Preston Sprinkle and Zondervan's "Upside Down Kingdom Bible" face fierce criticism for allegedly subverting Reformed theology with gender-neutral pronouns and affirming LGBTQ+ identities, despite the publisher's massive 450 million NIV sales. Hosts condemn Sprinkle's claims that same-sex attraction is not sinful and his controversial suggestion of a same-sex relationship between Jesus and John as blasphemous Pelagianism. Dr. Jared Moore counters by defining temptation as external rather than internal desire, promoting his "33 Days to Freedom from Lust" book and emphasizing mortifying lust through the Holy Spirit over self-justification, ultimately framing Sprinkle's approach as a deceptive strategy to advance heretical ideas under a soft-spoken guise. [Automatically generated summary]
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Why We Leave Five Star Reviews00:07:00
Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform.
I get it.
It's annoying.
Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.
When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds.
You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
It's hard to fathom, but in the United States, Reformed Christians make up a very small percentage of.
Protestant congregations and congregants.
That means that publishing houses that are much bigger than Reformation heritage books and personalities with a bigger reach than R.C. Sproul exert significant influence over a much broader swath of American evangelicals than merely small Reformed outfits.
One such influential publisher is Zondervan Publishers, a media company and printer founded almost 100 years ago that is the publisher of the popular NIV Bible translation.
Which has sold over 450 million copies.
Zondervan brings in over $100 million annually.
Today, Zondervan is publishing their new Upside Down Kingdom Bible.
It is edited by none other than Preston Sprinkle, who is an author and speaker that has said in the past that the church will look more like Jesus if it has more trans people in it, not fewer.
Packed full of contributions from Michael Bird, Jamar Tisbe, Francis Chan, and others, this one is sure to leave off of your wish list.
This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and Reese Fund, as well as our Patreon members and our faithful donors.
You can join our Patreon by going to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries, or you can donate at right response ministries.com forward slash donate.
Tune in today as we discuss Zondervan's political Bible, Preston Sprinkle, and how to combat the insidious lies of big evangelicalism with Dr. Jared Moore.
All right.
Welcome back, guys.
Yep.
Thanks for having me.
I know.
Thanks for holding it down while I was gone.
Yep.
I have a white pill, a good report from the front line.
I spent, traveled up, saw some family, saw friends.
These are guys like I grew up with, but just interacting with them, like they're not listening to Aaron McIntyre or anything.
But man, my goodness, they're like, God bless Trump.
We need our nation back.
We need Christian principles, Christian morals.
So I'm happy to report the youth are all right.
We're going to win.
Men are getting radicalized.
So today we're talking about Zondervan Publishers and more specifically Preston Sprinkle.
But to zoom out for a minute, like, why does it matter?
Like, all right, there's a political Bible or there's a bad Bible translation.
Like, why is that necessarily relevant?
We've had the Passion Translation for a while, we've had the message.
Why is it that it makes such big news, especially for you, the listener?
Most people that listen to this show, they're probably of a reform persuasion, whether that would be Presbyterian or some type of Reform Baptist.
So at the end of the day, they say, like, well, that's all well and good that someone somewhere out there is publishing a Bible that's silly and political, and you have this man who's trying to sneak into American evangelicalism the idea of gay Christians and trans Christians.
But what influence does it have?
And what I kind of, we've been talking about it for several months.
I alluded to it in the Cold Open.
The Reformed tribe, the Reformed world, it's a lot smaller than we really think it is.
When you think of the people that are voting, when you think of people that are involved in politics, when you think of the books that are being authored, the New York Times bestsellers, there's a huge pool of American evangelical Christians out there.
And the fact of the matter is, as Reformed Christians, we're just ultimately not very connected to them.
It's not Reformation heritage books or banner of truth that are necessarily the bread and butter of the millions and millions of.
It's about, so two thirds of America is Christian on paper.
Now that's down from 99% in 1900, but 66 to 68% of America is Christian.
And about 150 million is Protestant or Reformed.
You can show a graph, Nate.
Of that 150 million, so 150 American Christians that would claim to be Protestant, of that amount, you can actually see that those that are Reformed, the Presbyterian church, they're a very small proportion of it.
So right here, you've got a bar graph on your screen.
On the left, you have the number of non denominational churches in the U.S.
This is estimated to be about 44,000 to 45,000.
The biggest denomination would be Southern Baptists.
They're down a little bit.
They have about 47,000 churches, not just members, but churches.
So 44,000 non denominational, 47,000 Southern Baptist, big evangelical, big tent, non denominational Baptist churches.
Let's take the Presbyterians.
NAPARC, North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council, that's a conglomerate of PCA and OPC and some other smaller denominations.
They work together.
And the CREC.
Something like three to eight thousand estimated.
It's a tiny proportion.
And the CREC, just for the record, wouldn't that be less than 500 of that?
I think I saw about four to 500 would be the estimate.
The OPC is like 300 churches total.
The PCA is 1,200 or something.
About 1,800 was my estimate.
PCUSA is like 8,000.
So that's a mainline denomination.
So even if we step down from Baptist, but they're super gay, to Reformed Protestant, super gay, within the super gay, Still kind of gay for the most part.
It's a beautiful building, but you will have a purple haired lesbian pastor.
And there will be a pride flag adorning the pulpit.
So the point is, we're a small part of that.
And so that means that there are publishers and influential groups and academics, institutions, universities out there.
They exert massive influence.
And because you don't see it, because you don't experience it, because their books aren't on your shelf, does not mean that they hold significant sway over American evangelicals.
And one such of those that we're going to be talking about is Zondervan.
They've been around for almost 100 years.
And they're the publisher of the NIV Bible, the nearly inspired version, as some like to call it, which has sold 450 million copies.
This is a Bible I had a copy of growing up.
It's just they've been around for a while.
They put out a lot of books and they've been at their tricks for a long time.
Michael has a little bit more on that.
So I want to open it up.
But this is a group that's very influential.
Again, maybe not necessarily you, the listener, but your parents, your friends, your hometown, you have family that you're related to.
These are the type of books, if they're in church, that they have on their bookshelf.
Yep.
Yep.
Gender Neutral Pronouns Creeping In00:03:59
Like you say, Wes, it's true.
Zondervan has been.
To put it charitably, trying to figure out what to do about gender ideology and language for a little while.
And so there have actually been several versions of the New International Version Bible, or several editions, I should say, of that version over the last couple of decades.
And it's interesting how the emphasis on gender neutral pronouns or plural pronouns instead of he has been actually creeping into the Christian world for a long time.
It's in the secular world too.
But here's an example of how the New International Version has translated one specific verse.
This is Mark 4 25.
And so the first edition of this was in 1984.
