There are things that we didn't cover, but let's open up to John, the Gospel of John chapter 18. In the 90, what, 94 lessons of the church history study that we've been going through, I think we've hit John chapter 18 before, if I recall. Let me back this up just in case. And the Lord has blessed me with a voice, at least. It might get a little gravely from time to time, but... Why? Oh, there it is. Oh, don't be sister, I'm sorry. All right. I trust that you're there. Amen. If you're not, say amen. Okay, brother, I'll wait for you. There we are, thank you, brother. Verse 28, then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover, 29. So Pilate went outside to them and said, what accusations do you bring against this man? Verse 30, they answered him, if this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you. Verse 31, Pilate said to them, take him yourselves and judge him by your own law. The Jews said to him, it is not lawful for us to put anyone to death. Verse 32, this was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die. And in fact, if you can make a parallel with what we looked at last week, socialist theology does just that. It puts Christ to death. It wants to put a death knell in anything that is the gospel because it elevates man and sets aside the absolute truth of God's word. which is really what the Jews are doing. They're taking truth himself that is truth embodied, truth from heaven above, come down to earth to save us by his grace, and takes that truth and wants to dismiss it. Thank you, Brother Tegan. Verse 33. We're in John chapter 12 looking at our preliminary for the study in, Yes, what did I say? I was close. Did I have the right book? The Gospel of John, chapter 18. I'm inching closer to where we're supposed to be. I said, Brother Buzz. 418 is when you last did this, so maybe that's why you got the 18 mixed up. In the Sunday school, I believe so, yes sir, 418. That was a couple months ago. Apparently I'm having trouble with my math, adding things up. Chapter 18, chapter 12, it's kind of the same place. Verse 33 says of John chapter 18, so Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews? Verse 34, Jesus answered, do you say this of your own accord or do others say it to you about me? Verse 35, Pilate answered, am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done? 36, Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from this world. the world. That's pretty key right there as we look at socialist theologies because socialist theologies, not only do they elevate man, but they elevate man for the purpose of man ushering in God's kingdom under a socialist, communist, communal, and perverted communal type of community. Verse 37, then Pilate said to him, so are you a king? Jesus answered, you say that I am a king? For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. And notice, this is the purpose that he came. He was delivered over by the Jews to Pontius Pilate, and his purpose is to go to the cross, and you cannot, separate the truth from the truth of Christ crucified. If you do, it is devilish, it is satanic. Jesus pronounced that to Peter in Matthew chapter 16, right after he made that famous confession. You're the Christ of the Son of the living God. Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed the Son to you, but my Father which is in heaven. And then from that time, and I've given you the keys of the kingdom and so forth, and we looked at that, that was actually the basis of looking at church history. Christ will build his church. Now, he says to Peter in Matthew 16, he says, Or he says to the disciples, now the Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of the scribes and the Pharisees, and they'll do with them what they want. And they'll beat him, and they'll crucify him, and they'll put him to death. And he'll rise again the third day. They didn't hear the rising again. And remember what Peter did? Far be it from you, Lord, that this should ever happen to you. And Jesus gave to him the same rebuke he gave to Satan, In Matthew chapter four, get behind me, Satan, for you savor not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men. To deny the cross is devilish. It's the most satanic thing that one can do. And so socialist theologies, which deny the cross, deny personal salvation and elevate communal community, social community above the gospel, So, verse 38, Pilate said to him, what is truth? And I love that even the Lord uses unbelievers to point us to the question, what is truth? And how wrong it is, because unbelievers are looking for the what of truth when we know from the scriptures, it's not the what of truth, it is the who of truth. Who is truth? Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. From John 14, not John 12, John 14, verse six. 14, yeah, that's the one. After he had said this, verse 38 continues, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, I find no guilt in him. Verse 39, but you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews? Verse 40, they cried out again, not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. And that last verse right there speaks on this. And if you're not tracking because you missed, in a last week's lesson, if you're not tracking well, hopefully it'll kind of fill in for you as we cover an overview of what we looked at last week and then look at the five principle theologians that use socialists or have developed socialist theologies. He says, now Barabbas was a robber. And what socialism does, quote unquote socialist theologies does, by elevating the doctrine of man, equal to Christ or greater than Christ, because Christ is basically an example of giving to the poor, et cetera, that through socialism, that the oppressed can be raised up, and in fact, raised up above Christ, because Barabbas, whose name means in Aramaic, son of the father, a robber, and in the Greek it uses a word that means an insurrectionist, a murderer, He not only robbed people of things, the Romans of things, because he's an insurrectionist, he robbed people of their lives. And so socialism attempts to take victims, like Barabbas, and elevate them above Christ, equal to or greater than Christ, in its essence, because it denies personal salvation. It denies the deity of Christ, moreover, and many aspects of that. So I'll kind of put this right here. My voice is getting better, so apparently there's less pollen, and I think that's what was causing my voice the last couple weeks to really be strained. Since we've had the rain, it's put some of that pollen down. And I do have a voice, but I'll stand up here so that I can. put less pressure on my diaphragm, I guess, and voluminate. As the Holy Spirit illuminates, I will voluminate my voice. So, as you can see, we're in lesson, any questions so far? Or any comments from last week? which would be better if I probably just go over it, because about half of you weren't here last week, or a third of you weren't here last week. So what we're looking at now in Lesson 94 of Church History, Socialist theology continued in this postmodern age. You know, Rosie the Riveter is there because really there was a change from the early 1900s when modernism, especially in America and in Europe, liberalized the scriptures. This is no longer, for many, absolute authority. It is an authority, not the authority. But absolute truth went out the window. in approximately the 1940s, that now as America enters World War II, and also it's going that way in Germany, women enter into places of leadership and men are off to fight the war. And so when they come back, those roles hadn't changed. And so in order to make the Bible fit with that narrative, we have to remove absolute truth and make it relative. Well, you know, they're doing a pretty good job. Men resting upon their laurels, they relinquish their places of leadership so that as Christ and his beloved bride reflect the truth of the gospel, so that the husband is no longer the head of the family. the bridegroom to the bride, reflecting that onto our children and so forth and so on, which brings us to the place where we are today, to the present, which I believe will, as you can see in background of the last 800 years, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, modernism, post-modernism, And what I believe will be the very last social network that's going on, I think it's going to be neo-Gnosticism. That which reared up its head in the first century, the Gnostic heresies that play on their four strengths are the four lies that Satan revealed in the garden in Genesis chapter 3. He says, you know, you shall not die. Gnosticism promises everlasting life. That God knows in the day that you eat thereof, you shall be like him. So Gnosticism promises deity. That your eyes will be open. Gnosticism promises illumination. And you shall know the difference between good and evil. It promises secret knowledge, apart from God. So those four lies are what Gnosticism is. And if you remove absolute truth, which postmodernism does, Gnosticism will be most prevalent in the end of the end times, which we've been in for the last, we've been in the last days for 2,000 years. So that's where it's leading to. Postmodernism sets the stage for that. But as we covered the conservative theologies, we looked at socialist theologies because it hinges right upon, it comes right on the cusp of what we looked at in the modernist period because some of our history, the man who wrote In His Steps, The term, what would Jesus do, comes from Charles Sheldon, who was a Congregationalist pastor in the turn of the century, and he wrote that very popular book, but he was a socialist. He says, capitalism isn't working, it's greedy. And so, men like himself and a man named, I'm trying to remember, Walter Rauschenbusch, who was born in 1861, died in 1918. He was an American Baptist pastor who's called the father of the social gospel. He believed that communism would be the form of government that is most suitable to Christianity. And he influenced men like Martin Luther