man. Man's way, instead of reconciling with God first, and then reconciling with man,
01:10:07
God's way, which is through Jesus Christ and the gospel. That's, that's the number one. I think that's what we clearly see in If Gathering.
01:10:14
They mentioned the gospel. They, they give the gospel on occasion, especially since I've gone through Arise.
01:10:21
Their main focus is then the gospel got you in the door to save you from sins.
01:10:29
And, but now we have to work towards saving the world and racial reconciliation because if we don't prove that we are about justice, then the gospel doesn't mean anything is basically what they're saying.
01:10:41
Like it doesn't do anything. So we have to work to make, this is where I think
01:10:48
Eugene Cho is, I don't know if you know about him. I don't know a whole lot, but I've listened to his, some of his sermons and he gives what's called the whole gospel.
01:10:58
And basically saying, in essence, and I think David Platt kind of alludes to this as well, that if you don't have social justice, if your actions don't live up to social justice and giving to the poor and giving all away and, you know, basically just being like Jesus, then you, you, then the gospel's not at work at your heart.
01:11:22
Like you're not sanctified enough or you're not good enough. So the gospel itself is not enough to save people and bring reconciliation.
01:11:31
It's our works plus the gospel that does it. So, but anyway, so that's one of the things that I've clearly seen.
01:11:38
I think women fall for it. I would easily fall for this. Well, and part of it is there, like I said, there is the pressure.
01:11:44
There's the peer pressure. There is, I mean, who, who wants to be canceled? Who wants to be doxxed?
01:11:49
Who wants to be... Or called a racist. Called a racist, right? You, you, you just, we're recording this.
01:11:57
The news, the Supreme Court ruled that a woman who has her own website design company ruled that she has the freedom of speech to not have to write a blog article on views that are against her.
01:12:11
Now you had the same with Masterpiece Cakes, you know, where they had to make a cake.
01:12:17
Now it's interesting because in the same exact town, someone went into, to 13 different Muslim owned bakeries and asked them to make a homosexual same -sex marriage cake.
01:12:26
They wouldn't do it. In fact, one guy chased the guy out with a broom. Oh, wow. And no one's suing them. So it's just the
01:12:31
Christian. Now what happened? So the same with the guy with Masterpiece Cakes. You have this woman, the
01:12:38
Supreme Court rules that she has the freedom of speech. So what are they doing? Oh, they're looking to harass her, give her death threats, shut down her business.
01:12:45
So if you don't do what we want, then we're going to try to shut you down. That's basically the message they have.
01:12:52
There's a term for that, terrorism. So that's what we're looking at. And that's why no one wants to speak up against it.
01:12:59
But here's the reality. If we don't speak up against it, who will? Because when you walk away and go, well, you know, it was someone else.
01:13:09
Well, they're eventually coming for you if you're a believer. They're coming for all of us. It's just a matter of time.
01:13:16
So the question is, do you want to stand together when there's many of us that are willing to stand? Or do you want to just kind of sit quietly by?
01:13:24
So how does it look to stand up? Well, it's simple ways. Let me give you an example.
01:13:30
About a year ago, there was the leak that came out that Roe versus Wade was going to be overturned. I'm in a grocery store and there's this woman who's two people in front of me.
01:13:39
And I typically wouldn't do this in a grocery store. But this one was very loud and going,
01:13:44
I can't believe there's there's idiots out there that believe that a woman shouldn't have a right to do whatever she wants with her body.
01:13:51
Now, she's being very loud in public. And what is she doing? She's calling someone like me an idiot. She's offering her opinion.
01:13:56
So I just said, well, ma 'am, I agree with you. I think people should have the right to kill whoever they want to kill.
01:14:03
Now, the interesting thing is she didn't she never challenged that. She didn't even try to say it wasn't murder.
01:14:09
People should be able to murder whoever they want. And she goes, well, I'm not saying I would do it. I agree. I would never murder someone.
01:14:15
But people should have the right to murder whoever they want. I'm just speaking what she's saying. And I'm everyone that's hearing her is now hearing me.
01:14:23
But guess what? She's never been challenged. Yeah. You see, that's the whole thing. These people think they have great arguments, but they've never been challenged.
01:14:28
She goes, well, a man shouldn't tell a woman what to do with her body. I said, ma 'am, I agree. What am I doing? I'm agreeing with her on every one of them.
01:14:34
Right. I said, I agree. It was nine men on a Supreme Court that ruled that Roe versus Wade should be legal.
01:14:40
We should make it immediately. Abortion should be immediately illegal until women vote for it.
01:14:47
And she goes, well, you have no right. You're a man. And I just turned to her. I said, ma 'am, I never told you how
01:14:52
I identify. And she looked at me with this incredulous look and just walked away.
01:14:58
And then I turned to the cashier and I said, I'm sorry. My mother taught me that opinions are something we should keep to ourselves.
