Hello streamers, whether you're watching this live or later on on delay, we welcome you to a live recording session of the Faith Debate. The shows that we record tonight are going to begin airing towards the tail end of April, so we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, which is actually the way we used to do things, and it makes me a little more comfortable, actually, to be at least a month or so out, so that's good. The intention here is to do at least three or four, possibly five recording sessions. We'll be talking about the Danvers Statement and the Nashville Statement. If you don't know what those things are, they're controversial in some quarters, and so I think it'll be an interesting conversation. So anyway, thanks for being involved in the stream, and I'm not gonna be paying you a whole lot of attention for the duration of the evening, but if you make comments in the comment section, I will be sure to get back to those later, all right? The Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood says, We have been moved in our purpose by the following contemporary developments which we observe with deep concern, the widespread uncertainty and confusion in our culture regarding the complementary differences between masculinity and femininity, the tragic effects of this confusion in unraveling the fabric of marriage, The increasing promotion given to feminist egalitarianism, the widespread ambivalence regarding the values of motherhood, the growing claims of legitimacy for sexual relationships which have biblically and historically been considered illicit or perverse, the increase of pornographic portrayal of human sexuality, the upsurge of physical and emotional abuse in the family, the emergence of roles for men and women in church leadership that do not conform to biblical teaching, the increasing prevalence and acceptance of hermeneutical oddities, the consequent threat to biblical authority, and the apparent accommodation of some within the church to the spirit of the age. That's all from the opening part of the statements that they label the rationale. This is the Faith Debate on NewsRadio 930, WFMD on the FM at 99.9 HD2, on the internet of course at WFMD.com. And if you'd like a track along with us offline, the easiest way to connect is to go to HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. That's my church's website. I'm Troy Skinner, the pastor of that church. It's HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. If you go there, you can connect to the Faith Debate through that. You can connect to all the social media through that. You can connect to everything that we do with the church, the sermons and those sorts of things. And we've also vetted a bunch of resources. In fact, if you go to HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com, you can find a link to the Danvers statement that I just read a portion of. Not that everything that we link to on the website is perfect, But it's certainly better than most of what you'll find out there, and so if you want to get a fighting shot at finding something decent at the beginning, that's a good place to start. On the panel this week to talk about the things that are in the Danvers Statement are David Forsey, pastor of a multi-location house church. I like to joke that it's like the Whack-A-Mole church in town. You never quite know where he's going to meet. And so if you're interested in checking his church out, you definitely want to maybe get in touch with me. I'll get you in touch with David. He can tell you where he's going to be. But generally, for the most part, I think more often than not, it's in the southern sections of Washington and Frederick County area, or pretty close to that part. But on rare occasion, it's not down that, in them, their parts. So you never can be sure. And also on the panel this week is Stephen Yerger. He is one of the leaders of the Shabbat gathering that meets Gettysburg area, Adams County, north of Frederick. I'm not sure exactly what, Gettysburg has like a sprawling sort of zip code area, so I'm not sure how close to Frederick you are. If you're in northern Frederick County or southern Pennsylvania in the Adams County area, maybe that's something you'd want to check into. And if you want to get in touch with Steven Yerger, again, reach out to me and I'll hook you up. All right, so I opened up to set the stage of what the Danvers Statement is all about. This statement's pretty short. I think it was written in 1987 and released in 1988, if my understanding of the history of that is correct. We have recently been spending some time on the show going through the Chicago Statements. We did the Chicago Statement on inerrancy, on hermeneutics, and began to look at application. We're taking a small break from the application. We have a few articles left to do. We didn't quite finish that up in our last recording session with Imran and Daniel Razvi, and I think it would make sense maybe to pull them back into the discussion to finish that up so that they can finish what they started. So we're taking a break from that for now to do this, but it's all kind of related. The last of the Chicago Statements that was written came out in the 1980s, and here we are still in 1980s, just a little bit later into the Reagan years for this Danvers Statement. And so what we're going to do is I'm going to read the affirmations, and we're going to discuss. And I think I might do a couple at a time. I'll read a couple because they're pretty short. So I'll read a couple at a time and we'll go from there. So these are the affirmations. Based on our understanding of biblical teachings, we affirm the following. Both Adam and Eve were created in God's image, equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood. Distinctions in masculine and feminine roles are ordained by God as part of the created order and should find an echo in every human heart. Now this sounds like pretty boilerplate, basic, standard, historic, Christian kind of stuff. So why do they have to put this in a statement in the 1980s, do you think? I think probably they started seeing things on the horizon that they needed to solve the storm clouds coming. Maybe it was a way off, but they said, hey, we've got to make some definition here and we've got to put it out there so there's no confusion. By the way, that was the voice of Steven Yerger. The next voice you're going to hear is that of David Forsey, just so you can keep the voices clear. Yeah, I mean, I think they were actually maybe a little bit late to the game in getting something like this out. And I say they. I mean, maybe it'd be helpful. I'm not exactly sure. But Troy, maybe this would be helpful. You know sort of who was a part of the panel or whatever in putting the Danvers statement together? Yeah. Some pretty big names were involved, and it's the same group, basically the same group that came together about three decades later to do the Nashville Statement. And the people that were involved in the Nashville Statement, again, some of the names would be the same, I'm pretty sure. And some of them are big names. Let me see if I can find my list real quick. Where's the list that I was looking for? Just sort of across the board, evangelical leaders. Yeah, like if you're familiar with Ligonier Ministries, a lot of Ligonier guys like Burt Parsons would have been involved, R.C. Sproul would have been involved, but also some surprising names are in this group, like on the Nashville statement, David French. Oh, yeah. Surprising, right? Russell Moore, I think, was involved. Maybe. Depends on what's in there. Yeah, you know what I mean? So there's some people that they go, oh, yeah, they're solidly biblical. And the other is like, holy schmoly. So my thinking is that the heat wasn't real hot back then. And I think a lot of guys, in a postmodern world, where it's about reader response theory. We've talked about this before, where you can kind of make the words mean what you want them to mean, right? Everything's a living, breathing document. And I, as the reader, get to determine what the intention of the words are. it's not about authorial intent what the author thought doesn't matter it's what i as the reader think well in that kind of a world i could sign off on any statement i can make the words mean whatever i want to find them ever at least and i think that's a big part of how some of these guys are able to sign this so it was it was supposed to be a conservative group but we know better now that not all the guys who signed off on this for conservative time please things out yeah so and there's a name of the organization darn it and i'm i'm It'll come up at some point. I'll find it. I was saying, I think they're a little bit late to the game in some respects, because I think a lot of the issues that we have today, as far as this topic goes, are rooted well back into the feminist movements from a hundred to a hundred fifty years ago. I think they're mostly, this is probably more than anything, a response against third wave feminism. Right, third wave, not first wave, third wave, that's pretty far along. Yeah, and we're in fourth wave now. So I think they were dealing with third wave feminism, which, to be honest, first wave feminism, not all bad. might have been an important contextual, you know, that's... Was something of a saying, hey, you know, men do abuse, you know, their strength and position sometimes. Right. Which is true. And women are people too. You know, I think that there was some aspect of that with the first wave. So everything's a mixed bag historically. Second wave, it's like, okay, maybe we're pushing the envelope here. What's going on? Third wave, You know, women are men too, almost. Think about this, the 70s and 80s, the Equal Rights Amendment is big in the 70s, they're trying to get it ratified. And so now here we are a decade later after that big push, and all the women are career-minded and, you know, I can have... One of the great lies the enemy has perpetrated on women, families in general, but particularly on women, we can have it all. We can have the career. We can have the house. We can have the kids. We can have the perfect family. We can have the church involvement. We can have everything. No, you can't. There's only 168 hours in the week. You can't have everything. So you've got to make choices. You have to have discernment to decide where your priorities are going to lie. And so people bought into this lie. And we're paying the price of that as a culture. probably ahead of ourselves on some of these things in a statement, but... And also, you know, in the very basic sense like we have here, right? Like you... God has created us, man and woman, and, you know, men can't have everything that women have, and vice versa. Oh, right, yeah. Yeah, men can't have everything either. Right. The other big lie, by the way, that we've all heard growing up, particularly in the American, you know, positive affirmation kind of context is You can be anything you want to be. No, you can't. I'm sorry. If I'm the first person, if you're hearing my voice right now, I'm the first person to ever tell you, you can't be anything you want to be. You know what? You're going to be precisely what God says you're going to be. And if he says you're not going to be the president of the United States, you can't be president of the United States. So, and if you're, you know, five foot three, weigh a buck 25, you are not going to be a nose tackle for the, you know, What's a popular team? What do they call them? The Commanders, or the Ravens, or whatever. You're just not. If you're 5'3 and you weigh 125 pounds, you can't be anything you want to be. So anyway. Just to inject here, vacuums are created, and nature hates a vacuum. And when there is not proper understanding and proper implementation of the role, the man or the husband or the father, then you run into a real problem because then things are forced on the woman, the wife, the mother, that she might not be necessarily equipped and an overburden that will be placed that will create real issues and then you have the knee-jerk response. So all these movements, all these waves, probably came into play because there was a vacuum of proper male leadership. By the way, in the context of talking about women's roles, for the record, I was not the one that brought up the word vacuum. Just for the record. All right, let's look at the next two. Adam's headship in marriage was established by God before the fall and was not a result of sin. The fall introduced distortions into the relationship between men and women. This is an important thing to clarify, which is why they put it in here. You guys are pastors. Why is this an important thing to clarify? That Adam has a headship role and that this headship role is pre-fall. So, the fall is when sin enters the world and distorts everything. And so, yeah, some people do make the argument that the man being stronger, more dominant, whatever, is something that happened as a result of sin distorting the world. And so then they would make the argument, well, we need to than shoot for trying to make things in the image of what it was like before the fall when there was perfect equity, equality, sameness, whatever you want to put in there. So yeah, it's important to... I'd go with equality, by the way. Equity often brings a lot of baggage. I'm just saying it's going to depend on who you talk to as to what word they're going to use. But the man is not the head in the family because the woman's being punished. The man is being placed into a headship role because that's God's design and that's what's best for a well-oiled machine as the family. of punishment, and the results of the fall of distortion is, how many men do you know that are all too willing to abdicate that responsibility of leadership? And how many women, because of the distortion, and sometimes because their husbands refuse to step into leadership, are all too quick to want to take on that responsibility and be the ones who, quote unquote, wear the pants in the family? That's the context of the vacuum. Yeah, so I don't know if we have a whole lot more to say on that. And if we do, there's some common themes throughout this. I'm going to read the next two. So this is five and six. In the home, the husband's loving, humble headship tends to be replaced by domination or passivity. The wife's intelligent, willing submission tends to be replaced by usurpation or servility. So we were just kind of talking about that a little bit. In the church, sin inclines men toward a worldly love of power or an abdication of spiritual responsibility and inclines women to resist limitations on their roles or to neglect the use of their gifts in appropriate ministries. I kind of already got ahead of us and talked a little bit about how the fall, the sinful nature that we have messes things up in the home. But this starts to talk also about what this means inside the church. So you want to comment on that? I'm going to be a little more specific. David spoke the most the last time. So do you have anything you want to add first, Steve? And if not, I'm going to then Go to, David, anything you want to say about men abdicating their leadership roles inside the church, and women maybe not living the life the way that they should inside the church? Well, let's talk about some of the abdication of not testing and allowing the members within a congregation to be able to, when a pastor or elder or a significant leader is maybe coming out with some progressive ideas, It's the role of the congregation to kind of check that. And so in ways, as a leader of your home or your household, also the participation in God's household. And maybe spiritually, as in this nation and a lot of churches across the country, they've advocated that ability to test and in a loving, sharing, humble, mutual submission way, go and say, you know, what you're talking about is not quite biblical. Can you help me to understand where you're coming from and why the pressures of the world is encroaching within the congregation? That's one abdication you might be able to see. And for ease of being understood, I know that Steve Yerger used the word progressive, but I know him well enough to know that what he meant by that was regressive. Regressive tendencies in the church. There's nothing progressive about it. We're not making progress. It's a terminology that seems to be used a lot, and it does have meaning. Exactly. I appreciate your definition. I'm just clarifying in case anybody ever would be confused. When you hear progressive in common parlance, what you should hear is regressive. Well, today that's what it is, right? Right, yeah. The conservative and progressives have switched