The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Timothy Keller ｜ A Detailed Analysis of His “Woke Gospel”

00:00:00.000 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to Theology

00:00:04.520 Applied. Back by popular demand, our special guest is once again, John Harris. He was our guest in

00:00:11.820 last week's episode. If you haven't listened to that, you need to go back and listen to that

00:00:15.460 episode first, because this episode is actually the second part of one singular conversation that

00:00:22.860 John and I had. It was over an hour and a half long, and so what we did was we took that

00:00:27.180 conversation, we broke it up into two parts. Last week's episode, we really laid down just a

00:00:32.860 theological general framework for calling out the woke gospel, recognizing why social justice is an

00:00:41.420 affront to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It introduces law into the gospel of free grace, but not only

00:00:47.820 that, it introduces not God's law, but man's law, mob justice and not biblical justice. And so we lay

00:00:54.600 that framework out. We deal with Timothy Keller, but in this episode, this second half of the

00:00:58.840 conversation, John goes into far more detail, especially regarding Tim Keller, but also

00:01:04.860 regarding Al Mohler and Russell Moore. So you're in for a real treat. It's important for us to be

00:01:10.620 able to peg and identify those evangelical leaders in the church today who sadly are merely serving

00:01:17.420 as water carriers for the political left. That said, don't give your money to those who are

00:01:23.880 serving the political left. Don't give your money to ministries or ministers or organizations or

00:01:29.260 companies that hate you, right? It's the second vote that we as conservative Christians have. We

00:01:34.820 go to the voting booth, but we also, we make our vote every time we spend our money. And so God

00:01:40.860 has reserved in this time as he has in all ages, a remnant. We are not, hear me, we are not the only

00:01:47.540 faithful conservative christian ministry out there but they tend to be few and far between

00:01:54.960 and we're one of them and so if you're looking for someone to support not only by your prayers

00:01:59.400 and encouragement but by your finances please make a donation to right response ministries you

00:02:04.940 can do so by going to our website right response ministries.com last thing that i want to do is i

00:02:10.580 want to plug carpe fide carpe fide seize the faith they were at the g3 conference they had a booth

00:02:17.200 set up and they sold most of their shirts but they're getting their stock refilled and these

00:02:21.980 are some of their supply all right this is their first shirt burn the ships it comes from the

00:02:27.940 legendary phrase that Cortez issued to his men when they landed in Latin America burn the ships

00:02:33.480 what it symbolizes is this no retreat we're not going back we're only going forward the other

00:02:40.140 shirt that we have from Carpe Fide is this one. Come and take it. Come and take it. Now, you'll

00:02:47.580 notice that we have here a pulpit on this shirt, right? So they've kept the Texas star. They've

00:02:53.740 replaced the pulpit, or I'm sorry, the canon, the iconic canon that's typically there with a pulpit.

00:03:00.500 So what they're ultimately saying is that from King Leonidas to the Texas, you know, fortress

00:03:05.220 that was being defended, they're saying that pastors and churches need to defend their church,

00:03:09.780 defend their pulpit and a portion of the proceeds if you buy this shirt the come and take it shirt

00:03:14.800 from carpe fide a portion of those proceeds will actually go to pastor james coates and his church

00:03:21.220 in alberta canada james coates has taken that stand he's told his tyrannical government hey

00:03:27.140 i'm not handing over my pulpit i'm not handing over my church if you want it come and take it

00:03:33.020 we as christians here in america and all across the world should do the same without further ado

00:03:38.160 Thanks for tuning in to Theology Apply.

00:03:41.160 Applying God's word to every aspect of life.

00:03:44.560 This is Theology Apply.

00:03:52.140 Do you see the potential of a swing the other direction?

00:03:55.320 And what do you think these guys, your Timothy Kellers, your Russell Moores, what do you

00:04:02.560 think they would do?

00:04:03.440 Would they keep going this direction?

00:04:05.000 or do you think there's a point where they've lost enough followers and they see what direction

00:04:09.480 the people are headed and and they literally run out in front of it and try to pretend like they

00:04:13.780 were there all along do you do you think these guys have that little self-esteem yeah it's

00:04:19.560 obviously a hypothetical situation to think that you know conservative political conservatives are

00:04:24.980 going to have one of the big problems is we're so leaderless right now not just in the political

00:04:29.180 arena but also in the church like there's a lot of you're right fed up people but how many pastors

00:04:34.240 are there i mean it's there's a demand that cannot uh or a supply that that just doesn't

00:04:39.540 exist to meet the demand that's out there and so we we would have to see a bunch of men stepping up

00:04:46.400 um but i get so the main the main thing you're asking though is like if if uh if it was popular

00:04:54.060 to be conservative or something like that would these guys just be chameleons and i've said you

00:04:59.520 know um i'll name some names i'll get specific here and i i i want to try to be as careful as

00:05:05.920 i can but this is this is from a lot of study as far as um reading sermons and blog posts and books

00:05:15.080 from these guys so the guys i'm mentioning are guys i feel comfortable saying this about

00:05:18.800 al moeller i think is an opportunist i think i he might lean kind of slightly left on some things

00:05:25.480 he might lean slightly right on others i think more so i see him veering kind of leftish but

00:05:30.800 he is an opportunist and i can give you numerous examples of it where he plays both sides of an

00:05:38.420 issue and if something becomes more popular he tends to like shift in that direction um so

00:05:43.800 there's guys like that i think you're absolutely right and and it's kind of a shame it's sad

00:05:48.020 because if it let's say the clan was popular they'd probably be running around with hoods like

00:05:52.220 it that it's that bad you know they don't have convictions um uh or at least they the ones that

00:05:59.440 they do have they have some maybe but not not a lot and they're they're out for themselves and

00:06:04.300 then there's others who are um i think ideologues i think tim keller's an ideologue i think russell

00:06:09.960 moore is an ideologue i don't think they're going to change significantly i think that

00:06:15.340 there they will be enough yeah so i talk about this in um in in the book that just came out

00:06:22.440 uh christianity and social justice which by the way i should have plugged it you can go to

00:06:25.420 christianityandsocialjustice.com if you want to get a copy of that uh and there's a whole section

00:06:31.420 on ideology so um ideology uh as as the name implies is is about abstractions ideas and

00:06:42.460 taking so taking these ideas and then imposing them uh so um if the idea is equality or equity

00:06:51.040 diversity inclusion right that some kind of an egalitarian uh utopia of some kind but everything

00:06:57.400 is um compared to to that and everything is weighed on a scale according to whether or not

00:07:04.900 it is uh conforms with equality so the idea is equality so an ideologue is going to look through

00:07:11.800 life and evaluate everything through a very narrow scope of evaluation they're going to be

00:07:16.800 looking at uh okay is it equal is it not equal and they'll start assigning values to even weird

00:07:21.580 things right like they'll start assigning values to i don't know dr seuss books and things like that

00:07:26.840 uh whether or not it forwards their their revolutionary agenda and so i think that

00:07:33.180 tim keller and russell moore are ideologues they're um metaphysic in other words the way

00:07:38.420 that they look at reality when, when we're looking at it, let's say, um, and, and we're not perfect

00:07:43.840 at all, but, but, uh, hopefully we're seeing, we're, we're using the sense perception and the

00:07:49.020 mind that God's given us. And we're, we're trying to see reality, the full spectrum of reality.

