TSTT Fault Lines in American Evangelicalism

Welcome to The Sword in the Trial, a podcast the Founders Ministries. Founders Ministries exist for the recovery of the Gospel and the reformation of churches. I'm Jared Longshore and. I'm Tom Askell. Thanks for listening to The Sword in the Trial today. Before we get started, we want to remind you that we have a conference coming up January twenty first through the twenty third called the Doctrine of God right here in southwest Florida, and we would love for you to join us. There's still space to register for that conference. We found a bigger venue. We actually went and scouted out the venue just last week and it's awesome. Things are coming together. Man, it's just gonna be a wonderful, wonderful time. So we'd love to see there. Pastor Tom here will be preaching, I'll be preaching, and well vote Bacam here we'll be preaching. And he's actually with us for this particular podcast. So join us for that conference January twenty one through twenty three. Yeah, we're grateful for the opportunity to have this in a larger venue. It looks like we might sell out again. So if you've been delaying, signing up. Don't wait too much longer because registrations are coming in daily. We're excited about that. Well, man, what a joy to have Voty balk them with us here on the sword in the trial. Vodie is an old friend and just before we started recording this podcast, we were talking about the first time we met, which was in Fort Myers, Florida, where he was speaking at a state convention meeting for the Florida Baptist Convention and then came over and spoke in our church, and uh, we just had some good times together. That that was the first time you and I had met face to face, though I think we'd corresponded and had some engagements. But I was delighted to know about you. Do you remember when that was fifteen twenty years ago? You know, I do, I do not. It's spent a minute, man, Yeah, it's spent a minute. Yeah it has been. And those were those were good of the day. That's back in the day when they used to love me as well as you do. Votey. He kept preaching, he kept preaching the Bible and got in trouble. No, man, you know that's you know some one some twenty Zama says, Hey, I'm for peace, but when I speak, there for war. So, uh, you just either quit talking and have peace, keep talking and have war. And so you've kept talking, and just so good to see you again. Look forward to having you down here in January for the Doctrine of God conference. That's going to be awesome. I can't wait, man, I'm excited about that. Yeah. And then you're doing some other things too. You just have completed a book, manuscript that's going to be coming out in the spring of twenty twenty one, and we want to talk a little bit about that, and then also just talk about the theme of that book. So tell us a little bit about it. Well, the working title of it is fault Lines, and it's sort of a play on the idea of a fault where an earthquake takes place. And the subtitle is about the coming Catastrophe and evangelicalism social social justice movement and Evangelicalism's coming catastrophe. And I truly believe that we're seeing a shift now, that there is a fault and it has shifted and the ground is moving and there is separation taking place. And I don't think that we've seen the worst of it, and I was really I've been thinking about this for a number of years, but it's one of those books that I hadn't really wanted to write, you know. I was trying to just you know, stay out of stay out of things like that, especially since I've been living in Zambia for the last five years. Right, and then you know, all this stuff happened with George Floyd, and I decided that well, first I was late, you know, finding out about what had happened, because you know, I'm over here on the other side of the world. And then when I found out about what happened, you know, I didn't really do or say, you know, much about it, because again I was late to the party. And then I saw that there were people who were tweet being you know, we're watching your Twitter accounts and you know, and and and basically demanding outrage. Well, if I was gonna say anything, that settled the fact that I would when when when people started demanding outrage as as though, especially from those of us who assigned the Dallas statement, as though there's anything in the Dallas statement that would indicate that we would not be shocked and appalled by the taking of the life of a human being. I mean, it was absolutely ridiculous. And you know, yeah, I don't I don't do like bullying, and so I just said, you know what, that that pretty much settles it. I'm not you know, I'm not gonna going to get into this. And then there's a friend of mine who all he says to me, you know, God, you but I have a wonderful plan for your life. He decided to post He decided to post some videos from a conference that I had done with him. There's a little thing called a founder's conference. And so all of a sudden, I start getting messages from everywhere just blowing up, you know, with with with with stuff, you know, thank you for posting whatever. And you know, I don't have a YouTube channel. I've never had a YouTube channel. I've never posted anything to YouTube. Everybody's thanking me for posting this stuff on YouTube and law and behold, my friend who always tells me God loves me, but he has a wonderful plan for my life, had