F4F | Rick Warren Twists Scripture RE: Women Pastors

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ and this is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the

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Word of God. Now, you may have heard the news. Saddleback Church, founded by Rick Warren 43 years ago, has been yeeted,

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I like that word by the way, yeeted, yeeted from the Southern Baptist Convention.

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Why? They were yeeted, they were cast out of the Southern Baptist Convention because Rick Warren has been an innovator and he's been pushing things and he decided all on his own that he was going to ordain women.

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We're gonna be reviewing a recent interview, a portion of a recent interview, that Rick Warren did with Russell Moore, who's now with Christianity Today.

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He's also former SBC, along with Beth Moore, former SBC. And we're gonna listen to their conversation and we're going to biblically fact -check

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Rick Warren and some of the claims that he's making. So hopefully you'll find this helpful, but let's go ahead and let's whirl up the desktop.

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And yeah, I'm kind of looking forward to warmer weather around here. I feel that because the snow has continued to stick around here in North Dakota, might as well do a snowscape from my desktop today.

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Do I sound like I'm annoyed? Yeah, I'm looking forward to warmer weather here because I live in America and Siberia.

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So all right, that being said, let's whirl up the web browser.

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And this was a recent interview from nine days ago when I'm recording this with Rick Warren and Russell Moore, jawing, just kind of talking about doing a post -mortem on why

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Saddleback Church got kicked out of the SBC, in fact yeeted. But that being the case, we're gonna listen to Rick Warren as he tries to make a biblical case for ordaining women.

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And it's terrible. It's like embarrassingly bad. Rick Warren for decades has been a

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Bible twister extraordinaire, and this is a fellow from the beginning of Fighting for the

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Faith, from the podcast days, like the earliest podcast days, we were always reviewing

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Rick Warren's twisting of Scripture. But even before Fighting for the Faith was a thing,

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I was a blogger, and I was blogging and warning people about Rick Warren and his Scripture twisting and his innovations which were not biblical.

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So my personal opinion is it took the SBC way too long to legitimately address this problem that is

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Rick Warren. And as we hear him try to defend himself biblically, we're gonna note that this is a master class in Bible twisting on the part of Rick Warren, and we'll why along the way.

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So let's listen in to this conversation between Russell Moore and Rick Warren as they discuss

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Saddleback's yeeting from the Southern Baptist Convention. Some of them would probably say, well, the

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Confession of Faith says that the office of pastor is to be held by men qualified by Scripture.

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Yeah, yeah. Now, real quick, we're only just a few seconds into this, and Russell Moore is making reference to the doctrinal statement of the

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Southern Baptist Convention. It's called the Baptist Faith and Message, and the current version of it was published in the year 2000.

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And let's take a look at that, shall we? So Baptist Faith and Message. If you want to know what

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Baptists, and I should say it this way, generally believe, then you look to the

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Baptist Faith and Message. And in the Baptist Faith and Message, they have a Article Six as it relates to the church.

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And so, note, it says these, I'm gonna make this a little bit bigger just because older eyes. The New Testament Church of the

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Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel, observing the two ordinances of Christ governed by his laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by his word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.

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Each congregation operates under the lordship of Christ through the democratic process. In such a congregation, each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord.

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Its scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by scripture.

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So, you'll note, in the Baptist Faith and Message, Baptists recognize the biblical qualifications for one to hold the office of pastor, and they recognize that men and women are gifted by God for gifts of service in the church.

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However, the pastoral office is, according to scripture, limited to men as qualified by scripture.

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And here's the thing. This has been exactly, historically, what Southern Baptists have always believed, always taught, always confessed.

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Okay? And it's there in the Baptist Faith and Message for everybody to see.

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And Rick Warren has decided on his own, he's going to chuck the biblical requirements for a pastor, and he's going to ignore.

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That's literally what he's gonna do here. He's going to ignore the biblical texts that are clearest as it relates to the pastoral office, who's qualified to hold that office, and he is instead going to go to off -topic texts in order to try to justify biblically the smuggling of women into the pastoral office.

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Now, a little bit of a note here. Christ is the Lord of all, and human beings, both male and female, are created in the image of God.

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Most certainly true. And I would note that that being the case, men and women have different functions, different talents, different roles in both life and in the life of the

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Church. And scripture is clear, you'll see this as we develop this today, that men are the ones who are to hold the pastoral office, not women.

