Q&A Panel

Opening Remarks and Ministry Purpose

Hey, this is true. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for watching the videos and supporting us. I'm with a group of men tonight. They are joining me to do this video with me. This live Q and a panel Q and a session where we're going to try to answer some very important questions from a biblical perspective.

I'm grateful for these men thankful that they are joining me tonight and and our desire is to exalt Christ and to glorify him and to love you with his message and with our with our actions. And so they're joining me on a ministry that I do called truth and love and I get that from Ephesians chapter 4 verse 15, which says, but speaking the truth and love we to grow up in all aspects into him who was the head even Christ.

So we've asked the Holy Spirit would be working in us that we would speak truth and we would do that in love. And with that being said, I'm going to go around and let everyone introduce themselves tonight.

We had some guys that couldn't join us tonight, and we have one who was gracious enough to fill in. And I'm very thankful that he was willing to do that. So I'm going to start with Daniel. Daniel, will you introduce yourself?

Yeah, my name is Daniel. So I live in upstate New York. That's about all I got. I love the Lord and excited about tonight. Talk about some things.

Fantastic. Deontay, will you introduce yourself?

All right. My name is Deontay Walters. I'm a new pastor, pastor of church in the beautiful city of Rio Linda, California called New Beginnings Fellowship. And I know many of you might know Rio Linda from the late Rush Lambo.

You know, you always say down here, Rio Linda. So that's where I'm at, California.

Dale, will you introduce yourself?

Yeah, my name is Dale Payne. I'm from North Carolina, just north of where Rob is from. I pastor Clark's Chapel Baptist Church here. I've been there for about five years. My wife and I, we served overseas in missions for a number of years, but we're happy to be back in town now.

And that's that's about it for me.

All right, Jonathan.

My name's Jonathan Foster. I'm the pastor at Vertical Life and with Vertical Life. And I love foreign missions and local missions. And so we're looking forward to being a part of this tonight, brothers.

And by the way, I'm the fill in. I didn't make the poster.

And Jonathan is going to be the pastor that I'm going to be interviewing next Tuesday, hopefully, if the Lord allows. And then, Jesse.

My name is Jesse Blaine. I'm from the great state of Illinois, closer to St. Louis than Chicago. And I'm currently studying at Whitefield Theological Seminary to be a pastor.

Fantastic.

Well, I really appreciate all these men joining me. And we pray that the Lord will use this time together to build each other, grow each other. And we want to help you in any way that we can. We're going to pray at the end.

And at any point, if we can pray for you, let us know. All you have to do is type me. Let us know that we can pray for you. We'd love to be able to do that. We're also going to take questions live. If you have any questions, just type them out in the comments.

It'll pop up and we'll be able to ask those questions live. Gentlemen, I think there's an option for you to see the comments if anyone asks any questions. So I'm not sure how that works on your end, but I think there is that option.

So without any further ado, let's jump into these questions. These first couple of questions are going to be some that are coming from culture, coming from society. That I think we need to address from a Christian, from a biblical perspective.

And then we'll get on to some other type of question. And these are tough questions. So I'm going to open up the floor and let these gentlemen speak and answer as they feel led. So the first question is, and if you're not familiar with some of this terminology, it's OK.

Maybe somebody that knows a good definition can maybe explain what some of these unfamiliar terms mean. But the first question is, what does it mean to be woke? What does it mean to be woke? This is a word that's going around in a lot of circles today.

And it's making its way into Christian circles, into Christian churches, into Christian influence. And so we need to know, what does it mean to be woke? What does someone mean when they say woke?

My understanding of it, Robert, is, you know, it's a person that has a high sensitivity and awareness of social issues. You know, in our culture. So it's basically a person, supposedly, that's aware, that's attentive and understands social issues.

And of course, particularly with the issues of racism. And then it parallels in a lot of ways in our culture with the Black Lives Matter movements and things of that nature. So that's my understanding of this.

Anybody else?

I think that's a pretty good definition.

Yeah. OK. So is being woke, the folks that are promoting wokeness, they are encouraging individuals to be woke. So is being woke compatible with the Bible?