roles in some ways. This isn't new. And even in 1987, when these guys got together to write this, this was not a new problem. Think about in our entire lifetime, the three of us in the room, and if you're a little bit more well-seasoned than the three of us in this room, your lifetime too. When you were a little kid, it was very common to think in terms, to hear stories about how mom and grandma are really praying for you. They're really praying for your salvation. They're going to church and they're praying for you. It wasn't grandpa. It wasn't dad. It was, it was like a mate. It was a spiritual matriarchy that has been pervasive in the church my entire life. And if you walk into most churches today, if you walk into most churches 10 years ago, if you walk into most churches 40 years ago, a majority of those in attendance are women. Women and children. The women bring their kids, and the dad feels like, well, I checked that box, my wife is taking care of that, I don't have to go, I can watch football, I can play golf, I can do whatever. That is a problem. I wonder when that shift happened. That would be really interesting. I was just going to comment that some external pressures upon our society. Look at World War I. The demand of pulling the young men the draft. I'm not saying these things are bad. I'm not saying it's just a circumstance. And you get into World War II and you have men pulled out of the workforce. They're going overseas. They're doing what they have to do. You have women now that are being pulled from the family. And they're going to work because the war effort because this was huge. This was, you know, we were thinking at the time, you know, these people are going to take us over. We have to pull out all the stops, but it created an atmosphere where the home now is either watched by babysitters or grandparents or whatever. And there's an interruption in the family unit. And then after the war. They want to come back together and everything, but now you have all these things set in place and now you have an independence that probably wasn't there before because of the economic things, the financial things. And so there's things there that could ride on that, but it definitely had effect spiritually. Yeah, I definitely think that's part of it. I think it could go back even further. It's probably way more complex and complicated than what we're going to offer on the show today. But if we go back further, I would say that the shift, the economic, the macro shift from an agrarian society to more of an industrial society, where dad wasn't home anymore, he left the home to go work in the factory. You're talking right after the Civil War. Yeah, so I think in the 1800s, I think we began to see, at least then, maybe even before that, but certainly I think that was a shift. And so then the women are back on the homestead taking care of the kids, raising the kids in charge of the spiritual formation of their kids because dad wasn't home. I think that was part of it. Those are the grandmothers that were praying for the kids. Yeah. And then that gets exacerbated when you've got the, uh, you know, the war, World War I, World War II, and all of that dynamic going on. And then on top of that, you've got, um, Theological liberalism, to be distinct from political liberalism, that really was beginning to emerge in the late 1800s in the church in a big way and had basically won the fight for the church, meaning macro speaking, by the early 1900s. And so then it became more about emotional exuberance, about the church experience. And women are wired to really value and appreciate those kinds of experiences. Men are a little more binary, a little more intellectually focused, not that women are stupid, but I'm saying things that are interesting to men are, what can I learn, what's good, what's bad, tell me the truth, and I can make decisions with that truth. Like, you know, I have problems in my life, give me some information to help me solve those problems, generally speaking. And then women are more about the touchy-feely relationship, the mental gymnastics multitasking that they do, that sort of thing. And so with that mindset taking root in the church, the church has started to feel more feminine. And so the men didn't feel like they belonged as much and like, well, this is all sissy stuff that's going on in church. And the women felt really, so I think that that exacerbated it even more. So I think it's a whole combination of things, but at the root of it is men are all too willing to give up their headship role. And women are all too willing to take it on. So I think sin is at the root as well. We're going to make no time on this at all if we don't pick up the pace. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to read the next two, but we might not really have time to talk about them a whole lot in this episode. The Old Testament, as well as the New Testament, manifests the equality The equally, sorry, the equally high value and dignity which God attached to the roles of both men and women. Both Old and New Testaments also affirm the principle of male headship in the family and in the covenant community. Redemption in Christ aims at removing the distortions introduced by the curse. We have like maybe a minute, minute and a half, so if you have a quick take on that, and if that's enough, we'll start with new ones next week. If not, we'll pick up this discussion in next week's episode. Any quick comments on that one? No, nothing. You know I'm known for my quick comments. Quick comments, yes. Pithy, pithy David. No, no. All right, well, I can be the pithy one, but then I end up dominating the show. And I listen back to the show, and I'm like, man, I did like 80% of the talking in that episode. That's not good. We'll leave a clip hanging. I'll give you 15 seconds. OK. The role was advocated by Adam in the very beginning. If he was watching over things, which the forbidden fruit I mean, it's speculation on our part at this point. What's done is done. But it makes you wonder if that was the first abdication. In a sense, it makes you wonder if that's kind of the first sin. Adam abdicates his leadership role. He's standing by idly letting Eve take charge, make decisions for the both of them. I wonder if there's, I hadn't really thought about these terms before, but I wonder if that's the kernel from which all other sin kind of springs because he's given leadership, right? He's supposed to have dominion. He's supposed to subdue the earth and to fill it, to multiply. He's supposed to take that leadership role, take the world by the horns kind of thing, and he lays back and look at what the world left with us now all these thousands of years later. So that's interesting. All right, so we'll continue. I'm guessing we're going to finish the Denver statement next week. That's my guess. That's my prediction. We'll see if I'm a prophet or not, if my prediction comes true. If not, stone me now. Anyway, this is the Faith Debate. I'm Troy Skinner. Please don't stone me now. I'm the pastor of Household of Faith in Christ. You can find us online at HouseholdofFaithinChrist.com. I want to thank the two gentlemen who participated in this week's panel, Stephen Yerger with the Shabbat Gathering in Adams County, just north of Frederick County, and David Forsey. better name than the multi-location church. Now that's what I got. Pastor of the multi-location house church in the area, the Frederick area. We'll be back next week to finish up the Danvers statement. We're going to be getting into the Nashville statement shortly after that, and we will eventually swing back and finish up our talk on the Chicago statement on biblical application, but that'll be off the distance a few weeks at least. Anyway, thanks so much for spending part of your Sunday morning with us today, or if you're listening on podcast, whenever you're listening, thank you for that as well. Till next time, about 167 and a half hours from right now, God bless. You know, we're the multi... We're the multi... Yeah, they meet in different places too. Yeah. Oh, you do? Yeah, we do. It's not one location, it's like six. I didn't know that. Yeah. And each person that hosts that week within our core group, they lead. That way you can raise up folks a lot quicker to be able to do the things that you need to do within that. And the core has been together long enough. a good case of familiarity and security and somebody's not going to go way off in the left field. Yeah. And to be honest, I probably would have started to go in that direction already, except our church membership is pretty scattered. We aren't that close to each other. We're all over the place. Are you guys all virtual mostly? No, no. They come and gather, but people are driving like 40 minutes from different directions. So that'd be hard. It's kind of like with us. We're about 20 to 25. uh... each and then there's some that travel as far as an hour and fifty wow our fifteen that what they said the church alive is worth the drive but i i i i i i i i i i discover mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm m It's very helpful you tell us where you're at when you're reading so I can follow along. It was April 23rd, so this one's going to be April 30th. Actually, the last one's going to air the Sunday after the Dr. Fuller thing, as it turns out. Do you guys get much response off of that? Do you get any feedback on the show? I used to get quite a bit of feedback. I get much less. We get some, but I get much less than I used to. Is that because the church is asleep? Or they're going back to church and they're not listening to it? Yeah, I think it's a combination of a variety of things. I do wonder about the spiritual climate as being part of it. I also think that the heyday for the local radio stations is behind it. There's not quite the level of interest that there once upon a time was. So I think we're feeling some of that as well. So it's a combination. Plus, maybe I was more entertaining and energetic years ago, and I just completely stink at doing this now, and nobody cares what I have to say or what anybody I bring on the panel has to say. I don't think that's it. I think that what we're talking about over the past year is about as relevant as the show has ever really aimed to be. And I have some people that will interact. Not deep. They're like, oh, really loved that show. It was a cool insight. But it's not deep. I used to get more deep feedback than I've been getting more recently. And something I used to get people that would push back and argue on more substantive matters. Now it's emotion. Now it's a lot of nitpicking kind of stuff. It's like, whatever. I don't know. And I'll engage, because I'll try to respond to that health in a healthy way, too. But if they continue to be nitpicky, it's like, oh, I don't have time for this. I'm going to move on now. So we left off with... So you only can see a half a page at a time. I think we're picking up with the, in the family, husbands should forsake, which is somewhere around the halfway mark or halfway mark of the affirmations. Okay. Is there a number? Do you have a number? Mine doesn't have numbers, but I can count them. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Looks like it's number 9. Are you a Beatles fan, by any chance? Are you familiar with the White Album? Yeah. Number 9? number nine to ring any bells nope sorry if you think that i think i have a summary that was a lot of a slap that album together because they were in the process of kind of fall apart of the band and they had a bunch of half-finished projects and they just kind of put it out as an album that's why that's my sense of it okay one of their songs is called number nine and the whole song is ringo starr saying number nine number nine number nine was that i am we don't have to do it That's the whole song. Is there music? I think there's like some musical sounds. It's not really set to a melody or... It's just... It's... Yeah. It's... I think it's probably supposed to be like a psychedelic sort of a thing, maybe. I don't know. It's horrible. Yeah. It's horrible. Eat your fungi first. Anyway. Alright. Let's... Let me get this next one started. Let's see. Let's see what it looks like. Alright. Here we go. In the family, husbands should forsake harsh or selfish leadership and grow in love and care for their wives. Wives should forsake resistance to their husband's authority and grow in willing, joyful submission to their husband's leadership. In the church, redemption in Christ gives men and women an equal share in the blessings of salvation. Nevertheless, some governing and teaching roles within the church are restricted to men. Those are, by my count, Affirmations 9 and 10 from the 1987-1988 Danvers Statement put out by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. They met in Danvers, Massachusetts. If you didn't know where Danvers was, but it comes up as a trivia question, you now know it is from Massachusetts. And it is interesting, by the way, this is the Faith Debate on NewsRadio 930 WFMD, on the FM at 99.9 HD2, and on the World Wide Web at WFMD.com. If you would like to connect with the show, you can go to WFMD.com, find the Faith Debate page, or you can go to World... householdoffaithinchrist.com and you can link to the Faith Debate page through that as well and all sorts of other stuff to our social media accounts, our video channels, Sermon Audio, Odyssey, all that sort of stuff, all sorts of good stuff at householdoffaithinchrist.com On the panel this week, returning from last week, are Steven Yerger with the Shabbat Gathering, and I owe him an apology, which I'll explain in a second, and David Forsyth, pastor of the Multi-Location Church. that meets in and around the area, given the week. But apparently the Shabbat gathering, Stephen Yerger's church, they're also multi-location, so I didn't know that. They meet all over the place, although I'm willing to bet neither one of your churches has ever met in Danvers, Massachusetts. That's correct. That is correct. See that? So it is interesting. The Danvers statement is supposed to be a conservative thing, and so far it's a pretty conservative document. And it was put together in Danvers, Massachusetts. Bye. that bastion of conservative thinking massachusetts what about a time that was right home to the puritans and all that so it's amazing how back in the day how times change i mean we will do the documents we went over the chicago statements recently which you know yes i got another conservative statement right now yeah chicago is a and and island of uh... hardcore leftism and and and otherwise see if conservatism i mean illinois is mostly red But the population in and around Chicago is so massive compared to the rest of the state that it's not even close to being a purple state. It's a deep blue state because of the metropolitan Chicagoland area. The same thing with Maryland. Yeah, Baltimore, and Montgomery County, and PG County, and that rules the rest of the state. Yeah, and increasingly, sadly, Frederick County is joining the list. Yes. It's not quite as deep blue, but it's no longer a purple county. It's a blue county now. So we just have to come to grips with that reality and proceed accordingly. We don't do ourselves any favors pretending that it's what it's not. We need to come to grips with the reality of what is it and then navigate forward from there. You've got to be real. And here's a document, the Danvers Statement. It's trying to tell us how to be real. And part of it is that men shouldn't be harsh. They shouldn't be selfish. They should have love and care for their wives. Wives like hearing that. And wives, they should not resist their husband's authority and they should submit. They don't like hearing that. And in a church context, men and women, they have an equal share in the blessings of salvation. However, there are some differences. There are roles that are reserved, according to the Bible, for men, not because men are better. To be honest, I would argue not because men are more capable. because God and His providence has decided that's the way it would be best. There are women that are much more articulate, far more intelligent than a lot of the men I know. Based on skill level, there's no reason why they shouldn't stand up and preach. They know their Bibles and all that, but God says, I'm sorry, that's just not your role and I've got reasons for that. And that's a hard thing in this society particularly these days, but really over the last several decades, it's been a hard thing for our society to hear. Maybe a little deviation that part of the faith debate issue is you have the gifts that Paul talks about in Corinthians, and he says, all will prophesy. all will share