(Woke Preacher TV) During a July 2021 panel discussion on “Queer Theology,” Reverend Simon Woodman of London’s Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church asserts that Jesus Christ “transgenders himself” in several gospel narratives, including the washing of his disciples’ feet.
If we think of Jesus as the one who reveals God, I was really struck by Angela [Sheard] saying earlier that God is queer. And I think as humans we have a tendency to construct God in our own image (Editor’s note. YOU DON’T SAY!?’) rather than to recognize that we are made in the image of God.
And therefore, the dominant expression of humanity ends up writing itself onto God and making that God. And I think in the story of Jesus, the stories of Jesus’ life, we find that being broken down in some quite radical ways, which is then having the knock-on effect of altering the way we understand who God is in relation to humanity.
So I think Jesus transgenders himself on a number of occasions. I think you know, just a little phrase, that Jesus is lamenting over Jerusalem, longing to gather Jerusalem as a mother hen gathers her chicks.
And I think if you look at the foot-washing from John’s gospel, foot washing elsewhere, in both Old and New Testament, it’s consistently done by women. And yet Jesus takes that on. People often cast that as being the servant’s role. It was the woman’s role. And Jesus does it and becomes the woman at that point.
And I think, you know, we’ve observed that he’s unmarried, he’s childless, he defies gender and sexual norms of his day. He’s known for associating with those whose own sexual history or gender identity may be ambiguous.
So I think in Jesus we’ve got a revelation of God as encompassing far more than what historically and, recently at least, Christians have tended to construct God as being. And I think there’s a bit of an antidote to heteronormative idolatry in in the story of Jesus.
Editor’s Note. This article was posted on YouTube by @WokePreacherTV
Earlier in the year, a supermajority of voters in the city of Lubbock, Texas made history after overwhelming voting to ban abortion within city limits, making it the most populous city in the world to become a sanctuary city for the unborn.
By a margin of 62 percent to 38 percent, voters in the city of 265,000 cast their ballot in a May 2nd referendum, approving an ordinance that says, “It shall be unlawful for any person to procure or perform an abortion of any type and at any stage of pregnancy in the City of Lubbock, Texas,” and that “It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly aid or abet an abortion that occurs in the City of Lubbock, Texas.” Lubbock is the 11th biggest city in Texas and the 83rd in the United States.
When the town’s city council refused to pass the ordinance, seven citizens went around and gathered enough signatures for a referendum to put it on the ballot, which they eventually won in a city-wide vote. In total 21,400 people voted for it and 12860 people voted against it, demonstrating the power of passionate people in small numbers to enact real change in their city.
As if on cue, Planned Parenthood, the apex predator of the baby-killing world, along with a few of their murderous affiliates filed a lawsuit against the city, making the claim that the city of Lubbock had no right to interfere in a woman’s right to abortion. Within weeks, federal Judge James Hendrix dismissed Planned Parenthood’s suit, noting that they had not shown they have the standing to sue the city.
Planned Parenthood quickly appealed and the case has remained in limbo with no movement on either side, with the abortion giant likely occupied with the 6-week abortion ban that Governor Abbott and the state passed several months after that.
Yesterday, without explanation, Planned Parenthood filed a motion to dismiss the appeal, effectively ending any legal recourse or strategies to keep Lubbock from upholding their law and ensuring that the citizenry get their say.
Disgraced pastor Perry Noble has come full circle and completed the final phase of the ‘Evangelical Ministry Restoration and Reintegration Process’, after years of doing penance for doing some really bad things, signaling that he’s fully back in business and ready to put himself out into the Christian culture in a big way.
For the vast majority of evangelicalism, there is no such thing as ‘disqualified from the ministry’ on account of ‘no longer being biblically qualified and able to meet the strict standards the Lord has on elders and pastors’. Far from it. Rather there is an easily taken pathway to a life temporarily lost.
The ‘Evangelical Ministry Restoration and Reintegration Process’ is the system whereby disgraced pastors who get kicked out of their churches, usually for sexual sins and committing adultery, become reintegrated into Christendom and restored to their former glory, through a 10 step process.