Should we all say that once?

OK, I think we're all going to be in agreement that at least on this panel, the answer is no. Being woke is not compatible with the Bible. So let's go ahead and answer the question. Why is being woke not compatible with the Bible?

Well, let me let me let me.

I think there's a tension there, Robert. I think being woke, I think one thing as white American churches, I think sometimes we have not been sensitive to legitimate racial issues, too. And so so I just want to make sure that that if we say that it's unbiblical, that I think that's a fair assessment coming from the agenda that comes along with it.

Because of being attached with the LGBTQ communities and all the other things that that are unbiblical with that. But at the same time, I do think Christians should be aware and awake to very legitimate issues that's plagued our culture throughout.

And so so that's that's where I would say I think defining it as well. There is an unbiblical agenda that is attached with this terminology. But I think we should also, as Christians, be extremely awake to any kind of injustices that are going on.

And so there are some very, I guess you could say, popular guys out there that are attempting to take a biblical worldview that as as I've been looking at this and studying it for a long time, you know, even with what we'll get into in a minute with intersectionality or critical race theories and all those kind of things.

So so I'm definitely not for the agenda that it brings. But at the same time, I'm not against admitting that there are still even in what should be a progressive culture, very, very real race issues that have to be talked about.

And so so that's why I'm thankful for diversity in our panel tonight. And, you know, and I sit down with a couple of my black pastor friends, man, just good brothers in the Lord. And and we just had hard conversations about this.

So so I think you can have a Christian worldview when it comes to being sensitive to to social sin. But at the same time, not have to line up with what we're saying is against what. So we're so we're ultimately defining the woke movement as a liberal anti biblical movement as well.

But I think some of the principles of it aren't necessarily biblical. That makes sense. Is that fair to say, guys?

I mean, what do you all think? I think from a biblical perspective, when we look at those who hold to a woke ideology or worldview are completely against or antithetical to what we hold to in the scriptures.

I mean, if you just look on BLM's website, look at their definitions of what they want to do as far as destroying the family, as far as being Marxist in their worldview, they are completely antithetical to what we would hold to in scripture.

So, yeah, we can say yes and a man that racism is evil, but we can't conflate the two ideas when we say that racism is the same as. What the Black Lives Matter organization would say that they believe in, so so, yes, the scriptures have no desire for us to hold to a racist worldview or have any desire for partiality, but those two things are not the same thing.

We can we can be involved in social justice issues and not be woke. We can do so from a biblical framework, whereas the woke crowd wants to, especially in the church, wants to have those things intertwined or synchronized with the scriptures.

And those two things are not compatible. They don't they don't go hand in hand. One is going to overtake the other.

That's right. That's what I said.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe I can help give a little perspective on that from an overseas scenario. My wife and I, we served overseas in a particular country. And having been there for a while, we realized that it was a north south thing there.

The northerners were racist against the southern peoples and the southern peoples were racist against the northern peoples. And, of course, it was hard for us to tell the difference in who was who. And so racism is a is multicultural and it goes around the world.

It's just another effect of sin and the depravity of human nature. And it comes out in that sense. So the gospel supersedes that because the gospel, there's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither bond nor free, there's neither male nor female.

We are one in Christ Jesus. And the love that comes with knowing that God has loved us and he's redeemed us, regardless of our skin color, regardless of where we're from. It makes us brothers in Christ, brothers and sisters in Christ.

And so I was asked a question last night. That person asked me, he said, can you be a racist and be a Christian? And I said, absolutely not. I said, you cannot be a hater and say you love the brethren.

It's totally antithetical to what First John teaches us, what the scriptures teach us all around. And I guess that was a little bit of a shocking comment to them. But the reality is, is that's the truth.

We know we've passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. So it's a sin just like other sins. It has social consequences. But sin, all sin condemns and sends you to hell. And so sin must be repented of.

But I can keep going. I'm a preacher. That's what I do.

That's right. And I guess all I'm trying to say is I 100 percent agree with you guys. And I didn't put in as eloquent of terms as you guys did. I just think my issue is in the South where I've been raised and those kind of stuff.

