TSTT Health Update Fault Lines Resolution 9 Big Eva

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 Jerry Longshore and I'm Tom Askell. Thanks for listening to the Sword in the Trial today. We are delighted to have you with us, and we are delighted to have our dear brother Vody Balcom with us on this podcast. We thank the Lord for how he has sustained you. Brother. We have been praying for you along with Christians all over the place, and it is so so good to see your face. We're so happy that you're here with us. We're gonna give you a little bit more of a formal introduction soon, although vote doesn't need one. Before we get into that, we've got a lot of announcements. They're coming rapid fire. What do we have coming up? Man, We've got most urgently right now. We've got our be It Resolved One day conference June fourteenth and Nashville, Tennessee. This is the day before Southern Mabage Convention launches on June fifteenth, and this conference is going to be very pivotal. It's a conference for our moment right now in the Southern Mabage Convention. If you're Southern Baptist, even if you're if you're in the Nashville area, can get there. We encourage you to come. But all Southern Baptists we want to come to this conference because we've got to deal, honestly, not just with the problems that have been sprouting up, but we need to get below the surface level and recognize what is the at the root of all this nonsense that's going on in the SBC. That's what this conference is about. Monday, July fourteenth, the one day Founder's Conference be it resolved, a call for resolution in uncertain times. Watch this trailer for the conference. We have a book. It says this, what do you think makes the SBC the best denomination in America? If you believe the book, that's good. We're on the same team. I'm going to put it just simply put that we stick to what the Scripture has to tell us. I'm not seeing the SBC. We do what some conventions are doing in terms of stepping away from their values and stances on biblical hot button topics. If you say, yeah, I believe, but because the position I'm in. You know, I really can't say much. Then, you know, go get a different kind of job. How do you feel about a woman being president a SBC. I don't know that I have a comment on that, honestly. Yeah, what do you think scripture speaks on women preachers or pastors? Would you be willing to talk about that at all? I'd say the Bible does? The Bible does speak upon it. Since I'm honestly representing Life Way, I'd rather let Life Way answer that question. And we're requesting that Resolutions nine through thirteen would be taken as a block. I'll tell you what. Happened on the adoption of Resolution nine. What happened. We've been played. The resolution is adopted, We've been played. I am shocked that we could have a pro critical theory resolution come out of our Resolutions Committee this year. And this resolution is very clear in the way that we have approached the discussion of critical race theory and intersectionality. All of Christianity. How do we do it? Yeah? How would you do it? Make them woke? That couldn't have happened last year. That couldn't have happened any year I can remember since before the resurgence was successful, maybe not even left. If I might predict it, We're going to hold up some icon a woman, racial minorities, and they'll say, a church that doesn't have room for this person doesn't have room for any of us. A Southern Baptist convention that doesn't have a place for Bess Moore doesn't have a place for a lot of us. We will take this as an unfriendly amendment for this purpose. Critical race theory and intersectionality are simply analytical tools meant to be used as tools, not as a world views. And the original resolution that was submitted by a pastor out in California, you actually said one hundred and eighty degrees opposite. They took the title of the resolution that was submitted by the messenger from California, and then they gutted it and put their own words in there to turn it into something that was not at all what was submitted. I think that is at best disingenuous that most of the folks in our churches have not bought into this. You know, I just think most of the folks in our churches still believe the Bible. We would love for you to join us. Monday, June fourteenth, for this one day Founder's Conference in Nashville. If you're not able to join us, you will be able to live stream this conference by joining the FAM for FAM members, We're going to have a live stream on online that you can take advantage of. So go to founders dot org to find out more information about that. We have another conference coming up, but it's not until January twentieth. January twenty through the twenty second Militant in Triumphant. Our brother Vodie Bacam here will be their preaching God's Word. You'll be preaching, I'm preaching. We're going to have Pastor James Coates from Alberta, Canada. He is going to be preaching as well. Conrad in Beayway is going to be their preaching. God's Word is going to be a wonderful time. A doctrine of the church. How do we stand in today's world with militancy and triumphantly trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and being empowered by a spirit. You can go to Founders dot org and register for that conference now as well. That's right, that's in Southwest Florida right here. Betiful time