00:07:54.920It's not just as I talked about, this is a global phenomenon right now.
00:07:59.540um, that, that things are shifting. So, um, I want to get, we've got this list of 10 names and
00:08:05.140I want to get your input on each of them. But before we start, I know I just said a lot. Do
00:08:09.220you have any thoughts? No, I mean, other than I really see what you're talking about really
00:08:14.520clearly. Um, it's been interesting to sort of watch the deck shuffle. And as someone who kind
00:08:21.060of became a Christian in my early twenties, a lot of these are guys I came up with that I,
00:08:25.500you know, grew in my faith with. So it's been a little alarming and jarring to see that happen.
00:08:32.420And yeah, for a variety of reasons. And we'll get into that in a minute. I don't want to, you know,
00:08:38.060spoil it, but, but yeah, it's just been really surprising. And I always come back to that
00:08:43.820Lord of the Rings scene where, you know, Aragorn's trying to convince,
00:08:49.720I forget which king it was, but it was the king who didn't want to go to war.
00:08:53.380thank you he goes i don't want to risk open war and aragorn's response is well open war is upon
00:09:01.560you whether you would risk it or not and i feel like that's the moment we're in and so this to
00:09:05.560me is really a response to how are these guys responding to the fact that open war is upon us
00:09:11.060right right that's that's well said all right so here's our list uh number one
00:09:16.060Timothy Keller. Again, here are the three kind of categories, the pietist, the progressive,
00:09:23.320or the persevering, the faithful. What do you think? Now, some of these guys, I'll be honest,
00:09:28.840because I'm going to give some of my thoughts too. I would say, well, 30% over here. So you're,
00:09:32.580you are allowed to, you know, you don't have to put them all in one category, but Tim Keller,
00:09:37.940pietist, progressive, or persevering. What are your thoughts?
00:09:41.160so if you had asked me a year ago on tim kelly by the way i love this it's like a game show it's
00:09:46.780really fun i want a prize at the end um well he i i would have said even maybe a year ago that i
00:09:54.900maybe two years let's say that i viewed him more as pietist but he to me has been sort of actively
00:10:02.040moving into progressive in part uh by saying that's uh abortion he has moved into using that
00:10:10.220language of the Bible tells us abortion is wrong, but it doesn't tell us the best way to lower the
00:10:17.580rate of abortion. Again, I don't remember exactly what he said, but how to get rid of it. Yeah,
00:10:21.800no, you're absolutely right. And his implication was kind of, I felt like what that was, was saying
00:10:27.380it seemed very politically calculated. You don't have to vote for pro-life candidates.
00:10:34.120Maybe you vote for someone who is not pro-life, but if you believe they're going to put in a
00:10:38.960social safety net that's going to um alleviate the need for an abortion now i i would say that
00:10:46.100he just doesn't know the statistics on abortion that he's saying that but maybe he does i think
00:10:50.680he does yes and uh and it's interesting to now connect that to the fact that the erlc of the
00:10:56.800southern baptist just said something very similar that they want to eliminate the need for abortion
00:11:02.860well there's never a need for abortion i i hate that language um and it's really deceptive language
00:11:08.200And so the deception is where I go, that's progressive. That's not pietist. So, yeah, I would say for me, he's probably now more in the 60-ish percent progressive because I also did a lot of reporting on how he has used his influence and his platform to push government mandates for things like vaccinations during the height of COVID to keep churches closed, which that one, you know, that one really put someone
00:11:38.200in the progressive camp for me. If you're arguing, let's keep people away from the church in a time
00:11:43.100of a lot of fear and turmoil. I put you in progressive camp. Amen. I agree. Yeah. Tim
00:11:48.840Keller, I think you're being incredibly generous, probably because you're a woman and maybe just
00:11:53.640naturally more nurturing towards Tim Keller. If only, you know, maybe you can write a poem. If
00:11:58.060only I could have been Tim Keller's mom, you know, or something like that. But I, man, I feel
00:12:03.880like I put them at like almost 90, 90% that, you know, so, so theologically, and you may be
00:12:09.720familiar with these categories, but there's the, the kind of the two kingdom position,
00:12:13.340um, a strong, stark two kingdom position that, you know, a lot of that comes out of, uh,
00:12:18.340Westminster Escondido. Uh, you got guys like Van Druden, guys like Michael Horton, who would kind
00:12:23.260of be the gold standard of, of what I would call radical two kingdom, uh, theological position.
00:12:28.320And then on the flip side, there's different ways to, you know, different labels for this,
00:12:34.400but I would call it a Kuyperian mindset coming from Abraham Kuyper.
00:12:38.520One of his most famous sayings was there's not one single square inch of this world that
00:12:43.100Jesus doesn't cry out, that Christ doesn't cry out, mine.
00:12:46.120So the idea that basically is this idea of, are there two kingdoms, as Luther kind of
00:12:50.860argued, between the state and the church?
00:12:54.260I would say those are two sovereign spheres.