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And this is an actual command of Christ. You'll see that as well very shortly.

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But this is what Russell Moore is making reference to. The Baptist faith and message clearly defines that men are the ones who are to hold the pastoral office.

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Well, Rick Warren, all on his own, has rejected the idea that the pastoral office is an office. And number two, has come up with his own biblical text to justify the ordaining of women.

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So, let's see where this goes. Saddleback now has women pastors. How do you see that?

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Well, in the first place, Southern Baptists have always been anti -credal. I grew up with the phrase, we have no creed but Christ.

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So, Southern Baptists are anti -credal? Wow. This is an interesting place to go.

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So, basically, what he's doing is saying the Baptist faith and message doesn't have any bearing on me and my beliefs.

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That's what he's saying. So, we don't have any creed but Christ, he says. We have no book but the

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Bible. This is not a battle between liberals and conservatives. Yes, it is.

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All the liberals left a long time ago. No, they haven't. Seriously, Rick, I mean, are you not aware of the liberal contingency within the

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SBC? Everybody in the SBC believes in the inerrancy of Scripture. No, they don't.

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Wow. It just makes you wonder, is he saying this on purpose to lie or is he just this ignorant of certain notable, very liberal

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SBC churches? Now we're talking about difference of interpretation. Those particular passages,

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Titus, Timothy, and Corinthians, have hundreds, literally hundreds of interpretations.

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Hundreds of interpretations. Hundreds of interpretations. Titus, Timothy, and First Corinthians have hundreds of interpretations.

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So, we can never really figure out what on earth they mean. Hundreds, hundreds of interpretations.

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So, first, he attacks the Baptist faith and message and basically says that has no bearing on us.

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There's no creed but Christ and we just follow the Bible. So, the Baptist faith and message can't be used to tell me what to believe or do at Saddleback.

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And then number two, he's going to attack the clearest text as it relates to the pastoral office.

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And to say, well, there's hundreds, hundreds of interpretations.

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Hundreds. And that being the case, you can't expect, you know, we could never really know with certainty what any of this stuff means.

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Yeah. Let's take a look at those texts, by the way. Might as well throw them in now. So, we're going to start with Titus because he went

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Titus, First Timothy, and then First Corinthians. Titus chapter one.

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Here, the Apostle Paul lays out the qualifications for elders. Elders are synonymous with the concept of pastor, by the way.

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So, this is what Paul writes. This is why I left you in Crete so that you might put what remained in order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you if anyone is above reproach.

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So, note there are moral qualifications. Their character has to be weighed in balance regarding whether or not somebody's qualified.

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They have to be above reproach. And here we go. On air, the husband of one wife, or as the

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Greek says, a one woman man, and his children are believers, not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.

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For an overseer as God's steward must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant. That disqualifies you.

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Note he, he, he must not be arrogant or quick -tempered or drunkard or violent or greedy for gain but hospitable, a lover of good, self -controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.

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He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

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And he goes on to say, for there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers, and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party, and they must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.

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One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true.

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Therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth.

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Note again here, husband of one wife. Pastors are to be men, according to Titus.

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And you can sit there and say, well, there's hundreds of ways of interpreting this. No, there isn't.

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He's legitimately making that up, all right? The text says, husband of one wife.

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He must be, right? He must be able to teach. He must be self -controlled.

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He, he, he, he. How do you come up with a hundred different interpretations of that?

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You don't. Rick Warren is engaging in obfuscation. Next text, 1

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Timothy 2, 1 Timothy, hang on a second here, Timothy 2, and in, we, we get these words, all right?

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Chapter 2, verse 12, Paul writes, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.

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Okay? And we're going to see that this is not merely a Pauline preference. Okay?

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All right? So, don't permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet.

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Adam was formed first, then Eve. Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

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Okay? So, you'll note here that then he appeals to creation itself and then to the fall of humanity in the garden.

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Right? Hundreds of interpretations? No, it's pretty clear here what's going on.

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And we're talking about, again, the pastoral, pastoral office. And 1

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Timothy is a pastoral epistle, so is Titus. Now, the clearest then, and keep in mind this reference back to Genesis, that'll come into play in the third text.

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Third text is 1 Corinthians chapter 14. 1 Corinthians chapter 14, the

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Apostle Paul, after his discussion of the proper use of the gifts in church, then says this, as in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent.

