THE LIVE STREAM - Why Churches That Compromise Always Die
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the importance of taking a stand on the issues where the battle rages the fiercest in our day and age. Church history teaches us that each generation of christians will face unique assaults upon biblical truth. These attacks rarely manifest as open rebellion to core christian doctrine, but instead, especially in our age, often take the form of subversive deception and misplaced emphasis. They wear the guise of love, acceptance, and inclusion, all the while tearing down foundational truths that safeguard true virtue. Even the smallest of compromises from the greatest of institutions have ultimately resulted in their downfall to theological liberalism and neo-orthodoxy. Tune in now as we discuss why Christians need to take the strongest stand on biblical truths.
Transcript
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church history teaches us that each generation of christians will face unique assaults upon
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biblical truth these attacks rarely manifest as open rebellion to core christian doctrine but
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instead especially in our age often take the form of subversive deception and misplaced emphasis
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they wear the guise of love acceptance and inclusion all the while tearing down foundational
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truths that safeguard true virtue. Even the smallest of compromises from the greatest of
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institutions have ultimately resulted in their downfall to theological liberalism
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and neo-orthodoxy. Tune in now as we discuss the importance of taking a stand
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on the issues where the battle rages the fiercest.
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All right. Well, welcome back. Good to be here. We're going to discuss today and get into a
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little bit of church history. I hadn't planned it, but last week you mentioned you really got
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to know your history. The Bible gives us everything we need, most certainly for life
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and godliness. But in God's grace, he often uses history to illustrate, to explain, and to
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demonstrate the principles in it. So now, 2,000 years into the rule and the reign of Christ since
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his resurrection. We have the Bible. It's sufficient for all of these things. And God
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has multiplied and heaped upon it church history for us to learn from, to grow from, to see these
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principles in action. So we're going to look at a couple of case studies then and get into
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not just the past, not just looking in the past and going, oh, hindsight's 20-20. Shouldn't have
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done that. Shouldn't have done this. But in the last segment, getting into what are the current
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issues where the battle rages the fiercest now. So we're going to jump into some history,
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old Princeton specifically. We're going to look as well at the Anglican church, the Episcopal
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church, their decline? And then where right now do Christians need to take the strongest stand
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on biblical truth? So the first example we're going to get into, and it's a really interesting
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time period in history. So you had the Reformation in the 15th century, and what exploded out of
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there was a lot of great scholarship. Calvin, a personal favorite, just an incredible, probably
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one of the greatest minds, I would think, in all of Christian history. His intellect, what he built
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up there in Geneva. So you had Calvin, you had Theodore Beza, Francis Turretin, these stalwart
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reformers and that leads obviously at some level to the enlightenment and what starts happening in
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the mid 1800s is the school of higher criticism in germany so this would be friedrich schleiermacher
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for example who gets into the bible and begins to read it through a psychological lens and saying
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well instead of it having this clear meaning and this application and being primarily about god
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we need to read it psychologically and we need to read it as the fusion of the ego and the spirit
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Barth then reads—in some ways he wants to push back against Schleiermacher,
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but he reads a lot of Romans, his first book that was the most explosive,
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through Schleiermacher, through that alienation that Schleiermacher talks about.
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So you have German hierocriticism happening in the 1800s,
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But then in America, in 1900, so the start of the last century,
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I think only 124 years ago, America was 97% Christian.
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That dropped to, I think, 70% by 1960s, 1970s.
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I think of the car, the airplane, travel, international economics.
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Obviously, two world wars did the number on that.
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But the 1900s was a good time, and specifically for Protestants, specifically Calvinistic doctrine and research and theological writing, we had some of our best minds.
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I think of A.A. Hodge and Charles Hodge at Princeton Seminary, B.B. Warfield, the lion of Princeton he was called, fighting for biblical inerrancy.
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A personal favorite of mine, Gahardus Vos, probably one of the greatest exegetes, at least in the English language, Kuyper and Bavinck over there in the Netherlands.
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So it was a really good time in many senses of Christendom.
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You had these stalwart institutions, and they looked pretty invincible.
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So, going to the 19th century, what happens is it begins to be a movement for the revision of the Westminster Standards.
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So, B.B. Warfield, Voss, they would have confessed the Westminster Standards of Faith,
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the Westminster Confession coming out of England in the late 1600s from the Westminster Divines.
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And this group came about, and they said, we want to make some revisions to the Westminster Standards of Faith.
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This is what subversion always takes the form of.
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So they come to the Westminster Confession, to the General Assembly, and they say, we
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want to make some revisions, and we want to do so to do a better emphasis on the love
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We think that not including these parts about the universal, non-salvific love of God, which
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is true, God loves the world, that in doing so, we would be better equipped to do missions.
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We want to take out the parts about potentially non-elect infants, as well as the Pope not
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So they came in and said, we don't want to downgrade Holy Scripture at all.
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We want to make some modifications, though, to these Westminster standards.
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It's not going to impede us when we send missionaries out of missions.
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And they have to tell people, like, well, God has a specific love for those that he's elected, chosen in Christ to die for.
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Voss, Warfield, others, they were extremely resistant to it.
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Voss wrote that all heresy starts as a half-truth.
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In 1929, the Presbyterian Church in the United States ordained women.
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So this was 29 years, or 26 years, just from the revision of the Westminster Standards.
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You then had mid-1930s Jay Gresham Mason was kicked out because he formed a missions board
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that wasn't aligned with the liberal drift of the denomination.
