In a recent trip to Quebec City, Canada, Pope Francis addressed the so-called scourge of “Christian Nationalism,” criticizing those who have dared to influence non-Christian public institutions with Christian beliefs.
He (God) does not want to make decisions for us or oppress us with a sacral power, exercised in a world governed by religious laws. No! He created us to be free, and he asks us to be mature and responsible persons in life and in society.
Previously Francis, who when asked to make a judgment on whether homosexuality is permissible within the church, made the infamous statement, “Who am I to judge?” has persistently pushed leftist antinomian positions within the Catholic church.
Francis visited Quebec City to apologize on behalf of the Catholic church for sexual abuse against indigenous peoples, along with practices of the church and Canadian government authorities that contributed to the “eradication of indigenous cultures”. While the Pope certainly should apologize for abuse, the idea that scriptural teachings that call all men to repentance and faith in Christ should be subordinated to pagan indigenous religious practices in the name of politically correct cultural relativism is patently absurd. Christ is Lord over all, including the indigenous peoples.
Francis urged leaders in the Catholic Church to refrain from imposing the church’s beliefs on a secular society but rather to use “pastoral creativity” and utilize “mercy that silently speaks of Christ.” The words of Francis reflect the false teaching of St. Francis of Assisi, who famously said, “Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.” The idea that Gospel proclamation can be made in the absence of a verbal scripturally-based Gospel-centric framework is patently false. Silent Evangelism doesn’t appear in the New Testament because God has prescribed Evangelism through the proclamation of scripture.
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Romans 10:14-17
Ironically, while advocating for a pietistic posture towards society, Francis lamented the increasing secularization of many Catholics, who live as if God is of no consequence.
God seems to have disappeared from the horizon, and his word no longer seems a compass guiding our lives, our basic decisions, our human and social relationships.
It would seem that pietist views within the Catholic church that place artificial boundaries between religious belief and the creation of law would ultimately lead some Catholics to also divorce the doctrine that they hear at Mass from the way that they live in everyday life.
June 2022 was a particularly prideful Pride month, as sexual deviants of every particular letter of the “alphabet people” publicly boasted about their sexual identities while demanding that everyone learn their “preferred pronouns” and celebrate their society-destroying sinful lifestyles. Many corporations, even Christian publishers, honored sexual deviancy by incorporating the Pride flag into their corporate brand’s marketing or donating to sexual deviancy advocacy groups. All of this was done in the name of “diversity,” with the support of many leftist synagogues of Satan that masquerade as churches. Everyone involved in these festivities played the part of the fool, acting as if God is not sovereign and his word does not condemn sexual deviancy.
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good. Psalm 14:1
Scripture clearly articulates that pride in and of itself leads to destruction. The type of Pride that pagans celebrate every June is actually the combination of pride and God-defying sexual sin that goes against nature, as described by the Apostle Paul.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. Romans 1:24-27
God has clearly spoken concerning his judgement on proud sexual deviance. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for such sin and judges those who refuse to repent.
Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18
Recent reports regarding the rise of the Monkeypox virus in the United States indicate that current clusters of infection in the United States are almost exclusively amongst homosexual men. Look closely: where are the women?
In a July 17 interview with CBS’s Face The Nation, former FDA Commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb explained that a large portion of currently known cases of Monkeypox in the U.S. are concentrated in communities of “men who have sex with men” (i.e. sodomites).
Partial Transcript of Face The Nation Interview
MARGARET: Give us a sense of the scale of this because the CDC numbers are out. They say they’re only eight women within that. No children. You’re saying this is a pandemic? That’s not a word the administration is using yet, what level of emergency are we at?
GOTTLIEB: Yeah look, and I think they’re going to be reluctant to use the word pandemic, because it implies that they’ve failed to contain this. And I think at this point, we’ve failed to contain this. We’re now at the cusp of this becoming an endemic virus where this now becomes something that’s persistent that we need to continue to deal with. I think the window for getting control of this and containing it probably has closed, and if it hasn’t closed, it’s certainly starting to close. 11,000 cases across the world right now. 1,800 cases, as you said, in the US. We’re probably detecting just a fraction of the actual cases because we have a very, we had for a long time a very narrow case definition on who got tested. And by and large, we’re looking in the community of men who have sex with men and STD clinics.
Combine these statistics from another July 17 CBS News report on the Monkeypox outbreak to gain an even clearer picture of what is taking place.
Statistics from the city show that 95 percent of people testing positive for monkeypox identify as men. The rest identify as trans, gender non-conforming or non-binary.