It was taboo to talk about these issues. And so that's all I'm saying is it should not be. And that's why I'm so thankful for tonight, Robert, you putting this together. It really has to be something talked about.

And then the problem is, though, if you're willing to address it openly, then you're automatically thrown into a category. And so that's all I'm saying. So I just want to make sure we're willing to talk about it.

But I think we should encourage others, other people, because I think it's a part of our missionology as well. If we're not willing to talk about cultural issues and race issues and it becomes a taboo to us, then we're ignoring the culture of being able to reach people as well.

So that's exactly right, brother.

I was I was jotting down a few things that I thought about some of the terminology, some of the language that is used when I'm talking about this issue. And you guys can feel free live on air to tell me if I'm off base or tell me tell me your thoughts on the what I was thinking and these things that I jotted down.

But one of the terms that it's used in this conversation is systematic. So so this is this word is thrown around a lot. It's a broad accusational term saying that it's a system, a systematic problem. But what I see is that the word systematic is used, but the desired result is an individual benefit out of it.

We want to we want to deal with a we want to call it a systematic problem. But what we want is an individual benefit, individual solution out of it. But in reality, as a Christian, I want to deal with my sin individually so that it has an outward benefit.

Are you are you talking about systemic?

Yes, systemic, systemic.

Yeah, correct. In other words, it's inherent. Inherently, there's an issue with it is what you're saying. Inherently, it's it's the whole the system itself is systemically racist. So in other words, you need to tear down the system and then rebuild a new system.

Is that what you're saying?

Yes. And I apologize if I didn't use correct terminology, but I was just making sure. Yeah, absolutely. And to me, it seems like that that terminology is used to address that system as a whole. But what what is really desired is that an individual benefit is we won't we won't work in it for me.

But then as a Christian, I want to deal with my individual sin so that I can be a benefit to the the greater community. It seems like it's the Christian perspective versus the secular perspective on that issue is kind of flip flop.

And I may need to flesh those thoughts out, but you kind of see where I'm coming from.

Yeah, there's an inherent selfishness related to any humanistic system. It doesn't matter what way that that system is built, whether it's a Marxist system or a capitalist system or a semi capitalist socialist system.

There's always built in systemic disparities in those systems. You know, people say, well, you know, we need a communist socialist system and then everything will be fair. Well, that's not true. I've lived I've lived in a country that was that way.

And let me tell you something. There were the ones in power and there was everybody else and they were all poor as dirt. You know, so there's anything that's that's built on a humanistic framework and setting will ultimately have disparity in it.

It'll have racism in it. You know, I always think about the Apostle Paul and he was living in the Roman Empire, you know, and living in the Roman Empire. If you wanted to talk about racial injustice, you want to talk about systemic injustice, all of those things.

Well, you know, he could have he could have spent all of his time writing epistles related to that. But he wrote epistles related to what the gospel of Jesus Christ does in in saving people from their sin, regardless of their strata in society.

It doesn't mean and I don't mean this at all. It doesn't mean that you're not aware of what's going on. And if you can do something about it, you should do something about it. But it's not for us to spend all of our time on those social issues as preachers of the gospel.

Our duty is to proclaim the word of God. I could have spent all my time overseas just trying to find food for the poor. Or I could try to balance that and preach the gospel of Christ. I couldn't save all the poor people, but I could give them the gospel.

And there's a difference there that we have to balance that and be aware of it. But anyway, I'll be quiet.

Oh, no, it's all good. It's all good. Any final thoughts on that question? I know. OK.

So going to the next one, what do you think of the worldview? The mandates are to.

Oh, I'm sorry. I've got a little bit of a lag.

I'm not sure what's going on. I apologize.

Go ahead.

From a secular worldview, I think. I think, you know, I think from a secular worldview, we want to have the culture to impact the individual versus the individual from a biblical worldview impacts the culture.

And so I think that's the that's the huge, huge difference in my mind. And so from a biblical worldview, the only way to address social justice issues is for a person to be justified in Christ. That's that's the only answer.