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Watch this. In the churches, in the churches, when the church is gathered together to hear the

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Word of God, to worship, to receive the Lord's Supper, during that time when the church gathers in the church, the women are to be silent.

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They are not permitted to speak, but they should be in submission, as the law also says.

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Now, where does it say that women are to be in submission? Answer, it's in the book of Genesis.

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Let me show you the text. Genesis chapter 3. Now, after the fall of man,

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Adam and Eve, they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which they were not supposed to eat of. God then handed out punishments for this.

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To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children.

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Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. You see, the current state of affairs is a result of sin.

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And as a result of that, this is the text that Paul is referencing in 1

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Corinthians 14, that women are to be in submission. And that is a result of the fall into sin.

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Just like pain during childbearing is a consequence, so also that they are to be in submission.

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That's what he is referring to here in 1 Corinthians when he says, for they are not permitted to speak, but they should be in submission, as the law also says.

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If there's anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. It's shameful for a woman to speak where?

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In church. That's the caveat, okay? Now, let me show you this real quick, because this comes into bear.

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You're going to know, outside of the church, women can do a lot of things, including correcting the bad theology of a man.

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I'll show you that from scripture. So, we're going to do a quick word search for the word Apollos.

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And we're going to note that Acts 18 is where this is found. So, in Acts 18, hang on a second here,

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I need to learn how to spell. I want to do, I don't want words,

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I want flex. There we go, Acts 18. And let's see, Paul in Corinth. I want to see where Apollos shows up.

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Paul returns to Antioch. Here we go. Apollos speaks boldly. So, watch this.

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So, a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the scriptures.

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He had been instructed in the way of the Lord and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he only knew the baptism of John, John the

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Baptist. So, he doesn't have a correct baptismal theology at this point. He began to speak boldly in the way of God more accurately.

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Note here, no censure on Priscilla here for teaching and instructing

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Apollos on the proper understanding of the doctrine of baptism. Apollos, a man, received a correction, theological correction, from a woman and a man.

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No problem. We don't have a problem with that because, again, the prohibition, when we look at the prohibition in Scripture, the prohibition is regarding what?

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Well, it's regarding, let me go back, 1 Corinthians 14, it's regarding what a woman can do in church, okay?

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That God has orderly worship. You remember the Levites of old? Were there any females who served in the temple?

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Not a one. How many of Jesus' apostles, how many of the 12 apostles were women?

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Zero, okay? Not a single one, okay? Now, that doesn't mean that women didn't receive the gift of prophecy.

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They did, but they couldn't practice that gift in church. It doesn't mean that women don't know doctrine.

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They do. And it doesn't mean that women can't correct a man when his theology is wrong. Apollos' baptismal theology was incorrect.

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He received correction and instruction from a woman. Not a problem.

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No problem at all, because, again, note, as in all the churches of the saints, women should keep silent.

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Where? In the churches. When the church gathers to hear the Word of God, to worship, and to receive the

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Lord's Supper, they are not permitted to speak. That has been established by Christ, and this goes back to the order of creation, as well as to the prohibition set up that women are to be in submission that Christ established all the way back in Genesis chapter 3.

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Now, if there's anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. It is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

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It wasn't shameful for Apollos to be corrected by Priscilla. Nothing shameful about that at all.

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It didn't happen in church. Now, watch this, and then

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Paul goes on. Notice, or. Remember Schoolhouse Rock? Conjunction, junction, what's that function?

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Hooking up phrases. Yeah, I'm showing my age here, but you'll know, or is a conjunction, which means it's connected to the sentence in front of it.

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It's actually part of it, right? Then he asks this, or was it from you that the Word of God came, or are you the only ones it's reached?

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Then Paul says, if anyone thinks he's a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things

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I am writing to you are what? A command of the Lord. The Apostle Paul is making it clear.

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This isn't his preference. This isn't some cultural mandate. Oh, by the way, in the Roman pagan world, they had no problem with women priestesses, or women prophets, or things like that.

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Not at all. Okay? This is a command of Jesus Christ. In the Apostle Paul, writing by his apostolic authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ is making this clear.

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This command that women are to be silent in the church comes all the way from the top.

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It is a command of the Lord. And he says, if anyone does not recognize this, he's not recognized.