It says, Whoever has will be given more.
Whoever does not have, even what he has, will be taken from him.
And this is translating anthropos in the Greek, which means man or mankind.
The 2005 NIV had an update and they chose to go the plural route, which grammatically I've taught.
English grammar multiple times.
And this just drives me crazy.
Those who have will be given more for those who do not have, even what they have will be taken from them.
So it went from a singular, what he has, to a plural, what they have will be taken from them.
And this, all this does is avoid the word he.
The masculine pronoun.
Yeah, he and him.
And then the 2011 version, there was an outcry about this.
And so they split the difference, which grammatically is even worse in the English language.
It says, whoever has will be given more, whoever does not have, even what They have will be taken from them.
And so here you have a singular noun, whoever has will be given more, and switching within the same sentence to a plural noun, what they have will be taken from them.
What's interesting about this is, Nate, you can go to the next slide.
Zondervan defends their tampering and tinkering with pronouns and these sorts of translations or versions of these verses this way.
They actually had a whole study committee.
That did an extensive study, and this was one of their conclusions.
The study committee said the gender neutral pronoun they or them and theirs is by far the most common way that English language speakers and writers today refer back to singular antecedents such as whoever, anyone, somebody, a person, no one, and the like.
Now, the fact is, this actually in our time is true.
This is true in our culture, and it is true that English language has come to use these.
Non equal pronouns.
So you use a plural pronoun them to talk about he or her.
And just as a side note, I've been a fan for a long time that we need to start using the masculine he again when we refer to just an unknown single person in society.
Like that, that ought to be in many ways what comes to our mind when we think about the lawyer or the soldier or the politician.
But there's another interesting point here because when we think about the English language in particular, the two things that kind of universalized and Gave convention to the English language were Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
And so it's interesting to see that Zondervan is now saying, well, we are trying to adjust our version of the Bible to match social convention.
Whereas before, it was the King James Bible and Shakespeare that shaped the social convention.
And I think it's an interesting just thing to notice about where we are versus where we used to be in history.
You'll see this in your ESV the battle over Dulas, which would be slave.
The ESV, I have one right in front of me.
They'll make that bond servant, right?
Which is kind of redundant bond servant.
Sons Versus Daughters Of The Kingdom00:04:15
And because that term slate, oh, we don't really like it, and uh, it takes a Delphi, which would be brothers.
ESV does a good job in that, typically, it doesn't try to throw in their ancestors.
Right, Paul is generally saying, 'Greet the brothers, brothers, I write to you.' He's not writing brothers and sisters, preach the word, be faithful.
He's writing brothers, but the ESV does go out of its way, typically, in most versions of it, with the publisher, right, to add to the bottom.
Well, this could mean brothers and sisters.
This is a very inclusive term, and so it is true, though, grammatically, like, there is some merit to that.
Like, I speak Spanish.
And I teach Spanish.
And the word brothers, in fact, just today we took a test and they were asking me, like, the word brothers can mean a group of men or it can mean a mixed group of siblings.
And so language is tricky and translating language is tricky, also.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Jewel, I remember when you preached a number of years ago on why we cannot allow ourselves to, especially with the verses that talk about us being God's sons, and we cannot say we are God's sons and daughters.
And there's a real, and I don't know if you want to just take two or three minutes and.
Sure.
Explain that because that was really eye opening to me.
Thanks.
Yeah, well, because in that case, there's just significant theological implications that come from being a son.
The daughters would not receive the inheritance.
And so when we speak of the doctrine of adoption, the ministry of the Holy Spirit and justification, the doctrine of justification being declared righteous and then being grafted into the family of God, where the branches and Jesus is the vine, John 15 were grafted in.
When that takes place, you know, we go from being children of God's wrath to being, you know, beloved adoptive children, but particularly sons and not daughters, because we're co heirs with Christ.
We actually share in the Son, capital S, in his inheritance, and that becomes ours.
And it's the Son that carries on the name of the Father, that is the rightful heir to his entire estate.
And so, no, there are no.
Daughters of the kingdom in the technical sense.
And in the ministry of adoption, we are adopted as sons.
And that would include women who are born again by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
They too are co heirs in grace, and they're receiving that spiritual, eternal inheritance that is theirs rightfully by virtue of having faith in Christ.
But they're receiving that as sons in terms of a legal.
Not that women in the afterlife will become male, but in the legal, judicial status, my wife is a co heir in grace along with me, and she's receiving the inheritance that would be given to a son.
And so, in that sense, it matters.
And so, when we're looking at scripture that talks about that we're sons of the living God, he's adopted us as sons, we don't need to say sons and daughters.
It's understood theologically that God adopts by virtue of conversion.
That he adopts, he saves both men and women.
We know that.
We know that.
That's obvious from other portions of scripture.
But when we're speaking of adoption and all the judicial corresponding legal rights and inheritance that corresponds with that, then we should say what the Bible says sons.
And we don't have to bend over backwards to constantly be trying to make everything as inclusive as possible.
Because in that case, it's a bit ironic.
But the irony is that by virtue of including sons and daughters, you're actually downgrading all female Christians.
Status and inheritance.
You're saying so.
God actually adopts both, he adopts sons and daughters.
And what that would imply is that God saves both men and women, but he saves them in a different way, or at least saves them unto a different status.
That men are saved unto one status of a full inheritance, and women, you know, I don't know, maybe they get a dowry or something, you know, like a lighter status.
And that's not true.
So, yep.
Hebrews talks about that too.
Downgrading Female Christian Status00:14:57
I would tell, he's quoting Psalm 22, I would tell of my brothers in the midst of the congregation.
Like that's what he didn't say, like I'll be there and I'll talk of my brothers and sisters.
All right, so we're going to dig into this upside down Kingdom Bible.
We're going to play the actual video that's used to advertise this.
Why you should purchase your copy of Zondervin.
Before we do, real quick, we just went on a trip and visited the guys in Ogden, my family, and also Nathan's family, and another family from Georgetown.
So we took three families up there and spent time with Brian and Eric and Dan, Ben, and those guys.
And I'm reminded because we were just on a plane with a lot of little kids, and they were digging through the pockets and finding the menu and the little Instruction, you know, thing that shows you how to put on the mask and, you know, use the flotation device under your seat.
And they also, of course, naturally, as small children tend to do, they found the vomit bag.
And so, as we're going into this video, I would strongly, strongly prescribe finding, you know, whether it's a trash can or, you know, something that you can throw up into, you know, other than merely throwing up into your lap, because I think anything from Preston Sprinkle, you're going to need it.
How did he get that last name?
Like, you don't even choose them.
And the fact is, I'm going to give the gayest.
Well, here's the deal.
That's what I was going to say God is, we forget this.