Given that the women who tested positive identified exclusively as sexual deviants, the men who tested positive frequently admitted to taking part in acts of sodomy, and large swaths of infection were discovered during testing for sexually transmitted diseases, it can be safely concluded that while monkeypox is not officially considered an STD, it is almost exclusively afflicting sexual deviants. After insisting that monkeypox is not an STD, the CDC even created a webpage specifically designed for sexually active people that includes a graphic of two men cuddling in bed.
The judgement of sexual sin by God in the form of sexually transmitted diseases is a consequence of sodomy, and it is not a coincidence that an outbreak of monkeypox occurred in the month after Pride month. Those who live according to the Biblical sexual ethic prescribed by God, which limits sex to within the confines of a marriage between one man and one woman, have little to fear in regard to monkeypox. While the death rate of previous Monkeypox outbreaks has been 3-6% (a higher death rate than COVID-19), which may strike fear in the hearts of those sodomites who rush out to get a Monkeypox vaccine to continue their lifestyle, there is a form of judgement that should strike fear in the hearts of those who defy God and refuse to repent of their sins.
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10:28
The churches leaving the conference cite the denomination’s insistence on the ordination of sodomite clergy in defiance of a ban on the blessing of sodomite unions and clergy in the denomination’s book of discipline. These churches are suing because they have a right to secede from the denomination and not forfeit their buildings, as the denomination has failed to apply established discipline procedures in the administration of the denomination. While the UMC is one of the most progressive denominations in the United States today, less progressive churches within the denomination reject sodomy, especially those in rural areas, even though they have acquiesced to worldly pressures on the issues of the ordination of women and the adoption of woke church theology.
In response to the impending break-up within the Florida Conference, UMC Pastor Michael Adam Beck published a piece entitled “The Weaponization of ‘Orthodoxy’”, in which he claims that the concept of orthodoxy is being weaponized against the United Methodist Denomination.
So, when groups break off of Methodism in the name of preserving “orthodox theology”, I always find this intriguing. There has never been a single “orthodox theology” in history…
In reality, the term “orthodoxy” has been weaponized by various extremist camps to discredit groups that don’t agree with them. This is not dissimilar to the conflict Jesus experienced with some of the religious leaders.
To be clear, Beck, a far-left figure in the Florida United Methodist Conference, defends religious pluralism and homosexuality because “orthodox theology” doesn’t exist, because he believes that there has never been a uniformly accepted Christian Theology. Therefore, according to Beck, all Christian theologies must be accepted as equally valid choices. Beck’s interfaith views on evangelism mirror his views on “orthodox theology”.
Beck’s position seems to be in line with the limp-wristed UMC mantra “Open hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors”, a position that has led to the acceptance of nearly every form of sexual perversion and an eagerness for interfaith dialogue that eclipsed and subverted the denomination’s missions and evangelism efforts. What point is there to evangelism if cultural relativism is true and every religion and culture has its own holy ground? The downgrade turned the once powerful denomination into one that is in perpetual decline in the United States.
Ironically, Beck appeals to the theology of Irenaeus in his defense of what is Biblically indefensible.
Irenaeus gave us a grace-centred, holistic, and inclusive vision of human flourishing that has been core to the people called Methodists. The seeds of these ideas were taken up by liberation theologians who recognized how the physical embodiment of God’s justice could free the marginalized and the oppressed while simultaneously threatening the powerful and the comfortable.
Irenaeus’ most prominent work was entitled “Against Heresies” and most certainly doesn’t support the heresies of religious pluralism and liberation theology, as one might surmise from a short glance at the title.
othing characterizes the state of Big Eva like the overly nuanced statements of evangelical leaders in response to cultural issues and events. In the wake of the fall of Roe V. Wade, some evangelical leaders made statements that rejoiced in the ruling while recognizing and mourning alongside those who syncretize faith with the murder of pre-born children. Other leftist evangelical leaders decried the verdict as a miscarriage of justice. Christian abolitionists who seek to utterly abolish abortion now face criticism from incrementalists in evangelicalism who attack abolition as impractical and lacking in nuance.
The methodology for achieving such nuance usually lacks a standard. Often the test for finding the perfect moderate third-way position on a theological issue looks like the Goldilocks test. Identify the left and right positions, label both as “too extreme”, and then quickly assume the pragmatic third-way position, as if the middle position must be correct solely because it sits betwixt left and right. Such a strategy approaches every problem as if the answer to the question, like the one faced by Solomon in 1 Kings 3:16-28, is to split the baby right down the middle. Third-way proponents believe that the answer must lie in a highly nuanced middle position when in reality, the baby has one mother on either the right or the left, and the truth is clearly discernable when scripture is used as a guide. The position of Big Eva third-wayism exists in nearly every modern evangelical issue, from the issue of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood to the matter of determining standards of guilt for sex abuse cases.
