evangelicalism that it's just a white, it's a kind of a cloak for white supremacist teaching and has been guilty of, you know, systemic and substantive racism contributed to that and the domination of women, oppression of women. So we'll talk about issue with toxic masculinity next week and what's being leveled there and then also now tagged on to that in more recent years is this whole gender fluidity and sexual identity and all those kind of things. I want to just start in Micah 6 while we talk about racism today. We talk about race and This, of course, is a hot topic in America today. It's an important subject that we understand. What is race? What are the ethnic groups? What does the Bible say on this subject? We need to think clearly as Christians. Like I said, I want to start in Micah, chapter 6, with a verse by the prophet. He says this, and then we'll look to the Lord in order of prayer. He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? But to do justice, to love kindness, or some translations put mercy there, to walk humbly with your God. He has told you, O man, what is good. What does the Lord require of you? but to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with your God. Man, those three things, if we just get those right in our life, how much blessing would come upon us by the Lord? Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God. Let's just look to our Lord. as we start today. Father, we come before you, we pray that you would help us as your children, that we would walk humbly before you and with you, and that Lord, as we think about these issues of social justice and some of the debates that are going on in our country and in the world, that Lord, you would help us as Christians to just think biblically, to understand the issues for what they are, And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So here in Micah chapter 6, the greater context, Micah is asking a question in verse 6. With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come to him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? thinking of the sacrificial system in the Old Testament, which we know from Hebrews in the New Testament all pointed towards Christ. And there's not forgiveness through that sacrificial system alone. It's in Christ and it all foreshadowed and pointed to him. It's his death and they were merely pointing to Christ And he's just asking this question, is it good enough just to bring these sacrifices? Can I come to God bringing these sacrifices? And really what he's coming to terms with is, no, there's a deeper issue that's underlying all this that's in the heart. That's to be walking humbly with God, to be loving justice, doing justice, and loving mercy. And those things are what set the stage in a person's heart for our sacrifices to be acceptable to God. when our heart's not in it, so what if we go through the motions? There's no value in it. And so he then says, you know, and he's not talking about anything within the actual sacrificial system because there is obviously no demand in the Old Testament law to bring your own child to God as a sacrifice. Now your firstborn would come and you would redeem it and offer an animal in its place. And all that, of course, is picturesque of Christ. All of it is also picturesque, reminding us of what happened with Isaac and with Abraham. But he's saying, shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body? I'm a sinner. Can I bring the fruit of my body, which would also be a sinful human being? Is there going to be atonement in that? No. Can I bring the food of my body for the sin of my soul? And then he goes into this question that we're using to frame our conversation here. He's basically saying, you know, you can't, you know, no human that is also tainted by sin can be a substitute for my sin. That's, of course, obviously there again. pointing us towards Christ, who is sinless by virtue of not only his deity, but also preserved in the virgin birth. But this is an important question. What does God require of us? Now, he makes a statement here. He has shown you, O man, what is good. How has God showed us what is good? He has shown you, O man, what is good. How would these people know what is good? What is justice? What is mercy? How do you know these things? How has He shown us what is good? Where has He done that? In His Word. Right? In His Word. Mike is saying here, He has shown you what is good. You want to know what is justice? You want to know what is mercy? He has shown us. He has shown us in His Word. And so as Christians, like we talked about last week, we don't want to build our worldview on our own lived experience. We want to build our view of the world on what? The scripture, the word of God. And so when we look at these things, it is so important that we understand these things not in light of just what our world is telling us, not in light of what's on CNN, but in light of what is good, what is true, what is right. And that's given to us infallibly and inherently in God's word. And so that's where we as Christians turn to understand these issues, is we turn to God's word. Now, in 2018, a group of like, I think 13 guys, got together at the request of John MacArthur, Votie Bauckham, and Tom Askell. Tom Askell is a pastor and leader of a ministry called Founders Ministry, and I think it's based out of Florida. And those three men asked 13 Christian evangelical leaders to gather at a good place, a coffee shop, in Dallas, Texas. And they convened in 2018 to draw up a statement. Now, it was meant to be corollary or complementary to two other statements that have been drawn up by evangelical leaders in the last couple decades. One is called the Danvers Statement. The Danvers Statement was drawn up, I think, in 1987. It was done by a group of scholars. John Piper and Wayne Grudem were a part of that. And