Pastor Joel Webben and A.D. Robles confront religious leaders like Russell Moore and Andrew T. Walker for misapplying scripture to justify vaccine mandates and church closures, citing Janine Small's admission regarding Pfizer's untested transmission claims. They debate whether repentance requires more than an apology, contrasting Old Testament case law with modern epidemiological uncertainty and the danger of serving two masters. Ultimately, the discussion demands that pastors own their theological errors, reject government deception, and prove they will not be duped again to regain lost trust. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to Theology Applied00:03:30
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All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webben with Right Response Ministries.
And I'm pleased to announce in this episode, my special guest is A.D. Robles.
He is joining us now for the 116th time.
That's not that high, but he's been on the show several times.
Because he's a friend, because he has courage, because he loves Jesus, he knows scripture, and he calls out just the absolute ridiculousness that we often find in Big Eva and with our politicians and our culture today.
So, what we're talking about in this episode is we're talking about the bombshell of the Pfizer vaccine.
We had a high up Pfizer vaccine executive come out and say, Well, we didn't even test.
Not at all.
We did not even test the vaccine's ability to stop transmission before rolling out to the general public, which means when Russell Moore said, Hey, you should love your neighbor by getting the vaccine, the vaccine was not tested at all in its ability to love your neighbor.
It was not tested in its ability to stop or even slow transmission of the virus to your neighbor, which means all the pastors and all the seminary presidents and all the theologians who came out, everybody.
Person professing the name of Christ who came out and bound the consciences of Christians saying, You should get the vaccine because Jesus commands you to love your neighbor, and that means getting vaccinated.
All those people need to repent, and that's what we're talking about.
Tune in now.
Wait, hold it.
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Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webman with Right Response Ministries, and I am pleased to have returning now for, I think, the seventy.
Third time.
We've got AD Robles with the Right Response Ministries Network.
No, I'm just kidding.
We're fight lap fees, but I feel like he's an honorary member of our ministry here.
AD, thanks for coming on the show, man.
You're welcome.
I'm glad to be here.
Pastor Joel Returns for Episode 7300:05:30
Cool.
So we actually got to see each other in person for just a brief minute.
And I got to talk to AD for five, maybe seven minutes.
But I got to talk to his son for a good, you know, two and a half hours.
No, I'm just kidding.
His son faked an asthma attack so that dad would have to go get an inhaler so he could buy more time to tell me about the zoo.
Remember that.
So, okay, so that's your oldest.
What's his name?
AJ Adam Jr.
Okay, cool.
Yeah.
He loves that's his favorite thing to talk about different features of animals and things like that.
That's his favorite thing.
He nailed it.
So, like, his little brothers were keeping mom preoccupied.
And so, like, 80, it was funny.
He was like, You can talk to Mr. Joel, but you, you know, you've got to, you're going to tell him a couple of things.
And then, and then dad and Joel are going to talk.
But he, like, it was, he was so systematic.
He, like, went through each section of the, like, we were in Asia and then Africa and then, you know, amphibians and reptiles.
And it was really.
Cool.
Like, and he knew a lot of facts.
It was like a couple times I chimed in, but I got corrected multiple times for not knowing my facts.
So, all right.
So, anyways, let's go ahead and dive in.
So, I was thinking this has been in the Twitterverse a little while.
I've been commenting on it.
You've been commenting on it because it's just one more example in the providence of God of revealing Big Eva's hypocrisy.
And we all get it wrong, right?
We all get things wrong and we have to backtrack.
You know, God humbles us from time to time.
But the problem is that I haven't really seen a lot of guys actually take opportunity for humility, right?
I'm not seeing guys walking back.
So, for anybody who's wondering what I'm talking about, what I'm talking about is I'm just going to read a little bit here so I don't, you know, so I get the facts right.
But basically, during a hearing of the European Union's COVID 19 response, Pfizer's president of international developed markets, Janine Small, admitted that its vaccine had never been tested before its release to the general public.
On its ability to prevent the transmission of COVID.
So, Janine Small, she's the president of International Developed Markets.
Under oath, she admitted that the vaccine, the Pfizer vaccine, had never, not it was under tested or insufficient, never been tested before its release to the general public in regards to its ability to prevent the transmission of COVID.
And so, if you're wondering, so what are the dots you're connecting here?
What's the point you're trying to make?
The point is this.
I was told, I don't know about you, AD, but I was told that in order to love my neighbor, I needed to get vaxxed.
But apparently, the Pfizer vaccine was not tested at all in regards to its ability to love one's neighbor.
Right?
So, what do we do with that?
What are some of your thoughts on that?
Well, I'll say this I am actually surprised that she said it wasn't tested at all for that.
Because the thing is, the lie that We knew it was a lie that they did all of the normal testing and all the normal approvals and everything, because that's what they were saying.
They were saying, we did everything we normally do.
That's obviously not true, because normally it takes years for something to get approved or whatever.
And whether that's right or wrong, that's not really the point.
The point is, it wasn't the same approvals.
That was a lie we kept getting.
But I am a little bit surprised that it was so blatantly, we didn't even test it.
You know what I mean?
Because did not the Pfizer CEO?
Say at one point that they had like 100% efficiency in stopping transmission.
I can't remember.
I can't remember.
So I don't want to quote that.
I don't want to say that.
But I seem to remember something like that.
And it's like, okay, whatever.
But here's my thoughts, though.
I actually don't even care about any of this because even if it was totally effective at stopping transmission and it was totally awesome, it was like the greatest vaccine of all time.
The love your neighbor thing, it's still inappropriate.
It's still not God's law to get the vaccine.
So, like, honestly, like, this just makes it so much more apparent, so much more obvious.
Like, you, you change God's law for a lie, but it wouldn't have been good even if they changed it for something that was true.
You know what I mean?
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm grateful for it.
I'm grateful for it because this puts the egg on their face even that much more.
Right.
Exactly.
So, yeah.
So, I guess it was his name's Rob Roos, R O O S is his last name, but he's an EU parliamentarian.
Rob Bruce.
He's the guy who exposed an alleged misinformation campaign by Pfizer with the release of his video tweet today.
In it, he called the actions criminal, scandalous, and a cheap lie.
Her response under oath, and this is a quotation, when he presses her and says, Yes or no, did the Pfizer vaccine actually test it in its ability to stop transmission?
She said, Regarding the question around, Did we know about stopping immunization before it entered the market?
No.
Small replied.
Vaccine Misinformation and Moral Responsibility00:09:28
Um, and then let's see, she picks back up.
She continued, We really had to move at the speed of science, the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market.
So, yeah, I don't know, man.
I think my problem is just, um, you're right, like it's not in God's law that you got to get vaccinated.
Um, but there's just, there's, there's so many things with that.
The God's law does talk about, all right, so there aren't vaccines in the Old Testament, all right, because I'm just hearing, you know, like play the devil's advocate, I'm hearing our, you know, Um, the trolls coming out in the comments already on YouTube, you know, and saying, like, well, there are no vaccines.
And so, okay, God's law, what we have is we have 10 moral commandments and then we have civil codes, right?
We have case law.
Sure.
Some of the closest examples that I could get to would be like Exodus chapter 21.
I could, I could bring it up, but, um, I'll look for it.
But basically, Exodus chapter 21 uh talks about an ox that's accustomed to gore.
You know that passage, Eddie?
Sure.
Sure.
Um, and it says, like, if you have an ox that's accustomed to gore in the past, let's see, let me find it.
The first part of the chapter has to do with slavery.
Then it goes to restitution, which I've gotten in trouble with you before talking about slavery.
So we'll just stick to oxen on this episode.
I don't remember that, but hey.
It was the examining Moscow crew.
Remember that?
I didn't get in trouble because I'm a big deal.
They just used me as a pawn to get to Doug Wilson.
So they're like, this is the product of Doug Wilson's discipleship.
Now I remember.
Yes.
And it's like, and the funniest part about it was the only reason they even saw it is because the title of that episode was.
A defense of Doug Wilson.
And I thought, like, I put myself in Doug Wilson's shoes for a second.
I thought, he probably feels like a dad when his three year old son goes out to defend him.