And that's where you have to start in Christ.

Then they will impact that. Then they will impact their culture. And so cultural change does not does not affect the issue of racism, the issue of racism or woke issues or those things. That's a hard issue.

That's a sin issue. And just because something's mandated or whatever comes along with that. It doesn't transform the person, you know, so. So that's where that's that's the reason I'm saying Christians, the ones who are justified to have an identity in Christ.

That's why we have to speak into these issues, because we carry the gospel to the issue. And that's that's where true light shining. So I think we're saying the same thing.

All right, man.

All right. All right. So what is the intersectionality? This is a companion conversation in our groups and circles and culture today. What is intersectionality and is it compatible with the Bible? And people may people may real may not realize or may not recognize the term.

But if somebody could define it for us, they may say, oh, yeah, I see. I see that happening. They just may not be familiar with the term. So could somebody define intersectionality for us?

The way I understood it in a simplified way would be the level of your victimhood. So as my white brothers on here, you would be the oppressors. Right. And as a black man, I would be on the lower scale of victimhood, so to speak.

But if I was a black trans woman, man, however that goes, I would be at the height of this. So the more of a victim I am, the more I have the opportunity to.

Right. Right. Basically, the more categories you're in, the more you're oppressed.

Right. So what is the end game of intersectionality? Why do they want those who are proponents of it? Why do they want this to be accepted? Why do they want this ideology to advance? What's the end game for intersectionality?

It's ultimately power. That's what it all boils down to is power. And who's in control and who controls what. And it's the same thing that history has been burdened with since Adam and Eve fell in the garden.

And charming. And will it originate?

Go back to that. They actually just keep that in mind.

Those who hold this view, they actually basically do the same thing that Adam and Eve did. As soon as they said, what did they do? They started blaming their problems on somebody else. And really, the biblical view is all of us are oppressed.

Every single human being has been oppressed by sin. Right. But not only are not only have we been oppressed, but also we are oppressors in and of ourselves.

So you were you were taking us in that direction. Dale and Beyonce. Of course, the answer is going to be that this is, of course, again, not compatible with scripture. So. How is it not compatible scripture?

Because I would I would say one one reason why is going back to what we had said earlier. It causes you to place all of your your problems on somebody else. It is somebody else's fault for why I'm experiencing something.

You're not taking personal accountability for your own sins.

Anybody else want to chime in?

Oh, that's it in a nutshell. That was good.

So how does how does a Christian we're going to move right on. How does a Christian understand race and racism? And we've we've touched on that already. If anybody wants to elaborate just a little bit more.

How do we deal with race, racism and race?

From a biblical perspective, I tell people that there's only one race and that's the human race.

Amen.

Yeah. You love them. You love people. You love people regardless of who they are, what color they are, where they come from. You share the love of Christ with them. You you reach out to them in the name of Christ.

And you show that there's forgiveness of sin in Christ Jesus. And, you know, the scripture says we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. So that's where, you know, you take people because everybody knows Romans one in their heart, that they're a sinner against God and they oppress that truth.

They hold it down. But the reality is, is they all know it. And if you just start there, you start with the truth of the gospel. You love people. That makes a world of difference.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I think that's kind of where those those worldviews kind of collide together, is that everyone as an image bearer of God kind of sees the world. They see they see the same issues in the world.

They just don't always call it what it is.

Some will call it an oppression against them when really the problem is sin. So what we end up doing is as unbelievers, like they said earlier, they will suppress that truth with their own unrighteousness and try to fix the problem that they see through outside means.

So they're trying to fix the problem without ever actually taking away sin. Whereas the Christian, what we do is we preach Christ and him crucified because the only way that we're ever going to fix the problem that we see is for Christ to come and forgive the sins and to take them away, to wash them clean.

That's the only real solution. So any solution or proposed solution that tries to fix one of these issues that doesn't deal with the problem of sin is going to fail. The only thing it can do is produce more sin because it forgets that first commandment.

You shall have no other gods before me. When we place ourselves in the position of God, we go off. When you go off, you're acting in a world that doesn't jive with reality. And if you're not acting according to reality, it's not going to work.

