Ep. 175 - Pastor Loses Job For Biblical Position On Marriageā§øGender
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Summary
Pastor Justin Hoke of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church in Weed, California, lost his position as pastor because of a message that he put on a church sign that said, "Bruce Jenner is still a man. The culture may change, but the Bible does not."
Transcript
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On the Matt Walsh Show today, a pastor lost his job after taking a biblical position on sex and
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gender, and I've got several things, as you can imagine, to say about that. Also, in the same
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sort of vein, I want to talk about proof texting, the habit some Christians have of cherry-picking
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certain biblical passages to support their erroneous and often heretical views. It's a
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dangerous habit that we need to discuss today on the Matt Walsh Show.
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All right, first of all, let me give a shout-out to the Museum of the Bible in D.C. My wife and I
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went there on Saturday, and we thought it was wonderful. Much bigger, more elaborate than I
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thought it was going to be. I was picturing like a church basement with maybe some Bibles and some
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paintings and like some dioramas made by the eighth grade Sunday school or something, but it's definitely
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much, much more than that. There is, it's just, it's a massive place with a great mix of historic
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artifacts and interactive kinds of presentations, including a lifelike model of Nazareth, which you
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can go through and go through the different houses and visit the temple and all that kind of, it's just
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very impressive. So I definitely recommend it. Affordable too. What was not impressive, however,
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I have to mention, because we were in D.C. when the snowstorm hit. We stayed overnight. My kids
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were, my parents watched our kids so we could go to the Museum of the Bible. We stayed overnight in D.C.
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And we woke up the next morning, and there was like six inches of snow on the ground, yet somehow
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half of the roads in the city hadn't been plowed yet, including 295, which is a massive highway that
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connects D.C. to Baltimore. And it had been reduced down to one unplowed lane with all of these abandoned
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vehicles strewn all over the place. It looked like something out of The Walking Dead. And this is not
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because of the shutdown, you should know. You cannot blame this on the shutdown. This is just how it is
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in D.C. D.C. has never figured out how to deal with snowstorms, even though they're in the Northeast
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and they've gotten, or at least the mid-Atlantic region, they get snowstorms every year. D.C. has
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existed as a city for 230 years. And so that means it's probably gotten what, like maybe 450 or 500
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snowstorms throughout its existence. And through those 500 snowstorms, it still has not learned to expect
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snowstorms or what to do when snow lands on the ground. And so there's just confusion and
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incompetence. But what else can you expect from D.C. but confusion and incompetence?
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All right. I wanted to mention a story related to the Bible that's going nuts on The Daily Wire right
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now. It's gotten like 160,000 shares or something in a day. Written by Frank Camp. It's about Pastor
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Justin Hoke of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church in Weed, California. And kind of an unfortunate name
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for a town, especially in California, named Weed. He's now lost his position as pastor because of a
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message that he put on a church sign. And the sign says, or said, Bruce Jenner is still a man.
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Homosexuality is still a sin. The culture may change. The Bible does not. Now, he says he was
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inspired to create the sign after seeing that. Remember that viral video of the guy losing his
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mind at a store because a cashier called him sir rather than man? So for Pastor Hoke, he saw that
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video as kind of like the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back. And he wrote this, he put this sign
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up as a form of protest against the insanity and madness in our culture. Now, we can have a
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discussion about whether or not a church sign is really the most effective forum to have these kinds
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of discussions. But we can't have a discussion about whether the message on the sign was doctrinally
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and scripturally orthodox, because of course it was, without question. The message communicates
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an indisputable Christian truth. And when I say indisputable Christian truth, I mean that
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it is a truth that no Christian can dispute. If you're not a Christian, you can try to dispute it.
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Um, but if you are a Christian, you, you really, you literally cannot because in order to dispute it,
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you would have to toss out the Bible. And once you've done that, then you're not a Christian
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anymore. So in order to dispute that Christian, that homosexuality is a sin or that, um, God makes
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us male or female in order to dispute that you would have to take the Bible and basically like toss it
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into that fire I have behind me. Um, but if you're going to do that, then as I said, you, you have
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given up the basis for your faith. So you could not possibly retain your faith while doing that.
