Ehrman and Islamic Apologetics and More on Andy Stanley and Russell Moore

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:35

Greetings and welcome to the Divine Line. My name is James White. I don't see anything on the screen, but I'm assuming that we are there somehow, maybe.

00:42

I even pulled the microphone closer, but I still don't have anything on the screen. So we're doing the best that we can.

00:49

Sorry for being late in the day. It was all my fault.

00:56

Scheduling, so on and so forth, and rushing about and doing things like that, but it's good to be with you.

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So as to demonstrate that we haven't completely forgotten about the rest of the world, and so you don't think that we have an

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Andy Stanley fixation. In fact, it has nothing to do with Andy Stanley, actually. It's just that what's coming out from this is just so effective in casting light on key issues that we've been talking about for a long, long time.

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And a lot of people, I just don't think, have necessarily caught how important it is.

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And all of a sudden, we're hearing stuff like, what do you mean you start your every

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Easter service saying, we don't believe in resurrection because the Bible tells us so. We've got something better than that. What do you mean by that?

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What's that supposed to mean? Well, you know, we've been worrying about this stuff for a long, long time.

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And now you're hearing it from an extremely popular guy who, you know, 40 ,000 people listen to him.

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And how did that happen? And it's just illustrating stuff. But before we get to that, well, we have a listener in France where it is 1 a .m.,

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and I guess they want to be recognized for the devoted follower of the program that they are.

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Earlier in the day, a couple hours ago, we were tweeted this message.

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Well, it does, as long as you're leaving for the proper reason.

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And of course, having listened to this program, the only real reason to leave

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Rome is that you have come to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ and want to follow him and honor that gospel because Rome does not honor that gospel because of her additions there too.

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So before we get back to Dr. Moore and Andy Stanley, a couple months ago, well, actually, maybe a year ago, you know how these, it used to be more of something that happened more often.

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People would start impromptu email lists, you know, back when the internet was fairly new.

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And you didn't have all the social media and stuff like that.

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You'd start a group, and you'd use the CC, reply to all stuff, and that's how you sort of did the poor man's

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Facebook group or something before there was a Facebook. And about a year ago, maybe,

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I'd have to go look. A impromptu email list was put together that I was added to that is primarily populated.

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There's a couple of Christians in it. Tony Costa is one of them. I think

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Jonathan McClatchy's in the group. But it's mainly Muslim apologists,

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Yusuf Ismail, Paul Williams, Ijaz Ahmed, a few others, Yaya Snow, et cetera, et cetera.

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And there's been a number of times that I've just wanted to say, hey, you know,

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I'm not really interested in this, you know, I don't know.

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But, you know, it is helpful to sort of hear what people have to say, and there's been a few interesting things.

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And, you know, I don't have time. Those things can be just so time -consuming and stuff like that.

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Well, to make a long story short, a couple of days ago,

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Paul Williams, Paul Blau Williams from London, posted an article from Bart Ehrman.

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He loves to post Bart Ehrman articles. And so he posted a

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Bart Ehrman article, and it was about how textual criticism is safe for conservative

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Christians. And in and of itself, it's rather interesting.

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It would be something that I would respond to. You know, it does shed some light on Ehrman and his apostasy and the reasons therefore, and it's stuff we've talked about before.

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But what I found so strange is that Paul Williams and pretty much all of our

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Muslim friends have a fascination with Bart Ehrman. They just view him as their favorite weapon.

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Their favorite weapon of choice. And it was just so obvious to me, the double standard that was involved here, that what

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I did is I wrote back to Mr. Williams, and I said, Do you agree with what Bart Ehrman said here?

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Well, I get this short little one -line response that basically says, He made many claims.

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I don't have time to go through all of them. Okay. All right.

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Well, how about we do it this way then? Let me, you know,

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I find you all rather fascinating with how much you are into Bart Ehrman. Let me repost part of what

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Bart Ehrman said, but make a few little changes. And so I took the time.

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I was in the middle of something, but I took the time to take about, I don't know, one, two, three, four, five, oh, six.

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Six paragraphs of Ehrman's blog and just little creative editing and reposted it.

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Well, Williams' response was, You are not a scholar of the

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Quran, so I'm not going to read anything you say about it. That's it. And, of course, my response was,

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You're not a scholar of anything, therefore I guess we shouldn't listen to you about anything, which is true.

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Ehrman's never taught any place that I know of. It's not published. It's not taught in any schools. Nothing.

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But what he had skipped over, well, I doubt he skipped over. I imagine he read it and he just used that to get around it.