of year to be in Southwest Florida, and by God's grace, Florida has been blessed with a lot of freedom because of the way he's led our governing authorities. And so plan on being with us January twenty through twenty second here in Southwest Florida for that militant and triumphant doctor in the Church conference. And final update is the Institute of Public Theology is now open for applications. Classes launch in the fall. There is also going to be a convocation in the fall, and so you can go to Institute of Publictheology dot org to find out more information about that. Yeah, and we have Votebacham will be teaching a class coming up in January. That's right. That's right. He'll be teaching cultural apologetics January the twelfth through the eighteenth, and I'll encourage you to sign up for that. So if you need more information again, you can go to the Institute of Public Theology dot org and get that there. But Voting welcome man. It's great to have you here with us. It is great to see you, and I know that others are going to be delighted to see you as well. What an ordeal over the last few months that the Lord has taken you and your family through. And first first question out of the gate is how are you doing? Uh, you know, first of all, thank you for having me. I really appreciate this. I haven't been doing much. I really haven't been doing anything. Yeah, just trying to recover. I mean that's a lot. Well, first first just trying not to die, and then just you know, trying to get through all this, trying to recover. And uh, you know, I'm happy to say I'm doing much better. Uh. The road to recovery from this is a long one. Today actually five weeks post stop open our surgery, which is a pretty brutal thing to experience to go through. But God's been gracious, God's been kind, and I'm you know, on the road to recovery and looking forward to being restored to complete help and getting back at it. Amen. Amen, Well, yeah, we're looking forward to you getting back at it. And it's interesting in God's providential arrangement of things, you know, how this has happened because you wrote this book fault Lines last summer and had all these big plans about promoting it, and God said, no, I don't think so We're going to put vote on his back and make him lie down. And while you have been doing that, the book has exploded and has really gone around the world. Literally, I've heard from people in different nations that are reading the book with great profit and so grateful for your efforts in that book. And you know, I know it's got to be a challenge for you to think. Man, I was scheduled to have like a thirty city speaking tour and lots of promotional things, and you know, you just had to sit back and watch God do what he's doing differently than anybody could have planned. So, I mean, how's that been. What are you hearing? You know, it's been interesting because we were supposed to leave jack Bill again. All of this stuff was in the works, you know, long before we knew what was going on with my heart. And then I had the first procedure February twink fin and my goal after that was I gotta be ready to go, you know, April fifth, to start this tour. And there were a couple of things that they want us to do, a couple of things that they wanted to look at just to make sure, and they did one of those the day before we were supposed to get out of here. And that's when the wheels fell off. And that's when they immediately decided we're admitting you we're doing open heart surgery. So instead of you know, turning around to leave and go do on the tour and everything, I ended up having open heart surgery during the time that I was supposed to be out promoting the book. But you know, in God's providence, like you said, the book just exploded even without promotion. First of all, because of an incredible group of people signed up a part of the launch team. So a lot happened before the book launched, and then just you know, because of war amount and everything else that happened. And so we ended up debuting it at number seven on USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Wall Street Journal of bestsellers lists. And it's been incredible. It's been you know, full weeks on said they best sellers list. And this is you know, despite the fact that in most bookstores you won't find a book. You know, we want to burn and Noble here at Jacksonville, Florida, just you know, to go and take the kids in, find dance book, buy a copy. And they had one copy, and the one copy they had they had to go back to back to get this wasn't even on the shelves, and so this is, yeah, this is the kind of thing that's happening all over the place. And yet in spite of all of that, the book was going on. Game voting without giving away all the goodies of the book is called fault lines the social justice movement and evangelicalisms Looming Catastrophe. So why did you write this thing? Yeah, that's that's the that's the big question. You know. I've been dealing with and talking about many of these issues for a decade and a half, and we had some of these discussions ourselves the last several years, and it seemed like things were ranting up, things were moving more more rapidly, and because of a number of things that were happening in the culture, a number of flashboards, this divide became more and more obvious, and the need to say something about it, in my estimation, became