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Um, but still there was a protest. People are upset about the sign. And the pastor says that it was
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communicated to him that some of the church elders and many of the church members, uh, wanted him to
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leave and would themselves leave if he did not demanded that he leave. And so ultimately he
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decided that he had no choice. Now I personally, look, I'm not going to make judgment calls for him
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and his family. He had to decide to do what was best for him and his family. I kind of wish he would
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have said, okay, well, if you want to leave the church, go ahead. And if we only have five people
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left in the church, um, then that's what it's going to be. Because if you don't, if you're not on board
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with biblical truth, then it's better for you to leave. I'm not going to leave because you don't
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support biblical truth. You can leave. I'm not going to. Um, I wish he had said that he chose not
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to. And, um, and he ended up leaving and all of that because he put something on a sign that can be
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found over and over again in the Bible itself. Um, a couple of other points about that. The sign was
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protested, um, not just by people in the church, but also by other people in the community,
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like community members who are not members of the church, presumably not Christian.
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But this is interesting because, you know, the left has always claimed
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that it has no problem with our religion as long as we don't force it on them.
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And as long as we keep it in the church. Now I personally have a problem with the idea that
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our faith is supposed to be kept in a church building and away from the public square,
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because that's not what that, that is not consistent with the protections that we are
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afforded in the first amendment. That's not what it means to be a free American. That's also not what
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it means to be a Christian as Christians. We are not supposed to keep our truth, the truth in a church
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building. We're supposed to declare it, um, to the world. But in this case, okay, it was,
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it was on church property on a church sign. So why are you protesting in that case? If,
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if the left was really sincere about, no, no, you know, we're not trying to stop you from,
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from, uh, worshiping your God and from following your religion, just, just, just, you know, don't,
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don't throw it in our face. Well, we see yet again that they're not serious about that.
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You know, that's just something that they said so that we would accept with each kind of step down
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the slippery slope. They're always going to say, Oh, no, no, no. You know, we're just going to go
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here and no further. No, no, no. You're fine. Look, we're not trying to, no, no. We, we're just
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going to, we just want to take this one more step and then that's it. I, we promise. Okay. We promise.
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Um, but it never works out that way because ultimately the left hates biblical Christianity.
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It despises it. It does not think that Christianity has any right to exist. And, um, and its ultimate
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goal is to see Christianity destroyed. I mean, that's just, there's no way around it. That's,
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that's very obvious. Um, second thing. So, okay. That deals with the non-global,
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non-Christians who are protesting. But if you are a Christian and you don't like the sexual
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morality of Christianity, if you don't like the, the, um, the message of sexual morality that you
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get from, from Christianity, which is a morality that applies to everyone, by the way, not just
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homosexuals. Okay. So this is not just a thing where if you're a homosexual, you have to abide by these,
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um, rules of chastity. No, this goes for everybody. We're all, we're all, um, subject to it. But if you
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don't like it, um, you have a few options, right? You can leave, uh, you can, uh, denounce the faith,
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renounce the faith, I should say, and say, I'm not Christian anymore. I'm leaving. You could do that.
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Um, or you could stay and you could struggle to abide by these teachings as difficult as it is.
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And you're going to probably fail and fall and stumble along the way. And so there's going to be,
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you're going to be repenting and going back to God. There's going to be a lot of prayer
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and all of that. Um, so that, that's, that's another option. Um, or you could stay, but then
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basically personally ignore these teachings in your personal life and do what you want. Um,
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and then take it up with God later. Now I don't recommend that third path.
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I don't recommend the first path either of leaving. Although if you have to choose between,
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you know, door one, two, or three, and you're not going to choose door two,
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which is staying and struggling and trying to abide by the teachings. And you're left with only one or
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three, I would think one is better than three. You know, just leaving the church completely is better
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than staying and committing to this path of being a, a, a hypocrite and a fraud. Um,
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but those are, you know, three potential paths you could take the path that you really can't
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take the path that doesn't make sense. And that is impossible is to stay and then try to insist
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that the morality of Christianity be changed or amended or something like that. You know,
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because Christianity is not a, it's not a democracy. Um, it's not a, it's not a political
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movement. It's not a, uh, you know, a governing administration where you can petition for change
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and you can, you know, hope that it keeps up with the times or, or whatever. That's not what it is.
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It is a eternal, unchanging truth. It cannot be changed.
