The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - A Defense Of Mark Driscoll

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00:00:27.100 Pastor Mark Driscoll. That's what we're going to be talking about today. The reason why this is

00:00:32.460 kind of coming back into the Twitterverse, at least one neck of the woods of the Twitterverse,

00:00:38.420 namely the reformed ghetto, it really is a ghetto, the reformed deep state, if you will,

00:00:44.580 is because Pastor Mark Driscoll has been on the conference circuit for a while, for multiple

00:00:50.320 years. But a lot of the different platforms and conferences that he's spoken at in recent years

00:00:55.660 since the imploding of Mars Hill and his past vocation and pastorship there. A lot of these

00:01:02.980 conferences since then have been distinctly outside of the Reformed Protestant world.

00:01:10.120 And so you have your typical Reformed guys who, even though Mark Driscoll hasn't been doing anything

00:01:15.120 near Reformed guys, they still just every single day have to put out a negative tweet about Mark

00:01:20.180 Driscoll as a part of their reformed penance, I guess. Maybe even two tweets since John MacArthur

00:01:26.260 died just to honor John MacArthur. John MacArthur, he loved Christ. He really did. He was a good man.

00:01:32.080 He also loved Israel. Not so much a fan of that. And he hated Mark Driscoll. Those are like three 1.00

00:01:36.700 things, three hallmarks of John MacArthur. Loved Jesus, loved Israel, hated Mark Driscoll. So

00:01:43.060 there's been within the reformed world, regular tweets, this steady trickle every day.

00:01:49.420 hey, Jesus is Savior, Reformed soteriology, and Mark Driscoll is terrible. That's just kind of

00:01:55.660 what you can expect from some guys, not everyone, but some guys in the Reformed world. But

00:01:59.520 the last few days or so, there's been an uptick within the Reformed ghetto, the Reformed deep 0.81

00:02:05.700 state of guys reminding everyone of what happened now at this point, I guess, 11 years ago. It was 0.94

00:02:12.200 2014 of Driscoll resigning at Mars Hill, the church that he pastored in Seattle and being

00:02:19.280 kicked out of Acts 29, which was a church planting network that still is alive. I can't say alive and

00:02:25.460 well, but barely alive today that he founded. Well, he founded it with another guy who helped

00:02:31.440 him, but he was removed from that institution. And so it's been 11 years at this point. And so

00:02:38.920 it's like, why is there an uptick of reformed guys reminding everyone, relitigating the history

00:02:45.000 of what happened 11 years ago with Mark Driscoll?

00:02:47.040 Well, it's because although he's been

00:02:49.480 on the conference circuit already,

00:02:50.860 as I already established,

00:02:51.980 a lot of those conferences are distinctly

00:02:54.300 outside of the reformed world.

00:02:56.200 They're not reformed conferences,

00:02:57.880 but he has been slated for, I believe,

00:03:00.140 March of next year, the year of our Lord, 2026,

00:03:02.840 to speak at a conference.

00:03:04.980 It's going to be hosted by Clear Truth Media,

00:03:07.700 and Clear Truth Media is not necessarily

00:03:09.680 distinctly reformed.

00:03:11.560 It's not called the five points of Calvinism

00:03:14.960 or Tulip Media. But it has a lot of individuals who started the organization, the ministry,

00:03:21.380 Clear Truth Media, who are Reformed in their soteriology. They're either Reformed Baptist

00:03:25.980 or Reformed Presbyterian. And so for them to invite Mark Driscoll, a kind of, you know,

00:03:31.260 at least somewhat Reformed ministry, holding a somewhat Reformed conference and inviting Mark

00:03:37.800 Driscoll has reinvigorated all the John MacArthurites, you know, who are like, you know,

00:03:44.220 John MacArthur, his body, you know, it's barely even cold, and the reformed world is inviting

00:03:49.740 back Mark Driscoll, and so we're going to chimp out. So that's where we are. That's what, you 0.98

00:03:54.180 know, provoked, if you're wondering, why now? Why an episode? You could have done an episode

00:03:57.900 on Mark Driscoll for the past 11 years. You could do it, you know, some point during the next 11

00:04:02.660 years. Why today? Well, that's the reason for the timing today. So I'm going to tell you guys

00:04:07.240 in this episode through the various segments.

00:04:10.680 We'll have three segments.

00:04:11.800 At least one of the segments,

00:04:12.860 we'll just talk about who Mark is

00:04:15.260 and some of the history

00:04:16.800 and what went down with Mars Hill and Acts 29,

00:04:19.100 those kinds of things,

00:04:20.240 and why people in the Reformed world

00:04:22.640 have a problem with him.

00:04:24.540 And then first, or maybe we'll wait

00:04:26.380 till the second segment,

00:04:27.360 I'll give you guys a little bit of my story.

00:04:29.860 I've never met Mark in person.

00:04:32.400 I'd be happy to.

00:04:33.480 He seems like a great guy.

00:04:35.180 I think we'd get along just fine.

00:04:37.240 We'd probably differ on some things, but I think we would get along just fine.

00:04:41.380 But I don't know him personally, but I was a pastor in Acts 29, which is, again, an organization that he started.

00:04:47.780 The irony is that I came into Acts 29 and pretty much literally walked past Mark Driscoll as he was on his way out.

00:04:55.940 So the same year that Driscoll was kicked out of Acts 29 was a year that the church that I was pastoring in California, that we entered into Acts 29.

00:05:04.180 So I'll talk a little bit about Acts 29 and the way that Acts 29 spoke about Driscoll,

00:05:10.520 the way that they referenced Driscoll when I was coming in and he had just been removed.

00:05:15.740 I will say this, Acts 29 is exceedingly woke, exceedingly woke.

00:05:20.880 And it was not woke when Driscoll was there.

00:05:24.400 So you do the math, right?

00:05:25.960 So you have Driscoll there and people have all their criticisms.

00:05:29.780 They would say Acts 29 is immature or Acts 29 is harsh or Acts 29.

00:05:33.160 But I'll tell you what it wasn't. It wasn't woke. Driscoll leaves, and all of a sudden Acts 29 is doing calls of repentance for white pastors and their wives to repent for the ways that they've somehow, without even being conscious of it, oppressed black people.

00:05:50.800 and then also you start to see women being more platformed in quasi-pastoral ways.

00:05:56.540 So an embrace of wokeness, embrace of feminism, all those things Acts 29 undoubtedly embraced,

00:06:02.600 but coincidentally, not when Driscoll was there, but pretty much immediately afterwards.

00:06:07.460 So we'll talk about Acts 29, my experience with that, and how it relates to Driscoll.

00:06:11.160 And then we'll just kind of give our thoughts in that second and final segment of how we feel about Driscoll.

00:06:17.240 And I'll just, you know, from the outset, in a general sense, 30,000-foot view, I'll say that I like him.

00:06:23.120 I don't have a problem with him.

00:06:24.540 I don't think that Driscoll is like the world's greatest theologian, which I think if he was sitting here, he'd say, yeah, I've never claimed to be that.

00:06:32.160 But I think he's a phenomenal communicator.

00:06:34.380 I think that he is actually a very gifted leader.

00:06:38.920 Whether you like it or not, you can't deny the fact that he has built several organizations successfully.

00:06:45.160 So I think he's a good builder.

00:06:46.500 I think he's a good leader, a phenomenal communicator, and I do believe that he is a

00:06:52.360 faithful preacher, at least just in a general sense, that he preaches through books of the

00:06:57.480 Bible. I think he has generally good exegesis. It may not be exceptionally deep on this point

00:07:03.420 or that point, and guys are like, well, he abandoned Reformed theology and turned on a dime

00:07:07.840 the moment that he was allegedly running from church discipline, and that shows that he was

00:07:13.080 never really committed, that he's just an opportunist. He was just taking advantage the

00:07:16.960 whole time. We'll talk about that a little bit, but right here from the outset, I can at least

00:07:21.100 give you this. That's not true. Mark Driscoll did not abandon Reformed theology once he was

00:07:29.400 on the ropes with the elders from his church in Mars Hill and with Acts 29. The truth is that

00:07:34.340 Mark Driscoll did not abandon Reformed theology because Mark Driscoll was never Reformed.

00:07:37.960 and I don't say that as an insult. I say that because I think that really is fair to his

00:07:43.160 position. Acts 29, I remember finding it curious that in Acts 29, they would boast of their

00:07:48.760 Calvinistic, you know, reformed soteriology. You must be reformed in your soteriology, your view

00:07:54.100 of your doctrine of theology, of salvation in order to be a part of Acts 29, but they always

00:07:59.960 had this one exception that I found ironic. You know, you could be a four-point Calvinist instead

00:08:05.220 of five. And the one point that you could deny was limited atonement. And I remember even R.C.

00:08:10.280 Sproul would say, you know, back in the day when he was alive, one of his jokes that I thought was

00:08:15.240 true and hilarious, because it was true, is he would say, you know what we call a four-point

00:08:20.140 Calvinist? An Arminian. And I'd be like, so true, King. I agree that like a four-point Calvinist,

00:08:26.700 you're just an Arminian. You're not a Calvinist. You're not Reformed. Not even your soteriology,

00:08:32.640 not in any meaningful way. So Driscoll really did not abandon reformed soteriology. He only ever

00:08:39.880 held, during even his alleged reformed days, he only had held to a partial reformed soteriology.

00:08:48.160 And since then, as far as I know, he has not abandoned, in an objective public sense,

00:08:52.860 any of those doctrines that the other four points of Calvinism, whether it be

00:08:57.060 irresistible grace or unconditional election. But what's changed is not so much his theology,

00:09:03.340 but just his emphases. He's just not going to be the reformed guy. So he's not using that word.

00:09:09.360 He's not using the label Calvinism. He's just preaching through books of the Bible. And I think

00:09:15.780 he very much feels called towards. He said this and he even dresses the part and all these kinds

00:09:19.940 of things. He's just kind of a blue collar pastor. That's what he wants to be. He wants to be an

00:09:24.280 every man's pastor, right? And every man's pastor. And so he's not going to use huge theological

00:09:29.260 terms. He's not going to say, I'm reformed or I'm a Calvinist or go over the, you know, the five

00:09:34.840 points or this, that, and the other. He's just going to preach through books of the Bible in a

00:09:39.440 everyday, applicable, relevant way. But as far as I can tell, he does still hold to the four

00:09:47.280 out of the five points of Calvinism and has not actually abandoned those. He's just stopped

00:09:52.580 emphasizing them, or using the labels, and he was never a five-point Calvinist to begin with.

00:09:58.620 So anyways, all that being said, I don't think that Driscoll was a monster. I never thought he

00:10:03.280 was a monster. I think that there may have been some mistakes, and we'll get into some of those

00:10:07.440 in the episode today, but one way or the other, whether you love him or hate him, or whether

00:10:12.780 you're indifferent, Driscoll has, for a few years now, been making a very clear, undeniable comeback.

00:10:19.100 And I think there's a reason for that. 0.77

00:10:20.620 And I don't think it's just because he's a grifter or he's an opportunist.

00:10:24.020 I think it's because he has his fingers on the pulse of something that is significant and vital in America.

00:10:31.040 I think that he speaks to the everyman in everyman's terms, everyman lingo.

00:10:37.120 And he does so that shows grit, that shows masculinity, that shows spine, that's applicable, that's relevant.

00:10:44.240 And I think that he is a force for much good.

00:10:47.060 And so we're going to provide, in this episode, a defense of Mark Driscoll. Tune in now.

00:10:58.460 All right. Well, something this generation, kind of if you're younger, a lot of our audience is

00:11:06.380 younger men, that you may not have been around for, I actually, this was a little bit before

00:11:10.340 my time, is that one of the biggest movements in the early 2000s was the New Calvinist movement.

00:11:15.080 Time magazine in 2009, they ranked New Calvinism as the number third movement changing the world.

00:11:21.040 It exploded. And so this is 2009. Driscoll had just started Mars Hill really in 1996.

00:11:27.180 So 1996 to 2009, you're talking about 13 years to the growth, huge.

00:11:32.300 You have satellite campuses. You have at one point, I think elders, 50, 60, 70 elders,

00:11:38.320 a huge church with satellite campuses. And Mark Driscoll did it, let the record state,

00:11:42.740 in Seattle, Washington. So this is not the guy who came down to Alabama or came down to Florida

00:11:48.460 and planted a church in the Bible Belt. He was actually the first successful pastor to plant a

00:11:53.640 church that was stable, that was healthy at the time, in the very agnostic, very secular Pacific

00:12:00.940 Northwest. Let me pause real quick. That's part of my theory, my working theory for why things

00:12:08.720 i like this theory a lot yeah um when i when i think of driscoll and i think of chandler

00:12:13.000 i think that there is very little difference between the two in fact i think there is some

00:12:19.040 difference but the difference that actually could be described uh would be um simply driscoll being

00:12:26.340 better than chandler in every single way so so whatever difference there is between driscoll

00:12:31.220 and chandler the difference would be chandler's woke and driscoll's not right it would be things

00:12:35.360 like that right but for anybody who says well Chandler is fine but Driscoll is harsh you can

00:12:40.960 you can watch clips of Chandler and anything like where Driscoll's how dare you well you can see the

00:12:46.440 clip where Chandler says write your name if you're going to send an email to the elders of the village

00:12:51.400 church with a with a complaint write your name don't do it anonymously so that I can come and

00:12:56.900 grab you you know like so for every instance of Driscoll being you know whatever heavy-handed or

00:13:02.900 harsh behind the pulpit you can find just as many of Chandler so then it's like well what's the

00:13:06.860 difference well I think one difference one key difference is context Chandler was in Texas where

00:13:13.600 there's you know there's per capita men who have a higher grip strength right who have a little bit

00:13:20.360 higher t count who you know see some more sunlight yeah who see some more sunlight and Driscoll was

00:13:25.200 determined now this is Driscoll's doing so you know you can maybe chalk this up to some lack

00:13:30.300 of discernment or just not seeing the plan all the way through or whatever but driscoll was

00:13:34.680 insistent of of doing what he did in seattle and seattle is when i think of least masculine men

00:13:41.980 in the world i think of portland and then close second would be seattle yeah and i think that

00:13:47.340 that's and and so that's just the culture political climate cultural climate but then last piece real

00:13:53.180 quick with the context of being in seattle economic climate so think about this driscoll 0.99

00:13:57.520 was really big on wives should be able to stay home, be keepers at home. Don't rely on a two 1.00

00:14:03.500 income household. Men, you got to work hard. You go to sleep. You go to sleep tired. You wake up,

00:14:09.700 you clock in 10 hour days, 12 hour days, do whatever you have to do. And then he was also

00:14:14.860 an advocate of being fruitful, which these are all good things. I agree with these things. He's

00:14:20.240 like, so you don't just need to have 1.5 kids. Children are a blessing from the Lord, a heritage

00:14:25.820 from the Lord, blessed is the man whose quiver is full. So you need to be aiming for multiple

00:14:29.200 children. The more the merrier. Wives being keepers at home, keeping the children, taking

00:14:35.080 care of the children, and therefore relying on a single income. But here's the fine print,

00:14:41.780 and you got to be able to do it in Seattle. So Chandler, same kind of values, but you have to

00:14:47.180 be able to do it in Plano, Texas. I mean, just at the time, and this is, again, this is early

00:14:52.680 2000s, and then 2012, 13, 14, leading up to Driscoll's exit. At that time, you go back,

00:15:00.080 look at the house prices in Seattle, and then look at the surrounding house prices in Plano,

00:15:04.620 Texas. Look at the grocery prices. Look at the gas prices. Look at what it costs to live.