King, Jr. And the late the late Desmond Tutu of Africa, who's an Anglican minister, who just passed away this last December, 2021. Carl Barth, I mentioned last week, because Carl Barth, who was born in 1886, died in 1968, he was very influential in the men that I'm gonna mention next, the five men at the last part of your outline there, who developed social theologies. Though he was not a universalist, His conclusions, especially from his commentary on Romans, would have led people to universalism, and when he was confronted with it, he didn't deny it. He didn't say that he believed in universalism. And for you that don't know, like young people that don't know what universalism is, it's a belief that at the end, even after there's a final judgment, some people believe there'll be a final judgment, but everyone eventually will be saved. that there will be no eternal condemnation. That's what universalism is. It believes that universally, all will be saved. And it's just a doctrine that refutes the scriptures, and it has no sense of logic in it, because ultimately, by their logic, and I can understand how they draw their conclusions, they start off with a faulty premise, and if they carried it out to its ultimate end, that Satan can be saved as well. That's, and all the fallen angels, which the scriptures actually deny that they have salvation at all. A guy that we looked at with the theology of hope last week was a man named Jurgen Moltmann. He was the author of the Theology of Hope, which basically was the catalyst for socialist theologies, for liberation theology in particular. He was a German theologian that was born in 1926 and is still alive today, lecturing I would estimate, I didn't do an exact count, but lecturing in approximately 60%, that's my estimate, 60% of seminaries get this guy to speak, Jurgen Moltmann, get him to speak in their systematic theology classes. And this guy denied the, Moltmann denied the deity of Christ. He denied the absolute nature and character of God. He says God is part of a process of time and is not absolute. Future is the essential nature of God. God's figuring these things out as he goes along. That doesn't stimulate a lot of faith in me. to have a God that, well, he's gotta figure it out just as we do as we go along, which the Bible absolutely denies. The resurrection of Christ for him as an historical event is unimportant. Jorgen Moltmann, and he is lecturing in Ivy League seminaries today, Harvard, Princeton, All over. Christ's resurrection is only important eschatologically and gives hope because of a future resurrection. And I will add, for man. A future resurrection for man. That's why it becomes important, but that's only at the end. Man shares in the example of Christ's cross by accepting life's challenges as future moments breaking into the present because he was influenced, Moltmann was influenced by Ernst Bloch, who was a Marxist. He was also influenced by Karl Heinrich Marx, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, along with a man named Friedrich Engel. Marx was born in 1818, died in 1883, and being the co-author of the Communist Manifesto. And Moltmann was also influenced by George Wilhelm Nietzsche. Friedrich Hegel, born in 1770, died in 1831, a German philosopher who was born in Stuttgart. And he presented his philosophy as being logic, nature, and spirit. And Moltmann used this because one of the key things that he used is the from Hegel, which all the liberation theologians use, is the process of thesis to, is the past, chaos, thesis, this is what we have, to antithesis, future, which is opposite of chaos, which should be order, and then in the middle of it is the present, which is synthesis, taking from the past and converting it socially and communistically as well as you can to take the oppressed poor and build them up to be the antithesis or the future of order so that all is equal under God. sounds logically if you eliminate the things like the deity of Christ, the substitutionary atonement, the absolute nature and character of God. Yeah, you could make sense of this, and it seems like it would work. But if you use the scriptures and see the absolute nature of God, which we did before the New Testament church history study. We took some time and looked at the, and in fact, not just the attributes of God, we looked at certain attributes that aren't typically in your systematic theologies, that God is a consuming fire. That's one of them that we looked at, which presents judgment and also sanctification by his absolute nature. But the definition of liberation theology is this. One, a movement attempting to unite theology with socioeconomic concerns of the poor and oppressed people. And last week, we read John chapter 12. That's where we get that from. We read John chapter 12, verses one through eight, where the Lord Jesus, which was also recorded in Matthew 12, in Matthew 26, where the Lord Jesus is being anointed prior to his death. And he says in verse eight, the poor you have with you always, but