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So that other option of staying and trying to change it and trying to get rid of that teaching
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and this teaching and that teaching, that just doesn't make sense.
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All right. Um, staying in this general realm, I wanted to follow up on a conversation from, uh,
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we talked about mega church pastor, Andy Stanley, who, um, recently made headlines yet again for insisting
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that the old Testament, including the 10 commandments do not apply to Christians. Um,
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actually, as I mentioned on Friday, Stanley's been on this crusade against what he calls the Jewish
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scriptures for a while now. And he is in the past over the last year or two, he has been urging
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Christians to unhitch. That's his phrase, unhitch themselves from the old Testament. And he has
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declared that the first three or four dozen books of the Bible should not be a quote, go-to source
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regarding any behavior. And he's also said inaccurately that the early church unhitched
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itself from the quote, worldview and quote, value system, uh, of the old Testament. Um, he has said
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that those Christians who still strive to follow the moral teachings of the old Testament are standing
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on a quote, old Testament house of cards, which could come crashing down at any moment. Um,
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uh, in various interviews, he has appeared to really kind of be embarrassed by the old Testament.
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And, um, he said that the old Testament books are disturbing and violent. He says that it, you know,
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it's led many people to lose their faith. And so what he says is we should just leave it out.
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The old Testament should be quote, left out of the apologetic argument. Um, those again are his words
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left out. Now, of course, Jesus Christ did not leave it out. I mean, Jesus quoted from the old
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Testament or for, for back in those days, it would have just been scripture. Um, Jesus quoted from
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scripture all the time. He was constantly quoting from scripture. Uh, that's one of the things
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when you actually sit down and read the books. And I'm not sure if Andy Stanley has, has ever done
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that based on what he, based on what he says, he, he does not appear to have any biblical knowledge
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at all. Um, but if you actually sit down and read it, you're going to find that Jesus is
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constantly quoting what we call the old Testament, quoting it authoritatively as in saying, um, it's
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in scripture. So you should care about this. You should be following this. Okay. Um, and he is,
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he is using it as a, he is appealing to it, citing it all the time. Now, when Stanley has been
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confronted with that argument, he's suggested that, well, yeah, Jesus talks about scripture,
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but we don't really know what that means. It might not necessarily mean the old Testament texts as we
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know them. No, yes, that, that is what it means. There, there aren't any other scriptures that he
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could be, that he could be referring to, especially because a lot of times he gives you chapter and
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verse, he's going to actually quote them himself. Um, so like for instance, when Jesus gives us
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the, uh, what Stanley apparently, and some Christians think are completely new commandments,
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uh, love the Lord God, love your neighbor. When Jesus gives us those commandments and Stanley says,
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well, those are the new commandments that, you know, love God. That's the one commandment.
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All the rest are just tossed out. Don't pay attention to them. Well, when Jesus is doing that,
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he is quoting the old Testament. Those are commandments that are in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus.
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Jesus obviously knew that. So this was now they are new in the sense of, you might say,
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newly emphasized, um, or you could, or, or something like that, but they are not actually
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new. He is quoting old Testament. So, so Andy Stanley says, unhitch ourselves from the old
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Testament. Meanwhile, Jesus is saying the greatest commandment is this one right here in the old
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Testament. So that it just doesn't work. The two, so you've got what Andy Stanley is saying. You have
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what Jesus Christ is saying. They're saying two completely different things. And then you have
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to decide, are you going to listen to Andy Stanley or Jesus Christ? Me personally, I'm going to listen
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to Jesus Christ. Um, if you decide that Andy Stanley is your guy, then go for it. But as I said,
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that's not Christianity. That's a completely different religion. Um, now in the last week,
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he wrote an article, uh, criticizing Christians who erect monuments to the 10 commandments. Uh,
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he says that the 10 commandments don't apply to us. Again, those are his words. They don't apply.
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Don't kill, don't steal, don't commit adultery. Andy Stanley says, doesn't apply to us. Doesn't apply,
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you know, whatever. Um, he says again, his words, Christians are not required to obey any of the
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commandments found in the first part of their Bible. You don't have to obey any of it. The
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first commandment, the first command that God gives humankind, be fruitful and multiply. Um,
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I guess we don't have to, you know, don't, don't listen to that one either. I mean, the very first
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things that Jesus, that, that God is saying to, to, to mankind. I mean, God throughout the old
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Testament is, is constantly speaking to mankind and, and speaking, giving these moral commands,
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these moral truths. And these are not arbitrary commands. God does not speak arbitrary. He is
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talking about a moral truth that is woven into the fabric of human existence.
