The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 175 - Pastor Loses Job For Biblical Position On Marriage⧸Gender

00:00:00.000 On the Matt Walsh Show today, a pastor lost his job after taking a biblical position on sex and

00:00:06.780 gender, and I've got several things, as you can imagine, to say about that. Also, in the same

00:00:12.400 sort of vein, I want to talk about proof texting, the habit some Christians have of cherry-picking 1.00

00:00:18.140 certain biblical passages to support their erroneous and often heretical views. It's a

00:00:23.760 dangerous habit that we need to discuss today on the Matt Walsh Show.

00:00:30.000 All right, first of all, let me give a shout-out to the Museum of the Bible in D.C. My wife and I

00:00:38.000 went there on Saturday, and we thought it was wonderful. Much bigger, more elaborate than I

00:00:44.060 thought it was going to be. I was picturing like a church basement with maybe some Bibles and some

00:00:50.920 paintings and like some dioramas made by the eighth grade Sunday school or something, but it's definitely

00:00:56.880 much, much more than that. There is, it's just, it's a massive place with a great mix of historic

00:01:03.220 artifacts and interactive kinds of presentations, including a lifelike model of Nazareth, which you

00:01:13.480 can go through and go through the different houses and visit the temple and all that kind of, it's just

00:01:18.680 very impressive. So I definitely recommend it. Affordable too. What was not impressive, however,

00:01:25.220 I have to mention, because we were in D.C. when the snowstorm hit. We stayed overnight. My kids

00:01:32.120 were, my parents watched our kids so we could go to the Museum of the Bible. We stayed overnight in D.C.

00:01:36.780 And we woke up the next morning, and there was like six inches of snow on the ground, yet somehow

00:01:41.400 half of the roads in the city hadn't been plowed yet, including 295, which is a massive highway that

00:01:46.920 connects D.C. to Baltimore. And it had been reduced down to one unplowed lane with all of these abandoned

00:01:56.000 vehicles strewn all over the place. It looked like something out of The Walking Dead. And this is not

00:02:01.780 because of the shutdown, you should know. You cannot blame this on the shutdown. This is just how it is

00:02:06.040 in D.C. D.C. has never figured out how to deal with snowstorms, even though they're in the Northeast

00:02:13.500 and they've gotten, or at least the mid-Atlantic region, they get snowstorms every year. D.C. has

00:02:20.280 existed as a city for 230 years. And so that means it's probably gotten what, like maybe 450 or 500

00:02:28.120 snowstorms throughout its existence. And through those 500 snowstorms, it still has not learned to expect

00:02:35.980 snowstorms or what to do when snow lands on the ground. And so there's just confusion and

00:02:41.680 incompetence. But what else can you expect from D.C. but confusion and incompetence?

00:02:47.580 All right. I wanted to mention a story related to the Bible that's going nuts on The Daily Wire right

00:02:54.800 now. It's gotten like 160,000 shares or something in a day. Written by Frank Camp. It's about Pastor

00:03:03.980 Justin Hoke of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church in Weed, California. And kind of an unfortunate name

00:03:14.060 for a town, especially in California, named Weed. He's now lost his position as pastor because of a

00:03:22.440 message that he put on a church sign. And the sign says, or said, Bruce Jenner is still a man.

00:03:31.160 Homosexuality is still a sin. The culture may change. The Bible does not. Now, he says he was 1.00

00:03:37.980 inspired to create the sign after seeing that. Remember that viral video of the guy losing his

00:03:44.840 mind at a store because a cashier called him sir rather than man? So for Pastor Hoke, he saw that

00:03:52.120 video as kind of like the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back. And he wrote this, he put this sign

00:03:57.980 up as a form of protest against the insanity and madness in our culture. Now, we can have a

00:04:06.460 discussion about whether or not a church sign is really the most effective forum to have these kinds

00:04:12.420 of discussions. But we can't have a discussion about whether the message on the sign was doctrinally

00:04:22.680 and scripturally orthodox, because of course it was, without question. The message communicates