you do not always have me. And so as we understand that being a key verse, communism that attempts to eradicate ignorance and abolish poverty and put away oppression, we should be doing those things, but we're not going to eliminate those things. The only thing that will eliminate that is the Lord Jesus Christ returning That's the only thing and and that's what Jesus is pointing to the truth that Individual salvation is necessary. She is anointed before my burial. This is not a waste extravagant giving unto Christ is never a waste and We should not leave those things undone, but we're not going to remove those things. They are there as opportunities for us to show that we have been changed, not to make those changes. Oh, now that we can make those changes, we don't need Christ. That's basically what socialist theology is about. A sub-point to the movement attempting to unite theology and socioeconomic concerns, While its roots were especially focused in Central and South America, a much broader scope has developed globally to include, oh no wonder, I was wondering, there we go. Put on some reading glasses and it makes those things a little easier to see. It includes black theology, feminist theology, Palestinian liberal theology, And there's a whole longer, much longer list of all these subsets, but they're all cased in liberal theology, liberation theology, not liberal theology, excuse me, liberation theology, setting the captives free. Again, another verse from John, and this one is from John chapter, oh, this was from John chapter 12 as well, where he says that Jesus says that you shall know the truth, or is that from John 8? John 8 or John 12, that you shall know the truth and the truth shall, then you're, if you, you know the truth, you're my disciples indeed, and if you know the truth, the truth shall set you free. But since the absolute truth of God is kind of variable, then apparently we, it's left up to us in liberation theology, quote unquote. Some have taken Moltmann's point of revolution. Moltmann says that one of the means for bringing about this hope is by revolution. But the liberal theologians after Moltmann's thesis, which basically came out from his book in The Theology of Hope, was in 1967. So after that, the people that jumped on liberation theology said that the only means, many of them said the only means for bringing about Christian socialism is by revolution. And this is why it's very popular in the communist countries, or excuse me, very popular in the Latin American countries, because they have been quite oppressed, and they have been quite oppressed because they are predominantly Roman Catholic, which will be the next lesson next week. We're going to actually look at Roman Catholic dogma and see a little bit of its progression. And actually, social theology makes sense under that kind of thing, but we don't believe in much of Catholic doctrine. They elevate Marianism, or they elevate Mary to be equal in fact, actually greater than the Lord Jesus Christ. She's a co-redemptrix in Catholic theology. It emphasizes most often political, rather than scriptural points of doctrine. Factors contributing to the rise of liberation theology is Immanuel Kant. Excuse me, Immanuel Kant, Clark Kent. Immanuel Kant, okay. He was born in 1724, died in 1804. We mentioned him during the Age of Reason, the lessons that we had on the Age of Reason, because Immanuel can't, if you remember, emphasize human reasoning above God. divine truth and divine revelation. He was a philosopher and he said that, you know, he discarded this basically and said that human reason and human logic trumps the divine revelation of the scriptures. And other men jumped upon that like Rene Descartes, I think therefore I am. He came after Immanuel Kant. Hegelian transformation of society is another one of the factors which I just mentioned before under George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. It's actually in that order, too, because their goal, socialist theologies have a goal. They have the thesis, the chaos, and the antithesis, the ideal. And then how we get there is the synthesis in between there, the present now, and how we work that together. Interestingly, we have an answer to socialist theology in today's message from 1 Chronicles chapter 19. I am going to give you the open secret to prayer today. the open secret to prayer. It's not everything about prayer, because prayer is so exhaustive. This whole book, if it's about Jesus, then it's also about prayer from Genesis to Revelation. Marxism is overcoming class distinctions and barriers. That's a very huge factor. Marxism, they use Marxism in overcoming class distinctions and barriers, which opposes the scriptures. Paul, we would say, is a mighty, a mighty, tool used of God in his hands as an instrument for advancing the gospel. But what did Paul call himself time and again in his letters in the New Testament? He said that, and what was that, brother? He said he was the basest of all men. Brother, I think you had