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Now note, hundreds of interpretations. There's just no way for us to know for sure what is meant here is what

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Rick Warren is saying. He's engaging in obfuscation. Let's continue.

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We should be able to expel people over sin, racism, sexual abuse, other sexual sins, things like that.

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But this is over... What about the doctrine of the Trinity? That's in the Baptist faith and message too, Rick. Over...

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You mean, wait a minute, we can disagree over the Atonement, we can disagree over election, and we can disagree over dispensationalism, we can disagree over second coming, we can disagree over the nature of sin, but we can't disagree over what you name your staff.

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What you name your staff? You're putting women into an office that God's Word forbids for them to hold, and you're allowing them to preach in church, which

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Christ commands that that not be taking place. Wow.

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Here's the difference. The same old battle that's been going on for 100 years in SBC is between conservative

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Baptists and fundamental Baptists. Now watch this. This is a slick argument, but we're gonna debunk this pretty quick.

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All right. This is called an ad hominem. He's going to attack those who are responsible for yeeting

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Saddleback from the Southern Baptist Convention, and he's going to basically slander them through an ad hominem attack, calling them fundamentalists, and defining it a very particular way.

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Listen to what he does here. Fundamentalism is a word that has changed meaning. 100 years ago,

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I would have called myself a fundamentalist because in the 1920s, it meant you hold the historic doctrines of the church, the blood atonement of Christ, the authority of Scripture, all of the basic cardinal doctrines of evangelical

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Protestantism. But that word has changed because now we have fundamental

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Methodists, I mean, excuse me, fundamental Muslims, fundamental Buddhists. We have fundamental atheists.

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We have fundamental communists. We have fundamentalists who are secularists. Today, a fundamentalist means you've stopped listening.

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Okay. So fundamentalist means you've stopped listening. Uh -huh. All right.

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It means you've stopped listening. It's the number one mark of it. I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture.

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I do not believe in the inerrancy of your interpretation, nor of mine for that matter.

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Wow, that's interesting, because my immediate question for you, Rick, is when the 2000 edition of the

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Baptist Faith and Message, and if you look at the history of this document and its earlier iterations, they all say the same.

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Was it the fundamentalists who put this part in, while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture?

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Was that the fundamentalists who refused to listen, who believe in the inerrancy of their interpretation?

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Were they the ones responsible for putting that verbiage in the Baptist Faith and Message back in 2000?

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You see what's going on here. Yeah, what

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Rick Warren is doing is slick, but it is absolute obfuscation.

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Which is why I have to say, I could be wrong. Yeah. And you are. Okay. We have to approach

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Scripture humbly, saying, I could be wrong. You'll never hear a fundamentalist say that.

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I could be wrong. A conservative Baptist believes in the inerrancy of Scripture. A fundamentalist

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Baptist believes in the inerrancy of their interpretation. Okay. So yeah, if you're a fundamentalist, your interpretation is the inerrant bit.

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Again, this is an ad hominem attack. The question is, what does the Scripture say? What does the Scripture mean? And you arrive at that through sound biblical exegesis.

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That's a big difference. But you, of course, would agree that if Saddleback had baptized babies, for instance, that other churches would say, okay, well, we have all kinds of churches that do that, but Saddleback's not a

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Baptist church if they do that. Right. Exactly. Well, here's the thing. Now, I'm going to point this out.

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The question is not whether or not Rick Warren identifies as a Baptist. The question is whether or not he's truly a

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Southern Baptist. Has he been playing by the rules of what it means to be a Southern Baptist?

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Okay. He's engaging in some very interesting definitional wordplay here to kind of hide and obfuscate.

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I believe the church at its best was a church at its birth. And honestly,

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I have to say this, I wasn't planning on talking about this with you, Russell, but first,

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I understand why people get upset about this, because I believed the way they did until three years ago.

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And he's undergone a transformation. I actually had to change because of Scripture. So, this is where he's now hinting at this.

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He has come up with three passages of Scripture. He'll say four inadvertently here in a second, but he's come up with three passages of Scripture that have proved to him definitively that women should be pastors.

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Now, here's the issue. When we talk about how do you define a biblical doctrine, the idea then is that you need on -topic texts that specifically deal with the doctrine in question.

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And so, the three that we looked at, Titus, 1 Timothy, and 1

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Corinthians 14, these are all the clearest texts regarding who can hold the biblical office of pastor, who's qualified, who's not qualified, and who's excluded.