He's like, that's sweet, son.
I appreciate the attempt, but you're actually just making it harder.
Like, I was trying, you know, I was trying to make a good argument for Doug Wilson and I just got him in more trouble.
But, anyways, here it is.
So, this is Exodus 21, verse 28.
It says, When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten.
Right, you don't get to benefit from it, you lose the ox.
But the owner of the ox shall not be liable.
But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and which right there means that if they were following the law of God, the ox should have already been stoned if it gored in the past.
So, this is a guy who's already broken the law of God, he has an ox that's gored somehow, he got away and kept the ox, it's been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in.
Right, so the owner is responsible for.
Some kind of fence, some kind of barrier to keep the ox in to make sure it doesn't get out.
He hasn't kept it in.
He's failed in that responsibility, and it gets out and kills a man or a woman.
The ox shall be stoned and its owner also shall be put to death.
And so, my point is, you know, we got case law, these civil codes in the Old Testament, and they all, pretty much every single one of them, not even pretty much, all of them, we can track back to one or more of the Ten Commandments.
So, I would say the sixth commandment, thou shalt not murder, stated in the positive light would be, thou shalt not do any harm, physical harm to your neighbor, or the positive would be like, thou shalt esteem and defend and protect.
The sanctity of human life made in the image of God.
So, we have a moral obligation to protect human life and to not do harm or destruction and certainly murder to our neighbor.
And that does affect not just walking up to our neighbor and stabbing him in the chest with a knife, but that does affect something in regards to like an ox, right?
There could be a passive, indirect way of harming my neighbor because there's something that I had knowledge about, I was warned.
Right, that's key in the text too.
If he's been warned, and so it's like we've been warned there's this virus going around, we've been warned that it's contagious, we've been warned that it is very dangerous and can be deadly for certain groups of people, like the elderly.
All those, so I, you know, I remember when this was like two weeks after you know, COVID broke on the scene, it's still in March of 2020, and this was the text that I was using to think through it.
And I was thinking through that and thinking, okay, but there's, are there other ways?
I guess my question is, are there other ways of keeping the ox?
Hemmed in?
Are there other ways for, in the case of the virus, applying that to another case?
Are there other ways besides lockdowns, besides a mask, besides a vaccine?
Because what's not in the text is it doesn't say you have to build this type of fence out of these materials, this many feet high.
That's no, it's just keeping the ox somehow.
And if the ox does get out, so I would feel like the equivalent would be like if someone actually gets the virus and it can be.
Proven in a court of law that it came from you and it resulted in this individual's death.
And all the, you know what I mean?
Like there'd have to be so much to substantiate that you actually had some moral responsibility.
And the whole thing that we were pushing back at the time was just saying number one, we don't think COVID's nearly as bad as people are making it sound.
The elderly, there's only a small portion.
Yes, people are dying with COVID and some maybe from COVID, but it's one small sliver of the population.
These individuals could quarantine.
Right.
While the rest of us live our lives, not foolishly, but live our lives.
And so for me, it's just, it was way too much to make a biblical argument that you must put this untested, right?
It's like, oh, it's been tested, not long term.
It hasn't been around long term.
Right.
There's no way to.
Yeah, that was a lie from the beginning.
Exactly.
So to say you have to put, and then when it went to children, you have to inject an unknown substance without any long term testing in your own children or you're a murderer.
You're killing grandma.
Go ahead.
Right.
Right.
Well, that's just it.
I mean, with the oxen, this is, to me, this is a case law that's talking about sort of like reckless endangerment, like reckless behavior in general.
So if you have a dog or an ox and it's just a violent ox, it's a violent dog, you know, and you choose to not really take care of it or really, you know, oh, I just love little Sparky.
He's a great dog.
Like if that's your choice and then that dog goes and kills someone, that's your responsibility.
That's reckless of you.
But the thing is, like, people started to try to make existing reckless.
Like, existing and breathing air became reckless.
Right.
Going to the store became reckless.
You know, wanting to go see your grandparents became reckless.
Yeah, you're right.
And you can't do that.
That's an abuse of that particular text.
And so, if somebody has COVID or some kind of disease or any sickness, and they decide to go to an old folks' home and cough on all the elderly, yeah, that's a problem.
That's dangerous.
That's something that they should be prosecuted for.
But if you're just existing and an old person walks past you and somehow catches COVID, it's very different.
It's very different.
By the way, before we continue, I just want to make this point.
I was right.
Dr. Albert Borla, the chairman and CEO of Pfizer, in 2020 said on TV that their vaccine had an above 90% effective rate at preventing COVID.
Wow.
I mean, this is.
What does that mean, right?
That's probably where the loophole is.
But no, no, I'm saying you're right.
Like preventing.
No, that's.
That would mean that it can't be transmitted to you.
It's nothing.
Because it was only afterwards that they backpedaled and reworked their rhetoric to say, oh, well, vaccines were never about preventing COVID or stopping the transmission.
It's just about so that your symptoms are more mild.
And then people are still dying with a vaccine.
And it's like, well, that person would have died so much harder if they weren't vaccinated.
Thank goodness that dead person was vaccinated.
And this is the thing, right?
Because these vaccines are somewhat mysterious.
And I don't mean like, Like they're magical or whatever.
But, like the common man, like you and I, we don't understand exactly how to make one.
We don't understand the manufacturing process.
Like, that's above our pay grade, right?
But so to demand that we inject this into our system is nothing like demanding that you lock up your dangerous pit bull that's already bitten somebody.
Like, that's completely different.
You don't have to be a genius to understand that your pit bull who's bitten someone in the past needs to be locked away and needs to be chained so that they don't bite someone again.
It's different than a vaccine.
A vaccine is completely different.
And not to mention the fact that there are just so many other moral and ethical decisions that have to be made for any of these vaccines or any of these treatments.
It's just so complicated.
And yet we were told that our Christian faithfulness, our Christian witness, our morality, our obedience to Christ was hanging in the balance if we didn't get the vaccine.
Turning Propaganda into Christian Law00:04:11
And it was all propaganda at the end of the day, it was all based on a lie.
Right.
No, I completely agree.
There was one guy on Twitter that I saw today, the day that we're recording this, who came out, and I don't even know if he's a Christian, but I'd never heard of him before.
But he's, I don't know, I think he had a blue check, you know, so whatever that means, you know, but he had, you know, like 30,000 followers or something like that.
Like it wasn't just a guy with like two followers on Twitter.
He's official.
Yeah, he's official in some capacity.
Official for what?
Official, official.
Who knows?
According to who?
I, you know, I don't know those answers, but, but, anyways, like he just said, he said, well, Officially, I was wrong about loving your neighbor by getting the vaccine.
He said, There's a whole bunch of people that I need to apologize to.
And it was really refreshing.
And you just read the comments, and Twitter is like, people aren't particularly kind on Twitter.
And I'm not particularly kind on Twitter.
There's plenty of people on Twitter that I could be kind to.
But on Twitter, you're mainly engaging people who disagree with you.
Sure.
Everyone on this particular tweet was like, you know, really, you know, really positive.
Like, thanks, man, you know, or appreciate that.
Good on you, you know, like, and I just remember thinking, like, why can't Russell Moore do that?
You know, like, why can't, like, I remember seeing, you know, the picture of him, like, this hobbit is getting his, his vaccine.
You remember that?
I'll never forget that.
Yeah, I'll never.
Wish we could forget it, but, you know, but it was like, and he was, and he wasn't doing that.
Like, like, it's like we know his purpose.
He outright said, you know, but that was in his rhetoric, but then even in just in that image, you know, it was, You, I'm an evangelical leader, and you should be doing this too.
This is a moral thing.
This is a moral good that I'm doing, right?
Like, you know, you're putting it on social media because you think it's a moral good that you're performing and that others, you know, should follow in your footsteps.
And if anyone thinks I'm reading into the picture too much, like just go back and look at some of the things that he verbatim said.
Like he very much, you're not.
Yeah.
His position was that Christians, out of love for neighbor, should get a jab.
And one of the high up jab execs just said, We did not test this whatsoever in regards to its love for neighbor ability.
Right.
