Is Evangelicalism Reformable to Biblical Fidelity?

Is evangelicalism reformable to biblical fidelity? That is the topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian Worldview radio program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. Thank you to our listeners for your encouragement and support, and also to our national sponsor, Samaritan Ministries, who provide a biblical solution to healthcare.

You can go to our website to find out more about the Christian Worldview and Samaritan Ministries. Now, just a little follow-up early on in the program today before we get into the topic. We have never had more requests for transcripts than after the interview last week with Dr. Peter McCullough.

That's a great thing. Just keep in mind, when we produce transcripts, they typically come out on Tuesday after the program airs on the weekend. It takes time to generate them, edit them, and so forth, so a lot of emails asking about when they come out.

Tuesday is typically the day for that. Now, just to touch on a couple more things before we get to the topic of the day. So many unprecedented things are happening almost every week in this country that can only be described as full of lies and authoritarianism. It's like, is this America anymore? We didn't get a chance to play the audio last week of President Joe Biden mandating the vaccine for all companies with more than 100 employees and four federal employees as well.

Hard to even call him president, knowing what likely happened from a fraudulent standpoint in the election, and perhaps who is actually running this country behind the scenes. Anyway, I digress. So listen to the audio from this Joe Biden press conference last week, and you can easily find out who is going to be blamed for COVID and anything bad that happens in this country. My message to unvaccinated Americans is this. What more is there to wait for?

What more do you need to see? We've made vaccinations free, safe, and convenient. The vaccine is FDA approval. Over 200 million Americans have gotten at least one shot. We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us. So please do the right thing, but just don't take it from me. Listen to the voices of unvaccinated Americans who are lying in hospital beds, taking their final breaths saying, if only I'd gotten vaccinated. If only. It's a tragedy.

Please don't let it become yours. I tell you, these people on the left are professional liars. That's all that can be said about them. Blaming the unvaccinated, when this is actually right now, look in Israel, almost everyone's vaccinated, and the Delta variant is spreading like crazy there. So-called vaccines aren't effective against people getting or giving COVID. They're not officially FDA approved, despite what he said. Dr. Peter McCullough talked about that last week.

Our leaders are exceedingly sinful and wicked. Since when does the government have the authority to make you put something in your body? It doesn't take too much squinting to see where this is all going, whether it's going to be further restrictions on the unvaccinated, where you can go, what you can do, taking your children away. You can see that coming.

You're a danger to your own children, quarantine centers, denial of access to health care, who knows what it's going to be. And now we find out this week that the vaccine may be causing some forms of cancer and that it weakens your immune system. I remember earlier this year, perhaps, that we played some audio of Dr. Ryan Cole talking about the vitamin D deficiency people in America have who live in more than northern climates. Well, this is according to LifeSite News in a September article, but this is back from March when he was quoted as saying this. He's a board certified pathologist and owner and operator of a diagnostics lab. He trained at the Mayo Clinic.

He runs the largest independent testing laboratory in Idaho. He reported to the public in a video produced by Idaho State Government's Capital Clarity Project that he is seeing a massive uptick in various autoimmune diseases and cancers in patients who have been vaccinated. Listen to this two minute audio of Dr. Ryan Cole. What we're seeing in the laboratory after people get these shots, we're seeing a very concerning locked in low profile of these important killer T cells that you want in your body. It's almost a reverse HIV. In HIV, you lose your helper T cells, your CD4 cells. In this virus post vaccine, what we're seeing is a drop in your killer T cells, your CD8 cells. What do CD8 cells do?

They keep all other viruses in check. What am I seeing in the laboratory? I'm seeing an uptick of herpes family viruses. I'm seeing herpes. I'm seeing shingles.

I'm seeing mono. I'm seeing a huge uptick in human papillomavirus in the cervical biopsies and the cervical pap smears in women. In addition to that, there's a little infectious bump that kids get called molluscum contagiosum.

What do you need to keep that in check? You need CD8 killer T cells. I am seeing a 20 times increase in individuals over the age of 50 of this little bump and rash. That's innocuous, but what it tells me is the immune status of these individuals who have gotten the shot.