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Okay? Those three passages are the clearest.

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And as a result of it, they are on -topic. What Rick Warren has done here, he's attacked the clearest texts.

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Now, in Confessional Lutheranism, we look for a passage that's called the

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Sedes Doctrinae, the seat of the doctrine. What is the clearest passage?

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And here's the other thing. In sound biblical exegesis, clear passages always govern unclear.

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You never interpret a clear passage in light of an unclear. You always instead interpret an unclear passage in light of a clear text.

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So, when the text is clearer than an unclear text, you interpret the unclear text according to the clear one.

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And then off -topic texts do not get to determine anything regarding the doctrine because they deal with different topics altogether.

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So, what Rick Warren is going to do here is he's going to go to three texts that have nothing to do with the question of who is qualified and who is disqualified, who is allowed and who is forbidden from holding the office of pastor in Christ's Church.

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Okay? He's not going to address all of it because he's dismissed them altogether by saying, oh, well, there's hundreds, hundreds of interpretations.

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So, I mean, we can't even possibly know what any of those passages actually mean.

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Uh -huh. And he's now going to go to three texts that are off -topic, that don't actually address the question of who's qualified, what are the qualifications, who's disqualified and who's forbidden from holding the pastoral office.

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It's a sneaky trick on his part, but this is what Rick has been doing for decades. This isn't the first time he's engaged in biblical obfuscation.

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Don't believe me? I would suggest an interesting task for you.

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If you have a copy of the book, The Purpose -Driven Life, the original one that came out, you know, that everybody had to go and do purpose -driven life

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Bible studies with, right? Find a copy of that thing. Go to chapter two, and every single time

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Rick Warren in The Purpose -Driven Life in chapter two references a biblical text, look it up in the

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Bible and then apply the three rules for sound biblical exegesis. Context, context, and context.

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And after you do that, ask yourself this question, is Rick Warren a faithful teacher of God's Word or is he a

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Bible twister extraordinaire? Do it yourself. I'm not going to tell you what the conclusion would be, but if you do the due diligence,

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I know what your answer is going to be. Let's put it that way. Let's continue. Culture could not change me on this issue.

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Antidotes could not change me on this issue. Pressure from other people would not change me on this issue.

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What changed me was when I came to confrontation with four scriptures nobody ever talked about that I felt had strong implications about women in ministry, and nobody had ever shown it to me.

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I knew the passage. I knew the Timothy passage. I knew 1

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Corinthians. Which are, again, the clearest on -topic passages regarding this question.

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That's just a fact, okay? And every time people say, why don't you have women pastors?

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They say, show me a verse. You give me one verse, you know, I'll consider it, because I'm a

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Bible guy. I can't— No, you're not. No, absolutely not, Rick.

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You are a Bible twister, and I have more than a decade of episodes of Fighting for the

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Faith where we demonstrate that you are a Bible twister. I just say, well, everybody's doing it, or I've been to 165 countries, and I've seen churches of 30, 40, 50 ,000 people led by a senior pastor who's a woman.

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That's not enough for me. I have to have a biblical basis. Three years ago, right after I had taken the leadership of finishing the task—and that's something else

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I hope we can talk about later on—when COVID hit, I started reading every book

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I could find on the Great Commission and on church history. And I read over 200 books on the

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Great Commission and on the history of missions. And I was asking two questions.

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One, why did the church grow fastest in the first 300 years? Now, notice here, we are off topic.

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He refuses to actually address the content of Titus, 1

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Timothy, and 1 Corinthians. He just dismisses it by saying, oh, there's hundreds of interpretations here, right?

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And now he says, well, I read over 200 books on the Great Commission and why we haven't fulfilled it yet.

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And I have discovered the reason why we have not fulfilled the Great Commission.

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And how much you want to bet it's because we've forbidden women from being pastors.

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Watch. We went from 120 people in the upper room to becoming the official religion of the

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Roman Empire in 300 years. In my library, I have a Roman denarius of 87 with Caesar on the coin.

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But in 320, I've got a picture of a denarius with a cross on the coin.

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That's major cultural change. And the church grew about 50 percent a decade for the first 300 years.

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And I made a list of about 25 things that they did that we're not doing today as a church.

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I also made a list of the things that we have, that we think we have to have, that they didn't have. They didn't have planes, trains, automobiles.