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What I did is, I'm going to read you what I posted. My edits to the

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Bart Ehrman article. And listen and hear what you, now when it says

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Quranic, it used to say New Testament. And when it says

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Sunni, it used to say conservative Christian. Something along those lines. You'll see what it means.

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So here's Bart Ehrman's article edited. This is what I posted and this is what Paul Williams wouldn't respond to.

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And there's an obvious reason for it because it exposes the double standard. And I think he knows that.

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Most Quranic scholars are deeply interested in and committed to views of higher criticism, the rigorously historical attempt to understand the

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Quran. Engaging in this kind of critical work virtually presupposes that one will acknowledge and be willing to discover that there are historical problems with the

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Quran, discrepancies, contradictions, historical errors, and factual mistakes. The goal of higher criticism is not simply to point out such problems.

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The goal is to provide a historically rooted understanding of the text. But for most scholars, doing so means acknowledging that such problems exist simply at the starting point.

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Now I just stop right there. Applying what

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Ehrman was saying about the New Testament, the Quran, impossible for Sunnis. Because this exposes what is it to be a scholar of the

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Quran from Ehrman's perspective. It's to engage in higher criticism. It's to approach it from a thoroughly secular perspective.

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And to take as a given, as a starting point, that it is not what it claims to be. That it does contain errors.

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That it's not the very word of God. That's just where you have to start. And he's posting this because, oh, and Williams especially.

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This has been his very snobbish approach all the way along. I'm not a real scholar because I believe in inerrancy.

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See, Bart Ehrman's a real scholar. So I'm just turning it around and saying, oh. So in Islam, the people who believe that the

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Quran is actually the word of God and it is without error. And it's actually eternally existent in the very form that it has right now.

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They're not scholars, according to Bart Ehrman. They can't engage in scholarship. But for most scholars, doing so means acknowledging that such problems exist simply at the starting point.

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Well, if you can't do that, then you fall into the category he then goes on to talk about. But Orthodox Sunni scholars simply refuse to acknowledge that view.

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Which means they cannot start where all the other critical scholars start. Now, I stop right there and say,

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Ehrman is wrong to say that believing New Testament scholars do not acknowledge that this other view exists.

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Of course they do. They interact with it all the time. We interact with Ehrman's view far more than Ehrman and his people even acknowledge the existence of ours.

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But I'm changing this around. Orthodox Sunni scholars simply refuse to acknowledge that view. Which means they cannot start where all the other critical scholars start.

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That's exactly right. They start not with the sense that the Quran needs to be treated like all other books from the ancient world, but that it needs to be treated differently as the inspired word of God.

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But if that's the starting assumption, you can't really do the kind of analysis that others apply with their own assumption that the

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Quran is a very human book with all the frailties that a close connection with fallible human authors entails.

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And so it is very hard to be an interpreter of the Quran as an Orthodox Sunni if you want to work in and contribute to scholarship done by others in the field.

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It can be done depending on which interpretive issues you're dealing with, but it's very tricky. This is true on so many levels.

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For example, if you don't think there can be any contradictions in the parallel accounts of stories in the Quran, then your interpretation of a passage in Surah 7, that is also in Surah 26, will be affected because you will not be able to acknowledge that these surahs have changed and altered wording and content.

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But that kind of acknowledgement is absolutely fundamental to a historical, critical understanding of each of the surahs.

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Or, if you refuse to acknowledge that there are surahs in the Quran that claim to have come from Muhammad, which in fact give evidence of a later origination, then your interpretation of those surahs will be radically different from someone who, on historical, critical grounds, thinks that some of the current surahs in the

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Quran were written, in fact, by someone else. If you think Muhammad dictated Surah 9, Sunnis, as a rule, do,

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Orientalists, among the scholars, as a rule, see other possibilities, then you would use Surah 9 as evidence for what

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Muhammad thought and taught, and you would interpret Surah 9 in light of what Muhammad says elsewhere, and you would interpret what

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Muhammad says elsewhere in relation to what he says in Surah 9. If you think Muhammad did not write the surah, you simply would not treat it that way, and your interpretation would be massively different.

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See, all of this is exactly true. It fits perfectly, and what it demonstrates is that Paul Williams will buy one, not the other.

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Just change the words, exact same application, exact same categories, and yes, that proves the

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New Testament's wrong. No, that does not prove the Quran's wrong. It's just glowingly obvious, and I think that's why he decided that, well, you're not a scholar of the

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Quran, so I'm not going to listen to anything you say. That's nice. And so, if you want to talk whether the scholars in the field are published articles and books in the field and journals and presses and presupposed historical critical views and approaches, and you have a completely different set of assumptions and presuppositions, well, it's very hard.