00:04:30.580 an indisputable Christian truth. And when I say indisputable Christian truth, I mean that

00:04:37.560 it is a truth that no Christian can dispute. If you're not a Christian, you can try to dispute it. 0.88

00:04:43.960 Um, but if you are a Christian, you, you really, you literally cannot because in order to dispute it, 0.98

00:04:51.640 you would have to toss out the Bible. And once you've done that, then you're not a Christian 0.94

00:04:55.960 anymore. So in order to dispute that Christian, that homosexuality is a sin or that, um, God makes 0.87

00:05:03.300 us male or female in order to dispute that you would have to take the Bible and basically like toss it

00:05:08.740 into that fire I have behind me. Um, but if you're going to do that, then as I said, you, you have

00:05:14.140 given up the basis for your faith. So you could not possibly retain your faith while doing that.

00:05:21.480 Um, but still there was a protest. People are upset about the sign. And the pastor says that it was

00:05:28.820 communicated to him that some of the church elders and many of the church members, uh, wanted him to

00:05:36.500 leave and would themselves leave if he did not demanded that he leave. And so ultimately he

00:05:42.260 decided that he had no choice. Now I personally, look, I'm not going to make judgment calls for him

00:05:46.900 and his family. He had to decide to do what was best for him and his family. I kind of wish he would

00:05:52.020 have said, okay, well, if you want to leave the church, go ahead. And if we only have five people

00:05:56.480 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

00:06:02.560 with biblical truth, then it's better for you to leave. I'm not going to leave because you don't

00:06:07.460 support biblical truth. You can leave. I'm not going to. Um, I wish he had said that he chose not

00:06:12.780 to. And, um, and he ended up leaving and all of that because he put something on a sign that can be

00:06:21.320 found over and over again in the Bible itself. Um, a couple of other points about that. The sign was

00:06:29.940 protested, um, not just by people in the church, but also by other people in the community,

00:06:37.460 like community members who are not members of the church, presumably not Christian.

00:06:43.920 But this is interesting because, you know, the left has always claimed

00:06:46.860 that it has no problem with our religion as long as we don't force it on them.

00:06:53.720 And as long as we keep it in the church. Now I personally have a problem with the idea that

00:06:59.580 our faith is supposed to be kept in a church building and away from the public square,

00:07:04.040 because that's not what that, that is not consistent with the protections that we are

00:07:08.820 afforded in the first amendment. That's not what it means to be a free American. That's also not what

00:07:13.460 it means to be a Christian as Christians. We are not supposed to keep our truth, the truth in a church

00:07:19.060 building. We're supposed to declare it, um, to the world. But in this case, okay, it was,

00:07:26.720 it was on church property on a church sign. So why are you protesting in that case? If,

00:07:33.840 if the left was really sincere about, no, no, you know, we're not trying to stop you from,

00:07:38.680 from, uh, worshiping your God and from following your religion, just, just, just, you know, don't,

00:07:45.780 don't throw it in our face. Well, we see yet again that they're not serious about that.

00:07:50.760 You know, that's just something that they said so that we would accept with each kind of step down

00:07:58.280 the slippery slope. They're always going to say, Oh, no, no, no. You know, we're just going to go

00:08:03.560 here and no further. No, no, no. You're fine. Look, we're not trying to, no, no. We, we're just

00:08:08.460 going to, we just want to take this one more step and then that's it. I, we promise. Okay. We promise.

00:08:14.260 Um, but it never works out that way because ultimately the left hates biblical Christianity.