00:15:12.220 So they both have the same standard for men, and as it translates to provision, income,

00:15:17.700 economics. But Driscoll is saying, you got to do that in a place where it costs twice as much.

00:15:23.660 And so what you're going to have with those men is twice as much exasperation, which is actually,

00:15:29.120 and here's the irony in how, you know, how I feel like I can understand this. This is my story. This

00:15:33.800 is precisely one of the chief reasons why I left California. I left California because as I came

00:15:38.980 more and more into masculine convictions, patriarchal convictions, these kinds of things,

00:15:44.020 I realized that basically every sermon that I was preaching on the Lord's Day,

00:15:48.160 the title of the sermon should have been

00:15:49.600 Five Reasons Why You Should Leave My Church

00:15:52.420 by Virtue of Leaving the State of California.

00:15:55.120 And so then I realized if I preach these things,

00:15:57.680 which I believe to be true,

00:15:59.000 I'm going to preach my church empty.

00:16:02.040 Or I can lead those who are willing to follow

00:16:05.760 out of my church and out of the state and start over.

00:16:09.800 But Driscoll was unwilling to do that.

00:16:11.560 And I think the one thing that he really missed

00:16:13.460 I think one of his biggest mistakes was he was such a high caliber guy able to work you know 15

00:16:20.180 hour days and all these kinds of things and and he's sharp he's got just a natural instinctual

00:16:26.000 business sense and phenomenal communicator great leader great builder and so he's like look you've

00:16:32.500 got to be able to do it all you need to be the superman you need to be able to have five kids

00:16:36.100 like I do he has he has five kids I have five kids so speaking Driscoll's voice you need to have five

00:16:41.320 kids like I do, your wife stays home, a full-time caretaker, not supplementing your income, so

00:16:47.180 you're making all the money, and there's no reason that you shouldn't be at what, like, why can't you

00:16:51.240 make, you know, two, three, four hundred thousand dollars like I do? And that is a recipe for

00:16:57.460 disaster. So I think in that sense, I think that's the big thing, that the values and the virtues and

00:17:02.680 the expectations that he was preaching, I think, were biblical, and they were faithful. But I think

00:17:08.800 that what Driscoll kind of missed is our country is run by a managerial class that hates the common

00:17:17.960 man and has made it virtually impossible, especially for younger generations, to be able

00:17:24.180 to do what Driscoll was able to do in Seattle economically in terms of provision. And so

00:17:29.440 Driscoll is insistent about staying in Seattle with this missionary mentality because there's 0.52

00:17:34.720 a bunch of leftists in Seattle, there's a bunch of non-Christians, and we want to reach the lost

00:17:38.260 with the gospel. So we've got to be in Seattle with the missionary mentality, but you also have 0.83

00:17:42.660 to meet all these biblical masculine standards in Seattle, and financially, most men couldn't do it.

00:17:48.680 Most men, if they want to do all these things that are inherently good things, like provide

00:17:53.880 for their family, protect their family, have multiple kids, and make a way for their wives

00:17:58.580 to stay at home and be a caretaker full-time, those are good things, and I think men are called

00:18:03.120 to do it. But most men will not be able to do it, not because of a lack of virtue or character,

00:18:08.260 but just economically, they will not be able to do it in a place like Seattle. And I think that's

00:18:13.320 ultimately, in the end, what crushed him. He exasperated guys, telling them to do something

00:18:18.140 in a context where it couldn't be done, and they eventually turned against him.

00:18:21.900 And so that's the context. This is not a guy who started a church that got a thousand people.

00:18:25.720 There's tons of guys, not tons, but there's a number of men who started churches that have

00:18:29.100 been successful. They've written books that have sold a number of copies. We're talking about the

00:18:33.180 progenitor of an entire movement that really in many ways changed a generation. It changed Seattle

00:18:38.440 very much so while he was there. Acts 29 was a big movement in its heyday. It's very much so

00:18:43.340 declined from that now. But I mean, this is the guy, I personally, for example, I've maybe heard

00:18:48.300 three to four Driscoll sermons. I was probably in my very, very early 20s, if not in my teens,

00:18:54.400 when he was at the height of his preaching. So I'm not the guy who sat under Driscoll,

00:18:57.980 but I sat under men who listened to Driscoll. And so for a number of you, if you're Protestant,

00:19:02.500 especially if you're reformed so much of what you know now even if it's not entirely driscoll maybe

00:19:07.820 there's different elements that you took from other guys that were reformed i mean this is the

00:19:11.620 guy that spawned an entire movement that in the 2010s was supremely influential and and that

00:19:18.060 matters and we have to remember with uh getting to his departure uh for context whether you think

00:19:23.340 it was justified or not this is not a guy who was disqualified because he cheated on his wife this

00:19:28.180 was not a guy who embezzled funds from the church uh this is not a guy and real quick we'll get to

00:19:33.260 that one because people say that he did with the whole the book thing right but we'll get to that

00:19:37.180 one uh but yeah this is not a guy who ran away with the secretary it's not a guy who had an

00:19:41.540 affair it's not uh mark driscoll is was was a guy who um i think you know he he's had a beer

00:19:47.940 that's about it yeah i don't think he's like literally i from guys that know him some sermons

00:19:53.000 correct early 2000s but he said that was wrong but like never smoked a cigarette um i'm pretty

00:19:57.680 sure uh married uh you know grace is the name of his wife um i think she was like uh was the first

00:20:04.660 or you know very early on uh like one of the first couple girls that he ever dated so this is a guy

00:20:10.780 who didn't really have a moral scandal in his past which that's what was so peculiar about it

00:20:16.160 because lots of guys you know they end up falling because they embezzle money or they have an affair

00:20:21.120 or something like that right but with driscoll it was kind of like death by a thousand paper cuts

00:20:25.760 it was like he was mean okay well that that's not enough but then you if you you know over 15 years

00:20:31.340 get a thousand people to come out and say he's mean he's mean he's mean he's mean even if none

00:20:36.340 of them can actually prove each instance it's just well but enough people are saying it consensus

00:20:41.020 matters it must be true right and there's sins that are real sins but they're not disqualifying

00:20:45.660 so it could be an elder hey you did this and it really is a sin according to god's standards

00:20:49.880 however it doesn't rise to the level to say this man is now disqualified from the office because

00:20:55.300 that's what's happening right now is a lot of guys are saying driscoll is permanently disqualified

00:20:59.380 i've seen people arguing that so there's permanently right there's sin for an elder that's

00:21:03.860 not disqualifying there's sin for an elder that is disqualifying and then i do believe there's

00:21:08.460 some sin for an elder that's permanently disqualified uh disqualifying and what guys

00:21:13.560 are arguing is it's this third tier right and for me i've yet to see that case produced um i've yet

00:21:20.420 i've yet to see a case produced that's objective enough to even say that he was disqualified

00:21:24.980 much less permanently disqualified that that's a heck of a case could i make the argument to you

00:21:30.720 of a 10-part christianity today series in which they called the mean but in 10 episodes in a row

00:21:35.440 that was christianity today the rise and fall well and i'll be honest that that it's funny you

00:21:40.320 mentioned that because ironically i would say that that actually is the source of in large part of

00:21:46.360 driscoll's comeback when christianity today mike cosper one of the gayest men alive when they

00:21:51.680 produced that series 10 part series that basically was just 10 episodes of uh mark driscoll is mean

00:21:57.860 when they did that series and people listened to it right it got a lot of listens when they

00:22:03.720 produced that series and people listened to it a lot of people who did think that driscoll was 0.50

00:22:08.080 harsh listened to that series with a bunch of leftards with christianity today calling him harsh

00:22:13.040 and realized i don't want to be in the boat with mike cosper and russell moore like i like and they

00:22:19.820 listen to you know the evidence produced in that series for why mark driscoll was objectively

00:22:25.160 sinfully harsh and not just simply harsh right not just harsh because jesus was harsh at times

00:22:29.280 but simply harsh and not just simply harsh but uh simply harsh to the degree of being disqualified

00:22:34.980 and not just that but simply harsh to the degree of being disqualified permanently and as people

00:22:40.020 listen to that series they're like you did not make that case if anything you have persuaded me

00:22:45.120 now that I actually, you know, I was indifferent to Driscoll, or maybe I even didn't like Driscoll. 0.86

00:22:50.260 And after 10 hours of Christianity Today, one of the most compromising Christian organizations 0.76

00:22:56.740 currently in America, telling me that I shouldn't like this guy, well, I didn't want to, but now I 0.97

00:23:01.740 feel like I have to like this guy. Yeah, it was 10 episodes of just based Mark Driscoll clips.

00:23:06.480 And so that's, I think, for the first segment, that's kind of the encapsulation. This is a guy

00:23:10.000 who started a huge protestant kind of protestant resurgence certainly it's been called the reformed

00:23:15.420 resurgence in northwest seattle he built acts 29 he built a couple other organizations and in 2014

00:23:21.320 if you remember it was paul david tripp so there's a guy if you guys aren't familiar with him

00:23:26.180 the epitome of mr soft-spoken mr nice never harm a fly it was his testimony i think when he came to

00:23:33.780 the church and listened to some of the stories he's like oh this is a toxic he was really

00:23:39.360 um paul david tripp was really the the nail in the coffin i remember for a lot of guys even

00:23:44.820 shamefully i have to admit even for myself at the time 2014 it was like everybody was kind of on the

00:23:51.260 fence you know like like the elders of mars hill had come out and they they had written their

00:23:55.420 statement these kinds of things and guys are like yeah but is but but is he really disqualified you

00:24:01.460 know and like what what if it's a coup what if the elders are just turning against him and they're

00:24:05.220 taking something that may be sinful but they're they're exaggerating it making disqualifying

00:24:09.180 uh but but at that time today paul david tripp you know nobody really takes him seriously he's

00:24:14.640 literally an elder at eric mason's church right in philadelphia eric mason being uh the author of

00:24:21.140 woke church woke church um who has been you know i mean basically dismissed in disgrace by this

00:24:28.180 point no no conservative christian um would think uh anything fondly about eric mason and by you

00:24:35.040 virtue of Paul David Tripp's connection with him and then things that Paul David Tripp himself has

00:24:39.340 said that are very feminist and very woke. Paul David Tripp has absolutely fallen from grace

00:24:44.980 in the minds of many conservative Christians today. But back in 2014, he carried more weight,

00:24:50.960 was viewed as more conservative and thoughtful and wise. And so when he went and did his field

00:24:58.300 trip on the ground at Mars Hill in Seattle and surveyed the staff and surveyed the climate of

00:25:04.400 the church and these kinds of things, and then gave his very short report, this is the most toxic

00:25:09.640 environment I've ever seen. For a lot of guys who were on the fence, like, do I believe Mark or do

00:25:15.500 I believe Mark's elders, Paul David Tripp tipped the scales. Yeah. And now we're here, 2014, as you

00:25:21.160 said, 11 years later, and you can kind of look at the tail of the tape. It's like, okay, Paul David

00:25:25.540 Tripp, what's been the fallout since then? What has he gone on to do? Oh, he very much so led the

00:25:30.540 church in its embrace of wokeness. And we turn around and we look at Mark Driscoll. Well, he's

00:25:34.720 still a family man. As it turns out, so most of his sons are older now. I think a decent amount

00:25:38.980 of them are married. And as best I can tell, as I understand, they're all in the Christian faith.

00:25:43.920 So you've got a man, continued to be a faithful husband, a faithful father, his children, the

00:25:48.640 best evidence of a man's life. They're turning out really well. Like your children are going

00:25:52.960 to reflect. There's no, well, you know, I had some bad moments. Like, no, you had 20 years with

00:25:59.080 them they're they're going to be a reflection of you so his kids are turning out well he's

00:26:02.860 continuing to maintain orthodoxy and courage and that's we have some disagreements with him

00:26:07.620 but courage on issues like issues like masculinity femininity he had a series about a year ago at

00:26:13.160 this point on the jezebel spirit so talking about feminism in the church and women taking charge and

00:26:19.200 and with that so like mark driscoll he's a man right he's human so i think there's some great

00:26:24.460 things and then there's also some things it's like yeah i want to do that like so with the

00:26:27.720 jezebel spirit book right it it it made sales it was a hit and i read little portions of it excerpts

00:26:33.740 and from what i read it was good like it was good and and you're absolutely right um mark driscoll

00:26:38.480 has never i've never seen him say something i'm like that's heretical so he's always stayed in

00:26:43.120 the bounds of orthodoxy i would say that he is kind of normie evangelical um but the best of

00:26:49.720 normie evangelicals but but my point is like even with the jezebel book uh so um how did he launch

00:26:54.980 it what was the kickoff oh in his typical kind of mark driscoll way and i you know i don't think

00:27:01.480 it's a coincidence i think this is what he does i don't i'm not saying it's inherently evil but i

00:27:06.160 you know i i i don't like it i i don't find it particularly tasteful but that doesn't mean that

00:27:10.920 it's sin and it certainly doesn't mean it's disqualifying but even with that book uh mark

00:27:14.860 driscoll you know he put some pizzazz on on the launch of that book how do you do it he was invited

00:27:19.620 to a conference uh for men it was a men's conference not reformed outside of that just

00:27:24.380 kind of normie evangelical men's conference and one of it is pretty i mean it was pretty weird

00:27:30.120 uh but uh one of the things they had like a monster truck uh rally and they had you know

00:27:34.800 they had certain like entertainment and shows in addition to the speakers and one of the shows was

00:27:39.640 like some you know acrobat sword thrower swallower you know whatever kind of guy who was like at a

00:27:47.440 certain point was like climbing up a pole with a sword and doing it all with his shirt off

00:27:51.540 which for a men's conference i'm like i i jezebel spirit is not where i would go i would just say

00:27:57.540 that's gay that's gay i'm at a men's conference i brought my sons with me which i never would

00:28:03.200 have gone to this conference but i'm at a men's conference i brought my sons with me and there's 0.98

00:28:06.720 a shirtless chip and dales you know guy who got converted 15 minutes ago climbing on a strippers

00:28:13.180 pole i mean it was super gay yeah so what driscoll said about it i actually don't mind what he said i 0.72

