THEOLOGY APPLIED - Which Pastors Can You Trust？ ｜ Tim Keller, John Piper, Gavin Ortlund, Voddie Baucham, Matt Chandler, Michael Horton, Russell Moore, John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, Doug Wilson
00:09:48.060But, yeah, it's just been really surprising.
00:09:51.100And I always come back to that Lord of the Rings scene where, you know, Aragorn's trying to convince, I forget which king it was, but it was the king who didn't want to go to war.
00:11:07.860But he, to me, has been sort of actively moving into progressive, in part by saying that abortion, he has moved into using that language of the Bible tells us abortion is wrong, but it doesn't tell us the best way to lower the rate of abortion.
00:11:27.920Again, I don't remember exactly what he said.
00:11:31.800Yeah, and his implication was kind of, I felt like what that was was saying, it seemed very politically calculated.
00:11:39.800You don't have to vote for pro-life candidates.
00:11:43.180Maybe you vote for someone who is not pro-life, but if you believe they're going to put in a social safety net that's going to alleviate the need for an abortion.
00:11:53.760Now, I would say that he just doesn't know the statistics on abortion that he's saying that, but maybe he does.
00:12:00.080Yes. And and it's interesting to now connect that to the fact that the ERLC of the Southern Baptist just said something very similar, that they want to eliminate the need for abortion.
00:12:12.100Well, there's never a need for abortion. I hate that language. And it's really deceptive language.
00:12:17.280And so the deception is where I go. That's progressive. That's not pietist.
00:12:21.500So, 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 in the progressive camp for me.
00:12:48.800If you're arguing, let's keep people away from the church in a time of a lot of fear
00:12:53.100and turmoil, I put you in progressive camp.
00:15:12.060And so I don't think it's two kingdoms, church and state.
00:15:14.500I don't think it's two kingdoms, secular and sacred.
00:15:17.220I think it's two kingdoms of light and dark.
00:15:20.120But Christ, I believe that it is his earnest desire and his commandment in the Great Commission
00:15:25.540that his kingdom of light, that it would advance and spread in every realm of human society,
00:15:32.040in the arts and in medicine and in politics and culture and, of course, our families and our
00:15:38.680churches. And Tim Keller, my position is that Tim Keller is not a strong two-kingdom guy. He is a
00:15:45.260Kuyperian guy. The problem is what he's trying to advance in culture and in arts and certainly in1.00
00:15:52.180politics is not biblical principles, but Democrat platform virtues. You can look at, so it's not
00:16:00.940that he's like, Christians shouldn't be involved. He thinks Christians should be radically involved
00:16:04.480in all these different spheres, but involved doing what? And I think that's the difference
00:16:11.240between, the pietist says, let's not get involved. The progressive says, let's get involved.
00:16:15.960But when you look at and do what, it basically just mirrors what a leftist would say. And then
00:16:22.920the persevering guy, in the way that I'm defining it, would say, let's get involved and let's do
00:16:27.860it conservatively according to biblical standards. So I think you're right on the money with Tim
00:16:31.960Keller and I would maybe go a little stronger. Here's the next one. John Piper. What do you
00:16:35.740think about John Piper? So, you know, John Piper is interesting to me. I, I, I'll confess freely
00:16:42.020that I love John Piper. I really came up in the faith. He was one of the guys I listened to a lot.
00:16:46.740I've talked about, I mean, John MacArthur was probably the most formational for me when I
00:16:50.840became a Christian. Um, but John Piper, I know that he sort of put out that essay last year
00:16:57.500I'm trying to remember. It had some really sort of tortured logic about it's also murder. I can't even remember. I should have reread that essay. But it was something very sort of tortured logic about, yes, some political candidates are pro-murder as far as killing babies. But there's also a kind of murder that is whatever he felt Trump was.