The root of many third-way positions lies in the antinomian disposition of church leaders who neglect scripture as the origin of all relevant standards. Often the arguments made by Big Eva third-way position holders begin with an accusation of legalism or theonomy against those to the right. Believers in the sufficiency of scripture, which refer back to standards found in Old Testament law or the Apostolic instructions of the New Testament, are accused of acting as heartless legalistic Pharisees who could care less about the feelings or emotions of their opponents on the opposite side of an important issue. Never mind the fact that actual theonomists, those who believe that the entirety of the moral and ceremonial law of God given to Israel should be directly applied word for word to modern criminal and civil law, are about as common as real live unicorns.
Jonathan Leeman of 9 Marks, a Big Eva figure who loves himself some third-wayism, recently issued a warning for Christians who have begun “exploring various forms of theonomy or magisterial Protestantism” in response to “cultural opposition to aspects of Christianity.”
In his recent exposition on the threat of theonomy, Leeman fails to define with any level of precision the definitions of either theonomy or magisterial Protestantism. One must assume that by referring to “various forms” of theonomy, Leeman broadly refers to all those who believe in the general equity principle of the Law of God, along with actual theonomists. Leeman’s main point seems to be that those who engage in culture wars run the risk of falling into the ditch of neglecting the Gospel, as if the church can’t engage every issue in culture war under the banner of the Gospel, with the primary purpose of advancing the Gospel, as it has done for millennia.
For those who are unfamiliar with the history of Leeman’s line of argumentation against what he characterizes as “various forms” of theonomy, Leeman appeared on the September 6, 2020 episode of Crosspolitic, where he was pressed by hosts Toby Sumpter, Chocolate Knox, and Gabe Wrench on his opposition to John Macarthur’s position of church’s remaining open during COVID restrictions, in the face of government-mandated closures. Leeman characterized his idea that churches don’t necessarily have to meet on Sunday or in person as simply a different way to “cut a diamond” in response to the arguments of the Crosspolitic hosts.
The conversation initially focused on issues related to government overreach concerning the church. Leeman argued that “a legitimate implication of Genesis 9:5-6 can be used to defend “preventative” government measures related to government-mandated COVID restrictions. While Leeman believes that elements of the Noahic Covenant can be used to defend a position that allows government overreach against a church during lockdowns, he opposes a hermeneutic that allows for the “normative” use of Old Testament Mosaic law in the context of the general equity principle. Instead, Leeman believes the Bible is insufficient to answer all the specific questions that a pastor may face. He claims that the wisdom necessary to answer the more complicated questions comes from God in a form that looks like the wisdom of Solomon but is frequently divorced from specific scriptural support.
The interview ends with Leeman repeatedly dodging questions about whether the general equity of principles found in the Levitical law can be applied to a modern context. Chocolate Knox asked Leeman whether the death penalty should be applied to people who have sex with animals, women who murder their pre-born children, or abortionists. Leeman claimed that he was hesitant to answer the Crosspolitic host’s questions because he hadn’t given much thought to the questions. Leeman, by his own recent account, has been actively contemplating political theory since the 1990s but somehow hasn’t given enough serious pastoral thought to state with any degree of certainty whether the death penalty should be on the table for an abortionist.
Leeman couldn’t answer simple questions about the law of God because he considered it to be subservient to a gnostic form of wisdom that is not tethered to scripture. As the downgrade in evangelicalism continues, fault lines continue to form between those who believe in the sufficiency of scripture to determine truth and those who use claims of wisdom that contradict the written Word of God. These fault lines are evident in the debate over sexual abuse. Many Big Eva figures purposely ignore or reject the Old Testament principles for what constitutes rape in passages such as Deuteronomy 22:23-27. The fault lines are also evident in the partiality debate, where proponents of Social Justice Theory and Critical Race Theory impose anti-Biblical lenses onto the clear teachings of scripture while ignoring scriptures like Galatians 3:28 that clearly show that partiality based on woke ideology is anti-Gospel.
Jonathan Leeman is only one of numerous Big Eva figures who ascribe to an abstract view of Biblical Wisdom and despise those who seek truth in God’s Law and the clear instruction of the scriptures.
As part of the left-of-center Big-Eva complex, Beth Moore continues to remain silent on the overturning of Roe V. Wade. Whether or not a believer agrees with every decision of the Trump presidency, the supreme court decision brought about by Trump-appointed justices represents a milestone in the quest to stamp out the sinful scourge that has extinguished more than 63 million American lives. If you expect hardline never-Trump evangelicals to admit that the Donald got something right in a huge way, don’t hold your breath because of Beth Moore.