00:28:18.880 I, you know, but I'm just saying, here's the pizzazz, kind of the showmanship of Driscoll, 0.61

00:28:23.560 which again, I'm not saying is, is, you know, inherently wicked and evil, uh, but that he is

00:28:28.400 a business guy. He is a business guy. And so Driscoll, you know, follows up that act. Um,

00:28:33.080 it's now his turn to speak. And, uh, and he, he kind of does this like, you know, very, uh,

00:28:38.480 kind of dramatic. He's like, Hey, I'm, I'm here to speak, but before I do guys, we got to, you

00:28:43.040 know, make some things right. And, uh, and, and so he, uh, he comes down to like one knee, you

00:28:48.300 know like this dramatic pose he's like kneeling on on one knee you know and uh and uh and he's

00:28:54.780 like looking up to heaven kind of like a professional nfl guy who just scored a touchdown

00:28:58.440 he's like uh first we've got to ask the lord for forgiveness and repent because the jezebel spirit

00:29:04.100 was just here you just saw it on this stage when a man you know without his shirt was climbing on

00:29:08.260 this stripper pole and uh and then the guy who was hosting the conference you can hear him in

00:29:12.580 the background he's like he's like that you're done that's enough like you're insulting my

00:29:17.400 conference publicly that you were invited to and then driscoll walks off the stage and it's like

00:29:22.080 wow that was random what's that about very next day so my book it's already completely written

00:29:27.100 called the jezebel spirit it's like ah there there he is there's the driscoll we all know and love

00:29:32.560 so that was a classic driscoll move and it worked uh what he does works so uh but the book it's not 0.80

00:29:39.120 heresy it's it's actually really good uh the dude stripping on the pole was super gay right i don't

00:29:45.480 know if i would have called it i don't know if i would have called it a jezebel spirit but super 0.72

00:29:49.700 gay shouldn't have been done um the showmanship and the timing of i'm calling this thing out 0.75

00:29:55.260 publicly at a conference with a clip that's going to go viral inevitably and then i'm launching a 0.99

00:29:59.560 book the very next day oh that's that's uh you know a little bit uh curious but anyways and in

00:30:04.860 all of that i think it's fair totally fair if someone would say hey i saw the evidence as it

00:30:09.280 was coming out and i do think per the biblical qualifications i think he was disqualified at

00:30:13.780 Mars Hill. Now, here's the deal. Mars Hill is its own church. We're Baptists. We believe in

00:30:18.700 the authority of the believers. So the church, as the believers, they're the ones that have the

00:30:23.440 authority. Local church autonomy, yeah. Local church, that's actually, whether it be elder

00:30:27.080 ruled, so the elders of the church that have been appointed by the congregation or the congregants

00:30:30.680 themselves in a democratic vote, they're the ones that have the authority. So you're welcome to have

00:30:34.180 your opinion. Hey, he was disqualified. He was not disqualified. We're leaning towards, hey,

00:30:38.500 it would seem perhaps he was not. But the point is, either one of those, I think, are fair to say,

00:30:43.300 no i think yeah maybe on the level of biblical qualifications he failed here or to say no

00:30:48.900 actually the biblical qualifications matter and in each of these it is defensible and the church

00:30:53.820 renders the final verdict no i don't actually think he was right both of those are valid if i

00:30:57.880 both of them are valid uh here's so let's give an example of what's not valid uh what would not be

00:31:02.820 valid so saying um i think he's sent but uh he's not disqualified all right valid um i think that

00:31:09.600 he uh sinned and that he is disqualified valid here are two uh that's like the two center center

00:31:15.820 left center right here are the two uh polar opposite ones and both of these i think are

00:31:19.640 absolutely invalid okay uh one would be um i don't think he um not only was he not disqualified

00:31:25.100 sinned and not disqualified i don't think he ever sinned i don't think he ever was harsh or ever said

00:31:30.620 a single wrong thing in the pulpit or ever like okay so you think he's jesus christ okay so that's

00:31:35.380 not a valid position all right so nobody on this podcast is holding that position and then the other

00:31:40.000 one would be not only did he sin and was disqualified but he sinned and he's permanently

00:31:44.780 disqualified and and so therefore even the fact that he's at another church it's 11 years later

00:31:50.180 his leadership is vouching for his qualifications now and even though it's a baptist church with

00:31:56.820 local church autonomy and the leaders there are the final ecclesiastical authority for his

00:32:01.320 qualifications, I still am going to say, I don't care. You see what I'm saying?

00:32:05.700 He's forever disqualified.

00:32:06.720 So I think that's insane. So he's forever disqualified. I don't think that's a valid

00:32:12.120 position. He never even sinned. I don't think that's a valid position. I think it's got to

00:32:16.500 be one of these. He really did sin. He is a sinner, just like I am. I've sinned pastorally.

00:32:21.980 I have. Every pastor has. So he sinned, but not disqualified. The other one, he sinned,

00:32:27.420 but not disqualified but was disqualified but not permanently disqualified i think you could

00:32:32.020 hold either those positions and it's tenable um but on on x do you get some really dramatic

00:32:40.460 anything other than option four permanently disqualified for the rest of his life even his

00:32:44.960 sons can't be pastors anything less than that is yeah i mean that's pretty much what you see on x

00:32:49.340 you see john mccarthur brotes who i don't know if it's just you know in the last six months months

00:32:55.020 to honor john mcarthur it's like john mcarthur passed away and i know i you know i didn't talk

00:32:59.840 to him you know in his last moments you know before his death but i know that his dying wish

00:33:03.660 was probably that i tweet mean things about mark and so i'm gonna i'm gonna take up that mantle and

00:33:09.180 i'm gonna honor john mcarthur uh by holding the position that uh even though there's not really

00:33:13.920 anything objective mark driscoll is not only disqualified but he is eternally disqualified

00:33:18.760 and also to the fifth and tenth even generation yep that's what you see on x which is silly

00:33:25.080 all right well let's go ahead and hit our first commercial break we'll be right back

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00:36:47.100 all right two more important details that i want to deal with uh in this second segment

00:36:53.880 but i'm going to just deal with these two there's so much that could be said but i'm going to deal

00:36:57.920 with just these two details is as clearly accurately as i can try to keep it efficient

00:37:03.000 and brief because then we want to go to our third segment and leave extra time for that to be longer

00:37:07.840 because there's a lot of different questions and comments in the chat and we want to be able to

00:37:11.500 interact with you guys as much as possible. Real quick, though, let me say there's a ton of

00:37:17.480 questions. And so unfortunately, because of the sake of time, we are going to have to, as much as

00:37:24.100 we can, prioritize the Super Chats. The guys who are putting forth a little bit of generosity and

00:37:29.900 seeking to support this ministry are going to get priorities. So we're going to do the Super Chats.

00:37:34.340 If we have more time, we'll get to the non-Super Chat questions, and I think we'll be able to get

00:37:37.740 to some of them. But if you're sending in questions now at this point of the episode,

00:37:43.120 and it's not a super chat, I can just tell you we've got enough questions already. We will

00:37:47.580 probably not be able to address your question. If you want it to be addressed for sure,

00:37:51.820 then send it as a super chat and we will do that. All right. So two details. One,

00:37:57.320 Mark Driscoll was not defrocked. He resigned. And that does matter, right? The actual public record,

00:38:04.060 the public history of what happened and how it happened actually does matter as it pertains to

00:38:12.080 you know his future and ongoing ministry so what happened was this mark was confronted by all of

00:38:18.640 his elders and this is one of the peculiar things so i mean there's so many things i said and a lot

00:38:23.720 of these are practical things there are theological implications to be sure one of them being

00:38:27.780 ecclesiology and that that's certainly theological but these again these aren't uh to the level of

00:38:33.220 heresy. They're not major moral failures. But they are things that I think practical ways that

00:38:39.720 he actually set the stage, ironically, for his own dismissal. So one, the fact that he's preaching

00:38:46.300 masculinity and a lot of that having to do with provision, financial provision in the context of

00:38:52.540 Seattle where it's incredibly hard. And a lot of men are just going to, they're going to be

00:38:56.320 exasperated. Like, hey, you've got to be able to provide for a big family with a wife who stays 0.82

00:39:01.340 home and kids who don't use the public school district and all those things that we agree with.

00:39:06.080 But it's one thing to preach that in Texas where things are still expensive versus preaching in

00:39:11.640 Seattle where it's ungodly expensive, right? That's one thing. Here's another. Satellite campuses.

00:39:17.660 That was another part of it. So think about this. You have elders set up in other campuses and

00:39:23.740 eventually Mars Hill spread to the point where it was not just in Seattle or not even just in

00:39:27.800 Washington state, but they had a campus in Arizona. They had a campus in California, like

00:39:33.380 in the, where it was, Orange County, in Orange County, California. And so when you have elders

00:39:40.720 for your technically one church, but who are in different campuses of that one church, but they

00:39:46.600 are elders of that one church, so they actually have authority to remove you or at least rebuke

00:39:52.620 you, correct you, and yet they're, you know, 800 miles away, 900 miles away. You're seeing them

00:39:59.020 maybe a couple times a year. You can't foster a really intimate, genuine, deep relationship with

00:40:05.340 these guys. And so you're giving a lot of power to guys that you don't have a lot of relationship

00:40:10.180 with, right? Everyone wants accountability. Pastors should desire accountability, but they

00:40:15.880 should also desire accountability from people that they have genuine relationship with. I don't want

00:40:20.960 to give away power to people who don't know me,

00:40:24.580 don't know my wife, don't know my kids,

00:40:26.100 don't love me, don't have friendship with me,

00:40:28.300 but oh, by the way, I'll give you the keys to the engine

00:40:30.720 and control over taking away my job.

00:40:33.860 That's a suicidal recipe.

00:40:36.100 So for Driscoll to be preaching the things he was

00:40:40.300 in Seattle, strike one.

00:40:42.580 To do a multi-campus model with guys really far away

00:40:46.460 but who had power over him but really far away

00:40:48.680 and so then a lack of relationship,

00:40:50.080 strike number two. Number three, with this satellite campus model, he was screening in

00:40:55.760 his sermons, right? So you've got guys who are called to be pastors in these satellite campuses,

00:41:01.920 meaning it is in their heart to shepherd people and the lead avenue, the primary avenue where a

00:41:08.620 pastor shepherds people. Yes, you do that throughout the week with counseling. You do it

00:41:12.420 with officiating marriages and officiating funerals and all these kinds of things. But the primary

00:41:18.280 contemporary context where a shepherd shepherds the sheep of God is through the preached word

00:41:24.160 on the Lord's Day in the pulpit. And Driscoll, these guys, they're shepherds. It's in their

00:41:30.060 heart to shepherd their local, their campus. These are the people that they know. They're the ones,

00:41:34.660 not Driscoll, but these local pastors at these local campuses, they're the ones who are doing

00:41:38.840 the marriage counseling. They're the ones when there's a death, you know, of a child with one

00:41:44.080 of the families and the membership. They're the ones who are doing the grief counseling,

00:41:47.240 all these kinds of things, officiating the funeral. They know the people. They have their fingers on

00:41:52.180 the pulse of that individual congregation. And I think we'd be just naive and stupid to think 1.00

00:41:58.900 that these men didn't want to get up on the Lord's Day and be able to preach the word to the people 0.99

00:42:04.120 that they know, that they love, that they're shepherding. But instead, they get up and they

00:42:08.060 get to do the announcements. And then they have to walk off from behind the pulpit and Driscoll

00:42:15.420 gets to come on the screen. And so I think that recipe of, I'm going to give guys power over

00:42:21.720 firing me, but I'm going to set them up 900 miles away without the intimacy and relationship and

00:42:27.720 trust and the very thing that's in their heart to do, I'm going to rob them of that. They get to do

00:42:33.220 all the hard pastoral work, but the chief pastoral piece of preaching, they won't get to do that,

00:42:40.720 or at least very rarely, because I'm going to do it through a screen most of the time.

00:42:45.040 And I'm also going to have HQ in Seattle, one of the most effeminate, limp-wristed places

00:42:50.320 in the country. And I'm going to be known for masculinity. I mean, Mark Driscoll, his church

00:42:57.760 plan should have been three steps to being fired within 15 years. And he nailed it. But none of

00:43:04.960 that, again, defending Driscoll, none of that means that he actually was disqualified or that

00:43:09.700 he actually had a moral failure. That's disqualifying to plant a church in Seattle.

00:43:12.500 That's right. Yeah, that's not disqualifying. That would be silly. I think a campus model

00:43:16.240 is stupid. I wouldn't say it's disqualifying. I think that that's something that a minister 1.00

00:43:19.560 could realize the error of his ways, repent of that, change the model, and he wouldn't

00:43:23.400 have to step down from ministry. So that's one thing. Number two, like I said, Driscoll

00:43:28.460 resigned, and that's a key detail. So what happened is that when all the elders in all

00:43:33.460 these various campuses, it was like 47 elders or something like that, at the time, when

00:43:37.400 they all came against Driscoll and confronted Driscoll, they did not say, you're done, or you're

00:43:42.540 disqualified, or we're defrocking you, removing your ordination. Instead, they laid out for him,

00:43:48.840 they confronted him and laid out for him a two-year restorative plan of repentance.

00:43:55.220 And then Driscoll looked at that plan and recognized it, I would argue, very likely for

00:44:00.700 what it was, a coup, and said, no thanks, and resigned. He was never actually removed. He was

00:44:07.660 never removed, and that matters. He voluntarily chose to resign. So that's one key. Last thing

00:44:15.660 that I want to, there's so many things, but last thing I want to put in, and then we'll go to our

00:44:18.560 third segment, because there's a ton of questions already, but in regards to the book. So Wesley

00:44:24.140 briefly mentioned, you know, it's not like he embezzled money. Well, I recognize, playing the

00:44:28.260 devil's advocate that some guys would say yes he did yes he did okay try to try to try to step

00:44:36.580 into this picture that i'm going to paint okay let's let's try to be as objective as possible

00:44:41.040 put aside your biases whether you're for a driscoll or against him try to think about it

00:44:46.980 without the biases without the emotion as objective as possible okay um you're mark driscoll

00:44:54.200 you are like, I mean, you, you have been listed as like top 20, or it might've been top 10 in

00:45:01.300 Seattle times, uh, most powerful influential men. Um, you are a rising star. Um, you've written

00:45:09.300 several books already. Uh, you pastor a church with like 14, 12 or 14 campuses, something like

00:45:15.420 that, that boast of, you know, close to 12 to 14,000 people, um, in weekly attendance. Uh,

00:45:21.580 You personally have baptized, you know, well over a thousand people.

00:45:25.440 You started the Resurgence magazine.

00:45:27.580 So you've got the church, Mars Hill, Resurgence magazine with its various conferences and

00:45:32.020 a church planting network, Acts 29, that now has a couple hundred churches, you know, under

00:45:36.340 that banner.