00:07:53.800 We're starting to see in color. This is what God created. And if we understand what the Bible

00:07:58.460 teaches about man, we're, we're going to, we're going to see things from his perspective as much

00:08:03.300 as we can not perfectly right but an ideologue tends to instead of seeing the colors they see

00:08:08.920 the one shade they're looking for it's it's and they become obsessed with it you know equality

00:08:14.220 is the only thing that matters right it's the only thing that makes that that's of any value

00:08:18.460 and makes life worth living and that kind of thing so I do see Tim Keller and Russell Moore

00:08:24.060 kind of veering more towards an ideological uh way of of doing things where they you you even

00:08:31.780 just said a minute ago about tim keller when i described um his first one of the first influences

00:08:36.440 he had um uh at urbana um oh gosh what's his name now i'm trying to remember skinner tom skinner

00:08:44.420 yeah and and i described what skinner preached and you said well that's it that's like tim keller in

00:08:49.220 like every sermon or or whatever that tim it's a theme that comes up because it's tim keller is

00:08:55.500 if you look at his bio he's kind of like a 60s revolutionary type he never really changed all

00:09:00.960 that much. He's, he's got the same kind of philosophy. He's just, he's got become smarter.

00:09:07.160 He's a theologian. He's added a lot of knowledge to it, but he's still an ideologue and he still

00:09:12.880 has a vision for how he wants to see things and he's going to carry it out. And Russell Moore's

00:09:17.980 like that as well. So, um, I think Matt Chandler's like that too. I think he's a guy that's just,

00:09:23.400 he has this obsession, like trying to talk with them, trying to, to like, it's like trying to

00:09:28.520 describe colors to someone who's colorblind sometimes like they're just not going to see it

00:09:33.640 you know what i'm talking about like there's a blindness there almost that like they're just

00:09:37.460 not on that wavelength um so someone like you know yeah go ahead real quick you you know this

00:09:43.100 because we talked about it in in the episode that you came on you know a few weeks back you know my

00:09:47.640 experience in x29 and matt chandler but so i i certainly have problems with chandler and anybody

00:09:52.280 who didn't watch that episode go check it out calling uh calling out woke preachers by name

00:09:56.560 with me and John, but I did a whole thing on Chandler. That said though, I'm more sympathetic

00:10:02.800 towards Chandler. And this is why I think Keller, after reading your first book and your whole

00:10:09.620 chapter on Keller, and I want us to get a little, I'm going to push you to get a little deeper on

00:10:14.620 Keller because I think it'll be really helpful for our listeners. I'm less sympathetic for him

00:10:18.860 because here's part of the thing. Keller didn't really come to the stage, if you will, in

00:10:25.280 evangelicalism until later in life i mean he was he was a small town he was a pastor of a blue

00:10:30.980 collar congregation right in virginia or something like that that's right for a while and so so for

00:10:36.360 a long time i mean this guy is you know a pastor with with with not a lot of large influence not

00:10:43.680 not a lot of fame or prestige or anything like that hardly any just a small local pastor which

00:10:49.580 is wonderful by the way a small local pastor uh whereas chandler here's why i'm a little bit

00:10:54.760 sympathetic chandler blew up so big and so fast and so young that i i honestly think i i don't

00:11:03.300 think that chandler necessarily is the ideologue that you're describing that like at least not in

00:11:08.200 the same way that keller is i think chandler doesn't know i think chandler literally he blew

00:11:12.460 up so fast i mean you think about that like like what does a week look like for a pastor who pastors

00:11:19.840 10 000 people right like like what what is and i don't think chandler's lazy so i'm saying that

00:11:25.100 and saying i i think he's busy i think it's that week looks very very busy and so my thing is he

00:11:30.700 probably hasn't read all these books and then he just has some friends telling him he's taking his

00:11:35.940 cues from keller you know he's taking his cues from these and so if he has older men who have

00:11:40.620 done all all the all the reading and the writing and and and the study and they're telling him

00:11:45.740 then he's just like all right i don't i don't have time to study this chandler didn't go to

00:11:50.580 seminary he didn't you know i i think he has a bachelor's degree or maybe not even that well

00:11:55.280 let me let me try to maybe i didn't do a good job maybe explaining ideology um ideologues tend to

00:12:00.580 flatten reality and cram it into their obsession uh and it's an abstraction so they um most of the

00:12:10.980 people we know social justice warriors are ideologues okay so like most of the um people

00:12:16.080 that we think of as social justice warriors they're probably not thinking through it deeply

00:12:21.320 but they've still um caught the disease so to speak even like we could think of um even

00:12:26.920 religions sort of in this in a way like there are people that are adherents to religions

00:12:31.480 that can be very pious but they're uh they haven't thought through it deeply in the case of

00:12:38.100 tim keller i think you're absolutely right like he's he's actually like he's been kind of um

00:12:44.020 in enmeshed in this uh in some bad stuff for a long time and he's he's had more time to think

00:12:52.740 about things and understand things and and so i i get that like he's perhaps there's more knowledge

00:12:58.760 behind what keller's doing and he's leading the way in acts 29 we used to call like literally

00:13:03.580 everybody would call him yoda that's that's what acts 29 calls tim keller so like when you think

00:13:09.060 acts 29 like is separate from keller no acts 29 um keller keller is nothing separate from keller

00:13:17.260 no like the southern baptist convention is not separate from keller even though he's a presbyterian

00:13:21.640 jd greer is like like even even that sermon he did when the fall affects us all if you read the

00:13:27.220 notes he's like sighting color all over the place so yeah um with with matt chandler though uh i i

00:13:34.980 think it it's that obsession with with inequity and race and things like that that that's what i'm

00:13:41.820 why i say he's an ideologue because um there's i don't know if you read there was a blog a few

00:13:47.100 years ago from a i think it was a policeman that went to his church and wrote this whole thing

00:13:51.640 about like here's what it's like at village church and i've heard a lot of people like close

00:13:55.920 to Chandler who have come out of that church basically say the same thing like there's no

00:14:00.420 way to reason to approach him that he's he's on a one-track mindset of like we're going to carry out

00:14:06.400 this equity diversity inclusion agenda agenda and by the way it is featured in my book I talk

00:14:12.420 about Matt Chandler and he does mix social justice law with the gospel too so um it's for a guy as

00:14:20.900 sharp as he was or is i mean as much as i benefited from some of the things he said years ago

00:14:26.740 he should know better than to make that basic error but he's blinded by something and so um

00:14:33.040 it's this obsession i think with with equality and trying to make everything egalitarian that

00:14:39.520 causes some of this so you're right we could i mean you might be right maybe i'm no no no you're

00:14:45.320 you're right i think i but i do think there is a i think you're right i i guess i at first when i

00:14:51.600 when i was hearing you with the you know the you know the ideological person i was i was just kind

00:14:57.940 of assuming it was my fault to assume but i was assuming that that a high level of intelligence

00:15:03.080 and study was required to be ideological and so i was like well then i got to defend my boy

00:15:11.200 chandler you know but uh because i i i think he's sharp don't get me wrong i think he's probably

00:15:16.860 smarter than i am but i don't think he's like this this bookworm well-studied you know he's not he's

00:15:23.100 not coming from the ivory tower you know and and so but you're saying hey you can be ideological 0.96

00:15:28.180 and be dumb you can be ideological and be smart like like how do you study human like how do you 0.98

00:15:32.520 take a whole group of people you like white people we could say but you you could like nazi ideology 0.99

00:15:37.660 I mean, you take all the Jews or something and say they're they're not even human, basically, because they don't conform to this abstraction in our minds.