You might be able to lie to yourself a little bit, but unless we deal with that problem of sin and live as creatures in God's world, we're not going to find any real solutions. That's why we have to preach Christ and make sure that that is the basis of our solution for any problem that we come across, especially one like racism and race issues.

Fantastic. Yeah. What I'd like for you guys to do is to flesh that out even more into a way it's practical. So that leads me to my next question. Intersectionality and being woke. Those those ideologies, those things are seem to be from our culture.

They're from outside of us and they're trying to make an influence on us. But of course, what we want to do as Christians is we want to influence society. Obviously, gospel is is first and foremost. It's the answer.

It's it's what it's what we want to influence our society with. But instead of the instance, instead of society influence influencing us, we want to be an influence on society. So how do we as individuals want some good application here?

How can I as an individual make some influence in my society, in my culture, instead of the culture influencing me?

What's my role? To love your neighbor as yourself.

Yeah.

Which is a lot easier said than done, because, you know, we are so prone to hate God and to hate our neighbors. Yeah, but we really just need to learn how to love others. We love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

You know, Rob, the mainline churches of the 30s, 40s, 50s, particularly in the Northeast, they they became a social gospel oriented. And I'm kind of putting this in a little nutshell, but they became social gospel oriented.

And they they left off preaching the gospel, expositing the word of God consistently. And they became more outreach oriented towards community and so forth. And there's nothing wrong with those things.

But they allowed it to become the number one thing. As as some of you guys are pastors and preachers, our number one our number one duty and responsibility is to proclaim the word, proclaim the word to the congregation so that they grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then they go out impacting the world, just as the Lord Jesus went out impacting the world. Now, granted, we don't necessarily heal and do some of those kinds of things. Maybe you guys are of a different persuasion than me, but we still go out and we we we minister to the sick.

And we we minister to I had a little lady this evening that called me from a nursing home completely lost, completely addled, didn't know what was really going on. And it was just an opportunity to minister to her, you know, just a little bit.

So we've got to be real careful not to become so socially driven that we forget our main priority. That's just a thought. But I know there's other things that can be done and that can be fleshed out a little better than what I just said.

Yeah, I think it could be whatever actually. Oh, I'm sorry. Whatever we actually get into, whatever we actually do, like, say, we're going to go to a school board meeting. We're going to go to our local council.

That needs to look like ministry of the word to those people, because when we try to just fix an issue and we don't bring the word to bear on it, that's where we get into that issue where we're trying to fix a problem without having to take care of sin.

So everything it says in Matthew to disciple the nations. So the thing that we want to concentrate on is when we go to the nations, we disciple them. When we have our children, make sure that their education is teaching them the right thing, because we want to think about the long game as well, that in the future, what are our children going to act like?

We want to teach them how to do what is right. So that everything that we do, whether it be going to a school board, if we produce literature, if we do things like this, we can't go through and not make the word the central focus.

Otherwise, like what happened up here in the Northeast, you have people who want to do things socially. They leave off the word of God in order to try to get things accomplished. And there's churches everywhere up here, and there's not a lot of gospel influence.

You end up with a hollow shell of what it could be.

That's just what I was going to speak to you guys. I think it boils down when Robert was asking about very practically as well. There's no doubt what Pastor said just a second ago, Pastor Dale, when he said a second ago about preaching the gospel is our primary.

But I think one of the issues that's happened recently and not just recently, but it's more public in our generation with social media and everything. You're not going to be able to preach the gospel without a credibility as well.

And you're not going to be able to preach the gospel without genuine relationship with people. The attack of the enemy on the office of the pastor or the preacher or even the church in itself. The church appears very powerless and very, very empty, as the brother said just a second ago, an empty shell.

But then we got guys that are up preaching. And even though they're preaching truth, honestly, the most recent thing, if we look at Robbie Zacharias' ministry, Robbie was speaking a lot of things that were very truthful as far as an apologist and those kind of things.

But then his life of what came out after his death has really undermined that truth speaking. And so that's all I'm saying. There's a credibility issue that we have to overcome. And then it has to be relational too.