an encouraging word, all may encourage. So for our audience, how do you define those gifts operating freely as God intended and yet staying within the system of God's declared order? Have any thoughts on that? I'm pausing because I think I mentioned last week, I've become self-consciously aware whenever there's a little bit of a dead spot in the show, my history in radio has taught me to avoid those like the plague. And so I jump in, but it doesn't let those who are a little bit more thoughtful, pensive, circumspect, patient in formulating their thoughts than I am. It doesn't give them a chance to chime in, and I don't want to make this a monologue, and so I have opinions. Thanks for buying me some time, Troy. I'm ready. I'm trying to give everybody else a chance to really gather themselves. It sounds like David's ready to go. Yeah, so I think this will sort of connect in. So in the Denver statement here, I guess number number 9 as you have it, maybe it's 10 as you have it. Number 9? Mine looks a little different. Number 9? It says, in the church, in the church, redemption in Christ gives men and women an equal share in the blessings of salvation. So, I don't know that we can, that we should, I think some of these things are interchangeable here in the because they separate out they say in that family ratement in the church you know and i i think the roles of men and women are the same in the family and in the church i don't i don't think that brought you know you mean uh... it is is in in the sense of a hierarchy that's what you mean but we don't look the women don't necessarily have to be the ones that uh... that are cleaning up the church but they might take care of the house, being in charge of the home and managing the home. They're not necessarily automatically then in charge of managing the church building, if the church has a church building. Or do you mean that, too? Well, maybe. I mean, I guess one of the things I think about here, right, is like the, you know, it looks like, you know, when we look at in the statement when it says in the church, right, and it says, you know, nevertheless some governing and teaching roles within the church are restricted to men. And I think that in some ways is true in the home as well, where the husband, the father, is to have the they're supposed to be the primary teacher and discipler, right? The lead teacher, discipler. At the very least, the overseer, right? He's not here, but I like this turn of phrase, Imran Razvi. Raz, Razvi, to some. He's on the show pretty regularly, and he, in the context of talking about homeschooling, used a phrase that was really helpful, and I think it fits here, too, where the father is the principal and the mother is the classroom teacher. So the mom might be the, the father and husband can also be the teacher, but if he's busy at work and he's not home, but he still, even though the mom is taking the leadership role in that moment teaching the children, she still answers to the principal kind of thing. And so he should be involved in The curriculum, the direction that the family is going to be taught, is going to be checking in with the wife, hey, how are the kids doing in their class, anything I can help with? I think that's a helpful way of thinking about it. I think it's going to be directly involved though, and at least ought to be, right? you look at Deuteronomy 6 and what fathers are called to be teaching their children. Right, so maybe I'm applying Imran's phrase too specifically. Well, yeah, I think he's talking about some specific aspects of how to operate in a godly way. Because I agree, because that is one of the problems. We like to farm things out. We're either farming them out to the youth group, We're farming it out to the government-run pagan school systems. If we're the dad, we're farming it out to the mom. We're farming it out to daycare. We like to farm things out. So the dad needs to be involved. He should be directly, I agree 100%, should be directly involved in the leadership, the teaching, the spiritual formation. the training up and we should go that that that should definitely be very specific so if you're a dad shape up and and then if you're already shaped up good job keep it up and one of the things that you know, I mean, we should rejoice in the things that God gives us to do. And one of the things that the feminist movement has sought to take away from, Steve, I'm not even really addressing what you brought up, but we'll get around to it, I'm sure. One of the things that the feminist movement took away is to say, hey, you know, women, you know, like bearing children isn't that important, right? It's not. In fact, let's create a way, or multiple ways, so that you don't have to do that anymore. uh... and you know and and god god made i mean if i were to sum it up in in one way i would say you know god made men to uh... to build to build homes to build communities to build you know in the world and he god made women to fill those places with life uh... with life with with beauty great and uh... and you know and admit men men cannot you know, bear life in themselves. We don't do that, you know. And so, but the women can, and that is, you know, that's the thing that men are not given to do and are not equipped to do. Yeah. It looks like you've got your Bible open. Well, I'm just looking, when you said Deuteronomy 6, and I think here's a key component. Now this is the commandment and the statues and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you and that you might do them, me meaning Moses, in the land which you are going over to possess so that your sons and your grandsons may fear the Lord your God and keep his statues and his commandments which I command you all the days of your life. So there's a direct commandment here of influence and an actual direction from God to the fathers, to your point. And the fear of the Lord is something it says in the scriptures, the fear of the Lord is clean and men depart from evil. If we fear the Lord and we walk in his ways and we respect what he has to say, then we're going to search the scriptures and see what is our role. What is the role of the dad, the mom, the children. And as I studied the scriptures, I only find for children is obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. In the very, very young, young, young, young children. It's not until you get older and you start becoming more of an adult and become more inter-integrated with the community do some of the other commandments come in as your accountability and your understanding mature. So our families now, the kids especially, are being inundated with the internet and with all the stuff that's out there, whether it's good or whether it's bad. But there's an influence that's trending and almost on purpose, you know, because of the God of this world. and the direction that he wants those young impressionable minds to be influenced by. And that's why it's important as parents that we are able to walk in that influence so that they will be, because I get it. As a homeschool dad, I had that weakness where I did farm stuff out at times and when I shouldn't have, and I saw the direct effect that it had on my older children. And I had to repent. And I had to re-engage and be involved. And that was a painful part of life that, look, if you don't raise your kids, somebody else will. And if you're farming out, because motivations are a big part of it, if you're farming out because you're basically aiming to abdicate your responsibilities, that's bad, you should repent. If you're farming out because it's a tool for training up, you're delegating, you're giving somebody an opportunity to to grow, to learn, to show themselves, to feel a sense of accomplishment. So if you're picking your spots with wisdom, so the reason I'm mentioning that is because I think some people that want to make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to do biblically can overcorrect and they're trying too hard and they're squashing those around them because they're doing everything. It's like, hey, let them do. They need to do too. They need to learn how to do. Let them learn how to ride the bike. Yeah, and let them fall down from time to time. And realize that they're not going to die a horrible death from a skinned knee. You know what I mean? You're trying to address a whole life's full of experiences in a very limited amount of time. And to qualify everything, that becomes cumbersome. And so you try to hear the gist of the spirit of what we're trying to convey. and not hanging on the little nuances because we didn't maybe say it exactly right or whatever. But the heart is to really get people to understand that if you stand back, somebody else is going to stand back. Let's do the next two, which are In all of life, Christ is a supreme authority and guide for men and women so that no earthly submission—domestic, religious, or civil—ever implies a mandate to follow a human authority into sin. In both men and women, a heartfelt sense of call to ministry should never be used to set aside biblical criteria for particular ministries. Rather, biblical teaching should remain the authority for testing our subjective discernment of God's will. I'm going to give you guys a chance to gather your thoughts and I'm going to share something I was thinking about a second ago. It's not exactly in connection to this, but it's related to the broader topic. I can only imagine some grinding teeth with this topic among someone who's listening to what we have to say and really frustrated that they can't jump in here and just give us the business because we're wrong about this or wrong about that. And there's at least one kind of perspective that would lend itself to that, and that is the, what are you saying? They're not hearing some of the contextualization we're trying to do here to be careful to not say. So don't hear what we're not saying. We're not saying that men are better than women. We're not saying that men are more important than women. In fact, I think David went out of his way to talk about the importance that women bring with bringing beauty and life and those sorts of things in ways that men aren't equipped to do in the same way. So it's not about one being better than the other. There are just these different entities. analogy sort of a sense that's not biblical, it's just an analogy. If you're driving down the highway and it's got a lot of twists and turns and you're doing like 85 miles an hour and you had to give up your steering wheel or your brakes, which one would you choose? You wouldn't want to give up either. They're both vitally important. But they're both different. The brakes don't do what the steering wheel does. The steering wheel doesn't do what the brakes does. It doesn't make one better or worse than the other. They're different. They have different roles, different purposes. When the people created the car, they created the brakes to help you stop. They created the steering wheel to help you navigate. Same thing, God has created men and women for particular purposes and if you ask the brakes to steer or the steering wheel to brake, I guess you could brake with your steering wheel by swinging your wheel to the right and smashing into a tree and you will stop. So you could do that, but that's not the design. The other thing is we're talking about all in the life of Christ. We all get to play the Christ role. Christ is the head of his church. And so the man in headship and the woman submitting to that headship, Christ in the headship role is the male role, but the Son of God submits to the will of the Father. So Christ also submits. And so the woman gets to play the Christ role in her submission. So if Christ is willing to step into his role of headship, so too his men should be. submissive, submitting to the will of his father, be in a position of being the one who submits, then women should be. If it's not too good for Christ, it's not too good for you. So hopefully those kinds of things help to provide a counterbalance to those who are gnashing their teeth at the general topic last week and this week. Anyway, so thoughts from you guys. Well, I'd just like to add one of the first and probably foremost things that we see in the life of Jesus, Yeshua, our Messiah. is that he laid his life down for the sheep. He laid his life down. He said, I've come not to do my will, but the will of Him who sent me. So there is a dynamic within his heart and life that he completely died to self, he died to everything that would, in his humanity. And yet, as being God's representative, his actual likeness, his actual, of who, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And we actually get to see a demonstration where, as a father or a husband, you take on that role where you lay your life down for your wife, your children, and you wash them with the watering of the Word, and you do the things that would show that you're more concerned of their welfare in life, even to the expense of your own. And within that dynamic, that motive, I think would go a long way to appeasing some of the possible abuses that have happened within the church and within society, that instead of power grabbing and overbearing and lordship, to the point where there's suffocation, And they, you know, a woman would have to feel like, I have to get out from underneath this. But if it was a good environment with the proper motives, I think it would be a much different outcome. Do you have anything to add, David? Yeah. I think the only, the couple of things to add, I'm sure we'll go into this more at a later time, but you know, when you try to do something that you're, that you're not good at or that you're not made for, you won't do well. It will be frustrating. It will be discouraging. And this goes both directions for both men and women. And when you embrace what God has made you for, that is where the most gratification and you know, that is where you will find the most joy and glory. When you are doing what you were made to do, you're going to have a sense of accomplishment, purpose, and you're going to set yourself up to have an experience of thriving. And if you try to do what you weren't created to do, you're setting yourself for all sorts of frustration and difficulty in your life. And life is difficult enough, so let's try to stay in our lanes and we'll have a better shot at Shalom, right? So these are the last two. We're not going to have a lot of time to talk about them, but we're going to have a little bit of time, I think. Because this one, the second to last one, is really long, and the last one's kind of short. With half the world's population outside the reach of indigenous evangelism, with countless other lost people in those societies that have heard the gospel, with the stresses and miseries of sickness, malnutrition, homelessness, illiteracy, ignorance, aging, addiction, crime, incarceration, neuroses, and loneliness, no man or woman who feels a passion from God to make his grace known in word and deed need ever live without a fulfilling ministry for the glory of Christ and the good of this fallen world. We are convinced that a denial or neglect of these principles, talked about in the statement, will lead to increasingly destructive consequences in our families, our churches, and the culture at large. So we have about two minutes total left in this episode, and that's going to put a wrap on the Danvers statement. So by the way, I might be the son of a prophet, who knows? Final thoughts on what was just read or just kind of closing thoughts on the Danvers statement in general? Okay, so I see a picture. You gave an illustration about the car, the brake, and the steering wheel. I see two vehicles. I see a dump truck that can haul five tons of material, and I see a Volkswagen that can haul probably five cubic feet. Both can haul dirt. But if you put five tons of dirt in the Volkswagen, you'll squash it. It'll just sit there. And it's the same thing that we put more on than what we are made for, what we are designed for, what we are purposed for. it can become problematic. So it's important that we understand our role, we understand our purpose, we understand the calling, and then learn, and walk, and be able to see how that journey, biblically, how it looks out, looks for. And if a man thinks that he's going to give birth to a child, he's going to get squashed with a dump truck load full of dirt. Actually, that's a subject that will be coming up pretty soon. Oh, probably so. Anyway, the one who said probably so and is still laughing in the background is David Forsey. We've been joined this week also by Stephen Yerger. They are pastors of house churches that meet in random locations all around the area. So if you want