00:15:45.420 They're they're not they don't we're not going to view them as God sees them to the full spectrum of what they actually are as a person made in God's image. 0.65

00:15:54.200 Like we're going to we're just going to completely reduce them down to like ones and zeros.

00:16:00.120 Right. And they there's there's a deficiency in in who they are because they're not forwarding the agenda we want.

00:16:07.240 and and so they they get you know they whatever bad thing happens to them happens to them that's

00:16:13.700 kind of like that's the way an ideologue looks at things they just reality gets reduced and

00:16:17.780 flattened into um and i know this is kind of philosophical so that's why i took a long time

00:16:23.380 in my chapter on it to try to explain it to people and i probably do a better job in the book

00:16:27.220 uh doing that because i was taking a lot of time parsing it out right um but it is no it's helpful

00:16:33.800 it it really is a rejection though if you know peter jones truth exchange i don't know if you've

00:16:39.020 like familiar with his teachings um one ism and two ism right so like roman oh yeah okay i'm

00:16:44.500 familiar right yeah yeah so it's it's kind of like that it's it's uh it like ideologues tend

00:16:51.340 to like there's there's one thing and that's the only thing it's the only important thing and

00:16:55.420 everyone must care about it we must be obsessed with it and anyone who's not is not you know

00:16:59.760 worthy of, of being part of our club. That's, that's an ideologue.

00:17:03.660 That makes a lot of sense. And yeah, that's interesting because that, that,

00:17:07.320 that was, you know, when I was always like looking at young men to,

00:17:11.340 to become elders in my previous church that I pastored in, in California,

00:17:14.700 the first church that I planted, that was actually,

00:17:18.240 it's funny that you mentioned that because that was,

00:17:19.700 we had that in our language. That was one of the things that would,

00:17:22.660 that would immediately take someone out of the running for even consideration

00:17:27.820 for being an elder because there were lots of Christian men 0.82

00:17:30.600 who were good Christian men, but they were a one-trick pony, right? 0.95

00:17:35.460 They only marched to the beat of one drum. 1.00

00:17:37.720 Like guys who would do street preaching,

00:17:41.080 and I'm a fan of street preaching, so don't get me wrong.

00:17:43.780 You know, there's a lot of people, well, is it effective?

00:17:47.020 I don't even have time to go into that.

00:17:49.680 But like, yeah, I think so.

00:17:51.820 I think it is effective, and there's a lot that God does with his word

00:17:56.380 And saving is one of those things, but also condemning is one as well.

00:18:02.500 So anyways, but some guys, it's just street preaching.

00:18:05.000 They wanted to go to abortion clinic every single week, which is great.

00:18:08.220 Love that.

00:18:09.600 And the Jehovah's Witness would have some kind of conference in town, all those kind of things.

00:18:14.460 And so it was personal evangelism, evangelism, evangelism, and street preaching.

00:18:18.720 But if you start talking to them about other pastoral issues that a pastor should be versed in,

00:18:24.020 um and and and then just also just getting a a ground understanding for their for their doctrine

00:18:30.240 and you know they were just it was anemic it was um it was just like everything had been

00:18:36.420 funneled into this one direction and uh and and that could be you know anything you know you know

00:18:42.400 but anyways and so um i say that to agree with you it's it's clicking for me now and i appreciate

00:18:47.700 you explaining it a little bit more because an elder people as they need to be well-rounded

00:18:52.120 ideas go ahead sorry gotcha say that again they don't love they don't tend to love people as much

00:18:57.660 they love ideas and so when you put them in they usually have not the greatest interpersonal skills

00:19:03.500 generally like like hardcore ideologues generally um are just much more in love with the ideas in

00:19:10.580 their own head and conforming everything to that vision so biblically though and and just and just

00:19:17.040 this is the way the world works god created the world there's there's actual things out there

00:19:21.760 tangible things people are are out there uh who have souls obviously they're intangible but

00:19:26.820 there's there's a whole real world it's not the only the ideas in our head aren't the only thing

00:19:32.500 that matters and that's a basic that's a basic christian assumption that um we we live in a a

00:19:40.240 world that is much bigger than us and so when um for pastors when we interact when we have a bedside

00:19:46.300 manner and we shepherd and we and we shoot the wolves right we are also aggressive and we need

00:19:50.480 to be we're dealing with the real life stuff and we learn to love real things and one of my

00:19:58.260 contentions uh with the social justice advocates is i don't think they they have a love oftentimes

00:20:04.960 for real things for for the they have a love for ideas and then and then the things that exist are

00:20:11.580 supposed to just either they are supposed to conform to that to the idea they have but there

00:20:17.740 are there are some things out there there i mean there's people out there that just they can get on

00:20:21.580 your nerves even but we love them and we love um we love the blessings god gives us and the smell

00:20:28.320 and the taste and all of that stuff i'm not saying social justice warriors don't they don't enjoy some

00:20:32.300 of these things what i'm saying though is they devalue the importance of anything that doesn't

00:20:36.520 conform to the the one thing the one agenda the one right so now that's super helpful and it makes

00:20:42.860 me think like you know they don't love the whole person and they also don't preach the whole counsel

00:20:47.200 of God. So in both regards, that's what a faithful pastor does.

00:20:52.160 And the only difference between an elder and a Christian 0.84

00:20:55.240 man is that an elder must be a certain way, meeting these biblical qualifications. 0.88

00:20:59.460 But every Christian man, whether he's an elder or not, should be. 1.00

00:21:03.320 So it's must be versus should be. Every Christian man should be aspiring, not necessarily

00:21:07.320 aspiring towards the office of eldership, which is a noble thing to aspire towards,

00:21:11.300 but a Christian man can aspire towards business. He can aspire

00:21:15.160 towards something else. I don't want to hold the office of elder, but he should aspire to

00:21:18.740 all of those qualifications. He should aspire to being doctrinally sound, able to teach that which

00:21:24.460 is true and refute those who contradict it. He should aspire to being a man about one wife and

00:21:30.740 all that he should be. So all those kinds of qualifications, every Christian. So it's for

00:21:35.360 pastors. It's also for Christians. And what I want to say is that pastors must be, and every

00:21:40.800 christian man and woman for that matter should be loving the whole counsel of god and applying the

00:21:47.640 whole counsel of god to the whole person i think in a nutshell that's that's what it comes down to