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And then you have the PC, specifically the USA today.
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Our last episode talking about some PCA ministers,
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Machen obviously founded the OPC, which is small, but a stalwart.
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Princeton Seminary used to train over 1,000 students.
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Only something like 30% of them are actually going into Presbyterian ministry.
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It's an institution that was once training 1,000 men a year
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So they wouldn't necessarily be theologically liberal.
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And it was a Saturday in October, and it was empty.
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and there's of course other compromises that happened but the smallest of compromise in one
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of the greatest institutions better than many seminaries we have now better than 99 of seminaries
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we have now and the smallest of compromises began the slow decline said a lot there i have a little
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more but well that's great i've just been enjoying story time with west yeah the history lesson is
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fascinating yeah let's go ahead and break and then we'll uh we'll explain what you know the
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implications and what some of that means. But let's go ahead and take a quick break for our
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you brought up a really good point about how the compromise seems so small in the moment.
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Do you want to say more on that, specifically how ancient Christians used to think?
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Remind us, what was that first compromise in 1903?
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1903, General Assembly revised the Westminster Standards.
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They wanted to make it slightly more palatable or effective for really nonbelievers who would hear it
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and say, wait, God might love me differently than my neighbor.
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right right maybe i don't have an electing love so they were removing they were changing that
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language from the the two different types of love that god would have for humanity to emphasize the
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general love that god has for all people so god's and and for the listener if they're wondering what
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do you mean two types of love and this and that and the other uh there is a general sense in which
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god loves uh all people on the basis of him being uh the creator of all god is not father of all
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god is father of his son only begotten son the lord jesus christ and all those who have a union
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with Christ by grace and faith in him. So that's the whole purpose of the doctrine of adoption is
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that we are not physically born in our physical birth. We do not begin this life as children of
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God. The idea of like, well, we're all God's children. The Bible doesn't teach a universal
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fatherhood of God. There is a universal creatorhood. So God is creator of all people,
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but he is not father of all people. He is father of the Lord Jesus Christ, his only begotten son,
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and all those who are adopted in, grafted into Christ, who is the vine by grace through faith.
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And so the Bible speaks of God's, a general sense of God's universal love for all his,
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for all people on the basis of him being a universal creator and all people being made
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in the image of God. I think of the Psalms, it says, not even just all people, but all creatures.
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He has compassion on all he has made. He loves sparrows. He loves the lilies of the field.
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So there's a sense in which we can say with a straight face and with a clear conscience,
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before the Lord, we can say to a person without having any idea whether or not they're elect,
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we don't have election goggles, I can say to my neighbor who is not a professing Christian,
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God loves you. And that's a perfectly true statement. But when we speak of two loves of
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God, not just one steamroll truncated, but two specific particular kinds of love, there's a
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universal general love that God has for all people on the basis of him being all people's creator
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per John chapter 17 and Jesus' high priestly prayer
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that they would share in my glory which is your glory uh that i i i pray that they would be one
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even as we are one so he prays that we would have the same degree of unity for the church he doesn't
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pray this for the world in fact here's the thing john 17 since i brought it up john 17 jesus
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literally specifically imagine doing this in your prayer time taking the time to specify uh just so
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so we're clear here god i am not he says i do not pray for the world yeah but for those that you have
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given to me. And that really makes sense when you think about why would Jesus take the time
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to pray for a group of people that he's not... Jesus, I'll say it like this, Jesus is about to
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be arrested. He knows that. He's about to be betrayed. He's already said that in the Last
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Supper with his disciples, looks at Judas, the one who dips his hand into the bread. And so he
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knows he's about to be arrested and have a mock trial and be crucified. So he knows that he's
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about to die. Jesus, therefore, is now, moments before his death, he's going to pray for the same
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group of people that he's going to die for. A particular redemption, he's dying for the elect,
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and right here, it's a particular high priestly intercession. He's praying for the elect. And so
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that would just be one example of many that says that God has a universal general love for all
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people, but a specific, particular elective and salvific love, adoptive love, for his people.
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Yeah, and so, Wes, as you were talking about the decision that was made in the early 1900s, they went the wrong direction.
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But it made me think of a couple examples in church history where something seemingly minor was a catalyst, a pivot point.
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And I was thinking of the pinch of incense that the early Christians were expected to offer.