Maintain some degree of innocence innocence throughout. Admit the sin, but frame it as a mistake or error in judgement. Feel free to rail at the elders who kicked you out. Bonus for spending 2 weeks in rehab.
Go silent on social media. Don’t say a word. 3 months is the minimum. 4 months is better.
Announce you’re starting up a new church.
Name it ‘Redemption Church/ Messed up Church/ Second Chance Church’ and make its culture all about grace and God giving second chances.
Divorce wife and marry new one. (optional)
Get new tattoo. (not optional)
Rejoin social media and begin sharing pictures of church activities.
Grow church for 2-3 years.
Post about all the good things God is doing in your life and in your church.
Begin speaking tour again, going to conferences. After all, You’re back, baby.
Any pastor worth his salt can usually complete the process in about 4 years. Perry Noble, being a bit of an outlier, completed the process in 5 years. A little longer than most, but he also went through step 5 and acquired a new wife, despite saying that his former marriage was not dissolving for reasons of sexual immorality, adding a year to his restoration time.
Despite losing his church of 32,000 members back in 2016, he has a new one, pushing 1500 people, and has rejoined the preaching circuit, writing on social media:
Congrats, Perry, we look forward to seeing you at the big conferences sometime this summer.
On this episode of the Intelligence briefing, we talk about the pastor who made the most vile sermon illustration possible, as well as the wokest Acts 29 church around. Finally, we close it up with the SBC chasing bad money with good money.
As always, please like, share, subscribe, and click for notifications on YT.
YouTube, ever the bastion of censorship and dutiful soldier in the war of BigTech against free speech, labeled a recent sermon by Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Chuch as ‘hate speech’, on account of him preaching that God made us ‘Male and Female.’
Three weeks ago, Pastor MacArthur requested that pastors around the globe join him in preaching on the biblical understanding of human sexuality, in solidarity with Canadian pastors who were about to be tested after their insane government passed a law with the support of all parties declaring that any efforts to counsel someone or convert someone from homosexual to heterosexual was a crime punishable with up to 5 years in prison.
Without exaggeration, if a congregant tells a pastor they have sinful homosexual thoughts, and seek prayer and counseling for them to have them quelled and brought under the blood of Christ, that is worthy of fines, arrest, and even jail if discovered and brought to the authorities.
“Simply stated. There is no such thing as transgender. You are either XX or XY, that’s it. God made man male and female. That is determined genetically, that is physiology, that is science, that is reality.
This notion that you are something other than your biology is a cultural construct intended as an assault on God…. The only way you can address it, honestly, is to say, ‘God made you and God made you exactly the way He wanted you to be. You are not only fighting God in His physical creation, you are fighting God in His sovereignty. You are fighting God in His spiritual relationship to you. This is a war on God.’
…On the one hand, the reality of that lie and deception is so damaging, so destructive, so isolating, so corrupting that it needs to be confronted, but on the other hand, that confrontation can’t exaggerate what already exists, which is a sense of feeling isolated in relationships,”
According to Todd Starnes, after uploading a video clip of MacArthur preaching, YouTube took down the video and told him the pastor’s sermon was hate speech, explaining:
“Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our hate speech policy,” YouTube wrote to me. “We’ve removed the following content from YouTube: ‘There is no such thing as transgender. You are either XX or XY. That’s it. – Pastor John MacArthur.’”
In other words, YouTube affirmed the Canadian law by banning any opposition to transgenderism on their platform.
And it won’t be very long before the sex and gender revolutionaries target the source of our beliefs – the Holy Bible. I foresee a day in American history where Bibles could be confiscated or rewritten to affirm the LGBTQIA lifestyle.”
(Reformation Charlotte) Since the “pandemic” began almost two years ago, many churches shut their doors–some for a very short time and some dragged it out as long as they could. Yet, as of today, some churches still aren’t meeting regularly out of fear of catching a cold.