to find out what those are, reach out to me and I can connect with them and figure out how you can connect and hook up with them. I'm Troy Skinner. My church is Household of Faith in Christ. meet in Frederick, and if you're interested in learning more about us, go to HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. We're going to be picking up with a Nashville statement in next week's show, and it piggybacks a little bit on some of the themes that were in the Denver statement. They complement each other in many ways, particularly the cultural moment within which we live, so we'll be doing that next week. Until next week, when we do get together, may God bless you. That's going to be, what, 167 and a half hours from now when we get together. Until then, one more time, God bless. The folks that I congregate with, I have, I do have a chaplaincy. Okay, I'm indignant by the church out up in New York that, you know, they have a very strict protocol. In other words, they go through extensive background checks. They look for at least five to seven well-thought-out letters of recommendation. And they have a pretty extensive test that you take to be able to apply for this ordination. Well, chaplaincy. And so it does give me the ability to go into hospitals and different things. Oh, neat. OK. OK. But I don't know what to do when I'm called a pastor because I haven't gone to formal Seminary I haven't you know all my learning and everything goes through what I've done on my own or with people that I work with so when When people here in the public pastor or people that might hear it that know me They might think that's kind of strange that I'm called that because you know, I refer to myself like an elder I'm not but I was talking to Razzie about it. He says Do you pastor your family? Do you care for people within your congregation? Do you actually pray and, you know, try to, you know, and I do all those things. Yeah. So the other thing is I use pastor and elder interchangeably because I think the New Testament does. There you go. I, I'm just, I'm just making sure that I'm not putting something on myself that would make people think. Would the people at your, at the Shabbat gathering, would they be comfortable with you being called elder? we consider ourselves in the core group of elders. You're part of the spiritual leadership and teaching and all that sort of stuff and you have a church matter, a discipline matter, something you're involved in. We all come together and we work out those disciplines. So I'm not trying to make it awkward, I'll try to maybe be more self-conscious about referring to you as elder, because actually I remember you now mentioning that once before, but to me they're interchangeable. So I am an elder for Household of Faith in Christ. I am a pastor, well, the pastor, but, you know, I'm the elder on location, on campus, if you will, although we have it set up so we have some accountability and that sort of thing so that Imran and David are also elders at our church. And so they would, I would be totally cool with, even though they're, I've identified the three of us are the elder board, I have no issue with having my congregation refer to David as Pastor David or Pastor Forsey, because elder and pastor are the same thing, in my understanding of the language. Because in our group, if they hear this, they go, hey, Steve's calling himself pastor now. You can just blame me. Say, I didn't call myself pastor. That knucklehead on the radio did. And that might not be resolved. I don't know. A little more fake news from the radio. Everything's right on the internet, right? So that was, I just don't want to appear that I'm something more than I'm not, even though I feel like I'm... Yeah, I'll try to mentally shift, and I'll just say, you know, one of the elders with Shabbat gathering. Yeah, that would be more appropriate. You know, that's fine. Uh, what did I just say? That last one was April 30th, so this next one's going to be May 7th. This one's a long document. Yeah, this one's going to take more than a show, but that's all right. We'll get as far as we can while David can be with us, and then... What, uh... All right, I need to look up Nashville. I'm... I'm sorry, I'm... Nashville Statement Coalition for Biblical Sexuality. I just typed it in and a PDF came up. National Statement. Let's see. For those that have a little heart or the eyes, I love the tablet because it makes it bigger. Yeah, you can make it as big or as small as you want. And I'm finding that that's helpful for me, too. National Statement. What's the title? OK. Coalition. Gotcha. OK. 507. Hey, by the way, I didn't want to throw a wrench by saying what I was saying about Corinthians, about the prophesying and this and that and gifts. Oh, I didn't take it as a wrench. I didn't, you know, I was just thinking, because some people might be thinking, what about that? And just get them to go, what did he say? And then there was more definition. By the way, when I'm playful about the language and all that sort of stuff, that's not me trying to pick on something or trying to call you out or whatever. No, I didn't feel that way. Sometimes it's just me being playful because That's word association is part of how my brain works, but also understanding the, like you said, you talked about how there's things that there's, we can, there's more to be said, more on this to be learned or something like that. And what I heard was moron. And so part of it is like, ah, he said moron, but that's just me being, but also I am trying to be a small voice in a vast wilderness. to offer some linguistic correctives. I self-consciously avoid using the words race and racism like the plague. If I use them, I go out of my way to say, I'm only using them because I want you to know general... But there's one human race, so I'll specifically talk about ethnic groups, ethnicity, that sort of thing. That's true, because those are real serious trip words. So, yeah, so anything... We talked about this recently with the artificial intelligence. There's nothing intelligent about it. It's programmed. It's a computer. To grab information. It's computer modeling. That's all it is. It's not intelligent. And so I'm trying to come to grips with what's a better phrase for that, because it gives the wrong impression. Even though one day they do want to do that. Those of us who are on the conservative side of things, we surrender, in my opinion, too often we surrender the argument before we've even had it, because we use their terms. You cannot define their terms with their definitions. Right. Yeah, and it causes all sorts of confusion. Because you're going into the fight in the ring with no gloves, no pants on, and they beat the crap out of you. Yeah. Steve, I know why so many more people have signed the Nashville Statement, because I could click a button and sign it right now myself. Well, it came out in the internet age. The other one came out long before the internet. Is that what all those names that are in there are just to permit? Sign now. Are you going to go through the preamble? I'm sorry to mess you up, John. I bumped the button and it froze everything. I'm going to have to stop and record for refresh. I don't know what the heck that was. But we'll start over. Fortunately, we're two seconds in. A Western culture has become increasingly post-Christian. It has embarked upon a massive revision of what it means to be a human being. The pathway to full and lasting joy through God's good design for his creatures is replaced by the path of short-sighted alternatives that sooner or later ruin human life and dishonor God. The people of the Nashville Statement say that we did not make ourselves. That's true. None of us did. We are not our own. That's true. None of us are. Our true identity as male and female persons is given by God. We believe that God's design for His creation and His way of salvation serve to bring Him the greatest glory and bring us the greatest good. Therefore, We with the Nashville Statement offer the following affirmations and denials. So those are words from the preamble of the 2017 document called the Nashville Statement put out by a Coalition for Biblical Sexuality, a rather conservative-oriented kind of group one would think, but listen to some of these names that signed off on it, and you might be surprised at the names you hear. John Piper, OK. James Dobson, OK, I expect that. Russell Moore, well, that's a question mark and a half right there. J.I. Packer, Wayne Grudem, OK. Al Mohler, a little squishy, but OK, I get it. Tony Perkins, D.A. Carson, yeah, whatever. John McArthur makes a total lot of sense. R.C. Spiroli was still alive back then, so he signed it. Rosaria Butterfield, an important voice on these kinds of issues, OK. Francis Chan, a little surprising. Ligon Duncan, a little surprising. Alistair Begg, that makes sense. Kevin de Young, that makes sense. Karen Swallow Pryor, are you kidding me? J.D. Greer, really? Anyway, if you don't know all these names, the ones I expressed some surprise at have proven themselves to be rather on the left spectrum of things theologically in recent years. And I don't know that if they had to do it over again, they would really sign a statement like this. I just wonder. I'm not sure. And those that are You know, they've got their conservative bona fides. Well, okay, I'm not surprised by them. Anyway, enough about me carrying on. This is the Faith Debate on NewsRadio 930 WFMD. You can follow along online through my church's website. That's a really good one-stop shop, HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. The Faith Debate panel this week is comprised by yours truly, as well as Stephen Yerger, who's one of the elders with the Shabbat gathering that meets in Southern Adams County, Gettysburg area, and David Forsey. He's the pastor of a church kind of in the southern parts. Most of the time they meet in the southern parts of Frederick City, like southern Frederick County, southern Washington County, occasionally West Virginia. Yeah, over Harper's Ferry. And Mountain Mama, take me home country roads. Yeah. that but we're we're the potomac and i think i think that i i i i i don't think that i could be like i don't think that i i i i i i or the collection of potomac house churches there Something like that. So the Nashville Statement was put out, if you listened last week or the week before to the Faith Debate Show, or if you're listening on podcast, the previous two episodes of the podcast, we were talking about the Danvers Statement. Basically the same group of folks, generally speaking, kind of got together. Now it's 30 years different, so it's not exactly the same group of folks, but the spirit of it is it's supposed to be kind of the same group of folks. And they put out this statement on biblical sexuality. Now the Danvers Statement's talking about biblical roles for the biological sexes, the role for the men, the role for the women, that kind of thing. Now we're getting a little more granular. And we're not just talking about the roles for men and women, but we're starting to get into, like, so what exactly is a man? What exactly is a woman? And they were beginning to start to, and what does this mean regarding sexual behaviors? You know, that sort of thing. And so what do we want to say to the culture as a church about these sorts of things? So they put out a series of articles and, what are they, 14 of them maybe? Is that the number? I don't know how many. Yeah, it looks like 14. 14. So we'll start with Article 1. I'll do the affirmation and denial. And then we on the panel, we'll discuss. We affirm that God has designed marriage to be a covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman as husband and wife and is meant to signify the covenant love between Christ and his bride, the Church. We deny that God has designed marriage to be a homosexual, polygamous, or polyamorous relationship. We also deny that marriage is a mere human contract rather than a covenant made before God. Dems fightin' words these days, so who wants to enter the fray first? Well, yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on who is defining what marriage is, right? And we would say that God, well, He doesn't just define marriage, He defines everything. So, unless we're working by God's definition of something, it's not an accurate definition. Yeah. I mean, a simple answer to the question, because in a postmodern world, nothing feels real anymore, nothing's stable, everything's all over the place, we have no meaning or purpose or anything. What's real anymore? What's real, not just anymore, but always, is whatever God says it is. You want to know what's real? See what God has to say about it. That's what's real. And so this is what this is talking about. What's real is that marriage is one man and one woman by definition. Now there are other kinds of, if we want to call them relationships, that might exist. Call them whatever you want. But if you call it marriage, you are out of line with reality. One of the things that we were... That would be the biblical argument. ...that we were talking about, it was probably a couple weeks ago now, with the Danvers statement was, you know, what's pre-fall and what's post-fall, right? And what's pre-fall is one man and one woman and God brings them together and says, this is very good. So, before sin enters the world. And so any, I think it's fair to say that any distortion of that is is a post-fall effect. And that's an important thing, too, because it's not only post-fall, or pre-fall, rather, of marriage. The idea of marriage is pre-fall. It's also pre-church. It's pre-Israel. It's from the very, very beginnings of the very first human relationship was a marital relationship. And it's primordial, if you will, to use a word that the evolutionists like to use in a different context. And Christ has one bride. There's one Savior and there's one bride, one church. He doesn't have brides. Oh, that's another conversation I'd love to have, but it's in the constraints that we have. I would just like to read Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Okay? God created the heavens and the earth. God created everything. I mean, it starts from there. If you redefine marriage, then you've got to redefine was God involved or not. And then you get into all the different attributes that people say they want to do because they want to, you know, you get back to the Romans 1 context. knowing the judgment of God and they still, I'm paraphrasing, go into the depraved lifestyle and their mind is given over. So it's God's authority, it's God's definition, it's God's plan. And it's speaking in the denial specifically about homosexuality, and I think that might probably, I'm going to guess, recurrently come up a little bit. We'll have opportunity to talk about it some more, so I'm not going to jump into that right now because I think, like I said, it's just going to naturally flow, I'm assuming. But the thing I do want to highlight before we move on to Article 2 is the last part where it says that marriage is not a mere human contract, it is a covenant made before God. That's important because you think about it, if it's not just a contract, but it's a covenant before God, it doesn't matter what the government, the legal systems, the contractual language that we might want to create as humans, that doesn't matter. All of that is subsumed under God's authority on the matter. It's a covenant before Him, so marriage is what He says. So if the government says something else and they're saying what's opposed to God, As Bible-believing Christians, we need to reject and aim to try to correct what the government is doing. Anyway, Article 2. We affirm that God's revealed will for all people is chastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage. We deny that any affections, desires, or commitments ever justify sexual intercourse before or outside marriage, nor do they justify any form of sexual immorality. So basically, this is talking about the seventh commandment, no adultery allowed. This preamble or this article is becoming way more specific and targeting actual issues versus the one, the Danner statement, was more general, more, you know, just kind of the roles within a congregation and within a church type of setting, because the language here is much more specific. Yeah, you can tell it's 30 years later. right like this over thirty years after the other when you can tell and and and one is primarily dealing with roles and what is primarily dealing with sexuality i think right yeah and they didn't have to uh... deal with the roles again and because they said what they had to say and i don't think they would change a whole lot of that if it were that thirty