00:12:56.080but there's a difference between kingdoms and spheres. Three spheres, family, church, and state,
00:13:02.280but not three kingdoms and not two kingdoms with the dividing line being between the church and
00:13:06.740the state. Also, likewise, there are people who say, well, the two kingdoms, it's not church and
00:13:10.860state. It's the two kingdoms of sacred and secular. And perhaps you're familiar with that kind of
00:13:14.960language. And I would push back on that also because I'm of that Kuyperian framework. And so
00:13:21.400it's not secular or sacred. I would say there are two kingdoms. I think the Bible says that,
00:13:24.880but it's not the kingdom of church and state. That's not where the line is drawn and it's not
00:13:29.200secular and sacred. It's light and dark, the kingdom of light and dark. And there is light
00:13:35.660even within the civil realm of the state. There are Christians in politics that are advancing
00:13:43.100the kingdom of Christ and his light and his truth in that realm. There are good civil magistrates
00:13:48.660that bear the sword rightly and wherever we see that, and that is the kingdom of light marching
00:13:52.980forward. And there is certainly, sadly, but there is certainly the kingdom of darkness within the
00:13:58.160church. That's what an apostate is. That's what a false teacher is. And so, I don't think it's
00:14:04.180two kingdoms, church and state. I don't think it's two kingdoms, secular and sacred. I think
00:14:08.380it's two kingdoms of light and dark. But Christ, I believe that it is his earnest desire and his
00:14:14.940commandment in the Great Commission that his kingdom of light, that it would advance and spread
00:14:19.240in every realm of human society, in the arts and in medicine and in politics and culture. And of
00:14:27.620course, our families and our churches and Tim Keller, my position is that Tim Keller is not
00:14:33.660a strong two kingdom guy. He is a Kuyperian guy. The problem is what he's trying to advance in
00:14:40.360culture and in arts and certainly in politics is not biblical principles, but Democrat platform
00:14:48.180virtues you can look at so it's not that he's like christians shouldn't be involved he thinks
00:14:53.860christians should be radically involved in all these different spheres um but but involved doing
00:15:00.240what and i think that's the difference between the pietist says let's not get involved the
00:15:04.640progressive says let's get involved but but when you look at and do what it basically just mirrors
00:15:10.200um what what a leftist would say and then the persevering guy and the way that i'm defining it
00:15:16.600would say let's get involved and let's do it conservatively according to biblical standards
00:15:21.540so i think you're right on the money with tim keller and i would maybe go a little stronger
00:15:24.440here's the next one john piper what do you think about john piper so you know john piper is
00:15:30.220interesting to me i i i'll confess freely that i love john piper i really came up in the faith he
00:15:36.260was one of the guys i listened to a lot i've talked about i mean john macarthur was probably
00:15:39.500the most formational for me when i became a christian um but john piper i know that he sort
00:15:46.440of put out that essay last year about i'm trying to remember it had some really sort of tortured
00:15:51.200logic about it's also murder i can't i can't even remember i should have reread that essay but
00:15:58.960it was something very sort of tortured logic about yes some candidate political candidates
00:16:05.520are pro-murder as far as killing babies but there's also a kind of murderer that is whatever
00:16:11.640he felt trump was that he was it was right before the election it was basically it basically it was
00:16:16.860a false dichotomy but it was basically saying like trump has a monopoly on pride that's what it was
00:16:22.300it was some kind of pride as a kind of exactly so pride you know because that incites people and it
00:16:27.020leads towards you know uh murderous thoughts and a murderous culture and these kind of things and
00:16:31.200then there's explicit murder and so um so it's really not that clear of a choice and he didn't
00:16:35.860tell anybody to go out and vote for biden but i think he has waged the consciences of weak
00:16:40.380uninformed undiscerning christians to vote for biden go ahead and so i would not put him in
00:16:47.360the progressive camp i would put him in the pietist camp i feel like he um i think every
00:16:53.620pastor that i love is not always you know 100 all the time and i i feel that he's been a little
00:16:59.900naive about things and i i particularly look at what happened at his seminary that i know from
00:17:08.340talking to people, from doing some reporting, that you had an influx of people trying to move
00:17:14.220that seminary, trying to do a lot of what we talked about happening in the SBC towards
00:17:18.900complementarianism, towards introducing this very suspicious spirit of being concerned about all
00:17:26.180your other fellow Christians are racist if they are not adopting this, empowering a particular
00:17:31.520ethnic group or a particular skin color group. And I don't think he saw that stuff coming. I think
00:17:37.620for me he seemed naive to it i think he welcomed these people with good intentions and with good
00:17:44.260faith and um talking to some other people at that seminary i think he just really wasn't aware of
00:17:51.140what he was dealing with and when i look at that trump essay it felt to me like everybody was sort
00:17:55.980of looking at john piper going you have to say something you have to say something and so he said
00:18:00.040something and i it was to me it was cowardly more than anything else so i would put it in
00:18:05.100the pietist cowardly camp, but I don't think he's actively progressive.