Because that was the whole case.
That was a whole case.
That was the whole case.
Yeah.
Well, you don't have to.
I mean, that picture was especially embarrassing in my opinion, but he definitely, you're right.
He definitely wrote it.
And lots of guys were writing stuff like this.
And I wonder sometimes some of these guys throw around love your neighbor without really thinking about what they're saying, because what they are saying, Is that it's a part of the law of God.
That's what Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself meant.
So I think some people throw that around and it's just a slogan to them.
But there are some guys that know exactly what they're saying.
And I think one of those guys is someone that I addressed in a video today, the day we're recording this.
His name is Andrew T. Walker.
He's an ethics professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
So, as an ethics professor, he knows exactly what he's saying when he says it's about neighbor love, it's loving your neighbor as yourself.
And he said that about the vaccine.
Now, Andrew, I think he's been pretty base lately, in my opinion.
He's been taking some stands that no one in Big Eve is taking, and I got to applaud him for that.
And I got to get his back for that.
And I think, out of everyone who has said this ridiculous thing that this is a matter of loving your neighbor as yourself, Andrew T. Walker could be a leader in apologizing for that.
And you don't need to apologize to me.
I was never going to listen to you, but there were people that did.
Right, right.
There were people that did.
And I think that you're, I don't know why he went this way, why he was so excited to turn government propaganda into Christian law.
SIDS, Heart Attacks, and Vaccine Claims00:03:12
I don't know why.
Was it fear?
Was it, you know, I don't know.
But I think if anyone has the moral fortitude to change direction and to say, look, I was wrong on this one, it would be Andrew T. Walker.
So I'm just name dropping him here because I want to increase the pressure on him because I think he's already said, you know, maybe I should re examine some of that stuff publicly.
Good for him.
You really need to.
Because now that it's coming out that the vaccine didn't do any good and may have hurt as well, because I think that data is forthcoming.
We have a lot of anecdotes that the vaccine has hurt people, but we don't have a lot of hard, hard data, but that's coming.
I think I've seen some stuff lately that kind of indicates that there's something going on here.
You got Steve Dace.
Do you know Steve Dace from The Blaze?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
He's coming out with The Fourth Reich, his new book, and that's going to be coming out soon where he calls for a new Nuremberg trial, basically.
Yeah.
On all the vaccines, but he's been tracking a lot of stuff, and other guys have.
He has been tracking a lot of data.
Like, if you just look, you're right.
We don't have the hard facts, but what we do have is general things like how many heart attacks in young men under the age of 40 do we have in a typical month?
Like, excess heart attacks.
You have a certain amount of heart attacks as a baseline, and then how many excess?
Right, right, right.
And then it shoots through the roof.
Or people are saying, oh, we have this thing, SADS.
It's been around forever S A D S, right?
Like, SIDS, right?
Every parent's nightmare, like sudden incidents.
No, that's SADS.
Right, like sudden infant death syndrome.
But also, you know, everybody's probably heard about SIDS, right?
And everybody's also heard about SADS, right?
Sudden adult death syndrome.
You know, that's been around for decades.
No, no, it hasn't.
Like two years.
Right.
And even with the SIDS thing, you know, and this is like, and this is crazy as a parent because I didn't do all these things right.
Like the last two years, we've been, my wife and I, rethinking everything.
Like, are we going to get vaccines for, you know, like, are we going to get 17 vaccines every month for the first, you know, 12 years of our kids' life.
You know, I mean, they put them on this regimen from like the day they're born, you know, where it's just like shot, shot, shot, shot.
And thinking about like, okay, so like all of a sudden everybody's getting this vaccine, all these adults are.
And then, oh, we have sad, sudden adult death syndrome, people just killing over heart attacks.
But then it gets you, it kind of gets you thinking about SIDS.
Oh, totally.
What if SIDS?
Right?
How many of these babies that just, you know, like there's no cause, we don't know what killed them, you know, like the parent just wakes up, it's a nightmare come to life where they walk over to the cradle and the baby's just laying there dead.
But now a lot of people are coming out and saying, yeah, this happened two days after my baby's shots, or this happened.
What if I?
I remember watching this video, this mom just in tears saying, like, what if I killed my baby?
Like, I didn't know.
Like, obviously, like, she's not morally responsible.
Of course.
But, like, dude, what if, like, you know what I mean?
So, anyways, a ton of, and that's the mercy of God that a lot of things are being exposed.
And, but, anyways, all that being said, you're absolutely right.
Like, it didn't stop transmission and very likely killed a bunch of people.
Egregious Sin and Public Rebuke00:09:25
Go ahead.
And so these people that tried to make this a matter of loving you were eager to do it.
They were eager to say Jesus would tell you to get the vaccine, love your neighbor as yourself.
They need to, first of all, they need to apologize.
They need to make it right publicly.
But then after that, they need to look into their own hearts and say, well, why was I so eager to take a government lie that was so obviously a lie at the time and now it's being revealed that it was a lie?
Why was I so eager to push this on people and to make it a matter of Christian imperative for people?
Because a lot of these guys didn't just get their vaccine and go quietly about their day.
They were proud about it.
They posted their stupid hobbit picture.
They even wrote articles like Andrew T. Walker that said it was a matter of loving your neighbor as yourself.
And I don't mean to pick on Andrew Walker because a lot of guys did this.
The only reason I meant name dropping Andrew T. Walker is because I think out of all the guys that I know, he's the most likely.
To lead on this and say, I was wrong and we were wrong and we need to correct this.
Right.
Right.
I completely agree.
But that kind of brings me to my next question.
This is a genuine question.
So I've been thinking about this the last few days now and I'm curious what Adi Robles thinks.
But, oh man.
So, okay, so we get something wrong and we should repent, right?
And whatever context it was that we sinned in, that should be the same context that we repent in, right?
So, like if I sin against my wife privately, I need to go to her privately.
And ask for her forgiveness and acknowledge my sin, repent before the Lord and repent before my wife.
But I don't have to, you know, post it on Twitter or something like that.
It doesn't, you know, if it's a private grievance, it can be privately dealt with.
And except, you know, of course, in my case, being a pastor, if the grievance was something that would disqualify me from eldership, then 1 Timothy chapter 5, right?
Rebuke those elders that persist in sin before them all.
So then it does merit, a private sin could merit a public rebuke if a guy's in that position of leadership and it's an egregious sin.
All that being said, though, the context that we repent in is the context that we sin in.
So guys who sin publicly by telling them, you know, you got to get the jab because Jesus tells you to.
Because, like, this is Christian law.
You know, that's if you said that publicly, like, you need to publicly own that.
But that brings me to the question, which is certainly there needs to be repentance.
Sure.
But for leaders, I'm wondering, like, because some people think that this is funny that we're even doing this episode, right?
Like, when did COVID come out?
It's been 900 days, right?
Like, you know what I mean?
This wasn't like two weeks ago, two months ago.
It's not even two years ago now.
It's two and a half.
It's 900 days.
And so here's my thing is like, okay, like forgiveness belongs to a category of love and charity.
We could place that in that category.
But leadership is not a charity, right?
Like the office of elder is not a charity.
The president of a seminary is not a charity, right?
Like the Bible has a real category for charity and love and forgiveness.
And these things are free because we've been freely loved and freely given to and freely forgiven in the gospel.
So the gospel is the basis, it's the foundation.
For us forgiving our debtors as we, you know, as God forgives us our debts.
But this, people need to understand because this is one of the things people mix categories all the time, right?
This is what people do with the Democrat Party all the time is like, well, you know, yeah, Republicans care for the unborn, you know, but Democrats care for people once they are born.
It's like, okay, but wait a second.
But is government supposed to care for them?
Right.
Right.
Like government has been, you know, it's like the old saying, like, you had one job.
You know, like the government has one job, get kill bad guys.
You know what I mean?
Like that's their job.
You know, not it's not welfare.
That falls on the household.
When the household fails, it falls on the church if that person is qualified and faithful and all those kinds of things.
And then it never falls on the government.
It's family first, then the church for those who are faithful and never Uncle Sam.
Uncle Sam keeps wanting to be Daddy Sam, but he's not.