dropped me right in the middle of it. And I don't want to say anybody's name, you know, Tom. Askers, but Tom, and then let you fight that what happened, Tom punk somebody and stepped out of the way exactly, so I said, Tom, I said, Tom, I mean from The Godfather. I think it was from The Godfather Part three where Corleoni says, just when I thought I was. Out, oh yeah, yeah. Well so just that really sort of settled it, and I just I felt like it was time, it was time to do this. And the other thing that really pushed me over the edge was again, I've been living in Zambie for the last five years, and you got to understand. You know, here in Zambia, the police don't protect and serve. If somebody was to break into my house right now, I couldn't I couldn't call the police. If I did call them, they wouldn't come. If something happened and I needed the police, I would have to go get the police, pay them a bribe and bring them so that they could do whatever they were going to do. The police here set up checkpoints at the end of the beginning of the month in order to stop cars just you know, check people's tags and if your tags are out of date, they pull you over to the side of the road where you pay your fine in cash. So you know, Another thing that's happened here is I remember the first time we saw somebody being beaten by the police. We were in a grocery store and there's a bunch of cops who got this guy and they're just carrying him on their shoulders while others are beating him and he's just moaning and wailing and nobody's doing anything. And I'm like, what's going on, And the person in front of me in line just turns around and goes, ah, he's a thief, and I'm just like, so, so he just gets beating up by the police, And yes, that's absolutely what happens. So I say all that to say this that that's policing in the country where I live, and people here started talking about the corruption of American policing that that was a bridge too far. At that point, I thought, Okay, I gotta I gotta do this. I've got to write this. And then when I would talk to people here about the actual numbers and what was happening, they would get this curious look on their face, like I don't get you know, and to which I would respond, yeah, you're you're absolutely right. The police are not hunting and killing black men. You know this is this is an invented narrative, and so anyway, all those things together just kind of, you know, push me over the edge to where I've decided, you know this, uh, this needs to happen. Finally found somebody willing to publish it, and away we went. The fault line idea is just to hear you talk about it? Voting is I just personally to hear you talk about it is powerful because Tom and I are observing this, We're talking about it nearly every single day. We're watching what's happening with the various organizations over here. And it's crazy. It's crazy to me, especially coming out of like young wrestlers and reformed you know, and the new Calvinism, because there did seem to be I've said this before publicly. I was sitting with Tom. I don't know which T four G it was, but one of the early T fourgs, sitting with Tom and Louisville, and I remember thinking like I was over the moon, man, I was over the moon. I was like the hymns and the songs, and I was sitting with Tom, and Tom in his way, you know, he's never going to like actually tell me I could just tell he didn't seem quite as excited as me. He was very excited, he was for it. I was like, Tom, what's the deal, and why aren't you excited? He said, well, I am. I'm very thankful. I'm overjoyed about what I see. I'm mis concerned it might not be might not be as deep as it needs to be right now, doesn't have that doctrinal grounding. But even so, it's wild to look at what's going on over here in these fault lines. So I would love to hear you particulate more about what are those fault. Lines and what's going on on? What do you see? Well here, here's the thing then to to to go to your uh issue. You know, I remember, you know, being brought into some of those circles. I was never invited to be a part of, uh you know, uh some of them, but uh, you know, I was brought on as a council member of the Gospel Coalition, and you know, I, you know, preached to a number of these other you know, sort of events in this kind of New Calvinist resurgence or whatever. And I remember being very excited about that because you know, I am one of those individuals who did not come up in Calvinist ranks, came to the Doctrines of Grace late and started off really just as a Calvinist and ended up being reformed. There's a difference with being a Calvinist and being reformed, right, there's three ce's for the reform guys, Calvinistic, covenantal, and confessional. And so it was interesting, you know, coming into that and beginning to hear warnings from people who were, you know, writing books about the new Calvinism, and some of them are being very charitable and saying, hey, this is a good thing. We're glad to see people embracing the doctrines of Grace, but we worry about this, this, this and this, And some of the things that that guys were worrying about was how big the tent was, and how many guys were in the tent calling themselves reformed, who weren't reformed, who were not Covenental, who were not confessional, and whose cultural ethos was outside of sort of historic historical reform ethos. There understanding of law and gospel