01:15:05
And the cashier agreed with the woman. And she was starting to take the same woman's side. And the lady in front of me goes, yeah, what was wrong with that person?
01:15:12
Like saying things like that in public, like that's not the place for it. And the cashier just shut down. That's the behavior they do to us.
01:15:20
They openly say use mockery and intimidation, but they don't receive it. And so what happened?
01:15:26
Well, she got a little taste of it and she shut down. Right. And then all of a sudden the cashier shut down because it was like, oh,
01:15:34
I'm outnumbered. That's the whole thing. The only reason this continues is because the majority is silent, but it's time for the majority to stand up and say, this is wrong.
01:15:45
This is not biblical. And ladies, this needs to stop in the church.
01:15:52
That is the one place that it's going to be the easiest fight. And if you won't fight within the church for biblical perspectives and biblical arguments, you're never going to win in the culture.
01:16:06
And definitely keep there. Well, I suggest everybody do more study into it.
01:16:12
Look into the history of it. There's so much information out there. Good books.
01:16:19
Hey, I'll give you another option if they want. If you're saying, hey, our church really doesn't know how to handle this. Go to strivingfraternity .org.
01:16:26
Contact a speaker. Have us come out to your church. And we will do a weekend seminar on social justice.
01:16:31
And you say, well, our church can't afford it. That's okay. We didn't tell you that there's a buffet to it. We ask that you at least try to cover the travel costs.
01:16:38
But if you don't, you don't. We'd rather come out and get you to hear the teaching than to worry about, you know, oh, we got to get it paid for.
01:16:49
No, that's not how we work. So if you want us to come out, we target, we specifically try to work with smaller churches that need the help.
01:16:57
So if you're in that category, have us come out. We will work with your church to train you on what social justice is, how it's affecting the church and how to deal with it, how to react to it.
01:17:09
Yeah. That's great. That's awesome that you guys do that. All right.
01:17:14
Well, honestly, it's got way more in depth than I wanted to, but it was great.
01:17:20
I'm glad that you brought the Jewish history into it. I mean, that's if people don't know the history, similarities are just astounding.
01:17:31
It's it really is. And it's so sad. That we fall for this when we, we all know a little bit about it and know that it's just wrong.
01:17:40
We just don't know how it got there, you know? So, right. We need to look at history and understand history so it doesn't get repeated.
01:17:48
So Andrew, thank you for helping me out with this, helping me learn a bit more and stuff like that.
01:17:57
How can maybe us listeners pray for you or support Striving for Eternity or anything like that?
01:18:05
Let us know. They can go to strivingforeternity .org. They can go to the website there. If you want to support financially, that's great.
01:18:12
But a great way to support is to, you know, just contact us. Let us know how, you know, check out our, we have free courses in our academy.
01:18:19
You can watch them for free. You can learn for free. You can get our books.
01:18:25
You can listen to the podcasts. You can contact us. Just let us know how we're helping you. Let us know how we can help you.
01:18:30
Yeah. You know, email us info at strivingforeternity .com and that will get you to us so that we could respond.
01:18:38
But yeah, we're, we really see that we're at a time in this country where there is going to be great persecution for the
01:18:45
Christian. And if you, we are not prepared for it, we're going to see a lot of people that are going to be, well, we're going to really see who are the
01:18:52
Christians and who aren't. That's one thing for sure. But I think that the best thing folks could do is really invite us out to your church.
01:19:01
That's a great way to support us and you get to learn more about our ministry. All right. That's great.
01:19:06
All right, Andrew. Thank you. I hope you have a great day. Thanks for having me on. It was an honor to be here.
01:19:12
So ladies, thank you for listening to that entire episode and that discussion with Andrew Rappaport. Hopefully it's edified you and blessed you in some way.
01:19:19
And I look forward to seeing you in the coming episodes where we dive into the
01:19:24
Be the Bridge ministry and anti -racism and combat it with a biblical worldview.
01:19:32
And like always, I pray you are in his work. Ladies, thanks for listening or watching this episode of Thoroughly Equipped.
01:19:44
If this episode blessed you, would you give it a rating or a thumbs up? And if you think
01:19:49
Thoroughly Equipped is a much needed ministry, consider subscribing. It helps spread the word.
01:19:55
If you are interested to know more about Thoroughly Equipped, check out the blog or just find some other great
01:20:00
Christian resources. You can go to my website at ttew .org.
01:20:06
You can connect with me on Facebook and Instagram. Links in the description below or email me at melbatost at ttew .org.
01:20:15
Thoroughly Equipped is part of Striving for Eternity's Christian Podcast Community, a one -stop resource for solid podcasts that can assist you in your
01:20:24
Christian walk. Check that out at christianpodcastcommunity .org. I pray the
01:20:29
God of all grace grants you more and more knowledge and understanding of Jesus Christ as the
01:20:35
Holy Spirit thoroughly equips you through his written word for every good work.