He's just supposed to be the crazy uncle that takes a sword and kills bad guys, you know?
We mix categories.
And so, my point is, like, when it comes to eldership, I've seen people do this, like, where an elder gets caught in some kind of egregious sin, but he owns it.
You know, like, even like the Chandler thing.
And I don't know if it was egregious because that was so weird because it's like, he's absolutely not disqualified, but it was a disqualifying sin.
You know, I watched your video on that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just ridiculous.
You know, I'm just like, what is going on?
So, anyways, but in the case of Chandler, I don't know if it was egregious.
I have no idea what it is.
Nobody, you know, nobody's talking about it, but also everyone should know about it.
And so, whatever.
But my point is, With that, I saw a ton of people coming out and saying, like, good, you know, like, I don't like his woke stuff, but I'm really proud of him on this point.
I'm really impressed because people like when people own something.
It's just like what I said earlier the guy on Twitter who said, Hey, I've got a lot of people.
And I found myself immediately like, Good on you, man.
Way to go.
And you just immediately increase in respect for someone when they own their mistakes, you know?
And now, Chandler, I kind of feel like his elders probably had like a gun at his back, you know, making him.
So I don't know how much of that was voluntary, but the point is, People are so quick, and then they, you know, Christians will apply the gospel.
This is gospel.
Christ forgives us.
We should forgive Chandler and get him back in the pulpit.
Forgive him.
Don't be a Pharisee.
It's like, well, wait a second.
This is not a forgiveness.
There's forgiveness, which belongs to love, but then there's discernment and qualifications, which belongs to trust.
And those are two different categories.
You can forgive someone.
I'll see you in heaven.
You're a brother in Christ.
I love you.
I can have friendship with you, but you can't be my pastor.
You can't be a leader.
You've got to, you know, and so my question is this so we want guys to own it.
You're calling out Andrew T. Walker, and hopefully he owns it.
And I'm not saying this specifically to him because I don't know him, but I'm just saying in general, if some of these guys own it, my question is but what happens when you own something 900 days late?
Because for me, then it's like, okay, so there's repentance.
I can feel good about calling you a brother.
But I would like the leaders.
In Christ's church, to have a little bit of more discernment than, because literally to lead, just at a practical level, leading implies that you're ahead of the crowd.
But if you're coming to conclusions on weighty matters that have affected the globe, if you're coming to conclusions and able to apply God's word to these cultural, political matters, and you're coming to those conclusions 900 days after the fact, and it also happens to be the same day that.
Everyone else that you're leading also came to that conclusion, then are you a leader?
What do you think about that?
Yeah, well, I don't think, I think that you definitely aren't, at least in that area.
I think it depends on the person, you know, what you're talking about, who you're talking about, what they said, what they're doing, how they repent, you know what I mean?
Because a lot of guys will just do the sorry, you know, I didn't know, I didn't have the right data, sorry.
And like, you know, that's really not going to cut it because, again, it doesn't matter what the data was, like, you actually lied about what the The Bible says here, he tried to put this yoke on people.
Right.
So it all depends on the details.
But the thing is, though, like, even if, like, Andrew T. Walker, right, as far as I know, he's not a pastor.
I think he's just a professor, and that's it.
You know, I would never take an Andrew T. Walker ethics class.
That doesn't make any sense because this is the area that he just failed in, like, so miserably and spectacularly.
So I wouldn't take it.
Like, I'm not saying you should be fired, but like, I can't imagine anyone after this being like, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to get my ethics lessons from you.
But the thing is, we, you know, that doesn't mean that he's not a bad guy.
Like, doesn't mean like you can't learn from him in other areas.
But in this area, when it comes to like high emotion, you know, political, you know, you know, psyop level type stuff where everything's kind of happening all quickly and all at once and they're putting this propaganda pressure on you, like, you know, honestly, you probably should just sit it out.
Right.
You know, and maybe, maybe think about it a little bit before you make your judgments, before you, you know what I mean?
Like, and I'm not saying you didn't think about this, but it's just like, There's a difference between forgiving someone and then instantly trusting them in the same areas where they just failed.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Like, if your pastor, if you're, if you're, let's forget about pastors for a second.
Like, if your Christian friend fails, he goes to the bar and he picks up a girl and he sleeps with her, whatever.
Like, you don't go hang out with him at the bar like a few weeks later.
Protecting the Vulnerable from Risk00:02:26
Right.
You know what I mean?
Like, you probably shouldn't be there.
You can't be trusted there.
You should probably maybe do something else.
Does he have the freedom to go to a bar?
Is it unchristian to go to a bar?
No.
But, you know, you got to protect yourself sometimes.
You know what I mean?
Like, I'm not saying you can't repent and be fine.
Andrew T. Walker could repent.
He could have this great thing and he could be fine going forward because he learned his lesson that the government propaganda is not to be trusted.
That could definitely happen.
Yes.
But what I'm saying is, like, it just can't be like everything's all good if you give me the, yeah, sorry, you know, how could I have known?
A lot of guys are doing that.
How could I have known?
I just did the best with the data I had.
No, you didn't.
You failed with the data you had.
That's the problem.
Right.
No, I completely agree because we all had the same data and we didn't all have the same data and we didn't all come to the same conclusions.
And it's not just because some of us are, you know, right wing extremist, you know, MAGA Republican, whatever, like conspiracy theorists.
No, like, like there are very sensible people who just, who without being an epidemiologist, you know, just were able to say, wait a second, like by your own data, by your own admission, like how many people under the age of 65 are dying?
Right.
And, you know, and like the CDC comes out and says, like, that, you know, that the average person dying of COVID is 80, I believe it was 84 years old or 86 years old.
They also came out and said that the average person dying of COVID had not one, not two, not three, but four simultaneous four comorbidities.
Right.
So, so you can look at that and say, okay, like, so, so who do I, like, you're saying that, that me and, and all of my kids, we need to get, A vaccine that requires two doses and then every like five, six months, a booster vaccine.
And we need to do this in order to protect a very small sliver of the population 86 year olds with four comorbidities.
Could we just not hang out with 86 year olds with four comorbidities?
And can we do that instead?
And people were asking that question, which is a really reasonable question.
Pastors Must Admit When They Are Wrong00:02:35
And it's not just that we were being ignored.
We were being demeaned.
We were being slandered, accused as hateful.
And so, anyway, conspiracy theorists, all the whole nine yards hateful conspiracy theorists, you want to kill grandma, you listen to Tucker Carlson too much, all that kind of stuff.
Right, right.
But here's the thing I don't think every single pastor, I don't know if this is what you're kind of getting at, but I don't think every single pastor that pushed the vaccine as loving your neighbor as yourself, that they need to resign.
Yeah, that's what I'm getting at.
Okay, so you're giving me an answer?
I don't think so.
Okay.
Not every single one.
However, there's going to have to be some, like, there's a lot expected of a pastor when they screw up so royally.
And, like, you have to really, you have to, you're going to have to, to borrow a big Eva term, you're going to have to really lean into that repentance and demonstrate what it really is because it can't, it cannot just be sort of like, I'm sorry I got caught kind of thing.
Cause we've all been there.
I mean, you're a pastor, Joel.
You, you, you know, like, when you're talking to someone and they repent basically only because they got caught.
Right.
Like, you know the difference between that.
And heartfelt repentance.
Right.
You've been there.
We've all been there.
You don't have to be a pastor to know that.
Like, there are certain times you talk to someone and you know that they're really broken up about their sin, and other times where you're just like, well, they're kind of like annoyed that they got caught.
And so they'll repent.
I feel like that we're going to probably have to see the difference as it plays out to really make the judgment here.
But some of these guys will never repent.
They just won't ever do it.
Right.
Some of them, they're just going to memory hole it, you know, and we're never going to see, you know, like their past things that they said, we'll never see the light of day again.
And And the reason why guys do that is because it works.
Like it works.
Oh my goodness, it's effective.
You know, and you just, you know, you just never, ever, ever, ever, ever bring it up again, you know, and which, you know, for the record, even me personally, it's like nobody comes out of the womb with perfect theology and nobody goes into ordination with perfect theology, right?