And I mean this seriously.
I'm not just being facetious.
God is exceedingly kind.
Seriously.
And like, Pilgrim's Progress, you know, sometimes, like, some of the critiques was, you know, it's allegorical.
And sometimes people are like, ah, Bunyan, you know, like, it's just, it's too on the nose, right?
I mean, you've got like a judge over here in a courtroom in Vanity Fair called, you know, Mr. Hate Good.
You know, like, couldn't you be like a little bit more subtle, give a little more mistakes?
I mean, the dude's name is Mr. Hate Good.
It's like obvious this is a bad guy, you know?
Like, let the reader guess a little bit, right?
Like, his character can slowly come out through the narrative.
You know, you don't have to just label it right up front.
Hey, this is a bad guy and this is a good guy.
You know, the lead protagonist, Christian, you know, and one of the bad guys, Mr. Hate Good.
But sometimes God does that in the same way that John Bunyan did because God loves clarity and he wants to be merciful and kind.
And in God's providence, he gave Preston Sprinkle the last name Sprinkle.
So we would know this dude's gay.
All right, all right, let's play this video.
It's been said that the Christian faith is personal, but not private.
Our faith is political, but it's not partisan.
Christianity, in other words, is not about some private little Jesus that we keep tucked away in our hearts.
Rather, the lordship of King Jesus should determine how we think about all areas of life economics, immigration, the death penalty, abortion, war, violence, power, justice, sexuality, and what it means to follow the Creator's design for human flourishing.
This is why I'm so excited about the Upside Down Kingdom Study Bible.
This study Bible seeks to unleash the countercultural, upside down nature of the Christian faith.
Our hope and goal is that the Upside Down Kingdom Study Bible will provide you with a fresh and exciting encounter with God's Word so that you may be challenged to think more deeply and love more widely.
So, just for the sake of clarity, as a disclaimer, cover the bases here.
As far as I know, I have zero definitive knowledge that Preston Sprinkle is literally gay.
Just want to clear that up.
Otherwise, what he is.
We're saying G H E Y.
Yeah, G H E Y, exactly.
But in terms of G A Y, like actually gay, the proper biblical term being sodomite, he is sodomite friendly.
He himself is not one, as far as we know.
But that's what this study Bible is attempting to do, to carve out space.
And one of the things I hate, I should have taken my own advice.
I should have grabbed something during that video so that I could have thrown up.
But one of the things I.
I hate it, you know, Democrats do this all the time.
And I mean, I would be shocked if Preston Sprinkle voted for Trump.
I mean, like, the dude is, yeah, the dude's a Democrat, probably in the same vein as, remember, Russell Moore and like David French and who else came out?
It was, oh, Ortland, Ray Ortland guy.
Ray Ortland.
Remember, he said, never Trump, this time Harris, always Jesus.
Yeah.
That's the coalition board member.
Yeah.
Get that for a second.
We just got to stop there for a second.
Ray Ortland said, Never Trump.
He tweeted this publicly.
He took it down.
He did it on Blue Skies.
Because he got roasted.
Because he thought he'd get away with it.
Yeah, he did it on exactly.
Like they made an entire social media platform for all the gays to transfer over to because they were getting wrecked on X.
But, you know, as soon as they started, stopped, as soon as Elon stopped suppressing conservatives, AKA people who have common sense, then all of a sudden the gay libtards started getting wrecked on X.
And so an entire, you know, ecosystem was created for them, you know, so that they could.
For all 15 of them.
For all 15 of them.
Blue Skies is one of them.
And so, but over there, where I, you know, I guess Ray Ortland obviously belongs, you know, based off of this tweet, he ended up taking it down though because he got roasted so severely.
Praise God, rightfully so.
But he literally said, Never Trump, this time, Harris, always Jesus.
He literally said, I am voting for Kamala Harris.
And in the comments, one of the first comments, David French said, Amen, or this is the way.
This is the way.
This is the way.
Yeah.
Like quoting the Mandalorian.
Yeah.
This is the way.
And so, anyways, Democrats like Ray Ortland, like David French, these guys are not conservatives.
That is like such a joke.
So, liberals, arguably even to the point of being progressives in the case of David French, for sure, Russell Moore, for sure.
But what they do is they always use the language of like Jesus, he goes against the grain, he's countercultural.
So, Preston's using that language.
We wanted a study Bible that's countercultural.
Notice what they're doing.
They are assuming.
That you are stupid enough to believe that in 2025 that the overarching culture is staunchly standing for traditional conservative biblical values.
Right?
So when they say counterculture, what they mean is they're saying the culture today in the West is normative heterosexuality, against sodomy, against gay marriage.
Against transgenderism, against abortion, against mass invasion of immigrants, against this, against that.
And they're saying that's the culture.
And our study Bible is countercultural.
What you mean is your study Bible is there's nothing countercultural about it.
You're saying our study Bible is actually exactly in line with culture.
That's why we made it.
And that's why Zondervan stepped in to make it, because Zondervan wants to make a buck.
And so they're making, they're putting their finger in the wind, seeing which way the cultural winds are blowing.
And for everybody's like, well, you're being inconsistent right now because aren't you excited that Trump won?
And don't you feel like, you know, like the vibe shift, you know, and the white pill.
And yeah, 100%.
But let's just be honest.
I am, I'm over the moon that Trump won and not Harris.
But at the RNC, you still have a bunch of queers, you know, up on literally.
So you're really, Crowd has been warmly welcomed into the new GOP.
Absolutely.
100%.
So, even for like the vibe shift, I think there is a vibe shift.
I think that, yeah, hashtag winning.
We'll take what we can get.
There's a lot more work to be done, though, guys.
A lot more work to be done.
We don't need a black pill.
We don't need a despair.
We can actually celebrate victories, even when they're small.
I'm celebrating.
I'm happy.
These are not two things that I'm saying that contradict one another.
They both can work in tandem.
Number one, White pills for days.
Praise God.
Praise God.
He's being merciful to our country.
Change is underway.
And I feel more hopeful at a large cultural, political standpoint than I have in years.
All right.
That's statement number one.
Statement number two the GOP is still super duper gay.
And that's the conservative platform in our nation.
The other one is so gay, you can't even see straight.
Right.
It's like Ricky Bobby on Talladega Nice.
Like I'm getting dizzy because of all the gayness.
You know, like you can't even see.
That's how gay the other one is.
So, my point is when you say we're coming out with a study Bible that's countercultural, if that was true, then that study Bible would be saying, believe it or not, deported.
Believe it or not, jailed for sodomy.
Believe it or not, universal pornography ban, law.
Believe it or not, OnlyFans shut down.
Believe it or not, like it would be that kind of commentary, those kinds of footnotes.