and and things of this nature. And what's interesting about that is I've gone from scratching my head to you know, what are you guys, you know, talking about to Now I look back and I look at the influence of critical race theory, intersectionality, you know, the influence of this what I started calling the critical social justice movement. I look at the influence, and all of a sudden, it's like those movements had reformed guys at the helm, or more reformed guys at the helm, older mature guys who are reaching out to younger guys with platforms and bringing those younger guys with platforms in. And now what's happening is those younger guys with platforms are running headlong into the critical social justice movement, and instead of them having their chains jerked by the older guys, the older guys are starting to follow them and begin to sound exactly like these young guys and are moving some of those very foundations. And so it's really been unsettling, you know, to sort of watch that happen from afar and you know, you know, you guys know since the Dallas statement, just like you, I mean, I've been canceled, you know, to borrow, to borrow contemporary phrase, I've been I've been canceled by these groups just like just like you guys have. And I think you know you asked me about some of the fault lines. I think one of the key fault lines is the Dallas Statement. The Dallas Statement on social Justice in the Gospel was a fault line, and there were people who signed it who were over here, and people who refuse to sign it who were over here. And what was interesting is some of the people who refuse to sign it. What's interesting about them is that they're very vocal people, and they're very vocal critics. They didn't sign it, but they also did not give not just didn't they give a substantive critique. They didn't give any critique to the statement. So there was nothing wrong with the statement that they were willing to critique, but they weren't willing to sign it. And why, well, they haven't said. But for many of them, I believe it's because young guys and black guys and brown guys who they had embraced have run headlong into critical social justice and a lot of these guys did not sign the statement because it would have meant repudiating some of the young guys they embraced and mentored. Yeah, I think you're right, Odie, and I remember having a conversation like that with one of these older guys and he said that the statement. He was disappointed in it because I this is almost a quote. It shut down some productive conversations on race that were taking place. And uh, you know, I look at those conversations. Weren't productive number one. And if we can't agree on some fundamentals that the Dallas statement lays out to have a conversation, then I'm wondering what we're talking about. You know, there's not anything wild in that statement. At the end of Buy What Standard. You remember, there's there's that scene in there with you and me talking at church you helped found. In Houston, Texas. And it was late. Actually, man, I don't know, it was probably two in the morning when we were talking. Two o'clock in the morning. I saw how rid my eyes were in the. That's when the truth comes out. That's when the truth comes out to it. We may have needed a few more filters, but I do remember just a sober moment moment in our conversation. I think this is in the it made it into the film, where you know, you said you just think that division is inevitable. I mean, it just looks like it's it's we're not going to be able to avoid some separation, and that's heartbreaking, but you know God's done that in the past. So what do you You've. Had five years to kind of not live and breathe the air regularly in the US, and and man, you've been doing great work over there at the African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia, and in the church where you're serving and other things that you continue to do. But from that perspective, now, you know, what where do you think we need. To be looking and what do you think we ought to be doing? Those of us who are covenantal confessional, you know, those of us who do agree on the scriptures, even those I'm finding great unity with brothers and sisters who are not covenantal and confessional, but who agree on the authority and sufficiency of Scripture to address these current critical. Social justice issues. Where do you think we need to be taking our stands? Yeah, you know, I've been camping out second grad the intent. You know, this is a spiritual war and the weapons of our warfare they're not carnal, right, they're not physical, but they are powerful and they do destroy strongholds, and we've got to unleash them. And there's two things that we're called to do. And number one, we're called to destroy and we're called to take captives. And I know people don't like that language because we're talking about our brothers. We're not talking about destroying our brothers. We destroy arguments and lofty opinion opinions raised against the knowledge of God. That's what we're destroying. And I think one of the things that that has been happening is that people haven't been willing to destroy the arguments and lofty opinions because they don't want to be seen as trying to destroy their brothers. And the sad thing about that is is that's not love. I think one of the things that's been exposed here as this fault line has shifted, is it has