00:21:52.500 is um are we looking at all of god's word and we are we applying it with love to all of of human

00:21:59.580 life to all the person and um anytime we become obsessed with with one agenda one idea is what

00:22:07.440 you're saying, then we lose that. So everything you're saying is super helpful. Let's talk just

00:22:11.920 a little bit more about Keller. This is something that you wrote. I wanted to quote it for you

00:22:15.180 and see if you'll flesh it out a little bit more for us. I thought it was great. I thought it was

00:22:20.000 insightful. Here it is. In 2010, Keller told Christianity Today, it's biblical that we owe

00:22:27.140 the poor as much of our money as we can possibly give away. Using the language, and that was his

00:22:35.260 quote, but this is your writing. Using the language of moral obligation, he implied that

00:22:39.880 the have-nots on the basis of their need possessed a legitimate claim to resources not distributed to

00:22:46.760 them, which belongs to the haves. So the church's job is to address, or sorry, the church, the

00:22:54.940 church's job was to address these inequities by not only meeting needs, but also addressing the

00:23:00.380 conditions and social structures that led to such needs in the first place. That's something that

00:23:05.940 you wrote in your first book. And that quote in what you wrote, the part that's from Keller is

00:23:11.800 it's biblical that we owe the poor as much of our money as we possibly can give away.

00:23:18.840 That is just insane. Could you just flesh that out a little bit and tell us why that's insane?

00:23:23.960 One of the big things that makes it insane, I think, is the assumption behind it is if there's

00:23:29.480 a need, right? The poor need something. And if that's the basis on which we give our money away

00:23:37.280 because a need exists, if you carry that logic further, everyone needs to be saved and God

00:23:45.140 doesn't save everyone. And so what does this say about God? I mean, is he, this would, I think,

00:23:51.500 create a moral conundrum in a way that God's law supposedly says that we're supposed to meet these

00:23:56.800 needs, but, but this isn't something that he's necessarily even doing himself. And so I do see

00:24:04.600 that this could get into the gospel. Keller doesn't take it that far, but I'm just saying

00:24:07.920 the logic seems inescapable in my mind. The obvious thing when we look at a quote like that

00:24:13.620 first is that it's just, where do you find this verse that says this? This is, you know, money all

00:24:20.700 belongs to God. Every resource does ultimately, and we're stewards of it. God allows us to have

00:24:27.060 it temporarily. Um, but there's, there's nothing in the Bible that says that we, uh, there there's

00:24:32.660 a moral obligation. We owe the poor as much of our money as we can possibly give away. And it's such

00:24:37.540 a, and what's the standard for that? How do you figure that out? So it's, it's so, it's so

00:24:42.680 problematic. Um, we are, there's a principle we're supposed to love one another and, and included

00:24:49.880 in that would be meeting needs, especially first to the household of faith, but then to the, 1.00

00:24:56.580 you know, those who don't provide for their families are worse than unbelievers. It's to 1.00

00:25:00.060 the people in close proximity to us, loving our neighbor. These are things that we're supposed to

00:25:04.100 be doing. But the poor, that's just, these are, again, we see the language of abstraction and

00:25:12.140 ideology almost coming out here too. Is it the poor in our local proximity, the real tangible

00:25:18.460 people that we live with or is it just poor as a general category uh right and what would happen

00:25:24.480 if if everybody actually followed that so let's say everybody who has more than they need right

00:25:29.160 so paul says if we have food and clothing we'll be content with these right so like so first how

00:25:33.060 do you measure that what's the metric let's let's say it's it's shelter and then you have to well

00:25:37.000 how big of a house what what amount is is ethical to pay and all those kind of things but let's let's

00:25:41.860 say you quantified all of it and then every every first world person got saved and is a christian

00:25:49.560 now and every single one of them want to follow keller's suggestion here and and give every penny

00:25:57.460 they have above the line that we've all quantified now for what is actually needed um and they give

00:26:04.180 it to the poor and what if now i know that the devil's advocate is going to say it still wouldn't

00:26:08.400 be enough because there's so many people who are poor and that may be true um but let's just say

00:26:12.600 hypothetically that there were more rich people let's say we lived in a world where there were

00:26:16.100 more rich people than there were poor um what all right you give it all to the poor and now the poor

00:26:21.200 have more than they need if there's you know and like who do who do they give it to is is it okay

00:26:27.380 to have wealth beyond like then you know and and and then here's the thing is at the end of the day

00:26:33.620 so you give it to the poor now they have more than they need so now do they need to give it back and

00:26:37.200 then it would just keep going back and forth, back and forth. And the answer, I think that like

00:26:40.920 what Keller would say, and I think a lot of Christians would say, no, you would give it to

00:26:43.360 the poor, but there would still be need. One, because there's so many poor people, but let's

00:26:47.660 say there weren't so many poor people. There were more rich people than poor people. We give them

00:26:51.260 everything they need. I think there would eventually be still at the end of the day,

00:26:55.060 give it five years, give it 10 years, there would be a need once more. Jesus said, you will always

00:26:59.620 have the poor with you. And I think the reason why there will always eventually be a need is,

00:27:04.660 i think keller would say there will always be a need because he wouldn't say this explicitly but

00:27:09.520 this is what it implies he would say there will always be a need because wealth is a zero-sum game

00:27:13.660 aka god is not a good provider god has commanded us to be fruitful and multiply and and behind our

00:27:20.760 backs he's been snickering and laughing because he's called us to do the very thing that will be

00:27:24.780 our own demise because he created a planet that cannot sustain his people obeying what he told

00:27:30.240 them to do i think that's keller's view um my view would be no you'll always have the poor with you

00:27:35.840 because you'll always have sin and poverty is a result of sin um in the same like meaning now

00:27:41.540 it's not always your individual sin doesn't mean every poor person is in sin there are a lot of

00:27:45.880 poor people in north korea but even that is due to sin not necessarily their sin but but somebody

00:27:51.460 else's sin who who is afflicting them and so but but the reality is a sinless world what i believe

00:27:57.740 would be a a world that is rid of poverty because i cannot believe that god actually created this

00:28:03.480 world with not enough resources to to to meet the needs and even the the common grace pleasures and

00:28:11.460 enjoyments of people who who are fruitful multiply and fill it like that that's just insane to me but

00:28:17.940 i i think so my whole point is to say if we actually did what keller's saying it seems like

00:28:22.400 then all of a sudden the poor people would have more than rich people and but eventually the

00:28:26.100 problem is even if we did that, if we did this equal redistribution within a month, within a

00:28:31.500 year, some people, it won't be equal for long because eventually some people are going to

00:28:35.600 invest their money wisely. Other people are going to spend it lavishly and give it a year, give it

00:28:40.160 a decade, and all of a sudden you have rich and poor. So if we level the playing field economically

00:28:45.740 today across the whole world, everybody has the exact same amount. Give it a decade and all of a

00:28:51.560 sudden you're going to have people who are incredibly wealthy and people who are incredibly

00:28:55.480 poor. And I don't think that's because of a flaw in the way that God designed this world and the

00:29:00.480 resources it has. I think it's a flaw in man who chose to rebel against God in sin. And because of