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They didn't have church buildings. There were no church buildings in the fastest period of growth of the church for the first 300 years.

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I've been in the oldest church in Melula, Syria, in a small little church seats about 50 people.

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They had no pulpits. The idea that one guy would stand behind a pulpit and preach, that wasn't

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New Testament worship. Paul says, everybody has a song. Everybody has a scripture. Everybody has a teaching.

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It was in a house and every... Really, there were no pastors who were preaching?

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Again, you don't know church history. Everybody shared. It wasn't one guy sits still while I instill.

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That's our cultural imposition. Really? That's our cultural imposition.

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Really? How do you explain Augustine, Ambrose of Milan? How do you explain pastors like that?

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And so what did they do? They didn't have printing press. They didn't have the internet.

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They didn't have radio, TV, and yet they grew faster in the first 300 years than any other period of time.

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Then the next 1700 years, I was asking, what went wrong? In 1988, the

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IMB, International Mission Board, hired an Anglican scholar, David Barrett, to study and he wrote a book called

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The 877 Plans to Complete the Great Commission from AD 0 to 1988.

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I've used that book for the last three years as an index to study why we didn't get it done.

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What went wrong? And it even tells you, the Catholics had this many plans and the

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Anabaptists had this plan and the Lutherans and Methodists. And you can look at them all and I've seen all the things they did wrong.

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So FTT, we're talking about that. Well, anyway, in that study caused me to change my view about women.

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Nothing else could have studied it as I came upon it. So I thought you said the Bible changed your mind.

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Now you're saying that study changed your mind? Three different scriptures. Okay. So here are the three scriptures apparently in the study.

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First, the Great Commission. Now Baptists, Southern Baptists like to call ourselves

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Great Commission Baptists. And we claim that we believe the Great Commission is for everybody.

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Both men and women are to fulfill the Great Commission. Of course.

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Women are not forbidden from helping to fulfill the Great Commission. They're only forbidden to exercise authority over a man in the church.

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Remember Priscilla corrected Apollos. No problem here. Women can share the gospel.

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And I would note, women can even baptize. That's totally okay too.

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All right. So what on earth are you talking about? This has nothing to do with how the

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Bible defines and how Christ himself commands that women are to remain silent in the churches and it's only men who are to hold the pastoral office.

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So no, he's way off in the weeds here. Well, not really. You don't believe that because it says there are four verbs in the

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Great Commission. Go, make disciples, baptize, and teach.

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Now, I'm not going to quibble, but I'm going to quibble. Okay. In Matthew 28, I'm going to point this out because go is not actually an imperative.

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I'll explain here in a second here. I teach Greek, by the way.

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So that being the case, so Christ says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Here we got the

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Greek verb, parouamai. All right. And this shows up as the Arab's passive participle.

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This is a participle. Okay. So as you are going is probably a better translation.

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The go is not actually the command. The go is not the imperative. And since this is an

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Arab's participle, it's as you are going, therefore make disciples of all nations.

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Just pointing that out here. It's one of my annoyances when somebody says, go is like the thing we're supposed to be doing.

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No, Arab's passive participle, it means as you are going. Okay. Just saying.

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Women are to go. Women as they are going can make disciples.

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They can share the gospel. Absolutely. Men are to make disciples. Correct. No problem with that at all.

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That doesn't answer or even address the issue of who is qualified to hold the pastoral office.

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Women are to baptize. Women can baptize. This is absolutely true.

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And women are to teach, not just... Correct. Again, I have no problem with women teaching, but not in the church.

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And here's where I would note. One of my mentors, a woman who had a profound impact on me in my training as a

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Christian apologist, is the late Gretchen Pasantino. And Gretchen Pasantino was the ghost writer for Walter Martin.

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And she was legitimately one of my mentors in the truest sense.

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I learned from her specifically. In fact, she taught me theology.

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She taught me apologetics. She taught me tactics as an apologist. And she was brilliant.

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In fact, I would oftentimes go to her house and her and her husband,

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Bob, were there and I would meet with them and ask them questions. And sometimes when I would go there, she would be busy on a radio interview because she would be asked to do radio interviews around the country.

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So she'd be on the phone doing a radio interview, talking about this thing or that thing. And she was a great teacher in the

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Christian church. I'm talking about in the body of Christ. But Gretchen Pasantino, she never once preached a single sermon.