exposed a false unity because if a brother is going to say that I'm not his brother because I have a different opinion on I think it's very interesting that these these movements. Now you look at you know, the Gospel Coalition Together for the Gospel, and you know all of these you know, sorts of groups that that that rose up, these different conferences that happened, and the different seminaries that were attached to this, and seminary presidents that were involved in this, and you had people. One of the beauties of it, I think, Jared, one of the things that you were you know, we're talking about being excited about. Guys were saying, you know what, there are non essentials that we disagree on, things that we used to kill each other over. The Presbyterians used to baptize us to death right. But now here we are and we're saying, you know, there are things that are more significant than that, and we're unifying over this. And it was amazing. And guys you know, talking about you know, continuationists and and and cessationists coming together and and and saying that's not gonna divide. But now we're dividing on this issue of a critical race theory, intersectionality, critical social justice view of race that is more significant to us than baptism, more significant to us than you know, continuationism and and and and and more more significant to us than confessionalism. We were saying, you know, you've got a confessional guy, We're a confessional guy, YadA, YadA, YadA, But but this, this view is more significant to us, to a group of people who were uniting in spite of a whole bunch of things. Now guys are saying, no, this is a bridge too far, and if you don't interpret these issues, you know, down the line according to the ways a grace theory and intersectionality view these issues, according to the way the critical social justice used these issues. So the definition of whiteness and white privilege and white supremacy, and now add to that white equilimbrium inequilibrium and white fragility, and you know, the call to anti racism and so on and so forth. Now we're saying that those things right, that is our confession. So you don't have to hold to Westminster, you don't have to hold to sixteen eighty nine, but you do have to hold to DiAngelo and Kidney. Wow, man, that is a profound way to put it. And that's exactly what's happening. I mean, that's a great way to think think about it, because you find people now who do disagree on things that ten years ago we were trying to rally around, but they agree on this social justice approach that's current. And they're the allies and the ones of us who disagree, but who agree with them? Confessionally we're the opponents. And you know, Die Tom and I've been we've been thinking about what they Well you go ahead, you go ahead, I'll follow up. No, no, okay, Well because it just makes me so sad, man, you know, and I know we're all sad about it, and because I just it's funny. You know, we went through a lot with buy what standard obviously, and man, we just said, I love everybody. I just have this. I'm not mad at I'm not mad at it. My brothers, I'm not bitter toward anybody. I love them. And it's sad to see this. And I'm wanting to say, how can we what are what are those fault lines? So that we can help as many people not be take captive by hollow and deceptive philosophy. And you you mentioned one which I'll just underscore is this sense of if if if you're stop with the eleventh commandment, like stop with it, if you are, if you love your brother, just you've got to say, and this is actually a doctrine of God thing, because man, I vote if I see if I see voting, sin, you know I've voting. I care I do care what vote thinks about me. I don't want, you know, but that can't dominate our relationship. I gotta go to voting. And then well, what if vote doesn't repent and thinks you're wrong and doesn't like you. It's like, well, there's a god in heaven and this is my brother, Jared. I think we got to I think we got to back that up. Though. We got to back that up and even say, if vote sins, we've got to make sure we're defining sin not according to Robin DiAngelo and Hebra Mexicindy, and you know, we got a Kimberly Crenshaw and so on, So we got to make sure that we're defining it according to the law of God and so and I know you guys have done a lot of talking about you know, law and gospel, but what we've we've got to make sure that we're defining these things according to the law of God. And so when we're defining sin. By the way, this is one of the huge problems with the critical social justice movement, because there is a new original sin, and that new original sin is the sin of racism, and all white people are guilty of it. They're complicit in it by virtue of their whiteness. And this just that's just wrong, that's just not biblical. This idea that you know, and you know, I've talked about this idea of ethnic gnosticism and I unfolded you know a little more in the book. But this idea that somehow, and by the way, the concept of ethnic gnosticism is rooted in critical theory. They don't call it a narcissism, but this idea that the world is divided into oppressors and oppressed and be oppressed by virtue of their oppression, have access to knowledge that the oppressors don't because they're oppressors. They're inherently blind. And so that's why we talk about listening to our brothers and sisters of color. That's why we're