I guarantee you, those are not the footnotes of this upside down kingdom Bible.
When they say counterculture, what they actually mean is it's countercultural to the culture of Christendom in its heyday 200 years ago.
It's counter England in the 1700s, their culture, but it's right in line with our culture today and the worst aspects of it.
Well, there was an exchange because Woke Preacher Clips, he pulled a bunch of clips from the promotional.
It was just, I mean, if you needed a vomit bag for the first one, my goodness for those.
But he said, you know, it's funny because they talk about we're going to gather this host of different viewpoints.
There's all of this just drooling over like the perspective of women and there's perspective of minorities, all these different ones.
And well, Preacher Clips, who does some great work, he was like, well, I'm sure there will be representation, of course, from the patriarchal view, which was the main view throughout all of Christian history.
And Preston Sprinkle himself came in, he said, don't worry, I would love to assure you there will be no patriarchal viewpoint anywhere in this book.
Wow.
So we have the majority view.
And what we're going to do is we're going to sample a view from this side, from this ethnicity and this culture and women and Probably children.
I mean, the more diversity, the better.
And then leave off just what 98% of the church was through all of church history.
I want to just real quick cite a couple comments because I think it serves as a good case study for everybody else.
So I'm not really even talking to these individuals because maybe the Holy Spirit could bring conviction and change their minds and persuade them and those kinds of things.
God's sovereign.
He can do whatever he wants to do.
But I think, you know, if I had to guess, they probably won't be persuaded, the two comments I'm about to read.
But I think it serves as an example, as a larger case study for all of our other listeners to help them along and why we speak the way we do, why we use some of the rhetoric that we do, why we're.
You know, in terms of not just our theology, but our methodology.
So, a couple of the comments.
HJM says, So much of Jesus' love coming through here, being sarcastic with a smirky emoji.
And then somebody named, the handle is JW.
I don't think it's James White, but JW says, The irony here is that you're just as damaging to the body of Christ as Sprinkle.
You're just in the ditch on the other side of the road.
So, to both of those comments, my response would be, I don't really care, Margaret.
And the reason why I say that is, yeah, one, it's funny, but two, that is the proper response.
We have tried tolerance in our nation and in our culture for the past 70 years.
And it has gotten us the dismembering of 70 million babies in their mother's womb, it has gotten us the chopping off of genitals of children, it has gotten us gay pride parades.
In New York City, with men's genitalia hanging out and shaking around as parents holding their children on the sidelines, on the streets, watching this take place.
It has gotten us a full scale invasion of foreigners who worship foreign gods at our southern border, who come in illegally, many of them criminals, who not only take jobs from Americans who are trying to provide for their families, but also at an exponentially higher statistical rate rape our wives and daughters.
We are done being tolerant.
We're done being tolerant.
Jesus, when he fashions a whip of cords in John chapter 2 and begins to drive out the money changers, he is not putting gentleness to the side.
He is embodying perfect gentleness, which is a fruit of the Spirit.
Who's he being gentle to?
He's being gentle to all the people who came from the four corners of the earth to worship God at a time, a covenantal time under the old covenant in Israel, where there was a geographic center.
For worship of God, they couldn't stay home.
They couldn't just build their own churches.
They must come to the temple.
They've given up work for months, at least weeks.
They've paid an incredibly high price for travel.
And now they're trying to buy some pigeons or doves, one of the cheapest offerings that they could possibly give to God, the triune God, for the absolving of their sin, to receive his blessing, to renew steadfast covenant with him.
They've already paid an exorbitant Price, monetary price, just to be there.
And now the Jewish religious rulers of that day are like a Chuck E. Cheese, but with a currency exchange that's going to rip them off.
Instead of a dollar giving you four tokens to play the games, it's only going to give you one.
They're saying your Gentile money's no good here.
You have to exchange it for the temple currency.
And they ramp up the rates to where they're getting robbed blind.
Jesus is not putting gentleness to the side.
Jesus is embodying perfect gentleness as a fruit of the Spirit.
He's being gentle to the people who are being destroyed.
Americans are being destroyed by our elite class.
They are being destroyed by a flood of third worlders into our nation who take from our.
Temple Currency And Exorbitant Prices00:03:30
We are not a tax farm.
We're not an economic zone.
This is not merely a set of propositions, it is a particular people in a particular place.
We love Christians.
We love Americans, and we want to defend them.
And the language and the rhetoric of Mr. Rogers over the last 70 years has not done anything to hold back or to stem the tide of perversion and progressive politics and culture that has steamrolled into our country, into our churches, and even into some, many of our homes.
So this is not us being mean.
This is us being faithful.
We will not tolerate it any longer.
Enough is enough.
No more gay Bibles.
No more gay Bibles.
No more of this bullcrap.
We're done.
We love Christ.
We love his people.
And we love our country.
And we make no apology.
You want nice?
Tune into the Gospel Coalition.
Tune into Christianity Today.
Go follow Beth Moore.
Go follow Russell Moore.
Go follow Preston Sprinkle.
This is not the channel for nice.
This is the channel for love.
The love of Christ that includes welcoming in little children so that he might bless them.
And fashioning a whip of cords when his people are being oppressed.
So go touch grass, log off.
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Progression From Sin To Pride00:12:05
We're so back.
Here we are.
We've got Dr. Jared Moore.
Jared, let me know if you can hear me.
If so, welcome to the show.
Yeah, I can hear you.
All right.
Here he is the man, the myth, the legend, just destroying anyone with a bad view of concupiscence.
Jared, is it cool?
Let's just go right off the bat.
Is it cool if I don't sleep with dudes, but, you know, in my heart, I sometimes want to, but only for a few seconds?
Yeah, if it's under a second, then Doug Wilson says it's not a sin.
All right.
Just get your stopwatch out and you'll be all right.
Just keep it quick.
Okay.
We are super glad and honored to have you.
You and I have interacted some offline.
You know, we have a lot of the same friend group and other ministers and pastors and politicians and guys who are stand up Christian guys.
But I think I've had you on the show once before.
Is that right, Jared?
Yeah, that's right.
Okay.
So we've, by the grace of God, we've come a long way, I think, since then.
Each year we keep growing.
God keeps blessing this ministry.
And so we're glad to have you again.
I don't know if you were watching on standby as we were kind of outlining this episode, but we played one of the clips from Preston Sprinkle where he's plugging, you know, and promoting the upside down kingdom Bible and talking about how it's countercultural.
And I said, yeah, like countercultural to the high watermark of Christendom in England in the 1700s.
Perhaps it would have been countercultural.
But I think it's actually, he should just say, there's nothing counter to it.
It's just right along with.
The culture and are we experiencing some winds of change right now?