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Christians. So it's not like when God says, don't commit adultery, don't murder. He it's,
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it's not like he just decided randomly that, yeah, you shouldn't do that, but this is part of reality
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itself. Um, now why, according to Stanley, is it so crucial for, for Christians to reject or as he
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says, disengage with or unhitch themselves from the old Testament? He says, well, because in part,
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um, the old Testament has been used throughout history to, to justify all kinds of atrocities.
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And he, and he, he uses the same ones that atheists use the crusades, the inquisition. He says that that
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came, that, that came about because of an overemphasis on the old Testament, which is just wrong on so many
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levels that now he's betraying not only a biblical, uh, illiteracy, but a general historical
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illiteracy. Um, and actually the crusades for one thing happened as a result of 400 years of Muslim
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aggression. And the inquisitions were an attempt by the church to put a legal process in place for
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those accused of heresy, as opposed to the summary executions carried out by angry villagers, which had
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been the policy before the church intervened. But putting all that aside, um, here's my point.
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I already issued my rebuttal to this heresy, which as I said, is really just a reheated version of
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Marcionism, which is a heresy from like 1900 years ago. Marcion was a guy who said, said basically the
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same thing. Old Testament doesn't apply to us. That's for Jews. It's not for us. We don't have to
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listen to it. Uh, same, same basic thing. Um, but as we were talking about this, this discussion,
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you know, prompted a lot of interesting feedback. And I would say as an unscientific estimate, um,
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probably 75 to 80% of the feedback that I received was, uh, extremely critical of Stanley's position.
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Basically an agreement with me. A lot of people made additional points that I hadn't thought of
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were brought up. So that was interesting, but there was also a solid, probably 20 or 25% of the
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people that I've heard from over the weekend who passionately agree with Stanley and also insist
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that the old Testament is effectively useless. And all of the commandments given in those books
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are now irrelevant. We don't have to listen to them. We don't have to follow them. Um, uh,
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God apparently was not speaking eternally when he gave the, when he, when he spoke these moral truths,
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um, they, these moral truths had a, had a, uh, an expiration date. Um, and these Christians have
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just decided now God never said they had expiration date, but these Christians have decided that they
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did. Um, the one thing that these people do when arguing that the first two thirds of the Bible are
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are now basically pointless and that God's commands are actually just like symbolic suggestions. Um,
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the one thing they do is, you know, they'll, they'll find a verse, they'll find one verse in scripture,
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usually in the epistles. And then they'll hinge their whole argument on this one line, completely removed
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from context, completely isolated. And they use this one line to basically render almost every other
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line in the scripture and scripture moot. So they grab on, they, they, they search desperately for one
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sentence that seems to kind of support their position. They grab onto this one sentence and they
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say, you see, all we need is this one set. We don't even need the rest of the Bible. We have this one
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sentence right here. That's all. It's all right there. We don't need anything else. Um, now this
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isn't something that people just do with this argument. This is something that Christians often
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do in, in general, in any theological argument. And it's one of the worst things. It's one of the
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most insidious things in, in the church today. Um, and that's really what I want to talk about is, uh,
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it's called proof texting, uh, which, which is another word for that is another phrase term for that is
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cherry picking. But I think proof texting is a better, more, more specific term. Um, proof texting is
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when you, you want to prove a certain theological position that you've taken. Usually it's going to be a
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position that you've already taken. Okay. Importantly here, you already have the position and now you're going
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to go in the Bible and find a justification for it. So that's what you do. You, you, you have your
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position in mind. In this case, let's say for instance, your position is the old Testament
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doesn't matter. We don't have to follow anything that it says. Um, you've got that in your mind.
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And then you, you, you know, you flip over, open the Bible and you're just looking, you're like,
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give me one sentence. All I need is one sentence that seems to sort of support that. And you go
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searching desperately for it. Although usually you're not going to have a physical Bible. You're going to be
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doing it with Google looking for that one sentence that seems to fit in. And, uh, and once you find
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that sentence context, be damned, you're going to hang your whole theology on it. This is a very
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common thing, especially these days because of the internet. Um, the internet makes it so easy to do.