Like there's a minimum bottom line, biblically, you must be able to teach.
But you would hope that a pastor who has been an ordained minister of the gospel that 20 years into his ministry will have more refined.
Than the day that he was ordained, which means what?
It means that he has reformed in his.
He's meaning that a guy who's been preaching for 20 years should be able to look back and say, I was wrong about X, Y, and Z. You know, I can do that with certain doctrines that I was wrong about.
Reevaluating After Shutting Down Worship00:15:11
Like I used to be a continuationist.
I'm not anymore, but I was.
That's how I was raised.
And I was really into Piper at the time, John Piper.
And Sam Storm.
So I was a continuationist in that light, you know, not like Benny Hinn, but, you know, but like kind of the, you know, the trying to be soft about it, but eventually moved out of that.
So I'm not saying that I've never been wrong, but I think there's a difference when it's, and you can make a strong argument like, well, you were a continuationist.
Well, like, did you, you were holding the door open for there being new revelation?
What kinds of evils can that breed and what is the harm?
And so, like, you can make a strong argument like that is a big, you were, That's not a small thing, Joel.
Like that's a big thing.
And I would say, yeah, you're right.
It's not a small thing.
That's a big thing.
So it's not even so much the degree of I was wrong about the vaccine and bound people's conscience to inject their bodies with something that's never going to leave with this mRNA technology.
It's never going to leave.
It's not just like we're saying, like this category is such a big category.
To me, it's more so it's not like I just was misinformed because I was following this theologian instead of this theologian.
No, it's the thing that you were following was government propaganda.
The thing that you were following was pharmacy.
You know, like when I was a continuationist, my point is I had a biblical argument for it.
Now I would look now and say it was unbiblical, but what I'm saying is I was using the Bible to support my view.
I really thought that the Bible said that.
I really believed, like it was, you know, it seemed a lot clearer.
Whereas these guys, it's not just this one area, the same guys who are pushing love your neighbor by getting the vaccine.
Are the same guys who on their Instagram account, you saw pictures of them at the BLM rallies.
Their churches are closed down, but they're at a BLM rally in the summer of love, you know, 2020.
And so I guess for me, that would be the thing is not just are you wrong on this one thing, but over the last two years, like, were you silent and writing articles about how now's not the time to beat our chest when Roe is overturned?
And were you, you know, repeating the BLM, you know, rhetoric and, you know, this hobbit is getting vaccinated?
Like at that point, it's to me, it just shows it.
It's enough pieces of the puzzle to say, like, it's a bigger picture that says, yeah, this guy is just, he's a water carrier for the left.
This guy's just, you know, he's just a pundit.
He's not a minister.
Here's some unsolicited advice for if any pastors out there and they were doing this and they, you know, they feel bad about it and they want to make it right.
I'm not telling you that, you know, you need to do these things before I believe your repentance.
This is just advice for how to get people to trust you again because, quite frankly, you betrayed their trust.
Severely.
I think what you should do, if it were me, I would say, you know, I was wrong.
Here's exactly why I was wrong.
Here's why I fell for it.
Here's why I won't fall for it in the future.
Yeah.
Because the propaganda is going to get more and more intense.
It's getting worse every day.
And so there's going to be more propaganda that comes out.
There's going to be a new thing, and nobody knows what it's going to be.
People are saying it's going to be the flurona.
I don't know if it's going to be flurona or something else or nuclear war or whatever it is.
It's going to be something.
And so I think what you need to do, if you want people to trust you again, again, I'm not telling you how to repent.
You know, that's between you and God.
But if you want people to trust you again, if Andrew T. Walker wants people to trust him again, we need to understand.
How are you not going to fall for this again?
Because there's something inside of you that made you fall for this when so many people didn't.
A lot of people did, but a lot of people didn't.
Right.
And so, in the future, when the government comes and they've got a new snazzy thing that's super dangerous and they need you to carry water for them, how are you going to avoid it?
Yeah, that's good.
You know what I mean?
Because honestly, all of us were sort of fooled by this corona thing for a few days at least, or for a few weeks or for a few months or whatever.
And like you said, some 900 days.
But like we're all fooled to some degree.
And I think we've all kind of done this.
We've all done this diagnostic in ourselves.
Like, why did I get fooled by that?
How am I going to avoid being fooled the next time?
We've all done this.
So you need to do it, especially if you published articles trying to bind Christians' conscience to getting the vaccine.
We need to undo it.
You can't undo it.
You can't go back in time.
But what you can do is help the people that you hurt.
Right.
No, you're exactly right.
Like the first week when COVID dropped, Our church canceled.
We ended up canceling four weeks and then, boom, we were right back at it.
And that's when I was still in California at the time.
And it was, you know, it was very, very, very frowned upon.
And we even had a plan, you know, with me and my elders what happens if police come and, you know, if I was taken away, then the next elder was going to get up and start preaching.
And we had a plan in place, you know, and those kinds of things.
And this is, we only missed four Lord's days.
That was, you know, like that was before MacArthur came out and they started regathering those kinds of things.
And so, you know, but the point is we still missed four weeks.
And I had to tell the church, You know, I had to say something like, we're not going to do church this week.
And so, what did I do?
I recorded a 10 minute video where I exegeted horribly Romans 13.
You said that to me.
And then, what I had to do when we started gathering again is I had to preach a sermon.
And here's the deal I instinctively was able to know by the grace of God that the first 10 minutes of this sermon needs to be an apology, right?
Like, why are you going to listen to me preach?
You know, now a lot of people were actually upset that the church was gathering.
But for those who, who, you know, were like, all right, we're here now, but why do we listen to you now?
You know, because you said this thing and now we're gathering, which is the opposite.
And so I had to say, so you might notice that this sermon is going to directly contradict what I previously said.
You know, because a lot of guys don't do that.
This is the crazy thing, man.
Like a lot of guys publicly, I'm talking guys with huge platforms and I'm talking good guys on our team, they don't do that.
Like they say one thing.
They realize that's wrong.
They pivot.
Sometimes it's a year later.
Sometimes it's just two weeks later.
They say something that directly contradicts what they previously said.
And rather than actually pointing it out, that it's a blatant contradiction, so you might notice that these two things directly contradict.
And you might be wondering, well, which one's true, the thing that you said yesterday or the thing you're saying today?
Well, it's the thing I'm saying today because the thing I said yesterday was wrong.
And guys don't do that and they lose credibility.
Now, sometimes, you know, they memory hole it and a lot of people just forget or don't connect the dots or.
Or whatever, but you're right.
If you want to win back credibility and trust in those kinds of things, in terms of forgiveness, you just own your sin.
You just repent, right?
But in terms of trust, right?
We've got to keep the category separate.
In terms of trust and leadership and credibility, it's not just, hey, he owns his mistakes, but I need to know that moving forward, he's going to make fewer mistakes.
And so I need to know not just that he owned the last one, but I need to know that he's aware of how he ended up getting duped.
Last time.
And so, what I had to do with my church is say, So, this is how I exegeted Romans 13, and this is why I did it.
And part of it was I had four days before the next Sunday to say church is canceled and give a reason.
So, I had a short window to exegete this text.
All the guys that I had looked to and followed in the past were saying this.
I followed suit, but that was wrong.
I misviewed the word of God, misexegeted the word of God.
And the reason why it's not going to happen in the future is because now I understand the word of God better.
So that was my reason that I gave.
So, like, I think that would be awesome if Andrew T. Walker and other guys, I think, like, if you're thinking of what are so, what are reasons that I can say for why I was deceived before, but I will be deceived less moving forward?
I think one of the number one reasons you can say is I had a misunderstanding of scripture, of doctrine, of God's word before, and something in my theology.
Has actually changed, so not just like, yeah, well, miss that one.
Uh, if it's just you know, we'll write that one off, you know, um, and and you know, I just missed that one, but I believe all the same things I believed two years ago.
I have all the same doctrine, all you know, the same hermeneutical principles, the same this, the same that.
Because for me, the reason why I feel confident and others following me feel confident that I'm not going to shut down the church for four more weeks is not just because, um, because I made a mistake and I don't want to have egg on my face again, but I actually the whole way I read scripture changed the last two years.