Yes, and praise God for the executive orders from President Trump.
I'm so glad that he was elected and not Kamala.
But I was just saying that I want to be consistent and faithful and say I am so grateful for Trump.
He has my prayers, he has my support.
But the RNC was super duper gay.
So when you say countercultural, we just have to admit that the GOP today is gay and the Democrat Party is super gay.
And so a gay Bible doesn't seem that counter cultural to me.
What do you think?
Yeah, I think you're right.
Preston's just going right along with the culture.
I mean, there's no Christian in church history that would affirm this Bible as orthodox.
I mean, 20 years ago, these things would be considered heretical.
Hmm.
And so, I mean, he argues so many crazy things in this Bible, and he does it with just naked assertions.
He's not, he doesn't exegete the text.
This so called study Bible, the whole point is to have conclusions and then try to go find scripture to fit it.
And that's what they've done.
So, help us get into the meat a little bit.
I assume that you've, because you did a debate, I think, a while back with Preston Sprinkle.
Like, you've been, you've kind of, Been on his trail for a while, noticing all the things that he's kind of hijacking and trying to seep into the church.
And so I assume that you've probably read some actual text or at least some of the commentaries and the footnotes from this new study Bible.
I feel like every time I say the word Bible, I don't want to be struck by lightning calling this the Word of God.
So I keep doing, like, for our listeners on Apple or Spotify, just so you know, I'm often doing the finger quotes.
But, anyways, my point is I'm sure that you're probably pretty familiar with it.
Are there any examples that you could provide for our listeners?
Yeah, yeah, give me a second.
I'll give you some of them.
Like some of the things that really frustrated you.
Yeah, he says about Sodom and Gomorrah that it wasn't about homosexuality and that it's a text that should not be used to come against homosexuality.
You know, he quotes.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, so let me read you a quote from it.
It would be hypocritical for straight Christians to condemn gay people by citing the story of Sodom.
Does the Bible prohibit same sex relationships?
Yes.
But there are other passages that speak to this.
It is misguided to use Genesis 19 as a weapon to condemn gay people for experiencing an attraction to the same sex.
According to Ezekiel, arrogant people who don't care for the poor are the real Sodomites.
Actually, yeah, Ezekiel does.
It says, for this was the sin of Sodom.
I'm familiar, I'm a pastor, I preach through the Bible.
And then it talks about, like, basically withholding charity and generosity, and then also pride.
Pride is also, so it's arrogance and a lack of charity.
That's true.
But Ezekiel never says, and that's the definition of sodomy.
So there's, it's just multivariant.
There's, you know, Sodom had sodomy going on.
Well, how do you know?
It's a descriptive text.
Uh huh.
But in the description, all the men of the city are saying, hey, could you send those male angels outside of your house so that we can have sex with them?
Right.
So, not just so that we can withhold our alms and offerings and charitable gifts from them, or so that we can, you know, make snobbish remarks and be arrogant towards them.
No, it's you've got angels in your house.
They're pretty good looking.
They're also male.
We'd like to lie down with them.
That's, you know, so Sodom was marked by sodomy.
Was it also marked by pride and a lack of charity?
Yeah, because birds of a feather flock together, sins, there's a progression to sin.
And I think, I think there's a, you could, Pretty safe biblical theology that could be molded and saying, you know, the tree, if the roots are bad, the fruits are bad.
And you can't just designate, we have one branch that'll have bad fruit and all the rest will be really healthy.
Yeah, people who have embraced high degrees of sexual perversion also are probably not very charitable and probably not very humble.
We see that today all the time, right?
All the time.
You see all the different political lobbying groups for LGBT rights.
And also turns out that, The least Sodomite friendly state in the whole union, those backwoods traditional Bible thumpers of Oklahoma and Kansas would be another example, are literally statistically the most generous giving to nonprofits, 501c3s, churches.
So both are true.
Ezekiel's right.
Sodom was not a very generous place or a humble place.
Well, the badge of Sodom is also pride.
Exactly.
Pride.
Yeah.
So it wasn't a generous place.
It wasn't a humble place.
It also was a sexually perverse place.
All of that is true.
Back to you, Jared.
What do you think?
Yeah, that's 100% right.
It's interesting, the very next verse in Ezekiel, so it says that God condemned them for an abomination as well.
So even in Ezekiel, he mentions that Sodom was condemned for an abomination.
It's the same word used for men lying with men.
And then Jude is explicit as well for the strange flesh that they went after.
That it is, it was a homosexual sin, a perversion.
And it's interesting because Sprinkle is not logically or biblically consistent in anything he writes.
So, in this study, he'll talk about how, for example, in the Song of Solomon, he talks about how the Song of Solomon, according to ancient Near Eastern genre, the particular genre that it is, everybody would understand that it's talking about the relationship between a husband and a wife.
And he says that.
And then later on, as the man describes the woman, he goes from her head, describing her eyes and her facial features, her hair.
And then he describes her neck.
He gets down and he talks about her breasts.
And then Sprinkle argues that a single man looking at, you know, being enamored by a woman's beauty, and after talking about her breasts, that that's not sin.
And he does this numerously.
Like when he's talking about Romans 1, when he's talking about Sodom, he explicitly says God's not condemning same sex attraction here.
And so what he's doing is it's just a sleight of hand, a turn of phrase.
He's created this category, and this is the whole so called gay Christian movement.
They've created a category that does not exist in church history, it does not exist in the Bible, but it's this pre lust category.
Inclination or desire or orientation that is either neutral or not sin.
And that's essentially what Pelagians argued.
You can go back and read Augustine writing to Julian, the Pelagian, and he's pointing this out.
Like if something is luring and enticing you from within, and if it would be a sin to act on it, then it is already sin.
Like it can't produce.
Something contrary to its nature, if you argue that it's neutral, then how does it all of a sudden produce sin?
Right?
Like, right.
So, well, it just doesn't accord with the book of James that desire eventually, you know, gives birth, conceives, and gives birth to sin.
And then sin, when fully grown, brings forth death.
There's a progression to sin.
Nobody just wakes up in the morning with a perfect, you know, pure, spotless record and decides to become a serial killer, right?
That there is a progression to sin, all sin.
Lying.
You start with small discrepancies and exaggerations and flattery and gossip that eventually, you know, snowballs into slander and becomes larger deceptions.
And these, so at every level, whether it's sins of the tongue or whether it's sins of the flesh, especially sins of the flesh, there is a progression.
I'll never forget.
I'm going to, if you're a parent, go ahead and, and maybe if you're with your children, go ahead and log off for just a second or.
Or take the volume down, but I think it's worth sharing because it just marked me as a young man.