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And Gretchen Pasantino was not a pastor, nor did she aspire to be one. She knew that biblically she was forbidden to do that.

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Yet, she was a great instructor and teacher of the church. And she helped many a

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Christian in their discipleship to learn the proper understanding of God's word. She was a brilliant theologian, and she was a gifted

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Christian apologist, and she was a great defender of the Christian faith. And I'm proud to have her as one of my mentors.

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But she wasn't a pastor. But she absolutely fulfilled many aspects of the Great Commission as all women are commanded to do.

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This is for all of us. So no, the Great Commission has nothing, zero, to do with who can be a pastor.

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Men. Now, this is one of the reasons why Saddleback has baptized more people than any church in American history.

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57 ,000 adult baptisms in 43 years. Why? Because in our church, if you went into Christ, you get to baptize them.

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So, if a mom wants to baptize her child, or a wife wants to baptize her husband that she led to Christ, anybody can baptize anybody they led to Christ.

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57 ,000 baptisms. It's the reliberation, the emancipation of every member as a minister that truly, we believe in the priesthood of the priest most of the time instead of the priesthood of the...

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Again, complete obfuscation of biblical categories, and a complete refusal on his part to actually deal with the content of the clearest passages regarding the pastoral office.

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Now, Great Commission, go make disciples, baptize, teach. You can't say, well, the first two are for men and women, the last two are only for men, or maybe just ordain men.

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Again, you're not even addressing the actual text that limit women in the pastoral office.

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You're going to an off -topic text, one that, again, I have no problem with women teaching,

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I have no problem with women baptizing in certain circumstances, that's completely fine.

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I have no problem, no problem whatsoever with women teaching theology and discipling people, none whatsoever.

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That doesn't address the issue. That's eisegesis. You got a problem, who authorized women to teach?

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Jesus. All authority is given to me, therefore, teach. Right. Except that in 1

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Corinthians 14, again, I'll come back to this. So, if we go back to 1

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Corinthians 14, 1 Cor 14, note again, as in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent where?

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In the church. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission as the law says. And then you'll note, if anyone thinks that he's a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things

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I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. The Apostle Paul, with his apostolic credentials as an apostle of Jesus Christ, makes this clear.

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This isn't his personal preference. This is an actual command of Jesus Christ that in the church, women are to remain silent and in submission.

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Okay, we continue. All authority is given to me, therefore, baptize. You've got a problem with the

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Great Commission. I have no problem with the Great Commission. I have a problem with you twisting Scripture and attacking the clearest texts and getting them off the table and using an off -topic text to deal with the question of whether or not women can be pastors.

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This is a twisting of Scripture extraordinaire on your part. I had to repent when

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I actually looked at the Great Commission. I had to say, it's not just for ordained men, it's for everybody.

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The second thing that changed my mind was the Day of Pentecost. Two things happened on that day.

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Was the Day of Pentecost a church service? No, it wasn't.

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It may have started off like that, but after the Holy Spirit arrived and people went out and spoke to people in other languages that God gave them the ability to do, women participated in that as well.

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It wasn't a church service after that. It was an evangelistic event. We know the first day of the church, the church at its birth is the church at its best.

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On that day at Pentecost, we know women were in the upper room. We know women were filled with the

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Holy Spirit. We know that women were preaching in languages that other people couldn't hear.

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They were proclaiming the wonders of Christ in language, but you use the word preaching.

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You're sneaky here, Rick. Yeah, you're sneaky. But again, the prohibition is in the church when the church gathers to worship, to hear the

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Word of God, to receive the Lord's Supper. That's when women are to be in submission and only men are to hold the pastoral office.

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The clearest texts are very clear on this. I don't have a problem with the fact that, yeah, there were women who were speaking in other languages that they had not learned, and they were proclaiming the excellencies of Christ in these tongues.

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No problem whatsoever. It wasn't in a church service. To a mixed audience.

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We know. Right. Priscilla corrected Apollos. No problem. Women. It wasn't just men.

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Women were preaching on the day of Pentecost. How do we know that? Because Peter felt obligated to explain it.

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Right. Joel makes it clear that on your sons and your daughters, right, the Holy Spirit would fall.

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They would dream dreams, right? Yeah. And so in Acts chapter 2 verses 17 and 18, he goes, guys, these people aren't drunk.