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You know, um, you could even plug into Google. Like once you have your position in mind, you could even
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just Google biblical support for exposition. And then you're going to find someone somewhere has
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made a list and you find the verse and boom, there it is. That that's all of your biblical
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research. That's all you need to do. And so for this argument, a lot of people cited, uh, Hebrews 8,
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13, which says by calling this covenant new, he has made the first one obsolete and what is
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obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. Now. Okay. Sure. Yeah. You take that, take that verse,
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take it in isolation. Um, you know, it all by itself. And you seem to have found yourself pretty
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good proof, right? That's what, and that's what proof texting is. It's easy to do when you're proof
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texting, you could find proof for pretty much any position whatsoever when you're proof texting.
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And in this case, so you find it in Hebrews, uh, you find one line, you find one sentence,
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by the way, written by an anonymous author. We don't even know who wrote it.
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We have no idea who wrote Hebrews. Uh, now that doesn't mean that it's not legitimate. I'm not
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calling into question whether Hebrews should have been included in the Canon, even though some church
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fathers did call that into question, but I'm not, I'm just highlighting the absurdity here. Okay.
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The absurdity of using one sentence, one line from an anonymous author, all the way in the back of
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your Bible to basically nullify everything that came before it. It is an absurd, ridiculous thing
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to do. And the thing is, if, if this is just a general, a good general rule for reading your Bible,
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if you come across a sentence, which would seem to nullify almost everything else you've read in the
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book, then it's, it's likely that your interpretation is wrong. If, if the line made the
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first one obsolete really means what Andy Stanley thinks that Christians, as he says, are not required
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to obey anything at all that was written in the first two thirds of their Bible, then why did the
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people who compiled the Bible even include the first two, two thirds of it? Why did they,
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why did they just give us the gospels and some of the epistles and then leave the old Testament to
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the Jews? Andy Stanley says, well, that's the Jewish scripture. It's not for us. Okay. But why is it
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put in the same book for us? The people who compiled the Bible, they put it all together. Why'd they do
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that? Why did they just leave it for the old Testament for the Jews and say that? Don't worry about
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that part of it. And that's not for you. I mean, you could go read it if you want to, but you know,
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don't worry. That's what Andy Stanley is saying, but that's not the position that the writers and
00:26:17.060
compilers of scripture took. So you have to look at everything in context is what I'm saying.
00:26:23.460
You have to justify your theological positions with the entirety of scripture, not just one sentence.
00:26:30.120
because if we're doing the one sentence game, if we're doing the proof texting game, then as I said,
00:26:37.520
I can find proof. I can find biblical support for any position. And I really mean any position,
00:26:46.420
starting with the position that the earth is flat. We've talked about that in the past.
00:26:50.480
If you're doing proof texting, I could easily find you a couple of verses that would really seem to
00:26:56.200
indicate that the earth is flat. Um, or I think more troublingly and more, more, you know, in a more
00:27:02.720
relevant way, if I'm isolating sentences, removing them from context, I could certainly justify any
00:27:10.720
heresy that has ever been dreamt up. So Andy Stanley justifies Marcionism. Um, but you could do it with
00:27:19.300
any heresy. Arianism, the heresy that Christ is a created being, not eternal, not equal with the
00:27:26.120
father, not divine in the same sense as God, the father. Well, I could isolate many sentences in
00:27:32.620
scripture that would seem to fit that bill. How about this one? Why do you call me good? No one
00:27:37.960
is good, but God alone. If you're looking at that sentence by itself, completely isolated from
00:27:44.920
everything around it, well then it, that would seem to be, you say, wow, what was Jesus saying? He's not
00:27:51.900
God here. What about, um, adoptionism? Okay. The belief that Jesus Christ was adopted as the son of
00:27:59.820
God at some certain point in his life, but was not the son of God eternally. So you could, I mean,
00:28:08.280
adoptionists, adoptionism, that was a thing in the early days of the church and the adoptionists,
00:28:13.200
they had their verses that they could point to. Uh, one of the verses, one of the stories that they
00:28:18.280
used is the stories of Jesus's baptism. When God announces, this is my beloved son.