I remember serving tables when I was in college, and you know, I think it was a law of every restaurant in the world that at least half of the wait staff has to be, you know, gay.
And if they speak English, only the English can.
Yeah, that's right.
Half has to be Mexican, the other half has to be gay, which I appreciate the Mexican half, you know, much more than the gay white half.
But I remember talking to one of the servers, and they were just constantly making crude homosexual jokes with each other.
And they would always try to do it around me and try to involve me in their coarse joking.
And I remember asking him one time, I said, How did you become gay?
And this is back in the day.
So this is before the rhetoric had really become universal of, Well, you don't become gay.
Rome Argues Infant Application00:10:19
It's not a choice.
I was born this way.
This is back before they knew that they needed to.
To hedge that bet.
You know, this is back when you got the gays being honest, which I, you know, I appreciate it.
And so he just shot me straight.
He was like, oh, no, I wasn't born like this.
I wasn't born.
You know, it's not like I was, you know, I was just as a young boy, I was, you know, wearing dresses and more interested in dolls than I was with, you know, bows and arrows.
And none of that, that rhetoric hadn't seeped in yet.
He said, he just looked at me plainly.
He said, I've had sex with over a thousand women.
And at a certain point, it just doesn't do it anymore.
Nobody knows how to please a man like a man.
And I was like, oh, right.
It's just you're perverse.
It was a progression of perversion that got worse and worse and worse and worse with sin unchecked.
That's sodomy.
That's how you get there.
And that made a lot of sense.
It grossed me out, you know, but it made a lot of sense.
And yeah, so with all these things, sin, I think Catholics are actually, you correct me if I'm wrong, Jared, but Catholics are pretty good on the doctrine of concupiscence, that sin begins, it has a beginning, it has an in vitro.
Stage in the heart before it's ever even brought out in speech or actions.
Isn't that right?
They are good in that sense that they believe in concupiscence.
Where they are bad is that they believe that it.
So church history always argued that original sin is morally culpable sin and its motions are morally culpable sin.
The Roman Catholics argued that you had to be baptized to take that guilt away.
And they argued this ex opere operato, which just means to the thing conferred.
So, in other words, you read the Council of Trent in the 1500s, and they believed that the priestly order could essentially give you grace.
It didn't matter if you had faith or not.
And so, by them baptizing a baby, they were actually taking the priestly order away.
And so, that baby no longer had the guilt of concupiscence.
Now, when that concupiscence moved and they submitted to it, then they began to sin again.
But what Preston Sprinkle is arguing is that no, you don't need Jesus to die for your concupiscence or for, let's just say, for same sex attraction, because it's not sin.
So he's arguing, he's to the left of Rome.
He's to the left of Protestantism.
I mean, at least Rome was arguing that Jesus had to be applied to the infant in order to take the guilt away.
Where the Protestants and Rome disagreed in the 1500s on the doctrine of sin was that they were saying the guilt is taken away through the priestly order applying the work of Christ to the infant.
But the Protestants were saying that the sin remains in the individual, it's just credited to Christ.
And so the issue was that Rome was saying sin changes in the baptized, and Protestants were saying no, it doesn't.
And so you see this in the Westminster, the Second London, Canons of Doors, Belgium.
But both Protestants and Catholics were recognizing original sin, that it starts from conception.
In sin, did my mother conceive me?
In iniquity, I was brought forth.
And they were recognizing it from conception and recognizing it at the level of the heart, at the level of desire.
But these modern, like Revoice, is Preston, is he, or was he at some point teamed up with Revoice?
It sounds like he probably.
Yeah, he was a board member.
Okay.
All right.
There you go.
Well, I was going to say something that makes him so effective, Preston Sprinkle, the reason we're talking about him, for one, he's influential.
His podcast, Theology and the Raw, has millions of.
Listeners annually, but he manages to do, and Jared, I want to hear from you on the sleight of hand here.
He really does a good job of kind of maintaining his orthodox card, so to speak.
So he'll have Francis Chan, he'll have Russell Moore, he'll have Gavin Ortland on his podcast, he's had Nancy Piercy.
So we'll have a lot of guys, and of course, we all here would know that those guys don't pass the sniff test, but he'll have a lot of guys that would be theologically conservative, quote unquote, especially 10 years ago.
And so he can slide under the radar, and a lot of people think, like, okay, Preston's maybe.
And he's a little more lax on this issue, or a little bit more forgiving, or doesn't go as far as so and so, but he's still orthodox.
And I feel like that's what's really maintaining his grip, his hold, the popularity of his books, is he manages to pretend like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
No, no, no, I'm part of the flock just like you.
We have a clip we're going to play in a little bit here about like pronouns where he's soft on it.
But I feel like that's really what contributes to the influence, of course, his softspokenness as well.
Does that ring true for you and what you've seen out of him?
Oh, yeah.
And he's a nice guy.
I mean, that's really what it boils down in the kind of the killer, nice guy, and you know, people love their nice guys.
You know, let me just read some quotes here from press.
That's why people love me, Joe.
I just gotta get some highlights in your hair, and you'll be sad.
What'd you say, Jay?
People wouldn't like the prophets, brother, or Jesus or the apostles.
Like, I mean, that's the thing.
Nobody's prophetic anymore unless they're preaching against um sins that the culture believes are sins, and um.
God uses the prophet to raise the dead.
Like, I mean, we have to turn the page and preach the text with the tone that is in the text and the heinousness of sin.
Your tone should reflect that.
And so, anyways, I, you know, I appreciate you, brother.
Let me read you some quotes here.
So these are things that Preston has written in his writing, you know, and says, I'm actually pro gay.
I'm pro gay in the sense that I'm for gay people and I want God's best for them and believe they can.
Fully follow and honor God while being gay.
Same sex attraction includes a virtuous desire to be intimate in the David and Jonathan or Jesus and John sense of the phrase with people of the same sex.
That right there is a blasphemy.
That's just pure blasphemy.
To claim that there is a good element of same sex attraction, and that element is what Jesus and John experienced or had towards each other.
Like, That's just pure blasphemy right there.
That's from a paper he wrote at the Evangelical Lost Class.
So, for the listener, real quick, if I can interject, if anybody's wondering, why are you guys being so hard on Preston Sprinkle?
It doesn't sound very Christ like, it doesn't sound like you're being loving.
Preston Sprinkle is saying that Jesus is gay, that in his heart, Jesus had a same sex kind of under the veil relationship with the Apostle John.
Yeah, so we're not very nice with people who call Jesus gay.
And there's a Mott and Bailey technique going on because I read some of his defenses.
I think it was Rosaria Butterfield that she spoke at some type of convocation and she was calling him to account for his lies and his ridiculousness.