years later but now and these kind of statements come out when they feel a crisis moment and at this came up a couple weeks ago i think i think uh... steven mentioned how but those that was actually david said they were late Well, these kinds of statements are always late because people are trying to... They're reactive. Yeah, they're trying to tamp down the fires, trying to deal with it. When it becomes clear, you know what? We better put together a statement and clarify these things because things have gotten out of hand. We can't just control this anymore. The fire is consuming the whole house. Clearly, the Bible has not been enough. Right. Yeah, exactly. The Bible wasn't sufficient. Yeah. No, they're just trying to clarify that the leadership of the church has proven to be insufficient. in human terms, and they're trying to call the leadership of the church back together and say, look, this is what we as leaders in the church should be teaching and preaching and putting out there, and our people need to understand this is what we teach and what we believe, and this is just a clarifying kind of a thing. But yet, if it's not in agreement with Scripture, then it's wrong. So insofar as these statements agree with Scripture, they're good. And for the most part, I think these statements have been doing a good job of that so far. Article 3, we affirm that God created Adam and Eve, the first human beings in his own image, equal before God as persons and distinct as male and female. We deny that the divinely ordained differences between male and female render them unequal in dignity or worth." So basically both are image bearers, but they are different. And this is maybe the one wink and a nod to capture in one little article what the Danvers Statement was all about, right? That's true. So we probably don't have a whole lot more we need to say about that because you spent two shows talking about the danger statement. So Article 4. We affirm that divinely ordained differences between male and female reflect God's original creation design and are meant for human good and human flourishing. We deny that such differences are a result of the fall or are a tragedy to be overcome. So these distinctions are good. And it's interesting. This is talking about something that David foresees going out of his way to clarify a couple of different times how This isn't because of the fall. And I know that phrase, human flourishing, rubs some people wrong. I think it's a phrase that can be redeemed. A lot of people who are left theologically love that word. Human flourishing is a gospel issue. No, it's not. It's an important issue, but it's not a gospel issue. Human flourishing is what the church is all about. No, that's not what the church is all about. It's an aspect of what the church should be involved in, but it's not what we're all about. And so it gets misused and abused by people on a different theological spectrum than myself and people in this room right now. Some people hate that phrase. But human flourishing is just talking about shalom. That's all. Yeah, and human flourishing is the... that's a fruit. And you don't just... go out and buy the fruit, right? You have to cultivate the plant, right? In order that the plant might bear fruit. You know something about that. A little bit, a little bit. David makes a living dealing with that sort of stuff. Being an arborist, yes. So, right, and so the gospel, right, is the thing that if we hold true to it, right, to God's word and to the the saving knowledge of Christ, right? That will bear the fruit of human flourishing. So if we don't see human flourishing, it's not because we need to pursue human flourishing. Correct. Yeah, we can't ignore the means to getting to the end and go straight to the end because then we might as well just be another secular civic organization. It's an example of, I mean, it's idolatry, right? To worship the to worship the gift, which is the fruit that God gives as a result of just us being obedient and faithful. I think also the fact is that human flourishing the progressive, or should I say, the regressive religious folks, they see that as a negative, you know, where we're to deny ourself in some aspects as the flesh, you know, and be able to walk in a way that we submit to Christ and, Paul says, we die daily, okay? Well, that's anathema to the movement that says you should be flourishing. You should be living your best life now. Right, right. Eat and drink for tomorrow we die. So maybe you want to give a little more clarity, but I think you know what I'm trying to say. Yeah, no. I thought it was well said. I don't know if it needs any more clarity. If somebody's confused, it's not because of you. Although that sounded mean. It's because of my distracting tendencies to get people off track, and they couldn't track with you as well as you deserved. So it's my fault if they didn't track with you. Article 5. We affirm that the differences between male and female reproductive structures are integral to God's design for self-conception as male or female. We deny that physical anomalies or psychological conditions nullify the God-appointed link between biological sex and self-conception as male or female. So men and women were designed to fit together. Anomalies in the fallen world, they exist, but this doesn't change the initial design or the purposes put in place by God. I think that's, in a nutshell, what's being said there. That's an important one because that gets brought up in debates with people. What about the hermaphrodites? They exist. It's like 0.1% of the population or whatever it is. It's such a rare thing, but they do exist. So what does that mean? That's a sign of the fallen, broken world that we live in. That's not ideal. There's something not right. get Alzheimer's and die. That's not right. That's not good. That's not the best. So these bad things happen. Yeah, I think where we sort of started to creep in the wrong direction is when we, you know, when we said, okay, like everybody is, you know, everybody is, you know, made the way that God intended them to be. Right. So yeah, you know, someone who's born with some sort of, deformity or disability. We say, no, God made you and he made you perfect the way you are. That's not quite right and that goes down the wrong path. It's why language, word choices are so important. What's the right way to say it? I think the right way to understand it is that, one, we, you know, post fall, none of us are ideal humans anymore. We don't meet the standard of perfection that existed before sin entered the world. And so, you know, we all bear the brokenness of sin two different degrees and in different ways, but we need to recognize that as the brokenness of sin. But I think what we do need to also recognize is to say, all right, well, God has a use. God can use this brokenness for good, right? God can use what has been upset by sin and He can redeem it and use it for good purposes. And let's take the focus off of God for a moment and put the focus on the one who steals, kills, and destroys, Satan himself, who has come as God of this world and creates, I'm sorry, creates, he doesn't create, but he is involved in ways that can rob humanity of their, how God is created in various ways and yet we have the Redeemer Jesus who comes and says I want to give you life. I want to heal you. I want to correct I want to restore I want to Set a right so You know some people want to blame God for what Saint has done or indirectly through in our fallen world, so He gets the credit for being the one that's the killer and the stealer and the destroyer and Yeah, and picking up and echoing and adding a little bit more even to what you both have just now said, all of us, like we might not be, you know, to the best of my knowledge, the three of us having this conversation aren't hermaphrodites, but we have other problems. Like we're not pristinely healthy. we're not pristinely sin-free that we we've we've got problems that we deal with and i thought that you know those who know me well over the list of the show for any length of time know that i have a you know somewhat profoundly impacted uh... adult son he's got uh... but the world today calls uh... special needs uh... he's got some profound impacts from the the fallen world in his life but you know what He's just, in microcosm, an example of all of us. It's just that the challenges that he deals with in his life because of the brokenness in the world are a little more obvious to most people than maybe the brokennesses in my life. But you know what? Some of the brokenness in my life might be actually more profound than his brokenness. It's just not as visible because I'm better at masking it or compensating for somehow or hiding it. He's not able to hide his difficulties. We all have that problem. But that doesn't change the fact that me, my son, the hermaphrodite, they have incredible value as human beings. Yes, the image is marred to a certain degree, but we're still image bearers. We are ambassadors and representatives, or should be anyway, for God. We should be a positive God-like influence in this world, and there's something really special about human beings, and that's why we shouldn't murder them. So we should have compassion on the hermaphrodite, the ones that exist, But that doesn't change the paradigm for everything we think about sexuality and biological sex and those sorts of things because of these sorts of things in the world. Anyway, we spent a lot of time on that one, but that's good. We can probably do Article 6 before we have to wrap up, I think. We affirm that those born with a physical disorder of sex development are created in the image of God and have dignity and worth equal to all other image bearers. Actually, I was just going to talk about that. They are acknowledged by our Lord Jesus in his words about eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb. With all others, they are welcome as faithful followers of Jesus Christ and should embrace their biological sex insofar as it may be known. We deny that ambiguity is related to a person's biological sex. Render one incapable of living a fruitful life in joyful obedience to Christ. So again, these rare instances doesn't diminish the values that are just there. I mean, I kind of stole the thunder on that one. Do you guys have anything else that you want to add on that topic? No. I mean, it just makes me think of when the disciples ask Jesus why the guy was born blind. Was it blind? He's born black, you know, it wasn't because his parents sinned. Right, was it his parents sinned or his sin or whatever? No. He said to God we'd be glorified. Right, yeah. And so we should all see our weaknesses, right? And Paul says, you know, in my weakness he is made strong. Right, yeah. You know, God displays his strength through our weaknesses. And so it doesn't mean that our weaknesses are good things, but it means that God brings glory to himself through those things. Yeah. Yeah. He's such a big God. He can use even the bad things for the, for the good. Jody Erickson, Jody Erickson, Erickson, Jody Erickson. Tata. Yes. Is that what you're talking about? Yes. That's what I was hearing. Yeah. Quickly, just the story, as you're hearing that name and you're listening, you don't know what that is. Um, she has a, as a, I think late teens, like a high school student or something, uh, had a diving accident, broke her neck and, uh, was paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of her life. And she was crushed spiritually, emotionally by that, and through some really good ministering from friends that were Christians, she came out of that deep, dark depression, came to embrace Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior, and has become one of the great proclaimers of the gospel, using her injury, life-altering, forever injury, And she's had a really fruitful life, and God has used that in powerful ways. And I think if you were to ask her, she wouldn't take it back. She probably would say, I'd do it all over again, seeing how God has used it. I would guess. I don't want to speak for her, but I would imagine. I don't know if we're going to have time to talk about it, but I'll read Article 7. We'll see if we have time to talk about it. We affirm that self-conception as male or female should be defined by God's holy purposes in creation and redemption as revealed in Scripture. We deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God's holy purposes in creation and redemption. So God has decided to make people male or female and people have no legitimate say in the matter. That's the gist of what he's saying there. This is a hot button Or is it? And this is like totally opposed to the culture today. So we don't have time really to talk about it right now, which is almost unfair because this is a big one. Right. We've got like less than a minute. So do you have a pithy little something? Captain Pithy over here, David Forsen? Right, right. I mean, the gist of it is that we submit to God. God is our creator. He is the one in charge. uh... and that's our sin is you know our desires to rebel against that and that is what that's what we see in seeking to be something other than what God has made us to be and we'll let that be the final word remember Charles is not in charge God is in charge Remember that TV show, Charles is in Charge, or Charles is in Charge? Anyway, David Forsey, thank you. Stephen Yerger, thank you. Shabbat Gathering in Adams County, the Forsey Church in Southern, whatever. I'm Troy Skinner at the Household of Faith in Christ, online at HouseholdofFaithinChrist.com. Until next week, God bless. Wow. Are you going to leave some room for that to be able to talk about the next one? Yeah, no, we can. Do you have to head out? I should. And I'm sorry I've been on my phone so much. No, I mean, to be honest, I'm grateful that you're able to make time to come and do this. You can always ask. Not so much. That's it. I can jump back and forth. Now, I know that you and your family, your household, are all, you know, firmly committed to Christ. Is that true for your broader family as well? Yes, so on my dad's side, yes. And this is my dad's mother. And so, yeah, so she's She's prepared. Yes, she's strong in her faith and has been always and continually an encouragement and blessing to the rest of our family. Yeah, so not so much on my mom's side. Usually it's the other way around. There's some sadness there. That's amazing, yeah. And is this one of the first momentous deaths in the family your kids have had to deal with? Um, at this, I guess at this stage, I mean, my, so they, they were too little to remember when my mom's dad passed away. They remember my dad's dad. Um, but they, they were pretty little still. Um, so just, just barely. So they'll, this is the, yeah, this is the first one where they will really have, have a memory. Yeah. So we're going to get up there and say goodbye, essentially. So, for now. Well, appreciate the moment. Appreciate the positive aspects. Apparently, there's going to be time for a goodbye. So if you could get a phone call and see if it's out for some closure. So that might be helpful. Yeah, well, safe travels, too. Thank you. It puts the seriousness of the resurrection, so puts it at the forefront. I mean, you talk about, like when you do weddings and stuff, you have, you know, the whole aspect of Christ and the Church and all that, you know, but when it comes to funerals, it's the resurrection seems to you know, really be, because that's when people realize their, their frailty and the fact that your grandmother's prepared is wonderful. And, you know, she's, uh, in a place where that equation doesn't have to be wondered or, you know what I mean? And that brings a lot of Shalom. Yeah. That brings a lot of Shalom and peace and strength, you know, So when are you leaving tomorrow? Yep. Yep. Pray traveling mercies on you and your family and all that are traveling. Appreciate it. I'll see you. Bless you, brother. Yeah. Bless you as well. Give me a hug. Thanks. Appreciate it. All right. All right. Till next time. Yes. Have fun with that one. Not too much fun. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about some fun issues. That's true. So we'll probably have a little bit of fun. Exciting stuff. Um, yeah, we actually made it through exactly half of them last time. So maybe we'll get through the last half in this episode. And if you have time, we, we could do one more episode talking about the, the Asbury thing maybe. And sure. I mean, I don't have a whole lot of. information other than what I've seen a couple yeah and we have to go in depth on it necessarily but I think there has been some sense of people are getting excited thinking that maybe there's an emerging revival a point to the the Asbury thing and did you talk about the Jesus revolution did you see that I did so we could talk about that too if you want I came out of that I was born again in 75 and So we can kind of connect all of those things together, maybe. We'll see how we're feeling after this one. And also, if we have in mind that we might do that, it takes the pressure off of me. Like, if we only get through Article 12, I don't have to try to jam the last two in. I could say, we're going to finish up the next two next week and then have some additional thoughts on some other matters. It gives us some flexibility. Sure. Because we've barely got seven in. So we might barely get seven in again this time. Well, it depends on how much commentary is. If it's pretty self-explanatory, just let it roll. Right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So here we go. So you're on number eight, right? Correct. And I'm going to just Probably as I have it, I'm just going to read Article 8, but if you want to swing back and talk about Article 7 and 8 at the same time, that's totally fine. Okay. But it allows me to be a little more efficient in the use of the time. I don't have to do a setup for the show and then read the article. The article is the setup for the show. Yeah. Because we only got about 25 minutes per show. We affirm the people who experience sexual attraction for the same sex may live a rich and fruitful life pleasing to God through faith in Jesus Christ as they, like all Christians, walk in purity of life. We deny that sexual attraction for same sex is part of the natural goodness of God's original creation or that it puts a person outside the hope of the gospel. That's Article 8 of the Nashville Statement that came out back in 2017, so that would be somewhere around six years ago already. Time is super flying by. We did the first half of the articles, or 14 of them, last week's show, as we continue to work our way through some of the more noteworthy church statements, if you will, over the last generation or so. We did the Chicago statements, the Danvers statement, now we're doing the Nashville statement. and finishing it up probably this week. If not, we'll definitely finish it up on next week's show. I'm Troy Skinner. This is the Faith Debate. Thanks for spending part of your Sunday morning with us. If you want to connect with us online, of course, go to WFME.com or you can go to my church's website where you can link to the Faith Debate and a whole bunch of other stuff too. That's HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com, HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. And if you were listening the last couple weeks as we've been talking about some of these articles, David Forsey was part of the panel. He's not part of the panel this week. So good. Let's talk about him But still back and for more abuse at the hands of me I'm surprised that people keep coming back after I've used in the way I do but Stephen Yerger He's one of the elders with the Shabbat gathering that meets in the Gettysburg area area southern Adams County house of the faith in Christ meets in Frederick, so We ended last week's show with Article 7 and had little time to talk about it, and now we started Article 8, started off this week's show, which again, this week is talking about struggling with sinful temptations. That doesn't send someone to hell, so it's at least making that point. But I don't think that you had a chance to opine on Article 7 last week, so if you want to, you can, and if you have something you want to add on Article 8 as well, do that too. Double dip. Well, it's just interesting that since this article was written in 2017, and from 2017 to 2023, it's almost like the floodgates have opened. And it seems really almost a supernatural push of all of a sudden the issue of homosexuality and the transgender, what you affirm or your pronouns or how many, what is it, personalities or different identities? What is it, up to 62 now? like gender categorizations or whatever they call it. Yeah. And if you look at them, it's weird. I don't know what the differences are because some of them, the identities, they're almost exactly the same words. There's just a slight variance of like, okay, so what exists? We're getting like hyper-specific. I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. Before we're done, there's going to be like 2000 of them, not 62 anymore. And you know, one of the new phrases, by the way, on this topic, I heard it recently, neurodiverse. Somebody that's got like autism or something said, Oh, don't call me autistic. Call me neurodiverse. Well, if you think about it, all of us are neurodiverse, right? Everybody's wired a little bit differently. There's great diversity in how God has wired us. We don't all interact with the world exactly the same way. So we've gotten to the point where we're putting these labels on things that are so specific that they're robbed of any meaning whatsoever. If I call you neurodiverse, but we're all neurodiverse, have I said anything that distinguishes you from the rest of the population? You know what I mean? If you say somebody's autistic, oh, not everyone is autistic, so that means something. But if everybody is something, it doesn't really mean anything anymore. So it's crazy the world we're in. So if we were to boil it down, when Satan came to Eve and said, has God said? And it seems that all these definitions and these terms and all these equations, it's almost to like accuse God and say, have you said? There's no definition because you can't get pinned down on any one thing. When biblically you get pinned down, you're either a male or you're a female. You die, and they dig up your bones a hundred years later, they're going to pull out the DNA, what's it going to say? You are male. No matter what you claim, how you say you are, or your opinions, or now what you are in your identification, you're a biological male or you're a biological female. And credit where it's due, John Piper, who in recent years has really had some horrible takes with regards to politics, some horrible takes with regards to some of the woke moves in the church, some horrible takes on some of the quote unquote race issues, the ethnicity divide that we see. He's been wobbly at best. He's been really detrimental to the cause of biblical truth in some other areas. which is sad because for years and years he was a favorite of mine. I mean, he was, you know, I didn't agree with everything he had to say, but his passion in preaching is like bar none, a very gifted communicator from the pulpit. And he's had a lot of really good takes and he's been generally biblically conservative until like he lost his mind not too many years ago. However, he's been really good of late on this particular question. And he was asked, it was like a pastor's Q and A kind of thing. And he said, look, if you alter your body, if you're a woman and you remove your breasts, or if you're a male and you remove your nether regions, you're just, in the first case, you're a woman without breasts. In the other case, you're a man without male genitalia, but at the cellular level, every cell in your body, if you're a man, is still male. No matter how many hormones you take, no matter how many surgeries you have, no matter how many counseling sessions you have to come to grips with what you feel like you are, even if the whole world affirms you as something other than your maleness or your femaleness, your very DNA is pervasively, through and through, If you're a man, male, and if you're a woman, female. There's no getting around that. And John Piper was really, almost surprising to me at this stage, was really good on that answer. So credit where it's due. Why don't I just do eight, I guess? So nine. We're picking up with nine of the Nashville Statement. We affirm that sin distorts sexual desires by directing them away from the marriage covenant and toward sexual immorality, a distortion that includes both heterosexual and homosexual immorality. We deny that an enduring pattern of desire for sexual immorality justifies sexually immoral. behavior. So basically, sex outside of marriage is always bad, and one's feelings do not excuse sinful behavior. That's kind of in a nutshell what Article 9 is saying. There's nothing profound there. However, just because it's not profound doesn't mean people want to ignore it. We live in a culture, well you know what, I'm not even sure this is true actually, so as a bit of a rabbit trail for just a half a second, well it'll be more than half a second, but maybe a half a minute, hookup culture seems like it's dying. Have you been paying attention, Stephen? There's been these stories in the news about young men aren't having sex anymore. And this is a problem. I mean, it could be a problem for the species if men stop having sex. We're not going to have pregnant women having babies. They shouldn't be having sex out of wedlock. And so that's what the stories are focusing on, how the men aren't sleeping around anymore. That's a problem. But it is a problem in this sense. The men don't have a libido like they used to. What's going on with that? I think they've been robbed of their testosterone in a large measure, right? They're playing video games, and they don't have purpose in life, and they don't feel the dominion mandate, and so they don't feel like men, and after a while it has a negative effect, and you don't act like men. So I was about to say, you know, we have this hookup culture that we try to make excuses for ourselves when we sleep around. I don't know if that's as pervasive as it once was. That's weird. Anyway, end of rabbit trail. Anything you wanted to say about the rabbit trail before I either move on or you have what you have to say about Article 9? Well, just that there's also I think that lower testosterone levels also has to do with probably environment, our food, and also some of the pharmaceuticals that are being taken and ingested in large quantities. It seems like Our generation is looking for anything to be able to help wake up, help to go to sleep, help to be pain-free, help to be not hurting, blood pressure. I mean, you know, if there's an ailment, take a pill for it. And so maybe there's a possibility that all these things all strung together might have something to do with that as well. Yeah, all of those things are so true. Those are practical matters that, you know, I don't want to just gloss over those. Eat a healthier diet. Get some exercise. Men today are not as strong as men a couple of generations ago. Not physically as strong. because we're not working the farm anymore kind of thing, we're not exercising those muscles and that sort of thing. You know there's a, sometimes you hear this as a joke, a bunch of 20 and 30 somethings are trying to get something done and they can't quite lift it or they can't handle it, they don't have the strength to do it. And then their dad or granddad who's like 50, 60, 70 years old comes along and is able to do it and they jokingly refer to that as old man strength. You ever hear that? He's got old man strength. We get weaker as we get older. Once we hit our peak, generally speaking, I'm not as strong when I was 50 as I was at the age of 30. And yet, the 50 or 70-year-old is stronger than today's 30. Why is that? Because today's 30-year-olds are more passive in their activities. Even if you weren't working on the phone, when I was in my 20s and 30s, I was playing pickup basketball games all the time. touch or sometimes push and tackle football games with the guys. I was active. I was out. So I was healthier. I was stronger. It's not just muscle size or muscle strength. It's like your neuro net. you know, is stronger. You know, because your coordination is better. You make more efficient use of your body. Your whole body works together better when it's exercised properly. And so there's the residual effects of that for the older generation that might still be there. The younger generation, maybe in large measure, hasn't had that anymore. There are exceptions to the rule. Trust me, I know there are men who are 30 years old that are incredibly strong. I get it. I'm just talking in broad brush strokes generationally. Anyway, too many rabbit trails today. Let's get back on task. April. Hello. And we're not even in April. It's May. Article is what I meant. Article 10. We affirm that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness. We deny that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree. So there's right and wrong. Pick the right side. Pick one and make sure it's the right side. It's a more black and white issue than our culture wants to make us think. And it seems to be one of the bigger problems and the bigger denominations like Methodists. That church is completely divided down the middle and you've got the conservative side that says, you know, we want to stay to our historical biblical traditions, and then we have the other side that is taking an emotional pull from what we feel, our emotions, that this is fair. And they basically remove God out of the equation, and they become as God, because they rewrite His scriptures and make Him instead of a he, they make Him a she. So not only do they affirm with one another they expect Christianity, conservative historical Christianity, to do the same and affirm. And isn't it interesting that with such confusion that they're looking for affirmation constantly so that they feel comfortable emotionally. And that's a problem. And probably in my generation growing up in the 60s and 70s, It was the homosexuality and stuff was in the closet because if you came out there was even in our culture it was it was something that they felt like they had to be in the closet but now they're wanting to push us into the closet because we're not affirming. And too many are willing to stay in the closet. Too many conservative Christians they don't want to ruffle feathers they want to put themselves out there and they closet themselves. And we wonder why we have the problems we have. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting you talk about the Methodist Church being split down the middle, and it's interesting to me that there are exceptions to all these rules. However, you could geographically draw that split down the middle as the Atlantic Ocean, because the most conservative part of the Methodist Church is in Africa, and the most liberal part of the Methodist Church is in the United States. It's interesting how there's a continental divide there. So you talk to a Maryland Methodist and mention how men can be women, women can be men, and they might at some level be willing to agree with you. You say that same thing to a Methodist in Africa, and they're going to look at you funny like, Article 11. We affirm our duty to speak the truth in love at all times, including when we speak to our to or speak to or about one another as male or female. We deny any obligation to speak in such ways that dishonor God's design of his image bearers as male and female." So basically, I think this is saying using preferred pronouns is unloving. That's kind of what that's getting to, right? Yeah. And that's countercultural too right now. Like, why can't you just love them, accept them for who they are, You know, it's what was popular 20 years ago. You don't hear the phrase quite as much. You still hear it, but it was really popular 20 years ago. What's true for you is what's true for you. What's true for me is what's true for me. Like, you have your truth, I have my truth. You know, who's to say? The problem is God says. And God is the truth. Right? Jesus comes and says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. God is the truth. So it doesn't matter what I think the truth is. There is truth. That's debated by a lot of people, too, that there's an idea of an absolute truth. But as Christians, at the very least, we should be saying there is absolute truth. And if somebody's a male who wants to be identified as, like, he, she, or they, them pronouns, that's denying the truth. And if you participate in a lie with somebody, that's, from a biblical perspective, that's not Interesting. I heard Ben Shapiro was doing a stand-up, made a statement about this very issue. And a student got up and took the mic and said about affirming the different pronouns and ideology and what you are. And he just said, by the way, how old are you? And the student said, well, what does it matter my age? And he says, well, I'm going to say you're 60. You're 60. She goes, I'm not 60. He goes, yes, you are. I'm going to affirm that you're 60. And all of a sudden you heard this ooh in the audience because all of a sudden this young lady was caught in a moment