the Danvers Statement is a statement on biblical manhood and womanhood, and it relates to complementarianism. The next statement that came out that was related to that is called the Nashville Statement. And it was a group of evangelical leaders that got together to really write up a document that formulated biblical teaching on sexuality and gender. Now these guys got together to write another one, and this is called A Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. And it's an excellent statement. And, you know, many, many big name evangelical leaders have signed on to this. Not all of them, but most of them have looked at it and said, yeah, this is what the Bible is teaching on the issue of social justice. One of Ben's favorites, James White, he signed it. He was one of the founders of making sure this was done. So it's a statement on social justice and the gospel. Now, if you want to think about the big issue of social justice, go online and read it. I thought about printing a bunch, and I thought, why do that? You all got phones. Just Google it and read it. Don't do it now, but sometime, you know, just Google statement on social justice in the gospel. You can read through it. You can see all the main things that they're talking about. What I wanted to just use was to, and we'll use some things in this statement on each of the weeks, but they have three statements in here that are related to the issue of racism and race. So I'm going to put them up here on the screens and just go through them quickly and then we'll go into the scripture and we'll talk about the American experience some. And by the way, if you have any questions or I'm like losing you or you have something you want to put into the discussion, just flag me down. So the first one had to do with race and ethnicity. Not the first of the statements, but the first we're going to look at today. And they said this, we affirm God made all people from one man. Who is that? Adam, right? We're all awake in Genesis. And then they say, though people often can be distinguished by different ethnicities and nationalities, they are ontological equals before God in both creation and redemption. So affirming the equality of all people before God, that no race is supreme or ethnicity is supreme over any other. We all trace by direct creation from God through Adam to whatever ethnological, linguistic people we are a part of. So, they then affirm this, race is not a biblical category. Rather, it is a social construct that often has been used to classify groups of people in terms of inferiority and superiority. All that is good, honest, just, and beautiful in various ethnic backgrounds and experiences can be celebrated as the fruit of God's grace, and there again, within God's common grace. And in his common grace, every people group on the planet has experiences and parts of their culture that should be celebrated when they are good. All sinful actions and their results, including evils perpetrated between and upon ethnic groups by others, are to be confessed as sinful, repentant of, and repudiated. It's a good statement. on this basic issue. Now, then they deny some things. And so each one of these statements has an affirmation and a denial. There's scriptures that go with it. We won't go through all these. We deny that Christians should segregate themselves into racial groups or regard racial identity above or even equal to their identity in Christ. We deny that any divisions between people groups, from an unstated attitude of superiority to an overt spirit of resentment have any legitimate place in the fellowship of the redeemed. We reject any teaching that encourages racial groups to view themselves as either privileged oppressors or entitled victims of oppression. Like we talked about last week where people want to sort into basically by Marxist theology into the oppressed and the oppressor. So you can see their allusion to Marxism there, cultural Marxism. While we are to weep with those who weep, we deny that a person's feelings of offense or oppression necessarily prove that someone else is guilty of sinful behaviors, oppression, or prejudice. So that's a denial and affirmation. Next one is on culture. And I want to read this one because I think culture is important. when we think about this subject as well, we affirm that some cultures operate on assumptions that are inherently better than those of other cultures because of the biblical truths that inform those worldviews that have produced these distinct assumptions. Those elements of a given culture that reflect divine revelation should be celebrated and promoted. You know, Think about something here. We live in a valley that has been dominated by a culture that was produced by what group? The LDS. There are many things in that culture that are worth celebrating, that I would a whole lot rather live in and under than some other cultures that are out there that are blatantly idolatrous and pagan. And that's what we're getting at here. Every culture, you know, that is built to some degree or another. That's why even you go to Western civilization, even though Roman Catholicism and Western civilization in parts of Europe taught a false gospel in a means of salvation. Although many aspects of that culture were built on biblical principles, God still blessed it. He blessed that culture because it's a whole lot better. You know, it's not a good thing to live in a culture that promotes cannibalism. Right? That's not a good thing. It's inherently bad. You live in this culture, that's a good thing. So there are things to be celebrated about culture when culture is built on biblical assumptions. It's what we're getting at here. And so those elements of a given culture that reflect divine revelation should be celebrated and promoted. But the various cultures out of which we have been called all have