something. Chief of sinners, he said he was the chief of sinners. And in the beginning of most of his letters, he called himself a doulos in Greek, a bondservant, in other words, a slave. And if you watch the progression of the apostle Paul, first he says, in 1 Corinthians 15, which is written a little bit earlier, of these three that I'm gonna present, first he calls himself, well, I'm not fit to be an apostle. Here I am, the Lord saved me by his grace. I'm the least of the apostles. Then he says, I'm the least of saints. A little bit later, I think that was in 1 Timothy. And then in 2 Timothy, he says, I'm the chief of sinners. He's heading downhill. So think about class distinctions. And throughout the scriptures, it speaks of kingdoms. the Christ kingdom, God's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. You're certainly gonna have classes there. And had they spent more time in class awake, they wouldn't have come up with a lot of these things in there. seminaries. Latin American oppression under heavy Roman Catholic presence and Vatican II, which we'll talk about next week, which is the Roman Catholic Council that met for three and a half years from 1962 to 1965. that was a big contributing factor. But the diverse points of view, and I just put them in birth order, that's only particular order. Jose Miguez Bonino, he was a Methodist professor of theology born in Buenos Aires. In 1924, he died in 2012. So he's an Argentinian Methodist, and he attended the University of Buenos Aires in 1943 to 1948. He moved to Bolivia as a pastor and he pastored in Bolivia. And then he went to the United States at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. And I did kind of mention that last week. If you remember back in our, when we were looking at conservative theologies just recently, Dietrich Bonhoeffer came up as, under radical theologies. And that's, again, that's where Dr. Paul ends in the Moody Handbook of Theology. He called it radical as well. He called it radical, that's why I call it radical. It was radical because there was a departure, and Bonhoeffer was actually a huge influence on many of these, if not all of these guys. But Bonhoeffer in 1927 went to Union Theological Seminary, if you remember when we covered him, covered a little bit about Bonhoeffer, that he said, quote, quote, there is no theology here. speaking of Union Theological Seminary, and that was in 1927. It hasn't gotten better. You know, you can check it out, go to Union Theological Seminary, and you'll see that a lot of the names that adorn Union Theological Seminary would not have qualified to be pastor here, I'll just say. And of all the pastors since this church started back when Sister Doris Kelly was just a little girl back in the 30s, every one of the pastors, including myself, would look at Union Theological Seminary and say, that is not a church. institution of higher learning that I would even want to get near thinking that if I got too close I might have to shake the dust off my feet because I don't want any of that even close to what I'm going to teach or preach. Jose Benino wrote a book called Liberation Theology in 1986 and he says this quote from his I had to get, actually this quote is translated into English from a book by Dean William Firm called Contemporary American Theologies. It was published in New York in 1981. Excuse me, I said that his Liberation Theology was 1986. I believe that was, I said it backwards because of my dyslexia, it's 1968. I looked at my notes backwards, sorry. But this was translated in 1981 by Dean William Firm. Either he translated or somebody else did in Contemporary American Theologies. Quote, class struggle is a fact of life and Christians are called to participate in the struggle by identifying with the oppressed, end quote. Okay, and John 18, verse 36, the kingdom is not of this world. Jesus sets us free to be slaves, interestingly. Jesus sets us free to be slaves to him. A slave in Christ's kingdom to the Lord Jesus Christ is a greater honor than to be anything else, to be anything else. The second guy, Jose Porfirio Miranda de la Parra, this guy's background, his name is mentioned. However, if you did a search on Wikipedia or anything and Googled him, you're not gonna find anything except in German or in Spanish. In fact, this guy is so notorious, they don't want anyone to know about him in English. So I've had to do some translating and some back research to find out about this guy. But he's one of the five pillars of liberation theology. Jose Porfirio Miranda de la Parra, born in 1924, died in 2001. He's an ex-Jesuit priest in Mexico. He wrote the book, Marx and the Bible, A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression in 1971. Dr. Paul Enns of the Moody Handbook of Theology says this of the work that it is, quote, a volatile book, end quote. A volatile book. In other words, you're young people, volatile. It's dangerously explosive. Don't get near. It's what we used to call an explosive ordnance disposal. You got two