00:45:37.260 It was a men's thing too at some point where he's doing men's conferences.

00:45:40.020 Right.

00:45:40.180 I think that was Resurgence, but it might've been a fourth thing.

00:45:43.340 I can't remember.

00:45:44.100 So all that being said, you're, you know, it's like Ron Burgundy.

00:45:47.680 I'm kind of a big deal.

00:45:48.640 You know, so like generational run, honestly.

00:45:50.960 driscoll was on a generational run he really was um and so you're mark driscoll and you've already

00:45:56.680 experienced success you know that pretty much anything you do and put your name on uh is going

00:46:01.300 to get some mileage you know some success and you've just written a book on marriage and you

00:46:05.900 know that one of the chief problems in america at large within the church and out of the church is

00:46:10.360 a divorce divorce the the metrics are astronomical and you have all these broken homes and children

00:46:16.620 growing up with without fathers and all these kinds of things and then all the implications

00:46:20.280 of what that leads to, you know, crime and this and that and the other. And so you just wrote a

00:46:24.140 book on marriage, and it's, in typical Driscoll fashion, it's an every man's guide to marriage,

00:46:29.480 right? It's not, you know, heady ivory tower theology. It is biblical. It's rooted in the

00:46:34.600 scripture, but it's very practical and something that's in the layman's language. And so you feel

00:46:41.620 like this really will help people, not just it could be successful and do numbers and make money,

00:46:46.160 but it really will be helpful.

00:46:48.420 I believe in this book.

00:46:50.420 And Driscoll being very strategic on the business side.

00:46:54.360 I mean, he has a lot of practical business savvy,

00:46:56.840 entrepreneurial, and he's thinking,

00:46:59.320 well, I know how to get on

00:47:00.440 the New York Times bestseller list.

00:47:02.460 I mean, it's a simple algorithm.

00:47:03.760 It really is, right?

00:47:04.960 It's just a numbers game.

00:47:06.380 It's selling a certain number of copies,

00:47:08.660 not in total, not just eventually,

00:47:11.980 but within a very short window of time.

00:47:14.500 From the time you launch the book,

00:47:15.680 if within those first couple of weeks you breach this number of sales then you will be on the new

00:47:21.220 york times bestseller list unless the book is you know against zionism or you know something like

00:47:26.520 that um which driscoll's is not in any danger of so um we wish he was but he's not um so uh you

00:47:35.100 just wrote a book on marriage the country uh has a bunch of broken marriages we're hurting for

00:47:40.200 for stronger marriages and uh and you know that if you sell enough copies you'll get on the new

00:47:46.620 new york bestsellers list which gives you right it's kind of like the snowball effect which

00:47:52.060 makes more people aware of the book so that you sell even more copies but that you know the the

00:47:57.160 redeemed side of that is not oh so i make more money but more people will get help with their

00:48:01.960 marriage right i i doubt that in the middle of the night that driscoll you know went into the vault

00:48:08.380 of Mars Hill and broke in and he was climbing over the laser and security system and took all

00:48:15.640 the tithe money from the last six months and then took it over to the publisher and put it on the

00:48:21.660 table and said, I want to buy 10,000 copies of my own book to scam the system. That's not how it

00:48:27.960 happened. I guarantee you, Mark Driscoll did this with approval. Now, did he have the approval of

00:48:34.700 all 47 elders in every single campus probably not because i that like i said earlier that's

00:48:40.360 bad ecclesiology um that that just um there's probably a ton of decisions they made that they

00:48:46.080 didn't have unanimous approval with all the elders in these local campuses because it's 47 elders and

00:48:52.220 some of them live 800 miles away it's it's and like i said they shouldn't have had that system

00:48:56.180 to begin with that's a bad system but what they did because that system was bad is they got a

00:49:01.280 little less ecclesiology and a little bit more businessy, which business isn't wrong. That's

00:49:08.640 great. But it blended into the church sphere, and that was the problem. And so they said, well,

00:49:13.180 we've got so many elders with so many campuses. And instead of thinking, well, maybe we have bad

00:49:17.100 ecclesiology. Instead, they thought, nope, that can't be it. We just need to adopt. We've already

00:49:22.620 adopted some business world practices that are making it difficult for us. So let's adopt even

00:49:26.980 more business world practices into the sphere of the church. So what they did is they had a

00:49:31.080 they created a new tier of elders, and they called them executive, the executive elder team.

00:49:37.020 And it was three guys, Driscoll and two other guys. And that team was able to make fast-paced

00:49:41.920 decisions without having to get the approval of all the other elders. And the bylaws allowed for

00:49:47.400 this. And so what Driscoll and those guys, it wasn't just Driscoll sneaking into the Mars Hill

00:49:51.860 bank vault and stealing the tithe. It was Driscoll with those guys making this decision on a fast

00:49:57.220 play because the idea came times of the essence and they're like dude let's do this we'll spend

00:50:02.520 church money and and think about this again steel manning i this was probably the plan

00:50:07.560 we're going to use church money to buy these books you know what we're going to do we're going

00:50:12.560 to give them to members of the church for free to be a blessing to them so yes we're going to

00:50:17.040 use church tithe to buy this book to give as a free gift we're not doing it to be rich we're

00:50:22.500 going to buy the book at cost at cost not trying to make a huge profit at cost just to rack up the

00:50:28.920 sales so it'll be a bestseller on the new york times so that more people will see it so they'll

00:50:33.280 buy it not just so that we can be rich but so that people can have good marriages right we're

00:50:37.680 going to try to help people and so we're going to buy it at cost and we'll give it as a gift to

00:50:41.660 members in our church and not driscoll uh in isolation but with the executive team making

00:50:46.280 that decision. So that could be a bad decision. I'm not saying that was great. But to pretend as

00:50:53.200 though Driscoll did this single-handedly, all by himself, in the middle of the night, robbing

00:50:58.920 little old ladies, sending it on the front pew, reaching into their purse during the worship

00:51:03.900 songs, that's a lie. That's slanderous. So if you're two cases for Driscoll, because there's

00:51:12.340 no affair there's no substance abuse right there's nothing like that so if your two cases are he was

00:51:17.700 mean and then guys who have already heard us you know talk about that well he wasn't just mean

00:51:21.980 he also embezzled well there's your embezzlement yeah and embezzlement is disqualifying one of the

00:51:27.000 qualifications for elder but what i just described is not embezzlement exactly it could be a bad

00:51:31.940 decision of these elders but it's not embezzlement it does not seem at the time that mark driscoll

00:51:37.920 It's like, all right, for eight years, I've been stringing along on 50K a year, and here's the big plan.

00:51:43.500 We do pull off this heist.

00:51:45.460 I'm going to get half a million dollars, and that's it.

00:51:47.340 I'm going to ride away to the sunset.

00:51:48.680 He was not hurting for money.

00:51:49.860 This wasn't aligning the pockets.

00:51:51.260 When it comes to the biblical qualification that an elder cannot be a lover of money, this is what they would have to rise to.

00:51:58.100 And if a pastor stole money, embezzled, then, yeah, you would say you stole sin and you're a lover of money.

00:52:04.100 You are disqualified.

00:52:05.260 Nothing that you described falls into that category though.

00:52:07.880 Correct.

00:52:08.440 He's not hurting for money and like,

00:52:10.140 how can I get it from the church?

00:52:11.240 I'm going to do it this way.

00:52:12.240 It doesn't seem like that was the case.

00:52:14.040 Right.

00:52:14.160 Exactly.

00:52:14.660 So all that being said, the embezzlement thing,

00:52:17.080 you can say, I don't think that that was a wise decision.

00:52:20.500 Timothy Keller at the time said like,

00:52:22.440 it's not fair because it's an artificial manipulation

00:52:25.580 of the New York Times bestseller list

00:52:27.580 that takes someone who may be a really good communicator,

00:52:31.360 but then is not as good of a writer.

00:52:33.200 and uh but then um misportrays mispresents him as a stellar author as a better author than he

00:52:40.240 actually is and so in that sense it's dishonest right right so um i know that uh you know some

00:52:45.840 people made that argument that that's a fine argument but notice that's not an argument of a

00:52:50.040 disqualifying moral failure of embezzlement right so there's the embezzlement thing um also like i

00:52:55.120 mentioned it's resigning not being removed resigning not being removed um and then the

00:53:00.280 multi-campus thing and all that, you know, in the context of Seattle, um, all these things together,

00:53:05.080 I think culminated in, um, and just during this time, remember what, what years this was,

00:53:11.320 this was in the height of, um, of leftism takeover, kind of the high watermark of the left

00:53:18.160 with feminism and wokeism is rising, all these kinds of things. Um, if, if Driscoll had started,

00:53:24.120 he started in 1999 with mars hill if he had started in 2015 and reached his zenith with

00:53:30.280 mars hill uh you know got through the dark years of 2020 through 2024 and it's now 2025 and he's

00:53:36.520 still on his not his second church but his first church his first rodeo uh he would have made it

00:53:41.100 through the storm and he would have been fine so part of it is also timing and some of the things

00:53:45.340 that um you guys you know who are like i'm based and i'm just standing my ground uh yeah uh praise

00:53:51.180 God for you, that's great. I would fall into that category. But we do need to recognize that

00:53:55.920 the Overton has shifted in our favor. Driscoll did not have that at the time in 2014. The Overton

00:54:03.220 was still moving. It was still moving in a landslide towards the left. So there's all these

00:54:08.720 factors of the timing, the context, the place, Seattle, the manner of church governance being

00:54:16.480 you know multi-campus all these things i think uh in large part are what contributed to why things

00:54:22.100 went down the way they did and it's helpful to see real disqualifications that have occurred

00:54:26.280 since that time so guys that he was on the conference circuit with since 2015 i think of

00:54:30.500 james mcdonald yeah unrepentant anger yeah ravi zacharias obviously he passed and we found out

00:54:35.700 the extent of his sin uh affairs and homes and hidden apartments uh steve lawson an affair we

00:54:42.020 have tons of different cases where we look at those we go yeah that's actually really clear

00:54:46.400 And then with this one, well, I think the authority of the church is the best one to go to.

00:54:50.200 It could go either way.

00:54:51.360 Like we said, some of you in the chat, I still think he's disqualified.

00:54:54.760 Okay, that's a fair view.

00:54:56.260 I don't think it quite rose to the level.

00:54:57.880 That's fine.

00:54:58.340 Okay, well, the local church would deal with that.

00:54:59.920 But in all these other cases, what real disqualification looks like, it's actually pretty obvious.

00:55:04.900 You don't actually have this kind of like back and forth.

00:55:07.280 Like with Steve Lawson, it's not like, I don't know.

00:55:10.020 Like, no, this is clear, unrepentant sin, and it is disqualifying.

00:55:14.780 You're done.

00:55:15.180 You're off the circuit.

00:55:15.980 Amen. And here's another thing that you shouldn't even have to say, but it's just people are

00:55:20.280 ridiculous these days. So it needs to be said. You do not get, whether it's a member or an elder 0.82

00:55:26.120 or a deacon, a member of the church or officer of the church, you do not get to render an official

00:55:32.640 ecclesiastical judgment retroactively. See, the elders of Mars Hill, they had their shot.

00:55:38.580 They had their shot. They said, to stay as a pastor, you have to submit yourself to this two-year

00:55:44.920 restoration process, which Driscoll saw as not repentance, but penance, and that he thought

00:55:52.120 was a coup, and that it was artificial and manufactured and unjustifiable. And so then

00:55:59.120 he resigned, said, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to go. Now, right then, here's my point,

00:56:03.840 right then, the elders of Mars Hill could have said, no, you're actually not allowed. We do not

00:56:08.520 receive right you a resignation takes both parties to agree upon one party renders a resignation the

00:56:15.320 other party has to receive it right um they received it they could have said no you're not

00:56:20.400 allowed to resign you must do this right you could say i don't want to be an elder anymore but you

00:56:25.280 must still even even if you do resign you must go through this two-year restoration process with us

00:56:30.860 in order for us to be able to uh receive your resignation on good terms aside other than that

00:56:37.400 you're not resigning you're going to be defraud you're going to be removed but the public record

00:56:42.500 matters and the public record was not that mark driscoll was defraud he was not removed um he

00:56:48.980 said they said you've got to do uh jump through these hoops dance monkey right the elders of

00:56:54.920 mars hill said dance monkey mark driscoll said i'm not going to dance but i know what you really

00:57:00.640 want you just want me out of the way right so here's my resignation and he called their bluff

00:57:05.600 and he called it correctly.

00:57:06.940 They didn't actually think that he was in disqualifying sin

00:57:09.020 because if they did, they would have been consistent

00:57:11.580 and not received his resignation.

00:57:13.380 They would have actually removed him.

00:57:15.540 But they got what they wanted

00:57:17.220 and it kind of showed their hand.

00:57:19.520 They're like, oh, he's going to leave.

00:57:21.420 We'll take it.

00:57:22.780 So what they didn't do is fire him.

00:57:25.780 What they didn't do is defrock him, remove him.

00:57:28.540 So the public record currently rests with Mark Driscoll

00:57:32.000 that he has never been removed from eldership

00:57:34.820 by any local ecclesiastical body of elders that's the deal right same with a member you can't have

00:57:42.340 a member who you talk to you know you correct or you disagree with whatever and then and they say

00:57:48.460 you know what pastor i just it's more trouble than it's worth i don't want to cause trouble for you

00:57:52.740 in the church and so i'm just going to go on my merry way and then they do something later on

00:57:57.200 in retrospect you know on the internet they post something or whatever and say something maybe about

00:58:01.860 the church that you don't like, that you don't think reflects positively about you. And so they

00:58:06.400 left the church two years ago, but then you're going to retroactively now excommunicate someone

00:58:12.480 who already resigned their membership and a resignation that you received, that you accept,

00:58:17.660 can't do it. You don't get to retroactively excommunicate. You also don't get to retroactively

00:58:22.360 defrock from the clergy. You don't get to do it. So they had their shot. The elders of Mars Hill

00:58:28.220 had their shot. They didn't take it. And I'll tell you why. They didn't take it because they

00:58:32.600 didn't believe it. If they believed it, they would have done it. But at the end of the day,

00:58:36.520 they did not believe that Mark Driscoll, for the safety and the security and the benefit of the

00:58:43.280 capital C church at large, that he needed to be defraud. That actually is not what they believed.

00:58:48.200 They said they believed it. But what they really believed is we don't like him and we want him

00:58:52.140 gone. And his resignation, that gets us what we want. And so they received his resignation.

00:58:58.220 and they did not remove him, and you don't get to do it retroactively.

00:59:02.000 So Driscoll has never actually been defrocked, and that record matters.

00:59:06.420 And a local church has called him to be their pastor.

00:59:09.120 Correct.

00:59:09.520 They've deemed him qualified.