more and more urgent. And so that's really what motivated me writing this book. I really thought like this was something that God has been preparing me to say for over a decade and a half, something that made me said something that that was in a unique position to say, and that's sort of perfect storm came together, and that's what I Yeah. And so you had what like ten to fifteen evangelical publishing houses coming to you begging you to let you publish this. Yeah, yeah, no, no, not exactly. You know. One of the funny things we've talked about this is a lot of people say, instead of making you know, arguments or counter arguments, they say, well, no body's just doing this to curry favor, doing it for her favor with white people. And I'm sitting here going, that's that's a pretty stupid thing for me to do, because you know, even though the publishers have not wanted to touch me for a number of years now, really going all the way back to some of the things that I said and wrote after the Machael Brown incident and things like that, and that's when things really started to shake out. That's when you really started to see this divide between you know, people who interpreted things one way and people interpret things in another. And so no I had I had my literary agent and floated a couple of proposals even before that, and everybody passed. There was one publisher who was willing to take a shot at that and then after that, when we decided that because of what was going on, fault Line needed to be the first book that came out, that publisher decided that someone else would probably be better suited to publish this book and gave us six weeks to try to find somebody who will published this book. You know, by God's grace, Salem was there, and Salem was eager anxious to polish this book. But no, the evangelical polishing world has treated me like Ariah for a number of years now. If you were to put it in like a nutshell, just a paragraph, what's your main point, that's your main argument in the book? Just give us a quick summary in your own words. Yeah, my main argument is that we are looking at another world. That the reason that people are missing each other when certain events, when there's a police shooting or whatever, is that we're interpreting it, interpreting those things through two different lenses. And I wanted to show people this lens of critical race theory, intersectionality, and how it interprets things. And I also wanted to show people how that interpretation has gained traction at the highest levels of evangelicals, and how that's the source of this major divide that we're seeing, and how the Gospel is our only hope. That we've been called and commanded to take every thoughtcast. We've been called and commanded, you know, to refute those who contradict ton doctrine. And we've been called and commanded to do that because we love the Gospel and we love the brethren. Yeah, and Vodie Man, your book has just resonated with folks that have had this sense, yeah, there's something wrong. And even as they've begun to see that a lot of the things that happened in twenty twenty and the violence that just broke out rampantly, and the silence so often of evangelical leaders and thinking why is this and some evangelical leaders even seem to try to justify the violence. You know, well, okay, that's just the voice of the unheard, and don't ask what they're doing, ask why they're doing. It and all. And your book is coming along and say no, let me help you to think rightly about these things and bring the Gospel to bear. And so it's been great. I mean, I've had people talk to me that's like this book has just been exactly what we've been looking for. It's like a lifesaver because we felt like we were drowning and we talked to our pastors, looked to evangelical leaders and got zero. And now this book is put it in a different perspective and helping us to think, reorient thinking about No, we do have a gospel. And that's one of the things I love about the book is you bring the gospel in regularly. You show how these ideologies that are at play, what's behind black lives matter, which again, you know who wants to not say black lives matter. We were forced and many people, you know, just theyved, and so of course black lives matter. Thinking the words in and of themselves. Of course you know black lives matter, just like all lives matter. But the ideology behind that, I mean, you just you expose that so clearly. This is Marxist. Uh, this is radical, this is anti gospel, and in doing so you hold forth the hope of the gospel. I love the last part of the book. Ainks. The last chapter we say, man, here's the way forward. We got to mitigate these problems, and we've got to believe in true reconciliation, true justification. I think you say at some point that the key is forgiveness, which have all been forgiven, right. Yeah, and yeah, really that was my hope. My hope was that the book would kind of build to that crescendo. And one of the things that I see with this whole anti racist movement is that it is definitely religious and it's overton yeah, but it's an anti gospel. There is no forgiveness, there is no redemption. And it just amazed me to see Christians latching on to maybe maybe didn't work to latching onto this ideology, but they were latching onto the terminogy of this anti government. And I've said to people, it's it would be akin to