In a recent Twitter rant, Moore made a veiled swipe at those questioning her loyalty to the pro-life position, for failing to rejoice in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent landmark decision.
Those who have followed Moore’s sharp leftward trajectory over the past ten years understand that she has been called on the carpet on critical issues many, many times. There’s a reason why her failure to properly discern Biblical truth from blatant falsehood has been a matter of public record. Like many popular Bible teachers, she sticks out her finger to feel which way the wind is moving and then decides what she believes the scripture means in light of the direction of the culture. Moore went on to decry her critics’ use of screenshots of her teaching on Twitter and social media to show inconsistencies and changes in her teachings over time.
Moore went on in the thread to claim that she refuses to take political or principled theological sides. She claims that her position is in line with that of “a Jesus follower,” which in practice is really just Moore’s way of saying that she follows an image of Jesus made in the likeness of Beth Moore.
The idea that Moore is some neutral, above-the-fray standard for what it means to follow Christ is patently absurd. Her claims of neutrality on the issues of politics and complementarianism are demonstrably false. Last year, in response to critics who pointed out her departure from complementarianism, Moore clearly demonstrated in one of those “Gotcha” Tweets that she is most certainly unapologetically egalitarian.
At the time, Moore claimed that these “gotcha” statements were taken out of context, but within months of the comments, Moore preached on Mother’s day, claiming a special mother’s day exemption. Of course, once Moore left the Southern Baptist Convention, she was free to pursue a path that defied the clear teaching of scripture, preaching another sermon within five months of her Mother’s Day sermon. Moore’s claim, “I’m not a complementarian or egalitarian,” is demonstrably false both by Moore’s own words and deeds.
Beth Moore’s claim to be neither “Republican or Democrat,” “Conservative nor liberal” is also demonstrably false. Moore is a left-of-center political figure in evangelicalism. Her college degree is in political science, and she has been actively exercising her political muscles in the realm of evangelicalism by advocating leftist causes alongside the likes of former ERLC head Russell Moore.
All the indicators show that Beth Moore is neither politically nor theologically conservative, taking positions that align with political and theological liberalism. Moore retracted statements in her writings that defended Biblical sexuality and befriended leftist sodomite activists. She supported the social justice-driven theology leftist activists pushed in the SBC and characterized the SBC as a racist organization that sought to keep black persons from positions of power. Beth Moore doesn’t have a conservative bone in her body, and her impulse is to punch to the right.
According to Beth, conservative evangelicalism and politics are the problem. She never criticizes leftist politics, pro-abortion activists, or sodomite activists in evangelicalism because she provides cover for leftists. Beth claims that she is a victim of the “gotcha” game at the hands of discernment ministries. In reality, observers and ministries that capture the deconstruction of theology are merely neutral scorekeepers in the game, informing Christians of the game that false teachers play.
Beth is actively playing that game, manipulating the words of scripture and summoning the spirit of the age to build a kingdom of book-club followers who view scripture through the lens of her error-infested teachings.
The fallout of the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe V. Wade revealed the broken and divided state of evangelicalism. Many conservative pro-life evangelicals rejoiced in response to the decision and praised God for using imperfect men and means to bring about the ruling that would allow them to ban abortion in their respective states. Many never-Trump evangelicals, such as Russell Moore, remain silent on the verdict, as the Trump-appointed justices fulfilled President Trump’s promise to appoint strong conservatives who would bring an end to the federal institution of court-mandated pre-born child murder.
The most shocking response to the ruling in the evangelical realm comes from historically black churches, whose members are statistically more likely to murder their own pre-born children. These churches typically align themselves with liberal politicians that pander to the black community. It is no surprise that such organizations would oppose the pro-life message, as they are beholden to the political idolatry of progressivism. Jamal Bryant, pastor of the 12,000 member megachurch New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, exemplified the defiance of many leftist pastors when he declared to his congregation that God is displeased with the Supreme Court and the Pro-Life movement.
This week, America turned back the hands of time and declared a war on women in this nation. I wanted us to stand resolvely [sic] to say to this nation that if America was authentically pro-life, then they would immediately abolish the death penalty. If they were really pro-life, then they would put more money into Head Start programs. If they were pro-life, they would seek to cure the opiate addiction in this nation. If they were pro-life they would make sure that teachers feel safe in their schools. If they were pro-life, there would be stiff, stricter measures about gun control in this nation. If it was, pro-life we would not have to deal with food insecurity.