00:59:10.580 He is ministering there.

00:59:12.100 It's amazing to me, Protestants hate the idea of a pope.

00:59:14.980 They don't like the idea of a pope.

00:59:16.480 That's over.

00:59:17.220 He's across the ocean, and he's kind of the vicar of Christ.

00:59:20.240 He's the representative of Christ on earth.

00:59:22.520 But they'll hate the idea of a pope and then turn around and go,

00:59:25.760 forget that man in the funny hat making decisions.

00:59:27.720 i will be making decisions on everyone who's qualified and disqualified they will literally

00:59:33.380 act like their own pope right and say well he's disqualified and uh and you have to submit to my

00:59:39.300 subjective judgment that's right for it whereas we would say with our our ecclesiology no the church

00:59:45.100 rendered it now we can certainly say hey i think that church got it wrong and that yeah you can

00:59:49.620 say you can say that but but you cannot dictate by fiat yes you're not you're not the vicar of

00:59:54.800 christ neither is the pope i don't get to sit up here infallibly and say the pope is not the victor

00:59:59.160 of christ and and you aren't either and so uh but that but that is worth noting not only we're

01:00:03.880 saying hey mark's current local church is vouching for him that's not our argument our argument is

01:00:10.680 that plus mark's previous church even they did not ultimately defrock him they could have and they

01:00:17.700 didn't those are important details let's go to our last commercial break we'll come back got a lot of

01:00:21.860 questions in the chat, remember, we are going to prioritize the super chats because we got a lot

01:00:25.700 today. If it's not a super chat, chances are we won't have time to deal with it. So if you really

01:00:30.640 want your question to be answered, then go ahead and send it as a super chat and we'll do our best

01:00:34.900 to get to it. Appreciate it. Let's go to our last commercial break. Hey friends, Grey Toad Tallow

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01:02:43.660 all right we are back some would say so back uh we're going to go ahead and deal with the chat now

01:03:02.080 i'm going to take two questions that are not super chats uh because they're really good and

01:03:08.040 i think it'd be helpful not just for these two individuals but all of our listeners at large

01:03:12.120 and then we're gonna spend the rest of our time

01:03:13.960 on the Super Chats, all right?

01:03:14.960 So here's the first one.

01:03:15.740 This comes from Cosmic Treason.

01:03:17.460 Cosmic Treason, I hope you're still here.

01:03:19.680 I hope you're listening.

01:03:20.620 I wanna say a couple of things to you personally.

01:03:23.760 Cosmic Treason did not just find us 15 minutes ago

01:03:26.520 as our X account started growing

01:03:28.920 and these kinds of things.

01:03:30.020 Cosmic Treason has been following us.

01:03:32.420 I believe that he's even financially supported us

01:03:35.540 in the past at times.

01:03:38.080 And he has had thoughtful encouragement

01:03:40.740 and thoughtful criticism all along the way.

01:03:44.540 And so I just want to say,

01:03:45.840 lately, he's struggling with us lately.

01:03:48.500 You know, I think just because, you know,

01:03:51.040 some of the positions and some of the direction

01:03:53.160 and those kinds of things he's struggling with.

01:03:54.540 But here's my point.

01:03:55.840 Somebody who just hops in, we've never seen you before. 0.96

01:03:58.640 And it's so obvious you're just, you're being a troll. 0.86

01:04:02.760 I have very little tolerance for that. 0.84

01:04:05.640 That's not true.

01:04:06.520 I have zero tolerance for that.

01:04:08.180 Zero tolerance, that's how little.

01:04:09.260 um that's not cosmic treason and so the reason why um i want to deal with and his question is

01:04:14.300 perfectly respectful but every now and then he'll have some comments where like like i think he had

01:04:18.220 a comment on the chat today where he's like joel like why you know like you've said some positive

01:04:22.820 things about nick fuentes uh you don't need him right right and just for the record i haven't

01:04:27.920 said positive things about nick fuentes because i think i need him um people said that of driscoll

01:04:32.320 too like right and they and well cosmic treason so he's like what like why why are you like he's

01:04:37.560 not gonna he's not gonna date you bro you know like yeah like a defense of mark driscoll right

01:04:42.120 because that's in our thumbnail for today's episode it's like like are you hoping i hope

01:04:45.500 he sees this bro you know what i mean right and and i understand that sentiment is like like what's

01:04:49.660 your angle here why are you doing this right why'd you do an episode a few months ago that said

01:04:53.320 uh nick fuentes is right and we're tired of pretending he's not now if you watch the episode

01:04:58.300 uh of course we flashed that out and said nick fuentes is infallible and right about everything

01:05:02.740 no we said he's right about these things right and we felt like give credit where credit is due

01:05:07.540 and then there's plenty of things that we think he's wrong about um same that we're doing with

01:05:11.120 driscoll but i but i do understand where cosmic treason and others are coming from so if this

01:05:16.220 you know if the shoe fits where right if this describes you and you're like joel like dude god

01:05:20.820 god's blessing you um you're a valuable voice you're you're not like uh fuentes you're not

01:05:26.440 catholic you're not 27 years old and single you're you're you're a pastor you you're you're a husband

01:05:31.980 you have five kids um you're not a grifter um i feel like driscoll is too much of a showman and

01:05:38.020 it seems too businessy at times and you're not like that so so don't don't hit your wagon to

01:05:44.220 some of these shooting stars that that that are not you know not our favorite you know not our

01:05:49.540 cup of tea it's shooting stars that we predict are gonna you know are gonna blow up in the next 15

01:05:55.000 minutes because because we so my point is i've seen some of that criticism over the last few

01:06:00.040 months. And even in the chat today, and I saw some from Cosmic Treason. And I just want you to know,

01:06:04.240 I interpret that as love. I really appreciate it. Because I don't interpret that as you being a

01:06:09.760 troll or just being disagreeable. I really think, and I appreciate you taking the time to communicate

01:06:16.140 it clearly. I interpret it. Hopefully I'm right about this. I think I am. You saying, Joel, I don't

01:06:22.000 like today's episode. And I don't like some of the positive things you've said about Fuentes and

01:06:27.180 the things you're saying positive about driscoll today um because i love you and i don't want you

01:06:32.800 to go down with the ship i don't want you attached to that i i actually think you're different than

01:06:37.520 those guys i've been watching your ministry i've seen how it's grown organically that you haven't

01:06:42.320 uh gotten onto new york times bestseller uh list by uh using church funds to buy you know 10 000

01:06:47.960 copies of your own book or what and um and so for you guys who are concerned about us and that's why

01:06:53.460 you're kind of pushing back because you actually love us. I just want to say, you know, sounds a

01:06:57.640 little gay, but I mean it from the bottom of my heart. We love you too. We appreciate that. Just

01:07:01.740 keep praying for us. Feel free to shoot us an email. We read those. We will consider your

01:07:07.000 criticism. Take it to heart. And the best thing you can do is just pray for us that God would give

01:07:11.280 us wisdom, that we would remain faithful and exercise discernment. And we appreciate it.

01:07:16.460 So this is from Cosmic Trees. And he said, so he said, in light of everything you said on today's

01:07:21.900 episode, it seems like, you know, the real question is this, does the Bible say that

01:07:27.640 disqualification in the case of elders, so I'm thinking of 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, but then also

01:07:33.700 the big one would be 1 Timothy 5, because that's where it says, if an elder persists in sin,

01:07:39.200 right, it says like, rebuke him in the presence of all that they may stand in fear, right, so you

01:07:44.980 don't, if an elder is in serious sin, he doesn't just get a private, you know, come to Jesus moment,

01:07:50.020 but it's a public rebuke, public correction, rebuke him in the presence of all, so that the

01:07:54.860 rest may see that example, so that they might be deterred from committing that same sin, stand in

01:08:00.000 fear. And it says, and if he persists in sin. So there's a public rebuke, not just for sin,

01:08:07.300 but a certain, by way of implication, a certain degree of sin, and then what's explicitly,

01:08:11.840 not just implicitly, but explicitly said, is a persistence in that sin. So if he persists

01:08:16.800 in a certain degree or kind of sin, then it merits a public rebuke. Even there, it doesn't

01:08:23.680 necessarily say that he is immediately removed, but a public rebuke. And then I take that to mean

01:08:29.000 that if he persists more, then he would be removed. So that's the 1 Timothy 5, which is

01:08:34.220 probably the most thorough biblical text in terms of rebuking, correcting, and implicitly removing

01:08:40.980 an elder. And then we have the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and also in Titus 1. So again,

01:08:45.600 the question from Cosmic Treason is, does the Bible say that disqualification is temporary

01:08:50.840 or always permanent? And the answer is, and I know you won't like it, but I really am trying to be,

01:08:55.680 not trying to be cute, but trying to be biblically faithful. Biblical faithfulness requires speaking

01:09:01.300 the hard things of the Bible, even when it goes against your own preference. But biblical

01:09:06.720 faithfulness also requires not speaking when the Bible doesn't speak. And here's the deal.

01:09:12.520 So the answer to the question is, biblically speaking, I don't know. The Bible doesn't say.

01:09:19.280 1 Timothy 5 doesn't say that. 1 Timothy 5 does not explicitly say, one way or the other,

01:09:24.540 that you rebuke the guy publicly if he's persistent in sin so that the rest would stand in fear,

01:09:29.480 and then implicitly, I think this is a safe, implicit assumption. If he continues in that,

01:09:34.720 then he would be removed. But then you'd have to go not just from explicitly, which is rebuke him

01:09:39.980 publicly if he persists in sin. Implicitly, if he continues to persist in sin, remove him. Then

01:09:45.300 you'd have to go implicitly of the implicitly. And if he's removed, he can never come back.

01:09:50.120 And the reality is that that's not just an implicit assumption from what's explicitly

01:09:56.080 stated, but that's another assumption from what already we're assuming implicitly the Bible just

01:10:02.520 doesn't say. I think that you could definitely argue there are for sure some, and it's a very

01:10:06.260 short list of sins that are permanently disqualifying. I think of, for example, if a

01:10:10.960 man was previously a Muslim and was married to multiple women and came to Christ, he would not

01:10:15.420 meet the qualification of being married to one woman because he should continue to care for her.

01:10:19.120 It is still, we talked about this in an episode, don't have time to go into it. But as long as

01:10:22.600 he's married to two women, he cannot meet that qualification. So on a permanent basis,

01:10:26.840 he is disqualified. That's right. It would be the same thing, I think, if one of his children

01:10:30.280 was a unbeliever. As long as that child persists in that rebellion, I think you would look at that 1.00

01:10:35.540 man and say per the qualifications you are on on an ongoing basis that's right is qualified i think

01:10:40.840 of crimes that are serious those would probably look i'm sorry in this life you've repented you're

01:10:46.340 walking in repentance this crime is so serious it had prison time attached robert morse you're a

01:10:50.840 sex would be an example a sex offender with a minor yep you you just you can't ever come back

01:10:56.040 that's right uh so yeah so if you're if you have more than one wife then um it's not just that

01:11:00.520 you're removed you you should never be installed right you don't meet the one wife one woman man

01:11:05.420 qualification in 1 Timothy 3. And then also a child. If you have an unbelieving child who is 0.86

01:11:13.480 a blasphemer, who's publicly rebellious, right? Because Titus and Timothy, it's different 0.71

01:11:19.720 variations, but they basically say the same thing. Two things. It's that his children must be

01:11:24.760 believing and submissive, right? So not just that they have a profession believing, but also

01:11:30.500 obedient, right? Because if they claim to be believing, but they're just living a public,

01:11:34.700 open life of debauchery in other words um it's not talking about um well this my my pastor

01:11:41.200 preached a sermon that i don't like so i'm now looking for an out i'm looking for an excuse

01:11:46.260 to defrock him and he has a two-year-old who in our family integrated worship services

01:11:52.520 occasionally disobeys and uh and his wife has to take him outside for discipline and so i'm

01:11:57.860 going to say that that's an unsubmissive child and therefore he doesn't meet the qualifications

01:12:01.380 of Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3.

01:12:03.120 All right, that's BS, guys.

01:12:05.380 Seriously, that's demonic.

01:12:07.360 That's wicked.

01:12:07.980 That's malicious.

01:12:08.880 Stop that.

01:12:09.840 Stop that.

01:12:11.660 What that qualification, in terms of the children,

01:12:13.780 what that's getting at, I believe implicitly,

01:12:16.300 but obviously implicitly, is older children.

01:12:20.960 So you want to know who should not be an elder

01:12:23.280 based off of that?

01:12:24.700 I've said it before.

01:12:25.660 I'll say it again.

01:12:26.420 Not Mark Driscoll, John Piper.

01:12:27.880 john piper has a son namely abraham piper who has over a million tiktok followers so it's not

01:12:35.380 just privately he no longer professes to be a christian and he's on tiktok but he kind of

01:12:40.080 adding to this seriously so he's gay right and he also has long hair so he's he's you know he's gay

01:12:44.820 twice but um it's not just that uh he has a son who no longer makes a profession of faith or

01:12:49.340 attends church but he keeps his head down doesn't want to bring public shame to his father you know

01:12:53.560 who is a notorious, you know, famous minister. No, Abraham Piper has used his father's credibility

01:13:01.340 and name in order to build his own platform, blaspheming Christianity. He is literally on

01:13:07.760 TikTok, not with, you know, 27 followers, but with over a million followers, daily recording videos, 0.86

01:13:14.120 telling young people that they should not be Christian and telling young people who are

01:13:18.280 Christian, how they can leave the Christian faith. And it's not something he did and then came to

01:13:25.020 repentance. No, he is currently doing. So John Piper should not be preaching in churches. He

01:13:31.380 should not be preaching at conferences. He should not be filling the office of elder.

01:13:36.900 I think, I actually think, objectively speaking, everybody who's, you know, chimping out about

01:13:42.060 Driscoll right now, for every tweet you put out about Driscoll and how he's permanently disqualified,

01:13:46.400 I need to see 10 tweets about John Piper.

01:13:49.640 Because Driscoll's kids are the ones that are adults following Christ.

01:13:53.080 Correct.

01:13:53.880 My point is there is a more airtight biblical case to make for John Piper's disqualification

01:13:59.560 than Driscoll's.

01:14:01.140 Go ahead.

01:14:01.600 I was just going to say, so on that continuum, we listed sins.

01:14:04.100 They're so serious.

01:14:05.040 You would just have to say, this man cannot hold the office of elder ever in his life.

01:14:08.920 Then let's take some of the, they're still sins, but they're not as destructive.

01:14:11.720 Say the love of money.

01:14:12.780 Say a man that's qualified in every other area says, hey,

01:14:15.260 the last year, I have idolized riches, and I'm going to step down from the office for a time.