types of EOD techs, old and bold. So don't go near. The bold guys are the guys that are either gone and you have to, you know, raise a Coca-Cola to their memory, or they're the guys that go into the bar and go, I say, four beers, please. Missing a couple fingers. I knew some bold guys. They weren't all together there. Conclusions are, his conclusions are much the same as Moltmann. He points to Exodus as the model of liberation, as many liberation theologians do. Exodus, they're oppressed, they're in slavery, but God delivers them. But when it comes to the point where God delivers them so that they wander in the wilderness for 40 years, they never mention the wilderness, interestingly enough. They just mention, oh, he brings them out. So, and they viewed the central thesis of the Bible as social justice and the salvation of the poor. As I mentioned, John 12, verse eight emphasizes not on the, its emphasis is not on the poor, but on the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus himself preached in Matthew 5, verse three, in the Sermon on the Mount, which Brother Walt preached a message while I was on my staycation, with just that, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They would translate that as blessed are the poor in spirit for there is liberation on the way. That wouldn't go along with your message, Brother Walt, not at all. And neither would it go along. Juan Luis Segundo, born in 1925, died in 1996. He's also a Jesuit priest in Uruguay. And he wrote the book, The Liberation of Theology, which the title is pretty telling. Theology, which means the study of God. Well, if we get rid of God and his absolutes, then we can get rid of theology and we're liberated from it to do all our Marxist stuff. Here's a quote. from C. Peter Wagner, author of Latin American Theology, a quote concerning this book, The Liberation of Theology. That's where I had to get the quote, because I think his work was the only work I could get of his was in Spanish, and I didn't have enough time to do the translations. with my three years of high school Spanish and Google Translate. So I took from C. Peter Wagner, quote, there is no such thing as Christian theology or Christian interpretation of the gospel message in the absence of a prior political commitment. Only the latter makes the former possible at all. He says that this, What you and I believe about Christ must take a backseat, or in fact, it must be under the seat of the car while political systems drive it. The political system is what is over all. And the political system he's talking about is communism or Marxism. But, There are many objections to that. In Acts, Paul only invoked his rites as a Roman citizen as it furthered the gospel of Christ. He never invoked his right as a citizen, and we can, and we can exercise our rights, we can vote and so forth. And we covered that when we were in the book of Acts in the church history lesson. However, he never used it as something in order to gain him anything. He only did it for the advancement of the gospel. And Jesus speaks on that again in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6, verse 33. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. But you seek his kingdom first. And what is his kingdom? The exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Gustavo Gutierrez, born in 1928. He's the only one of the five that's still alive. He's a Dominican priest and a Peruvian philosopher. He wrote the book, A Theology of Liberation, History, Politics, and Salvation. He wrote it in 1971. It was translated into English in 1973, and then re-translated again with a... slightly different words, I guess, but still the same meat of it in 1988. and was called by some the Magna Carta of liberation theology. In the book it says this from the Liberation of Theology that was translated in 1973, quote, it is a theological reflection born of the experience of shared efforts to abolish the current unjust situation and to build a different society, freer and more Human, end quote. The reason why that's a problem is because the liberation theologians see that humanity is the height of existence and has to be in the place of exaltation. Everyone equal, but exalted. That's not what our Bible says. There's one that is exalted above all. The Lord Jesus Christ, Philippians chapter two, many other places. John 14, verse six, they have to change, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me. They would probably have to change it to read, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through Marxism. That's basically what, it boils down to. The hypocrisy is also not beyond liberation theology. In 1984, he attended a lecture in Cordoba, Argentina. It was a movement of priests of the world under the Catholic priests. And so he attends, but there was another priest that was there whose name was Geronimo Podesta. It's Geronimo but spelled with a J. So if it's in Spanish, it's Geronimo and Geronimo Podesta as a Catholic priest married an activist married an activist