talking about listening to black voices, you know. And again, so why and then God will fall into the trap and they'll say, well, what about a voice like Vote's voice. No, no, no, no, no, my voice is not a black voice, because according to critical race theory and critical social justice, the black voice is the voice of the oppressed. If the person is not accepting the role of the oppressed and speaking from the perspective of oppression, then their voice is not authentically a black voice. So even that statement itself is a nod to critical theory. So when we start talking about, you know, black voices versus black bodies, right again, this is absolutely a nod to critical to critical race theory. You know, when the when the Attorney General of Kentucky, you know, comes out and offers his findings, and you have people saying, you know that he's given One of the founders of BLM says he gave a bull Connor speech. In twenty twenty, a former, a farmer, a sergeant in the LAPD says he might be skinfolk, but he's not kinfolk. In other words, he's a black body, but he's not a black voice. And so again this is all rooted and grounded in critical theory. So we have to be aware of where this stuff is coming from. And so there's two things there. Number one, destroyed arguments and lofty opinion. So we need to identify the arguments and lofty opinions that are raised up against the knowledge of God, and they need to be destroyed for the sake of our brothers. And we need to be we be you know, open, honest, loving with our brothers, but fierce in the way that we fight and go to war with these ideologies. Okay, and then that the second, the second part of it is taking every thought captive. So we've got to recognize that one of the reasons that this is attractive is because our Christian brothers is not racist, right, our Christian brothers love the brethren. I brought this. I told you I had a a prop here. You know, you guys can see this case, and you know inside this case is an SBC, you know, symbol of here. Inside this case, you know, there's this really nice fountain pen and it's really nice, you know, at there, and you know it has my name on it here. It's from two thousand and one. I was appointed chair of the Taylor's Committee at the SBC. Now I didn't get to go because of the flooding that year. I was in Houston trying to get to New Orleans and it was flooding, and so I didn't get to go. Although I was appointed chair, why was I appointed chair of the Tailor's Committee? When they appointed me chair of the Teilers Committee, I had to ask, what's the Tailor's committee? You know, I'm not a political pon in my body. But let me back up a little bit. About a year or so before that, I had been in a meeting in the home of Page Patterson, me Dary Hodge another, you know, two black doctoral students at Southeastern Seminary, and Patterson had given me permission. He's president of Southeastern. He had given me permission outside of the system. I was doing d MAN and my plan was to do a dmon and then do a PhD. He gave me permission because I had this wild idea of going to Oxford doing my defil at Oxford. He gave me written permission as the president to do my last year of the de man as the first year of the defil at Oxford, and to count that towards the completion of the one degree and started the other. Because he had God loved me. But Page had a wonderful plan for my life. Paige wanted to see me be the president of one of our seminaries or the first black president of the Southern Baptist Convention. And Page was not about tokenism. And he set us down and he said, it's important that you guys are doing this work because we love the brethren, and we've always tried, you know, to embrace brothers of other ethnicities and see them rise up to the ranks. But god, guys, you know, go off here, they go off there. They don't have our you know, share our theology or whatever. So, just like it had happened throughout my entire theological career, I had white brothers reaching out to me, not giving me anything other than encouragement to stay the course because they wanted to see me succeed. And so that's what was happening. And Jared, you kind of joked earlier, you know, about what happened to me. I'll tell you what happened to me. A few years later, I wrote a blog post and Tom, I think this is when you and I started corresponding. And in that blog post, I came out as a Calvinist. And I don't know if you remember it there or not, but you know, I wrote a blog post explaining why I embraced the title of Calvinists. So that was strike one. The other strike was Bruce Short and I I brought a resolution at the at the convention. I forget which year it was we brought that resolution, but it was it was that resolution about public schools, right, calling for the investigation of the public schools. You know, there's radical agenda in the public schools, and so you know, I'm a proponent of home education, and the public schools are sacred you know to Southern Baptists, and so because of those things, you know, I ended up getting blacklisted in the SBC because I got off message. I got offline. This wasn't you know what our ideology was. And it's quite interesting that, you know, nowadays, we've we've got guys sort of going in different directions, and instead of the SBC right or Wrong saying no, no, no, this is not what our ideology is, they're sort of caving and letting things out of the resolution