00:18:09.220Okay. Yeah, I think you're right. I think Tim Keller had a play, has a play. Whereas John
00:18:14.820Piper, I really do think is naive and it's unfortunate. I think he still has culpability,
00:18:19.640but it's unfortunate that just the way that our world is with social media and just,
00:18:24.280you know, the immediacy of a public figure to respond to anything and everything that's
00:18:29.360happening that, um, we're just, we're expected to know, um, everything about anything. And, um,
00:18:35.860and we don't, none of us do. And, and pastors are no exception. I do believe that pastors do need to
00:18:41.000be, um, generalists. We have too many experts, um, in our world today. And I think pastors do
00:18:46.580need to be kind of a jack of all trades. They need to be generalist. They need to be able to,
00:18:50.380uh, counsel people with grief and the loss of a loved one and exegete scripture, and then also
00:18:55.000apply it to the civil realm. Like pastors, you know, with COVID it's like, I felt like there
00:18:59.000was three things that I was trying to simultaneously learn. I was trying to learn the
00:19:02.000constitution. I was, you know, I had to make sure that I also knew the Bible. And then I was also
00:19:08.120having to read the data about the virus. So it was like, I was trying to be a medical expert on
00:19:14.580viruses and a constitutional law expert, and then also a theologian all the same time, because if
00:19:21.620you knew the Bible really, really well, but you didn't know these other two things, you weren't
00:19:25.060going to have necessarily the right answer you know and so so there's a lot of weight on pastors
00:19:29.880um to be faithful if we're going to be involved and we're going to apply all of christ to all
00:19:34.280of life and i think that john piper who who i i have admired greatly in the past and still
00:19:39.980appreciate in some regard i think john piper has been radically informed and knowledgeable about
00:19:44.900a breadth of topics um but i think he sucks when it comes to politics i you know what i mean i
00:19:50.560i don't think he's got this yeah go ahead to be a little more pietist about to just i think it's
00:19:56.720okay to sometimes go i really can't tell you what to do here here's the principles go apply them
00:20:01.560you know it wasn't that it was saying you're okay if you decide to go vote for that other guy
00:20:10.140which did not age well now that we've had 49 out of 50 democrats voting not just to codify row but
00:20:17.620beyond that, right, that for any reason in any state, all the way up until a baby breathes its
00:20:23.060first breath of air, that it could be murdered. When one political party comes out so unanimously
00:20:30.680on such a clear biblical issue like that, then it really erodes any kind of argumentation that
00:20:39.720would say, well, maybe, you know, politically you can go either way because there are problems on
00:20:43.380both sides republic the republican party is not synonymous with the bible but that's the problem
00:20:48.240with tim keller this third way ism it's like well there's republicans and there's democrats and then
00:20:53.100there's jesus but what that implies is that that both are wrong but they're equally wrong and that's
00:20:59.640the problem a lot of young people i've realized young christians who are just now becoming
00:21:03.560politically minded because you know it's kind of hard not to over the last two years with the
00:21:08.060events that have been going on but um a lot of people young people they they feel like to by
00:21:12.620some of our evangelical gatekeepers because they're like i i thought that both republicans
00:21:18.060and democrats were wrong and and i would respond by saying they are but not equally and they're
00:21:23.300like yeah but that's the thing i thought equally wrong i thought you could go either way because
00:21:27.040both are a complete you know train wreck and and but you know but but i'm looking at it's like yeah
00:21:32.580there's some serious problems with republicans but then there's this other party that 49 out of
00:21:37.880You know what I mean? It's just, it's not even a contest. And I think guys like Tim Keller and
00:21:43.120his third way-ism and then guys like John Piper, I think in some of the ignorance and particularly
00:21:48.080that one article have paved the way for evangelical Christians to think, oh, you really, you can go
00:21:55.440either way. You can be involved on either side or you can be a pietist and just not get involved at
00:22:00.380all because it really doesn't matter because they're both equally evil. And we live in this
00:22:04.400two-party system and both of them are equally wrong and so it just and and i think a lot of
00:22:08.840christians are coming out of that and realize we were lied to and it's because of people like you
00:22:12.520with the daily wire and now it's like people are listening to ben shapiro instead of tim keller
00:22:17.340you know and and they're frustrated you know they're frustrated they're like why am i having
00:22:21.940to to learn biblical application from an orthodox jew as a protestant christian because all my
00:22:28.280guys have failed me you know it's just any thoughts on that real quick and we'll move on
00:22:34.240No, I agree with all of that. And I just go that so much of this, I just keep thinking about courage. So much of it just seems to me to come down to courage that I don't believe it's what I'm looking at.
00:22:48.140I don't see a real conviction that even that I believe that Republicans are also wrong and Democrats are wrong.
00:22:53.820I just see a real fear to sort of be boldly, this is what's biblical. This is what we believe. And we want at least some political organization to represent what we believe is biblical for the good of our nation, for the good of our neighbor, for the good of our families.
00:23:10.600So if you completely cede all political organization, all political grassroots efforts to the left, well, I mean, we're seeing what the wages of that are.
00:23:56.200Yeah, that really just turned my thinking around. I can tell you that I've been through some
00:24:02.680experiences in Christian organizations. When the CRT stuff first started happening,
00:24:07.760I didn't recognize it for what it was. And I will tell you that there was a period of time
00:24:11.040that I probably used some of that terminology without knowing what I was doing.
00:24:18.460Yeah, because I really didn't know. And then when the ask kept getting bigger, you were like,
00:24:25.100I will concede this. And then it was like, well, now we need to promote people based on skin color.
00:24:30.140Now we need to concede that this is a systemic problem and that we need to reorganize the justice system around it.