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Most of the time, it doesn't work. Let me stress I can't stress this enough, although roughly 36 % of my readers won't believe me or possibly hear me.

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I am not saying there cannot be Sunni scholars of the Quran. That is absolutely not the case, in the least. There are lots of Sunni scholars of the

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Quran, some of them superb scholars, but if they approach the Quran from the point of view that there could be no mistakes of any kind in it, that would be a very hardcore

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Sunni and certainly a Salafist position, then they have to restrict their scholarly conversation partners to one another, publishing in journals and with presses that support their theological views, not in the standard critical journals and presses.

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It was, if I say so myself, an extremely accurate editing job to demonstrate the epidemic of inconsistency demonstrated by Paul Williams.

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Yes, I know, there's a bunch of them. Anyway, hey, if Rush Limbaugh can talk to people outside, then

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I can respond to Rich when he's looking around at stuff.

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Anyway, so, once again, I think the reason that Paul Williams didn't respond to that is because it's just too glaringly obvious that this really does demonstrate the fundamental problem that Islamic scholarship has on this issue.

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Now, I don't have the specifics as far as place and time yet.

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I hope to have that as early as Thursday, but I am exceptionally pleased, exceptionally pleased, to be able to announce that coming up in just a matter of weeks, at the end of October, when

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I visit Brisbane and Sydney and Wellington, New Zealand.

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First time in New Zealand. That while we are in Sydney, we will be having a debate, a discussion, a dialogue between myself and Abdullah Kunda.

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And the subject will be Peace With God, How Do You Obtain It?

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A Christian -Muslim Dialogue. And most of you, well,

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I hope most of you have seen the debate that Abdullah Kunda and I did what year was that?

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2011, 2012? Somewhere around. It was the last time I was in Australia. On Can God Become Man?

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Because in more than 40 moderated public debates with Muslims, it still ranks number one in my mind for clarity and my greatest the greatest positive thing that I can say toward Abdullah Kunda is that he is one of the only

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Muslim thinkers that I know that actually hears what the other side says.

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That actually extends himself to try to understand, to try to dialogue, to try to engage in a meaningful fashion.

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And so when you have both sides trying to do that, that makes for great discussions.

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And quite honestly, in the Christian -Muslim area, really unusual discussions.

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Really unusual discussions. And so we tackled a tough topic before.

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I thought this would be a real good addition to that.

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You know, there's a number of other topics that we need to get to someday, but we're picking off the big, you know, the top ones, the heavy ones, and this is certainly a subject with tremendous range of application.

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How do you have peace with God? And you know,

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Abdullah has joined my classes a number of times in the seminaries that I've taught via Skype to interact with my students, and this is a subject that has come up, and so I know that already

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Abdullah has much more understanding of what it is that Christians are saying about the

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Atonement and about peace with God and stuff like that than the vast majority of Muslims I know.

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So it should be, I hope it will be exceptionally useful.

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So I'm very excited about that and we will see what comes of that.

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So I'm excited and we can still use your help in getting to Australia and New Zealand.

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There's a link on the front of the webpage to help us to do that. Michael Kruger, one of the most brilliant minds in believing

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Reformed Christendom today, President of the Charlotte Campus of the

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Reformed Theological Seminary, today posted a blog article at michaeljkruger .com

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Is the Bible Foundation of Christianity Engaging with Andy Stanley? I do not know if Dr.

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Kruger has the time to have listened to the dividing line or maybe someone summarized.

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I don't know. All I know is we're saying the same things.

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He raises the same issues in responding to Andy Stanley and if you'd like to have the written version of that, michaeljkruger .com

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is where you can read that blog article posted today. Again, sort of a shortened version of the rather elongated version that we have been doing, but I would recommend that to you.

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I don't have time today because I do want to dive back into this, but if you have not been listening to the briefing,

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I pretty much overdosed Monday.

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I caught up with all the briefings in one day. Six briefings in one day will possibly cause you to either become the

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Unabomber or leave all social media and become the

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Unabomber. There's not much of a choice. It's depressing. It's not depressing because Dr.

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Mueller is depressing. It's just that he's documenting the moral and cultural revolution and it's pathetic to watch and listen to.

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Please especially take note, if you have not listened to it, take note of the

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U .S. Commission on Civil Rights report on religious freedom and discrimination entitled

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Peaceful Coexistence, Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties and Ben Sasse, the senator from Nebraska, real sharp young man, really is.