00:29:09.420 sin, we do things that produce poverty. Yeah. Well, I hadn't thought of that. That's an

00:29:16.680 interesting way. I was thinking about some of the other people who have said similar things in

00:29:21.140 scripture like martha to mary right um i mean martha didn't really martha was just getting on

00:29:27.720 mary's uh case for wasting right uh resources that could have and not helping her and these

00:29:34.460 kinds of things judas was really the one though actually she's the one i really should the patron

00:29:38.760 saint of social justice judas who said uh you know we could have sold this and we could have

00:29:44.080 sold this and and given it to the poor and that that's kind of a you know i i hear that kind of

00:29:49.120 what keller's saying here as well um it's it's and again it's so nebulous it's so vague um ron

00:29:58.320 sider likes to try to say they're in rich christians in an age of hunger that there's poor

00:30:03.680 uh all over the world it's our hungry neighbors in africa and asia and other places that aren't

00:30:10.640 you know they're they have trade inequities and these kinds of things and we're in sin because

00:30:14.920 we're not giving them resources but there's there's never a way to actually rectify the

00:30:19.920 situation completely because you'll never like you just said you'll never actually get rid of poverty

00:30:24.080 in this fallen world so um yeah i think it's better just to live life the way according to

00:30:31.940 providence we're situated in different places and we have different responsibilities our family the

00:30:38.760 sizes of our families are different the sizes of our church are different where we live is different

00:30:43.060 The needs of those areas are different. There's so many different contingencies. And we have to just try to be charitable, but I'll just steward the resources God has given us to the best of our ability. And you know what, sometimes that means that you may be taking your family out for a nice dinner, and there's nothing wrong with that.

00:30:59.880 In fact, the way a market economy works, you're actually feeding a lot of people doing that because they have to wait on your table and they're there. The money's not going and disappearing somewhere. It's, you know, waiters are getting it and restaurants getting it. And so there's sort of like a misunderstanding of how a market economy even works.

00:31:18.560 um sometimes i know piper had said this years ago i was at a conference i heard this firsthand i

00:31:23.200 can't give you a recording i know i heard it though someone asked him if it was a sin to buy

00:31:26.740 a new car and he said yes it was a sin to buy a new car and i'm like well where do you get this

00:31:32.980 you know that's not in the scripture anywhere um it's it's certainly not and we we just can't go

00:31:38.260 beyond what god has told us in scripture and that's the the danger of this is you get you

00:31:43.080 you tie yourself up in knots when you start going past that. And so yeah, there's, you're absolutely

00:31:48.800 right. Go ahead. Sorry. There's a lot, I was gonna say there's a lot of other quotes in that chapter

00:31:53.360 that are just as problematic. Keller, Keller's a mess when you really start looking at his past,

00:32:00.060 his influences, his beliefs on social justice. I was, my eyes were popping out of my sockets when

00:32:06.000 I started researching it, because I knew he was left leaning. I didn't realize it was this bad.

00:32:10.980 I didn't realize he was, you know, he was really firmly in that kind of left leaning category.

00:32:17.400 So, you know, one real quick, real quick, one really interesting thing that I read.

00:32:24.180 It was it was something that Steve Jobs said just in terms of the poor and wealth and the way that it works.

00:32:31.460 Somebody once challenged Steve Jobs with his, you know, one of his arch rivals, Bill Gates, and said, Bill Gates does so much.

00:32:40.980 for charity he's a you know philanthropist and and humanitarian and um and steve jobs kind of was

00:32:47.880 was known for doing very little if if nothing um he didn't give away his money i said how come you're

00:32:54.800 not charitable like bill gates um he said well bill gates is charitable because bill gates doesn't

00:33:00.020 have any talents he said bill gates has only ever taken over things or slid into things he hasn't

00:33:08.700 ever done anything and uh for guys who can't do anything they don't have anything to give to the

00:33:13.860 world except their money he said but um i have alleviated poverty more than bill gates not by

00:33:19.560 my charity but by my work and i thought that that was really really insightful now regardless of

00:33:26.000 whether it's true whether whether or not you know apple has actually you know made people's lives

00:33:31.760 that much better because i think there's an argument to the counter you know but they're

00:33:35.140 We're using the sweatshop labor, I thought, yeah.

00:33:37.700 Yeah, exactly. 0.99

00:33:38.540 So whether or not that's true, the concept, I think, has a lot of truth in it.

00:33:43.540 So whether or not it's true in the case study of Steve Jobs versus Bill Gates, I think the concept is true.

00:33:50.140 And I think that's what guys like John Piper just don't understand.

00:33:54.140 But guys like R.C. Sproul did.

00:33:56.140 R.C. Sproul was okay with the finer things in life.

00:33:59.800 Ligonier Cruises, you know, they weren't doing Ligonier bunk beds, you know, at the old Baptist camp.

00:34:04.980 They were, you know, going on cruises, you know, and having a good time. 0.58

00:34:09.420 And not to say that R.C. Sproul was, you know, foolish in the way that he spent his money. 0.97

00:34:15.640 But R.C. Sproul, from what I've read and what I've heard, he slept with a clear conscience at night and he had nice things and he encouraged Christians to build wealth and all these things. 0.99

00:34:25.020 And yes, be generous. But you're right, John, like one of the ways that we're generous is not just by giving every dime we have after paying our rent, you know, but by starting a business and that creates jobs for people.

00:34:42.880 There are guys who have – they're pagans.

00:34:47.440 They've never actually given to a charity, and they've certainly never given to the church.

00:34:51.940 And yet they've created more wealth for more people than John Piper ever has or ever will.

00:35:00.680 And wealth is not the only metric, too.

00:35:02.780 We need to remember that.

00:35:05.620 There's a quality of life, too, that some people obviously don't have a lot of money,

00:35:11.660 but their quality of life is very good. And there's other people that are completely miserable

00:35:17.040 who have all the money in the world. And so the things that actually matter aren't, aren't the,

00:35:22.620 the number that that pops up when you log into your bank account, the so many people who have

00:35:31.920 little are satisfied and, and, and whatever you have, whether it's money or whether it's just

00:35:39.240 giving of your time, time's another thing you can give people, um, your talents, you know,

00:35:45.020 whatever, uh, you know, you, you do you, I guess to, to say a California phrase, but, uh, God's

00:35:53.100 made everyone different and, and we have to allow for that. And we, we can't just pigeonhole everyone

00:35:57.720 into this really super legalistic, um, standard that, uh, allows people to really one up each

00:36:05.520 other. And, you know, well, I don't drive a new car and I, you know, I, I give all my money to

00:36:11.300 the poor and I could be drawing so much money from my book sales, but I don't, I donate to

00:36:15.920 charity. It's like, okay, but how about, you know, that's between you and God, just, just live your

00:36:21.820 life. And, um, I think of like the widow with two mites. She was the moral of that story. I remember

00:36:27.720 I heard John MacArthur preach on it years ago. And I had always thought like, this was a story

00:36:32.040 about exemplifying her sacrifice and and how important it was and because it was what she

00:36:37.560 had to live on and she gave it and i think though when you read it in context it seems clear that

00:36:42.660 actually it's an indictment of the pharisees that this is the kind of thing that you are doing you're

00:36:48.920 you're putting these heavy burdens on people that they're giving even the last what they had to live

00:36:53.880 on and so um i i see keller is as in that vein as well uh at least with that quote that we just read 0.89

00:37:01.920 and it's not right it's not it's not right you're right so it's it's great the hypocrisy is crazy

00:37:07.580 it's so i don't think there's anything wrong with having a nine hundred thousand dollar house

00:37:11.280 i don't have a nine hundred thousand dollar house for the record but i don't think it would be wrong

00:37:15.580 but i think it is wrong if you have a nine hundred thousand dollar house and you write a book like

00:37:22.520 radical you know i think right that you know what i'm saying that's when it becomes a problem and so

00:37:28.160 So like R.C. Sproul, I mean, this is public knowledge.