00:24:39.800Some really big asks. And then that was when I started paying attention.
00:24:43.020And when I saw Votie Bauckham's ethnic Gnosticism message, I realized how much that logic applies to so much as a way of silencing public debate.
00:24:52.040saying and we just saw it with this abuse issue that if you are not yourself a victim of abuse
00:24:59.200then you do not have the information to speak if you are not black if you are not a woman you don't
00:25:04.460have the information to speak and so it's really a very crafty way of silencing the the public
00:25:12.540debate that is our legacy that is our right as americans and it's it's what we see biblically
00:25:18.240that when one person speaks he may seem right another person gets you come along and interrogate
00:25:23.680that and that's part of how we get at the truth so um yeah i was i love him me too i love vodhi
00:25:29.780bacham also and you're absolutely right and it's it's not just a tactic this this gnosticism ethnic
00:25:34.700gnosticism the idea of of um it was it's just basically it elevates experience above all other
00:25:40.540things so instead of sola scriptura it's you know it's solo experience you know it's this experience
00:25:46.820trumps everything. So, it's not just to silence public debate, but ultimately, it's to silence
00:25:57.400the Bible, because it says that the Bible is not, in and of itself, sufficient. It may be
00:26:04.500authoritative. It may be inerrant, but it's not sufficient. So, me with an open Bible, I cannot
00:26:10.040speak credibly or authoritatively to, you know, this or that unless I also have, in addition to
00:26:17.720the Bible, some kind of unique personal experience and specifically an experience of being oppressed,
00:26:25.860an experience of victimhood. I must have that standpoint epistemology, that ethnic Gnosticism,
00:26:33.160that victim experience in order to be credible, to see the Bible rightly, to interpret the Bible
00:26:40.860clearly. And, and Voti did a great job pointing that out. So you're absolutely right. I accidentally
00:26:46.220skipped one. So let's go back real quick. But Gavin Ortlund, are you familiar with him?
00:27:12.400I was familiar with his brother's book, a little bit familiar with his dad, but he was putting forward these arguments about climate change.
00:27:22.180Well, I'm married to a meteorologist, so I know a little something about that.
00:27:25.400And he was arguing that this is an issue Christians really need to care about.
00:27:31.100And for me, knowing what I know about that particular issue, that just set off alarm bells.
00:27:37.800And he mentioned I have this podcast about why Christians should care about climate change.
00:27:45.760And much like some reporting I did on Francis Collins, and if you're not familiar, the former National Institute of Health director,
00:27:53.640and how he used evangelical leaders to push the government's message regarding vaccinations, masks, shutdowns.
00:28:00.180Well, in this case, Portland was using the U.N. and the arm that studies climate change to argue this is great evidence.
00:28:11.420You should go look at this and it will tell you why there is a scientific consensus, which, by the way, anytime you hear scientific consensus as an argument these days, big alarm bells should go off.
00:28:22.140They don't really want you asking questions about it.
00:28:24.820So what I happen to know about this arm of the U.N. is that it's extremely corrupt.
00:28:29.380and that it got into a lot of trouble a few years ago for suppressing some the results of some
00:28:36.680studies for faking results in studies to get the answer that they wanted for climate change and of
00:28:42.480course what we know is that is being used to inform policy it's being it's why your gas prices
00:28:47.960are so high it's why your grocery prices are getting higher and it's a way to implement what
00:28:54.200I would call some really authoritarian policies. So when you are using your platform as a pastor
00:29:00.440to say Christians should care about this issue that the government is particularly pushing,
00:29:06.240pushing and using government sources, that to me is you're an activist now.
00:29:12.260Yeah, I agree. No, I think that Gavin Orland, I always say he's one of my favorite race hustlers
00:29:18.480right, right there with Al Sharpton. He just, he's a, he's a progressive. He's a liberal. He,
00:29:23.440you know, the shooting in Texas, you know, you know, or, or particularly the one in Buffalo,
00:29:28.980but it's, it's immediately racialized. And, and he just, he will speak, he's not a pietist. So
00:29:35.980he's not even close. He's not, let's stay out of politics. No, like Tim Keller, and I would say
00:29:40.840even more so um tim keller probably is just just wiser and older about you know how to say but he
00:29:48.760just without any shame at all he's just immediately getting involved in every political cultural issue
00:29:54.340but always on on the side of uh the political left um you can immediately ascertain what gavin
00:30:02.740is going to think about anything based off of uh what's the recent report that came out of the
00:30:07.740white house all right gavin will will mirror that um but wrapped in some theological language
00:30:14.220i have a half-written essay about that and i really got to get it done oh okay
00:30:18.320all right issues in particular cool we look forward to looking at that um okay so here's
00:30:24.460the next one matt chandler what are your thoughts on matt he's interesting right so i will there's
00:30:29.820a couple people on this list that i did not know much about until they popped up in my reporting
00:30:33.880And he was one of them. And I really didn't know much about Matt Chandler until I, and this was a couple of years ago. It was pre-COVID. So you always try to remember, okay, what, when was that? Well, I know it was before COVID hit. So it was at least a couple of years ago.
00:30:50.260And it was when I was at World, and we did a podcast on this CRT issue, right when people were really starting to become aware of it. And I saw that video about the invisible bag of privilege. And of course, you know that that I mean, that that's literally a quote from Kimberly Crenshaw, one of the founders of critical theory.