The position held by Bryant and many other evangelical leftists unapologetically presents abortion as a choice that a woman must make without any interference from church or state, a Biblically indefensible position. Of course, Bryant, a serial adulterer, who should have been permanently disqualified from the pastorate long ago, wouldn’t let the scriptures get in the way of his personal desires or opinions. It is no surprise that pastors without personal integrity, who participate in sexual immorality, would favor pre-born child murder, especially when murder could potentially be used to cover up sexual sin. Bryant continued his godless rant, claiming the Supreme Court ruling will lead to a 30% increase in black infant mortality.
I want all of us all over this room, would you do me a favor? Would you celebrate the women around you who are competent enough to make decisions about their bodies, decisions about their life, and decisions about their future? We’re praying steadfastly, because what we are seeing is racism rearing its head again uh with this measure that has just taken place. Black baby infant mortality is going to rise by 30 percent, and hence we cover the lives of our mothers of our pregnant mothers and our unborn babies…today we stand in the gap for mothers and for emerging mothers.
The idea that 30% more black children will die with the elimination of abortion is an absurd perversion of the facts. The abortion rate for black women is nearly four times the abortion rate of white women. The elimination of abortion would lead to an increase in the total number of black babies born by more than 100,000 per year. Any increase in infant mortality would be dwarfed by the total number of black infants who would live because they were not murdered in the womb. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and eugenics proponent, advocated for the deception of black women by leftist pastors like Jamal Bryant.
It seems to me from my experience…that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors, they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.
Ironically, after advocating for child murder, Bryant went on to officiate a baby dedication without even skipping a beat because he believes in the sovereignty of mothers to choose whether their children live or die over the Biblical sovereignty of God.
So today, proudly, we dedicate babies in our church. They’re coming at this time because we believe the children are the future. But we also believe that mothers have the right to elect where it is that they are in the season and the stages of their life, and they should not be criminalized for making decisions that will best suit them for where it is that they are.
The idea of deciding whether or not to murder a child on the basis of personal convenience and circumstance shows that churches like New Birth are not churches at all, but rather synagogues of Satan masquerading as houses of God. The writer of Judges chronicles an attitude of disregard for the law of God and the Kingship of Yahweh in all areas of life that was rampant in the nation of Israel in the days of the Judges. This attitude is present in New Birth Church and many other like-minded churches today.
In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
As American Christians celebrate the death of Roe V. Wade and prayerfully petition God for the end of abortion in their respective states, evangelical leftists have begun subversive messaging to bring the Democratic Party platform into the church under the guise of the trojan horse of “making abortion “unnecessary” or “making abortion unthinkable.” Many social media messages about the Supreme Court decision from leftist evangelicals followed a typical pattern that began with a mention of the ruling and ended with a statement about making abortion unnecessary or ending the conditions that they believe cause women to want to murder their pre-born children.
Former TGC contributor Thabiti Anyabwile (AKA Ron Burns) believes that the overturning of Roe V. Wade will be a “pyrrhic victory” (a worthless or fruitless victory) if work is not done to “make abortion unthinkable” and “create conditions for women that help them escape the dreadful situation altogether.” By this, Burns means that the church must advocate for leftist policies such as increased welfare, gun control, and anything else deemed necessary to deter women from murdering their children, as if throwing money and failed socialist solutions at a heart problem will instantly make murder go away.
Egalitarian Beth Allison Barr echoed Burn’s sentiment, beginning her Twitter thread by claiming the pro-life credentials of having done pro-life work. Allison Barr didn’t offer any praise for the ruling, as she is a leftist, but instead used the opportunity to rail against the systemic oppression of women. Barr wants to stuff her “pro-life” trojan horse with egalitarianism, birth control, “believing women,” and leftist “systemic solutions.”
Karen Swallow Prior, a self-proclaimed “whole life” pro-lifer (a position more deceptive than a whole-life insurance sales pitch), wants a deluxe trojan horse that will include everything from climate care, gun control, animal rights, egalitarianism, and socialism. She isn’t shy about her desire to loot money from those who have earned it and dump it on pregnant women. Of course, everyone knows that Bible verse about redistributing wealth and giving it to pregnant women to change their hearts and win them over to the Gospel. Or was that a Democratic Party field manual on how to win votes?
Sheologian Summer Jaeger pointed out the subversiveness of the messaging. Instead of pointing women to the Gospel of Jesus, leftist evangelicals and incrementalists have substituted pragmatism for the message of the Gospel. In place of presenting the Law of God as a mirror to show women that murder is a sin and the Gospel to show them that salvation and forgiveness for that sin come through Christ alone, they want to win women over with cold hard cash. Whether that cash is obtained through redistribution within the church or government programs, money will never solve the heart problem of a wicked and depraved generation.