We're literally weakening the immune system of these individuals. Most concerning of all is there's a pattern of these types of immune cells in the body that keep cancer in check. Well, since January 1 in the laboratory, I've seen a 20 times increase of endometrial cancers over what I see on an annual basis.

A 20 times increase. I'm not exaggerating at all because I look at my numbers year over year. I'm like, gosh, I've never seen this many endometrial cancers before. I'm seeing invasive melanomas in younger patients. Normally, we catch those early and they're thin melanomas. I'm seeing thick melanomas skyrocketing in the last month or two.

I'm already seeing the early signals. And we are modifying the immune system to a weakened state. Great study out of Germany that looked at these profiles on young individuals after the Pfizer showing this locked in. And we don't know how long. Maybe the immune system is going to regenerate and those ratios will go back up.

But who's studying it? And where are the long term trials? Two months? Four months?

How long is this profile locked in? We don't know. That's chilling audio that this so-called vaccine that was rushed, and by the way, by President Trump, who was the one pushing it at first, but of course has taken to old new levels when the Biden administration came into power, that this injection, whatever they're putting into the bodies of millions of people now, may have deleterious health impacts on them, very serious ones.

So just keep that in mind as you consider whether you're going to be pressured into getting this so-called vaccine. The only thing to conclude here is that we are in a very bad state in our country right now. A couple other stories this week that are really troubling is that left wing Governor Gavin Newsom, who was recalled in that state in California, won the recall election in a landslide. I mean, California is basically a one party system state, massive homelessness, crime, terrible educational system, expensive, full of illegal immigrants, authoritarian lockdowns over covid.

And he still was elected governor in a landslide, which means the people of California either diluted or their one party machine is completely fraudulent when it comes to elections. Either way, it's very bad news. And then you probably heard this week about Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He's the top military officer in the country.

Came out in a book by two authors from The Washington Post that Milley had told this to his counterpart position in China. He said, General Lee, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be OK. This is right before the election in 2020. We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you. If we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time.

It's not going to be a surprise, unquote. Now, you did hear that, right? And it is truly beyond comprehension how that's not considered treason. And this man has not been removed from his position yesterday. General Milley hasn't even denied saying this, and it is actually being defended as this is what our military commanders do when they talk to their contemporaries in other countries. You may remember this general as the one who is the absolute hater of Donald Trump and who was pushing white rage, ideology and critical race theory on the military.

There's no way to sugarcoat it. Our government is on the left in every branch. Big business is on the left. Our educational system is on the Godless left. Our media and entertainment industry are joined in on the Godless left.

I can't think of a major institution in this country that is not on the God rejecting left at this point in time. In fact, this leftist worldview is impacting the evangelical church as well now, which brings us to the topic of the day, is evangelicalism reformable to biblical fidelity? The word evangelical has become a very broad term with hardly any meaning anymore. It once described a follower of Christ who believed in the complete truthfulness of scripture, the essential doctrines about sin and salvation and God and Christ and others, and the call to tell other people about the gospel of Christ. Today, seemingly every professing Christian who is not part of the totally compromised liberal mainline denominations self-identifies as quote an evangelical, except those who don't want to be associated with Donald Trump in any way for whom evangelicals voted for in large numbers. But the doctrinal stances of professing evangelicals today in evangelical churches and organizations on interpreting scripture or hot button issues like homosexuality, race, or women in preaching roles spans such a wide spectrum that the term evangelical has all but lost its meaning.

Here's just an example I read this week from the online publication Pride Source. Crossover Christian and pop music megastar Amy Grant. Now, she was considered this great evangelical, right? For years, everyone knows who Amy Grant is. She recently made clear her thoughts on the LGBTQ community and Christianity. Grant shared her most pro-LGBTQ sentiment to date with Apple Music's proud radio host Hunter Kelly. Here's what Amy Grant said. Evangelical Amy Grant said, who loves us more than the one who made us? Grant asked Kelly in the July 12 interview, quote, none of us are a surprise to God. Nothing about who we are or what we've done.

That's why to me it's so important to set a welcome table because I was invited to a table where someone said, don't be afraid. You're loved. Gay, straight. It does not matter. This is Amy Grant. It doesn't matter how we behave.

Grant continued. It doesn't matter how we're wired. We're all our best selves when we believe to the core I'm loved. And then our creativity flourishes.

We're like, I'm going to arrange flowers on your table and my table when we're loved. We're brave enough to say yes to every good impulse that comes to us, unquote. That from the evangelical mega star, Amy Grant, who then just this last week played in a concert for 9-11 with other well-known Christian contemporary music stars, Matt Redmond and Michael W. Smith. And big evangelicalism goes on in all its confusion. So with the evangelical church and movement becoming a mile wide and hardly even an inch deep, is it even possible and advisable to try to recapture the term back to its more faithful roots? Don Green, the founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, joins us today in the Christian Real View to discuss what was an evangelical, what caused the compromise, and whether evangelicalism is reformable. Don is preaching at the upcoming Reforming Evangelicalism Conference at Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado, which we'll tell you about today. Let's get to the first segment of the interview with Pastor Don Green. Don, thank you for coming on the program today.

This is your first time on the program. And so I'd like to ask you just to briefly tell us about your background, how you came to saving faith in Jesus Christ and about Truth Community Church. I was born and raised in southern Indiana. I had exposure to the gospel in some ways in a small country church in a little town that no one's ever heard of. And I thought myself a Christian for a long time, David. But I went to college, I went to law school, and through a variety of circumstances and scriptures, it became obvious that I was not a Christian. And in fact, I was a sinner that was doomed to eternal wrath. I was in big, big trouble before a holy God. And so based on things that I had heard in the past, I cried out in simple faith to Christ.

I was repenting of my sin and yielding my life to him and asking him and his love and mercy to save me. And he did, and changed my life. And the big thing that happened immediately after my conversion, David, was the Spirit of God opened up my eyes and my mind to scripture, to be able to understand them, to love the Word of God.

And that set me on a trajectory that eventually led me away from my law practice and into studies at the Masters Seminary out in California. And through a long series of circumstances, I came to Cincinnati to be the founding pastor of Truth Community Church. The Lord is blessing our ministry. We're very encouraged by all that is happening just with the simple philosophy. I've explained our philosophy of ministry to people like this. We open the Bible, we teach it, and we deal biblically with the consequences.

And it's really as simple as that. The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton returns in just a moment. Psalm 46 starts, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth should change. The earth is changing.

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Or calling 1-888-646-2233. Your email and mailing address will never be shared, and you can unsubscribe at any time. Call 1-888-646-2233, or visit thechristianworldview.org. Welcome back to The Christian Worldview. Be sure to visit our website, thechristianworldview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print newsletter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Now, back to today's program with host David Wheaton. You are going to be part of a conference coming up that has a very interesting theme to it, I think a very relevant theme for our day and age. It's the Reforming Evangelicalism Conference. This is being held at Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado. Some listeners will maybe recognize that church. Pastor Travis Allen has been a frequent guest on this program before, so he's invited you along with Tom Askell, another guest on this program from Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida.

The president of Founders Ministries and also Phil Johnson, the executive director of Grace to You. You four men are going to be part of this conference on Reforming Evangelicalism. And so I wanted to start out with a question on how wide a spectrum evangelicalism is today. There are widely divergent theological viewpoints across different denominational lines and organizations all considering themselves evangelical.

So on one side you have what I would categorize as conservative biblicists like John MacArthur, Steve Lawson, some of the more well-known ones. Then you have other well-known evangelicals like David Platt or Matt Chandler or many in the Southern Baptist Convention who are really intent on this issue of social justice. Then you have, I think, even those who are in the charismatic movement or even the New Apostolic Reformation, people like Jill Osteen or Bill Johnson, Bethel Church, Reading, California. They may seem very non-orthodox in their biblical viewpoints, but I think they consider themselves evangelicals. I think the culture would consider them evangelicals. And then you have those who are more theologically moderate or even liberal like the National Association of Evangelicals, Christianity Today, a seminary like Fuller, which is very liberal theologically, Rick Warren, Andy Stanley, Tim Keller, Thabiti Anyabwile.

The issue is very widely done on the inerrancy of scripture, social justice, immigration, some are for, some are against, unvetted immigration, the issue of homosexuality, race and reparations, critical race theory. I mean, the evangelical movement is a very, very big tent. So my first question on this topic is, what was an evangelical and what or whom do you think represents being an evangelical now? You know, originally it was an expression of commitment to the authority of scripture and the primacy of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible, holy word of God, and that Jesus Christ is the only savior of the world, and that only through faith in Christ can anyone be saved.

And along with that comes a corollary of recognizing the sufficiency of scripture, the sufficiency of scripture for ministry to the church and the sufficiency of scripture for what we proclaim to the world. And with the broad scope of people that you mentioned claiming the label of evangelical and the contradictory viewpoints that are held under that umbrella, it's rather obvious to me that the term itself has been so diluted that it's almost not even useful anymore because it doesn't describe anything specific. If you can have Fuller Seminary and John MacArthur under the same term, it's obvious that something's happened to the language since the term was originally instituted. And so what we're hoping to do with this conference is to bring things back to what the real issues are, and whatever label we use for conservative biblical Christianity going forward, that the issues that are represented under the term evangelical would be clarified and defended and asserted against those who are undermining them, either consciously or unconsciously, unintentionally, with the scope of their ministries.

Don Green with us today on the Christian Worldview radio program, the founding pastor of Truth Community Church that's in Cincinnati, Ohio. Would it be accurate to say, Don, that the evangelical movement or the evangelical church has changed more in the last, let's say, 40 years than in the previous 100 years, or let's say the first 60 years? Didn't the term evangelical come about sometime in the early 1900s?

Maybe you could explain that. When you look at what's happened in the charismatic movement, for example, over the past 50 years, that's an attack on the sufficiency and the final authority of Scripture. When you are open to new revelation from God and you think that God speaks outside of his word and speaks directly to people today in the spirit of their hearts, you have really undermined the very foundation of what it originally meant to be an evangelical, which was built on the exclusive final, complete authority of Scripture. There has been a great shift, and along with that, even in very more recent years, within the past decade or so, as evangelicals have embraced through the Gospel Coalition and the MLK 50 conference that happened there and this idea of racial reconciliation being a gospel issue, the reality is that the meaning of the authority of Scripture and the meaning of the gospel is being redefined by the introduction of new things that were not part of the original term. So, new revelation from God, violating the final authority of Scripture. Calling racial reconciliation a gospel issue, in other words, you can't be saved unless you're engaged in their version of racial reconciliation, completely redefining the simplicity of the gospel as it's expressed perhaps in 1 Corinthians 15, for example.

That's why we need to come back and redefine terms as we're hoping to do in this conference to reform and to challenge these assaults that have been made on biblical truth and to stand clearly, humbly, unapologetically on the final authority of Scripture and the sufficiency of the gospel as it is revealed in Scripture. For listeners in the Denver area, you'll be able to attend the conference in person. You can just go to gracegreeley.org to find out how, and greeley spelled G-R-E-E-L-E-Y, gracegreeley.org. But the great news is anyone can watch this conference live streamed from anywhere. Again, go to that same website, gracegreeley.org.

All the sessions will be live streamed. The conference is September 24th through the 26th. Let's talk about some of the things that have happened, the methodologies that have entered into the evangelical movement. Some may have had more impact than others, but you think about the 1970s. That was really the birth of Christian contemporary music. That started to come into the evangelical church.

The seeker model with Bill Hybels and Willow Creek started somewhere in the late 80s, early 90s. And then after that, the 90s, 2000s, the very highly programmed church, a program for every person who comes, turning much more into directed at the audience, the felt needs going on in their life, creating this worship experience. Multi-site campuses now where you have one church and that pastor is beamed over to other churches that are under the umbrella of that church. Or just even during the COVID pandemic, the online church, the growth of that. So, Don, what do you think have been one or two of the most damaging theologies or methodologies that have occurred within the evangelical church over the last 20, 30 years? I've always been disturbed by the shift that took place with Willow Creek, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, and just turning things into a seeker sensitive model.

I don't even know if these guys recognized at the time the fundamental shift that they were making. We cannot orient ministry in order to please the unsaved world. The gospel confronts the world.

It does not comfort the world in their unrepentance and in their hostility to God. And so if you are gearing a ministry or if you are shaping your ministry in order to draw in an audience from the world, you've already given up the battle because you have said, I will be a servant of unsaved men and to give them what they want rather than a servant of Christ proclaiming his truth and trusting the Holy Spirit to work in the lives of both the redeemed and the unsaved in order to accomplish his purposes. And so you've strayed from confidence in the gospel. You've strayed from confidence in the spirit in a desire to please a world that is at hostility with God.

You know, Jesus said that men don't come to the light because they love the darkness and they hate the light. And so our responsibility, David, as you know so well, our responsibility is to proclaim the truth and to trust God for the consequences of that. Whether our ministry grows, whether we see people outwardly converted to Christ or not, we just have to trust him for the consequences rather than shaping our ministry to try to bring in visible numbers inside the walls of the church. We don't do a service to the world when we do that. And also we abandon the purpose of the church, which is to present every man complete in Christ.

I look at the seeker-sensitive movement as being the inflection point where the trajectory really got off track and we're dealing with the consequences of that to this day, you know, 50 years later. Very good. Founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, Don Green joins us today here on the Christian Real View Radio program. You can find out more about the church that Don pastors at truthcommunitychurch.org.

He also has a daily radio program, and that website is thetruthpulpit.com. There's more than just the church within evangelicalism. There is just a host of parachurch ministries. As a matter of fact, there's actually a term, Big Eva, that's used to just describe the vast array of the movement of evangelicalism out there, and much of it has to do with parachurch ministries. There's the evangelical book industry, just unending number of books being churned out by all these publishers, most being really not worth the paper they're printed on.

Very few come out that are, I think, very helpful biblically and sound biblically. You have the whole evangelical music industry, the contemporary Christian music industry, that just churns out music and influences churches in so many ways. Then there are all the various non-church ministries. Again, parachurch ministries for social care or this particular mission or that. How do you think the whole evangelical parachurch ministry dynamic has affected what evangelicalism has become? Well, if I could focus on just one aspect from familiarity with some other parachurch ministries, it necessarily results in a dilution of doctrine and a dilution of the deep truths of scripture. In order for a parachurch ministry to survive, it needs to have a broad footprint of support from people from a diverse realm of theological commitments.

Inevitably, their doctrinal statements, if they even have one, is very brief, very shallow in order to encompass as many people under their big tent as possible. As they grow in influence and as they grow in their resources, they become a more dominant influence than anything about their ministry actually justifies. That happens at the expense of the local church. Let's say you've got a faithful pastor preaching the word to the same congregation week after week for 10, 20, 30 years, but his congregation is 50, 100, 150, 200 people. That's kind of the realm that we're operating in at Truth Community Church.

People have a sense of measuring it by the size rather than by the fidelity to truth. Looking at the parachurch ministries and all of the big attractions that they can put on and things like that, it has maybe an unrecognized shift in expectations that success is measured by the size of the ministry rather than what is being taught in the faithfulness of ministry to the people under the leadership of a local church. I'm greatly concerned about that and I'm greatly committed to the local church. That's what Christ promised to build. He promised to build his church, not things that are outside the biblical structure of qualified spiritual leadership, teaching designed to edify the saints and to exalt God. I'm content to do it Christ-ways and let the parachurch ministries, let them go. I'm not trying to emulate them in my own ministry. I just want to be faithful to the Word, teach it to my people, and let the Lord take the results of that wherever He wants to.

I trust Him to bless it according to His will and that's all I care about. The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton returns in just a moment. When it comes to your health care provider, what are some words you would use to describe your experience with them? Comfort, peace, confidence? Well, at Samaritan Ministries, those are just some of the words our members use frequently, like Samaritan member, former long-term board member, and now staff member, Jamie Piles uses to describe his 24-year relationship with Samaritan Ministries. It's hard to put words into the comfort and the relief and the peace that you have as you've come to terms that Samaritan Ministries is real, it's viable, and it's working, and it's there.

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Short takes are also available and be sure to share with others. Now, back to today's program with host David Wheaton. Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, joins us today. Their website is TruthCommunityChurch.org. He's also going to be speaking at the upcoming Reforming Evangelicalism Conference just outside Denver at Grace Church Greeley. You can attend in person or watch it online.

GraceGreeley.org is the website. Don, with only one Bible, how do you explain how evangelicals come to such widely different views on, let's say, some of the more hot-button issues of our day, women preaching to men, the issue of homosexuality now has entered the evangelical church, divergent viewpoints on that, same-sex attraction being okay, you can be a same-sex-attracted Christian. The issue of critical race theory, of course, was brought before the Southern Baptist Convention.

There was a resolution in favor of using it as an analytical tool. Of course, social justice has really taken hold and really divided even those on the more conservative theological end of evangelicalism. How do you come to such widely divergent views on these issues when we only have one Bible? In part, I think that while we have only one Bible, we have different men interpreting it for one thing, and these men come at Scripture with different motives and with different presuppositions. Is the Bible, which was completed, the canon was completed 2,000 years ago, does it speak final truth for all time, or do subsequent events and subsequent human learning change the way that we are to understand Scripture? And with a cultural shift, just to pick on one topic that you mentioned, with a cultural shift on homosexuality, if we are driven by what culture says, then we're going to reinterpret Scripture against the long-standing historic understanding of the church, of the Orthodox Church, for centuries and even millennia. We're going to reinterpret it because there's a sense that what's new learning is more important and is better than the revealed pages of Scripture and what was established 2,000 years ago. And so if men are hungering for that which is new, that which is in conformity with the spirit of the world, that is going to influence and change the way they interpret Scripture. And eventually they'll put into Scripture, or they'll twist Scripture to bring out the preordained conclusion that they wanted. If I think that homosexuality is good, or that it at least should not be criticized by spiritual leaders, then when I go to the Bible, I'm going to find what I want instead of what the Bible says. And that's why exit Jesus is so important, to study Scripture for what it says, let the Bible speak on its own terms, and adjust the world to Scripture rather than adjusting Scripture to the world. Very well said.

Thank you for that. Don Green with us today on the Christian Worldview founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I want to read just a couple sentences of the preview for the upcoming Reforming Evangelicalism conference that you're going to be speaking at outside Denver, Colorado. It said, this is the perfect time to reassert the creeds and confessions, the Reformation solas, and the doctrines of God's sovereign grace. The theology that once set the standard of orthodoxy for evangelicalism is needed, now more than ever, to captivate the hearts of God's people and guide the churches and their pastors. We want to see a new generation of evangelicals rise up, reform evangelicalism, and rediscover the true beauty of the evangel in all its glory. Perhaps God will grant us kindness in our time to pour out his Spirit and revive the land.

That's from the conference preview, and that's a certainly noble mission. I'm wondering how realistic that is, seeing how far the whole evangelical movement has gone, whether it's worth the effort trying to recapture a term rather than just exhorting churches and Christians to be faithful to scripture. Part two of that question is, what do you think the apostles would do? As the apostle Paul traveled around and dealt with false teaching and drifts in the churches that he had started, or that he ministered to, how do you think he would deal with the drift going on within evangelicalism today? Let me start with the last question that you asked there about the apostle Paul. I think we have a clear answer to that question in scripture. As he was writing his parting words in 2 Timothy to the next generation pastor, so to speak, he said in 2 Timothy chapter 4, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction.

The apostle Paul in the biblical mandate to the men of God who are leading churches and have positions of spiritual influence is to proclaim truth, to teach the word, to explain it in its context and to exhort sinners to believe in Christ and to exhort the faithful to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ. And you're right, humanly speaking, where you were kind of leading into with the initial framing of the question, humanly speaking, this is hopeless. Humanly speaking, this cannot be recovered. I mean, we've got 2,000 cats out of the barn and we're not going to be able to shepherd them back into the barn and get control over this again. The thing that we're relying on as we teach the word and teaching it from a minority position in the broader church, the thing that we're relying on is the great power of the Holy Spirit in order to bless our efforts beyond what we could humanly manufacture, to bless his word to the glory of Christ, to the salvation of sinners and to bring a wandering church to repentance.

I have no confidence in this conference itself to be able to accomplish anything simply by the human power of the speakers. But I have great confidence in the power of the Holy Spirit to use it to accomplish the purposes of God, whatever they may be. Our job is to be faithful to the word, leave the consequences to God and hopefully when we enter into his presence on the merits of the righteousness and shed blood of our Savior, to hear him say to us, well done, thou good and faithful servant. If I hear those words, the purpose of my life has been fulfilled, David.

Very well said. Don Green, the founding pastor of Truth Community Church with us today, again on the Christian worldview. Their website is truthcommunitychurch.org. He also hosts a radio program daily, thetruthpulpit.com is the website for that. He's speaking at the upcoming Reforming Evangelicalism Conference. We'll tell you how you can listen to that or attend that. And I was just thinking as you're giving that answer, how important this would be for pastors and elder boards to take in what you and the other speakers are going to be saying, regular Christians as well, those in the congregation of course, but particularly for those in leadership to get a biblical ecclesiology for how they should be leading their churches. That would be very important, so highly encouraged for pastors and elders to take in this excellent conference.

Let's talk about one other issue that came up within the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, perhaps even the world. They had an election of a new president this year. Ed Litton took over for J.D. Greer almost immediately after he was elected. It came out that he had been involved in plagiarizing sermons from J.D. Greer and I think maybe some others for, well, for the last many years.

This wasn't just a one-time thing. He had gotten permission from J.D. Greer to use his material, but he never credited it when he was preaching it.

It was like word for word, we played some of this on the program. It's one thing for one pastor to plagiarize sermons, but the reaction or the lack of reaction, the lack of pushback, the lack of demand that this man resign in one of the biggest evangelical positions in the country, I think is still shocking. So how do you explain the lack of action taken over such a clear issue of sin, plagiarism, taking someone else's material and using it as if it's your own, and how common this turns out to be, not only with Ed Litton, but other pastors buying and borrowing sermons.

This is apparently commonly done. What does this say to you, Don? I wasn't anticipating you to bring this up in the interview, but I'm really, really glad you did.

At the time that those stories were breaking, I wrote about this extensively on my personal Facebook page. In my perspective, David, everything that we've talked about before now is child's play compared to how devastating this scandal is to the future of the evangelical church for the next 50 years. The largest conservative Protestant denomination or convention or whatever you want to call the SBC has openly embraced and accepted a man who is not qualified for pastoral office. Scripture is clear that the man of God is to be able to teach and be able to refute those who contradict, and it is essential to the pastoral office for a man to be able to do that.

If he does not do that, he's not qualified for office. The convention leadership and the seminary leadership, the flagship seminaries, none of them, to my knowledge, ever called for his resignation. They might have said, oh, that's not such a good thing, but they never stood boldly against this in a way that would have cost them their jobs. And the result of this is that the next generation of pastors trained under the leadership of SBC seminaries has, as their flagship model, a man who did not do the work of the ministry, a man who did not study to show himself approved. And they are being taught by example that the Word of God is not important enough for you to actually spend your time studying it yourself, and you can advance to the highest levels of ministry without showing any integrity toward the Word of God. That is devastating for what it means to the future leaders that are being trained under the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention.

You can tell by the animation in my voice. I am greatly exercised about this. I am greatly grieved that this has been accepted by men who apparently concern numbers and dollars more than the integrity of Scripture. And what this means by people who will adopt the example of Ed Litton is devastating for the future of our church.

I don't know how you recover it, humanly speaking, in the next 50 years when you have set an example for future leaders to follow like that. This is worse than anything about vaccines or church mandates or anything like this. This has much longer lasting consequences than any of the current issues that are occupying the attention of the church. That's so well said, Don, and the reason you say that is because you know that the pulpit is the starting point and the ending point of not only a God-honoring church, the point of which people, our lives are saved and believers are discipled and everything else, and if that's compromised, as it has been. The example here, this was dealt with like a political scandal.

Yeah, just kind of deflect and do a few interviews, send out some counterpoints and so forth, and just let time pass and something else comes up, then people forget about it. That's how this has been dealt with. That's exactly right.

That is exactly right. So it is extremely troubling, and I think your view of this, that this is a major, major problem because it's going to degrade the pulpit in the eyes of younger men who are aspiring to be pastors. And what it means to be a preacher of God's word is right on point.

Don Green joins us today here on the Christian worldview. The final question for you is, in light of that, why is, and I think a big question people have in their areas, they're listening today, and they don't perhaps have a church like you've been describing today where there's a high view of God in Scripture. There's not sound expository preaching. There's pragmatic methodologies in their local church and they don't know what to do about it.

They don't know where to go. Why is sound expository preaching from a church's pulpit the starting point and the ending point? I mean, that is the most important part of a God-honoring local church.

Yeah, that's right, David. It's from the pulpit where we learn who God is, who Christ is, who we are as sinners, and what the gospel is. And the pulpit is God's appointed means of providing truth to His people and proclaiming truth to a lost and rebellious world. And if you compromise the pulpit, you've shaken the foundation upon which the church is supposed to stand. Paul called the church the pillar of truth and the pillar in the support of truth. And if you evacuate and you render null the pulpit, then everything else falls along with it.

And we've become nothing more than a social gathering around, you know, common human values, maybe. But the voice of God is silenced when the pulpit is compromised. And it is a voice of God we need, by which I mean the truth of Scripture applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And the pulpit is central to that. Without the pulpit, all of that goes away. You might have a man up that is speaking, but you're not getting the truth of God proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit. And that is what the crying need of the church is today.

So well said. Don, thank you so much for coming on the Christian Real View today. But thank you even more for your fidelity to the Word of God, preaching it faithfully, standing up for truth. And at the same time, by the way, pointing out error.

That's another overlooked thing today, is that there's so much error going on. You see it in Scripture. It's pointed out in Scripture. And just overlooking it or just talking about the good things, the things that make us feel good, that's not what Scripture calls Christians to do and especially pastors to do. So thank you for being faithful to Scripture in that way as well, in all of God's best. And grace to you and your church and your family. And thanks again for coming on the program. Well, David, thank you for having me. Thank you for what you do. And we certainly covet the prayers of your audience for the Ministry of Truth Community Church. It's a blessing to have been here with you.

And may God bless you as well. Okay, I hope you gained from that conversation with Pastor Don Green. And just a reminder, he will be part of that Reforming Evangelicalism Conference, held at Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado, September 24th through the 26th.

You can attend in person or you can watch online. Go to gracegreeley.org to find out more. One thing that I just took away from hearing Don was about the importance of pastors just being so clear and so strong and so Bible-based and Bible-centered in their preaching.

They can't back off the things that they think might offend people's sensibilities today. They need to preach the full counsel of God and also the gospel, that God created you and me to know Him, obey Him, and give Him glory, but that our sin separates us from God and puts us under His judgment. But that's what Jesus Christ came to reconcile, to live a perfect life and then to die as our sinless substitute on the cross so that God's wrath and justice could be satisfied over our sins and that by repenting and believing in His work and not our own works, we can be forgiven and made right with God. That is the good news, and if you have never believed that, put your faith in that, you need to do that today. That is one of the key aims of this program, to not only sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians, but to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, that sinners can be made right with the Holy God. Find out more by going to our website and reading What Must I Do to Be Saved? Thank you for listening to and for supporting this radio ministry. Be sure to take advantage of our current resource for a donation of any amount, a book by Steve Lawson, Show Me Your Glory. You can find out about that at our website, thechristianrealview.org, and all our contact information is given right after this program.

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