01:14:21.020 So it's a real sin, and he really is disqualified. He's coming and saying, in my conscience,

01:14:24.620 I cannot. I love money too much. He steps away. He deals with it. Is he permanently disqualified

01:14:29.420 in the same way a Robert Jeffries is? No. So you have a continuum. Where certain sins fall

01:14:34.560 is a great place for the wisdom of the local church with the exact situation to make the

01:14:39.680 determination permanently to not right you lean towards not permanently generally speaking but 0.89

01:14:45.260 the church then decides this is too serious right man lived a secret gay lifestyle for multiple

01:14:49.920 years we're sorry you're permanently disqualified and to flesh it out just a little bit more

01:14:54.280 leaning leaning on the the bible for anyone who heard what west just said which i agree with but

01:14:58.820 feels like but that just feels still a little bit too arbitrary um is there any way you can use the

01:15:04.740 bible um well what i would say is um for these sins that may be permanently disqualifying uh if

01:15:12.640 you want to root it in a text the best way to probably do it is to look at these sins and then

01:15:18.020 somehow root them into a way that uh that that man because of this uh particular sin um can uh

01:15:25.640 indefinitely moving forward uh no longer meet one of the qualifications right right so for instance

01:15:31.660 um good reputation with outsiders right uh it's going to be real hard for a um a child molester

01:15:40.520 tried and found guilty in a court of law um sex offender to have a good reputation with outsiders

01:15:49.640 um and and it's not like oh in five years he he could like no that's always on his record um he

01:15:55.960 he will never be able to have a good reputation with outsiders even if repentant even if repentant

01:16:00.620 he's not going to be able to change the record. It's still who he is. And so that would be a good

01:16:07.100 example. Now, that said, some would look at that and say, well, Driscoll doesn't have a good

01:16:12.220 reputation with outsiders because he's viewed as harsh and quarrelsome. Well, here's the deal. The

01:16:18.520 same guy who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, namely the Apostle Paul, who wrote Titus

01:16:23.580 and Timothy and wrote these qualifications, one of which being must have a good reputation with

01:16:28.340 outsiders elsewhere in the book of Acts. It says that he was known by outsiders as one who stirs

01:16:35.940 up riots. There were thousands of people, arguably tens of thousands of people, outsiders, who they

01:16:44.560 viewed Paul in his reputation as being a quarrelsome, not just quarrelsome, like he likes to

01:16:51.720 get in arguments, but viewed him as he is a rioter. He goes town to town, stirring up riots.

01:17:00.680 And yet whatever Paul meant by must have a good reputation with outsiders, he did not mean,

01:17:05.980 I think we can assume this, he did not mean that he himself as an apostle of the Lord Jesus did

01:17:12.540 not meet that own qualification that he wrote. So the apostle Paul, on the one hand, is known by

01:17:18.160 thousands of people thousands of outsiders as one who stirs up riots and yet at the same time

01:17:23.300 says you can't be uh have a bad reputation with outsiders and we're meant to assume that he thinks

01:17:30.180 thousands of people thinking that he's a riot starter does not somehow breach that right

01:17:35.640 requirement because he's being faithful in that role so bad reputation for doing terrible things

01:17:40.540 is not the same as a bad reputation for being a faithful minister exactly so so uh what outsiders

01:17:45.680 think that you're a rioter outsiders think that you're quarrelsome you're mean at the abortion

01:17:49.820 mill when you preach against abortion it's called right yeah so if that's if that's all it means is

01:17:54.920 just enough people have said something and if so you have a bad reputation well then john macarthur

01:18:01.960 was disqualified right charles spurgeon was disqualified jesus was disqualified i mean think

01:18:07.500 it think it through guys think it through so it has to be outsider it's not just outsiders don't

01:18:12.100 like you because Jesus himself said that the world will hate you on account of me. If the student is

01:18:19.140 not above the teacher, the slave is not above the master, if the world hated me, then the world will

01:18:23.700 hate you, right? Jesus did not have a good reputation with many outsiders. Some of the

01:18:29.360 crowds loved him, but there were a lot of people who hated him. Enough people who hated him to

01:18:35.440 kill him, right? Spoiler alert, that's the end of the story if you haven't, you know, if you haven't

01:18:39.460 gotten to that part of the story yet. Jesus dies, and he's killed by outsiders, people outside of

01:18:45.300 his disciples who hate him, and yet Jesus, I believe, crazy, crazy position here. Joel Webin,

01:18:52.040 right? Mark it down. Joel Webin believes that Jesus is qualified to be an elder in Jesus's church.

01:18:59.760 Crazy, okay? So, Mark being known by outsiders as being mean does not objectively mean that he's

01:19:08.180 disqualified um robert moore's being known by outsiders having a bad reputation with outsiders

01:19:14.560 and then the follow-up question being for what reason and the answer to that being because he

01:19:18.860 diddled kids right can we see how that's a bit of a difference can we see how that's different come

01:19:25.820 on guys we can do this all right um so that's that's all i got for you unfortunately cosmic

01:19:29.900 treason i i don't think that there's a clear text in scripture that says this list of particular

01:19:35.360 sins permanently disqualifying, this other list temporally disqualifying. I would say that if

01:19:39.980 there's any biblical answer to the question other than prudence and wisdom, is it a particular sin

01:19:46.880 that puts you now in a state, a station of life to where you're no longer meeting the Titus 1 and

01:19:53.580 1 Timothy 3 qualifications? And in the case of Driscoll, I don't think that that's happened.

01:19:58.020 Okay, now let's do one more and then the super chat. So this is Thomas W. Edwards. Will you

01:20:02.600 read it, Wes? All right, I'll read it, and I'll take a first stab at it because it's actually a

01:20:05.540 pretty simple answer. So, all right, so Driscoll, good reputation. What about the requirements to

01:20:10.840 be gentle, Thomas asks. 1 Timothy 3, 2, reading the verse, therefore an overseer must be above

01:20:15.340 reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable,

01:20:19.520 able to teach, not a drunkard, this is the key phrase, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome,

01:20:25.480 and not a lover of money. I don't prefer the way, this is the ESV, I don't prefer the way the ESV

01:20:29.880 renders it. It's not bad though. It doesn't say not quarrelsome, but gentle, not violent. That is

01:20:36.440 getting closer to the point. It brings them together. So the two words that are used there

01:20:40.300 are the word for patience. And that has the idea it's of moderation and gentleness. So James,

01:20:45.620 Peter, Philippians also use the word. So let's take that first idea, patient. That is a good

01:20:49.720 thing. That is a fruit of the spirit, gentleness. The second one, the King James renders it as

01:20:54.320 brawler. And literally what it means is just not given to literally fist fighting. So what is not

01:20:59.460 being said here is every pastor must never take his voice above 60 decibels. He can never be

01:21:05.880 polemical in the pulpit. Think of the Presbyterians, for example, with the Revolutionary War. These

01:21:11.260 guys would preach sermons, then they would take off their robes, pick up their rifles, and go to

01:21:16.240 war. If that word not violent means they can never initiate, never defend, never participate in a

01:21:22.980 just war, then I mean... Then the Black Robe Regiment was disqualified. You have the Black Robe Regiment, 0.98

01:21:27.320 you have pastors in churches in the middle ages in europe that would be disqualified 0.65

01:21:31.500 what it's getting at there i really think is he has to be a patient man he cannot fly off the

01:21:36.660 handle he has to exercise all things in moderation he also must not be a guy who regularly punches

01:21:42.600 people in the face right saint nicholas hardest said he punched areas i was gonna say council i

01:21:47.340 was driscoll not disqualified right santa hardest hit right saint nicholas he did punch areas in

01:21:54.860 the face but even in that case it's one one instance right like the follow-up question would

01:22:01.620 be how how right you're marked by this it's a regular occurrence so my question to good old

01:22:07.660 saint nick would be how many guys have you punched in the face oh just the one who was the one arius

01:22:12.880 i would have punched him in the face all right let's go we're good yep but in driscoll's case

01:22:17.540 like do we have a half dozen testimonies of him physically punching people fighting

01:22:24.400 zero we have zero what are we talking about yep and so then as long as he's patient and self-controlled

01:22:30.200 per the verse that he says at least on this tenant and again you may disagree with us we've been very

01:22:34.080 clear hey i think he's disqualified not the end of the world we would maybe disagree not the end of

01:22:38.340 the world but per violence gentleness it would not seem there's any credible evidence to say

01:22:44.980 he's disqualified on that basis all right super chats here we go let's go to the top

01:22:49.800 we've got uh this dude rocks uh ten dollars he said joel and west and your best guess uh why do

01:22:57.700 you believe that god in his providence chose not to inspire new testament scripture like

01:23:02.680 the 10 commandments for things like infant baptism okay um or uh denomination schisms

01:23:10.340 i don't know that's a good question thoughts wish you did yeah there's definitely um a wisdom in the

01:23:18.920 new testament of what it lays down and doesn't so that christianity could operate how it has so it

01:23:23.840 doesn't give us an order of worship for instance of you must sing this number of songs and the

01:23:27.760 preaching should be this amount of time in different places in different times with different

01:23:31.200 people probably the closest we get is first corinthians 14 two or three should speak at most

01:23:35.940 and not simultaneously but one at a time so that the listeners can interpret what is saying yep so

01:23:41.260 it lays down first principles it's got to be orderly it cannot be raucous uh there should be 1.00

01:23:45.720 know speaking in tongues if there's no one there to interpret it is shameful for a woman to speak

01:23:49.560 in church also first corinthians 14 so there are some things that are explicit we know that um

01:23:55.080 we shouldn't have 12 that we shouldn't sit in a circle and everyone gets to take uh two minutes

01:24:00.400 to share nope two or three should speak in the entire church service and we know that those two 1.00

01:24:05.760 or three should be qualified men for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church first 1.00

01:24:10.740 Corinthians 14. Yep. So we do have some principles, but then as it relates to time, as it relates to 1.00

01:24:16.020 order of service, and where this really works well, and I'll just give this example, I think

01:24:20.020 it helps illustrate it. America was settled, to be honest, by Baptists and Methodist circuit

01:24:26.380 riders. It was settled by frontiersmen. These frontiersmen did not have clerical robes. These

01:24:31.760 frontiersmen probably didn't have psalters. Many of these guys were not trained in different

01:24:35.980 languages uh there was a certain adaptability needed to take the gospel to go out on the

01:24:41.260 frontier and settle and build churches all across america and they did a great job and i actually

01:24:46.140 think kind of the low church it should ideally be replaced by a higher church model as a town as a

01:24:52.580 civilization matures and gets older it has the resources for that but the bible in its wisdom

01:24:57.800 for some of these things does not come out and say and it should be exactly like right this and

01:25:02.940 you're right this providentially it was a massive blessing in the early settlement of the united

01:25:07.940 states when people are going west and it was an incredible blessing that a preacher

01:25:13.680 with nothing but a bible and a horse could ride town to town to town because there's christians

01:25:20.480 there that need the lord's day they need the preached word and they need the sacrament and

01:25:24.620 the beauty of the christian faith is it doesn't require an inordinate temple made of gold with

01:25:28.920 an altar and this and that and other like what does it take to do church it takes one biblically

01:25:33.480 qualified man technically if we get down to like what's the base requirements it's great to have a

01:25:37.600 plurality of elders i understand that's ideal but what does it take in terms of the minimal

01:25:41.860 requirements one biblically qualified man a bible bread and wine and if you don't have bread and

01:25:51.520 two or three yeah if you don't have water of christ and you don't have bread you're literally

01:25:54.900 in a desert and you're starving. You need two people, one man being qualified, a Bible, and

01:25:59.700 that simplicity. And even with the denominational schisms, let's be honest, Methodism is not going

01:26:05.300 to last until 2,500. So it's like, well, why in the Bible do we not see more clearly laid out,

01:26:11.460 so it'd be obvious these people are wrong, or these people are wrong? Well, we are going to

01:26:14.720 see that, but the Holy Spirit's going to work in history to do that. And so in some ways, we have

01:26:18.460 to be patient. At the end of the day, when Christ consummates his relationship with the church and

01:26:24.140 history ends, infant baptism or credo baptism, one of those is going to win out if you're

01:26:31.540 post-millennial. One of those is going to win out. So in time, the Spirit working through the church, 0.89

01:26:36.740 through the Bible, is going to help us arrive at those and will actually probably be more mature

01:26:41.520 for it. It's like, why don't we do this anymore? Well, we did this one for 2,000 years. I don't

01:26:46.900 know, whatever practice, Marian dogmas maybe. We disagree with them. Well, why don't we believe 0.75

01:26:51.340 this? Well, for 2,000 years we did. And as we labored and as we taught and preached and studied

01:26:57.360 and debated, we came to the conclusion that God did not say that. And that's not true. And so we

01:27:02.180 arrive, the church perfected with all of these things. Not that she was handed. Consensus over

01:27:07.820 centuries matters. Yep. She arrives with these truths. Not that she was handed on a silver

01:27:12.980 platter right at the beginning, but truths that she's worked through and knows deep in her bones.

01:27:17.360 Yep, well said. This dude rocks, follows it up with another $5 super chat. We appreciate that. He says, John Welnick, a.k.a. Charismatic Calvinist, is a friend of Mark Driscoll's and is very ecumenical. Plus, he's a Christian nationalist. You should talk to him sometime. I'll look into it and see if I can make a connection.

01:27:36.940 Then we have MB East, $5 super chat. Thank you. We appreciate it. They said, we have you, Pastor Joel, as a patriarchal reformed pastor. Implicitly, she's saying, so we don't need Driscoll. Driscoll, she continues, is a businessman. That's fine. He should do that instead.

01:27:54.660 What I would say in regards to that is, number one, thank you.

01:27:57.160 I appreciate your encouragement to me personally.

01:28:00.220 But just to kind of further validate what I said earlier,

01:28:04.280 this actually I think is a great case in point.

01:28:10.240 You want to build a YouTube channel?

01:28:14.040 Just pick big-name guys, bigger than you, and say negative things about them.

01:28:19.280 Right? That's how you do it.

01:28:20.960 Honestly, that's how you do it.

01:28:22.180 Be a discernment minister.