and and Gutierrez, because he was a married priest, refused to speak and lecture at this place unless that guy left. Now this guy, Gutierrez, denies the deity of Christ, denies the substitutionary atonement, denies the absolute nature and character of God. Yet this priest who's married, which seems to be okay with me because that's one of the things that Paul objected to, that they would deny marriage. which proclaims the gospel, he wouldn't preach, and so he got a scathing letter, Gutierrez, from Podesta's wife. Podesta left. He said, well, she said, how did the conference go? He said, I don't know, I was asked to leave. And she says, dear Gustavo, I am Clelia Luro, the partner of Geronimo Podesta, if you remember. You came to Cordoba for a movement of priests for the Third World Talk. Geronimo had been invited for the first time by Maramici. He went to Cordoba very happy, this having been the first time the priests invited him. Because he was somewhat ostracized for actually marrying. The next day, Geronimo came back home. I asked him what happened, and he answered, Gustavo didn't want to start if I was in the room. Without hiding any pain, I thought, liberation theology? What liberation did he offer? The clerical liberation of false values? And I pitied you. I know you also behave the same way towards Leonardo Boff. the best theologian the church has today. Last Saturday Francis called me and I reminded him of that incident and he replied that he remembered because I had already told him back when he was still our cardinal. Gustavo, if liberation theology leads us to judge other brothers, we would have to liberate ourselves from that theology." And she's right. Because that's what it will, you know, the hypocrisy will cause them to narrow into certain things concerning socialism and deny others blindly. Finally, James H. Cone. And I mentioned him last week, born in 1938, died in 2018. He's born in Fordyce, Arkansas and grew up in a African Methodist Episcopal church. You know, he's a black man. And growing up in Arkansas in the late 1930s, early 1940s, somewhat understandable why he would go into this because of the oppression. And he's the author of the book, Black Theology and Black Power, which was published in 1969. He graduated with a PhD in 1965 from Northwestern University, and his thesis was The Doctrine of Man According to the Theology of Karl Barth. but the doctrine of man, that was his thesis that he got the PhD in. And really within it contains the elevation of man. And so, and then in 1970, he wrote, A Black Theology of Liberation. And in that book, it says this, quote, the consistent theme in Israelite prophecy is Yahweh's concern for the lack of social, economic and political justice for those who are poor and unwanted in society. Yahweh, according to Hebrew prophecy, will not tolerate injustice against the poor. Though through his activity, the poor will be vindicated. Again, God revealed himself as the God of liberation for the oppressed." I remember this guy, up until his death, he was the professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary. And I don't have to go into that, because I already went into it at length. He left a huge legacy there. But based on his quote of the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, The objection here, were this the case, Moses should have been successful to liberate Israel through the murder of an Egyptian. Moreover, because of the hardness of their hearts, they would not believe Moses unless God's word, by God's word, miracles happened before their eyes and after being delivered, guess what? They still complained. They complain throughout. And then they refuse to go into the land of promise. It was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This theology is doomed from the very start. because their premise is not the glorification of God through the exaltation of Jesus Christ. It's the liberation of man. And ultimately, it's a lie from Satan to say that man is liberated not from the social economic norms. That's just a facade. It's liberated from God himself. If what they say is true, then basically what it boils down to, if you read the whole volume of just one of their theologies, but it's all of them are saying the same thing. If we can do it, you don't need God. And so therefore there is the lie from Satan right there, liberation theology, socialist theology. Is Christianity communal? Yes, in a sense it is. But is it capitalistic? Time to end. Let's pray. Our most blessed and gracious Father in God, in Jesus' name and for his sake, we thank you, Lord, for the blessed truths that you have given us. We may have some questions next week, and I pray that we'll have enough time to cover them, because we're gonna go in the Catholic dogma as well. We love you, Lord, and thank you for all you've given us, and pray that our worship of you is sweet, that it exalts the Lord Jesus Christ, and that you're glorified, Heavenly Father, this Father's Day, in Jesus' name, and for his sake, amen.