00:37:31.880 You can look it up online because it wasn't a church.

00:37:37.080 But with Ligonier, I think he was paid a little over 200 grand.

00:37:41.640 And I assume he got book sales.

00:37:44.100 And I assume that he also had a salary from his church as a co-pastor there of St. Andrews, the church that he pastored for several years.

00:37:55.020 But R.C. Sproul, I love R.C. Sproul.

00:37:57.440 i don't think there was anything wrong with that um because rc's role didn't write books telling

00:38:03.740 people to to give everything away and i guess my i'll give piper credit in this regard um piper is

00:38:11.220 one of the few guys who talks like that and and from what i've heard does it david platt doesn't

00:38:18.300 david platt talks like piper but lives like sprawl and keller i don't really know keller

00:38:26.240 but it it's just i mean he seems to be doing fine but that kind of rhetoric right we we owe the poor

00:38:33.680 is as much of our money as we can possibly give away the people who take you up on that

00:38:38.740 this is the irony it's usually the poor it's usually the poorest christians you know who

00:38:45.740 are barely getting by uh trying to love their kids love their wife working working a job that

00:38:50.720 that's hard work you know usually physical labor you know crawling into bed late at night to wake

00:38:56.080 up and do it all over again and they're the ones who are taking tim keller up on on these kinds of

00:39:01.440 statements like well technically we could live off of 3500 a month instead of you know what the 800

00:39:06.520 that we make the most generous state is in the country do you know what is it it goes back and

00:39:12.640 forth i think right now it's utah it's it's between though usually utah and mississippi

00:39:16.780 the most generous like giving the most to charitable uh causes and mississippi is the

00:39:24.620 poorest state in the country. So just think about that. I mean, and then it's also heavily

00:39:30.200 evangelical. So for all the negative attention that a state like Mississippi gets, they're giving

00:39:38.000 from their poverty. And I think I just wanted to illustrate your point that you just made,

00:39:44.500 which I thought was a good point. So I'm sorry, I interrupted your train of thought there.

00:39:47.600 No, no, you're right. So let me ask you this, and we'll go ahead and land the plane. But

00:39:52.480 But last question, just again with Keller, because I think, you know, we've just got a lot of listeners like myself who have benefited from Tim Keller and, you know, for years were reading his books, listening to his sermons.

00:40:04.660 And there was a lot of good stuff. But we started seeing, you know, that the writing on the wall and having concerns.

00:40:09.980 And so I just you've you've done some some substantial research on him.

00:40:15.000 And so one of the things that you wrote about in regards to Keller was that he seemed to have a peculiar fascination with Karl Marx.

00:40:26.420 Is that true?

00:40:27.720 And what did that look like?

00:40:29.580 Was there anything he disagreed with Marx over?

00:40:33.180 Or what drew him into Karl Marx?

00:40:35.640 And where do you see that, whether it be his writings or his preaching?

00:40:39.980 Where did you get that from?

00:40:41.840 um yeah i mean i don't know if i'd use the word fascination uh he okay then i use the word

00:40:49.440 fascination well you know sorry well he he might he may have a fascination he certainly has a

00:40:55.900 fascination i would say with like new left thinkers but i think that's just because of the the world

00:41:00.720 he grew up in he um came you know at bucknell university or bucknell college um you know he

00:41:07.580 was involved with the more the activist students and then you know he he gets involved with hearing

00:41:14.700 the Tom Skinner thing that changes his life and then Edward Edward Ellis when he's in seminary 0.56

00:41:20.960 basically tells him that you he doesn't use the term but it's the same concept you have white

00:41:25.820 privilege and Keller accepts that and then Harvey Kahn gives him the hermeneutical spiral which is

00:41:31.580 basically a it they'll claim it's not postmodern but it's subjective it's a subjective way of

00:41:37.040 reading a scripture it's the same way liberation theologians read the bible and pretty much um

00:41:42.000 this kind of reader response uh way of looking at it so like keller these are his influences and

00:41:48.360 then you see in his writings you can tell he reads a lot of um he reads foucault if there's a honestly

00:41:55.340 if there's a obsession he has or a fascination i think it's foucault he talks about foucault and

00:42:00.460 some servants quite a bit uh french uh yeah michael foucault or some people will say michelle

00:42:07.940 i always get whenever i say michelle people uh they write me and say it's michelle but

00:42:12.820 it depends i guess who you're talking to um foucault was a french um deconstructionist a

00:42:20.320 post-modern thinker and um he he's known mostly for uh his book discipline and punishment which

00:42:27.700 was about the prison system and how uh he talks about he calls them discourses but how um there's

00:42:35.800 there's these systems set up and they uh and basically it's it's more complicated i'm trying

00:42:43.480 i'm giving you the real shorthand here but it's it's not just marxism's class conflict but there's

00:42:48.440 this really complicated kind of interplay of language and all kinds of things that constitute

00:42:54.000 power relationships and these power relationships form these discourses and so it's it's um there's

00:42:59.540 definitely a marxist flair to foucault when you read him as there is a marxist flair most of the

00:43:04.760 post-modern thinkers uh but um foucault so foucault's thing was um he was obsessed with power

00:43:13.260 he was an ideologue and everything was power everything was power uh in fact i think he

00:43:19.400 created his own term um a a power uh i'm blanking on the term that he created but it is basically

00:43:29.460 the concept that he was trying to get across is that basically everything's everything's power

00:43:34.020 and so keller also he likes to quote foucault and foucault's um going after power relationships

00:43:41.800 and analyzing things according to power dynamics and um keller will say that you know every it's

00:43:48.640 inescapable that power conflicts are part of this world and oppression is part of this world as a

00:43:54.040 result but christianity is the escape hatch jesus is the escape hatch um and i think it's power

00:43:59.940 discourse that i'm thinking i think that was the term foucault came up with anyway um so these so

00:44:06.600 because jesus gave up his power as the son of god and came to this earth uh that is the example that

00:44:13.360 christians are supposed to give up their power and so it plays right into the whole let's

00:44:17.080 redistribute our power let's sit down and listen let's i mean it's it's all this it's the social

00:44:22.260 justice stuff and it sounds really good when you're a preacher in new york city so um he i