00:28:25.900
And so many adoptionists took that passage and they argued that Jesus became the son of God
00:28:31.720
in that moment. And they say, well, God didn't announce this, you know, at Jesus's birth. Uh,
00:28:39.900
this wasn't announced at any other, but this was announced at the baptism. Okay. So he was adopted
00:28:47.680
in that moment. There you go. There's all the proof I need. If I'm just looking at that story by itself,
00:28:52.840
as if it existed on its own without anything else around it. Uh, how about docetism? The belief that
00:28:59.560
Jesus was not really flesh and blood and was actually a kind of like a phantasm or a, or a
00:29:04.740
hallucination, a hologram basically, uh, projected from heaven. Well, Colossians does say after all,
00:29:12.620
that Jesus was the image of the invisible God. Now you wouldn't, I mean, it's, I mean,
00:29:18.280
it seems odd to say of a physical flesh and blood human that they are an image of something else,
00:29:23.260
right? So who knows? And I could go on, but you get the idea. Now the fake scriptural support for
00:29:32.040
docetism that I just mentioned is kind of weak. Admittedly, I'm actually not sure what,
00:29:35.980
what scriptures that docetists used to support their position. I'm thinking they probably use some
00:29:41.220
of the Gnostic gospels that weren't included in the canon, like, um, like the gospel of Thomas or
00:29:45.520
gospel of Judas or Mary or, or whatever else, but, um, Arianism. Now you can find some very
00:29:55.100
compelling passages like the one that I cited. No one is good, but God, why do you call me good?
00:30:01.640
Um, and you can find others that on their own seem like interesting pieces of evidence
00:30:08.260
in, in favor of Arianism. In fact, the gospels don't make Christ's divinity completely explicit
00:30:16.940
until you get to John's gospel, which was the last one written, you know, like John's gospel
00:30:22.380
wasn't written until, until probably, um, the year 90 or so. So a knowledgeable proponent of Arianism,
00:30:31.420
all they need to do is toss out that one book, the last gospel written. All they got to do is just
00:30:37.480
toss that one out and say, or, or just, or just make the whole thing symbolic, symbolicize,
00:30:43.580
which isn't a word, all of John's gospel and say, yeah, well, you know, that's just theological,
00:30:49.200
symbolic, you know, you don't have to take that literally. Um, and then maybe toss out a few of
00:30:53.500
the epistles. And once you've done that, everything else else, everything else kind of falls into place
00:30:57.220
and, and boom, you've got Arianism, you know, you've proved it. That's what happens when you
00:31:03.080
don't look at the totality of scripture, when you don't look at the overall point being made,
00:31:09.380
when you don't look at the overall story being told. And that's also what happens, by the way,
00:31:18.240
when you just go into the Bible yourself and interpret it completely on your own. You know,
00:31:25.360
when you just pick up a Bible haphazardly and just flip through it and just come up with your
00:31:31.060
own interpretations for everything that you read, paying no mind at all to the theological
00:31:36.920
tradition of Christianity or to what the, um, you know, great, uh, teachers and apologists have
00:31:45.160
said, or to what the church fathers said. I mean, the thing is the guys who actually helped
00:31:51.560
to compile and translate the Bible, guys like, like, uh, St. Jerome, for instance,
00:31:59.580
you know, they'll tell you what they thought about some of these issues.
00:32:04.620
All you have to go, you know, these guys, they, they wrote about these issues and you can go and
00:32:09.660
you can read what they had to say. They'll give you their own theological interpretations of these
00:32:14.980
things. And I would think that their opinion probably should carry some weight, right? Considering
00:32:20.580
they're the ones who gave us the Bible. We wouldn't have a Bible if it wasn't for them.
00:32:25.760
They are the instruments, the instruments that God chose to use to compile and translate these
00:32:32.640
documents. Now that doesn't make their personal theological opinions infallible. It doesn't mean
00:32:37.820
that we have to agree with everything that they said. Uh, St. Augustine, one of the most brilliant
00:32:42.880
Christians to ever live. I think that if you really want to know the Bible and understand your own
00:32:47.200
religion, you got to read some of Augustine, but he had opinions that I think were not only wrong,
00:32:52.380
but repulsively wrong. Like he thought that all babies who aren't baptized go to hell. Okay. Uh,
00:32:57.460
I absolutely reject that opinion. I don't accept that from him, but that doesn't mean that I'm
00:33:02.860
just going to toss Augustine out completely and say, ah, his opinion doesn't matter.