someone in the church starting to talk about, you know, Vishnu and Shiva and and and and Nirvana and reincarnation. But but all the while saying no, no, no, no, no, I don't believe him, do it? Right? I just I just believe that, you know, the ideas behind the work that they're using are important. And if that were happening, I think we'd be saying to that person, you know what, you need to choose some different words, and you need to understand what those words mean. And where those words come from, and because of what they mean and where they come from, you should not used those words. And so that's that's that's kind of what I'm trying to do there, and then show how different the concept of manti racism from the concept of the Gospel and reconciliation Christ and really that that that word forgiveness is what it comes down to, because there is no forgiveness in anti racism. Mm hmm. But it would have been like the you know, the books have been out now and I've not noted some people challenging various parts of the book or various dimensions of it, would have been the kind of the strongest objections and uh, and what would you say to those they say, hey, well here's here's where I would think vote's off here and what are those and then speak to them, Yeah. I don't even know. You know. One of the things that I've done, just for the sake of my own recovery during the time, is I've stayed away from all of that, right, I haven't. I haven't gotten into all that. I haven't. I haven't you know, paid attention to all that. I mean, the books out there, they're going to be people, you know, on various sides of it. Uh. You know, I've seen some of the you know, outright dismissals of the book. Uh. My my favorite is the guy who called it a you know, a strong man, slippery, slow piece of trash. I have to read pages. Yeah, we're gonna right. Wow. Yeah. I don't know if I sent you that or not, but I've tried not to send you too much. But when I saw what Anthony said, that was such a joke. I mean, this is that was such a joke. That's really ridiculous. So it was it was because of things like that that I decided, you know what, maybe right now it's not the time for me to even delve into to all of that. I'm sure the time will come. Uh. And and again, my hope in the book is, well, my hope is that it would be a flash for right. My hope was that it would ignite some things, and that it would get people to to talking about this, maybe with some common language, right and and maybe with some of these issues sort of laid out on the table, so that there would be a foundation from which, uh to debate them. And and uh, that's my hope is that it's a it's a contribution to the debate. I don't think we should shot away from debate. I think we should run to this debate because these are these things are these things are essential and and some of them are dangerous and so yeah, I'm not in that yet. Eventually, I guess I will be. But I've really enjoyed not being part of. A great part of being there in Jacksonville. I envy you sometimes. Yeah, so yeah. But Dana Lesh called it, you know, one of the most or the most powerful books she'd read in ten years. I think something like that was just wonderful. And I'm getting those kinds of comments from folks that aren't this high profile as she is. One of the things that you do in this book is you show how the Southern Baptist Convention has been integral in the debates, especially with Resolution nine. And so you take Resolution nine in its original form as it was submitted and Resolution nine as the Resolutions Committee from twenty nineteen rehabilitated, dehabilitated. I only know what the word is, probably told a bit, Yeah, told it. Yeah, Jay, you. Give us I think the words I used were gutted. And rewrote, Yeah, there you go gutted, rework better words. Think of a resolution ast Plato, you offer Plato to the Resolutions Committee, and we shape it. So I mean, talk about that a little bit of what happened in twenty nineteen with this Resolution nine that came out, and I mean that was far more significant than people realized at the moment. I think, yeah, and you know, people that I talked to who've read the book, and I had a number of people read the book before it came out and everything, and a number of people were aware of Resolution nine, but few people were aware that it was the opposite of the original resolution. And uh, you know this, this came out in the documentary if Aulet Standard documentary, which I think really hit the nail on the head and showed what happened in a powerful way. But yeah, a lot of people had no idea that that resolution was originally against critical race theory and intersectionality, and that not only unaware of the fact that the Resolutions Committee changed it, but unaware of the fact that two of the members of the Roman Resolutions Committee were professors at Southern Baptist seminaries who have been teaching critical experience, intersectionality and Black Liberation theology for a while before they changed that resolution, So you know, that's one of the things. And you know, we debated whether or not to spend a whole chapter on that, especially because it's very specific to the Southern best dimension. But in the end, I decided that this was significant enough to warrant that whole chapter being spent on it, and I think it fits well within the twelve of the book, and I think it