So he would say something like, Jared, just read, and you would respond like we would.
But the Mott Bailey technique is you say something that you know can be misinterpreted and then when pushed and challenged, like imagine he watched this and responded, what he would say is, No, no, no, I'm just talking about the desire for friendship, that the friendship that men long for, that's what's good.
Well, why did you attach it to gay?
But they'll run this play again and again.
No, no, no.
What I really meant was, Like he said in a paper or a guide, the church will look more like Jesus when it has more trans people.
And if you asked him, like, should 50% of the church be trans, this, that, or the other, he would just retreat and say, Well, no, no, no, I'm just talking about people with this medical condition, blah, blah, blah.
And you have to know the play.
Mott and Bailey make some wild assertion like that.
And then when challenged, retreat, don't let them say, No, no, no, you claimed this.
You attached that label, gay, to David and to Jonathan and this.
What exactly did you mean?
That's good.
Hey, Jared, is it okay if we play this clip and then we'll let you get the first response to it?
Sure.
Let's go ahead and sync it up, Nathan.
You ready?
Preferred pronouns for trans people.
There are good people on both sides of this debate.
Some of my friends will say, no, I won't use pronouns that don't match somebody's biological sex.
And their big thing is, you know, I feel like I'm lying to them.
If a female wants to be called he, him, And I agree and I do that, I call this female he, him, then I feel like I'm lying to them.
I don't think it's necessarily lying.
The other viewpoint is what a friend of mine, Greg Coles, has called pronoun hospitality.
Like, could we, whether we agree or disagree with their pronoun use, can we meet them where they're at?
Can we be hospitable even in disagreement and use their pronouns?
And that's the view that I would recommend.
I do think language is flexible.
So, you know, if there's Person A over here, so I'll be person A over here, and I believe pronouns should match your biological sex, and that's true.
I think that's right.
But person B over here thinks that pronouns should match your gender identity, not your biological sex, but your internal sense of who you are, your personal identity.
Now, I could disagree with all of that.
But language is shared social space.
So when I use language, I'm reflecting my worldview.
When this person uses language, it's reflecting their worldview.
Am I going to require that wherever I go, people must use the language that reflects my worldview?
No, I'm not.
What do you think, Jared?
Language Reflects Worldview00:03:59
Cut it off there just because he blathers on for two more minutes.
So there's more, but I spared you, the listener.
What do you think, Jared?
I think the command is to love God and your neighbor, and you love God first.
You know, and Preston sounds like he's worried about offending people, and not.
The thing is, it's not about needlessly offending people, it's about.
Whether or not God made the person male or female, the person says he believes that, but then he's going to say the opposite of that.
Now, I think his friends are right.
He's a liar.
Yeah.
All right.
Wes, you outlined the episode.
Where do you think we should go next?
I want to talk about, like Jared just put his finger on, the niceness and the softspokenness.
Maybe we'll go to our last commercial break, but when we come back, It fools so many people.
And to be honest, it fools women a lot.
Women really enjoy that type of soft spoken, the soft peddling.
You'll see, like, well, there's very fine people on both sides.
Kind of what about the new one?
The way he started that, I was thinking about the Trump hoax, you know, the very fine people on both sides.
So we'll go to our last commercial break.
When we come back, Jared, we'd love to get your thoughts on how it appeals to people, but how to combat it.
All right, the clock is running out.
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All right, welcome back to the last segment.
We have Dr. Jared Moore joining us to talk about the Zondervan Upside Down Kingdom Study Bible, to talk about Preston Sprinkle.
If you guys have questions for Dr. Moore, go ahead and put them in the chat.
We'll try to get to them as we finish up our content here.
Dr. Morai, before the break, I just said, you know, one of the things, you know, his orthodoxy card, his PhD, his credentials, all of that, he's also Preston Sprinkle, just a really soft spoken guy.
Marriage Given For All Life00:11:24
And I mentioned, and some of the women are noting it in the chat, that women can be especially, not every single woman, they can really appeal to them.
Women really like, or at least want to like, that soft spoken approach that isn't dogmatic, that doesn't have a serrated edge, that doesn't say hard truths.
And I mean, I would have to guess his listeners for the most part.
I've even seen the stats.
Look at his followers on social media.
It would be a good amount of women and women of both genders, women adjacent.
How does that appeal?
And then just not how does it, how is it that that captures so many people that they soak it up?
But how do we then say no and you need to stop being duped by that?
The easiest thing is to get it to where.
Is something they hate.
Like, if Preston was arguing the same thing about racism, there's this vitriol toward racism that it doesn't matter how soft spoken you are, right?
Like, if you're being racist in your rhetoric, and so you have to expose.
And so, anybody who's duped by Preston Sprinkle, it's because they don't hate homosexual sin enough.
Yeah.
That's a good point.
That's the issue.
Like, it's become so.
You know, it's viewed as a victimless sin, I guess you could say.
And so, and basically, it's just, it's all empty rhetoric.
It's anthropology.
Preston Sprinkle is basically an anthropologist masquerading as a theologian.
He asks people how they feel, and then he literally finds and defines entire doctrines, entire categories that aren't in scripture.
Oh, there's this pre lust category.
Gregory Coles does this too, who's kind of his right hand man.
And they have this creation.
But if you started saying, well, the inclination towards racism, that's not sin.
Or if you start saying, well, the inclination towards children is not sin, well, then people start getting alarmed and say, of course it's sin.
Well, then why not the inclination toward the same sex, right?
Or the trans stuff.
It's all morally culpable sin, and Christ is the only remedy.
And that's what's so sinister about what Sprinkle is doing.
He is sending people running to the mirror to self justify instead of running to Christ.
He's also leaving Christians ensnared in their sin, teaching them that they will never.
He's teaching that there's male, female, and then there are homosexuals, and then there are trans people.
Like there's four different sexes, is what he's teaching.
It's an ontological reality that these people are, you know, and that these people are something other than just male or female.
Because otherwise, if they're just male or female, then they can repent and Christ can transform them according to how he has designed them.
That's not what he teaches.
He teaches his hearers that they're going, if they're gay, they're going to be gay.
Like that's that.
And so they need to make the best of it.
And well, how do you make the best of it?
Well, you need to take the good elements, like what.
That Jesus and John desire, you need to take those good elements and sanctify those.
And the sexual desire, well, it's not sin, but just don't act on it.
And he argues, he's so Pelagian that he argues this about, you know, if I was enamored at another woman, even her breasts, and I'm married, and let's say she's married, that that would not be sin.
Like that's a pre lust desire.
I'm just noticing beauty.
The problem is when you look at Genesis 2, there was only one woman.
Pulled from Adam's side, and she would only come from one man's side, and that is the definition of marriage.