not happen. So I just think it's really interesting to watch, you know, the way things have unfolded. And I said, I'd have to say this. One of the irony, one of the ironies is that people not only say that I'm not a black voice, but they try to explain why I'm not a black voice by saying that I'm trying to curry favor with white people so that I can have elevated positions with white people. So let me see it opened in the SBC where they wanted me to be the president, the first black president of one of our seminaries, or the first black pleasure president of the SBC. So I opened my mouth and that was gone. Now recently I've opened my mouth, and all of these other organizations that I used to be a part of now won't touch me with a ten foot pole. But the answer people have is that I'm doing this in order to curry favor with white people. As we see Texas. There reason I think you're in trouble voting, the reason Tom in trouble the same. It's like I want to be with both y'all guys wherever I go, because y'all both gonna say something. Something's gonna happen. Is gonna be voting Tom does said something. The first one is to say something, everybody's gonna be like throwing down. But you know, this is interesting. It's kind of have a think about when you were talking voting about the two issues that you know, Calvinism, public school, and yet the way it's being played now by the SBC, they're really caving. I'm suspicious that it's it's pragmatism. Just rampant in the SBC that plays it both ways. Right, So what you did? You you hit two issues that transgressed pragmatism. Calvinism doesn't work, and government schools don't work. But this CRT stuff does. It fits the pragmatic worldview. And it's just kind of trying. It is trying to curry favor even with man. It's not trying to become all things to all man, like Paul tells us. But we're to be accepted kind of by the world in order to do evangelism. And you know, the issues you wrote up don't don't fit. And but this this modern stuff right now seems to fit the spirit of the age, and so they're kind of moving with it. Yeah, until until they can't go far enough. And that's the thing. The whole anti racist movement is upfront about the fact that you can never complete the work of anti racism. There is no there. There's top five million dollars from the original. Yeah, no, it won't it won't be enough. It won't be enough. You watch because you know when you get letters, you know that they're talking about, Yeah, the patriarchy and the pernicious you know, theology and this and this and the founders or whatever. I'm telling you. You did five million dollars. Number one, five million dollars is not enough. But number two, you kept the names on the building. And then number three, you didn't see power. You didn't give up your power to black people. And so now it's going to be thank you for the five million dollars. That was a nice first step, But where are you elevating black voices? That's where are you putting black people in the seats of honor? And where are you tearing down all of the references to these these individuals in your past who sins today have been deemed unforgivable because tomorrow it'll be somebody else's sins. You know, it's always it's always somebody else's statue today, but eventually it's going to be yours, you. Know, Vodi. One of the things you said ago, I want to circle back to that at the bottom of all of this is a failure to recognize or appreciate or understand God's law, I mean the law and the Gospel. And we have hammered that, but I don't think we can hammere. It enough because God is the one that gets to define what is sin, what is righteous? And good night. I mean, I have enough trouble dealing with real sin in my life. I don't need anybody to manufacture new sins and try to make me measure up to their shifting standards in order to deal with that. When I hear people treat you and say about you the things that they do sometimes are people like you who refuse to cowtow to the spirit of the age. It angers me. I mean, it angers me because they are taking what they assume to be and what they propose to others is high moral ground, and they're trying to point out how you don't measure up to their high standard or righteousness, and their standard is wrong, their standard is godless, and they are sinning while claiming that they're being morally superior. And the Emperor has no clothes, and we have to be willing to say that. And I mean, one of the things I just appreciate you, man. I watch you on that A Time to Speak panel, you know, with that Stetzer and the be Daniela. I think it's twenty fifteen, wasn't it when you were in Memphis. For that Matt Chandler and yeah, yeah. Yeah, those guys, and you know, every one of them turned on you, every one of them. And you refuse to give one inch. And they were taking shots, cheap shots sometimes, and they weren't listening to you. They're twisting your words, and that there's nothing they could do to get you to back down from just standing firmly on the law. And the gospel. And that's desperately what we need today. Man. I just I'm so grateful for you and your willingness not to budge on those issues. Well, man, I appreciate that, and I mean, I just appreciate having friends. You know. I hear you, bro, I hear you. This is about to kiuse. It's the group that that we have anymore voting, have you? So hey, you know, and it's interesting. It's interesting that you know, now I get I get things, you know, like, you know, my circle of friends is getting so small, and then people try to make me make my circle of friends even smaller. And so somebody told me, for example that you know, Jeff Durbin apparently you know, stepped down the line here recently in a message that he did at the Fight Love Feast or something like that. And I'm getting emails from people asking me why I haven't spoken up to condemned John Derby. First of all, I've never met the man. Secondly, what did he do? You know? And then they're like, you know, he did this and he did that. But then, not only am I supposed to condemn Jeff Durbin, but I'm supposed to condemn the fight the Feast guys. And so wait, how did it go? No? Okay, maybe you didn't hear what the message and maybe you don't know Durban, but you do know James White, and James White is at Durban's church, and the guys that fight Love Feast, they speak highly of you. Therefore, since you know the one guy who knows him and the other guys who did the events speak highly of you, you're therefore, I was like, what are you talking about? Some fundamental and stuff going on? And they say, we're the ones being fundamentalist. Vot you got so much man, what would you say? You know? And here's the other here's the other ironic thing. Here's here's the other ironic thing about people are saying that, you know, we're trying to to truncate the gospel, and you know, we don't understand any implications of the Gospel, and this and that and the other. You know what's funny about that? Two things are funny about that. Number one, some of these same people were saying that I was being too broad in my application of the Gospel because of my advocacy for home education in particular and for Christian education for parents in general. And so when I started, when I did what He must be with the ebling truth, family shepherds and what He must be, there are people who felt like I was applying the Gospel too broadly in dealing with those family issues and educational issues and things like that. Right, some of those same people now are saying that I'm a fundamentalist because I'm not willing to apply the Gospel to the work of anti racism. But I'm going to go you one further. Why did I come to Zambia to help start the African Christian University, which is a classical Christian, liberal arts, biblical worldview university. You know what's interesting about that? There are people when I tell them what I'm doing, they always say, oh, you guys are starting a Bible college. No, it's not a Bible college. Oh you guys are starting you know. No, we're starting a university. We're offering degrees in agriculture, business education, fine arts, theology, getting ready to add biology and chemistry, and some of these same people could not wrap their mind around it. We don't have a hard time raising funds for ACU because there are people who get doing the Bible College because you know, yeah Africans, you know, Bible College, you know, preach the Gospel, get them safe so they don't go to Hell. But then they hear about the expensive work that we're doing and they can't wrap their heads around it because they're fundamentalists who don't get the broader view that we have of this university. And now people turn around and say that I'm being a fundamentalist because I'm not embracing the twisted view of anti racism as being part of the Gospel, not because I think racism is okay, but because anti racism is part of a worldview that is counter to the Gospel. So sit there and try to tell me that, you know, I'm not willing to expand my understanding of the implications of the Gospel broadly enough. You know, if you get rid of of God's word and God's law is the standard than any old standard will do, and they can measure. You, buy it and beat you up all day. That's exactly what's happening. Yea, right, Yeah, I think that that's interesting, the way that's shaking down voting. And we've sens the same thing like in this in some ways. As I watched why A. R kind of go south, they were Chris Tomlin, God of the City, went out and sang, but then they kind of got put in. The pocket of the city. They didn't have their Bibles with them, And then there are these other kind of fundamentalists draw high walls, we shouldn't be involved in culture and all that kind of stuff. I mean, we're striking at that with the Wheeled the Sword project that we've got going on that we're so excited about you going to be here, going to be recording season two on that, And I think there's doctrine under that, and important doctrines about the nature of the Kingdom of Christ and its relationship to the world and the sense that it is coming on earth as it is in heaven, and there's the relationship of the physical and the spiritual and the very nature of reality itself. I think all of that's going on, and I hope a recovery of those doctrines, as you said, destroying certain arguments and then teaching clearly so that some of our brothers can get right on this, because I do think there's a lot of good there's a good impulse, but there's been not a deep enough doctrinal grounding. I do have another question for you. I don't know, we're kind running, but just one more or one go at it with two different questions voting. You see these fault lines, especially in American evangelicalism, probably in an American reformed evenge ocalism. You know, Tom knows many of the