While they were typically more purposely vague about their understanding of what “make abortion unthinkable” means, institutionalist evangelicals were also out in force. Jen Wilkin pushed the idea that “underlying factors make abortion appear the only alternative for so many women.” After reading all of the comments about the extenuating circumstances of women in the United States that cause them to murder their children, an outside observer would certainly question the argument’s legitimacy on the basis of economics. If women in the United States, a country that ranks as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, choose to murder their children at a higher rate than most third-world countries, how would more cash and programs solve the problem?
It’s subtle, but then this theological sort of sleight of hand always is.
As the twenty-first-century Christian downgrade continues at a blistering pace, those without roots don’t stand a chance in the face of strong cultural headwinds. Cultural issues produce fault lines between faithful Gospel teaching and popular false teaching that derives its legitimacy from the approval of the world. Pastor John MacArthur, author of Slave: The Hidden Truth About Your Identity In Christ, wrote his work on the identity of believers as slaves (doulos) to Christ prior to the popularization of Critical Race Theory in churches and denominations. The slave-master metaphor was the most frequently used metaphor in the New Testament to describe a believer’s relationship with God. MacArthur highlighted the significance of this fact in his book.
As followers of Jesus, we call ourselves “Christians,” but the fact is this word only appears three times in the Bible. In the New Testament, you’ll find a host of terms that identify the followers of Jesus, but there is one metaphor used more frequently than any other. Slave. That’s right. The first Christians, having been galvanized by the words of Jesus, gave up everything, and called themselves slaves of Christ. Now you can learn why this word best described early Christ-followers- and you’ll see how an understanding of this truth changes the way to follow Him now. This discovery will unveil the riches of your salvation in a radically, new way.
MacArthur recognized that slavery in early America taints the Western understanding of slavery, making it difficult for believers to understand the context of slavery in the New Testament. American slavery was the form of slavery strictly forbidden by the law of God and punishable by death.
Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.
-Exodus 21:16
However, in the context of the New Testament, which was written in the Roman world, slavery was a much different institution than the chattel slavery of the United States. In the Roman empire, ten to twenty percent of the population owed allegiance to a master. Doulos became subservient to masters for various reasons. Some became slaves to escape destitution, as their new master was able to give provisions in exchange for service and devotion. Some chose slavery as a means of lifestyle, while others found themselves enslaved as a result of indebtedness or warfare. Slavery was a part of the societal structure of Rome, and the apostles drew heavily on the metaphor. James begins his epistle by identifying as a “slave (doulos) of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” MacArthur explains:
It should be said that the Bible never condemns slavery – never – and if Jesus and the apostles came to abolish slavery, they failed miserably – they didn’t come to do that. The Bible never condones slavery, it simply recognizes that it exists, and it just happens to be the best way to describe a believer’s relationship to Christ – and that’s why it becomes this dominant paradigm. If you think that this is a problem – if you think this is a problem for us, with a distant memory of what slavery was – if you think that’s a problem for us, think of what a problem it was in the New Testament time.
There are about 12 million slaves living in the Mediterranean world. To any free Greek, or free Roman, slavery was viewed with disdain; it was a despicable way to live. The supreme virtue for a Greek or a Roman was freedom; freedom. They despised slavery. Why? Slaves had no freedom; slaves had no rights. They could not defend themselves in a court of law, nor could they go to a court of law to seek justice. They couldn’t give testimony in a court of law. They couldn’t be citizens. They couldn’t join the military. They could not own property.
And in pagan religion, no follower of any deity ever called himself a slave of his God. The Greeks referred to their relationship as philos, not doulos.Philos means friend – they were a friend to the God. The idea of being a slave to anyone, even to a deity, was despicable in the Greek world, so here is another component in what Paul in 1 Corinthians talks about, the foolishness of the cross, the stumbling block that it was to the Greek mind.
We’re trying to convey a gospel of a crucified Jew who wants to make you His slave. You couldn’t have come up with a more difficult message to communicate to people who honored freedom and had nothing but disdain for slavery, and yet it’s in that kind of environment – and I’ll just give you a quick little run down…Listen to this – Romans 1:1: “Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus,” this says – there’s no such word in the Greek.
“Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus” – and that’s the launch point – “Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus” – not “Paul, an apostle and preacher, incidentally, also a slave” – “Paul, a slave.” In Galatians chapter 1, verse 10, he says, “I am – am I now seeking the favor of men or of God?” Now you’re getting to the heart of slavery, right? It’s not about seeking the favor of men, it’s about seeking the favor of God. “Am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ.” Why?
Because one principle of slavery, everybody understood; Jesus put it this way: “No man can be a slave to two masters” – that is an impossibility. Paul says, “I can’t therefore be the slave of man and the slave of God.” In Philippians, again he identifies himself this way, only with his companion: “Paul and Timothy” – right off the starting point – “slaves of Christ Jesus.” “Epaphras” – you remember Colossians 4:12 – “slave of Christ.” James 1:1: “James, a slave of Jesus Christ.” “Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ.”