00:33:06.300
But that's the, there's this kind of aggressive ignorance. That's very common among some Christians
00:33:11.320
today where that's what they do. They say, you know, it doesn't matter what any of those guys had to
00:33:14.860
say. Now it doesn't matter. I don't care what anyone says. I'm just going to pick up the Bible
00:33:18.380
myself and I'm going to come up with my own interpretation for all these things because
00:33:22.080
I'm smart enough to figure all this out on my own. But you know, the problem is the people who say that
00:33:29.180
they say, you know what? I'm just doing this on. Yeah. I don't need any of those guys.
00:33:33.280
St. Jerome, Augustine, who needs Aquinas? I don't need them. Um, the church fathers, who cares?
00:33:43.160
The people who say that and who act like, you know what? I'm not going to appeal to anyone else's
00:33:49.800
opinion. It's all about my own opinion. What inevitably ends up happening is that they do
00:33:55.560
end up trusting someone else's opinion, you know, because they're too lazy to do the work on their
00:34:02.160
own. They aren't actually going to sit there and read the whole Bible and come up with their own
00:34:07.920
interpretations for everything. Uh, I mean, I don't recommend doing that, but at least if you
00:34:14.280
actually did that, it means you're reading the whole Bible and you're putting some work and effort
00:34:17.800
and thought into it. So, you know, there is some positive maybe that could come out of it, but
00:34:21.960
the people who have that, uh, as I said, aggressively ignorant, self-centered sort of, uh, mentality,
00:34:30.480
arrogant mentality too, where they think that they're smart and wise enough to figure all this out on
00:34:35.720
their own. And so that 2000 years of theological teaching and interpretation is irrelevant as far
00:34:42.940
as they're concerned. What ends up happening is that, is, is, is that they don't want to do the
00:34:47.640
work. So they're going to latch on to some person who comes along and offers a very simplistic,
00:34:54.580
very easy to understand, uh, very self-serving interpretation. And they're going to latch on to
00:35:01.100
that guy and say, you know, yeah, I'll, I'll go with him. So you have some Christians who, you know,
00:35:06.280
uh, are going to latch on to Andy Stanley and they're going to say, you know what? Well, yeah,
00:35:10.900
I'm going to go with Andy Stanley. Um, all the rest of those guys over there, the entire history,
00:35:14.600
I mean, all the most, the most brilliant minds that have ever existed, um, in the history of
00:35:19.360
Christianity, I'm going to ignore all of them. And I'm going to go with Andy Stanley. If I have to,
00:35:23.820
if I, you know, I've got Andy Stanley on one hand, and then I've got like St. Jerome and
00:35:27.500
Augustine over here, I'm going to go with Stanley. Yeah, he's my guy. Um, that's what ends up happening
00:35:32.640
is, is, is these people, uh, are just kind of vulnerable. They leave themselves very
00:35:40.680
spiritually and sort of theologically vulnerable. And then they get, they get, they get plucked up
00:35:47.620
by heretics who are maybe gifted speakers and can offer them a dumbed down, boiled down,
00:36:00.380
uh, as I said, self-centered, self-serving interpretation. And that's what they're going
00:36:07.220
to go with. So as much as they say, no, it's all about me and Jesus, personal relationship. It's not
00:36:12.940
about listening to what anyone else says. Yeah, but it's, it ends up not really being me and Jesus.
00:36:17.740
It ends up being you, Jesus, and Andy Stanley, or you, Jesus, and, uh, and Joel Osteen or something
00:36:24.260
like that. That's what it ends up, you, Jesus, and Joyce Meyer, you know, that's what it ends up
00:36:28.300
being. You end up with this personal sort of Trinity. Only there's one, except there's only one person in
00:36:35.460
that Trinity that belongs in a Trinity and that's Jesus. And the other two, no. All right. Um,
00:36:41.000
I guess we'll, we'll leave it there. Uh, thanks for watching, everybody. Thanks for listening.
00:37:00.820
On today's Ben Shapiro show, the FBI opens an investigation into Trump as a Russian agent.
00:37:06.160
The government shutdown continues and Democrats move even further to the left. That's today on