features that are worldly and sinful. The United States of America, right? The United States of America has been tremendously blessed by God because it was built on biblical principle. But the United States of America has had features that have been worldly and sinful. We should never disregard that. We should never deny that. It's the truth. Therefore, those sinful features should be repudiated for the honor of Christ. So as a culture, you're always analyzing and you're trying to grow. And you're trying to say, you know, this is wrong. And we identify that, we repent of it, and we move to what is right. It is an aspiration. You know, the statement that, you know, all men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. You know, that is a tremendous statement that was also an aspiration that we have been working towards, that we will never completely attain to until we sit in the kingdom at the feet of Christ. We affirm that whatever evil influences to which we've been subjected via our culture can be and must be overcome through conversion and the training of both the mind and the heart to biblical truth. We deny that individuals and subgroups in any culture are unable by God's grace to rise above whatever moral defects or spiritual deficiencies have been engendered or encouraged by their culture. You know, there's no group out there that's just such a victim that God's grace can't get it, help them get it right. And that's what we're getting at there. Last statement, racism. We affirm that racism is a sin. It is rooted in pride and malice which must be condemned and renounced. by all who would honor the image of God in all people. Such racial sin can subtly or overtly manifest itself as racial animosity or racial vainglory. That's an old King James word they used there, empty boasting. Such sinful prejudice or partiality falls short of God's revealed will It violates the royal law of love. We affirm that virtually all cultures including our own at times contain laws and systems that foster racist attitudes and policies. America is not the only one that's had sins in this regard, okay? America is not the only nation who has struggled with this issue. Then the denial, we deny that treating people with sinful partiality or prejudice is consistent with biblical Christianity. We deny that only those in positions of power are capable of racism, or that individuals of any particular ethnic group are incapable of racism. So we're saying it's not a one-way street. This is in everybody's heart. We deny that systemic racism is in any way compatible with the core principles of historic evangelical conviction. We deny that the Bible can be legitimately used to foster or justify partiality, prejudice, or contempt toward any ethnicity. We deny that the contemporary evangelical movement has any deliberate agenda to elevate one ethnic group and subjugate another. We emphatically deny that lectures on social issues or activism aimed at reshaping the wider culture are as vital to the life and health of the church as the preaching of the gospel and the exposition of scripture. Historically, such things tend to become distractions that inevitably lead to departures from the gospel. Anybody understand what they're saying? OK. Go to James chapter 2. James chapter 2. James is probably of all the epistles in the New Testament, he is probably the writer that is most concerned with social issues going on around him. And he addresses them at various times in his book in various ways. And I just want to read James chapter two, part of this. Although he's not talking about racism, he's talking about partiality. And I think it just applies. Because I don't think whether we're talking about partiality or, you know, thinking of ourselves as better than someone else over race or money or gender, whatever the issue is, it's sin. And so we can apply it. Cross the board on this issue. This is my brothers. Show no partiality as you hold to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory. For if a man comes into your assembly and he's wearing a golden ring, he has fine clothes, and then a poor man comes in and he has shabby clothes, And you all pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing. You say, sit here in the good place. Well, I say to the poor man, stand over there. Sit down at my feet. Have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs to the kingdom of God? Which he has promised to those who love him. Has he chosen the poor? Yes, of course he has. Has he chosen rich people too? Yeah, of course he has. He's chosen rich and poor. And so he's just making the point, you know, God has chosen poor. God has chosen rich. The important thing isn't rich or poor, it's in Christ. And when you show partiality based on the superficial thing of someone's clothing, or their wealth, or their status, or their race, we're judges with evil thoughts. Of course, in the day, as in all days, who are the oppressors? Many times it's the rich. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you? The ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scriptures, you shall love your neighbors as yourself, you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin, you are convicted by the law as a transgressor. For whoever keeps the whole law, but he fails in one point, he is guilty of it all. For he who said, do not commit adultery also said, do not murder. You know, don't boast if you don't commit adultery, but you do go and kill somebody because you're a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. And I love verse 13. Judgment will be without mercy on the one who shows no mercy. And it is mercy that triumphs over judgment. And so we are to what? Do justice, but we're to love mercy as we walk humbly with our God. So, we're talking about the sin of partiality as condemned in Scripture, all through Scripture. You