really makes the point in a powerful way. Yeah, yeah, that's Uh. We've got this conference coming up in SBC's coming up. We haven't had one for two years since that resolution. You know, we didn't didn't meet the last year because of COVID and trying to address that. I'm thinking of that looming conference now only what a month way in your book as a flashpoint and as a as an advance in the conversation, even in even in writing a book. You know, it took you time to write this book, and the conversation is kind of going on about this issue. It seems to me that the general census now and at least some of the conservative evangelical world, is that, yeah, you know, we don't we don't want to be fully woke and social justice full full throttle is bad, and even resolution nine since a lot of people backing away from it, Yeah, it was, it was bad. And so it seems to me your book is really pushing that next conversation, like how did we get here? And what do we do about it? You know, do you have any any solutions or any directions? If you say, yeah, once you grasp there is a fault line here, what do we then do? Yeah? And and really that's chapter ten and eleven in the book, and I could have right, and I believe that Paul just really gives us a framework there. Right, the weapons of our warfare, they're not they're not carnal, but they're powerful for destroying strongholds, we destroy arguments, and every lost of pink, we lost the opinion raised against the knowledge of God. And I think that's where we start. And then we take every thought captive. I think there are a lot of people who just want to run to the second part of that, right, Well, we need to take every thought captive, and we need to think positively about you know, how we you know, work together and reconcile and so on and so forth. But the first part of that is essential. We have to destroy lofty opinions, arguments and lost the opinions racing against the knowledge of God. We can't just ignore cripor is theory and efectionality and just sort of run to you know, uh, let's love each other. We have to destoyed that, we have to expose that, We have to dismantle that and then move toward the second you know, part of that text. And I think that's what a lot of people have been trying not to do. People who've been looking for some sort of third way, will you know, and I mean not always the case that there's this there's this argument where where brothers and sisters are put it against one another. And instead of saying, let's go ahead and deal with this and have this out right, let's do the Luther and harassmus thing, you know, we just sort of say no, no, no, no, no, let a commandment. I shall be nice, right, you know, real Christians shouldn't have disagreement, So let's just act like you know that hasn't happened, to figure out how to find some sort of third way. And we can't do that. There is no third way here. We we have to address ce our team in sectionality, cryptical theory. So so, and these things have to be exposed for if they are, and then we move on, because if we don't, then those things just continue to make headway because they're making headway in the culture at large, and they're definitely making headway of the church, and so we have to deal with that. And I think another place to look at is, you know Titus one nine, what this Titus one nine said, they do hold firmly to the strustworthy word has taught, right. That's one, have the theology so that we might exortan sound doctrine, right, the good theology. And then the third one again we don't want to do this, refute those who contradict it. That's the obligation of an elder to refute those who contradict sound doctrine. So you know, I think we've got to do that. People have to know what these things are and where they come from, so that they can then understand why this fault line has emerged. And then it moves to the step and learning how to think rightly about musicians. Yeah, you know, that's so well put, And I mean there are proposals right now in the air especially in the SBC, saying let's get the anti CRT people on one side, and let's get the pro CRT people on the other side, and let's see, let's come to consensus. Let's come to consensus. And they're good brothers, you know, they're well intended brothers, perhaps even making these proposals by look at that and say, there is no consensus. So what does light have to do with darkness? How can two walk together unless they're agreed? And I hate it, but I think your your book is exactly rightly titled. These are fault lines, and you're gonna be on one side or the other. You try to stand in the middle, you're just going to be ripped apart because there is no middle ground here if we're going to be faithful to Christ. And that's a that's a hard thing. And when people hear us say that and take this stand, they you know, they accuse us of breaking that eleventh commandment as you cited it. And you know, you guys are just so mean and you're so unyielding, and you're unwilling to be entreated with wisdom. And it's not that this is a right wrong, a truth error issue, and there's no compromise the Resolution nine. You know, the committee chairman Curtis Woods, when he was arguing against an amendment that I'd proposed from the floor for that resolution, he said that critical race theory and intersection intersectionality, we're saying these are simply analytical