Changed everything for me.
I had to, my paradigm of the civil magistrate and sphere sovereignty, separation of church and state, Christ being king over all things, my eschatology, everything came.
When I shut down the Church of Jesus Christ as a minister of the gospel, shut down the Church of Jesus Christ for not understanding his word and then realized that I made a mistake, I realized I've got to make some big changes.
That was not a small thing, that was a big deal.
God, please have mercy on me.
Please forgive me.
But don't just forgive me.
Change me.
Give me eyes to see.
And so I reworked all of my doctrine, all of my thinking, because I had to recognize this is a big deal, what I just did.
And it doesn't matter that everybody else did it too.
I did it.
And there's something in the way that I view scripture, something in the way that I view Christ and his lordship, something in the way that I view Caesar, something in the way that I view human life and its dignity, and our lives being a vapor or idolatry of, you know, and so I had to rethink everything.
That's where I became post millennial.
That's where I'd be like, all these major things changed, and people would be like, dude, those are some really big changes.
Yeah, because sin is serious.
Sin is serious.
Well, it was, I hate to use like a word that everyone's using like so flippantly, but like to be honest, it sounds to me like realizing that you shut down the Lord's Day worship for four weeks was almost like a traumatic, like, man, I need to reevaluate things here.
Like, this is a big deal.
Like, I'm me, just a man, decided to close down God's worship in my assembly for four weeks.
And I don't want to say it like traumatized you in like the lame way, but like, it's like almost like, you know, it's almost like you had like a look in the mirror moment, a come to Jesus moment.
Like, what am I doing?
Right.
And you got, and listen, that's, listen, I'm glad it happened because you're seeing things a lot clearer now.
And now you're a force.
You're not going to fall for that again.
I think anyone who knows you, Joel, knows that you're not going to fall for the next propaganda thing again.
When they tell you to shut down the church, no matter what it is, you're probably going to say no.
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah, I like the way Doug.
The Russians are going to come and they're going to bring their H bombs.
You got to shut down your church, Joel.
I'm fairly sure that the answer is going to be no.
Look, we'll turn the lights off, but we're still having church.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, and if we're going to die from H bombs, then we might as well die while we're worshiping Christ.
Might as well do it while you're worshiping.
Amen to that.
That's what I'm talking about.
So, yeah, no, you're right.
I remember Doug Wilson, he came out and said, like, you know, I used to be a reasonable man.
And he had that whole analogy, the sniper in church gets called off by the authorities.
There's a sniper on the roof.
And it's like, okay, we're immediately going to listen to the authorities, the civil magistrate, because there's a sniper on the roof.
But he was like, but after six weeks in a row, and we've never been able to actually find and capture the sniper, but the authorities have come into our worship service six weeks running in a row and said, there's a sniper and you got to cancel.
Then eventually you say, I'm sorry.
No, we're going to worship.
And so Doug said, I remember when he said, this should be one of the standards.
When you're looking for a church right now, because so many people are churchless, you know, because they've just been so disappointed by their previous pastors, you know, and not just with COVID and shutting down the church, but then, you know, when they started meeting, they wanted, you know, the pastor didn't let them sing or made them wear a mask or segregated based off of jab status or their pastor, you know, was pushing the BLM stuff and then Roe was overturned and their pastors preached against abortion, you know, but then there's finally a win in the province of God and there's not a word about it.
And so, A lot of people are churchless because they've been so disappointed.
And I remember Doug saying, like, when you're looking for a new church and you're thinking about the criteria, one of the questions you should ask that church and ask the minister is, would you shut down the church for any reason?
Because Doug's, and Doug is even saying, I'm going back on what I previously said.
He said, like, there are reasons I would shut down the church.
There are, you know, like if a tsunami's coming or so, you know, like then we need to get.
He said, but now the answer should be no.
There is no reason.
And it's not because there's not actually a reason, hypothetically, we could think of.
That would merit canceling church.
The reason that the answer is always no is because we know that the people who would be telling us we need to shut down the church are liars.
That's why.
That's why you can just say, you don't have to reway through all the data on COVID 2.0 whenever it comes, flu rona or what.
The next big thing, we don't have to reasonably assess everything.
We can just say no because we don't know necessarily all the details about the thing.
But we know the details about the people telling us about the thing.
And the details about those people is they're liars.
So if they say shut down the church, we say take a hype.
100%.
I love that.
Joel, the vaccine situation was such providentially, it was such a gift.
Amen.
Because when you think about all the details there, right?
Like Trump is the guy who took the credit for celebrating the vaccine, and he was all about it.
He loves the vaccine.
He's still holding on to it.
He needs to let that go.
To this day, he's holding on to it.
You're right, Joel.
And obviously, Democrats love the vaccine.
So, at a time when everything is hyper partisan, they're like, oh, you're just a MAGA.
You're just a MAGA.
That's why you're against it.
God gives us this gift that's like a partisan propaganda or a non partisan propaganda thing.
They're both loving it, right?
And so, we can't even give them the excuse.
It's like, well, you're just a hyper partisan, things like that.
They don't even have that.
This was just pure government propaganda.
Repenting of Ignorance on Epidemiology00:15:36
They were both lying to us.
Trump was lying to us that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
And the Democrats, they were all lying to us as well.
Everyone was lying to us.
The government is just a bunch of liars and we know this.
So this is a gift because now you have to always, and listen, that doesn't mean everything that they say is a lie.
But now when they're trying to get you to do something that you know you shouldn't be doing, that they don't have the authority to tell you to do.
That is very radical.
It's very radical to demand that churches do not meet.
I don't think we kind of, I don't think we, we all, I know you do because you kind of had a come to Jesus moment over it, but like, I don't think we all as a collectively like realize how intensely insane that was that we didn't do that, we didn't meet for a period.
Yeah.
It's so insane.
And, and, and it was just so, so now we know that they're liars.
And so anytime they try to get you to do something like stick something in your veins or do something to your kids or close down your church or whatever it is.
You have to say no.
Yeah.
Because they're known liars and they're bipartisan liars.
Right.
We always knew that there were crooks in politics, but we did not know the extent of it.
Now we do.
Now we have no excuse.
As George Bush would have said, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice.
Well, the point is, you're not going to fool me again.
I believe that's exactly right.
So we know their character.
If someone says, don't go to the shopping mall today because there's going to be, I don't know, an air raid or something or a tsunami, Or something like that.
Okay, fine.
You don't have to go to the shopping mall.
I mean, what's the big deal?
You can choose to listen or not.
That's not a big deal.
But when they tell you don't worship the Lord, don't gather with your congregation and worship with the Lord, don't lay hands on the sick, don't greet each other with a holy kiss and all that stuff.
Don't sing, too dangerous.
Don't breathe, too dangerous.
You have to say no because they're known liars.
If they lie about not going to the shopping mall, no harm, no fuck.
If they lie about not worshiping on Sunday, Big deal.
That's got to be the line in the sand.
I'll never forget this.
I think I might have mentioned this to you on your show before, but I'll never forget when Cross Politic was interviewing Jonathan Lehman about all this kind of stuff.
And Jonathan Lehman is doing the thing where he says, Well, you know, eventually, maybe one day we'll have to stand up to them, you know, but now we don't have to use our cultural capital right now.
And under his breath, Chocolate Knox makes a comment.
He doesn't actually ask him, he just kind of says it under his breath, but you can hear him.
And he says something like, I don't know.
I think worship on Sunday is one of those lines.
You know what I mean?
And it was, and it was, I remember hearing that and I was like, that's exactly it.
That's right.
If this is not the line, you have no line.
Right.
So you need to repent of that.
And a lot of these guys need to just straight up repent of that.
Right.
And I think that some will.
And I'm very hopeful that all it's going to take is a few guys.
Like I'm hopeful for Andrew T. Walker, but I don't know.
I'm hopeful for some other guys to come to their senses because I think once a one or two of these guys does it, as sad as this is, I think there's a lot of guys waiting in the wings, you know, lower level tier guys that just want someone to take the lead on this and to say it's okay to do this.