00:08:23.620 It despises it. It does not think that Christianity has any right to exist. And, um, and its ultimate 0.99

00:08:32.180 goal is to see Christianity destroyed. I mean, that's just, there's no way around it. That's, 0.99

00:08:36.440 that's very obvious. Um, second thing. So, okay. That deals with the non-global,

00:08:44.260 non-Christians who are protesting. But if you are a Christian and you don't like the sexual 0.66

00:08:52.160 morality of Christianity, if you don't like the, the, um, the message of sexual morality that you

00:08:59.000 get from, from Christianity, which is a morality that applies to everyone, by the way, not just 0.83

00:09:04.620 homosexuals. Okay. So this is not just a thing where if you're a homosexual, you have to abide by these, 0.95

00:09:13.280 um, rules of chastity. No, this goes for everybody. We're all, we're all, um, subject to it. But if you

00:09:23.180 don't like it, um, you have a few options, right? You can leave, uh, you can, uh, denounce the faith,

00:09:34.980 renounce the faith, I should say, and say, I'm not Christian anymore. I'm leaving. You could do that. 0.99

00:09:40.400 Um, or you could stay and you could struggle to abide by these teachings as difficult as it is.

00:09:47.960 And you're going to probably fail and fall and stumble along the way. And so there's going to be,

00:09:52.700 you're going to be repenting and going back to God. There's going to be a lot of prayer

00:09:56.300 and all of that. Um, so that, that's, that's another option. Um, or you could stay, but then

00:10:04.900 basically personally ignore these teachings in your personal life and do what you want. Um,

00:10:13.120 and then take it up with God later. Now I don't recommend that third path.

00:10:17.620 I don't recommend the first path either of leaving. Although if you have to choose between,

00:10:24.820 you know, door one, two, or three, and you're not going to choose door two,

00:10:29.640 which is staying and struggling and trying to abide by the teachings. And you're left with only one or

00:10:35.840 three, I would think one is better than three. You know, just leaving the church completely is better

00:10:40.520 than staying and committing to this path of being a, a, a hypocrite and a fraud. Um, 0.99

00:10:46.940 but those are, you know, three potential paths you could take the path that you really can't

00:10:55.460 take the path that doesn't make sense. And that is impossible is to stay and then try to insist

00:11:05.260 that the morality of Christianity be changed or amended or something like that. You know,

00:11:12.040 because Christianity is not a, it's not a democracy. Um, it's not a, it's not a political 0.72

00:11:18.840 movement. It's not a, uh, you know, a governing administration where you can petition for change

00:11:28.360 and you can, you know, hope that it keeps up with the times or, or whatever. That's not what it is.

00:11:34.780 It is a eternal, unchanging truth. It cannot be changed.

00:11:47.380 So that other option of staying and trying to change it and trying to get rid of that teaching

00:11:52.240 and this teaching and that teaching, that just doesn't make sense.

00:11:55.160 All right. Um, staying in this general realm, I wanted to follow up on a conversation from, uh,

00:12:03.740 from last week, last Friday. Um,

00:12:08.940 we talked about mega church pastor, Andy Stanley, who, um, recently made headlines yet again for insisting

00:12:20.540 that the old Testament, including the 10 commandments do not apply to Christians. Um,

00:12:26.760 actually, as I mentioned on Friday, Stanley's been on this crusade against what he calls the Jewish

00:12:32.320 scriptures for a while now. And he is in the past over the last year or two, he has been urging

00:12:38.940 Christians to unhitch. That's his phrase, unhitch themselves from the old Testament. And he has 1.00

00:12:45.360 declared that the first three or four dozen books of the Bible should not be a quote, go-to source

00:12:52.060 regarding any behavior. And he's also said inaccurately that the early church unhitched

00:12:59.340 itself from the quote, worldview and quote, value system, uh, of the old Testament. Um, he has said

00:13:06.920 that those Christians who still strive to follow the moral teachings of the old Testament are standing 0.83

00:13:14.380 on a quote, old Testament house of cards, which could come crashing down at any moment. Um,

00:13:20.960 uh, in various interviews, he has appeared to really kind of be embarrassed by the old Testament.

00:13:27.820 And, um, he said that the old Testament books are disturbing and violent. He says that it, you know,

00:13:33.780 it's led many people to lose their faith. And so what he says is we should just leave it out.

00:13:38.640 The old Testament should be quote, left out of the apologetic argument. Um, those again are his words

00:13:47.800 left out. Now, of course, Jesus Christ did not leave it out. I mean, Jesus quoted from the old

00:13:56.360 Testament or for, for back in those days, it would have just been scripture. Um, Jesus quoted from

00:14:02.120 scripture all the time. He was constantly quoting from scripture. Uh, that's one of the things

00:14:08.540 when you actually sit down and read the books. And I'm not sure if Andy Stanley has, has ever done

00:14:13.100 that based on what he, based on what he says, he, he does not appear to have any biblical knowledge

00:14:19.740 at all. Um, but if you actually sit down and read it, you're going to find that Jesus is

00:14:24.780 constantly quoting what we call the old Testament, quoting it authoritatively as in saying, um, it's

00:14:34.740 in scripture. So you should care about this. You should be following this. Okay. Um, and he is,

00:14:40.520 he is using it as a, he is appealing to it, citing it all the time. Now, when Stanley has been

00:14:50.700 confronted with that argument, he's suggested that, well, yeah, Jesus talks about scripture,

00:14:57.120 but we don't really know what that means. It might not necessarily mean the old Testament texts as we

00:15:03.180 know them. No, yes, that, that is what it means. There, there aren't any other scriptures that he

00:15:07.460 could be, that he could be referring to, especially because a lot of times he gives you chapter and

00:15:12.140 verse, he's going to actually quote them himself. Um, so like for instance, when Jesus gives us

00:15:21.220 the, uh, what Stanley apparently, and some Christians think are completely new commandments,

00:15:29.320 uh, love the Lord God, love your neighbor. When Jesus gives us those commandments and Stanley says,

00:15:38.100 well, those are the new commandments that, you know, love God. That's the one commandment.

00:15:42.400 All the rest are just tossed out. Don't pay attention to them. Well, when Jesus is doing that,

00:15:48.400 he is quoting the old Testament. Those are commandments that are in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus.

00:15:56.560 Jesus obviously knew that. So this was now they are new in the sense of, you might say,

00:16:05.420 newly emphasized, um, or you could, or, or something like that, but they are not actually

00:16:12.000 new. He is quoting old Testament. So, so Andy Stanley says, unhitch ourselves from the old

00:16:19.620 Testament. Meanwhile, Jesus is saying the greatest commandment is this one right here in the old

00:16:24.560 Testament. So that it just doesn't work. The two, so you've got what Andy Stanley is saying. You have

00:16:31.200 what Jesus Christ is saying. They're saying two completely different things. And then you have

00:16:34.820 to decide, are you going to listen to Andy Stanley or Jesus Christ? Me personally, I'm going to listen

00:16:38.760 to Jesus Christ. Um, if you decide that Andy Stanley is your guy, then go for it. But as I said,

00:16:43.560 that's not Christianity. That's a completely different religion. Um, now in the last week, 1.00

00:16:49.720 he wrote an article, uh, criticizing Christians who erect monuments to the 10 commandments. Uh,

00:16:54.700 he says that the 10 commandments don't apply to us. Again, those are his words. They don't apply.

00:17:01.280 Don't kill, don't steal, don't commit adultery. Andy Stanley says, doesn't apply to us. Doesn't apply,

00:17:07.980 you know, whatever. Um, he says again, his words, Christians are not required to obey any of the

00:17:16.100 commandments found in the first part of their Bible. You don't have to obey any of it. The

00:17:21.320 first commandment, the first command that God gives humankind, be fruitful and multiply. Um,

00:17:27.600 I guess we don't have to, you know, don't, don't listen to that one either. I mean, the very first

00:17:32.880 things that Jesus, that, that God is saying to, to, to mankind. I mean, God throughout the old

00:17:40.540 Testament is, is constantly speaking to mankind and, and speaking, giving these moral commands,

00:17:48.700 these moral truths. And these are not arbitrary commands. God does not speak arbitrary. He is

00:17:57.080 talking about a moral truth that is woven into the fabric of human existence.

00:18:04.360 Christians. So it's not like when God says, don't commit adultery, don't murder. He it's,

00:18:11.740 it's not like he just decided randomly that, yeah, you shouldn't do that, but this is part of reality

00:18:17.880 itself. Um, now why, according to Stanley, is it so crucial for, for Christians to reject or as he 0.83

00:18:29.520 says, disengage with or unhitch themselves from the old Testament? He says, well, because in part, 0.93

00:18:35.880 um, the old Testament has been used throughout history to, to justify all kinds of atrocities.

00:18:42.100 And he, and he, he uses the same ones that atheists use the crusades, the inquisition. He says that that 0.87

00:18:48.200 came, that, that came about because of an overemphasis on the old Testament, which is just wrong on so many

00:18:54.400 levels that now he's betraying not only a biblical, uh, illiteracy, but a general historical

00:19:01.100 illiteracy. Um, and actually the crusades for one thing happened as a result of 400 years of Muslim 1.00

00:19:07.780 aggression. And the inquisitions were an attempt by the church to put a legal process in place for

00:19:12.700 those accused of heresy, as opposed to the summary executions carried out by angry villagers, which had

00:19:18.840 been the policy before the church intervened. But putting all that aside, um, here's my point.

00:19:28.480 I already issued my rebuttal to this heresy, which as I said, is really just a reheated version of

00:19:34.840 Marcionism, which is a heresy from like 1900 years ago. Marcion was a guy who said, said basically the

00:19:40.540 same thing. Old Testament doesn't apply to us. That's for Jews. It's not for us. We don't have to 1.00

00:19:44.500 listen to it. Uh, same, same basic thing. Um, but as we were talking about this, this discussion,

00:19:51.660 you know, prompted a lot of interesting feedback. And I would say as an unscientific estimate, um,

00:19:58.460 probably 75 to 80% of the feedback that I received was, uh, extremely critical of Stanley's position.

00:20:07.100 Basically an agreement with me. A lot of people made additional points that I hadn't thought of

00:20:11.800 were brought up. So that was interesting, but there was also a solid, probably 20 or 25% of the

00:20:17.460 people that I've heard from over the weekend who passionately agree with Stanley and also insist

00:20:24.400 that the old Testament is effectively useless. And all of the commandments given in those books

00:20:29.400 are now irrelevant. We don't have to listen to them. We don't have to follow them. Um, uh,

00:20:33.920 God apparently was not speaking eternally when he gave the, when he, when he spoke these moral truths,

00:20:39.320 um, they, these moral truths had a, had a, uh, an expiration date. Um, and these Christians have 1.00

00:20:46.800 just decided now God never said they had expiration date, but these Christians have decided that they 0.96

00:20:52.260 did. Um, the one thing that these people do when arguing that the first two thirds of the Bible are

00:21:03.920 are now basically pointless and that God's commands are actually just like symbolic suggestions. Um,

00:21:12.840 the one thing they do is, you know, they'll, they'll find a verse, they'll find one verse in scripture,

00:21:19.400 usually in the epistles. And then they'll hinge their whole argument on this one line, completely removed

00:21:28.180 from context, completely isolated. And they use this one line to basically render almost every other

00:21:36.500 line in the scripture and scripture moot. So they grab on, they, they, they search desperately for one

00:21:42.800 sentence that seems to kind of support their position. They grab onto this one sentence and they

00:21:47.660 say, you see, all we need is this one set. We don't even need the rest of the Bible. We have this one

00:21:52.980 sentence right here. That's all. It's all right there. We don't need anything else. Um, now this

00:21:58.860 isn't something that people just do with this argument. This is something that Christians often

00:22:02.780 do in, in general, in any theological argument. And it's one of the worst things. It's one of the

00:22:08.420 most insidious things in, in the church today. Um, and that's really what I want to talk about is, uh,

00:22:17.280 it's called proof texting, uh, which, which is another word for that is another phrase term for that is

00:22:24.780 cherry picking. But I think proof texting is a better, more, more specific term. Um, proof texting is

00:22:32.060 when you, you want to prove a certain theological position that you've taken. Usually it's going to be a

00:22:38.460 position that you've already taken. Okay. Importantly here, you already have the position and now you're going

00:22:44.960 to go in the Bible and find a justification for it. So that's what you do. You, you, you have your

00:22:49.140 position in mind. In this case, let's say for instance, your position is the old Testament 0.68

00:22:53.020 doesn't matter. We don't have to follow anything that it says. Um, you've got that in your mind.

00:22:57.300 And then you, you, you know, you flip over, open the Bible and you're just looking, you're like,

00:23:00.660 give me one sentence. All I need is one sentence that seems to sort of support that. And you go

00:23:07.140 searching desperately for it. Although usually you're not going to have a physical Bible. You're going to be

00:23:11.480 doing it with Google looking for that one sentence that seems to fit in. And, uh, and once you find

00:23:17.960 that sentence context, be damned, you're going to hang your whole theology on it. This is a very

00:23:25.820 common thing, especially these days because of the internet. Um, the internet makes it so easy to do.

00:23:32.360 You know, um, you could even plug into Google. Like once you have your position in mind, you could even

00:23:37.860 just Google biblical support for exposition. And then you're going to find someone somewhere has

00:23:45.480 made a list and you find the verse and boom, there it is. That that's all of your biblical

00:23:50.160 research. That's all you need to do. And so for this argument, a lot of people cited, uh, Hebrews 8,

00:23:56.740 13, which says by calling this covenant new, he has made the first one obsolete and what is

00:24:02.380 obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. Now. Okay. Sure. Yeah. You take that, take that verse,

00:24:09.080 take it in isolation. Um, you know, it all by itself. And you seem to have found yourself pretty

00:24:17.660 good proof, right? That's what, and that's what proof texting is. It's easy to do when you're proof

00:24:21.620 texting, you could find proof for pretty much any position whatsoever when you're proof texting.

00:24:26.800 And in this case, so you find it in Hebrews, uh, you find one line, you find one sentence,

00:24:33.340 by the way, written by an anonymous author. We don't even know who wrote it.

00:24:37.840 We have no idea who wrote Hebrews. Uh, now that doesn't mean that it's not legitimate. I'm not

00:24:42.620 calling into question whether Hebrews should have been included in the Canon, even though some church

00:24:47.340 fathers did call that into question, but I'm not, I'm just highlighting the absurdity here. Okay.

00:24:52.360 The absurdity of using one sentence, one line from an anonymous author, all the way in the back of

00:24:59.740 your Bible to basically nullify everything that came before it. It is an absurd, ridiculous thing 0.91

00:25:06.980 to do. And the thing is, if, if this is just a general, a good general rule for reading your Bible,

00:25:12.300 if you come across a sentence, which would seem to nullify almost everything else you've read in the

00:25:18.240 book, then it's, it's likely that your interpretation is wrong. If, if the line made the

00:25:26.340 first one obsolete really means what Andy Stanley thinks that Christians, as he says, are not required

00:25:34.020 to obey anything at all that was written in the first two thirds of their Bible, then why did the

00:25:40.720 people who compiled the Bible even include the first two, two thirds of it? Why did they,

00:25:46.700 why did they just give us the gospels and some of the epistles and then leave the old Testament to

00:25:52.060 the Jews? Andy Stanley says, well, that's the Jewish scripture. It's not for us. Okay. But why is it

00:25:56.340 put in the same book for us? The people who compiled the Bible, they put it all together. Why'd they do

00:26:01.200 that? Why did they just leave it for the old Testament for the Jews and say that? Don't worry about 0.99

00:26:06.680 that part of it. And that's not for you. I mean, you could go read it if you want to, but you know,

00:26:10.040 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 0.69

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 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.95

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, 0.97

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, 1.00

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.

00:36:47.220 Godspeed.

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

00:37:09.960 the Ben Shapiro show.

The Matt Walsh Show - January 14, 2019

Ep. 175 - Pastor Loses Job For Biblical Position On Marriage⧸Gender

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