leaders in this, in all of this, what is your message to them, given the fact of these fault lines and some that have been unwilling to speak or just how would you direct to the leaders? What would be your word to them that you would see good things to come? And then secondly, what would be your word to just pastors throughout our community? What should they be doing given the situation at hand. I would say two things, mad up and love. Those would be my two things, mad up and love. And when I say mad up, what I mean by that is this, there are a lot of these guys, and I am aware, I've had things shared with me. These guys do not believe this stuff. These guys know better. But what they're doing right now is they're saying, for example, they're saying things like, yeah, we know that you know, the police are not really hunting down and killing black men, but our black brothers and sisters really feel this deeply, you know, so on and so forth. And so number one mana say that speak that truth, because guys are saying it behind closed doors, but they're not saying it publicly. Right publicly, they're out there parroting the whole black Lives Matter thing and so on and so forth. But privately, privately, these guys know better, but they're not willing to say it. And the second one man up. And the second one is love right, because love me enough if I'm being unreasonable about something that you'll tell me I'm being unreasonable, Love me enough to say to me, you know, brother, I understand that you're hurting, and I appreciate that you're hurting, but let's back up here a little bit, and rather than just jumping all in and turning your hurt into whatever I feel is factual let's separate what you're feeling from what is factual. That's what love does, right. Love doesn't just say, you know, my brother's hurting and so he's running away from the facts. So we're just gonna pat him on the head, you know, and not say anything about the you know, the facts, because that's how we're going to prove that we like. No, that's that's not proven that you love it. That's proven that you don't respect it. That's the soft bigotry of low expectations. Amen, brother, Amen, man. I thank God for you, Vodie. Yeah, so much, man, And it's been great to have this conversation, and we are excited about the book. I'm really excited about you being here in. January, just getting see again and then having you do well the Sword. We're gonna have a great time with this Doctor of God conference. It's crazy, this thing's taking off, man, I think we're already at like, I don't know, seven hundred and six fifty seven hundred. It's spiking and has been. So we're gonna have a really good time at that conference. And then you're doing a tour or can we talk about the tour at all? Because we got you taken by what standard when you go on that tour, that by what standard? Book? Absolutely, man, absolutely, And those are yeah, those are flying off the shelves. Yeah. I saw Ja Ja was selling them when I wasn't even selling them. At one other recent conference, I said, Man, Jay's selling them. I'm not even selling these. Yeah, yeah, yeah, But yeah, We're gonna be doing a number of things in Florida, you know, while the while I'm there. So I'll be there for two weeks, you know, starting with the G three crews, yes, right, and so yeah, and looking forward to a couple other things you know there at Florida. But yeah, I haven't you know, I haven't been out there for a while. I U should go at least three tours, three two week tours every year in the US and one somewhere else in the world. You know, my tours got canceled right this year. Everything just you know, I got canceled this year. So, I mean, by God's grace, we've been able to to make it. But I need to do work. That's still the primary way that we are, you know, support ourselves. So yeah, I'll be back and excited about being able to do another tour. And also just getting you know, boots on the ground and being in the fight again. So we'll we'll link to a c U and vote ball and ministries and folks man encourage you if you have means to support voting and what he's doing over in Lusaka. It's a great work and it has potential to do good for generations. Do do do you have a few minutes to hang on and we'd like to have just a further conversation with you, but. Let me look. I also give them one more website. Yeah, it's called Muzulu or m u z U l U Movezulu Mozulu dot org, which is another ironic thank because you know, Missulu is something that we started a couple of years ago with a view toward helping people partner with the work that we're doing here with evangelistic partnerships, educational partnerships and economic partnerships. How's that for somebody who has a fundamentalist view of the School for the Gospel. Yeah, we'll make sure linked to that as well. So thanks for that. It's been good to talk to you, brother. Yeah, we'll jump in the armory here in just a minute. We're going to shut down this podcast, but we'll talk for about five or ten minutes more and a little bit deeper dive into things. And that armory is for those who are a part of the fan that is the Founder's Alliance members, and if you're not a part of the FAM, you can join. Go to founders dot org and check that out. We're always putting content up there in the armory, so get into that FAM and then check out what we've got there. Thanks so much for listening to The Sword in the Trial today.