tools, simply analytical tools, and that's not true. I mean, you've shown in your book, you know, this is a worldview. There are embedded philosophies. This has religion woven into it, religious commitments involved in it. And one of the things that talk about that in light of the Dallas Statement, the Statement on Social Justice and Gospel, you and I and some others participated in that, and I thought you had a very insightful perspective that Resolution nine may well have been in response to the dallast in trying to provide cover for those who are already teaching these views in seminaries and colleges. Yeah. Well, you know, when the Dalla Statement came out, there were a number of people who signed it, but there are also a number of people who were conspicuous in their absence signing the Dallas Statement. Some of them said they had issues with signing statements even though they had signed you know, Nashville other things. But what I began to realize was that there were a number of people who, because of relationships that they had and because of people who were in their can who were on the wrong side of these dishes, who are essentially espousing critical race theory and intersectionality. Uh, there are a number of people who who because of that didn't want to sign the statement on Social Justice. H They weren't against it, they weren't writing papers against it, they weren't talking about you know, here are many ways and which they aired you know, so and so forth. They were just saying that, you know, pastorally, we think it's it's into you know, which is kind of a roundabout way of saying you're going to offend people who you know, are are essentially teaching you know, cr team ansect now. And I think that that original resolution was born out of that soil where people who looked at the statement and saw the statement as something that made sense, and simultaneously we're looking around at some of the big names and even jugalism, even some who said that, you know who would have said that they were critical theory, interceptionalities on so forth, but they wouldn't sign the statement, and so I think that original resolution was a way to sort of smook some of this saut and basically give an ultimatum if you will. And I think it's ironic that that that original resolution was was gutted and rewritten the way that it was so that it became an ultimatum in the other direction. Yeah, that that statement really is. I can't get away from that notes appendix in your in your book, but it does seem like a tangible way to see the fault line. And you know, again all of us signed that document, right. I think James White signed that signed that document. Doug Wilson signed that document. You've got Chris Larson of Ligandier Ministry signed that document and says our board thinks it's a timely or great piece something like that, very publicly about it. You don't have a single Southern Baptist Seminary president that signed that document. I mean not many professors, only a couple of professors. Very very small number of professors in Southern Baptist seminaries. And I remember stepping back as I saw that unfold, I said, wow, wow, that is there There is a way to tangibly see this fault line. But if you understand that in a number of our Southern seminaries there were professors who were teaching this stuff, then you understand why it would be difficult for seminary presidents or fellow professors to sign on to this document because this stuff was there. These guys were there, and you know a number of these people are black professors. So here's the Southern Baptist Convention, who you know, for you years has been bending over backwards not only to apologize for racism and history, but also to say, no, we want to see, you know, black people in the convention. We want to see black leaders in the convention. We want to see black professor professors at our seminaries, We want to see black presidents of our seminaries in the our convention. And so you start investing. And I remember, as a young seminarian, guys investing in me, Guys who saw pretension. I remember, and I write about the new book. You know, Pag Patterson, who you know, brought me and another brother over to his home where he and Dorothy you know, fed us a meal and talked about how he wanted to see us put in the work so that we get advanced in the something that convention. So that wouldn't and it can never be, you know, seen as tokenism because we put in the work right. And so now all of a sudden you see a number of black professors at Southern seminaries, and these seminaries are very proud of that. They've worked long and hard to cultivate these guys and to get them into these positions, and all of a sudden, these guys, some of them are teaching CRT, they're teaching intersectionality, they're teaching black liberation theology, they're promoting it publicly when they're going and speaking at different places. So what do you do? Do you fire these guys and have everybody come and say, oh, we knew you really didn't mean it? Or do I mean? What do you do? Because because that's the position that these guys were in, Because we know that the minute you fire Curtis Woods or Jarvist Woods, you know, or the minute you fired you know, Walter Strickman, the minute you fired again I don't know all the names. Again, the minute you fired these people, what is going to be said. It's going to be