00:31:11.500and so when I saw that I you know that one kind of that startled me and at the same time I go
00:31:19.760I'm not you'll tell me I'm gonna be interested to hear what you have to say because I go
00:31:23.740did he know what he was doing when he made that video or was it one of those issues I know the
00:31:31.160MLK 50 stuff came up but I go was it an issue of I am trying to push this in the church or
00:31:38.240I just want to be at the table with the popular kids. And that's what they're talking about.
00:31:44.040So you tell me, what do you think? I'm not sure. So I don't think that Matt Chandler is a scholar
00:31:49.020by any stretch of the imagination. And that's not to say that I'm a scholar. But I think Matt
00:31:53.940Chandler, some of these guys, not all of them, right? There are guys like John Piper, guys who
00:31:57.900it was a slow build in their ministry in terms of platform, popularity, followers, those kinds of
00:32:05.140things. Um, but, but it's, there is a, a very unique danger when a guy like Matt Chandler or
00:32:11.300a guy like Mark Driscoll launches into the stratosphere, um, at a very young age and,
00:32:17.120and just blows up in popularity quickly. And Matt was one of those guys. And I think that,
00:32:22.440uh, one of the things that happens is that you immediately become so popular and your church
00:32:26.420grows so much and you're immediately, uh, weighted down by so many daily responsibilities that study
00:32:32.160suffers. And so I don't think that Matt Chandler is particularly educated when it comes to doctrine
00:32:40.540and theology and cultural issues. And so I think that guys like Matt Chandler are taking his
00:32:46.780friend's word for it. So when you got a guy like that, okay, good. Yeah. So I agree with you. So
00:32:53.080when you got a guy like that, you need to ask the question, who are his friends, right? And so I was,
00:32:58.080Matt Chandler is the president of Acts 29, which was founded by Mark Driscoll until they kicked him
00:33:02.400out. And I think there were some problems with Mark Driscoll, but just kind of like the SBC thing
00:33:06.720that we, you know, we recently talked about. I think that with Mark Driscoll, there were other
00:33:10.600things going on, right? That he's more patriarchal in his view of the dynamics between men and women
00:33:16.180and the created order and what God's plan is for the home and the church and even the sphere of
00:33:23.060society at large, you know, women in the military and all these kinds of, and, and
00:33:27.420Mark Driscoll, again, in his youthful angst and sin, I think there was some real
00:33:32.140sin, made some statements that, you know, I'm thinking, I would not have said it
00:33:36.420that way, you know, and I don't think this is just semantics or subjective
00:33:39.820because there is a lot of subjectivity to gentleness. How do you define
00:33:44.080gentleness, right? But I think Driscoll went to the point where it's like, no,
00:33:47.300this was crude language and it's on record. And so there were really some
00:33:52.560things like that. But my point is Acts 29 pushed him out around the time that his church elders
00:33:58.960were pushing him out with Mars Hill, with Driscoll. Chandler assumed, you know, had already actually
00:34:03.900taken over as president of Acts 29. And I was an Acts 29 pastor in California at the time.
00:34:09.340And this was right around the time when just a couple of years after Driscoll was removed,
00:34:14.160that's when Eric Mason, who is a very close friend of Matt Chandler and was seated on the
00:34:19.120international board for Acts 29, appointed by Chandler and the rest of the board came out with
00:34:24.820his infamous book, Woke Church. And when that happened, I read that book and I started dialoguing
00:34:29.660with Acts 29 pastors in my area in Southern California and heated debates at the local level
00:34:35.580and that was happening at the national. And I pulled our church out of Acts 29. That was the
00:34:39.380end of 2018. And we had some people leave the church and people were upset with me because I
00:34:43.100was being divisive by making a big deal about critical race theory and saying certain things
00:34:48.460about Eric Mason and making certain comments, even about Matt Chandler and some of those comments I
00:34:52.340made publicly. And what I kept falling back on was the Apostle Paul has something to say about
00:34:58.120when it comes to how we say something, our tone. The Bible does address that. Rebuke your opponents
00:35:06.280with gentleness, not knowing if God might grant them repentance. So the Bible, it does talk about
00:35:11.340how we say something, but the priority, the emphasis is given to what we say, not just how
00:35:17.200we package it, not how we say it, but what we say. And the apostle Paul always indicts primarily
00:35:22.900as the divisive, quarrelsome, argumentative party, the person not who has less than charitable tone,
00:35:33.540but the person who introduces error into the church. I've never heard that. I'm going to use
00:35:39.520that. And so Eric Mason, he's introducing this, what Brody Bakken would have called ethnic
00:35:46.740Gnosticism, you know, white and black spaces at the Lord's table and this, this weird divisive,
00:35:54.120he's the one bringing division. And, and so anyway, so with all that being said, I would say
00:35:59.180Matt Chandler. Yeah. I don't think that he's an expert on, on critical race theory and Kimberly
00:36:04.340Crenshaw and Ibram X. Kendi or these, no, I don't think that he's probably hasn't read a lot of the
00:36:10.080literature, at least not deeply, not thoroughly. But he got in with the wrong crap. He's got the
00:36:16.660wrong friends. Eric Mason has read this stuff. Leon's Trump, to name somebody else, has read
00:36:22.300this stuff. And these guys are neo-Marxists. Absolutely. And Chandler has flanked himself.