01:28:23.340 you want to build a youtube channel quick with very little substance uh just be a discernment

01:28:30.660 minister and and that's how that's how you justify it you say well what i'm doing isn't gossip and

01:28:35.680 what i'm doing isn't tearing down and what i'm doing isn't sowing division it's discernment

01:28:40.160 right so i'm a discernment minister and every thumbnail and every title of every video i do

01:28:45.280 just happens to be coincidentally some of the biggest names that people would recognize

01:28:50.580 with the most, you know, the most views, the most notoriety, and then me telling you why they're bad

01:28:56.700 and you should listen to me instead. That's a great way to build a YouTube channel. You know

01:29:01.460 what's not? Saying, hey, this other guy that a lot of people currently think is disqualified,

01:29:07.420 who's actually really gifted in a lot of ways and a great communicator. And, but, you know,

01:29:12.760 one of the reasons he's not even bigger than he already is, is because a lot of people think he's

01:29:17.020 disqualified um well i'm gonna go do a whole episode defending him and telling you why i think

01:29:24.520 he has some faults but he's ultimately not disqualified um so that you know some of the

01:29:29.400 people who currently listen to me might start listening to him instead that's not how you

01:29:34.420 build a platform right so then why do you do it because it's right so i appreciate the comment

01:29:40.520 because the first half of the comment is i know what you're doing you're trying to encourage me

01:29:44.400 and I appreciate that. It really means a lot. You know, we have you, Pastor Joel, as a patriarchal

01:29:48.600 reformed pastor. We have you as an example. We have you as a teacher. We have you as a public

01:29:53.780 influence, and you're good. Thank you for saying that. That's very kind. But then you followed it

01:29:58.540 up by saying, Driscoll is a businessman, right? He's good in business, but he's not a pastor,

01:30:03.180 and so he shouldn't be a pastor. He should do business instead. For me, if I was seeking to

01:30:08.720 just, you know, to be self-serving, I would say, so true, queen. It looks, you know, it's a picture

01:30:13.640 of female in the profile. So I'll assume it's a woman. So true, Queen. Driscoll should just do

01:30:19.260 business and he should stop preaching so that my competition would be whittled down and I can build

01:30:25.100 my own platform. But I don't think that that's fair. I don't think it's true. There are plenty

01:30:30.940 of guys who I actually do believe are disqualified. And when it comes up and it's relevant, we'll

01:30:37.900 point it out. Um, but in the case of Driscoll, um, I, I, I'm not listening to Driscoll all the time

01:30:45.220 because, you know, I, I, I think he's a great communicator, but it's, it's pretty, you know,

01:30:51.900 it's pretty generic and kind of, um, just simple, kind of more milk, you know, rather than meat for,

01:30:58.200 uh, for a lot of normie evangelicals. So I would prefer to listen to somebody else who's

01:31:02.640 little, you know, little deeper, a little, a little more thoughtful, a little bit more,

01:31:06.280 maybe classically trained you know blah blah blah um so i i can say from a preference uh

01:31:12.500 disposition that i don't really listen to driscoll and for a lot of our audience

01:31:17.240 um you're probably going to prefer us if you like us you're probably you know you would listen to

01:31:21.380 driscoll and be like you know it's it's kind of uh he's a good communicator i see what you're

01:31:25.800 saying joel you know he's gifted but it's pretty simple and i think i'll stick with joel weapon

01:31:29.500 uh that's fine uh but the purpose of the episode is to say uh not to say driscoll's the best thing

01:31:35.000 sense sliced bread or he's the most theologically savvy person in the world currently alive today

01:31:40.540 that's not the purpose of the episode the purpose of the episode is to say driscoll's making a

01:31:44.220 comeback he's now been invited to at least a somewhat reformed conference um in light of that

01:31:50.520 a bunch of reformed guys are saying he's disqualified and i personally don't believe

01:31:54.640 that's true yeah and he's moving in circles that we're not in so he helped co-host the tp usa show

01:31:59.560 shortly after charlie kirk was shot he's been to the white house and prayed with donald trump and

01:32:04.220 what we're kind of saying is all right so this guy is here and he's influential and he's patriarchal

01:32:08.700 and he's orthodox and when you go and look at the tape it's actually very likely that he was not

01:32:13.920 biblically disqualified and so you have a guy that was not defrocked but he resigned from a church

01:32:19.020 that is pastoring in good faith a church over here he's a faithful husband faithful family man

01:32:23.880 his children are turning out okay and he has significant influence invitations to the white

01:32:28.380 house guys here's the deal like you can purity spiral and he's still disqualified from 11 years

01:32:34.360 ago and you can purity that's not what mb east is but no no you're not but some guys are yep and

01:32:40.400 here's the deal you can do that uh but can we just all just be honest for a moment say

01:32:44.520 who would you rather shaking hands with donald trump and in the oval office giving him um uh

01:32:50.780 spiritual advice paula white or mark driscoll and i understand you know that some guys who

01:32:56.480 neither okay well but neither is not an option right it will be someone and and honestly i i'm

01:33:04.220 not going to i'm not going to shoot you know fire on my own troops i'm not going to shoot uh one of

01:33:11.980 the the best options that we currently have would i like an even better option would i prefer it to

01:33:17.260 be uh mark driscoll or uh brian silvey sure brian silvey but guess what uh brian silvey and much to

01:33:25.520 my own chagrin i don't know why but i you know i think they're crazy but i still haven't gotten

01:33:28.960 the personal phone call yet you know i'd like to be joel webin but it's not it's not i'm not being

01:33:34.660 invited to the white house maybe one day i will uh but as of now i'm not brian survey's not right

01:33:39.700 stephen wolf is not uh driscoll is and of the guys who are getting invited to the white house

01:33:44.780 i think we should be able to admit that uh that list it's pretty pathetic right it's pretty 0.98

01:33:51.640 pathetic. Paula White is the chief spiritual advisor. It's a pretty pathetic list. And so on 0.98

01:33:56.160 that pathetic list, Driscoll is a giant. And you might say, well, he's only a giant because by 0.99

01:34:01.420 comparison, he's standing next to a bunch of spiritual midgets. And I would say, so true king, 0.99

01:34:06.420 but like, let's put our best man forward. And if, if he's the best, and I think he is in these

01:34:12.720 circles, one of the best in these circles, getting these kinds of invitations, let's not take out our

01:34:18.420 best guy and until until we're sitting on a smorgasbord of alternatives who have risen to

01:34:24.520 that stature who they are now in the oval office like if if if we get to the point where donald

01:34:30.720 trump is surrounded by uh brian sauve and andrew isker and joel webbin and stephen wolf and mark

01:34:37.000 driscoll then then yes in a you know when driscoll goes out of that room it's the five of us it's me

01:34:43.020 It's Sauve, it's Wolf, it's Isker, and it's Driscoll in the Oval Office.

01:34:47.380 I give you my word that when Driscoll goes out of the Oval Office to use the restroom,

01:34:51.720 the four of us will tell Trump, don't listen to him.

01:34:55.300 Listen to us instead.

01:34:56.580 But we are nowhere near that.

01:34:58.540 So for now, Driscoll, may God enlarge his territory.

01:35:03.520 Yeah. 0.64

01:35:04.260 And we need masculinity. 1.00

01:35:05.680 We do.

01:35:06.000 And to be counter signaling Driscoll in 2025, right?

01:35:11.080 as he's being invited to talk to trump or invited to tp usa to be counter signaling driscoll in 2025 0.95

01:35:17.500 is um it is simply retarded don't do it be better be smarter be shrewd be wise don't don't do it 0.83

01:35:27.220 okay all right answers in genesis sent 50 very kind thank you so much for your support good 0.79

01:35:33.540 question here uh they i'm guessing it's a him but already your haters took the chum bait headline

01:35:38.880 i get your analysis and it's really good appreciate that but driscoll is n-a-r and that

01:35:43.240 stands for new apostolic reformation charismatic and swings at reform pastors as heretics regularly

01:35:48.580 i get you guys but the rest of the world is learning love you i would quibble i i appreciate

01:35:54.320 the comment there was very charitable that's great pushback like hey i know what you're doing i think

01:35:58.340 these areas like you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot let me say this real quick you push

01:36:02.620 back with 50 and we will appreciate that pushback i don't care if it's the meanest now um

01:36:08.560 So charismatic, yes, he is.

01:36:10.360 We are not charismatic.

01:36:11.460 So we have that difference there. 0.95

01:36:13.340 N-A-R, New Apostolic Reformation, 0.89

01:36:15.420 this would be more your Bethel, 0.96

01:36:16.880 your International House of Prayer.

01:36:19.460 Would that be?

01:36:19.820 IHOP would be one of the examples of it.

01:36:21.940 This movement more specifically believes

01:36:23.440 that there are actual modern apostles today.

01:36:25.640 So it's not just you had the 12 original apostles

01:36:27.560 and Paul, but you have modern ones today.

01:36:30.960 You have your Bill Johnsons at Bethel.

01:36:32.940 And Driscoll's not really a part of that.

01:36:35.000 So he is not like saying,

01:36:36.420 hey, and Paul O'White's a new apostle.

01:36:37.860 he of course would oppose her being in the pulpit and so yeah he certainly has some overlap because

01:36:43.280 he's charismatic his church that's there in arizona trinity they're a charismatic church and so they're

01:36:47.900 going to have some overlap with the type of people that are in the nar but formally as a doctrine

01:36:52.540 he's not big on that right and then the second part he's certainly not word of faith nope and a

01:36:57.020 lot of those guys bill johnson those guys they are word of faith and driscoll's not but he is

01:37:01.120 charismatic he's denying that and it says swings that reform pastors as heretics regularly i wasn't

01:37:06.480 able to find nor am i aware of him calling reformed pastors heretics for just being reformed i i saw

01:37:12.300 one clip i think it was early on when understandably he was angry within the i know the one

01:37:17.760 you're referencing so it was within the first couple years uh where he felt like you know he

01:37:22.080 was ostracized and canceled and all by the reformed world largely and um and you know so he's

01:37:28.420 frustrated and those kinds of things and he kind of you know goes off a little bit um but but i

01:37:33.000 haven't the the regularly piece is what i would quibble with um that he's regularly doing this

01:37:37.340 i i maybe maybe he is if so feel free answers in scripture to uh to email us and uh and and just

01:37:44.360 send us if it's regularly then i i would appreciate if you sent me you know like maybe maybe 10

01:37:49.740 different clips like 10 links uh to clips uh in the last you know couple years um but uh and and

01:37:56.680 and then i'll i'll come on and and correct it and and say i was wrong but i i'd be surprised if you

01:38:02.060 can find uh 10 examples in the last couple years and if you can't uh then i just want to say

01:38:07.420 regularly i would say he has done this um and if it's something that he merely has done i wish he

01:38:13.320 didn't i'm with you on that i wish he didn't uh but i i just want to say regularly as though it's

01:38:18.280 a continual pattern yeah in 2019 he went on a podcast and he said uh you know calvinism is for

01:38:23.700 guys that have a dad complex their dad wasn't around and so they've made god out to be this

01:38:27.980 distant father not the greatest take not the greatest take also kind of true i mean like

01:38:33.220 you know so i don't know about the dad complex but i would say this uh i've said this before

01:38:38.340 as a guy who's reformed i've said um uh calvinists not so much the calvinists themselves but calvinist

01:38:45.040 ministers um almost 100 of the time now i say almost because i'd like to think that i personally

01:38:52.940 don't fall into this category myself but um at a pretty high i'm talking like 80 90 percent of the

01:38:58.800 time calvinist ministers are guys who were scrawny small short and weak and got beat up on the

01:39:06.740 playground and uh but they had intellect and they gravitated later in life in adulthood uh towards

01:39:13.360 a position where their intellect served them because calvin calvinist doctrine is a little

01:39:17.360 bit more heady you know and um and so they gravitated towards a spiritual position where

01:39:23.600 their intellect would cause them to excel so that all of a sudden they now would have authority and

01:39:29.660 uh and i have seen some of those guys it does seem like at times um like they're they're just

01:39:35.160 kind of living out their vengeance personal vengeance story on all the vicarious bullies

01:39:43.260 who once upon a time beat them up on the playground in fifth grade like so it's like i'm i'm a nerdy

01:39:48.800 calvinist pastor but i'm the pastor now i'm in charge now you see this i'm the captain now i

01:39:55.280 memorized west and there's some confession right and there's some blue collar salt of the earth

01:39:59.640 works with his hands construction worker at church who thinks that um that adolf hitler

01:40:05.300 uh was you know maybe not the last christian prince but also not a monster and the worst

01:40:10.540 person who's ever lived and uh but he really his physique and just his build he really looks like

01:40:17.060 that guy who back in fifth grade you know beat me up and took my lunch money and so i'm going to now

01:40:23.200 because i have the authority excommunicate him i do see that within calvinism within calvinist

01:40:27.960 ministers so driscoll was saying that calvinism as a doctrine not because there's something

01:40:32.140 inherently wrong with it but but it does tend to kind of attract like a magnet a particular type

01:40:38.800 of man with a particular build, a particular disposition, a particular personality, and that

01:40:44.020 that guy tends to be less practical, less masculine, more nerdy, and in some cases effeminate, and he

01:40:52.120 uses that pastoral authority in less than ideal ways than I would say I agree with Driscoll. Now,

01:40:58.400 I remember the clip. Did he go further than that? Yes, he did. Do I appreciate the fact that he went

01:41:04.140 further than that no i don't is it a regular pattern that he's doing all the time not that

01:41:09.140 i've seen fair enough all right uh let's finish it up uh joel do you think that mark driscoll was

01:41:14.820 told things by the holy spirit about his about abuse of his congregants and other revelations

01:41:20.080 and mark this is from mark fuentes he sent five dollars very kind of you mark not nick fuentes

01:41:24.040 mark fuentes um i don't quite understand the the question there was a time i think it was still at

01:41:31.000 mars hill and he said during a sermon that uh the holy spirit would give him visions of congregants

01:41:36.380 that were fornicating or doing things i remember that yep it was weird i don't to be honest i don't

01:41:41.280 know what to think of it yeah i don't think so tend towards no i i tend towards no this is what

01:41:45.380 i think uh with a lot of charismatic guys i used to be charismatic i used to be you know like i was

01:41:49.920 i was raised in a vineyard church um that that was my my childhood and background um this is what

01:41:55.220 i've come to in hindsight you know um in adulthood at this point i've been um in the cessationist

01:42:01.700 camp not autistic cessationist but like god still heals but i don't believe in healers right i don't

01:42:06.500 think we're passing around handkerchiefs you know in shadows that you know like like it's not like

01:42:10.460 the apostles uh but i do think that that um god in his sovereignty he's not he's not obligated to

01:42:15.800 but at times he does heal and he does so when the church prays it so it's not a healer but

01:42:20.580 he leans at times under the sovereignty of God. So we pray for healing in our church,

01:42:25.140 those kinds of things. But in terms of extra biblical revelation, and it truly being a

01:42:29.260 revelation from God, a new revelation, I stand firmly against new revelation. So what I've

01:42:37.040 noticed from my personal experience, in hindsight, is that certain things that back in the day I

01:42:42.180 would have chalked up as a word of knowledge or a word of wisdom or, you know, under this larger

01:42:46.580 banner of a lowercase p prophetic um i realize now that a lot of those guys including even myself

01:42:55.000 um really were just unique guys who had some some uh what i now look at it wasn't supernatural but

01:43:02.960 just some natural gifting like like okay so like there are atheists who are fbi interrogators

01:43:10.200 they're not even christian they don't like they don't have um uh gifts of the spirit because they

01:43:17.120 don't have the spirit right they're not saved they're they're atheist and yet they're able to