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as they went into businesses even to do business it was just take your fingers do a little hoof
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little hoof and that was to honor caesar right as you would go in and do business it was kind of
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asking caesar that god caesar's blessing on the business that you're about to conduct
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and they said this was common practice this was so common right this was so common in that time
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that but they said no we can't wait a minute we can't do that because we're we're invoking
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a blessing that only God has the right to give, the prosperity of a business,
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the prosperity of a family, and we're invoking Caesar's name to grant that blessing as we do
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that pinch. And for that rejection, when they refused to do that, that was what led to massive
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persecution. And that was, there were Christians who did do the pinch of incense, and there was a
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huge debate in the church about whether they should even be welcomed back into the body after
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this all died down. They ended up doing so, but it required public repentance. The other one was
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the Puritans. One of the big things that led the Puritans to separate themselves from the Church
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of England was that the Church of England wanted them to perform the sign of the cross before they
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took communion. It's like, well, that's not inherently a bad thing. They're like, no, it's
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not, but you're requiring it. You're requiring that we do this. You're saying that if we don't
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do it, we have not done the Lord's Supper in the proper way. And that binds our conscience. And we
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will not tolerate that binding of the conscience. A lot of them push back. It doesn't make sense
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because we're not in their context. We don't know the larger narrative of what was going on. They
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were right to push back on this. We read it 200 years later and we're like, well, what's the big
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deal but uh you'll you'll read some of the puritans uh like who are furious and making a very big deal
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about uh kneeling in the supper right like we're not going to kneel and still to this day you know
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episcopalians um you know roman catholics um you know some anglicans you know that but they'll you
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know they'll come to an altar um come forward to receive the lord's supper uh from the priest and
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they'll kneel right you know there's an altar uh for kneeling or a confession you know there's
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churches, you know, even, you know, reformed churches, Presbyterian or reformed Baptist that
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might kneel during confession. And I don't think that that's wrong. But to assert, you must do
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this. Another thing is, you know, as they were trying to, you know, break the Puritans in England
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at the time was mandating that they had to, on the Lord's day in their church gathering, they had to
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read from the final scoreboard, the final scores and results of the cricket match that week out of
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the sports almanac. But that was a violation of the Sabbath in their understanding. And to be
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fair, I think that's probably the right understanding, regardless of what time period
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you live in. But both Westminster and 1689, as it talks about the Lord's Day and the Sabbath,
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I believe it's chapter 22 for the 1689 explicitly says that it's only for the only work that's
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permissible are works of necessity and mercy and that recreation it doesn't just say that work is
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not permitted working on the Sabbath but also recreation and so this idea that that in a church
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service that the minister the gospel minister is going to be forced by the king or parliament to
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uh to read uh the the scores of the football game that happened you know uh the day before it was
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just um was unheard of it was it was a scandal um but the whole thing was again it was power
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it was all these things it seems small so people are like well why not um well if it's small then
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why are they pushing it why see see that's a two-way street that works both ways so you're
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saying it's so small it's just a pinch of incense you know or it's just uh i mean it's technically
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true that there is another there's two two kinds of god's love his love particular love for the
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elect but there's also god's universal love on the basis of being a creator of all for for all
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people he has compassion all he has made uh that's true why can't we say it okay but why is it being
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mandated why is it being forced why is it being you know well it's just reading off the the score
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of the sports almanac or it's just kneeling at the lord's supper or it's just you know pinch of
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incense uh you know for caesar um yeah okay but that's a two that that game works both ways it's
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just this little thing so why not um why not oblige okay but the reverse rhetoric is is just
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this little thing why are they enforcing it why and and and the answer is uh because it's a battle
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for authority it's a battle for authority yes uh even you know i think of you know with uh eo you
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know in roman catholicism and uh the the schism you know over you know does the spirit proceed
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from the father only or from the father and the son and we're you know we're uh christians and
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westerners and you know and and right uh biblically right so we of course believe that the spirit
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proceeds from both the father and the son you know and augustine argued that and that's you know and
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that's that's the position uh but eastern orthodox guys were no the spirit proceeds from the father
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only and on now with that issue i that one i don't want to completely truncate and throw it in the
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same category as something that's trivial that one matters um however though on the big scheme of
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things even though that one does doctrinally matter the processions of the trinity it does
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matter. But even that one was elevated, I think, in the historical context was elevated, although
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it does objectively matter at a theological level, it was elevated as the biggest fight in the world
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because behind the scenes, again, what was really going on wasn't just a debate over theological
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truth, but who has power. It's always power. It's always authority. So with all these little
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uh you know compromises um the person who is is is um is demanding them the the party that's
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always involved and say well can't you compromise can't you come um they they don't just want the
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compromise they want you yeah they want power they want authority that's what they're going after
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and the last thing i'll say on it with the pc usa it's so funny that in 1903 there's this whole
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whole debate about uh the love of god and just this this small concession well and then you know
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like maybe 10 years ago or so, I remember the PCUSA formally petitioning for In Christ Alone,
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the modern hymn, In Christ Alone. And the bridge is, you know,
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and on the cross where Jesus died, the wrath of God is satisfied. And they wanted to change the
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lyrics because they wanted to print hymnals. And for their hymnal, for the PCUSA, they wanted to
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say instead of on that cross where jesus died the wrath of god was satisfied they wanted to change
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that to the love of god was magnified well is it true that in the cross of jesus christ in the
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crucifixion of the son that that is um a uh one of the greatest demonstrations of the love of god
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and therefore a a love magnifying moment of course it is of course it's true uh but the question is
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why. Why do you want to change it? It is true that the love of God is magnified subjectively
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in terms of manifestation, in terms of perception. As it were, the love of God is being magnified
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at the crucifixion. And yet, also, certainly, the wrath of God for sinners is being
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satisfied at the crucifixion. Both are technically true. But anytime someone wants to make a change,
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um it it always is a good policy to ask why why and the reality is for the pc usa well we you know
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10 years later we and we knew 10 years ago but certainly uh the verdict has come back in in
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terms of motive and you know the reasoning why um it's because uh they wanted to say the love
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of god is magnified rather than the wrath of god being satisfied because they want to uh deny the
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wrath of god entirely and uh and be a gay affirming um well it's funny because denomination they
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allowed affirmations man this would have been i think it was still in the 1900s so they allowed
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them but not every minister ordained in the pc usa had to agree with it but they're getting scared
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because of redeemed zoomer and some of these reconquista guys that are coming in and saying
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like no we want to take back our presbyterian heritage these buildings in the church not our
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movement god bless them they're so concerned about that that now they're about to change i think at
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the general assembly this summer put forward a proposition that ministers must affirm lgbtq wow
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so you can imagine the guys in the 90s when they was coming out and and i'm sure they signaled like
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this will never mean you have to agree with that i'm sure they said that we're just allowing for
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different brothers and sisters at different convictions and now in 2024 who could have
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foreseen it it's going to be required uh one note is too the puritans um the covenanters
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it cost them a lot to take the stands they did to think of a man specifically john bunyan he was
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in prison for 12 years because he refused to be believe it was licensed he didn't have a license
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to preach when he was thrown in prison for the first time my dates might be a little off his
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first wife has died had died and he had four children and one of them was blind so he actually
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remarried and his second wife was pregnant when he was thrown into prison for the first time so
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she is living off what little charity their little church could afford his salary for making shoelaces
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I feel like every week I mentioned communism.