to say there was an untruth being stated and she said, this is not a reality in my life. I'm not 60 years old. I'm only 30 years old. or 20 years old, excuse me, and that she was caught in this dilemma, but she didn't see it because of the blindness of running in and trying to affirm because this is what's being demanded of people, expected of people, that all of a sudden it kind of clarified the situation and the argument was actually stated. And so Ben made it pretty clear that, you know, truth is truth and affirming non-truth is not truth. But nobody consistently lives that out. I mean, if you're going to cross the street and there's a big semi-tractor trailer doing 90 miles an hour, and you're going to say, well, I choose to believe, I choose to affirm that I'm impervious to semi-tractor trailer trucks doing 80 miles an hour, 90 miles an hour. I'm going to step out in front of it, and I'm going to be fine. Nobody lives that way. Everybody understand? There's an absolute truth. If I step out in front of that truck, I'm going to get squashed like a bug. Nobody can consistently live it out. And yet, as a society, we're trying. We're trying our darndest to live this insane, nutty world. Well, unfortunately, people that might be high on LSD might be able to do that very thing once. But isn't it interesting that that crowd is trying to pressure believers into the LSD, mind altered consciousness of affirming something, but it's not, we're not taking LSD, but they're wanting us to actually affirm that something is just not that reality. And not to get too far afield, but we live in the age, we talked about this I think on a recent show too, so I won't say too much about it other than to once again say we live in the age of the fake. You know, everything's artificial flavoring, artificial coloring, everything's super processed and enriched and whatever. And you know, all of our food, my wife, one of her favorite phrases when somebody's eating a bunch of junk, she'll say, there's no food in your food. Everything's fake. But don't get me started. Article 12. We affirm that the grace of God in Christ gives both merciful pardon and transforming power, and that this pardon and power enable a follower of Jesus to put to death sinful desires and to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. We deny that the grace of God in Christ is insufficient to forgive all sexual sins and to give power for holiness to every believer who feels drawn into sexual sin. So repentance and freedom from sin is possible by the power of God. This is controversial because people are saying that you shouldn't try to help somebody out of certain kinds of sinful behaviors or sinful understandings of their self-identity. uh... in fact i think it's not illegal in california in uh... canada i think i think so i think it's illegal that all conversion therapy or whatever but as a pastor if you try to counsel somebody say no i don't think you're this but you're not let me help you see the biblical truth of it you go to jail in canada for that it could never happen here until it happens here everything you want to add article twelve i just think that there is a uh... pressure that's coming upon biblical thinking and it's going to become more and more an issue for you to stay to the faith and be able to say what the truth is in this context of this conversation. If you're not already in the game you're not developing your skills and by the time you try to exercise you're going to reach into your bag of tricks and it'll be empty. You've got to enter the game now because the heat's already been turned up pretty fast. If you're not keeping pace, when the heat gets to the point where it's completely intolerable and you've got to be able to meet the moment, You can't just turn on a light switch. You've got to exercise your faith. You've got to work it out with fear and trembling. You've got to put yourself in situations where you can be iron sharpening iron so that when you're challenged in a moment, you're more equipped. Now, it doesn't say that God can't help you overcome your weaknesses in spite of yourself, but you can trust God in these things, but don't test God in these things. Get in the game now. Article 13. I don't think we're going to finish all 14. I doubt we're going to get two done in the remaining time. But I think we might be able to finish Article 13 at least. We affirm that the grace of God in Christ enables sinners to forsake transgender self-conceptions and by divine forbearance to accept the God-ordained link between one's biological sex and one's self-conception as male or female. We deny that the grace of God in Christ sanctions self-conceptions that are at odds with God's revealed will. So basically, identifying as homosexual, identifying as trans, whatever, is sinful. It's a little bit redundant with what we've said. Do you have anything you wanted to add? It's just missing the mark. I mean, you're, you're basically saying that you're telling God and man that you're not what God made you. You're claiming something different. And, um, you know, that's, that's something that, you know, if that's not corrected or you're not being honest with yourself and you're not being honest with all those that affirm you. So you're basically living a lie. And it's hilarious because people will claim, this generation claims that they want to have authentic experience. And there's nothing authentic about living a lie. They're at odds with their own self-commitments. Well, maybe we have time to do Article 14. Let's see. We affirm that Jesus Christ has come into the world to save sinners, and that through Christ's death and resurrection, forgiveness of sins and eternal life are available to every person who repents of sin and trusts in Christ alone as Savior, Lord, and supreme treasure. We deny that the Lord's arm is too short to save, or that any sinner is beyond his reach. So Jesus came to heal the sick, restore the reprobate. No one is too far gone for God to rescue. I want to say hallelujah, amen to that. What can be said to that from the Lord Jesus? And so I think one of the important parts of that though is don't hear condemnation in what's been said on today's episode and last week's episode. There's hope. Right? As pastors, as elders in Christ's church, we want people to experience forgiveness, to experience the fruit and blessing that comes from repentance, that you don't have to live the lie. Now, you might think, oh, I'm totally fine living the lie. Well, you're not as fine as you think you are, is what the Bible would say. And we're suggesting that you check that out. And it's not out of a place of hatred or bigotry or anything like that. It's about concern to have care for those who aren't in alignment with what God has revealed the truth to be. And if we're right, even if we're not right, if we are completely persuaded that we're right, we are not demonstrating a loving attitude towards you to say something other. We are completely persuaded that God's word is right. And out of love, we're sharing that understanding with the world, whether they like it or not. You know, it hurts me more than it hurts you. How many times you hear that as a kid? It's going to hurt me more than it hurts you. Anyway, Stephen Yerger, thank you so much. I'm Troy Skinner. We're totally wrapping up out of time here. This is the Faith Debate on News Radio 930 WFMV. Check us out online at HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. Until next week, God bless. I lost a little bit of track of the time there. I thought I had like 15 more seconds than I did. Whoa, I'm completely out of time. Oh yeah, you ran that up pretty quick. Oops. Yikesters, where did that come from? Oh, that's the one I want. Here we go. What do you know about a guy named C.J. Mahaney? Probably more than most, but not anywhere near as much as others. But I certainly know who he is and I know some of his story. Why do you ask? He's one of the signers on all his documents. Yeah, CJ, do you know who he is? I was in his church for 13 years. Oh, then you know him better than I do. But yeah, he's a mixed bag. There's a lot of really good things, I think, to be said about him, but boy, there's some really not-so-good things, too. I'll just say that in our weaknesses, there are six things that the Lord hates. Seven are an abomination. A proud look, a lying tongue, those that shed innocent blood. Let's see if I can paraphrase any of the rest of them. And then it goes on to say the seventh is an abomination, is those that sow discord amongst the brethren. And it's, there's quite a history and there's a back story that is been trying to kept under wraps, but it just seems like Things have allowed and that darn internet just you can't keep stuff switched down And it's sad because Certain people and this is what's very I'm very aware of this that you know be not a novice like it says I think in Timothy about giving somebody too much authority. Because if they're a novice, they can be tricked by the enemy and make a lot of very damaging and hurtful mistakes. And I think that's what happened to him. He was put into very big leadership in limelight very, very early on. And when I see the definition of an elder, I see somebody who's been seasoned in life, somebody who's probably went through life and raised their children to adulthood. and might even be a grandparent, to be able to speak on the seasons of life in a way that are knowledgeable in the scriptures, husband of one wife, their children are ruled well, and it's not talking about toddlers. And I think that when we came in out of the Jesus movement, there was people that were just so hungry and so thirsty and they just wanted to hear the word of God. And if anybody had any type of a gift of teaching or preaching, they were put up and then, you know, accelerated. So you're in a Saturn V rocket and you're being propelled into the atmosphere. This might actually relate to some of the things we're going to talk about. Yeah, but I don't want to go specifically about it. Not CJ necessarily, but some of the thematic things, it sounds like we're getting into that. So maybe we should. Yeah, that's kind of why I kind of weave that, because out of the Jesus movement, I'm praying for Asbury and all around type of that they will be planted in solid churches. This is the show. Let's let's jump in because this is the topic. Yeah. So yeah, we don't have to mention a particular name. No, no, no. I don't want to get sued. Of a now disgraced. Fallen from grace. Sovereign grace fallen from grace. Yeah. Yeah. This is the Faith Debate on News Radio 930 WFMD on the FM at HD2 99.9 FM and online at WFMD.com. You can take us with you wherever you go live stream or you can listen later on the podcast. Speaking of podcast, you can connect with all sorts of podcasts related to this show, other teachings and sermons that I'm involved with at my church. You can get there by going to HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. You can connect with all the social media. You can connect with my Odyssey account and see videos and even audio podcasts, even though it's a video platform. Sermon audio, all of our stuff is getting posted there slowly over time. There's a lot of stuff to post. There's probably in the ballpark of, I don't know, 500 podcasts posted there, but there's more to come. But anyway, you can get to all of that sort of stuff at HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. I'm Troy Skinner, joined this week again by one of the elders at the Shabbat gathering in the Gettysburg area of Adams County, just north of Frederick County, in case you're geographically challenged and don't know where that is. We've spent the last several weeks, well let me back up, we talked for goodness, eight or ten shows probably, mostly about the Chicago Statements on inerrancy, hermeneutics, and biblical application. We didn't finish our total look on biblical application, and my anticipation is that probably the next episode we'll swing back in that direction and wrap up our look at the Chicago Statement on application. Just as a programming note for you, The last few shows we were talking about the Danvers Statement and the Nashville Statement. These are church organization types of things that were put together over the last generation or so, talking about issues of sex, sexuality, sexual role, sexual identity, sexual behavior, those sorts of things. We pretty much finished all of that up last week and so now this week we're going to shift gears and be a little bit more in the moment and speak to things that are going on around us in the church culture. In recent months there's been a lot of hope for a possible sign of broad revival for the church. And so some people point to things like over the last few years there's been the Chosen TV series has come out and it's been very successful. I've got some issues with the Chosen but you know it's not all bad. And then more recently this year there was what was called the Asbury Revival at a college-slash-seminary campus area. And then on the heels of that, there was a movie that came out this year that did surprisingly well, at least, well, surprising to those who are naysayers about faith-based movies doing well, called Jesus Revolution. And there are other faith-based kinds of movies that are out. Nefarious is a Christian horror film, believe it or not. Yeah, believe it or not. So, and other interesting things in the culture. They say, hey, look, there's an awakening happening here. And I thought we should talk to the moment. And I had a chance to talk with Steven Yerger, you know, before the show about some of these things. And he's got some interesting insights and some personal experience on some of the matters that are related to this sort of issue. I'm going to open the floor to you to see what kinds of things you have to say about what happened at Asbury, your thoughts about the historical moment that is represented by the Jesus Revolution movie, and how the two possibly are even interconnected, because I think there is a bit of a connection of how we can think about what happened back in the 70s and what maybe is or isn't happening here in the 2020s. So, the floor is yours for now. What do you have to say? Well, I came to the Lord in 1975, which is probably four years to the tail end of the Jesus movement from 68 to 72, I think. I mean, I'm just kind of grabbing here. what the years are, but I grew up an hour away from, you know, Chuck Smith's church, and that, the Jesus movement, you know, went all across the country, and even they mentioned in the movie Jesus Revolution that the Ashbery had a revival there and it was connected to part of that movement and I know some local pastors here in the area that were very much influenced by the movement in the early 70s, 72 time frame and you know the the Word of God was just like incredible. It was free people were like, you know, how do we respond to this? How do we, how do we just, you know, forsake all and follow Him just with all zeal and reality? And, you know, significant different men of God that came out of that movement. Number one is Keith Green. You know, he came out of that movement and what a ministry he had. Keith Green might not be known to everybody. Keith Green was a, he died far too young. I think he was only like in his late twenties when he died in an accident of some sort, I believe. Aircraft accident. And he was already becoming very popular. He's still kind of what seems to me in the early stages of what was going to be a fantastically successful long career in Christian music. And he's still popular among people like the older Christian music to this day. You'll hear Keith Green's name come up rather frequently. But if you're outside of those circles, the name means nothing to you. And to be honest, I don't know by today's standards of taste that his music holds up all that well. It sounds a little bit dated. But if you like that old school sound, like some people prefer country music from the 60s and 70s more than they like the country music of today. Some people like that old folk kind of sound in pop music that was popular in the 70s more than they like today's pop sound. So I wasn't being disparaging, but now that we've mentioned his name, I could see some people going online and trying to find videos or podcasts that have his music and be like, this guy was popular? Consider the time frame and appreciate it for the moment when the music came out. And he was incredibly talented. and theologically sound. Yes. I was going to say that he challenged people in their Christianity, whether if there was hypocrisy or standing back, being asleep and not really understanding what the mandate of the gospel to preach to the