00:44:27.680 would consider foucault a more neo-marxist thinker um but he he quotes james cone i mean the favorable

00:44:33.400 things about james cone and and his analysis of of religion um that you'll find a lot of of those

00:44:40.440 kinds of guys um with marx though just for our listeners real quick he's the father of black

00:44:45.780 liberation theology yeah yeah so the the insight the main insight he gets from james cone is that

00:44:52.940 the religion of um the slave masters was basically illegitimate and the religion of the slaves was a

00:44:58.560 more pure type of christianity based on what how do you know that why would you say that well

00:45:03.080 based on the fact that they're oppressed they can identify more with with the new testament and

00:45:09.120 um they're basically they're not in sin like the like slave masters would be so i you know how how

00:45:15.920 you how you read this back into the new testament or you know the old testament forget it but how

00:45:22.600 how you make that work i you can't i mean it's it's imposing things onto christianity that are

00:45:29.180 foreign to it but um but yeah so so james cone foucault um marx though he has some crazy i mean

00:45:36.400 i'm just saying they're crazy to me quotes um where he says that let's see i'm trying to think

00:45:41.860 if i can pull it up here because i want to get the quote right um he's there's actually a few

00:45:48.080 things um from marx that he says but i can't find it right now but basically i'm going to summarize

00:45:53.980 it um that marx cared about uh oh here i found it he was the only major thinker other than god

00:46:02.660 himself who held up the common worker with a high view of labor i mean that's kind of that's crazy

00:46:09.560 talk the marks you know the only major thinker other than god who held up held up the common

00:46:14.680 worker that's a quote from from keller yeah well um it's a some yeah it's so in the um i i have the

00:46:22.680 quotes um cited in the book this is um i'm it's a sentence where there's half of it is a tim keller

00:46:30.840 quote and then i'm summarizing the the end of it because i'm trying to reduce the whole paragraph

00:46:34.800 but yes he does say major marx is the only major thinker who held up the common worker other than

00:46:40.940 god uh with a high view of labor so this is his teaching and you can go look it up it's in a

00:46:46.760 one of his sermons um i'll give you the right it's made for stewardship is the name of the sermon

00:46:52.740 but he talks about um marxist thinkers as well saying these weren't bad people you know they

00:46:58.980 were just trying to alleviate poverty these kinds of things so it it's obvious that he's got a very

00:47:05.660 left-leaning bone in his body and um i updated the article because after i wrote the book some other

00:47:12.220 information came out like for instance he is a registered democrat i didn't know that so i put

00:47:16.820 that in there as well and some things like that keller was a registered democrat keller is a

00:47:22.780 registered he has been for years but he is a registered democrat yes wow so is so is mark

00:47:28.760 ever by the way so you can actually and then the only reason we know that is because in those

00:47:34.620 particular no i'm not joking are you serious i'm serious it's in the public record you can actually

00:47:39.980 go that's how we know is in new york state you can actually look up party affiliation and so

00:47:45.500 someone just searched tim keller and then tim keller had to go answer it and try to explain

00:47:49.360 himself and it's kind of this whole awkward situation but yeah so um there's a million

00:47:55.620 things i could bring up about tim keller i mean he admires saul alinsky's vision of community

00:48:01.020 organizing he was on the advisory board for the and campaign um there's just a lot there but uh

00:48:09.340 but yeah so i would say there's political stuff right he's politically progressive there's also

00:48:14.220 though and and these two are connected in some ways but there's theological stuff there too

00:48:19.020 um hermeneutical spiral that way of looking at scripture where your your interpretation is

00:48:27.820 happening along with um well the interpretation the meaning of the text is this interplay between

00:48:33.820 the interpreter and the text itself that's postmodern that's you get rid of objective

00:48:38.300 truth that kind of destroys inerrancy yeah i don't know if there's anything you want me to

00:48:41.980 expand on but that's tim keller no that that was fantastic that's exactly what i was hoping for

00:48:47.180 was just a detailed analysis breaking it down because i yeah a lot of that was foreign to me

00:48:52.000 i knew there was a problem i didn't know the engaging color book into engaging keller yeah

00:48:59.560 2013 now this is if you can find a copy i think it's out of print um but it's it's got some really

00:49:05.820 good stuff in it from some traditional presbyterians engaging keller who's the author

00:49:11.460 uh it's it's by a bunch of authors um in fact if i type it in it's it's like i think it's like 10

00:49:19.900 maybe eight or 10 authors that are all presbyterians uh who uh decided to go after some of

00:49:27.260 his theology um and it's like really basic stuff like uh it's not really coming up it is out of

00:49:35.440 print now but uh but yeah you can i think da hart was one of the contributors i think that's where

00:49:41.380 i found out about it um yeah so if you type it in it will come up engaging with keller um and

00:49:48.600 it's ian campbell and uh dj hart is part of that there's a bunch of people ian hamilton

00:49:56.120 and so so they talk about like how he rebrands the doctrine of sin um his doctrine of the church

00:50:04.360 his doctrine of hell i mean it's like some really basic stuff that they're they basically say he

00:50:10.280 gets this wrong and they have all the the citations there so that's a resource if someone can find an

00:50:16.760 imprint book then then they can use it if if there's a concern about keller wow that's super

00:50:22.620 helpful john thanks for that resource thanks for breaking that down yeah all right well any any

00:50:27.820 final thoughts that uh you want to share with us i feel like that's been super helpful we got to

00:50:31.820 talk about your well really both of your books um but your latest book so we have social justice

00:50:37.260 goes to church. But then your latest book is Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and

00:50:42.720 Conflict. I didn't even catch that, but I see what you did now with the Christianity and 0.98

00:50:51.600 liberalism. I like that. Just saying these are two different religions.

00:50:55.800 I don't want to end it on a bummer note. Like, hey, Keller's kind of terrible. 0.74

00:50:59.540 I'm just going to want to...

00:51:00.900 Okay, well, give us something positive.

00:51:03.120 Yeah, you can send all the hate mail to me for people to get mad at this.

00:51:06.440 But I love it. I'll say I think the book's doing real well. I've had a lot of and I'm not just saying that because I'm supposed to say it, but but people have really benefited from it.

00:51:15.080 And I've had a lot of people reach out and just say how it's really made everything clear for them, which is was my intention.

00:51:22.380 So that's going well. And I to riff off of something you said earlier, I think you're absolutely right that there is there's a change going on.

00:51:31.860 People don't want the same old, same old.

00:51:33.900 They don't want the social justice, but really just more the compromised, fake pastors anymore.

00:51:41.080 The deck is being reshuffled.

00:51:44.080 And my confidence is in that God, he says the gates of hell won't prevail against his church.

00:51:51.080 He will preserve his church.

00:51:52.620 He built it. 0.93

00:51:53.860 And the sheep hear his voice.

00:51:57.120 And so there's nothing that can stop the church.

00:51:59.800 Tim Keller can't stop the true church.