We're attempting something pretty audacious in our culture, in our city is we want every man, woman and child to be able to respond to the gospel. And the reality is our city is 70 percent uninterested.

They don't care. And so how do we overcome that? And it has to be through authentic relationship. And so it's not just it is addressing social issues, but it's addressing social issues with face to face conversations with the gospel.

And so I just I'm speaking from our culture. It's not that the role of the pulpit is ineffective because it is a primary thing that we work toward every single week. But if that's all we have, then then you're not going to have a very powerful ministry.

And so in dealing with the issues of race, we can't just speak it from the pulpit. We've got to do life together and live with each other. And and so so it has to it requires a lot of intentionality. It requires phone calls.

It requires a lot of humility and and just willing to be vulnerable. You know, and pastors aren't very good at those things. We're not very we're pretty egotistical guys. And if we're not careful, we we are not willing to talk to each other.

Realifications and ministers and all those kind of things that you know, that that a faith without works or preaching without words is dead. It doesn't matter. So so that so that's just important, I think.

And I think that's that's some of the issue with the intersectionality is is things have been created, I think, because there's been a vacuum of of activity from the church. I think there's been a vacuum of speaking into these things in the communities.

And so when there's no king, the Bible says they just do what's right in their own eyes. So people's come up with a worldly wisdom because there's there's no king in my city in Newton Conover right now where there is a king.

Don't get me wrong.

Jesus is king, but they're not bowing the knee to him. And so as a result, people just do what's right in their own eyes. And that goes back all the way to the Old Testament. So when there's no king in Israel, do what's right in their own eyes.

So so unless the we're not here unless we go. So that's that's important.

I appreciate your answers. Thank you. That's fantastic application. Love, love with the word, love with the gospel, love with our actions. If I could summarize everything that was just said. So I want to transition.

And you guys feel free if you if you think of something that you that you wanted to say and you want to come back to it. I'm open to that. Feel free to chime back in. I want to change the line of questioning.

If you're watching. Thank you so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We hope that this is being edifying or encouraging to you. Do you have any questions? We're going to take questions live. And so all you have to do is put them in the comments and we'll try to answer your question live.

We'll be looking for them. If we can pray for you at the end, let us know. We would love to be able to do that as well. So let's transition. To another line of questioning. And hopefully these will be helpful to you or to someone, you know,.

If you think if you think these questions.

Will be helpful to someone, share this question and answer session with them. And we want to share Jesus with everyone that we can and give them good, solid biblical answers. So here's the first question.

Why would a good person go to hell?

What does it mean to be good?

All right.

Expound on that a little bit.

The Bible tells us that no one is good. No one is righteous. I think our definition of good is that everyone is primarily in our culture, a decent person. Right. We all are good people. Quote unquote.

But the scriptures tell us that no one does good. Right. So not only that, Ephesians tells us that we are all spiritually dead. Yes. Those who do not know Christ can do decent things in the eyes of the world and even to us who are in the church.

But to have a right relationship with Christ.

Requires.

Regeneration. And that requires the work of the Holy Spirit. And no one in and of himself can do that. So your definition of good is extremely important. Are we are we defining it as the culture defines it, that everybody is good?

I'm good. Me and my family is good. As long as I'm not like Adolf Hitler or I'm not like Joseph Stalin, are we defining the scripture defines good? I think that's key.

I think this answering this question. It was right along with what some of you guys were saying earlier. This type of questioning comes.

From.

Outside of scripture. It comes from culture. It comes from society. And so, therefore, as as a friend, as a family member, as we approach this individual that we're having a conversation with, like you guys were saying earlier, we can't come to a conversation without Jesus.

We can't come to a conversation without the word of God, without truth. And so by you guys answering this question, you're kind of putting an example. You're giving an example of what we were talking about earlier.

So we're we're helping. We're we're looking at this question and we're bringing.

Christ to it.

We're bringing truth to it. And this is a common question that so many people ask. Why would a good person go to hell? And what we need to do is what Jesse did bring Jesus and bring scripture to the conversation.