That’s what we’re working with here.
Eager to distort the truth of scripture and the teaching that MacArthur derived directly from God’s word, Rick Pidcock of fake news site Baptist News Global wrote a hit piece against MacArthur’s teaching on slavery as a scriptural metaphor. Pidcock, has been fighting against the patriarchy for several years, writing a song to encourage Beth Moore to “Please Don’t Go Home”, and encouraging his followers to “re-imagine deconstruction.”
Pidcock uses bits and pieces of MacArthur’s teaching separated from context to create the narrative that MacArthur is a rabid white supremacist and promoter of chattel slavery as a societal good.
For MacArthur, slavery appears to be more than simply a secondary issue Christians can disagree about. He believes slavery is central. In fact, he believes slavery is the gospel. So for MacArthur to reject slavery would be to reject the gospel. In The Gospel According to Jesus, MacArthur said, “The gospel is an invitation to slavery.”
Julie Roys, who operates in much the same way, promoted Pidcock’s story.
Julie’s Twitter post contained a heavily edited excerpt of a Grace to You short video by Pastor MacArthur on the metaphor of slavery as the model for a Christian’s relationship to Christ. Julie’s video is less than a minute and a half, while the Grace to You video is less than three minutes. One might ask why it would be necessary to edit such a short video. Of course, Julie has never been a big fan of reporting on the whole truth in context. Shortly after posting her slander, Roys made the claim that GTY had taken the video down in an effort to cover Pastor John’s tracks.
Despite Roys’ claims, the full video remains up on the GTY Youtube channel. Perhaps it was really Julie who didn’t want her followers to see the true context of the whole video.
Discontent with being left out of the leftist MacArthur-bashing Twitter party, Dr. Michael Bird, a so-called “New Testament Lecturer” who is best known for his “scholarly” speculation on the erections of Jesus, should know better than to attack MacArthur on this point joined the failed journalist/songwriter Pidcock and half-truth reporting Roys in a leftist twitter pile-on.
Believers would do well to note those who participated in the foolishness of clearly mischaracterizing the statements of MacArthur. Note them and avoid them like the plague, because their reward, the approval of carnal men is a clear sign of where their treasure lies. They are slaves to the opinions of this world.
Men like MacArthur are slaves to the Lord Jesus Christ.
A large number of conservatives entered the 2022 SBC annual meeting with high hopes to change the course of the nation’s largest protestant denomination. Tom Ascol, a pastor and ministry leader with solid conservative credentials who battled for the SBC presidency was rejected in favor of a left-of-center institutionalist in Bart Barber, who garnered 60% of the vote in a run-off with Ascol. For the conservative camp in the SBC, the defeat confirms that the denomination is on an increasingly liberal trajectory.
The 2021 race between conservative Mike Stone and leftist Ed Litton resulted in a 52% to 48% loss for conservatives. As more conservative churches make the decision to pull the plug on SBC affiliation, this deficit is certain to increase on an annual basis. The SBC Presidency is not the sole defining factor in whether conservatives have influence in the SBC, but virtually all of the other conservative candidates, including Voddie Baucham lost their 2022 election contests.
A Tale of Two Messengers
The state of the convention could best be described by the different ways in which Ed Litton treated Rick Warren and Tom Buck, as both came to the microphone to make statements against their opponents. Tom Buck was afforded three and a half minutes to speak but was continually interrupted by Litton several times, as Buck sought to make a point about how victims can’t trust the SBC establishment to not politicize their situation. In contrast, Litton rolled out the red carpet for Rick Warren and gave him six uninterrupted self-aggrandizing minutes to criticize his opponents on the grounds that he considers the ordination of female “pastors” to be a secondary issue. These different treatments of a conservative pastor and a leftist pastor illustrate the way that SBC conservatives will be treated in the future, as they become an increasingly small minority in the convention.
A Leftward Trajectory
Aside from the election of candidates, the SBC has taken increasingly pragmatic positions, as it follows a leftist trajectory. Institutionalists in the convention, like newly elected SBC President Bart Barber claim to be conservatives, but their conservative claims are made purely on the basis of not embracing overtly leftist ideology in the world. Everyone knows that Southern Baptists who openly embrace Side A homosexuality are a tiny closeted minority in the convention, but how many embrace a Side B position and how many years will it take for the downgrade to progress from an acceptance of unbiblical same-sex attraction identity to an acceptance of overt homosexuality?