00:52:01.860 um no one can no false teacher can and so um that's that's my encouragement and comfort and

00:52:09.560 i'm and the cool thing is right now i think we're seeing that happen we're seeing with all the bad

00:52:14.160 things that are going on out there there's a hunger and there's an energy that that you know

00:52:18.080 you sense and i'm sensing it too and people want authenticity they want the word of god and they

00:52:23.960 and they don't care if it's politically incorrect they don't care if uh you know people hate them

00:52:30.000 for it, they're, they're going to, they're going to cling to it. And I'm, and it, there's really

00:52:33.720 a sifting going on. We're seeing who the true, who the true Christians are. And, and, and that's 0.88

00:52:39.320 a beautiful thing. So I'll end it on that note if we can. No, that's super helpful. That's really,

00:52:45.320 really helpful. And I think if things continue to go that direction, if there is a resurgence

00:52:50.500 and, and, and there is a tipping point and there is a critical mass and all those kinds of things,

00:52:56.720 I think there will be guys who will try to all of a sudden turn around and say,

00:53:04.000 oh, we've always been on this side and try to benefit from it.

00:53:06.760 And my caution would be, just as a last pastoral note, look at repentance.

00:53:13.900 And I think two factors.

00:53:16.680 One, godly sorrow doesn't, godly, real repentance that leads to life,

00:53:22.700 It comes from godly sorrow, and godly sorrow doesn't wait for opportune times to repent.

00:53:29.180 So one side is, when did the person repent?

00:53:32.920 Was it once things shifted and it became popular?

00:53:36.600 Once people started wanting bold pastors, then they started being a bold pastor?

00:53:40.240 So when did they repent?

00:53:42.300 What was the timing?

00:53:43.380 And then also, was the repentance only in deed, or was it in deed and in word?

00:53:48.660 meaning that they changed their position, their actions.

00:53:53.380 But was there ever a point, right?

00:53:55.500 Because if some of these guys come back around, praise God.

00:53:58.500 But was there ever a point when they actually in word said,

00:54:02.540 I was wrong.

00:54:04.540 I was wrong.

00:54:06.540 I was teaching this.

00:54:07.660 I was saying that.

00:54:09.180 I did this.

00:54:10.300 I did that.

00:54:11.060 This is how it directly contradicts with God's word and the truth.

00:54:15.520 I was wrong.

00:54:16.520 um my concern is that you'll see guys if things start to shift if there starts to be this

00:54:23.880 conservative christian sound doctrine resurgence you're going to see guys try to get out and head

00:54:31.200 ahead of it try to pretend as though they were leading it and try to get all of these followers

00:54:36.800 to still stay with them and some of them to even come back and i would just say when did they make

00:54:42.060 the switch right that to turn they turned right that's repentance to turn when did they repent

00:54:46.860 when did they turn was it once things were opportune or did they turn even when it would

00:54:51.800 have cost them and then two did they turn only in their actions they started writing new articles

00:54:57.560 they started changing you know having a little bit more aggressive tone they started taking some

00:55:01.760 stronger stances did they did they just change in what they do and what they teach or was there ever

00:55:06.860 a point where in word repentance and word where they said this is what we previously did and this

00:55:12.400 is how it was wrong and that's that's what i rarely rarely see from some of the big eva guys

00:55:20.360 is even the guys who have turned or changed on a certain position um they just they they they 0.98

00:55:27.920 turn on a dime and then they act like that's where they always were like like like we're stupid

00:55:33.780 they literally just like we're students like it's like like we don't know how that's a direct 0.91

00:55:38.360 contradiction from what you were teaching for decades for decades it's all recorded we have it

00:55:45.660 you know and and not just something you taught 20 years ago but something you said two weeks ago

00:55:49.920 direct contradiction and all i want praise god you changed your position that's wonderful

00:55:54.560 all i want is in addition to repentance indeed repentant word so go forward and say we're going

00:56:01.100 this direction and you might have noticed this directly contradicts the direction we were going

00:56:05.980 five five minutes ago um i was i was wrong i'm a man i i get it wrong um please forgive me it's

00:56:15.220 like i mean some of these guys it's like you could afford to be wrong once or twice right you've been

00:56:18.980 faithfully according to the record right you've been faithfully ministering for 20 years 30 years

00:56:23.080 40 years 50 years like i think you can afford and honestly if anything i mean that would probably

00:56:28.220 which defeats the whole point that I'm trying to make,

00:56:30.840 but that would probably work in their favor

00:56:33.360 with their listeners.

00:56:34.360 People would probably,

00:56:35.600 they'd probably become even more popular

00:56:37.280 if they would be willing to, you know,

00:56:38.760 just to own something.

00:56:41.000 So anyways, all that being said,

00:56:42.840 I agree with you.

00:56:44.040 Christ is building his church.

00:56:45.300 The gates of hell will not prevail against it.

00:56:47.360 And I think, you know,

00:56:48.540 we're promised that the church will endure.

00:56:51.120 We're not promised that America will,

00:56:52.640 but I'm hopeful even for America.

00:56:54.540 I'm hopeful even in the near future

00:56:56.260 and to the point where one of my big concerns is not even uh what are we going to do when we get

00:57:02.220 shipped off to the the gulags uh my concern because i don't actually think that's going to

00:57:06.940 happen my concern is what are we going to do when we win and and the bad guys pretend like they've

00:57:14.580 been on our team the whole time and that they actually even architect were the architects

00:57:20.800 behind the scenes of this win, right?

00:57:23.860 And like, well, we did that.

00:57:24.940 We knew all along, you know,

00:57:26.280 the reason we were careful.

00:57:27.940 Like I can just, I can hear the explanations.

00:57:31.660 And yeah, I want to warn people

00:57:33.960 preemptively against it.

00:57:35.160 So, all right.

00:57:36.300 Well, one more time, the website,

00:57:37.640 what's the website where your book can be bought?

00:57:40.780 Socialjustice.com.

00:57:42.940 Okay, great.

00:57:44.480 All right, well, all of our listeners go out,

00:57:45.920 get yourself a copy of John's latest book

00:57:49.380 and feel free to get the other book

00:57:50.680 while you're at it.

00:57:51.340 John, thank you so much

00:57:52.140 for coming on the show.

00:57:53.700 As a special thank you

00:57:54.900 for your gift of any amount,

00:57:56.280 we'll be happy to send you

00:57:57.320 a free digital book

00:57:58.360 from our store.

00:57:59.500 To access this offer,

00:58:00.980 visit

00:58:01.240 rightresponseministries.com

00:58:03.120 slash offer.

00:58:04.400 We highly recommend

00:58:05.580 Pastor Joel's book,

00:58:06.820 Am I Truly Saved?

00:58:08.000 If you or someone you know

00:58:09.240 has wrestled with doubts

00:58:10.260 about the love of God,

00:58:11.780 this would be a great resource.

00:58:13.760 As a reminder,

00:58:14.480 to get this offer,

00:58:15.140 go to

00:58:15.480 rightresponseministries.com

00:58:17.240 slash offer.

00:58:18.480 And thank you

00:58:19.120 for your generous support.

00:58:20.680 Thank you.

The NXR Podcast - October 13, 2021

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Timothy Keller ｜ A Detailed Analysis of His “Woke Gospel”

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