As we’ve reported already, vaccination has become one of the professing church’s new ordinances–being required by many churches for people to gather together corporately for worship. Those who don’t submit themselves to the requirements have shown themselves unapproved in the eyes of woke, statist pastors and church leaders.
But another peculiar notion that has been exposed in light of the “pandemic” is that the idea of corporate worship is not central to the Church. Many churches are now turning to this “be the Church” movement that says corporate gatherings are not required and, instead, Christians need to “be the Church” by acting like Christians in their daily lives.
Of course, we agree that acting like Christians in our daily lives is important–not doing so would expose one as a hypocrite, not a true, born-again Christian. But one pastor, Darryl Ford of Ikon Community Church, took it even further. He says that concerning yourself with corporate worship “might be idolatry.”
Darryl Ford of Ikon Community Church recounts horror stories from the days of the Spanish flu, then warns us against the "idolatry" of gathering in-person for worship.
Considered it for this week's vaccine discourse compilation, but probably not since vax isn't mentioned. pic.twitter.com/Lp9JNxMtHg
North Point Community Church “impastor” Andy Stanley continued his wretched job of being seen as the elder statesman of evangelicalism, after his 40,000 member megachurch put on Led Zeppelin concert, filled with flashing lights and several extended guitar solos, to open up their January 9th Church service.
Assuming he’s jesting in most of his reasoning, Stanley explains that they opened with Led Zepplin because it reminds people of the past and that “times moves on,” and it serves as a grotesque sermon illustration of the things people ought to leave in the past.
Yes, it was the call to worship. So why did we do that? Here’s why we did that. Because we have to let the band get things out of their system every once in a while just so they’ll play the songs we need them to play.
So when I was watching the rehearsal, and they sent me this stuff ahead of time, it just reminded me that, you know, for some of you, that was a reminder of a season of life. I can see some of the guys my age kind of looking like “oh my gosh,” you’re just thinking of high school. Some of you, it reminds you of your parents, season of life, or your grandparents or it might have remind you of a Cadillac commercial.
…But you know what it reminds all of us of? It reminds us that time just moves on, right? And if we’re lucky, if we’re lucky, we get to get older. But if we’re intentional, we get to get wiser. And the thing that determines wisdom is what we choose to leave behind and the things that we choose to carry forward. And some things need to be left behind. Some things need to be carried forward.
Today, we’re going to talk about one of the things that we should all leave behind.
There was a time (albeit brief) that being a church within the Acts 29 Network meant something. Founded by Mark Driscoll and then taken over by Matt Chandler in 2012, the evangelistic, church planting network was designed to exemplify a deep, deep biblicism, mostly on the back of its Calvinistic soteriology, which convinced many well-meaning folks that they can’t possibly be dangerous and that churches within the network couldn’t possibly have deep marring undercurrents.
After all, look at their church statement of faith. It’s a masterpiece of depth and substance, with the words ‘God’s sovereignty and ‘gospel’ and ‘penal substitution’ strewn about liberally.
Enter Park Church in Denver, Colorado. It’s a church body that is part of the Acts 29 Network and is absolutely drenched with wokeness and streaks of compromise.
Of chief interest is their Diversity & Racial Justice Resources, which explains that Park Church “has an opportunity to either lead us into unity or remain complicit in allowing systems of racial inequities to disproportionately harm our sisters and brothers of color” and that they’ve “spent the last three years intentionally breaking down such systems internally and have focused on building a more inclusive culture and church.
Here are some of the helpful resources they provide for their church members, to gain a better appreciation for what they’re trying to say:
James Cone’s book The Cross and the Lynching Tree:
Soong Chan Rah’s book The Next Evangelicalism (we covered him extensively in our woke World Cisions series. He’s the guy who claims every white man sees black men as pets or threats, and black women as jezebel’s or “mammy’s)
Pastor Eric Mason’s sermon Race, Justice, and the Church
Jemar Tisby’s book The Color of Compromise. (he literally works for Ibram X Kendi, and his organization is rife with pro-pro-abortion, pro LGBTQ people, including the VP of The Witness BBC)
Latasha Morrision’s book Be the Bridge
Latasha’s Morrison’s BTB101 booklet, which teaches the 4 W’s. White Supremacy
White Fragility, White Identity and White Privilege
Dr. John Perkins book One Blood.
In a 2020 sermon, lead pastor Gary McQuinn rifts on the typical talking points you’d find in these sort of antiracist/ racism sermons while including a bit about how puzzling and trippy suggestion that “the idea of inherited guilt from the sins of our forefathers is not an unbiblical idea.” He explains:
We can be corporately condemned… the sin of Achan in the book of Judges where Achan sins, and his whole family is condemned, because they find a corporate identity and relationship to their father. It’s a biblical concept.
So when people are..afraid of concepts like… ‘white guilt’, and you kind of think, like, ‘oh, how could I be, how can I experience guilt based on just the color of my skin?’ It’s like, well, it’s complicated. It’s complicated. I get it. And there are questions and I’m hearing all the triggers and the emails start coming. But the idea of actually ‘inherited guilt from the sins of our forefathers’ is not an unbiblical idea. It’s a very biblical idea. So there’s culpability that we carry as we pick up the power structures, and we benefit from the injustices, and we experienced, the cultural idolatries and the cultural sins of the generations that came before us.
That’s just biblical. It’s not Marxist. It’s not socialist. It’s not. It’s just Biblical. And so as a people, you have to like pay attention, that there really is corporate responsibility. That doesn’t mean shame on you. That doesn’t mean forever and ever and ever- you’re just nasty guilty. It’s like no, God sent Jesus into the world to redeem and forgive and justify guilty people, good news for us. So we can be changed. We can admit our guilt, we can embrace and we can seek to do better and bring more restoration into the world.
Gary McQuinn, lead pastor of Denver, CO's Park Church (an Acts 29 plant), compares white Americans who "inherit systems of power built on the backs of the oppressed" to a hypothetical child of Pharaoh who denies his nation is oppressing Israelites because "I have Hebrew friends." pic.twitter.com/BimBPg9foA
‘Pastor Michael Todd of Transformation Church in Tulsa, OK, has apologized for spitting phlegm and saliva into his hands and then rubbing on a congregants face (a man who later turned out to be his brother) is some obscene, freaky-deaky sermon illustration, writing on social media it was “never my intention to distract others from God’s Word and the message of Jesus… even with illustrations!” and “I apologize for my example being too extreme and disgusting!”
He explains in the video
I just want to acknowledge what happened yesterday when the ‘spit’ hit the fan. I watched it back and it was disgusting. Like, that was gross. I want to validate everybody’s feelings. That was a distraction to what I was really trying to do. I was really trying to make the word come alive and for people to see the story.
But yesterday, it got too live. And I own that. And I just want to make sure people know that we want to help people. We want people to see Jesus, we want people to feel loved. We want people who are desperate to be able to find hope. And I’m passionate about that, so much so that I tried to do extreme things to help people get it, and yesterday crossed the line.
So I love you guys. I appreciate everybody that’s been praying for us and sending us messages. And to anybody who just saw that three-minute clip, I really encourage you to go back and watch the whole message. There’s some truth and some life in there that could potentially change your whole life.
When Jesus spit on that man, he was blind and then he could see. From my brother who I love and honor so much, I just called him; he was bald before I spit on him and he’s still bald today. So no miracle here. And so next time I’ll rethink and do something differently….
It’s never my intention to distract others from God’s Word and the message of Jesus… even with illustrations!
I apologize for my example being too extreme and disgusting!
Prominent Christian rap artist Phanatik has renounced his faith in a video published to Facebook, announcing that “ I sent a letter to my church withdrawing my membership and saying that I am denouncing the Christian faith that I have believed, professed, proclaimed, and defended for the last 30 years of my life.”
Phanatik, whose real name is Brady Goodwin Jr, was the founding member of the Grammy-nominated Christian rap group The Cross Movement, formed in 1996, who has worked with most Christian rappers today.
A graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary who has also studied at Lancaster Bible College, he has also written several Christian books and when he is not producing or making music, he has been teaching courses in apologetics and biblical studies at the Center for Urban Theological Studies
He explains:
For me over the last couple of years, I sort of been trying to throw out little hints that kind of just advertise or at least let people know I’m not where I once was, I’m not where I used to be.
And even when I didn’t know where I was, I knew I wasn’t totally where I used to be. And that’s just on some social matters, political matters. Not even theological just, I don’t see things the way some folks in my Christian community do, a lot of folks in a Christian community do. But then there were others who were in the Christian community who I did see eye to eye with you. Even when I was wrestling with the theology.
So what am I saying? I’m really making this video because I know the word is kind of going out from some people who were part of the church that I was at for the last maybe four or five years. I recently sent a letter to the church withdrawing my membership from the church. And it was a heavy, heavy letter because as I said in the letter, I was not just withdrawing my membership from this local body. It’s actually the universal church that I said ‘you know what? I really can’t ‘Amen’ what I used to ‘Amen.”
My struggle is I know that there’s a world of people who are going to be crushed, who are going to be let down and disappointed and hurt and sad and by hearing this.
Anyway, I sent a letter to my church withdrawing my membership and saying that I am denouncing the Christian faith that I have believed, professed, proclaimed, and defended for the last 30 years of my life.” 30 years travelling the world, preaching to others, preaching to others about what I wholeheartedly believed.”
He goes on to explain that he began struggling in 2014, and that it was in bible college that he adjusted his view from biblical inerrancy to ‘infallibility’ which “which was kind of a, a lesser claim, but still just as solid in terms of the Bible being trustworthy.”
Despite doing apologetics for 25 years, he attended the Westminister Theological Seminary in order to better “defend the Christian faith against atheism and liberalism” where he started to deconstruct his faith
“I began to ask those more penetrating questions. And I begin to second guess the answers that I was getting, and answers that I would give someone else if they asked me that same question… I’m in the class and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Okay, you want me to give that response to my unbelieving coworkers? I don’t think that’s going to be good enough’… I don’t know if it’d be good enough for them. And I’m starting to wonder why is it good enough for me?
He went on to live his life after that, even teaching apologetics despite struggling to believe in it, when a friend challenged him to really start reading his bible again, and really dive in, something he hadn’t been doing much of.
“I literally told God, like if I find one more thing in the scriptures that doesn’t have a good explanation without resorting to some kind of, having to bend over backwards and hop over barrels to explain it, I’m going to lose my faith.”
He dove in and he quickly saw the bible not as the word of God, but as a non-sensical amalgamation of error and contradiction “all these issues are jumping out of me issues I never saw before. I’m like, yo, who put that in the Bible? Where’d that come from? No, that’s, that’s been there. Why am I just now seeing this issue?”
“I realized what had happened in those five or six years since seminary when I wasn’t living in the text. All my presuppositions had fallen off. All of the things that I used to, almost like the armour that I had, that helped me to bulldoze my way through issues in the text, all those things had fallen off.”
He spent 2021 traveling the country talking to experts and professors. He says he consulted the conservative people first, and not the liberals, and their answers left him wanting, explaining “it got to the point where the liberal Jews were the ones bringing the most comfort because they were the ones that were being the most honest about the issues.’
I know people who they signed statements of faith so that they can still teach at Christian universities, but they believe very different. And they would hardly tell their students what they’re really thinking. And I just said, I can’t do that.”
He doesn’t say what his issues were, but they seem to be your run-of-the-mill apologetic issues that have existed for centuries, such as the pericope adulterae, authorship of genesis, death of Moses and who recorded it, longer ending of Mark, Johannine comma, , added bible verses, lost bible verses, angels that stir up waters, differing numbers, Jesus lineage, etc. He concludes:
“When I hold the Bible, in my hands, I think I understand what I’m holding now. I think I understand it now better than I ever have. And I don’t believe it, but I understand it. And I actually still love the gospel actually. Still love the way that the message has been massaged and presented to us. The way that the scriptures present themselves, the various authors, I get it. I just don’t believe it.”