00:36:29.400This is one of his iconic lines he used to say about having a plurality of elders and accountability within the church for the lead pastor.
00:36:36.040He's like, flank yourself with strong men.
00:36:38.360And sadly, that's precisely what he did.
00:36:40.580He flanked himself with strong Marxist men.
00:36:44.940And Acts 29 has suffered greatly for it.
00:36:59.400but uh michael horton are you familiar with him i did not know him and so i'm going to be
00:37:04.420interested to hear what you have to say so i hear a name i don't know i go to some guys i know who
00:37:08.700are solid i i'm in kind of a signal group with some pastors and um who i know are rock solid
00:37:14.400and i ask them hey guys i have not heard of this theologian who is this and their perception was
00:37:20.440that we think he you know they said oh he's very influential theologian uh we think he's pretty
00:37:25.060solid because i assume they're going why are you asking so um so i didn't know about him but i i
00:37:31.840am here to report that they told me we think he's solid why have you heard something so gotcha now
00:37:38.740tell me okay great so yeah so i think michael horton is solid in a lot of ways um he is you
00:37:44.960know he's my my proximity with michael horton was that i pastored in southern california i was in
00:37:50.540San Diego for multiple years. And he was right there with the Westminster Escondido Seminary.
00:37:58.700And so about 40, 45 minutes south, and I was pretty close friends with one of the guys who
00:38:05.420worked with Michael Horton with Whitehorse Inn. And I think that Michael Horton has contributed
00:38:09.740much to the body of Christ at large. I think that he is theologically brilliant. He's opposite of
00:38:17.100Matt Chandler. He is a scholar. He is very informed, very gifted. But Westminster Escondido,
00:38:26.120so I don't know if you're familiar with John Frame. John Frame wrote a book on apologetic.
00:38:29.300He's written a ton of books, but he's another Westminster guy, but he has written a critique
00:38:33.760specifically of the Westminster in Escondido because there's the one in Philadelphia, you
00:38:39.420know, and so John Frame coming from another neck of the woods within the Presbyterian
00:38:43.920larger would, is critiquing the Escondido guys, Van Druden and Michael Horton, specifically
00:38:51.800for their radical, what he would call a radical two kingdom perspective. So I would say that
00:38:57.480Michael Horton is faithful in many ways, but he would be of the persuasion that if you talked to,
00:39:04.500if you ever interviewed Mike Horton and talked to him about the culture war,
00:39:08.100um you you especially um listening to you and reading you you would be frustrated you would
00:39:14.800not like what he would have to say so i would put him you know he's one of the percentage guys like
00:39:19.880like john piper i'd say maybe 30 33 percent in each of the three categories of progressive and
00:39:25.180pietist and and persevering faithful uh mike horton i would put 50 50 piet yeah 50 50 i'll
00:39:32.500give him 50 50 but pietist and persevering so i would say he's got great doctrine and you can
00:39:37.360always expect for him not to apply it to anything that's the problem that's interesting i'll probably
00:39:46.100look into that a little bit um and that's man that's what we for those of you who are theologians
00:39:52.980for those of you who are pastors i guess that's what i would go is you need to know how much we're
00:39:57.100facing this constantly in our schools in our work in our personal relationships i'm like we need to
00:40:03.660know how to apply it amen yeah and i think it's easy for people who maybe live in this more
00:40:09.360academic scholarly place to go this is life and death for us out here so right amen um okay here
00:40:16.260we go russell moore what do you think about old russell moore he will definitely be the most
00:40:22.500progressive for me on this list um i i think that he in many ways is an operative of the left i
00:40:30.840um i just see him do things i see the places that you watch him pop up and the arguments that he
00:40:38.060makes seemed very intended to move um you take a conservative denomination like the sbc and he
00:40:46.880seemed very intent on moving it to the left and aligning it with a new set of convictions
00:40:52.500yeah um yeah so and but I will say this about Russell Moore the more I he's popped up in so
00:41:00.520many stories is I feel that he's a man driven a lot by personal grievance um so I it's almost
00:41:09.080like there needs to be a fourth category for him that I he just seems to do a lot of things that
00:41:15.100are aimed at sort of settling scores. I don't quite know how else to put it, but it's a lot
00:41:23.440of intrigue. It's a lot of machinations behind the scenes that I see with him. And, you know,
00:41:31.420obviously, like I said, his platform seems to be to move it left, but yeah, I just see a lot of
00:41:37.580personal with him. Gotcha. So in terms of what he's doing, he wants to move evangelicalism
00:41:43.580in a liberal direction but in terms of why part of it might be because he's an ideologue
00:41:49.100which i think he is for the record actual conviction but also part of it seems to be
00:41:53.800personal and emotional is what yes yes i would say that and and maybe the personal and emotional
00:41:59.240grew out of the friction that came from trying to i think so yeah yeah that's helpful great i i
00:42:06.880agree with your assessment all right here's the next one uh good old j mac john mccarthur
00:42:11.220i love john mccarthur so i'm i'm no never made any secret of that and what's funny is
00:42:18.460he seems to i and i don't know i don't want to put words in his mouth by any means but
00:42:23.060he seems to have evolved a little bit and i would love to ask him about it and maybe i'll see if i
00:42:29.840you know one of these days can get an interview on this topic because i remember when i first
00:42:34.900became a Christian, um, you know, reading some sermons of his. And I, you know, whenever I had
00:42:41.640a question, I go, I wonder what John MacArthur thinks of that. And somehow I came across
00:42:44.980his argument that the American revolution was not biblical. And that just blew my mind,
00:42:52.620you know, because I went, I mean, you know, that's sort of sacrosanct, the revolution as an
00:42:58.760American. And so I didn't, even then I didn't, I never really settled on. I don't know if I agree
00:43:02.920with him but he definitely forced me to rethink it and he's always I know that he wouldn't sign
00:43:08.140um I forget which statement it was but it was the statement regarding marriage I think or no
00:43:13.780was it abortion there was some political statement this was actually before I became a Christian but
00:43:18.840I remember hearing about it that there was a statement he would not sign because it involved
00:43:22.980Chuck Colson because it was political and he did not want to take that stand um and so it's funny
00:43:29.820to me now to watch people sort of accuse him of being this, you know, firebrand for conservative
00:43:36.360politics. Yeah. And I don't think that's what he is at all. So, um, uh, yeah, I, I mean,
00:43:43.800I find him very faithful. I, I find him adjusting to the time. I see someone who is saying, okay,
00:43:50.340we now live to use Aaron Wren's kind of famous three worlds. We are now in the negative. We
00:43:55.780to be in sort of positive world where the culture liked christianity then it was neutral to
00:44:00.660christianity and now it's negative to christianity and so what i feel like i see with him is someone
00:44:06.100who is responding to living in the negative world the principles are the same but he's going you
00:44:11.620are encroaching on the rights of the church now so because you're encroaching on the rights of
00:44:15.380the church we now speak you do not hold dominion over this that's what i see yep i agree with your
00:44:23.060assessment. I would put him 70, 80% in the persevering faithful category, 52, 53 years of
00:44:31.640faithful ministry in many regards. But if you didn't say it, I was going to say it. His stance
00:44:36.800on the revolution and just America's existence, and well, it was actually sinful and wrong because
00:44:42.760they weren't submitting to the civil magistrate in England. I would much more adhere to guys like
00:44:47.320John Knox, the Scottish reformer and Protestant resistant theory, the doctrine of the lesser
00:44:52.240magistrate and actually being able to, my reading of Romans 13 would be, this doesn't tell us to
00:44:59.340submit unconditionally to civil magistrates. The Bible is filled with examples of people who don't
00:45:04.580obey those in positions of civil authority because what they're doing is wrong, right? The midwives
00:45:11.360disobeyed Pharaoh because they feared God. Daniel disobeys the king, Shadrach, Meshach,
00:45:17.640and Abednego, disobey the king. You have the apostles. You see for yourself, is it right for
00:45:23.180us to obey men rather than obey God when it comes to preaching the gospel? And so John MacArthur,
00:45:27.540I think he has the right position now. I don't think he did. I think that's a new development.
00:45:33.120I think he has the right position now. But what I want to see is him broaden his application.
00:45:38.580So I think he has the right position of obedience to God. John Knox is one of the guys that this
00:45:44.500is attributed to, nobody's quite sure, but the expression of obedience to God or resistance to
00:45:50.180tyranny is obedience to God. And I think John MacArthur would now adhere to that, but in a more
00:45:56.160narrow context. When the civil magistrate comes to the front door of the church with its tyranny,
00:46:02.760we obey God. And I would love to see him expand that and say, even if they're not coming to shut
00:46:09.760down my church, if they're still tyrannizing the public and tyrannizing Christians, maybe not in
00:46:16.060the context of the church, but in the context of their families or in the context of schools or in
00:46:20.000the context of, then we have an obligation to resist Caesar when Caesar is being insubordinate
00:46:27.180to God. And so, yeah, I think I agree with you. I think that very, very faithful. I'm incredibly
00:46:33.460thankful for John MacArthur, but it does seem like a recent development because even his first
00:46:37.940response. People forget this, but his first response to COVID was they came out and they
00:46:42.360said, we're going to meet, you know, and then the ninth, I think it was the ninth district court
00:46:46.860ruled against it. And then he immediately put out an email that said, they're the law of the land.
00:46:53.220And sadly, you know, we know that they're liberal and they're progressive and they're corrupt and
00:46:56.880this and that, but they are the law of the land and God has sovereignly appointed them as the
00:47:00.680highest civil magistrate in our land, which I would disagree. I would say the constitution is
00:47:03.740above them, and above that is the scripture, but this is what they said, and so we're canceling
00:47:08.300our meeting, and then it was two weeks later that he came out, Christ, not Caesar, is head of the
00:47:12.440church, and when you put those two things, those two statements side by side, it's like a direct
00:47:17.820contradiction, so it's like, no, he changed his mind. He did. He didn't actually, he never said
00:47:22.680like, so I was wrong, the words that I don't think I've ever heard John MacArthur say, but he, but
00:47:27.500the good news is, he changed his mind. Yeah, yeah, and that seems clear, and I do think,
00:47:32.500I give, I give everybody a lot of grace for the early COVID because it was so unprecedented and
00:47:38.400we didn't know what was happening. So I, I, and the guys who shut down, it was when I started
00:47:42.760to string out that I'm like, if you're not resisting the shutdown now, if you don't see
00:47:47.060which way the wind is blowing, then, you know, my, my grace is ending now for you to start.