whole world. So he was a compelling force that really challenged people to not just sit back and sit in the church pews for two hours and worship and then go watch football. go out to eat or whatever. Not that any of those things are bad in themselves, but he was kind of like a John the Baptist. And, you know, prepare you the way of the Lord. So this movement is an incredible movement and there was significant ministries and men of God that have come out of the movement and then we see through time how things were tested. And some ministries that did really well and some ministries kind of went by the wayside. There's different individuals that kind of came from the initial Jesus movement, then the Vineyard movement was birthed, and you have John Wimber, and you know, Paul Cain, and you got, you know, different, Mike Bickle, you got different individuals that came up and through these different ministries, and yet, there was a kind of, through the testing of time, some of these ministries started kind of missing the mark in certain areas. Maybe not the ministry as a whole, but the men of God themselves, they were starting to see some compromise or some kind of going off in ways that, you know, what was the original message all about? And in the Jesus Revolution movie, there's a scene where Lonnie Frisbee, is one of the characters in the movie, which is played by the actor that plays Jesus in The Chosen. His name escapes me, God forgive me. His last name is Romy. Romy. I can't think of his first name for some reason. Right. But, you know, he plays very well the character in who he's representing. And there's a portion in the movie where There's a difference of opinion or a difference in philosophy that's starting to develop between Chuck Smith, who a lot of this is about, and Greg Lurie, because it's really their story. Okay, it's from their perspective. Jonathan Rumi, by the way. Jonathan is his first name. And you see where a young man, and he's being elevated in an incredible way. And this is why it's important to have men in your life, to have ministries or accountability or checks and balances kind of thing, so that yes, you have a gift. Yes, you have the ability to go in and be able to operate in a particular gift. But there's also you need the seasoning of leadership and the iron sharpening an iron so that there's a balance so that if something is kind of not doctrinally correct or thematically correct, there's men that will help adjust and encourage and move you on forward so that you can be all that you need to be so that number one, the name of God is glorified. His name is in his character are consistently demonstrated as accurate as the Bible defines it. And it's important that, you know, and I know I'm getting off the tinge here a little bit, but, you know, the aspect of not being put in leadership too quickly, in the limelight too quickly, to be tested and proven. And through my life's experience, When I see like an elder or somebody, I see somebody that through time, it's not because you were appointed, because you had a particular gift or a gift, a particular way of being able to motivate people and captivate an audience. But you also have to have the seasons of life, like somebody that would be, that have had their children, they've had their even in grandchildren. And as an elder, you would have more of the season of life to be able to speak from the wisdom of life and what you've gone through, coupled with the direction and the guidance of the scriptures that give a wholesome, rounded effort to be able to help the young coming up and the young people to be able to have a good sense of direction in the way they should go. Yeah, my take, and we're in the ballpark of the same generation, but you're a little bit older than I am, so you're going to have a healthier view on that moment in history than I do, but I remember it. I was around, I was going to church at that time. Maranatha singers and Maranatha ministries came out of that whole late 80s, early 90s, and it was indirected from the Jesus movement. So I have a more limited personal experience with it, and so I can mostly look at it through the rear view mirror from, like, almost as a historical view. Not that much different than if I was examining something that took place in the 1930s. Like, I could learn about it, but I wasn't there. I have a little more of a leg up because I was there in the 70s, but not in a way that I could fully process everything that was going on the way that I would today, for example. But my sense of it is a bit of a mixed bag. the whole movement because of what you're talking about. I think there were elements within the Jesus movement that those who weren't careful, maybe they weren't prepared to navigate the challenges of ministry, weren't mature enough in the faith perhaps or whatever, They were set up perhaps to fail, maybe, I don't know, but there were certain elements that seemed to be given over to a form of syncretism, where the church tries to be like the culture. Because if you think about what was going on in that moment, we're talking about the Woodstock era. We're talking about psychedelics and all those sorts of things in the late 60s, or very prominent into the early 70s, and the folk music move, and all these sorts of things. And people were chasing experience, and the rock and roll music wasn't quite filling the void anymore, and the LSD acid drops weren't filling the void anymore, and all of the wild, free, orgiatic sex wasn't enough anymore, and they wanted a new experience, and there were certain elements within that movement that were like, oh, we'll give you an experience, and it became more about the emotionalism and the experience and the spectacular, and a little bit less in certain circles about the discipleship. I think the elements that were good have been good. We're glorifying Christ's name. We're proclaiming the gospel. Those who got plugged into good faithful Bible churches were discipled. And then there were other elements that weren't so good. I think that we, here we are all these years later, like 50 years later, I think we're living with the echoes of both of that. because I think we still see it today. We've got some churches that either sprang from that movement or were inspired by that movement, one or the other, that are really solid for all the right reasons, and others that aren't quite so solid. because of all the kinds of wrong reasons and i'm bringing all that up as a as a setup because i think my take of uh... the uh... and i'm gonna call the so-called revival explain in a minute uh... with with asbury that that uh... is asbury ashbury i don't know for sure as and i think i think it's asparagus asparagus i believe uh... but i i think that doesn't matter but everybody i think you know that we're not going to do this Is that a revival or is it a good thing? And there's been mixed. There's been some people have been very critical. Like, really, if you pay attention to online, I mean, really critical. And there's other people that are just hog wild in support of it. It's the best thing ever. And I think it's probably, I'm not going to say it's somewhere in the middle. I think it's both. Kind of like the Jesus movement from the 1970s. It's a mixed bag. And I think there's good things that happened at that college and seminary campus. And I think there are some things that weren't the best things, but could God, well, could. Is God moving even in those situations? Absolutely, God moves in all situations. My concerns with the Asbury thing is I think that some of the people were there for the experience because, oh, there's this happening. It's historic. I want to be a part of it. It's at a school that has a reputation for trying to almost manufacture these sorts of things. They, on average, have a quote-unquote revival there like every 12 years over the last hundred years or so. It's something that they try to, and I'm not saying they manufactured this, but I think once the students, the first dozen and a half students that stay late after a chapel service to pray and fellowship longer, I think the administrators of the church, who are always looking for an opportunity to try to spur a quote-unquote revival, saw an opportunity and at that point started to invite people to come and it became a borderline, possible anyway, manufactured event as opposed to just a true move of the Spirit. It doesn't mean God couldn't still move in it. So I've got some suspicions, but you know what? There were some great testimonies shared, and there was a lot of praise and worship taking place, and there was authentic prayer. I don't think that some of the teaching that was coming from the front was consistently biblical. But I think that was because there were people who maybe weren't as mature and maybe were put up front before they really should have been. Maybe in 10 years, they would say things differently and better than they did. I think we all have. Yeah. Because our environment as we grow in the Lord there's things that I believe when I first got saved because I was just like this sponge and that whatever book I read or whatever it happened had Jesus on it you know I'm like okay you know but over the years my position has changed my even my theology has been adjusted over the years on on things but what we have to be careful about and what I see is when Because the internet is the vastness and there's so many phones, there's so much recording, there's so much interviews and things that are going on, it's almost like a 360 view and what particular view from some person's particular phone and you're getting a interview, unless you're there in person to actually judge it or to not judge it in a negative way, but to test. To make a discernment. To make a discernment and test and see what is there. Now, I knew of a couple ministries that we know and trust and that their leadership is in a sound biblical way where they had representatives go and make observations about this particular event. And from what they could see and tell and discern in that limited amount of exposure, that it didn't seem like, I'm going to mention a couple of things that have happened in the church's past. Brownsville, I'm sorry, not Brownsville, excuse me, I'm missing, the Brownsville down in Texas, Texas, I'm saying again, the down in Florida, The revival that happened with the, gosh I'm at a loss for words right now, Todd Bentley, all that stuff. And then you got Toronto, the Toronto Blessing Movement. And there was a lot of... Was it Bradenton, maybe? I don't know. So in these two movements, there was a lot of the emotionalism, a lot of the manufacturing, a lot of attributing to the Holy Spirit, when really it was not. Almost the power of suggestion would allow people to go on, and it was very controversial. In the Asbury movement, or the move of God, or the touch, or whatever, was not that emotional from what I've seen or looked at. But I have to be very critical in the sense that I'm going off a second or third hand of somebody who tapes something and giving their commentary. So I think for us to judge and discern or be critical, it's gather your information and reliable sources and pray and say God what is authentic and what have you given and what is man-made and What is because you know the the movement that came out of the Jesus movement? I mean Katherine Kuhlman, okay I mean that was very emotional very out there and They were looking for the signs and wonders Sid Roth. He came out of the the Jesus movement And if you know anything about that particular ministry... Yeah, he has a TV show on cable systems called Supernatural. Supernatural, correct. And so, from a biblical standpoint, there's some real problems with what he actually attributes to the Holy Spirit and certain gifts and different things. So, we have to pray, and please forgive me for not being quite so accurate on the two statements there, but there are things that have been manufactured by by man and yet even in men. you can hear that there are people that have been touched, but at the same side, there's people that have been devastated and hurt by it. So we have to. Yeah. So it sounds like you and I are probably of like mind on this. Um, if somebody says, do you think it was good or do you think it was bad? And my answer is yes. I think there were some elements that weren't good, but those can be corrected and God can still work in and through those. But I think there were elements that were, that were excellent as well. And we should celebrate those and we should, and we should praise God for them and we should, be praying that these young people who had maybe mostly an experience, but because of that experience, are going to end up getting plugged into a Bible-believing church, and they will be discipled, and that experience will turn into a deeply rooted, authentic faith, and not just some fun thing that they did for a week or two on the college campus. and it's just something they can check off as another cool thing they did. That happens too often, and so I think there's a legitimate concern there. But does that mean that's going to be the story? Time will tell. But I mentioned before, I use the quote-unquote revival. And the reason for that, because I've had people ask me the very specific question, you know, Asperity, you think it's a revival? And I don't know that the Church is equipped to know how to answer that question because revival, like Trinity, is a word that is not in the Bible. Now, the Church has spent centuries clarifying what we mean by the Father, Son, Holy Spirit and what that identity is and isn't. We've got very careful language and we can articulate it and understanding that there is what we would call a Trinity or a Triune God or a Godhead kind of a thing is orthodox, solidly biblical teaching. Some people don't like using any words that are not in the Bible. Okay, fine, but we need to be able to communicate and articulate what the Bible is teaching, and so sometimes you come with a label that encapsulates an entire system for thought. So I'm fine using the Trinity, but revival doesn't have that advantage. We haven't had a bunch of historic church councils and a bunch of Danvers statements and Nashville statements on, these are the signs and symptoms of a true, authentic revival. We don't know how to define it. Is that a revival? I don't know because I don't know for even 100% sure that revival, as we sometimes think about it, is even a biblical category. Repentance is a category. A move among a group of people that have a heart to return to God. So is it a return to God? Is it a moment of group repentance? Those are categories we could have a conversation about. Revival, I don't even know how to define. Maybe you could help me. How should we define revival? Okay, part of it is the blind man said. All's I know is I was blind, and now I can see. There was a definite, authenticated, first-hand witness of a miracle that Jesus did, and there was absolute fruit behind that. And the man spoke truth in such a way that he even said, you know, when the Pharisees came, and they said, well, go ask my parents. No, I'm sorry, the parents said, go ask the son, you know, he's of age. And so it's, the point is, when you see biblical affirmation or biblical miracles. In these movements, we have to be really careful that we don't say miracle because that could mean different things to different people. And, you know, one of the things we're admonished as believers is to be very accurate as a true witness and not to embellish things to make it look more sensational because then comes the time when the people in the world will come and verify facts, verify the actual things that were said and find out that there might have been misrepresentation or dishonesty or whatever. And that'll be close to the last word. The one thing I want to say is if you're wondering if that was a revival or not, I have a better question for you. Where's the revival? Where's the evidence of the revival in your life? That's a much better question. Think about that as we wrap up the show. This is the Faith Debate. I want to once again thank my good friend Stephen Yerger with the Shabbat Gathering in Adams County. I'm Troy Skinner with the Household of Faith in Christ online at HouseholdofFaithinChrist.com. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back at this again with you about 160 Well, my brother, let me tell you, I'm going to give you an interpretation to what you spoke and said. That feels a lot more authentic than what you normally see going on, right? Yes. I'm going to shut this down. It looks like a couple of people might be actually watching. So hello. I'll interact with you later if you left a comment. All right. God bless.