said that you're racist, that you you you wanted black bodies but not black voices. The minute. Yeah, these guys got too black. You know, you've got rid of them. And so, you know, this was a very difficult position for guys to find themselves in. And I think it goes a long way and explaining why at least some of them I decided to shy away from the Dallas State. Yeah, you know, I think it's in your book in it maybe we just talked about it. I know it's in the book about Tony Dungee's statement. You know, you can know when we're not being treated as tokens, not when they hire us, but when they fire us, you know, and will willing to fire us. And uh, yeah, you're being treated on the basis of the merits, and you know your competencies on that point. And it's fascinating to see the exact opposite happening out of a fear of having those accusations brought against you that you know you're not sincere in treating people of different ethnicities all the same on the basis of their competencies. And the great irony in that is that's when you're actually telling me how about it, that's right, that's when you're telling me that you don't respect when when this white professor over here can't get away with deviating from the truth, but I can get away with deviating from the truth. And it's because I'm black. You're saying you don't have the same expectation of me, right, And and that's that's that's there's that soft bigotry of low expectations right, right, exactly. And it's so ironic that this was happening in a number of instances. Yeah, but I can't get away from the fact that the title of your book, it just shines the light exactly where it needs to be shined on the fact that there are fault lines among evangelicals and you're going to stand on one side or the other. You can't play the middle. You can't not choose sides. Because these ideologies have permitted our culture. They are coming into our churches and evangelical institutions, and either you're going to stand against them, or even even if you're not promoting them, you're going to be complicit in allowing them to come. And that's been made crystal clear to me, and I just compelled. I mean, I look at my grandkids, and I think you know, I don't want to die without having tried to do what I can do to sound the alarm, to stand against this, to refute these pagan ideas that are contrary to the Gospel of Jesus, and if they come into our institutions and our churches, to say to those who are complicit allowing them to do so, Look, we're not on the same team. We're not practicing the same religion. And I love you, I wish you would repent. If you refuse to repent, we can't walk together. That's exactly right, and it's for that reason you need to go and buy this book Fault Lines by vote Balcom. And we have the joy of giving away a few copies. That's right, to give away three. Let's do three copies, three copies, and to enter in to get one of those copies that we're giving away, you gotta like share, share with what do you need to say with it? I just say this is a great book, and every Christian ought to read it. Best book I haven't read, or something like that book. Everybody loves this book. I'm gonna read it one day if I get a free copy. Say something like that Tagg Founders, so we know we're going to be sending those. You gotta you gotta, you gotta, you gotta pash the bill y. That's right, that's right. And hey, the more you share, the more you retweet, the more you like, the more you pass it around, the more opportunity you'll have to be drawn when we get all those names together. And we're gonna give away three of these books. And it's a dynamite book. It's it's on the bestseller list. We hope it goes all the way to number one, despite the efforts of some to keep it hidden in the back rooms of their bookstores. That's right, that's right. Vodie. Thanks brother, It's been so great to see you. Brother. We are continuing to pray for you as you recover and rejoicing at God's grace and how He's worked over these past months. Yeah, and we look forward to hearing this whole story. I've told lots of people there's an incredible story of God's providence behind all that happened, beginning back even in the latter part of twenty twenty to bring you to where you are today health wise, and what God has done so man I know you're taking notes, so get ready to tell that story the right time. Yeah. And also I just have to say thank you to you and Founders Ray than you guys did on our behalf to support us and it's funds for us and to get people updates for us. I mean, brother, you'll just never know how much that meant to me and to my family this side of glory and I'll behalf of all of moments. I just want to publicly say we are greatful. Well, love you brother, love you. Amen. Hey, before we go voting, we would love to keep you around. And what we have the armory for those who are part of our Founders Alliance membership. We have resources there in the armory of continual growing set of resources. We want you to say around if you're up for that, me about five minutes. Let's just press into one of the next steps is particularly for evangelical leadership as it regards this fault line. Is that cool? You stay around for five minutes. For sure? Okay, all right, thanks so much for listening to the sword in the trial today until next week, follow the Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart.