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That's right. You guys can help us keep the conversation moving forward by supporting the show. You can share it online with your friends and your family. Leave us a good five-star review on iTunes or Spotify. Absolutely nothing less than five stars. Link is in the description below. We're here in the Clearview Today studio with Dr. Abbadon Shah, who's a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show. Dr. Shah, welcome. Welcome. Welcome.
Welcome. Happy Tuesday. Happy Tuesday to you guys.
Happy Tuesday. Happy to be here. Good to be here.
Good to see you. Our verse of the day today has come to us from Philippians 2, verse 11, and that every one should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. I think that's one of my favorite parts of the whole book of Philippians, where he does that whole monologue. It's not even a monologue, but it's that whole section that the name of Jesus, every knee is going to bow and every tongue confess. I remember the things that we're saying, like the power of confessing with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. Dr. Shah, I think you said it from the pulpit, and I'm sure there's tons of people who have said it, but I always remember the way you said it, that it's not that, hey, you should really confess Jesus Christ, it's that at the end of the line, you will confess. Every tongue is going to say it, whether they believe it, whether they want to or not.
That's right. Now, it does not mean that that automatically guarantees you to heaven, because that's universalism. But this does say that everyone will confess. And, of course, if you read what the Bible says about even the demons believe and shudder. So they confess all the time, but they don't confess unto salvation. There's a distinction there.
I think it is about that time. Welcome. Oh, welcome to the gripe. Welcome to the gripe. Here, we'll do it.
One, two, three. Welcome to the gripe vine. This is the segment of our show where we talk about all those little moments in life that just get under your skin. I heard David's mom say something the other day that reminded me of stuff that my mom used to say to me. And I want to run this by you, see if it's just a North Carolina thing, see if maybe your parents did anything similar. I don't know what it is about moms in the South, but when they're talking to their sons, not just their daughters, but like their sons or even like a boy dog, a boy animal, it doesn't matter. They will say, no, ma'am.
Oh, yeah. Did your mom do that? So I would say, I would say, hey, mom, can we go to McDonald's?
Can we get blockbuster? Can we blame it? No, ma'am. And I remember I'd be like, what?
I'm a boy. A hundred percent. My mom did that. My mom was a school teacher, so her class would be acted out and she would go, no, ma'am, we're not going to do that today.
Yes. And David's mom does it. I've heard her say it to him and she'll say it to the dog who's a boy. It's just like, no, ma'am. But if you're talking to your daughter, I completely understand it.
But talk to your son. I just never understood that. And even as a kid, I was confused. My mom would say it to inanimate objects. Like if someone would fall on the table, she'd go, no, ma'am.
What is that? Well, I mean, you want to jump in on something there? You were about to. Well, I was going to say something. It'll kind of reveal our hand a little bit. We recorded a show for tomorrow, but I was going to say by the dog, he means the actual dog, not her friend.
Yeah, the actual dog. But for those who are listening, you'll get it tomorrow. Yeah, you'll get that tomorrow. Did your parents ever do stuff like that where you're like, what you said didn't make any sense? It sounded authoritative, but I don't understand this. Not in this particular instance. I mean, this was not about, they wouldn't say no, ma'am.
This is the different cultures. But there are other things they would say that was like, huh? Okay, whatever. Do you remember any of them? I don't. I don't. Or did they have any things that at the time you didn't understand the way they would do stuff?
A lot of those things. I didn't understand why they did it. I just never understood that whole no ma'am thing. And I've even seen my sister doing it with her son. I was going to say, I'm pretty sure Elizabeth has done that.
Really? Where she will say no ma'am to Noah. Like I would see my sister had a baby. He's not quite one, but he'll be reaching for stuff and she'll be like, no ma'am. I'm like, it's going to continue. It's generational.
I will probably be the outsider who will say no, sir. Yeah. Yeah.
I do that. Like if Gavin goes to do something like, hey, no, sir. I've never seen Ellie do it. I wonder if Ellie's parents did that. I don't think they did, but my mom definitely did. I called her before we started recording the show and I was like, why did you used to do that? She was like, you know, I don't know.
That don't ever make that sense to me. I think it's a Southern mom thing. I think there's a lot of moms from the South. I was like, did you hear your mom do it? So I want to know from the Southern moms and the Southern women who are listening to this now, do you say no ma'am to yourself?
Maybe write to us. Text in. And if you do, why do you do that? It's not really a ma'am in reference to the person that they're talking to. It's just kind of an extension of no, like no ma'am.
It's just a, it's a weird, yeah, it's a weird exclamation mark, but it will leave your, it will leave your sons definitely confused. Feeling confused. Just confused. Why? Why would you say that? I would be like, it would always, and I heard it for years and years, but it always stopped me in my tracks. Just instant question marks.
Which maybe that was the purpose behind it. Maybe. Write in and let us know Southern moms out there. Let us know if you are a no ma'am mom.
2525825028. Don't go anywhere. We're going to take a quick break and be right back with more Clearview today. Hey, Clearview Today listeners. We want to take a quick moment to thank you for tuning in. As you can imagine, producing a show like this takes a lot of time, effort and resources. And we're grateful for the Truth Network for giving us a platform to syndicate our show. But the vast majority of our support comes from listeners just like you. If you enjoy these talks with Dr. Shaw and you want to see Clearview Today continue to grow, consider making a donation today because your contributions help us deliver fun, relevant and biblical content right to your phone every single day.
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Thank you for being part of this community. Now let's get back to the show. Welcome back to Clear View Today with Dr. Abbadon Shaw, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
You can visit us online at Clearview today show dot com or if you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028. We got a new segment. Well, it's not a new segment. It's not a new segment. It's a segment we've done. We've done it before.
But we got new theme music for it. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dr. Shaw's book club. Every month we take this time to dive deep into the books that shape our faith, challenge our minds and inspire our daily walk with Christ. Whether it's theology, history or powerful Christian living, Dr. Shaw is here to bring his insight and wisdom to help you get the most out of every page. I feel like we're going to start a lo fi club, Dr. Shaw's book club.
We hadn't done a book club in a little bit. I feel like I'm on some balcony somewhere at a restaurant at a hotel restaurant. There's like a poet on stage. We're snapping. Yeah. The waiter is not even called a waiter. He's Garcon. What does Garcon even mean?
I hear fancy people say it. I have no clue. I don't know. I don't know. So do you want to, so maybe this book club should have a little bit of buildup. Because there's things that have been happening in the community.
We've been talking about it a little bit on the show. There was a church. There was a church in our community, well really in a surrounding community, that posted some very, very inflammatory... Oh, the pastor did. The pastor, yes.
That's a great point. He posted some very controversial things about homosexuality. Number one, the entire thing was generated by chat GPT, just to put that out.
The cadence was identical. But we saw lots and lots and lots of people online loving it and commenting, oh my goodness, thank you so much for posting this. Thank you. This is exactly what we needed. A lot of people just putting this, more Christians need to understand this. And so what we didn't see online, but what was happening beneath the surface was people did not like it. They felt very unsure about what to think. They felt very betrayed by their pastor and by their church. And so they started contacting... And other people in the community who were also concerned because somehow they were either connected through other family and friends to that church. And so, yeah, I got a significant number of messages to say, hey, I don't know what to think.
Can you help? Right. And you did. And you talked to those people.
And I remember the way that all those conversations started going, people were like, yeah, I'm very convinced that this is not ... But we still didn't see people reaching out or like speaking out, I should say. Speaking out, right. Speaking out. So we spoke out as Clearview. We spoke out online and you spoke out. And the ones who did speak out, it was not really strong and bold. It was like, hey, that's just me. But maybe, you know, I get where you're coming from, you know, and so those kind of things. But it was not as clear and courageous. It was sort of very mealy-mouthed. So we spoke out and the situation, you know, I don't even know if I want to say it resolved itself. I'm not sure really what to think of how everything ended up. But once we started speaking out, more people online started speaking out. Absolutely. More people started growing a spine and saying, listen, this isn't right.
We don't want this in our community. And it led us to this book that you wanted to talk about us with today because it's really... And I think the way you put it, maybe you can put it this way a little bit better, but I really like the way you put it. This whole thing, this is a machine.
This is how the machine works. And maybe you can kind of explain what that means. Well, years and years ago, and when I say years ago, I'm going back 25 years ago, I was recommended to read a book. And I have the book right here with me. It's called Call to Preach, Condemned to Survive by Clayton Sullivan. Clayton Sullivan was a seminary graduate who went to seminary. And as he went to seminary, he was told by the people in his church that don't let them change you.
Because seminaries at the time, we're talking about especially Southern Baptist seminaries, were liberal. And they were told, don't let them change you. Don't come back no longer believing in the inerrancy of the word of God. Don't let them teach you that Jesus did not really rise from the grave and it was all just a myth and that the gospels are myths or Paul's letters were written hundreds of years later by somebody other than Paul, you know, all this kind of stuff.
Don't let them change you. And so, you know, he goes to study. And of course, the sad reality is, and it's a sad book, by the way, this book, Call to Preach, Condemned to Survive is a sad book published by Mercer University Press.
Mercer is where my father-in-law graduated from. He did his master's from. And so anyways, it was not a good happy ending because he lost his faith. He came out very disillusioned.
This is in a period of, you know, kind of like Depression Era poverty and Jim Crow laws and biblical fundamentalism and all that, you know, all that sort of led him to go down the path of theological liberalism and just lack of spiritual growth and in time his desire to pastor and all that just kind of died out. Yeah. Clayton Sullivan still living today?
I don't know. I doubt it because this book actually came out in 1985. Okay.
Wow. So even then the liberal, liberalism was really heavy in the church. In 1985? Oh yeah. More so than today, you think?
Or is that just like when it boomed into life? In the 80s, liberalism was there, but it was more in the county seat churches like the first Baptist type churches. Got it. Got it.
Okay. But surrounding churches or rural churches were not as liberal or moderate, but in time they were also infected by it. And the closer you were to seminary, to a seminary, whether it's Southeastern, Southwestern, New Orleans, Southern, the closer you were to some of these seminaries, the more chances there are that you will probably be a liberal church because the graduates usually go to the nearby places either while they're working in seminary or studying in seminary or that's where they find a church after seminary. But usually, like even our church right now, back in the day was not a conservative church. It was more like a moderate legalistic church.
When you use the word liberal, talking about the church, can we think of it as liberal politics? Is it in the same vein? Yeah, it's the same with regards to values. Yes. Okay. Okay.
Yeah. Those who go down this path of theological liberalism, how often of an occurrence is it that they end up walking away from the faith? Oh, even if they don't walk away from the faith, they no longer have anything left to preach. I mean, that's what Clayton Sullivan, if I can find some of those sections, because it's a lot of places I'm marked up in this book where he said things that were very... Here it is.
Here's one. This is page 79. He said, as a seminary and still in my mid-twenties, I found myself baffled. I was more certain of what I didn't believe than I was of what I did believe. Southern seminary, this is the one in Louisville, Kentucky, had destroyed my biblical fundamentalism, but it had not given me anything viable to take its place. So they were saying all these things that you think you believe about the gospel aren't true. And then instead of saying, here's what is true, it's just tearing down his fundamental beliefs.
So that's why you get into the social gospel type stuff. It's like, feed the hungry, help the needy, and then you take on causes, whether causes like fight against racism. And by the way, liberals are just as racist as anybody else, but they love to think that they are fighting against racism.
It's a mirage. And then also stand up for the marginalized. So who do you stand up for?
Well, of course, you'll stand up for the gay or the lesbians or the transgender movements or the immigrants or whatever, or at least they claim to be. But they don't really do anything. They claim to be like, I am for them because Jesus would be for them.
But they're doing that in a sense to cover up the fact that they have no actual core fundamental beliefs to build on. Yeah, there's nothing left to do. So it's like good works.
Good works, guys. That's what it comes down to. But salvation is not any longer as critical because what are you being saved from? Sin?
Because sin has to be minimized because sin means you're a bad person. I can't say that. I can't say you're a bad person.
I cannot be a mean guy and say that to you. So I'm no longer going to say that. I'm not going to focus on your sinfulness and your need for a safe. None of that now. Now everybody's good.
We just got to help each other get through the journey of life. That's why liberal theology and liberalism typically takes on causes like that so that I don't have to focus on my sin. But that does not mean for a single solitary second that those people genuinely care about those people. I'm not saying that everybody's like that. No, there are people who do care, but then there are people who do care even among conservatives. I know people in conservative circles who don't care. Just because you're a conservative does not mean you're going to be a caring person.
I just want to clarify that. It happens when you truly have a heart for humanity because God has a heart for humanity. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. So you have the same heart and you want to help people who are hurting. Now liberal theology or people who are espoused to that will try to do that, but from a whole different motive.
Because it's the appearance of being, it's the appearance of being virtuous and to, you know, shift the focus away from sin and corruption and death and forgiveness. So now let's talk about how to lift humanity. Do you feel like, do you feel like, I think you're, you're, you're kind of causing me to think right now, so this may not be the perfectly construed sentence or points, but do you feel like that's why a lot of times if you ask a liberal person, whether it's liberally, feel liberal theologically or just politically, if you ask them what their core values are, it's almost always to do with others.
Yeah. Because, because I don't really hear that a lot from conservatives. Conservatives is like, I think we need to be strong. We need to be an independent nation. We need to be this and we need to be that. But with liberals, it's typically always, I believe in helping others, fighting for others, fighting for the weak, fighting for, it's almost always outward based because there's no work being done here. Right.
Because there's no need for it. You're just hurting, you know? And so we need to just help each other stop hurting or help them to be justified in how they feel. You don't need to have that conflict inside of you of being a person who needs forgiveness or a person who needs to change their sinful sexual lifestyle. No, no.
You just need to be confirmed and loved and affirmed. So this was happening in the seminaries as well. Yeah. When you were going through seminary, did you feel like, was it, was it happening there as well?
Oh, no, no. By the time I came, there was a conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. So things were very different. It had already happened. I came to the seminary setting in 1996. The conservative resurgence had already happened since like 91, 92. So all that had changed. So you were getting good, solid, fundamental theological training. Right. I was.
Got you. There were some professors who had more of a moderate bend. I'm not against them. I don't hate them. I mean, I read commentaries by people who are moderates.
And I'm fine with that because I know where the meat is and where the bones are, where I can eat it and throw it away because they were experts in certain areas, but not in others. So I'm not going to like say, I don't read. Anybody but comes, no, I read them, but also have sense enough to understand, ah, I know why he's saying that. I know why she is saying that.
I can't really buy that. What was your goal going into reading this book? What did you hope to gain from it? So when I came into the Southern Baptist life, that was because of Nicole and Nicole's dad was a Southern Baptist pastor and a missionary as well. So I chose to go to Southern Baptist church. I did not grow up Southern Baptist. I grew up Christian missionary Alliance.
So it was a change for me. So I was like, I'm going to learn about Southern Baptist. What are they all about?
And then everybody's like, there's a conservative resurgence, you know, that has happened. I'm like, what is that? I didn't know a thing about it. I would like to do an episode. We clearly don't have time today, but I would like to do an episode on what Christian missionary Alliance is and how it differs from Southern Baptist.
Cause I've heard you talk about it multiple times, but never, I have no clue like what the difference is. I would really love to talk about that. Sure. Sure. I'll be glad to do that.
Sure. But yeah, why did I choose this so I can educate myself? So I read books like Baptist Battles by Nancy Ammerman. I read books about the Baptist reformation by Jerry Sutton. And then of course, Called to Preach, Condemned to Survive by Clayton Sullivan. I read other, of course, other than books that were required for Baptist history class.
I was reading those anyways. What does he mean by that? Condemned to survive? Means, you know, once you lose all your faith, you just have the rest of your life to live. You got to survive.
Now you have to find ways to get an income. What a grim existence. It's a sad book.
Yeah. It's a sad book. It's kind of a noisome book.
Do you... Don't do it, man. You go. Noisome? What is noisome? Noisome means, let me see for a second.
Our listeners are like, what just happened? Noisome is something harmful or offensive, often related to a smell. Noisome. Noisome. Noisome. Never heard of that.
Let me talk about smell. W.A. Criswell gave a famous message. This is back in the day. I'm talking about maybe the early 80s and maybe 79 or something like that at a Southern Baptist Convention meeting. I wasn't there, of course.
I was still... Not on diapers, but I was probably 10 years old. But Nicole's dad remembers hearing that. And he made that famous statement. How do you say it? A skunk can... Oh my goodness. Hold on.
I got it right here. W.A. Criswell, skunk, liberal. What do you say? A skunk by any other name still stinks because the... Yeah, that's what it says.
A skunk by any other name still stinks. That's what W.A. Criswell said? That's what it says. Okay. Hang on. Okay. And anybody else find anything different?
That's it? I can find the context. It's part of a big message.
And I mean, people went crazy. It says he preached a message, I don't know if this is what it's from, but the skunk sermon in 1988. 88. Okay. Okay. 88.
At the Southern Baptist Convention in San Antonio. That's it. That's it. So talk about noisome, smell.
I thought I would need to mention that. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, he was talking about moderates and it says because of the... Because moderates say, we're not liberals, and he was saying a skunk by any other smell is still a suck-up.
So it says because of the appropriate epithet liberal, today these people call themselves moderates, but a skunk by any other name still stinks. That's a good quote. When it comes to Sullivan, what was his first name? Clayton.
Clayton Sullivan. Do you feel any culpability on his part or do you feel like by the time he enrolled himself in liberal education, he was doomed? Or is it like, no, you bought into this, you went down that road? Not like you deserve what you get, but it's like, do you feel there's more responsibility on the university, on the seminary? Or do you feel like when you go into that setting, you should know you're going into education that is not good for you? You know, we're living in a different era now where we don't have to wonder if a seminary is liberal, moderate, or conservative.
We have a good idea because of the information that is available now, right? Back in the day, Harold Linzel wrote a book called Battle for the Bible. And in that book, he exposed a lot of seminaries and denomination and theological institutions that had gone off the deep end. It was a big earth-shattering book, if I may say that. Some may differ with me, but it was on earth. And it was all of a sudden people were like, oh my goodness, I didn't know that. Nowadays we already know. It's like that school, that university, that seminary, I think they hold to this particular view, or they're weak on this, or they don't stress the inerrancy and authority of the word of God here.
But back in the day, it was tough to do that. I would say it's incumbent on our seminary, especially Southern Baptist seminaries, to make sure that we are aware of people who may creep in and who may have aberrant theology. And those who are in charge should really do a good job in vetting them, making sure, you know, so you believe this, but you do know if you believe this, do you also believe this because that's connected?
And they should be able to answer that. Most of the time, I think the job is being done well, but there are times once in a while I've seen it where people creep in and, you know, they get in and then you go, then others are, you know, like the critical race theory stuff. I mean, come on. Somebody should do a better job in vetting who is teaching that because it has a major... Do you think they're scared to vet that or do you think it's like, well, is it more like we're going to be cool? We're going to be the cool hip now happening thing to jump on that bandwagon.
I think that's the cool hip now happening thing is sometimes the motivation behind it. And I think it's, again, we can be welcoming to every, you know, ethnicity. We should be for goodness sakes.
But does that mean we have to compromise and have the liberal mindset? Right. I've learned from it. Maybe I know I might not be as good as your dad ever was, but I am starting to see like, okay, wait a minute. I've been here before. I've heard this before.
I've heard these horror stories. We've talked about them on the show and you can start to see where it's like, you can start to see those vague shapes through the fog of how things are going to play out in the future. Yeah. One thing I would say is Southern Baptists should do a better job in making sure who are on the boards, who are being elected to the offices, the executive committee, all these things or in the seminary trustees and all that. I mean, they do need, I think they've done okay. I'm not against it. It's just that it could be better and it needs to be better.
I think, I don't know, some places I'm disappointed. Yeah, I agree. Maybe we can talk about that on a later show. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Make sure you guys join us tomorrow. Same time, same station. We're going to be diving into another great topic here on the Clearview Today Show. Thanks again to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. And don't forget that you can support us by subscribing to the show on iTunes. If you want to re-listen to an episode, you can always support us financially at ClearviewTodayShow.com.
John, why do you want to plug as we close today? The Clearview Today Show is going to be in Dallas, Texas in just a couple of weeks. We're going to be at NRB. We're going to be doing some shows live on the floor. We're going to have these right here.
This is 30 Days of Praying for America, Daily Devotions to Heal Our Nation. This is actually book three in our 30-day series by Dr. Shah and his wife. Book four is coming out very soon. We'll at least be announcing it very soon. You can also get all of our original music on iTunes or Spotify. You can get our debut album, Heaven Here and Now, in all those places. A brand new single is on the way. It's called Great and Awesome. We'll let you know as soon as that's out, but it should be very, very soon.
That's right. Make sure you guys join us for the conversation tomorrow. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clearview Today. We'll see you tomorrow.