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You know you're getting old when you call senators young men. He said it reveals a disturbingly low view of our

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First Amendment freedoms. It puts religious liberty in scare quotes and says religious liberty must now be subservient to other values and you need to understand those other values are erotic freedom and the exaltation of sexual perversion.

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That's what it is. That's just the only way to put it. so take a look at that if you have not listened to Dr.

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Moeller's comments on it. He rightly made it the lead story. I think it was Thursday of last week, I don't remember exactly but take a look at that.

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We will have more to say on that. We have been talking about the Uber rights for a very, very, very, very long time and now we're seeing this taking place.

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There's absolutely no question about that at all. I want to go back to Andy Stanley and Russell Moore.

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We stopped at the end of the Atheist Letter and made some comments at that particular point.

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Just to remind you, obviously one of my greatest concerns here is the very nature of the church and the function of the church and it does seem to me that Pastor Stanley has decided that the idea of being limited by New Testament Revelation as to what the church is to be, there's clearly no concept of a regulative principle in his mind.

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There is no concept that is derived from the Reformation example of seeking biblical foundation for positive actions within the church or the definition of the nature of the church, the constituency of the church.

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I have no earthly idea how this conglomeration of fellowships, of hundreds, thousands maybe, fellowships under the loose technical leadership and it's technical in the sense of somebody up on a screen on a

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Sunday. I don't know how this loose confederation engages in church discipline or if it even does.

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I don't know how it could because if atheists are members of your church, then how do you disfellowship them?

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And for what? I don't understand. I don't get it. But we have obvious foundational differences and these foundational differences are beginning to become more and more blatantly seen once the pressure of the society is coming more and more upon our churches.

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I hate to say it, but that's what I've been saying for a long time. As that pressure increases, as we get pushed closer and closer to one another, the fundamental foundational differences will become more and more evident.

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It's like with Roman Catholicism. If you are a non -Roman

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Catholic of mere convenience, of taste, of prejudice or bigotry rather than of conviction, the time's going to come when you're going to have to wonder is it really worth my doing this?

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Is it really worth my suffering or should I just go ahead and compromise? Because taste, preference, prejudice, those aren't good reasons to oppose

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Roman Catholicism. So, getting back to this issue with Andy Stanley, people are just, they hear what he's saying and first of all, most of us can't understand the distinction he's making between Scripture and Bible.

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We don't see how, well, you know, I'm just trying to, I'm overcoming barriers. You see, because so many people have barriers because of Noah or because of problems in the

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Old Testament. Well, there are people who have barriers because of problems with the concept of the Resurrection. So, I'm sorry, just saying, well, we need to go back to the

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Resurrection, that's foundation. Well, we don't know the Resurrection outside of not the general historical reliability of the

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Scriptures, but outside of the authority of God's Word pronouncing it to us.

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I'm sorry, I know all you minimalists just are screaming right now, but the idea that generally reliable but errant, non -religious, non -inspired historical sources are not sufficient to establish the fact and the meaning of the

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Resurrection of Jesus Christ. You may want to pretend that all you want, it doesn't work.

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And you'll never find an apostle doing that, and okay, I get it. Some of you go, we don't need to. The apostles didn't live in our day, we're not looking at them as examples.

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Well, once you go that direction, do you have any idea where you're going to end up stopping?

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And here's a place where, again, the pragmatism of apologetic activity ends up creating theology.

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The theology just sort of lags behind and if the theology starts slowing you down, you start chopping parts of it off, you know, until all you got is just a little bit left.

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And that's what the minimalization movement is all about. And so we've been pointing this out and saying, hey, folks, there's reason for all this, and it goes back to theology again, and it's important.

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So, with that said, let's pick up with...

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Now, one of the issues was that when the

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Andy Stanley clip from the ERLC first made its way onto the web, the only thing

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I saw was right at the very end, the Pope thing. If you're the evangelical Pope, and Andy Stanley's saying, you know, don't focus on the

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Bible. But we talked about all that before. And Russell Moore took a lot of heat on the basis of that being a partial clip that he didn't push back.

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Well, he did push back. It was just earlier in the program. And so, he's just now read that atheist letter

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Andy Stanley has. So here's Russell Moore after Andy Stanley gets done.

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Thanks for letting me read that letter. That really gets us to some important conversations here.

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When you're thinking about that atheist woman, would you say that your goal would be to sort of subtly introduce her to Christianity?

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I see in the New Testament the distinctiveness of the gospel message being what brings its power.