00:17:21.700it was right before the election it was basically it basically it was a false dichotomy but it was
00:17:27.240basically saying like trump has a monopoly on pride that's what it was it was some kind of
00:17:32.020pride is a kind of exactly so pride you know because that incites people and it leads towards
00:17:36.820you know murderous thoughts and a murderous culture and these kind of things and then there's
00:17:40.720explicit murder and so um so it's really not that clear of a choice and he didn't tell anybody to
00:17:45.480go out and vote for biden but i think he assuaged the consciences of weak uninformed undiscerning
00:17:51.040christians to vote for biden go ahead and so i would not put him in the progressive camp i would
00:17:57.400put him in the pietist camp i feel like he um i think every pastor that i love is not always you
00:18:05.200know 100 all the time and i i feel that he's been a little naive about things and i i particularly
00:18:12.840look at what happened at his seminary that i know from talking to people from doing some reporting
00:18:19.300that you had an influx of people trying to move that seminary, trying to do a lot of what we've
00:18:25.700talked about happening in the SBC towards complementarianism, towards introducing this
00:18:30.520very suspicious spirit of being concerned about all your other fellow Christians are racist if
00:18:37.360they are not adopting this, empowering a particular ethnic group or a particular skin color group.
00:18:43.880And I don't think he saw that stuff coming. I think for me, he seemed naive to it.
00:18:49.300I think he welcomed these people with good intentions and with good faith.
00:18:54.380And talking to some other people at that seminary, I think he just really wasn't aware of what he was dealing with.
00:19:01.300And when I look at that Trump essay, it felt to me like everybody was sort of looking at John Piper going, you have to say something, you have to say something.
00:20:14.500that I also knew the Bible. And then I was also having to read the data about the virus. So it's
00:20:19.540like, I was trying to be a medical expert on viruses and a constitutional law expert, and then
00:20:27.640also a theologian all at the same time. Because if you knew the Bible really, really well, but you
00:20:32.320didn't know these other two things, you weren't going to have necessarily the right answer.
00:20:36.500You know, and so there's a lot of weight on pastors to be faithful if we're going to be
00:20:41.460involved and we're going to apply all of christ to all of life and i think that john piper who
00:20:45.640who i i have admired greatly in the past and still appreciate in some regard i think john
00:20:51.060piper has been radically informed and knowledgeable about a breadth of topics
00:20:55.180but i think he sucks when it comes to politics i you know what i mean i i don't think he's got
00:21:00.660yeah go ahead to be a little more pietist about to just i think it's okay to sometimes go i really0.91
00:21:07.700can't tell you what to do here here's the principles go apply them you know it wasn't
00:21:12.220that it was saying you're okay if you decide to go vote for that other guy which did not age well
00:21:21.520now that we've had 49 out of 50 democrats voting not just to codify row but beyond that
00:21:27.660right that for any reason in any state all the way up until a baby breathes its first
00:21:32.580breath of air, that it could be murdered. When one political party comes out so unanimously
00:21:39.760on such a clear biblical issue like that, then it really erodes any kind of argumentation that
00:21:48.820would say, well, maybe, you know, politically you can go either way because there are problems on
00:21:52.480both sides. The Republican Party is not synonymous with the Bible. But that's the problem with Tim
00:21:57.660Keller, this third wayism is like, well, there's Republicans and there's Democrats and then there's
00:22:02.660Jesus. But what that implies is that both are wrong, but they're equally wrong. And that's
00:22:08.740the problem. A lot of young people I've realized, young Christians who are just now becoming1.00
00:22:12.660politically minded because, you know, it's kind of hard not to over the last two years with the
00:22:17.160events that have been going on. But a lot of people, young people, they feel liked to by some
00:22:21.940of our evangelical gatekeepers because they're like i i thought that both republicans and
00:22:27.440democrats were wrong and and i would respond by saying they are but not equally and they're like
00:22:32.520yeah but that's the thing i thought equally wrong i thought you could go either way because both are
00:22:37.040a complete you know train wreck and and but you know but but i'm looking at it's like yeah there's
00:22:41.900some serious problems with republicans but then there's this other party that 49 out of you know
00:22:47.460what I mean? It's just, it's not even a contest. And I think guys like Tim Keller and his third
00:22:52.600way-ism, and then guys like John Piper, I think, and some of the ignorance, and particularly that
00:22:57.360one article, have paved the way for evangelical Christians to think, oh, you really, you can go
00:23:04.540either way. You can be involved on either side, or you can be a pietist and just not get involved
00:23:09.340at all because it really doesn't matter because they're both equally evil. And we live in this0.96
00:23:13.500two-party system and both of them are equally wrong and so it just and and i think a lot of
00:23:17.940christians are coming out of that and realize we were lied to and it's because of people like you
00:23:21.600with the daily wire and now it's like people are listening to ben shapiro instead of tim keller
00:23:26.420you know and and they're frustrated you know they're frustrated they're like why am i having
00:23:31.040to to learn biblical application from an orthodox jew as a protestant christian because all my
00:23:37.360guys have failed me you know it's just any thoughts on that real quick and we'll move on
00:23:43.340No, 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.
00:23:57.240I don't see a real conviction that even that I believe that Republicans are also wrong and Democrats are wrong.
00:24:02.920I 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.
00:24:19.700So 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.
00:25:30.500And then when the ask kept getting bigger, you were like, I will concede this.
00:25:35.160And then it was like, well, now we need to promote people based on skin color.0.88
00:25:39.220Now we need to concede that this is a systemic problem and that we need to reorganize the justice system around it.0.89
00:25:48.940Some really big asks. And then that was when I started paying attention.
00:25:52.120And 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.
00:26:01.120saying and we just saw it with this abuse issue that if you are not yourself a victim of abuse
00:26:08.300then you do not have the information to speak if you are not black if you are not a woman you don't0.52
00:26:13.560have the information to speak and so it's really a very crafty way of silencing the the public0.58
00:26:21.660debate that is our legacy that is our right as americans and it's it's what we see biblically
00:26:27.340that when one person speaks he may seem right another person gets you come along and interrogate
00:26:32.780that and that's part of how we get at the truth right so um yeah i was i love him me too i love
00:26:38.680vodhi bakum also and you're absolutely right and it's it's not just a tactic this this gnosticism
00:26:43.480ethnic gnosticism the idea of of um it was it's just basically it elevates experience above all
00:26:49.480other things so instead of sola scriptura it's you know it's sola experience you know it's this
00:26:54.880experience trumps everything. So it's not just to silence, um, public debate. Um, but ultimately
00:27:01.220within, within, well, ultimately it's to silence the Bible because it says that, um, the Bible is
00:27:10.520not in and of itself sufficient. It may be authoritative. It may be inerrant, but it's not
00:27:15.800sufficient. So me with an open Bible, I cannot speak credibly or authoritatively, uh, to, to,
00:27:22.780this or that unless I also have, in addition to the Bible, some kind of unique personal experience
00:27:30.460and specifically an experience of being oppressed, an experience of victimhood. I must have that
00:27:38.080standpoint epistemology, that ethnic Gnosticism, that victim experience in order to be credible,0.97
00:27:45.860um to see the bible rightly to interpret the bible clearly and um and Vody did a great job0.71
00:27:53.000pointing that out so you're absolutely right I accidentally skipped one um so let's go back
00:27:57.060real quick but Gavin Ortlund are you familiar with him I am how do you feel about old Gavin
00:28:02.900I mean Ortlund yeah Gavin is I put him in definitely the progressive camp and I'll tell
00:28:10.920you why I won't pretend to know everything that he's written, but, um, Gavin and I had a few
00:28:18.060debates on social media. I didn't really know who he was. I was familiar with his, um, brother's
00:28:24.040book, a little bit familiar with his dad, but he was putting forward these arguments about climate
00:28:30.520change. Well, I'm married to a meteorologist, so I know a little something about that. And he was
00:28:35.440arguing that this is an issue Christians really need to care about. And for me, knowing what I
00:28:42.620know about that particular issue, that just set off alarm bells. And he mentioned, I have this
00:28:48.640podcast about why Christians should care about climate change. So I went and watched this
00:28:53.540podcast. And much like some reporting I did on Francis Collins, and if you're not familiar,
00:28:59.740the former National Institutes of Health director, and how he used evangelical leaders to push the
00:29:05.420government's message regarding vaccinations, masks, shutdowns. Well, in this case, Portland was using
00:29:12.920the UN and the arm that studies climate change to argue, this is great evidence. You should go
00:29:21.000look at this and it will tell you why there is a scientific consensus, which by the way,
00:29:25.680anytime you hear scientific consensus as an argument these days, big alarm bells should go
00:29:30.640off they don't really want you asking questions about it um so what i happen to know about this
00:29:36.320arm of the un is that it's extremely corrupt and that it got into a lot of trouble a few years ago
00:29:42.720for suppressing some the results of some studies for faking results in studies to get the answer
00:29:49.440that they wanted for climate change and of course what we know is that is being used to inform
00:29:54.080policy it's being it's why your gas prices are so high it's why your grocery prices are getting
00:30:00.000higher. And it's a way to implement what I would call some really authoritarian policies. So when
00:30:07.220you are using your platform as a pastor to say Christians should care about this issue that the0.55
00:30:13.260government is particularly pushing and using government sources, that to me is you're an
00:30:19.640activist now. Yeah, I agree. I think that Gavin Orland, I always say he's one of my favorite
00:30:26.820race hustlers right there with Al Sharpton. He's a progressive. He's a liberal. The shooting in
00:30:33.940Texas, or particularly the one in Buffalo, but it's immediately racialized. He's not a pietist,
00:30:45.040so he's not even close. He's not, let's stay out of politics. No, like Tim Keller, and I would say
00:30:49.940even more so um tim keller probably is just just wiser and older about you know how to say but he
00:30:57.860just without any shame at all he's just immediately getting involved in every political cultural issue
00:31:03.440but always on on the side of uh the political left um you can immediately ascertain what gavin
00:31:11.840is going to think about anything based off of uh what what's the recent report that came out of the
00:31:16.820white house all right gavin will will mirror that um but wrapped in some theological language
00:31:23.320i have a half-written essay about that and i really got to get it done oh okay
00:31:27.420climate change issues in particular cool we look forward to looking at that um okay so here's the
00:31:33.660next one matt chandler what are your thoughts on matt he's interesting right so i will there's a
00:31:39.000couple people on this list that i did not know much about until they popped up in my reporting
00:31:42.980And 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.
00:31:59.360And 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.
00:32:20.600and so when I saw that I you know that one kind of that startled me and at the same time I go
00:32:28.860I'm not you'll tell me I'm gonna be interested to hear what you have to say because I go
00:32:32.840did he know what he was doing when he made that video or was it one of those issues I know the
00:32:40.260MLK 50 stuff came up but I go was it an issue of I am trying to push this in the church or
00:32:47.340I just want to be at the table with the popular kids. And that's what they're talking about.
00:32:53.100So you tell me, what do you think? I'm not sure. So I don't think that Matt Chandler is a scholar
00:32:58.120by any stretch of the imagination. And that's not to say that I'm a scholar. But I think Matt
00:33:03.040Chandler, some of these guys, not all of them, right? There are guys like John Piper, guys who
00:33:07.000it was a slow build in their ministry in terms of platform, popularity, followers, those kinds of
00:33:14.220things. Um, but, but it's, there is a, a very unique danger when a guy like Matt Chandler or
00:33:20.400a guy like Mark Driscoll launches into the stratosphere, um, at a very young age and,
00:33:26.220and just blows up in popularity quickly. And Matt was one of those guys. And I think that,
00:33:31.540uh, one of the things that happens is that you immediately become so popular and your church
00:33:35.520grows so much and you're immediately, uh, weighted down by so many daily responsibilities that study
00:33:41.260suffers. And so, um, I don't think that, um, that Matt Chandler is particularly, um, educated when
00:33:48.420it comes to doctrine and theology and, and cultural issues. And so I think that guys like
00:33:53.980Matt Chandler are, are taking his friend's word for it. So when you got a guy like that,
00:33:59.260okay, good. Yeah. So, so I agree with you. So when you got a guy like that, you need to ask
00:34:03.880the question, who are his friends? Right. And so I was, Matt Chandler is the president of Acts 29,
00:34:08.980which was founded by Mark Driscoll until they kicked him out.
00:34:12.240And I think there were some problems with Mark Driscoll,
00:34:14.240but just kind of like the SBC thing that we recently talked about,
00:34:17.880I think that with Mark Driscoll, there were other things going on, right?
00:34:20.780That he's more patriarchal in his view of the dynamics between men and women
00:34:25.260and the created order and what God's plan is for the home and the church
00:34:29.400and even the sphere of society at large, you know,0.94
00:34:33.900women in the military and all these kinds of...
00:34:35.980And Mark Driscoll, again, in his youthful angst and sin, I think there was some real
00:34:41.240sin, made some statements that, you know, I'm thinking, I would not have said it that
00:34:45.680way, you know, and I don't think this is just semantics or subjective, because there is
00:34:59.960And so there are really some things like that.
00:35:02.300But my point is, Acts 29 pushed him out around the time that his church elders were pushing
00:35:08.500him out with Mars Hill, with Driscoll.
00:35:10.780Chandler assumed, you know, had already actually taken over as president of Acts 29.
00:35:15.360And I was an Acts 29 pastor in California at the time.
00:35:18.680And this was right around the time when just a couple of years after Driscoll was removed,
00:35:23.240that's when Eric Mason, who is a very close friend of Matt Chandler and was seated on
00:35:28.060the international board for Acts 29, appointed by Chandler and the rest of the board, came out with
00:35:33.920his infamous book, Woke Church. And when that happened, I read that book and I started dialoguing
00:35:38.760with Acts 29 pastors in my area in Southern California and heated debates at the local level
00:35:44.680and that was happening at the national. And I pulled our church out of Acts 29. That was the
00:35:48.480end of 2018. And we had some people leave the church and people were upset with me because I
00:35:52.200was being divisive by making a big deal about critical race theory and saying certain things
00:35:57.560about Eric Mason and making certain comments, even about Matt Chandler and some of those comments I
00:36:01.440made publicly. And what I kept falling back on was the Apostle Paul has something to say about
00:36:07.200when it comes to how we say something, our tone. The Bible does address that. Rebuke your opponents
00:36:15.380with gentleness, not knowing if God might grant them repentance. So the Bible, it does talk about
00:36:20.420how we say something, but the priority, the emphasis is given to what we say, not just how
00:36:26.300we package it, not how we say it, but what we say. And the apostle Paul always indicts primarily
00:36:32.000as the divisive, quarrelsome, argumentative party, the person not who has less than charitable tone,
00:36:42.620but the person who introduces error into the church. I've never heard that. I'm going to use
00:36:48.620that. And so Eric Mason, he's introducing this, what Brody Bakken would have called ethnic
00:36:55.840Gnosticism, you know, white and black spaces at the Lord's table and this, this weird divisive,
00:37:03.200he's the one bringing division. And, and so anyway, so with all that being said, I would say
00:37:08.280Matt Chandler. Yeah. I don't think that he's an expert on, on critical race theory and Kimberly
00:37:13.440Crenshaw and Ibram X. Kendi or these, no, I don't think that he's probably hasn't read a lot of the
00:37:19.160literature, at least not deeply, not thoroughly. But he got in with the wrong crowd. He's got the
00:37:25.740wrong friends. Eric Mason has read this stuff. Leon's Trump, to name somebody else, has read
00:37:31.380this stuff. And these guys are neo-Marxists. Absolutely. And Chandler has flanked himself.
00:37:38.500This 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.
00:37:45.140He was like, flank yourself with strong men.
00:37:47.660And sadly, that's precisely what he did.
00:37:49.680He flanked himself with strong Marxist men.
00:37:54.040And Acts 29 has suffered greatly for it.0.79
00:48:17.880And then it was two weeks later that he came out, Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church.
00:48:21.960And when you put those two things, those two statements side by side, it's like a direct
00:48:26.900contradiction so it's like no he changed his mind yeah he didn't actually he never said like so i
00:48:32.340was wrong uh the words that i don't think i've ever heard john mccarthur say but he but the good
00:48:37.400news is he changed his mind yeah yeah and that seems clear and i do think i give i give everybody
00:48:43.120a lot of grace for the early covid right because it was so unprecedented and we didn't know what
00:48:48.060was happening so i i and the guys who shut down it was when i started to string out that i'm like
00:48:53.340If you're not resisting the shutdown now, if you don't see which way the wind is blowing, then my grace is ending now for your discernment.
00:49:06.640So, yeah, I wish he was here so that we 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.
00:49:21.680that i i wish he was here and it would be funny to go all of these people who um you know you
00:49:28.940sort of see on the more progressive side oh we love rc i'm like i wonder if you would love him
00:49:32.940if he were here speaking to you about these issues right now amen i completely agree and i think rc
00:49:39.360sprawl would have been right there with john mccarthur and i personally think and i think
00:49:42.440john mccarthur you're right like grace in the beginning none of us knew what was happening we
00:49:45.920thought we were all going to die the imperial college model 2.2 million dead by october and
00:49:49.680And so there needs to be some grace for the beginning.
00:49:52.820I think R.C. Sproul would have been right there
00:52:01.660And just because, you know, the perspective I bring, again, is more reporterly and personal than logical.
00:52:11.020I can't remember how I first came about him, but what I know is this, is he wrote something and I went, well, that's very sensible in this.
00:52:19.580It was some, it might have been racial, it might have been, I don't remember, but he wrote something and I went, that is, one, it's courageous, and two, it's extremely sensible and well said.
00:52:27.720and i started quoting him and immediately he posted on social media my dms lit up with hey
00:52:35.200megan right you don't know who you're referencing you need to stop it that guy well if you know me
00:52:40.860you know that all i am now is more curious about well who is doug wilson that's right warning me
00:52:46.300off of him and i started reading him more and more i started reading the blog in may blog i
00:52:51.540watched an interview he did with aaron wren who i mentioned a little bit ago the masculinist
00:52:55.300who puts out this um yeah and all of it very interesting to me and um i really liked what
00:53:01.380he was saying i was really fascinated by his teaching um and so i've just continued to read
00:53:06.400him and i definitely put him in the faithful category even because i don't know everything
00:53:11.460doug wilson has ever written i read through the controversies and i felt like the things that
00:53:15.440people were warning me off of he addressed to my satisfaction i agree um but the reason he's
00:53:21.220faithful to me as i go he seems to me like someone who has literally thrown it to the wind and gone
00:53:30.740i don't care what the response is i don't care what damage you think my reputation takes i don't
00:53:37.700care if you're going to push me off into the fringe and say you are now a fringe figure because
00:53:43.260my understanding this was all kind of before my time that he used to be considered quite mainstream
00:53:47.900right now they have fringified him and i go his his courage and saying this is what i think is
00:53:55.940true this is what i believe is biblical his total willingness to fly in the face of what we're told
00:54:02.800we must say and must think every time some controversy within the church comes up
00:54:07.100makes him at the very least give him the the benefit of the doubt that he is being faithful
00:54:14.300and consider him openly because he's sure not looking to win popularity prizes.