In the same way, openly pro-abortion Southern Baptists are unicorns in today’s convention, but pragmatic incrementalists are a dime a dozen. With Southern Baptists uniting with Catholics and non-Christians in national right-to-life organizations, how will the integrity of the Gospel be maintained as the goal line is shifted from the total abolition of abortion to “uniting to make abortion unnecessary”, as the ERLC has proposed? The leftist policy items that can be stuffed into the trojan horse of “making abortion unnecessary” are endless.
If every issue with the exception of the Gospel is considered secondary and no longer an issue to be taken into consideration by the credentialing committee, as Rick Warren insinuated, what is the purpose of the credentialing committee? Such a position would open the door to accepting churches that deviate from Baptist theology in significant ways. Can Joel Osteen join fellowship with the SBC if he says that he loves Jesus? Can prosperity preachers and wild charismatics like Kenneth Copeland join the SBC as long as their church uses the sinner’s prayer? Is a paedobaptist Southern Baptist Church in the cards, if secondary issues are irrelevant in the future?
The SBC is done as a conservative, Bible-believing institution. You can put a fork in it. By this, I mean that the leftward momentum is so great that the only thing that will stop the downgrade is a direct intervention from God. Does this mean that individual SBC churches or missionaries will not make an impact in the world? Of course not. However, the general state of the convention and its entities is in steady decline. Pragmatism, institutionalism, wokeism, and leftism are on the rise; while conservatism, sufficiency of scripture, and local church autonomy are being increasingly marginalized.
Hope for the Future
As the hymn writer Edward Mote stated in his famous hymn, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness.” The foundation of the local church is not a para-church organization like the SBC, but rather the righteousness of Christ and his atoning blood. Institutions will rise and fall, but the local church will remain strong. Jesus promised in Matthew 16:18 that the “gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Our savior promises to protect the church, but he makes no such promises for organizations like the SBC.
As David Morrill frequently reminds us, “Jesus didn’t die for the SBC.”
Following a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court Decision that derived a constitutional right to abortion out of thin air, pro-life incrementalists in Kansas proposed a constitutional “Value Them Both” amendment, that would clarify that there is no constitutional right to an abortion, while also proposing a constitutional right to continually regulate abortion through legislation. Abolitionists in the state, led by AIM KS (Abortion is Murder, KS) are warning that the upcoming vote on the amendment is actually a trojan horse that is intended to perpetuate the incrementalist cause, regulating abortion rather than abolishing the murder of pre-born babies.
Abolitionists and pro-life incrementalists agree that the decision by the Kansas Supreme Court requires a constitutional amendment to declare that there is no constitutional right to an abortion, but the incrementalist proposal puts Kansas on the same path as Oklahoma and Louisiana, who saw abolitionist bills that would totally ban abortion replaced by weak incrementalist bills that merely sought to regulate the murder of children. In Kansas the “Value Them Both” incrementalist amendment replaced an abolitionist amendment that conferred personhood on all pre-born children, effectively rendering all abortion murder.
Kansans For Life has actively threatened to run incrementalist candidates to primary any abolitionist political candidates who oppose the “Value Them Both” amendment. The amendment has been marketed as a bi-partisan bill, because it doesn’t actually ban abortion, a point that is proudly declared by the Value Them Both organization.
Liberal elements in the judiciary will likely rule that the amendment’s “laws that accounts for circumstances” clause actually enshrines so-called “life of the mother” exceptions that can be broadly interpreted to allow for abortion in cases where the birth of a child is deemed emotionally or psychologically harmful for the woman, a low bar that can easily crossed by an abortion clinic that works in conjunction with a pro-choice psychologist.
Creators of “Value Them Both” deceptively labeled the amendment as pro-woman and pro-baby, because the bill will allow for future legislation that regulates some abortion, all the while preventing an abolitionist declaration of pre-born personhood that would effectively declare a woman who aborts her baby to be a murderer.
Incrementalists make arguments similar to Denny Burk, who claims that women who have abortions may not fully understand that they are killing a baby. Culpability for murder of a pre-born baby should fall on both the abortionist and the mother. When an individual hires a hitman, both are responsible for murder. When parents give their children over to sex traffickers, both the parents and the traffickers are responsible for the crime of sex trafficking. The incrementalist position departs from logical consistency and the standard of scripture, when it comes to holding women accountable for murdering their children.
Following in the incrementalist steps of the ERLC of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Kansas Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists has endorsed “Value Them Both”, which isn’t surprising considering that the convention has recently taken a wild turn to the left on social issues. There will come a day when believers will answer for the compromise of incrementalism.
Unfortunately, many conservative Christians continue to unwittingly fall for the false advertising of the pro-life industry.