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We have a very clear proclamation from John the Baptist all the way through to the

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Apostle Paul and Peter and elsewhere. So would you say we ought to sort of gradually, as this woman does, start to become comfortable with the church?

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Or instead, is there a place for 2 Corinthians 5,

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I'm pleading with you as though Christ is pleading through me, be reconciled to God.

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That was a letter to the church. Yes, it's a letter to the church. But it's a letter to a church that's in error.

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But it was a letter to the church. I think, as I'm listening to this, what

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Stanley's doing there, I think what he's trying to say is that proves that the church is made up of believers and unbelievers.

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Because this statement in Paul's letter to the

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Corinthians, be reconciled to God. If you take that as a primarily evangelistic exhortation, that is problematic in the very conversation you're seeing here.

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I'm not seeing it as a primarily evangelistic, external thing. I see it as addressed to the church, and it's a need that all

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Christians have to recognize the reconciliation that has taken place in Christ, and how that reorders all of our relationships, our priorities, our behavior, everything else.

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And so, you know, I attended a Southern Baptist megachurch for many years.

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Was on staff for a while, just as a staff assistant. I wasn't some pastor or something. I was still in Bible college.

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But I saw it from the inside. I get it. And I think

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Andy Stanley and I are pretty much around the same age, I think. How old is Andy Stanley? Late 40s, maybe?

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Can't be too much younger than I am. If we were, you know, seeing the same things around the same time, the absolute what?

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58? Wow, he's really good. Looking good for 58. He's older than I am.

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I don't look nearly that good. I'm younger than the man. Well, I'm sure he does have a makeup artist, but I don't have one, and I will never have one.

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1958. See, I was complimenting the man. See? People say

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I don't have a heart. I was complimenting the man. Anyway, the emphasis on making the church a numbers producing production from beginning to end,

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I'm sure that's what he experienced in his father's megachurch. That's what

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I experienced in the megachurch I was a part of. And just as the emergent church is a counter -reaction to that, maybe some of this is

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Andy Stanley's reaction to that, but without recognizing where the real problems were. And so he's still got the we've got to have the numbers thing, but now he's just recognizing the old way of getting the numbers isn't going to do it.

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We've got to do it a different way. The problem was both ways are based upon bad theology. The old

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Southern Baptist way, manipulating people into doing things, etc, etc. The 32 choruses of Just As I Am.

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The kids baptistry made like a pirate ship that shoots cannons when they get baptized and stuff like that.

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The old way doesn't work with an ever more secularizing society. So now you've got a new way.

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And the new way is to get atheists to feel comfortable in your church.

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As part of your church. By throwing the net wide and watering down the message and making them feel comfortable.

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That kind of thing. I get it. I get where it's coming from. No two ways about it.

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But it's talking not just about the church, it's talking about the world. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. I totally believe that.

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So how would you how do you decide? It goes back to what

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I said earlier. It's a three and a half hour sermon. That I'm going to break up into bite sized chunks.

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And people say, oh, but people miss. But here's the great thing about the culture we live in. You can see everything on demand. I mean, if you miss week two, you just watch online.

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Everything's out there. Which gives us even more freedom. Not to feel like we've got to go from zero to 60 in 25 or 35 or 45 minutes or an hour.

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However long that you preach. So, absolutely yes. It's just when you prepare a sermon, you have an introduction.

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And at some point in the minutes you have, you get to the text. All we've done is stretched it out further.

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Because something very important that she talks about that we hear all the time. And I know you do too, it's not just us. When people who are far from God and people who don't believe and people who don't take the

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Bible seriously show up in a church environment and enjoy it. That is shocking.

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It is shocking. For them to want to come back because of who I connected with and my kids loved it.

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And as I hear all the time, I don't believe the whole thing but you're a good motivational speaker. You hear those kinds of things.

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You think, I don't care. You just come be with God's people after a while and it's going to start to rub off on you.

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Rub off. This is rub off on you evangelism. Let's not call it evangelism.

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Because what's the message being presented? See what more is trying to say is the apostolic message was in former times you worshipped and served those which by nature are not gods.

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But now that you've come to be known by God you serve the one true God in spirit and truth.

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There is a break. There is a radical repentance.

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You're going one way you go another way. Slow down a little bit. Turn a little bit over this direction.

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Maybe a little bit farther this way. This is the incrementalism and I didn't take the time to listen to it but the idea of the

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Holy Spirit of God being able, capable, willing, powerful enough to actually change hearts and minds not through a slow culturally friendly process but through the proclamation of the gospel which the world considers to be foolishness.

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I don't hear that. It's missing.

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It's MIA. Missing in action. I have that moment that we all had where it's like oh the

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Holy Spirit just does that thing. The Holy Spirit does that thing.

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Rub off and the Holy Spirit does that thing. I want people to fall in love with the author of scripture and I want them to fall in love with his son.

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I cannot make anyone fall in love. All I can do is set up the dates. If you believe that the heart is in rebellion and is in love with itself with its idols there's only one thing that can change a heart and it's the gospel.

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It's the gospel presentation. It's the message of what

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God has done in Jesus Christ. That's the power. If all he was saying is we need to make sure we don't get in the way of that I would still be going where is that message supposed to be being proclaimed?

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In an alleged church service by some dude on a screen? Or one on one in the highways and byways of life?

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That's what's really concerning to me in listening to what we're listening to here. I see

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Sunday morning we're just setting up dates and hoping that God does his thing and we're not shying away from difficult topics that may be one thing we talk about.

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But the point is approach is everything. Approach is everything and here's how

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I know that you know that. Men, you're driving home, you've got to have a difficult conversation with your wife and you know the point and you know the application.

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What are you obsessing over as you drive home? The what? It's the approach. How do I bring this up?

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You've got to talk to one of your kids about something they've done again. You know your main point you know the application.

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Stop going in your sister's room. But what you obsess over is okay, what's the right approach?

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Here's what we know in relationships. If you choose the right approach, the right thing does not happen even if you're right. If you approach relationships, especially marriage topic the wrong way, you may be absolutely right with your kids but all of us who are parents have apologized to our kids because we were saying the right thing, we said it the wrong way, they're crying and I'm apologizing.

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But wait a minute. Why am I apologizing? Well, so your approach to your audience and your approach to preaching is as almost, maybe as close to as important as the content of your preaching because the wrong...

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Your approach is as he wants to say it's as important and he finally gets to it at the end there.

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It's as important as the content. The content.

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Now, look, I understand. Steven Anderson blasphemes the gospel even when he happens to stumble upon it.

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Remember, he's a radical anti -lordship heretic. But even when he says things that are true, he does not adorn the gospel by his behavior.

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So, we can't go, it has nothing to do with our approach. No, no, no.

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Don't get me wrong. You have to recognize the world you live in.

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You have to recognize the context of the people you're talking to. I mean, it wouldn't make a lick of sense for you to walk into a congregation of people who can only speak

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Spanish and try preaching to them in German. There has to be some kind of a...

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You need to be able to communicate. You know? You don't speak to a huge, large group of very elderly people in a super large room without proper magnification of your voice.

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I mean, sure, there are things we have to think about. And it's appropriate to give consideration to these things, make sure the message can be clearly communicated.

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But all of that is secondary. Radically secondary to the fact that it's the content of what you're saying that is supernatural.

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Not you. Your approach isn't supernatural. It's the gospel that changes hearts and minds.

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So, yeah, I want to get out of the way of the gospel. I want to adorn the gospel. But woe be to me if I ever get to the place of thinking that my approach is equal to the gospel.

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That's the content of the preaching before the people of God. I...

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No, no, no, never. Can't be. And what

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I'm afraid of is if you end up building some mega church with 40 ,000 people, you just go, hey, the proof's in the pudding.

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Rather than the proof's in the scripture. Approach can cancel the content, and we know that relationally, and I think the same thing happens when we put on a mic and stand up on a platform.

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So a lot of this is just about approach. Okay, there was where I stopped. You want to bring that down because I got to switch.

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That's where I stopped the first one. And then

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I started listening as I was working on a presentation to the rest of the presentation, and said, you know, there's stuff here worth doing.

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So I'm now sending you a new one that's slightly smaller, I think, but it'll still work for us.

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Let's just press on and finish off the hour commenting on this. So a lot of this is just about approach.

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One of the things I would say is I also think it's important that what we're approaching people with is an encounter with the risen

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Christ who speaks through his word. And so if you have a service in which you're not appealing to the word of God, you're simply building the...

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I'm simply doing what you might do the first five minutes before you get to the rest. But in a worship experience, what you're doing is communicating to your people,

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I think, and to the people who are watching, what's the basis for our authority? You do have two fundamental differences here in approach.

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Andy Stanley is saying, look, we can go ahead and let's not call it a worship service.

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In fact, I would say let's not even call it a meeting at the church. If you want to have evangelistic meetings, then have evangelistic meetings.