00:47:51.280I agree. Okay. Two more. R.C. Sproul. What do you think about R.C. Sproul?
00:47:55.840Oh, I love R.C. Sproul. So, um, yeah, I, which is, I wish he was here so that, um,
00:48:02.500We could talk about how he is handling these days because, you know, he was always so very faithful, so persevering, so not suffering of fools and foolish arguments that I wish he was here.
00:48:14.900And it would be funny to go all of these people who, you know, you sort of see on the more progressive side, oh, we love R.C.
00:48:22.240I'm like, I wonder if you would love him if he were here speaking to you about these issues right now.
00:53:13.420I have to give you credit for if you started listening to Doug Wilson and started quoting
00:53:17.840him, it does not shock me at all that you were DMed probably a couple of hundred times
00:53:23.020and for you to get that kind of feedback about Doug Wilson and to actually still investigate,
00:53:30.540well, I guess it makes sense because you're a reporter, but to investigate it yourself
00:53:33.720you know, and to dig in and say, no, I still like them. Good for you. Cause I think a lot of people
00:53:38.380have been, you know, dissuaded from, from the whole Moscow, Idaho group, Doug Wilson, Christ
00:53:44.140Church and blog and may blog and Canon press. And, and yeah, I think they just, they just bought the
00:53:50.280negative press and you're right. So he used to, you know, Ligonier conferences, you can, you know,
00:53:54.020you can watch old videos of him sitting on a panel with R.C. Sproul and, and eventually was
00:53:59.000blacklisted. And there's a lot of reasons, you know, that people would cite for why federal
00:54:02.700vision, which, you know, nobody knows what federal vision is. And so we don't have time to go into that one out. And I'm sorry, I couldn't. So I will, I will say, I don't know what happened with that controversy, because I don't understand. Right. But so there's the federal vision controversy. And then there's some in house controversies with this church and different things like that. And same as you know, with the SBC or with John MacArthur recently, you know, the different alleged scandals or cover ups or this or that. But I had the same sense as you, I feel like when you when you look at his responses to these things, they are reasonable.
00:54:32.700and satisfactory responses. So not a perfect man with a perfect ministry. Nobody has that.
00:54:38.080But it seems like, you know, whatever they try to throw at him, he has a reasonable and sufficient
00:54:44.760satisfactory response, defense for. But like you said, he was fringe, but it's not that he's not
00:54:54.580afraid of it. He's not afraid of it because it's already happened. He was blacklisted a long time
00:54:59.100ago and has nothing to lose. And so he has just been able with an incredible fervor and boldness
00:55:08.560to speak to certain issues because nobody's got anything on Doug. I mean, there's nothing else.
00:55:15.000He's been blasted from every single side. The only conferences he really speaks at are his own,
00:55:20.140and everything's his own platform. They've got their Canon Plus app and all these kind of things,
00:55:24.640And over 40 years, I mean, they really, you talk about all of Christ for all of life,
00:57:37.460Amen. Well, Megan Basham, I am incredible, incredibly grateful for your ministry and the way that the Lord's used you just personally, even in my life, just your reporting, the morning wire and hearing you.
00:57:48.820I feel like you're probably one of the, it feels like you're on almost every episode, right?
00:57:53.060They have like a team of people. Are you, you seem like the person who's called in.
00:57:56.580I mean, several times a week. It depends on what else I've got going on. Some, some weeks. Yeah. I'm on like almost every day and other weeks.
00:58:02.460Yeah. Like this week I wasn't on very much because of all the terror on the prairie promotion.
00:58:08.420Right. Well, anyways, all that being said, you do a great job. And I'm just so grateful as somebody
00:58:13.860who is more of that, like I said earlier, that Kuyperian mindset, you know, not one square inch,
00:58:18.240you know, that Christ doesn't cry out. Mine. I want to see a God fearing, courageous Christians,
00:58:24.940not just on staff at churches, but in the public sphere. And so to know that we've got somebody
00:58:32.580who fears the Lord Jesus Christ and wants to see him, not just Jesus meek and mild,
00:58:37.940but Jesus who is also triumphant and ruling and reigning King, King Jesus. And to see somebody
00:58:45.280like that, that we've got somebody like that with the daily wire, you know, who's pushing the King
00:58:50.620rights of Jesus. I just want to say thank you for what you're doing. So thanks for coming on the
00:58:55.120show. Thanks for what you're doing. Absolutely. And thank you. Thank you for having me. And
00:58:59.760I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk about all this. Thanks so much for listening. But real
00:59:05.360quick, before you go, do us a small favor, take a moment and leave us a five-star review if you
00:59:11.080enjoyed the show. This is undoubtedly the best way that you can help us get this biblically
00:59:16.560faithful content to as many people as possible. Thanks so much.