I think a lot of people will do it.
I think a lot of people will have their good look in the mirror moment and they will like, we'll never do this again under no circumstances.
Now, whether or not that's true or not, I don't know, but I'm just hopeful to get a big movement of that because that's what we need right now, man.
We need as many soldiers as we can get, as many people that know the score as we can get.
And so I'm the kind of guy that I'm willing to extend a lot of grace, even though it's 900 days later.
That's insane.
But you give us a good case for why you won't be duped again.
And, you know, I'm not going to say all is forgiven or forgotten, but we can lock arms again.
I agree.
I agree.
And I think we just pan out and look at the bigger picture.
So for 900 days, did you miss COVID?
Okay, that's a big deal.
You missed it for 900.
Everybody missed it for like a day or two, but like four weeks, right?
So 28 days versus 900, there's quite a difference there.
But even with that, we can pan out like, okay, so did you miss the COVID thing?
But did you also miss the total propaganda with CRT?
Because honestly, like if a guy was like holding the line against Black Lives Matter and saying, like, this is just racism against white people, this is just envy, this is just coveting, this is like the bike.
Like, if a guy was saying those kinds of things in 2020, but he was missing it on COVID, like, I'm really compassionate.
You know what I mean?
Because I'm like, that guy has spine, that guy, I've seen him make a stand, he's been right on some of these, and he does have some measure.
Exactly.
So, those are good guys.
So, I want to, because everything you're saying is so good.
So, I'm agreeing with you.
Clarifying, you know, my position because I really did pose it as a question because I'm thinking through it.
What, what's, you know, what, what should I be telling people with the, you know, the little platform that I have?
People who are actively right now looking for a church, should this be a deal breaker, right?
Like, like if a guy, if it took him 900 days to realize telling people that they had to get a jab in order to obey Christ's commandment to love their neighbor, that's a deal breaker.
And it sounds like what we're arriving at is no, that is not in and of itself inherently a deal breaker, but it's a big red flag.
And let's, and then let's see, number one, does he?
Own it.
So that would be the first thing.
Does he repent?
Number two, does he give a reason for why he was wrong and he won't be wrong again in the future?
That's something we covered.
And then number three, let's pan out beyond just that one issue of COVID stuff and how did he do on the woke test, right?
Because there's been multiple tests over the last couple of years.
How do you do on the baby killing test?
How's he doing on the sodomy test?
How's he doing on the hate white people test?
There's a lot of great tests that in God's providence we've gotten all in just two and a half short years.
And so, you know, but if a guy's failed.
And you tell me if I'm being extreme here, AD.
If he's failed all those tests, the Homo test, he's failed the racism test, he's failed, you know what I mean?
And the COVID test, then I feel like let's forgive that guy if he repents on all accounts and then get him a nice warm seat on the bench, right?
Yeah, I would agree.
I mean, I'm laughing over here because it's an embarrassment of riches.
It's like there's just been so many tests.
And the thing is, a lot of these, you know, look, COVID was a new thing.
Like nobody's ever experienced anything like that before.
But a lot of these are like simple tests.
You know what I mean?
Like a lot of these are very basic.
And so, and even you could even argue that staying open for church is basic too.
I'm not going to say that that's not basic.
But, but like if you're just a slave to the narrative, right?
You are a slave to the government propaganda machine.
That is a sign that you are trying to serve two masters.
Somebody that I actually really like on Twitter who was saying how it was ridiculous to demand that pastors apologize for the vaccine thing.
And we both retweeted that.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
And I like that guy.
That guy says a lot of good things.
And he's lamenting about why it's so, man, this is a hard job.
And I said, you know, it's not hard unless you're trying to serve two masters.
That's right.
Then it's impossible.
Like, it's not even hard.
It's impossible.
And so, if you are failing test after test after test after test, and some of these are basic tests, like don't be racist against white people.
How hard can it get?
You know, if you're failing all these tests, you are obviously trying to serve two masters.
You're just in no position to lead the church of God.
You're in no position.
Yeah.
And it's like, you know, maybe in 20 years you'll be in that position.
I doubt it.
But for right now, you need to take a seat on the bench.
I mean, it's just that simple.
Yeah.
Amen.
And I want to just go back for just a moment and highlight a little bit.
What you said earlier is so good because there's just one more big point that I think I don't want people to miss.
We're not faulting pastors for not being epidemiologists.
Like, thank God for Robert Malone and some of those guys, but man, they were shadow banned and suppressed and kicked off platforms.
So, like, sometimes some of their stuff was hard to find.
You know what I mean?
And, like, and when you've got, you know, you've got, you know, and it wasn't just like one doctor, though, to be fair.
Like, early on, you had like 200 renowned doctors coming out and speaking, you know, so it's not like it was a bunch of quack jobs.
Like, these guys were legit and they're coming out.
With evidence and with strong argumentation, all these kinds of things.
And some of their argumentation was just like, look, we're not even saying COVID is not a thing.
We're not saying this.
We're not saying that.
But we're just saying this thing, ivermectin, ever heard of it?
Right?
Nobel winning prize, you know, prize winning drug with like virtually no side effects.
And no, it's not a horse dewormer.
Yes, it has been using that, but this is for people and blah, blah.
Like, you know, like, and you know the irony with that?
It's like, well, I'm not going to take medicine that's made for an animal, made for a horse.
Libs have literally started.
Talk about the hypocrisy.
They started pushing a drug.
I forget the name of it, but they started pushing a drug for red states where Planned Parenthoods are getting shut down that women can take, pregnant women can take, that'll kill their baby in their womb because they can't get a legal abortion in their state.
And it's a drug that's made for animals.
So the libs making fun of conservatives for taking horse dewormers are now saying, take this other horse pill.
Not to save a life, but to end one.
So, anyways, all that being said, like, no, nobody's faulting pastors for not being epidemiologists and even having, you know, it being a little fuzzy.
I didn't know the government was that corrupt.
I knew there were problems, but I didn't know that corrupt.
I think what you're saying that keeps standing out to me is you're saying, look, here's a line shutting down church.
That's the line.
Because when the Spanish flu rolled around in 18, you know, or 1918 or whatever it was, it was about 100 years before.
COVID stuff.
But I read up on some of that.
The government, number one, they did not mandate anything.
They asked churches and pastors, they asked them if they would cancel their services and they canceled for three weeks.
And that was the Spanish flu, which was no respecter of persons.
This was not just killing 86 year olds.
Sure, this was a legitimate disease.
Yeah, yeah.
And it was taking, it would take a 17 year old right alongside it, you know, like, and at the same ratio, at the same proportion.
And so, but it was three weeks and they were asked by the government.
If churches would shut down.
And I can't help but think, I don't just think it was because, oh, these Neanderthals 100 years ago didn't understand the dangerous potential of germs.
They didn't have the scientific theology or technology.
I don't think that it was due that they treated it differently.
They handled the situation differently 100 years ago.
I don't think it's because they were primitive in the realm of science.
I think it's because they were premier in the realm of doctrine.
They knew ecclesiology.
They knew the Lord's day, gathering and meeting with the risen Christ and the sacraments and the word rightly preached, that that was a big deal.
And that missing the Lord's day, the saints being barred from the table of the Lord, his body, his blood, they knew that that is dangerous.
And they were unwilling.
And so I can't help but think if it was just a matter of a pastor not knowing epidemiology or not knowing all the dotted I's and cross T's of the government or constitutional law, there was a lot of things that we were all trying to brush up on in like 15 minutes.
And I understand and sympathize with pastors because I was one of them trying to quickly learn all these things that I should have already known.
But the thing is, pastors didn't just shut down their churches because they didn't know epidemiology and so they trusted the experts.
They shut down their churches because I'm afraid it's because they didn't know ecclesiology and they didn't believe the promises of God that Christ uniquely meets with his people on the Lord's day when they're gathered together to administer the ordinary means of grace and that this is one of the primary means by which.
He preserves the soul, which is of more value than the body.
Like, it just revealed that, like, we don't know what the church is.
We don't know who Christ is.
And all the stuff we talk about, about eternity and the soul, and like, we're just idolaters.
We really love this life more than we love the life to come.