01:43:21.720 sit in a room with somebody who speaks another language and watching their body behavior you

01:43:27.820 know and patterns and these kinds of things are able to pick up on certain social cues and this

01:43:32.040 and that and and conclude certain things that are just amazing yeah right there are magicians you

01:43:38.460 know who work a crowd and they ask certain questions are able to you know ascertain from

01:43:43.480 the answer to this and that that implies a probability of that above um so my point is i

01:43:48.780 think that there really are a lot of practical explanations to these things um and so what i

01:43:53.940 would say with driscoll being as high caliber of a man as he is he just he really is just naturally

01:43:58.780 gifted really naturally gifted um i would say so i'm not saying oh this was from satan or it was

01:44:04.700 demonic um and i'm also not saying oh uh you know he was just shooting in the dark and 99 percent of

01:44:11.180 the time he was wrong my guess is that in pastoral settings with counseling that driscoll being a

01:44:16.360 high caliber man and and spending hours and hours and hours a day with people right um probably was

01:44:22.880 picking up on some things naturally in the world that god made god remember god made a world where

01:44:29.200 an interrogator could pick up on social cues and certain patterns and movement of the hands or

01:44:33.820 looking to the left when you answer a question, or this or that, blinking of the eyes, and be able

01:44:38.100 to ascertain certain things. That's God's world that he made, right? So this isn't demonic

01:44:42.500 spirits, you know, whatever. I think that Driscoll is naturally gifted enough, coupled with years of

01:44:47.760 experience in the counseling room, these kinds of meetings, and dealing with people, that he was

01:44:53.380 just able to naturally pick up on a lot of things, and probably had a high accuracy rate with some of

01:45:00.160 his conclusions and insights. And because his theological framework is charismatic,

01:45:06.600 he placed those kinds of experiences underneath the lowercase p prophecy label. But I would not

01:45:13.940 call that prophecy. So that's how I would answer it. Okay, is that it? Final super chat. This dude

01:45:19.500 rocks, gave another $10. Very kind. What is God saying in his story? So he's getting back to our

01:45:24.180 earlier kind of answer that sometimes God works through the church overcoming obstacles, learning,

01:45:31.140 maturing. So he says, what is God saying in his story by allowing angels and humans to sin by

01:45:35.480 begetting Nephilim after the fall? And why did he erase evidence of their existence globally from

01:45:40.040 historians outside of scripture? Well, I don't think he erased the evidence. I think the

01:45:43.840 Smithsonian did that. Dude, I am a Nephilim appreciator. You're a Nephilim respecter. 0.55

01:45:49.640 yeah i i now i don't appreciate nor respect them in the literal sense i you know i think 0.91

01:45:54.280 they're terrible and wicked and evil but um i absolutely believe uh that nephilim was not just

01:45:58.920 you know the line of seth you know marrying that you know the daughters of cain um i i really i

01:46:04.020 really do i really do believe in uh fallen angels um and seeing that the daughters of men were

01:46:10.580 beautiful um took them as wives and uh created a hybrid you know humanoid uh line of nephilim and

01:46:18.620 And then furthering from the Nephilim, I think that's where you get giants.

01:46:21.740 I think that Goliath was actually, I don't think he was 6'6".

01:46:24.540 I think he was 9'6". 0.90

01:46:25.960 It's the Hebrew cubit versus whatever. 0.93

01:46:29.040 So I think Goliath was 9 feet tall with some change. 0.99

01:46:33.420 And I think that he was a small giant descending from the line of Anak. 1.00

01:46:37.080 And I think they got smaller and smaller the further they removed from their Nephilim fathers. 1.00

01:46:41.900 But I think that giants were real.

01:46:44.400 I think some of those giants could have been 15 feet tall, maybe even taller.

01:46:47.840 as tall as uh as tall as um what is it uh it's a tree amos i believe chapter two or chapter three

01:46:54.800 cedars cedars as tall as cedars and that region if you just google it you have to look at that

01:46:59.240 region the time it's like like 40 feet uh now i understand i understand metaphor um and west is

01:47:06.800 sitting over here just cringing right now but i'm i'm gonna go literal on that one i believe in 40

01:47:11.540 feet giant uh why because i believe the bible is that the only reason no because it's also freaking

01:47:16.120 cool like i admit it's freaking cool i but i think it's true i believe in unicorns i believe in

01:47:21.100 dragons i believe in fairies the fey folk i believe in it i believe i believe in mermaids and i've

01:47:27.300 gotten a lot of flack but i'm still gonna go i'm with you on the dragons piece for sure okay that

01:47:31.060 one's easy but yeah i i believe in all this stuff i believe in a crazy world that god made um that

01:47:36.040 being said um i don't think that god wiped out if you're alluding to god sovereignly doing it

01:47:40.560 through the flood no i i don't think that uh that god wiped out all the nephilim uh because we know

01:47:45.620 that they were on the earth before and after the flood the bible explicitly says that numbers

01:47:49.860 chapter 13 talks about nephilim being among um the citizens of jericho you know that joshua has to

01:47:55.360 face and then we know goliath i think was a descendant of uh nephilim you know and and that's

01:48:00.180 even you know centuries after joshua all the way down now to david um so i i think that uh giants

01:48:05.960 being you know descendants of nephilim and then the nephilim themselves being the the first

01:48:10.140 generation of a fallen angel with a human wife, their offspring. I think that this was before the

01:48:16.740 flood. I think it was also after the flood. I don't think that God erased all the evidence

01:48:20.240 in some supernatural constant way. I think that the evidence was still periodically found by

01:48:25.560 people. I think that this is part of Roman and Greek mythology and folklore where, you know,

01:48:31.200 people, you know, like stories of like Hercules. So Hercules, he's like, he's part son of the gods,

01:48:36.920 but he also is a mortal, you know, so he's part human, part God. So he's not a God. He's not a

01:48:41.640 human. He's a demigod, like part lowercase g God, part human. Does the Bible have a category for 0.95

01:48:47.140 that? Yes. Nephilim. I think Hercules was a Nephilim. I think that he was, um, he was

01:48:51.420 supernaturally strong. I think he was probably really big. And, uh, and he went around killing

01:48:56.040 dragons and monsters. Um, I, I think that Hercules was, I actually think, yes, I think things were

01:49:01.440 embellished, you know, like, uh, history becomes myth myth becomes legend. I understand the

01:49:06.040 telephone game and how it goes. And so I think that certain pieces that we have today are

01:49:09.460 embellished. But I think that there is truth to some of these things, going and exploring and

01:49:13.500 finding deserted islands where there's a cyclops that lives in a cave. How do you account for that?

01:49:17.840 I think it was a giant, a descendant of the Nephilim that already had one eye removed or

01:49:21.720 because these giants in Nephilim, they wanted to keep their bloodline pure, you know, so that they

01:49:25.760 wouldn't get smaller over time. They would maintain their power. I think there was a lot of

01:49:29.020 intermarriage. And so I think they would maintain their height and stature and strength,

01:49:33.180 but there would be certain birth defects, like maybe one eye instead of two. Yeah, I think this

01:49:37.820 stuff is real, guys. I know it's wacky. I think it's real. But the point is, I don't think that

01:49:42.100 cataclysmically in God's providence, in the flood, that all the evidence was wiped away.

01:49:48.240 The Nephilim were there before the flood and after the flood. And I think the evidence of

01:49:52.080 Nephilim and their sons and daughters, giants, was found and has been found in various places

01:49:56.980 all over the world, including America. Look it up. The burial mounds in America, lots of giants

01:50:02.740 found even as late as the early 1900s, and not just, you know, hey, this is a giant. He's seven

01:50:10.020 feet tall. People say, oh, we still have giants, Joel. They're called NBA players. No, no, no. I'm

01:50:14.020 not talking about people who are six foot 10. I'm talking about nine feet, 10 feet, and even 15 to

01:50:19.160 18 feet. There are reports. You can look at the newspaper clippings. They're hard to find, but you

01:50:23.760 can find newspaper clippings from the 1920s in America, and especially the late 1800s, 1880s,

01:50:30.060 1890s of a farmer was digging a well and discovers 18-foot human skeleton 10 feet under the ground

01:50:39.220 in his backyard. And you can just say it's all BS, that's fine. Or you can also say that secularism

01:50:45.380 hates God, doesn't want anything that would validate the biblical worldview, like a flood

01:50:50.300 or like giants or any of these kinds of things, and that this was common knowledge actually

01:50:55.140 for a lot of people early on

01:50:57.300 and they erased the evidence.

01:50:59.100 They incinerated giant bones

01:51:01.000 with the Smithsonian 0.59

01:51:02.340 that is God-hating and leftist

01:51:03.940 and macroevolution,

01:51:06.020 all these kind of things.

01:51:07.100 And that is my position.

01:51:09.840 Unhinged, albeit.

01:51:12.040 But it is my position.

01:51:13.900 All right.

01:51:14.940 And my kids love it.

01:51:16.580 I have five little kids,

01:51:18.000 seven years old, six years old,

01:51:20.060 four, three, and zero.

01:51:22.340 And they brag at their Christian school. 0.68

01:51:24.740 they're like yeah my dad believes in fairies and it's awesome so there you go last one nine dollars

01:51:30.860 just bottom of the ninth incredible you were wrapping up your last sentence it came in but

01:51:35.120 we want to honor it victor trina ten ten dollars thank you victor under what circumstances would

01:51:39.740 a dui conviction disqualify an officer of the church uh i would say like is it does happen

01:51:48.620 that a man has two beers which i don't think rises to the level of drunkenness and sin right

01:51:52.660 And it is right there at the legal threshold, 0.08.

01:51:55.900 He doesn't get in an accident.

01:51:56.860 He was driving safely, but he got pulled over.

01:51:59.280 And technically the breathalyzer, you know, like maybe he weighs 130 pounds, you know,

01:52:04.620 instead of, you know, 300 pounds, like most ministers.

01:52:09.500 Yeah, it's like you've got 130, you've got 300.

01:52:12.620 Well, sir, people say it's because of substance abuse.

01:52:15.800 But the real reason I'm disqualified is because I'm not a fat lard like most pastors in the pulpit today.

01:52:20.420 You're right.

01:52:21.220 And even then it would be a breach of wisdom.

01:52:22.660 If you're 130 pounds, don't drink three whiskeys.

01:52:25.520 So even there, it's still, you don't just get a DUI

01:52:27.880 because you had a sip of wine.

01:52:29.820 We've been on this podcast for two hours

01:52:31.480 and I am still sipping my one and only whiskey.

01:52:34.800 Incredible.

01:52:35.440 Incredible.

01:52:36.080 Yep.

01:52:36.560 Just so much self-control being exuded.

01:52:38.720 Right, that would not get you a DUI.

01:52:40.320 So it would be some level of a breach of wisdom.

01:52:42.120 No, I did pour it to the top of the rim.

01:52:45.060 I've only had six ounces.

01:52:46.780 So same thing as permanently disqualified.

01:52:49.180 There's a continuum.

01:52:49.960 Are we literally talking about,

01:52:51.180 man this dude literally had two beers whatever it would be he got nailed he wasn't driving

01:52:56.500 erratically he didn't cause an accident he doesn't even drink every week right to all the way over

01:53:00.540 here oh snap uh he's been drinking on the job came home from work hit another car where does

01:53:05.980 he fall on it swerving all over the place absolutely reckless kids in the back seat like

01:53:10.340 disqualified he's given too much wine he's not above reproach even that even that um that then

01:53:15.960 it goes to the question is it permanent disqualification sure and i i don't think it is

01:53:20.580 i i would agree i don't think it is wouldn't think so either um so yeah so the answer to it

01:53:24.660 uh unfortunately this is the answer to a lot of these questions is prudence uh prudence is part

01:53:30.480 of it okay they keep coming in last one last one for real swinters uh uh 07 thoughts on the

01:53:36.680 possibility of baron trump taking a top position board position at tiktok uh yeah sure i think

01:53:43.300 It's being floated.

01:53:44.420 I wonder if you're asking about the possibility of it.

01:53:46.360 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:53:47.200 Oh, the likelihood of it happening.

01:53:49.100 Okay, sure, in terms of, yeah, I would be for that.

01:53:52.120 Will it happen?

01:53:53.760 You know what?

01:53:54.440 We live in a crazy world.

01:53:55.420 I put it at a 50-50.

01:53:57.000 I can see it. 0.98

01:53:57.760 I cannot see it.

01:53:58.600 That's it.

01:53:59.060 That's all we got for today.

01:54:00.020 Thank you guys for tuning in.

01:54:00.920 We've got a prerecorded episode, but it is a banger for Wednesday at 3 p.m. Central Time.

01:54:05.680 It'll be broadcast live on both YouTube and on X.

01:54:09.780 Make sure to follow us on X.

01:54:11.420 the handle is at right response m m as in ministries at right response m and if you're

01:54:16.200 on youtube right now do us a huge favor subscribe and click the bell it's not enough to subscribe

01:54:20.600 click the bell as well uh it'll be uh wednesday at 3 p.m central time the title of the episode is

01:54:26.440 what is fascism what is fascism oh snap they're going there we are going there uh so we're uh

01:54:33.660 dealing with fascism uh episode that's been in the making for quite some time it's a long time

01:54:37.720 coming. It's going to be a great episode. And then we're going to run it back on Friday because

01:54:42.420 we've got different things going on. So on Friday, we are going to do a rerun of an episode. We've

01:54:48.440 only aired once. It was somewhat recent, like maybe at this point, two months ago, but got a

01:54:53.260 lot of attention, negative attention, but also a lot of positive attention. And so that episode

01:54:58.180 is infamously titled The Four Pillars, The Four Pillars, and The Four Pillars being explicitly

01:55:06.420 Christian, patriarchal, biblical patriarchy, race realism, and anti-Zionism. Four pillars that we

01:55:15.380 think are integral to the new Christian right that we think God sovereignly and providentially

01:55:21.460 is using in many ways. So that episode of defining what does it look like, this new Christian right,

01:55:27.180 and what are some of the marking characteristics of this new movement that the Lord is using? 0.73

01:55:31.840 Well, it's unapologetically explicitly Christian. It's also unapologetically patriarchal. It is not

01:55:39.200 race essentialist or race determinist, but a race realism. And then also lastly, anti-Zionist. 0.79

01:55:48.420 And so that's going to be a rerun on Friday at 3 p.m. So our schedule is three episodes every

01:55:55.180 single week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 3 p.m. Central Time. Today is Monday. Wednesday,

01:55:59.760 we've got fresh content for you. What is fascism? And then Friday, we've got one of our best

01:56:04.940 episodes we've ever done, rerun the four pillars. All right. So stay tuned this week. And we're

01:56:11.340 excited. We'll see you on Wednesday. God bless.

The NXR Podcast - October 14, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - A Defense Of Mark Driscoll

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