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I don't think there's anything wrong with getting together, inviting the public in for a public talk. Just don't call it church.

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Just be honest about what it is. We're going to have a get -together, and we'd like to, you know, we're going to have child care and some music, but just don't call it the church.

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Because that's not the church. That's not a worship experience. And what Andy Stanley's doing is, well, look, it's just I'm preaching a really long sermon, and I'm cutting it up into parts.

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That's his excuse for what I'm doing is I'm stripping anything distinctively

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Christian from the service. And I'm just left going, you know why so many people bought into this?

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Because, drawing on my megachurch background experience there, when

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I was at that church, I never, I do not recall ever hearing a serious discussion of ecclesiology.

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Any serious discussion of what the church is supposed to be in the first place, of the offices of the church, plurality of elders, didn't have that.

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Oh yeah, we had big staff, but they were all just extensions of the one mega -pastor, and the elders were the deacons, and there basically weren't any deacons.

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But the very nature of the church, what

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I was taught in Bible college, it was the Southern Baptist Bible College at the time, it ain't no longer, but it was then, crafting of the sermon, always with the public invitation at the end as the focus.

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So even your interpretation of the text had to be limited to allow you the time to pivot to an evangelistic application at the end, because the purpose of the church is to win souls in the worship service.

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And we wonder why so many of our sheep in these contexts are utterly defenseless against the cults, have no grounding for dealing with the difficult issues in life, because we leave that to something else.

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What else? Well, that's the fellowship groups. Oh, so where we all sit around and say, well, I think this

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Bible verse says this, well, I think it says that, well, that's fascinating. Where do you ever get the authoritative proclamation of the

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Word of God in this context? Well, we'll get to it later on. We'll get to it at the end of the three and a half hour sermon.

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So let's say three and a half hours, what are you thinking? Six weeks? So the sheep get to hear the authoritative

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Word of the Shepherd once every six weeks or so? Do you eat once every six weeks or so?

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Probably not. And if they're not with elders being taught the

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Word of God on a regular basis, are they supposed to take this in by osmosis or something? I don't know.

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Just some questions that pop into my mind. As a congregation and as a church.

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You very controversially said a couple of years ago that we shouldn't say the

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Bible says now, in appealing to the authority of... I am...

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Ever seen... Is it Fox News that has that body language reader chick?

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They did have her for... Okay. If what

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I'm hearing is true, and I don't know that it is. If what I'm hearing is true, that there had been some disagreement even before coming out,

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I'm looking at body language here. Look at Andy Stanley's face right now. And did you hear

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Russell Moore was sort of stumbling a little bit?

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He sounds a little nervous. He sounds like when you know you're about to step real close to that landmine and you're not sure what's going to happen.

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I could be wrong. I'm just... I'm reading this in. I'm not... But I... You know, he just...

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Because he just brought up the controversial thing that he said. And yeah.

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Because of people like this atheist nun, when she doesn't receive the authority of Scripture.

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I would, of course, disagree with that because it would say no one naturally receives the authority of Scripture.

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The Scripture brings with it its own power and its own authority. What do you mean when you say we shouldn't say the

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Bible says? Is it? Yeah. I'm glad you asked that. The reason I encourage pastors not to say the

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Bible says, the Scripture teaches those things. If it's a bunch of Christians and it's a bunch of people who take the

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Bible seriously, we're good to go. And for generations in our culture, we got by with it. But...

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It wasn't just generations in our culture. It's like the entire history of the Christian church. But again, when you change what the nature of the church is to where it's now this...

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It's a mixed company rather than the right of Christ. But the point is, the apostles,

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Jesus said the Scriptures say. And I think a lot of these guys are going to come back saying, yeah, but they were talking to people who already believed the

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Bible. And so we can't take that as normative for us. We have to come up with something new.

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The problem is, once you try to come up with something new and you don't have apostolic guidance, what ends up being new is normally pretty wacky too.

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I've just learned through experience. I have removed an unnecessary obstacle when I say to not just non -Christians, but Christians who are having doubts about the

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Scripture perhaps. When I say, it's just a more direct route to say, Jesus taught.

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The Apostle Paul, who by the way used to hate Christians. Anybody here hate Christians? You love the Apostle Paul. He hated Christians.

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The Apostle Paul... I know, it's kind of funny. Now you're interested in the Apostle Paul. Peter taught. Let me tell you about Peter.

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James, my favorite one is James. James... Before we go to James, let me tell you about James. James was the brother of Jesus. What would your brother have to do to convince you that he was the son of God?

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Everybody laughs. I'm like, did you know that James didn't show up until after the resurrection? James believed his brother was his

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Lord. That's awesome. Here's what he says. Now by the way, as an approach,

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I don't think this is actually relevant to what is being asked. Because the real question is, what's the nature of Scripture?

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And why are you afraid to say that God has spoken? And eventually you're going to have to get around to saying, well the reason we take

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James seriously is because what he was writing is God speaking. But this is similar to what

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I exhort people to do in the 100 verse memorization system. You provide a context.

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You provide the story. When you quote a verse to someone and you have gotten their interest and you've demonstrated you know what the storyline is, what the context is, what the force of the argument is, you bet that's going to carry more weight than just simply you know, someone who sees you, let me move my tribbles out of the way.

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Batteries haven't died yet. Sorry, I was just for geeky people. If you're carrying your

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Bible and you're constantly turning to the back where you have a list of evangelism verses and you're going, the

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Bible says in John 3, 16 just a second here for for God so love the world.

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Okay, that's probably going to communicate to most people that you don't really know a lot about what you're saying and it's not a real personal thing and you're just following this.

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Yeah, I get it. So this is a part of the style thing and again, if you can avoid artificial barriers, that's cool but that's not what the issue is here.

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Because Jesus in dealing with unbelievers, in dealing with all sorts of people said

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God has spoken. And that really becomes the issue because even when you give all this stuff and you give the background and stuff like that eventually you still have to get around to it and why should you believe it?

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Why is this binding on you? Because Jesus said, have you not read what

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God spoke to you? Jesus was not afraid to say God has spoken to you and He's spoken to you in Scripture and you will be held accountable for this.

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How many people have listened to Andy Stanley preach and then walked away going yeah, maybe someday.

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Because there was no communication that you will be held accountable for what you have heard. You will be held accountable to the lordship of Christ, you'll be held accountable to the revelation of His word.

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I think it is an easier on ramp for people who are distancing, doubting, to start with the authority of the author than to start with the

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Bible. And there are other reasons. All Scripture is theanostas.

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Not Scripture writers. not Scripture writers. The locus, the focus of power, supernatural, divine power is in that which is

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Theanoustos, and that is the Scriptures themselves, not the authors. What's scary here is this is a view of Scripture very parallel to the

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Muslim view, where the prophets have to have a particularly holy character, and then the message they deliver is only as authoritative as the character they possess.

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That is not a Christian view of Scripture. It's just not. You're bypassing the fundamental harmony of Scripture and its ultimate source, its ultimate source is that it comes from God.

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It is God speaking. Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

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So I'm sorry, there is a there is a, you know, he may be Norman Geisler's favorite student, but I would have a hard time thinking even

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Norman Geisler could buy that one. And you know this, it's not what the Bible says that's the issue, it's what else the

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Bible says. And again, when you're dealing with secular people, as soon as you say the

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Bible, everybody now knows all the problems with the Bible. And when I say problems, the problems in terms of a culture's view of the

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Bible, in terms of six -day creation, no geological evidence for a worldwide flood, there's no evidence for the

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Exodus, there's all kinds of things that people can poke at, poke at, poke at, and when we just...

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Okay, now hold on a second. Here's where we're almost out of time. Poke at, poke at, poke at.

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Are there people who will poke at anything in the Bible? Yes.

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Pastor Stanley, how do you differentiate between those issues you just mentioned and the things that are fundamental to your apologetic?

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They poke at who James was. They poke at the authorship of the They poke at the resurrection.

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It's one of their primary things to go after. They poke at, there are answers for all of them.

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So what do you accomplish? What is the apologetic advantage?

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I was saying, don't worry about the things that you poke at, just don't poke at the things that I'm presenting to you.

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That does not make any sense to me. That it seems to me that you're just simply moving the question back one step and saying, let's not worry about that, let's worry about this.

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Okay? You may have all those problems with that and you're just hoping they don't already have problems with these things that you say are absolutely foundational.

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I just don't see how that accomplishes anything. I really, really honestly don't. Well, there's more to be viewed there.

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I promised, well, I just have to get done today in a normal size dividing line.

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I think there were some people, I think there may have been a pool somewhere of people wondering whether I could still do a one -hour program that would actually get done on time because I don't know the last time that I did a program that actually got done in time.

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But we're doing it today! We're actually finishing up today. Lord willing, we will be back on Thursday at our normally scheduled time, whatever that is, which

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I don't even know what it is, and sometime on Thursday. We'll get back together with you here on The Dividing Line.