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What you're seeing was foretold by Joel. It was going to happen. And so he explains why you're now seeing women preaching on the very first day of the church.

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He explains it. And he says... No, no. You are using the word preaching. That's not what they were doing.

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This is that that Joel predicted. And here's what he says. In the last days, and clearly, that means

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Peter thought the last days began with the birth of the church. We're in the latter of the last days now.

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We don't know how many more there will be, but the last days began with the church. Peter says, in the last days,

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I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. All flesh. Your sons and daughters...

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Correct. There were even prophetesses of the New Testament recorded in the book of Acts.

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No problem with it, but they weren't allowed to preach in church. 1

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Corinthians 14 makes that very clear, and that's a command of Jesus. Will prophesy.

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That's different than the Old Testament. Russell, I've looked at over 300 commentaries on those verses, and it's interesting to me that almost everybody goes, yep, in the church, everybody gets to play.

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Everybody gets to preach. No. 1 Corinthians 14 is clear.

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In the church, not everybody gets to preach. Everybody gets to prophesy. No, not in the church.

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The Apostle Paul prohibits women, even who have the gift of prophecy, to prophesy in the church.

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And the people who don't like that ignore that verse. I just interacted with it.

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Haven't ignored it at all! You're the one who's ignoring all the clear texts that forbid women from holding the pastoral office.

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John MacArthur doesn't even cover that verse. He just skips over it. No, he doesn't. MacArthur's preached on that before.

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I've heard him preach on that text before. You are not telling the truth. I'm not even a

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Baptist, and I've heard MacArthur preach on that text. And then the third thing that changed my mind—see, none of this had to do with culture.

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Had to do with Scripture. And then all of a sudden, I noticed that the very first sermon, the very first Christian sermon—

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Watch what he's doing here. Now, basically, he's dealing with a double -sided deck.

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He's completely loaded the cards here. A sermon that we're going to talk about in the context that we're talking about, who can hold the pastoral office?

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Who is it that is permitted to open the Word of God and to preach and proclaim and give a sermon when the church gathers together specifically for that purpose?

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To hear the Word of God, to worship, and to receive the Lord's Supper. And also to pray, right? Prayers are also a part of that.

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Sorry, since I've been omitting that, but that's also part of it. The church, they devoted themselves to the apostles' preaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers.

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So, when the church gathers specifically for those functions, who is permitted to give a sermon, to open the

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Word, and to preach the Word? Only the men. Only qualified men, the one who studied and showed himself approved, who is in the pastoral office.

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He here is going to, again, off -topic text. This isn't even the context of a church service, and watch what he does.

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The message of the gospel of good news of the resurrection, Jesus chose a woman to deliver it to men.

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Yep, no problem with that. That's absolutely true. But you're comparing apples and bananas.

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He had Mary Magdalene go and tell the disciples. Now, that clearly wasn't an accident.

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It was unintentional. It's a whole... It was not intentional for the purpose of then making women pastors.

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You'll note that for 2 ,000 years of Christian history, there have been no women pastors.

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And now, all of a sudden, we found three verses that makes it possible for them to be, but all we have to do is ignore the actual biblical texts that prohibit them from being pastors.

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Old New World, baby. Now, he has a woman go tell the apostles.

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Can a woman teach an apostle? Evidently. Yeah, Priscilla corrected

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Apollos too. Not a problem. But notice, she didn't then say, let's open up our

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Bibles to the Gospel of Luke chapter 25, and we're going to be discussing... Uh -uh, this is total obfuscation, duplicitous on his part.

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He did it on the first day. He chose her to be the first preacher of the Gospel.

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So, you would, after the last three years, you would support men and women as elders, as senior pastor, as everything within the church?

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I would. I would. I would, but here's... I think we've seen enough.

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I think you get the point. And what has he done here? Oh, he's taken the texts that are the clearest, obliterated them by basically, oh, there's hundreds of interpretations, hundreds.

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We can't possibly know what they mean. And then he's taken three out of context, non -on topic.

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These aren't even texts that are on topic that deal with the pastoral office. And he's exalted these to then justify what he's done.

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This is what Bible twisters do. So, hopefully you found this helpful.

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If so, all the information on how you can share the video is down below. I'd like to give a shout out and a thanks to all the members of our crew.

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And until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.