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Gulag Archipelago,
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Well, someone's got to take a stand, but I'm not the right person.
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Everyone said, oh, I'm not the one that can take the fall.
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But our Christian heritage is John Bunyan, who now, he is the author of the second greatest selling book in the world.
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Well, I just wanted to make you think of somebody who will assume the purpose-driven life.
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Everyone assumes I'm not the one who needs to take a stand.
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Another one is this is not the hill to stand on or to die on.
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So I'm not the person who needs to take the stand.
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This is, yeah, sure, there's a right and wrong answer,
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And then lastly is a question of tactics and methods.
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So a question of a person, a question of theology, and then a question of methodology.
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And then on the issue of theology, he'll say, this isn't the hill to die on.
00:25:35.260
The substance isn't worth fighting for, dying for.
00:25:38.280
and then lastly in terms of the methodological side of the equation he'll say this just isn't
00:25:44.780
the right timing it's not the right tactics it's not the right strategy and you said this in the
00:25:49.560
other video but i think it's worth saying again what are uh for for big eva cowardly types what
0.99
00:25:54.600
are the four stages of war four stages are there is no war going on there's nothing to fight that's
00:26:00.320
stage one stage two is the there actually is a battle going on out there but it's too early
00:26:04.720
it's not the right time to get in we don't want to waste our cultural we don't waste our capital
00:26:08.260
COVID. Yep, exactly. So stage one, there's no war going on. Okay, there is a war, but it's too
00:26:13.220
early. Stage three, there is a war going on and it's actually just too late. We're exiles, we're
00:26:18.220
pilgrims. Stage four, you're in the gulag wishing that you were back at stage one, back at stage two
00:26:23.600
and had the opportunity to fight. Right. And we see this all throughout history again and again.
00:26:28.020
Well, we're not going to take the stand on this. We're not going to take a stand right now,
00:26:30.420
both in the church and in society. But here's the crux. For men especially, do you want to be a man
00:27:06.760
to take a stand and to be courageous and to fight
00:27:08.740
where the battle's the thickest. And if you want
00:27:12.640
not going to be that. If every opportunity that comes
00:27:20.660
has to take this fight. Someone else has to do this.
00:27:22.840
Yep. And notice what Wes is saying. He's saying
00:27:26.500
part of my sermon notes for this Sunday coming up,
00:27:36.740
the time, then yeah, you're making a mistake if you are rejecting every opportunity for courage.
00:27:45.300
But that's not to say, because the pendulum can overswing, that's not to say that you should be
00:27:50.680
fighting every single hill imaginable. And the reason why is not because truth doesn't matter
00:27:55.880
and not because we want to carve out nuance and room for compromise, everything that we've been
00:28:00.820
talking against thus far up until this point in the video uh but but there is something to be said
00:28:06.540
for um you can only um effectively defend so many hills at once like even you know like with with
00:28:13.900
generals and war and wartime strategies you know like the art of war you know and all these things
00:28:18.460
it's uh you can't spread your troops out uh too thin you have to say okay what uh what are the
00:28:24.960
areas uh that are are most valuable that must be defended and we're going to concentrate
00:28:30.000
great um our our our biggest efforts our most men our best artillery um at those places this
00:28:37.980
these are the hills that we cannot uh lose and certainly some of those hills um are are definitely
00:28:44.920
it can't be anything less than this but i would argue it's it's far more uh those hills certainly
00:28:49.420
include the trinity and inerrancy of scripture and the hypostatic union these kinds of things
00:28:54.740
but there are other hills beyond just the Apostles Crete, beyond just primary Orthodox
00:29:05.360
theology. There are cultural hills that are worth dying on, right? It's just a pinch of incense to
00:29:12.400
Caesar. Why does it matter? It's just a dirty diaper over your face, you know? It's just 15
00:29:17.500
days to stop. It's just women pastors. Right. It's just women pastors or not even that. Oh,
1.00
00:29:21.520
we'd never have a woman pastor. It's just a woman preaching under the authority of the elders,
1.00
00:29:26.020
right? It's just a woman preaching. It's just a pinch of incense. It's just a mask. It's just
1.00
00:29:33.640
15 days to slow the spread. But that's always the way it goes. And so having wisdom and being able
00:29:41.080
to see, okay, what is, because we can't fight a hundred battles simultaneously effectively.
00:29:46.960
right um so but then determining okay uh which of these battles um is most important and and to
00:29:54.800
answer that question you can't just look at the surface level of the issue and say what's uh what's
00:30:00.200
the biggest concession what's the biggest compromise uh you have to look behind uh what's
00:30:05.120
actually being demanded the concession that's being uh requested and say all right um which
00:30:11.240
which which one would be uh the foothold that that will let the enemy in the gate um and
00:30:17.540
covid was was one of those it's just a mask yeah yeah but but here's the thing um this is the
00:30:23.960
government telling the church what to do yeah telling the church it has to close telling uh
00:30:29.360
you what uh how you have to physically dress yourself at church um that to come to the lord's
00:30:35.140
table it requires nothing but faith plus mask um you know like and and that was that was a big
00:30:43.320
uh issue you know uh the woke stuff well it's just it's just loving people you know loving your
00:30:48.300
neighbor and not being a racist no no it wasn't uh loving black people that's not what they wanted
00:30:54.180
what they wanted is for you to hate white people they wanted you to hate the founders right well
00:30:59.740
it's just stonewall jackson didn't stop with stonewall jackson who was great by the way
00:31:04.800
But it didn't stop with Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee.
00:31:13.380
Last week, it was in the UK, they removed two statues of missionaries from a train station or something like that.
0.64
00:31:22.000
And they erected two statues of very tribal-looking black people.
0.87
00:31:28.240
And I think that the point that we're trying to make here is some of these secondary issues might not be enough to send your soul to hell, but they are turning points that will destroy Christian organizations, Christian churches, Christian associations.
0.84
00:31:45.280
They are deadly and have the power to alter the trajectory entirely of something that is good and godly and going the right direction.
0.90
00:31:56.800
And because of that, they're worth fighting about.
0.96
00:31:59.800
We're not just saying the only thing that Christians can fight about are first-tier theological issues.
00:32:06.160
What we're saying is some of the secondary issues, like whether or not you obey the government's mandate and close your church,
00:32:13.660
those churches that closed for an extended period of time,
00:32:17.720
I would be shocked if the majority of those churches are not in decline now
00:32:22.860
and the churches that repented early or didn't close at all are growing.
00:32:27.480
These are huge issues when we think about the direction of a church
00:32:36.600
and they're worth taking stands about in a strategic way, like you're saying.
00:32:40.820
Let's go to commercial, and then we'll hit one last example
0.99
00:32:43.860
in women's ordination and what that did to the Anglican church,
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your free 30 minute consultation today. All right. So we've beat this drum a little bit,
00:35:31.280
especially about women's ordination compromises on biblical truth, like the love of God. But I
00:35:35.680
just want to really drive it home for a second. So the Anglican church in the 1990s had a big
00:35:40.180
brilliant idea, which was a little bit of a compromise here might help boost some attendance
00:35:44.360
numbers, get the kids back, reach the youth. So in the 90, the youth. So in 1994, they approved
00:35:50.520
the ordination of women and obviously their nomination is growing and doing great of course
00:35:56.720
not the once great british empire i mean again we were talking about john bunyan and the
00:36:00.740
westminster divines their legacy is anglican uh martin lloyd jones was an anglican minister
00:36:05.960
so this incredible legacy this church that stood for hundreds of years but in the 90s they began
00:36:11.100
to ordain women they began to blast same-sex unions in 2023 so last year uh they've now
00:36:16.540
decline, so between 18 and 24 years old, less than 1% of English youth attend church weekly.
00:36:22.780
They were 2.8 million, their number of baptized members in 1971. They've lost a million of those
00:36:30.560
and are down to 1.8 million. So in the UK, they began ordaining women in the 90s and now gone on
00:36:37.020
same-sex mirage. Their attendance, the people coming, I think it's an average of 57, will attend
00:36:49.700
They allow individual dioceses to ordain women,
00:36:56.120
So we're not even talking like full-blown patriarchal.
00:37:03.220
will directly correlate to exactly like you said,
00:37:12.700
PGC writer. He might be on the board, big conference speaker guy. His book has most
00:37:20.580
certainly been in your church library. He said this, this was probably two or three years ago,
00:37:25.420
to summarize, I accept the Bible's teaching on the male leadership in the church. So he kind of
00:37:30.860
plays his conservative card, then says, I'm not a misogynistic, culture-warring pastor. I'm not a
00:37:36.520
culture warrior. I think women preaching and pastoring is a gospel issue. And certainly in a
1.00
00:37:42.100
sense women not being ordained is not a gospel issue the gospel is jesus given for sinners that
00:37:48.580
doesn't include women's ordination but most certainly you can see the well just the gospels
00:37:52.860
here and then pretending everything else is just all tertiary right there are things that are not
00:37:57.900
gospel issues like biblical sexuality that are right below in their importance of to your faith
00:38:05.020
to your functioning for the church actually to be a church uh it's not just gospel everything else
00:38:11.320
there is the gospel and then as we've been saying this whole episode these other truths matter they
00:38:16.460
matter for your church for your family for your health for your children and you can't just discard
00:38:21.340
them and pull that card he pulled out i'm not a culture warrior i'm not a misogynist i'm not a
00:38:26.280
misogynist yeah um no you're right that's good theological minimalism is uh you know a phrase
00:38:32.620
that could be used theological minimalism which ironically is uh i think one of the uh
00:38:38.260
unintended negative fruits that came out of fundamentalism that uh you know the fundamentalist
00:38:44.400
in the good sense you know there's you know that word is used uh most regularly these days as a
00:38:51.200
pejorative that's something bad you know you don't want to be a fundamentalist and we think you know
00:38:55.620
fundamentalist is someone who doesn't go to movies uh someone who doesn't use playing cards you know
00:39:00.000
somebody who doesn't smoke or chew or date girls who do you know and um usually a teetotaler or
00:39:08.380
But I'm using the term fundamentalist in terms of, you know,
00:39:17.560
And a lot of guys, you know, Martin Lloyd-Jones, you know,
00:39:21.140
would have been a part of, you know, guys like that.
00:39:22.700
And, you know, Lloyd-Jones and Stott had, you know,
00:39:25.200
a big disagreement on whether or not, you know, with Anglicanism,
00:39:28.320
you know, whether or not to stay as a part of the church or to leave.
00:39:33.160
the idea was that there was this massive rise and push at the time of liberalism and so uh the idea
00:39:39.560
is we're outnumbered and so we've got to uh we've got a circle uh link arms and form kind of a ring
00:39:46.520
you know a circle uh so that we can all watch each other's you know six you know so that you
00:39:51.560
get my back i'll get yours you know and um it's it's what you would typically do uh in a scenario
00:39:57.140
where you're being attacked by an opposing force
00:40:06.440
And the mentality is we've got to get the circle tight, right?
00:40:10.380
The shield wall, if we're going to survive,
1.00
00:40:19.640
like, well, but does there have to be a virgin birth?
00:40:25.160
There was a ton of that going on in the early 1900s, and they were outnumbered in many regards.
00:40:35.100
So the mindset was, let's draw the circle tight, and let's defend what we cannot live without.
00:40:44.220
And let's narrow it down to as few issues as possible, as few hills that are actually worth dying on as possible,
00:40:51.700
so that the few of us, we can keep the shield wall tight around these, you know, seven or eight
00:40:58.020
issues because we fight for everything. If we fight for a robust Christian doctrine, we just,
00:41:03.900
we don't have the manpower. We won't be able to spread our forces that, that, that wide will be
0.99
00:41:09.100
spread too thin and we'll lose. And that was a mindset. And you know, I don't envy those guys
00:41:13.960
in that time. And, and so I don't want to just sit here as the, you know, the Monday, you know,
00:41:20.120
Monday morning quarterback and critique it. But I think, so I won't speak for them and what they
00:41:25.500
did and what, you know, but I think that that mentality has carried over and whether or not
00:41:30.360
they were right to have that mentality is maybe up for debate. But whether or not that mentality
00:41:36.940
should continue today, whether or not that should be our mentality, I do have a strong opinion on
00:41:41.840
that. And my opinion is no, I don't think it's helpful. I think that's part of why we have the
00:41:46.260
problem we have today is because of a theological minimalism. We would say that there's literally
00:41:50.680
only seven or eight issues that are actually worth having a conviction on, that are actually
00:41:54.840
worth defending. And so then what happens? We'll defend inerrancy, we'll defend the Trinity,
00:42:02.340
we'll defend this, that, and the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, but that's about it.
1.00
00:42:09.120
Well, then what happens is you get women pastors. What happens is you get gay affirming churches.
0.91
00:42:13.860
What happens is, you know, that you begin to bend on all these other things because—
1.00
00:42:19.940
They'll hollow out those truths from the inside.
00:42:24.200
And that's the irony, because you would think, oh, that's not even possible.
00:42:32.420
Some of the oldest churches in terms of, you know, ancient, historic stone church buildings
00:43:15.580
And we're singing hymns and there's only an organ,
00:43:24.620
And then also you have a short-haired female minister.
00:43:30.320
My point is the most historic traditional churches
00:43:37.600
in terms of their building in terms of their liturgy in terms of their methodology in terms
00:43:42.280
of the dress the attire the clerical robes uh candles being lit you know the whole nine yards
00:43:47.620
um but uh they're very traditional um but in terms of their substance the theology uh they're
0.97
00:43:54.960
they're the homo jihad they're like they're as liberal as you could possibly get and then you
0.95
00:44:00.160
know and then it's this you know cowboy church that uh that you know if you talked about the
0.97
00:44:05.140
regular principle they wouldn't know what the heck you were talking about um but the cowboy church
00:44:09.380
uh they at least know that you don't ordain a gay minister yeah you know and so that so anyway so my
00:44:14.940
point is like um because you would think right because those churches i'm describing gay affirming
00:44:19.700
pc usa churches you know what they do on sunday they uh they recite the apostles creed the
00:44:25.360
apostles creed was not a bulwark um against uh ordaining female and gay pastors uh and and
00:44:32.520
here's the thing i'm not knocking we recite the apostles creed in our church it's part of our
00:44:36.220
liturgy so i'm not knocking the apostles creed i love it that that's just i think that's a good
00:44:40.200
example to prove my point um theological minimalism saying uh we only will speak up
00:44:46.220
for top tier orthodox issues which is what the apostles creed addresses and that's its purpose
00:44:52.200
it's a creed not a confession it's meant to be narrow short brief concise top tier orthodox
00:44:58.820
issues. But my point is you can go to a church and recite the Apostles' Creed week after week
00:45:03.980
after week for 50 years, and Sally is your pastor with blue hair, and her son sits in the front row
00:45:12.360
with his boyfriend. There's another element here too, and that is the church has always refined
00:45:18.600
its doctrine in response to false teaching. And so a lot of what happened over church history
00:45:24.860
was men of discernment looked at what someone was saying and said, wait a minute, that's not
00:45:31.320
only a problem, but that's a problem that affects how we understand the fundamental reality of
00:45:37.440
salvation, of who God is, of who man is, of who Christ is. And we should expect, as the church
00:45:45.980
goes through history, that new issues, errors, heresies are going to arise, and it's up to
00:45:52.400
discerning men to realize this is not just some whack kook idea. This touches on an essential
00:45:59.040
truth about who God is, who man is, and what God is doing. And so when we look at a lot of the
00:46:04.900
issues, even women's ordination, I'm not going to say that you're going to hell if you disagree
00:46:10.920
with the patriarchal position on this, but you have missed something fundamental about the creation
00:46:17.700
order, you have missed something fundamental about Paul's argument that man was created first,
00:46:24.440
that woman was created for man. When you get into sexuality and gender, you miss something
00:46:29.980
absolutely fundamental, which I think through our time will become Orthodox Christian belief.
00:46:38.140
The church has to refine what the Bible says about what it means to be a man and what it
00:46:43.240
means to be a woman and in the process of refining that um now we look back at the arguments about
0.84
00:46:50.020
the trinity we said well obviously right but the men who fought that and arius was winning for a
00:46:55.520
long time arius was it was the official position of the roman emperor it's like half the empire
00:47:01.080
yeah yeah half the empire went arian and he had i think two different emperors
00:47:05.760
affirm his position and that was the law of the land it was a long battle and and yet uh by god's
00:47:13.060
grace and by the tenacity and perseverance and courage of christian men now the church says oh
00:47:18.200
well look obviously right and and and what we are in the process of right now in part
00:47:22.900
is getting to the point where in 300 years people say yeah obviously men and women are different
00:47:28.320
obviously women ought not be ordained that's just so so like why would anyone ever think
00:47:32.840
differently right but no these are the battles of our time that that directly affect how we
00:47:39.460
understand how god has made mankind what god did when he created nations all of these are battles
00:47:44.300
that the church needs to refine and they're important battles yep everybody wants a tailor
00:47:49.320
made solution too maybe you're listening to this like okay what's the confession that i can confess
00:47:53.580
that will guard me against this error or how do i guard against liberalism is laying out all of
00:47:57.880
these things but as you can see from the revision of the westminster standards in the 1900s there's
00:48:02.700
nothing that you can just set in stone and leave it there and will serve as the bulwark we're
00:48:07.460
living stones as christians and jesus uses the example of old wineskins and new there's always
00:48:12.820
going to have to be each generation freshly fighting for the truth right most orthodox
00:48:19.180
churches or i'm sorry most uh compromised churches have an orthodox statement of faith in their
00:48:24.660
basements on their website yeah you know uh so yeah it's it's not just a formula like if we adopt
00:48:29.860
this um you know this policy or we adopt this confession then then we're you know we'll always
00:48:35.740
be good uh what you need with each generation that's um that you just there's no substitute
00:48:42.640
for is um not just good policies or good confessions but you need good men you have to
00:48:47.680
have good leaders um and not just good leaders of yesterday uh you know and then and then men who
00:48:55.240
just point back to them you have to have leaders today you're always going to have to have uh
00:49:00.360
leaders, uh, present, present day leaders. Um, and here's the thing about present day leaders,
00:49:06.480
um, present day leaders, uh, a lot of times they're, um, they're not appreciated until
00:49:12.480
they're gone. Right. I was about to say that they're not appreciated in their day. They're
00:49:16.460
appreciated, um, after, you know, very few people, um, get to receive, you know, uh, the praise for
00:49:24.280
being the hero in their lifetime. Um, it's usually, you know, that's what Jesus said, you know, it's
00:49:29.740
like what are you basing that off of well you know one example would be the words of christ
00:49:33.360
like jesus said like you know of of the jews he said was there ever a prophet that your fathers
00:49:38.360
didn't kill you build the tombs of the prophets now so you your father's sons the posterity of
0.62
00:49:43.960
your fathers your fathers killed jeremiah your fathers killed the prophets uh but you uh you
00:49:49.460
honor them now and you exactly what you said michael that your your general sentiment is of
00:49:53.980
course it's universal it's a it's common knowledge that jeremiah was a true prophet of the lord and
00:49:59.580
it's common knowledge that isaiah was great and it's common knowledge that um yeah sure now it is
00:50:05.640
but at the time um all these men were hated they were all rejected um so it's it's always the
00:50:14.100
position to look back and appreciate uh former leaders after they're gone um but but if you're
00:50:21.440
looking for okay but uh we we can't just have an appreciation for former leaders we have to have
00:50:26.680
present leaders and uh and one mark of president i'm not saying this is the sole mark the the only
00:50:32.240
one but one mark of if you're looking for well who who's faithfully leading today is who's uh
00:50:38.220
who's willing to uh be despised today who is uh who's willing and you know that's that's all right
00:50:45.380
and i would i would put stephen wolf in this category and here's let me you know i know it's
00:50:49.440
random to bring him up right here at the end um but uh let me just be clear uh i i don't agree
00:50:55.440
with Stephen Wolf on plenty of things, doctrinally.
00:51:25.440
and i kind of prefer that one special revelation um and so uh we're gonna have difference he's
00:51:30.720
presbyterian i'm not he's all millennial i'm post-millennial um and yet though here's the
00:51:35.960
irony uh it's it's the guys who uh who view themselves as the uh the biggest fan club of
00:51:46.540
john calvin that hates that's right r scott clark right when stephen wolf is 100 straight line
00:51:56.620
from john calvin yep yep straight line like i'm willing to admit that i'm taking a detour yes
00:52:03.040
i'm actually i'm willing to admit that all the theonomic guys and i would say i'm a general
00:52:07.940
equity you know theonomist the theonomic guys are detouring from calvin right we don't have a claim
00:52:14.000
on calvin we do we agree with his soteriology we agree with i agree with a ton of stuff with
00:52:18.360
calvin his view on the lord's supper i you know so i am a calvinist i have some i'm not it's not
00:52:22.620
like i have no claim to calvin uh but my claim to calvin is uh not nearly as sound as as steven
00:52:28.260
wolf's claim to calvin yeah uh me jeff durbin james white doug wilson like and and and i don't even
00:52:34.460
know if those guys they'll probably not appreciate what i'm saying right now um but i think if
00:52:38.380
they're honest and willing to admit um if you're just going to read calvin plain reading of calvin
00:52:43.740
and then read the case for christian nationalism by steven wolf um steven wolf is closer to calvin
00:52:49.700
than uh than greg bonson and uh and his you know his his by what standard or those kinds of and i
00:52:56.720
love greg bonson and i'm more on greg bonson's side than i am on steven wolf's side in the
00:53:01.080
particularities but that's my point is like who who is hated you know like that um i got a feeling
00:53:08.580
and again i like i you know i'm not saying this because i have a dog in the fight i'm not going
00:53:12.740
to get steven's not going to send me royalties i get i get no benefit by saying this all i get is
00:53:17.660
uh my my camp my team being mad at me for talking about this right now so i stand nothing but to
00:53:23.680
lose as a general equity theonomist guy you know singing praises of steven wolf um but mark my
00:53:29.620
words a hundred years from now yeah um if there if there is any book that was written in our
00:53:34.920
generation i think there will be few i think most books even the decent books that let's just be
00:53:39.520
honest uh they pale in comparison to former generations why you know john piper uh you know
00:53:44.560
love john piper but um a hundred years from now um you don't need to read john piper when you can
00:53:49.580
read john owen you just don't yeah um if there's any book from our generation uh books uh that will
00:53:55.620
be uh a hundred years from now still in i think regular circulation and use it will be uh the case
00:54:01.560
for christian nationalism by stephen wolf it will it just will and you can hate them and you can oh
00:54:06.420
you can cope and seethe and ah and i can hear the guys coping and seething you know through the
00:54:10.720
through the camera uh and again like i said i disagree with steven on multiple things um but
00:54:16.420
again if you're trying to identify leaders right bringing it back to the topic for today and
00:54:20.560
landing the plane if you're trying to identify not just leaders of of yesteryear it's easy to find
00:54:26.100
leaders who are already dead everyone hindsight's 2020 everyone can identify a leader once the
00:54:33.660
verdict has come fully back in once they've lived their life they've died they're safely buried six
00:54:38.080
feet under dirt and you know it's easy to identify a leader then it's hard to identify leaders today
00:54:43.560
so what do you look for well you look for here's the guys who um you know because jesus is in the
00:54:49.000
line of the prophets right he's in this direct line he's saying you're trying to kill me just
00:54:53.860
like your father's tried to kill them and meanwhile you're building tombs to the prophets
00:54:58.040
that your father's killed while trying to kill me behaving just like your father's and i do find it
00:55:02.720
ironic um you know uh calvin college you know and like you know we're gonna go uh we're gonna go to
00:55:08.460
geneva you know or whatever and we're gonna do a tour you know this kind of stuff uh meanwhile we
00:55:12.880
hate steven wolf the heidel blog which steven wolf literally it basically is just copy and paste john
00:55:17.440
calvin it's 400 pages of i mean it's it's almost i mean it's just it's just john calvin regurgitated
00:55:23.140
for 400 pages in a book so we're gonna go on a tour and visit calvin's grave and also tweet out
00:55:30.040
how much we hate steven wolf i would say that's a great sign and again i disagree with steven
00:55:33.920
on certain things but that uh that is a great indicator if you're looking for a leader and i
00:55:38.960
know this isn't popular that's how you know he's a leader c.a that's my whole freaking point is
00:55:43.980
how do you find that the leader is the guy that when you're podcasting and talking about right
00:55:47.780
now people are coping and seething yeah right that's uh there you go there's there's uh there's
00:55:53.100
your sign uh steven wolf is just one and there are many others but that's just one i'm just
00:55:57.140
showing you, how do you do it? How do you find leaders today? Not just leaders of yesteryear,
00:56:01.680
but today. Who's in the line of the prophets that were killed in their lifetime, that people
00:56:07.260
hated in their lifetime, and who today is saying, we love Calvin, we love Luther, we love this,
00:56:17.460
but we hate him. If his name wasn't on the book and I was just reading pages with no citation
00:56:55.740
uh are scott clark's on any list the regime does not care about the two kingdom escondido
00:57:00.900
westminster west they're not going to put up a fight communism comes to this land but there's
00:57:05.060
some other guys that will so yeah notice who's the enemy of the regime i'm going to close with
00:57:08.900
this quote it is attributed to martin luther it is not technically from him it says this it's
00:57:13.820
really good though if i profess with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition every portion
00:57:18.940
of truth of god except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that
00:57:23.940
moment attacking i am not confessing christ however boldly i may be professing christianity
00:57:28.940
where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proven and is steady upon all the battlefields
00:57:34.380
is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at one point it's the chronicles of the schoenberg
00:57:40.460
family so thanks for tuning in yep thanks for tuning in yep we'll see you guys again uh next