So there's some severe deficiencies.
There's no question about it.
I mean, if you, nobody's going to fault you for not understanding the nuances of constitutional law, epidemiology, all that stuff.
But we need to examine ourselves when the default isn't, all right, I'm going to stay open until I get up to speed on this.
Right.
And then maybe we'll figure it out.
And then maybe we'll shut down for a week or two, whatever.
But no, the default was, we're going to shut down and maybe never reopen because some churches never reopened.
And so that's the thing.
It's like we got to really look inside ourselves and like, why is it that we know how important church is?
Because a lot of these people that did this, they've written books.
About the gathering and how important it is.
That's what's so weird about Lehman.
He's the gathering guy.
Exactly.
So that guy knows what the Bible says about gatherings.
And all it took was the government to say, no, no, shut down.
It's too dangerous.
He's like, yes, sir.
Instantly.
There's something in him he needs to examine why he hears the voice of God and then he hears the voice of the state.
And that takes precedent instantly.
Right.
Right.
That's something you do.
And it's the same thing with the vaccines because that's what we initially started talking about.
It's like, Why do we understand the law of God so poorly as to pretend like injecting yourself with a chemical is part of God's law?
Like, that's that you have to do it, an unknown chemical.
Why do we understand God's law so poorly that why is the default like, oh, yeah, I don't even know where the love your neighbor meme started, but it started somewhere.
Why is when the first time you heard getting the vaccine is a way to love your neighbor, why did so many people go, oh, yeah, that sounds right?
Like, why were the brakes not pumped?
You need to look inside yourself.
I can't figure that out for Andrew T. Walker.
He needs to figure that out for himself.
And I think a lot of guys will, and at least I'm hopeful that they will.
And if they don't, that's okay too, because God does a lot of good things, even with small numbers.
Right.
And fortunately, with the law of God in terms of the vaccine, fortunately, you're right.
And everybody, Russell Moore and guys who are like, we have an obligation.
This is how we love our neighbor, and blah, blah, blah.
Fortunately, for them, they're wrong because if their exegesis of the law of God and what it means to love our neighbor, And not do him physical harm, and that includes, um, you know, 17 steps between me and my neighbor that might harm it, right?
Because that's the thing, it becomes more indirect.
Yeah.
You know, because then you could just not do anything.
So, fortunately for those people, they're wrong because by their same logic, we could say, okay, let's track how many people got SADS, sudden adult death syndrome.
How many people died and that we can track to the vaccine?
And then how many of them got the vaccine because you motivated them and bound their conscience?
The Whole Story of God's Sanctification00:05:52
Like, so you're a murderer.
That's right.
You know what I mean?
Like, it works both ways.
So it's like you didn't get the vaccine and, you know, somebody got COVID.
Okay.
You told people to get the vaccine and the vaccine killed them.
Right.
Like, this, like, you know what I mean?
Like, so that's a, so, you know, it cuts both ways.
Yeah.
You're right.
100%.
So, all right, man.
Any final thoughts?
I think this has been good.
This has been really good.
Yeah.
I don't have any final thoughts.
And I just, I think I totally understand people that are like, man, it's 900 days later.
Like, you know, how could you ever trust them again?
And I think that, I just want to caution everybody.
Like, I'm the first guy out there that talks about how pastors shouldn't whine about how hard their job is.
Like, I'm the first guy to say that.
Whenever someone does, I say, okay, so quit.
You know, good riddance.
You know, I don't care.
Their job is hard, though.
I'm going to say that.
And I think that if we've got guys out here that are coherently, you know, repenting and they do what we've talked about here, where they're like, man, like, This is how I'm never going to be duped again.
Like, I was lied to.
I should have known.
I didn't, but I will know next time because they're lying to me all the time.
They're still lying, right?
They're still doing it.
You know what I mean?
So, I think that we should extend as much grace as possible.
I'm not saying you have to go to these guys' churches because there's plenty of good churches out there that didn't fall for this for very long.
So, I'm not saying you got to go to, you know, Andrew T. Walker's church.
Just, I'm just using, we're picking on him.
But the reason I'm picking on him is because I think I want to put pressure on him.
You're picking on him because he's the worst, but he's the best of the worst.
He's in the worst category, but he's the best of the worst.
I agree.
He's on good company with this vaccine stuff.
Yeah.
Because every time I've been positively mentioning Andrew Tiwaku, because he's been saying some pretty awesome stuff.
Really cool.
In my opinion.
I have to follow him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would suggest it because he's saying stuff that a lot of people in Big Eva aren't saying.
And he is in Big Eva 100%.
He's totally Big Eva.
And anyway, but anyway, my point though is that I'm not saying you have to go to his church.
I'm not saying you have to listen to everything he says.
But I would say extend grace if someone like that comes out and says, you know, man, I shouldn't have done that.
You know, and he can coherently explain why and all that.
Because I don't think, look, God doesn't need any of us, but it would be awesome to have more soldiers out here, you know.
And listen, a soldier that was, like you said, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, you're not going to fool me twice, shame on me.
George Bush botched the same, but yeah, go ahead.
Well, but I like that.
I like it.
My point is, you're not going to fool me again.
I like that, though, because.
That can be an effective soldier.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
I think it can be.
So, well, because I'm that soldier.
Just for the record, you know, people think, oh man, you know, Joel's hardcore and that's why we follow him, you know, like, but I just, as the Lord expands my influence and uses me and stuff, I want to try to be that guy who's, you know, not self sabotaging and, you know, and flogging myself, you know, and never experiencing God's grace and moving on.
But I do, I want to be the guy who tells the whole story.
You know what I mean?
Like, there's some leaders who are just like, they've got spine, they've got gravitas, they've got virtue, you know?
But, like, one of the reasons they're so high and lifted up on this pedestal, and like, they're awe inspiring, but they're not, nobody feels like they'll ever be able to be like them, right?
They don't feel real.
They don't feel real.
And they don't feel real because they don't tell the whole story.
They don't tell the whole story.
You see what they are now and you see what they want you to see, but they won't tell you the whole story.
They won't go, you know, rewind the track and go back and say, Hey, for the record, I did close my church like everyone else.
Now, here's the difference, though.
The difference is it was for four weeks and not four months, and we never closed it again.
And when I opened the door, I owned it.
I apologized.
It's recorded.
You can go and watch the sermon where I apologize.
And I didn't just apologize for getting it wrong, I was able to articulate exegetically how I got it wrong and my new exegesis that is actually biblically faithful that will keep me from getting it wrong.
In the future, like, but there's not a lot of guys like that.
Every guy who's solid is solid.
He didn't, he wasn't born out of the womb solid.
That's right.
He became solid by doing exactly what I just described.
And I guess I just wish some of these guys would tell the story every once in a while of the process of how God sanctified them to that.
Like, everybody has a track record of getting some things wrong.
Like, you know, if you think baptizing infants is right, well, guess what?
Doug used to be wrong then.
Right?
Because he was like, he was a Baptist pastor.
He had to change in that.
And he lost every single elder in the church when he made that change.
And you know what I mean?
Like, nobody just starts with all their ducks in a row.
And so I think it's helpful to tell the whole story, not in every podcast, not every sermon, you know what I mean?
But from time to time, we're not just picking on the guys who are 900 days late and saying, we were never late.
My argument is not that I knew all these things, my argument is I missed it too.
But it took me 28 days by the grace of God.
And if it took you 900 days, in the same way that I had to give an explanation, I had to give an account for my 28 days of stupidity, man, I want to see a heck of a big account for that 900 days of stupidity.
Accountability for 900 Days of Stupidity00:00:41
You know what I mean?
I think that's unfair.
Maybe it's because I just got back from the Fight Laugh Feast conference, or maybe I'm just a big softy, but I have a lot of hope that this is going to happen at some level.
I don't know how many people, but I think there's going to be some big names.
As more information comes out, I think they're going to do it.
And I'm hopeful, man.
I'm hopeful it's going to be like a tidal wave after that.
So we'll see.
Amen.
All right, AD.
Thanks for coming on the show, man.
Appreciate it.
God bless you, man.
Thanks so much for listening.
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