know, He has shown us, O man, what is good. So, you know, we could go this morning to the Old Testament. We could look in the book of Exodus. We could look in the book of Deuteronomy. We could look in the book of Leviticus. And we could read passages all through that where God repeatedly tells His people, show no partiality. Don't respect the face of any man, whether he's poor or he's rich. Treat the stranger in the land and the alien with grace and compassion. Remember that you were once a slave. All those things are just woven all through the message of the Torah when God gave the law. So what went wrong? What went wrong? Our sinful hearts, right? Our sinful hearts. I mean, you know, this has been a struggle. It's not only a struggle in regards to rich and poor. It's a struggle between, many times, men and women. And many times, it's a struggle between races. It's not God's intention. We identify it as sin. When we see it in ourselves, we repudiate it. We repent of it. and we seek to embrace what God has called us to be as his children. Now, when you think about race, when you think about Marxism, we talked about cultural Marxism, cultural Marxism and dialectic materialism which comes out of Marx. We talked about that briefly last week. We won't go into all that again because of time. When you think about those philosophies and those theories, we have to understand that none of these thinkers lived in a vacuum. They were products of their time and they are thinking other people's thoughts after them and parallel to them. Marx is heavily, heavily, heavily impacted by another guy in the 1800s. And he as well is one of the most influential thinkers. His name is Charles Darwin. Marx takes Darwinian naturalistic evolutionary thought, applies it to dialectic materialism, and to theories on economics. Gramsci, who we talked about last week in the Frankfurt School, take those same theories and then apply them to culture. But it's Darwinian evolutionary thought. And what you have going on, okay, so let's say you believe there is no God, and man evolved in various ways around the planet. You have denied a basic assumption that every Christian holds, and that's what? That man is the what? Direct creation of God through who? One man, Adam. In naturalistic Darwinianism, you have groups of people springing up on the planet in various places in evolutionary processes. Some of them are better off and more advanced. Some of them, their evolutionary process didn't go quite as well. Darwinian eugenics, the eugenics movement, led to many of the greatest genocides of the last century. Okay? It was Darwinian eugenics. And so, we need to understand something. We affirm and deny this. Darwin did not. Never has, never will. Darwin does not see humanity as made by God in the image of God. in the Imago Dei. Darwin and Darwinian naturalism sees man as a result of blind processes. And some of those blind processes went better in certain locations than in others. That's Darwinian naturalism that gave birth to many of the things that happened in the last century in the eugenics movement. Now that doesn't answer in any way how America embraced slavery. We will deal with that in a minute. The Bible, on the other hand, teaches what? For time, I'm not going to go there, but in Acts chapter 17, Paul in a sermon, preaching it to the Athenians at the Areopagus said, God has made from one man, from one blood, all men. who live on the planet. When you get to Tower of Babel, you see God dividing people by color. What does God divide people by? Language. And people migrate based on linguistic differences to various parts of the planet. Table of Nations in Genesis chapter 11. So that's kind of how these things progress in the scripture. God creates from one man all people who live on the planet. All people aren't doing so well at about the time of Noah, and so God kills them all except for Noah, his wife, and Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. Then we get to the Tower of Babel, and then we get to the migration of people around the planet, people sorting based on language, but then in various places, specific gene pools end up, over time, highlighting certain hereditary features. I understand that because I do it with my cattle. Right? I want certain traits in my cattle, I select for it in my bulls. And over time, I can bring certain traits into my herd. Takes a little while, but I can do it. And so I do it with Hereford bulls at times. I don't mind the white faces, but I sure want the good milk from a Hereford cow. I want that trait. And so I'm selecting traits. And then when you get people who are specifically interbreeding over an extended period of time, certain hereditary traits are going to be pronounced in those people. And it gives us the answer for the racial distinctions when it comes to color and other things. So it's kind of where we're going with those thoughts. Now, so this is where we get to this. I think it also helps us think about the importance of language and how really in the scripture, God's not dividing people in any way by color. But you see divisions based on, not even necessarily where people live, but more based on language. And then those things, you know, have to be overcome. So the Tower of Babel, God confuses the language, but what does God do on the day of Pentecost? He lets people cross-communicate. It's kind of a foreshadowing of what's going to be like in heaven. And it's interesting that in heaven, We don't all speak the language of angels. Because what's going on around the throne? People of every language are praising God in their language. And yet everybody understands each other. So I think what we're going to have is we're going to have the gift of interpretation in heaven. So people are going to, you know, we're going to be who we are. And that's going to be preserved in glory for the glory of God. Because God loves that diversity of the nations that he created in all the languages. But he's also going to erase the distinction so we understand each other. And it's all going to be acceptable to God. It's not like there's one language that's better than any of the others. No, God likes to be praised in every language. And so those are important things. So what happens in the American experience? By the way, I brought this book just to show you. I don't know how many of you are history geeks out there. I'm a history geek. I love history. I love to read. If you want to ever buy a history of the United States of America, it's called A Patriot's History of the United States, written by two guys, Larry Schweikert and Michael Allen. They wrote it as a kind of a rebuff to the book that Howard Zinn wrote, and I can't remember the name of Howard Zinn's book, but he wrote, Howard Zinn wrote a book that's very revisionist. It's used in many classrooms, kind of AP, advanced placement classes in the United States of America. Howard Zinn's history is really deplorable, and these guys take it to task, but what's great with these guys is They don't pull any punches, and they deal with all the national sins of America. I mean, the chapters in here on the Confederacy are not very flattering to the Confederacy. They call it what it is. And so it's a great book. If you want a good history in your household, get a Patriot's History of the United States of America, help frame some of these things. So let's understand the American experience for a minute. We've got just a couple minutes, then we've got to close. So just a couple points I want to make. First thing that we got to remember about America is the American colonies, despite everything we say about people coming here for religious freedom, which is true. Puritans came here for that. Individuals came here for that. But how did they get here? They got here as part of English business ventures. They were business ventures. These big companies, these big conglomerates, these big corporations, you know, you also have the East India Company, which is English, that is doing business in India. These companies are in business for the purpose of making what? Just making life good for everybody? No, they were in what? For the shareholders and for making money. I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying it's what it is. We need to understand that. Pilgrims get here not because they own the Mayflower. They hire the Mayflower and they are coming as a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and it ends up, it's a business venture. These are business ventures that are made for the UK, for the United Kingdom. In these business ventures, there are notoriously huge labor shortages. They want to produce raw materials in the United States of America. Well, we call it United States, but in the Americas. In order to produce these raw materials, it takes huge amounts of people. Technologically, at the time, if you go back to that time, You know, there was not a John Deere Model H on the Mayflower to help them farm when they got here. There's no equipment. It's done by human labor. All of it. Few tools, but it's work. It's people. Now, many people want to get to the New World from Europe. Most of them. could not pay to get here. How did they get here? How did Europeans get here? What did they do? You remember that from history? Indenturehood. It's usually a seven-year stint. You are trading your labor for what? Passage to get here. You have something you want. They have something they want. They want your labor. And they want to make money from you, and you want to get here. We still do indenturehood, don't we? What's a mortgage? I want something. It's a house. So for a period of time, I sell my labor or a portion of it in order to get what I want. And they get what they want, which is my money. It's indenturehood. We also have slavery. The slave trade does not begin with the United States of America. Correct? Start in the Bible. What guy is sold to a caravan of Ishmaelites? Name is Joseph. OK? Slavery is not a new thing. Not a good thing, but it's not a new thing. Now, when you think about the African slave trade, let me give you a couple of facts about it. And some things about the Americans. The first slave voyage that comes from Africa to America comes in the year 1526. What year did Columbus find the place? 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Not too long after. In the time frame from 1526, until 1808, which is when Congress in the Americas outlaws foreign transport of slaves to the US. We often forget that. But in 1808, the foreign slave trade was abolished by the American Congress. And no foreign slaves could come here from Africa. But in that time frame, About 9 to 11 million people are taken out of Africa and make it alive to the new world. That's a lot of people. That's a mass migration. 9 to 11 million. It is estimated from ship logs that about another 9 million were taken who perish on the journey. So about 20 million Africans leave Africa to come to America in this period of time. There was a triangular trade route. You probably remember this from history too. So a ship would go from Europe to Africa. It would take goods from Europe and take them to Africa. In Africa, they dump their load of goods and they pick up slaves. The middle passage is what it's called, goes from Africa to the Americas. By the way, of the nine million slaves who arrive in the Americas, not even 400,000 of them come to North America. So not even a half a million come to North America. About 5 million of them go to, anybody want to postulate a guess? Brazil. Brazil is the number one. Most of them go to Brazil, and then it's the Caribbean and the West Indies, Jamaica, and places where they're doing sugarcane. So the Middle Passage goes from Africa to the Americas, and then they take what is being produced in the Americas, and they haul it back to Europe. So it's a very profitable business. Typical slave ship. You've probably seen this. Maybe you've seen the movie Amazing Grace about William Wilberforce that depicts this and goes into a slave hole. It took between three and six months to get from Africa to the New World. the 1500s. By the end of the trade, it's taking about six weeks, so it's quicker. There have been advances in the technology. During that period of time, you got the equivalent of two cans of soda pop of fluid a day. It's water, not soda pop, but the equivalent to two cans of soda pop. You got horse beans and rice, and you were packed away in a slab down in the hold that was for men six feet by one feet six inches. So it's like bunk beds, except there's no mattress. It's just rough-hewn wood. You're slabbed in there. 6 feet, 1 foot 6 inches, 3 to 6 months. And not to be gross, but pooping and peeing and everything else, and puking in storms. And you can understand why 9 million of them die. Women are given 5 feet by 1 feet 3 inches on the woman's side of the ship, and children, of course, less. Horrible conditions. So in 1808, the United States of America outlaws the importation of slaves. That does not mean that domestic slave trade goes away. In fact, it grows. It grows exponentially. And so you have not to be gross, but you have specific breeding programs in the South to produce slaves because it is highly profitable. And there are no more slaves coming from outside the country. It's in the 1700s that the Christian community begins to mobilize to say this is wrong. It is the Christian community. that mobilizes. Just like the Christian community has mobilized to say it is wrong to kill babies. It is the Christian community that is saying it's not a good thing to kill babies. That is not a good thing. No culture is blessed by God that routinely kills its babies. It's not abortion. It's killing babies. We need to call it that. That's what it is. The Christian community has mobilized to stop that We're seeing progress on it. It was the Christian community that mobilized. So how did we get there? Okay, I'm in a live. We're about out of time. I'm gonna take five minutes and people are gonna have to wait and then we'll quit. So what happens? Here's what's going on. Number one, think with me about Europe and think with me of establishment churches. In the Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, Congress cannot do what with religion? establish a church. Europe is not so much that way. There are established churches. In the European mindset, especially at this time, much more than now, but in the European mindset, a baptized citizen is a Christian. A baptized citizen is a Christian. So There's a problem in terminology here. Because when we read these things, and we think about the culture, and we think about all these things, and we say it's Christian, what we're saying is, we're not saying these are individuals who have been converted and regenerated by the gospel of Jesus Christ, who are involved in this trade. They are baptized citizens. Many of them are not believers. Doesn't mean no believers get involved in this. We know some do. But this leads to confusion and a wrong definition of what a Christian truly is. So Western civilization, we talked about culture in here, was Christianized in many ways. It was built on biblical principles. But it's not Christian in the sense that we're talking about with the gospel. Establishment churches, this is the next step in this journey, this is important to understand, because this is something that happens, we do this. Establishment churches begin to look to the scripture, this is historical, I'm not faulting anybody, saying this is what happened. The establishment churches begin to look to the scripture to justify their culture. They're looking to the Bible and they're trying to justify what they're doing instead of confront it. And there is an uneasy alliance with sinful practices that begins to be formed. So much so that by the first great awakening The man of God who is probably most influential in the First Great Awakening is a guy named who? Anybody want to guess? Okay, let's go with another guy. George Whitefield. George Whitefield had two slaves. George Whitefield wrote the Christian consensus that ends up justifying slavery in the American South. He formulates the teaching from scripture that says it is okay for you to own a slave under these conditions. He is a man of God who loves God, who God brings great revival through, and he would be denied communion in every evangelical church in America today, if he came in those doors and he had two slaves. And David had how many wives? And he couldn't see it. We need to understand that we are notoriously terrible as people at self-diagnosis of sin. So the point is the establishment churches begin to justify instead of confront. Last leg of it, we got to quit. It's interesting how it's the non-conformist believers, not the establishment churches, it's the non-conformist believers, and that's a term that comes out of that period of time. So it's like the Baptists, the Quakers, and the Methodists. John and Charles Wesley are probably the two most influential men that set the stage for William Wilberforce to come forward and to take on slavery in the UK. It's John and Charles Wesley. It's the nonconformists who are looking at scripture and they're not trying to justify the culture, they're trying to confront it. And so then political division and separation and we got all this stuff that I don't have time for. So we got to quit. That gets into the Civil War and Reconstruction and everything that comes from that. And we just got to quit because it's time. It's 24 after. You're dismissed. Bye-bye. I'll see you in five.