And so, his desire was to be for her, and her desire was to be for him.
We're not supposed to be sexually attracted to people we're not married to, and the only reason we are is because of sin, it's not noticing beauty.
I mean, Paul picks this up in First Timothy 5 2 and says that we're to view older women as mothers and younger women as sisters in all purity.
And so, if we would take responsibility for that from the root.
You wouldn't have any ministers failing morally.
You wouldn't have, you know, we have to redeem.
We've got to return back to what the church has always taught concerning these things because there's a lot of men ensnared in sexual sin.
I saw Dusty Devers.
He is trying to ban pornography.
That's wonderful.
That would be awesome.
Like, we need to ban it because it's wrecked marriages, wrecked men and women and young people.
We've sold future generations down the road, messed them up sexually because of how they've been exposed to that stuff so early on.
But, anyways, I'm kind of rambling.
But what Preston is lacking is.
The definition of sin and the fact that Jesus Christ can actually transform people.
He can actually transform sinners.
So, listener, if you are having same sex inclinations in the power of the Holy Spirit, if you're a Christian, you can mortify that.
That's not who you are.
You are not a homosexual.
Even that language, that rhetoric is baloney.
You're male or female, and entailed in God's design of you is the pursuit of opposite sex marriage.
unless you have the gift of singleness.
But if you're running around talking about your sexual orientation all the time, you don't have the gift of singleness.
Well said.
All right.
We've got a couple questions in the chat.
I'm going to throw them out there for you, Jared.
Here's one that I thought was helpful.
This is from Statistics Man 24.
Since no marriage or children, since there's no marriage or children in heaven, what do you think will be different between men and women in the eternal state?
Like roles, et cetera?
That's a good question.
I think the roles will stay the same.
I think it'll look like helpmate and spouse.
I just think that there won't be a sexual relationship.
I think there will be kings, you know, and there may be queens, but there won't be marriage.
And there'll be a hierarchy.
I mean, it'll be very much similar to this earth, it'll be very much similar to what the garden would have been.
Um, but uh, you know, in answering the question, there one, there is marriage in heaven, it's just everybody's married to Jesus.
Marriage is fulfilled.
What's not fulfilled in heaven is singleness, there is no end goal for singleness.
As a matter of fact, that singleness, I would argue, in Paul's mind, is that he's married to Christ, um, that he's already living that out while he's on earth, is why he's rejecting the physical marriage.
Um, he doesn't have that desire, so he wants to.
I mean, the language is devoted to the Lord, right?
And that's what we need to emphasize because you, a lot of people like Preston Sprinkle, they, in the Gospel Coalition, they have exalted singleness to this grandiose state.
They make the argument, well, Jesus, in the end, we're all single.
And that's just not true.
No, we're all married to Christ.
Even the language of when you, so the language in the Septuagint concerning Eve being taken from Adam, from his side, It's rib in the Hebrew, but when the Septuagint translated it, it translated side.
And the Apostle John picks that language up when he's describing Jesus's side being pierced with a spear and the blood and the water flow out, which are two essential elements of life.
And the picture is that of the church being born from Jesus's bloody side, similar to Eve being born from Adam.
As a bride.
Yeah.
I like that.
I think another interesting angle, and this is a little bit speculative, but marriage was given.
Partially for the roles where a woman would be a helpmeet to a man, but even preceding that, it was the command to be fruitful and multiply.
And so we've talked a lot on the podcast about how God's original desire was for structure and order and tending and caretaking and stewardship of the earth and producing out of it.
Well, in heaven, there's no seemingly no need to be fruitful and multiply anymore.
That's the missing ingredient.
It's not the need to still, you know, in the new earth, which will be our permanent home.
I agree with you, Dr. Moore.
I think there will be hierarchy and structure and tasks to do.
But the being fruitful and multiplying will no longer seemingly be part of the equation.
And so, in that sense, the sexual element of marriage would not be necessary because sexual relations, primarily and at their core, they do many things, but at their core, are for reproduction.
And that being unnecessary in heaven would remove what we largely associate earthly marriage with.
But that's not to diminish the hierarchy and role and potentially pairing up of a man and a woman for.
Stewardship and helping and leading and things like that.
I don't know.
I feel like my children will still be, in a sense, my children in eternity.
My wife, although maybe we won't share the same home, there won't be headship because we'll live with God and see Him.
But like my wife will still be my wife, and I'll have, I would think, more interaction.
Like it's this body that's going to be raised, more interaction with her than other sisters in Christ.
Same thing with my children.
It would be them at my home eating meal on a Friday night.
We don't know what the heavenly state will look like.
And even though they wouldn't necessarily be under my headship in my home as a father, Even though my wife wouldn't be under my headship as a wife, I think those people will still recognize there was a closeness and intimacy and a nearness.
We did this during our time on earth.
And even now, in the internal state, when we're freed from the headship, the authority, living in the same home, all of those different things, there still will be, I think, a special place in my heart for my children.
And they will be my male children and my female children.
I will still have been my wife's husband.
She will still have been my wife, even though the roles, like you said, Dr. Moore.
We don't know what those look like.
We will judge angels, but there's still part of that.
I think that will continue.
Well, everybody who listens to the show, Jared, they know that I don't speculate about the sexes of people in the eternal state.
I'm strictly reserved for that kind of speculation when it comes to the sexes of angels.
That's my gig, that's what I do.
So I don't know if you've ever watched those episodes where I hypothesize about whether or not all angels are male.
Temptation Is External Not Internal00:15:08
That definitely upset a few folks, but.
I think lots of good thoughts.
I appreciate it.
Here's another question for you, Jared.
Somebody in the chat said, This is T. James Boone.
Dr. Moore, are you open to running again someday, maybe not this year, but in the future for SBC president?
I'm definitely open to it, but I'll tell you, it's a rough go.
Can you share some of your experience?
What was that like?
Just the interviews and the nastiness of Christians intentionally misrepresenting, you know, well, What you've said or what you believe, which has happened every time I've ever run.
You know, I was second VP of the SBC a little over 10 years ago.
And even then, folks were writing articles that just, it's just boldface line, you know, fellow pastors.
And that, so it's a rough go.
And this pastime was particularly interesting because they, we were pushed, I was trying to push for a debate, a public debate.
And we got close to that.
And so preparing for all those was difficult.
But yeah, I would definitely be willing to do that again because, you know, listener, if you don't know, whoever the SBC president is controls the future of the SBC because they appoint the committee that appoints the committee that chooses all the trustees at SBC entities.
And so if you get a hillbilly like me to be SBC president for 10 years, you're going to have hillbillies on all the committees.
I mean, you could, you know what I'm saying?
You could.
You could, the SBC can actually be reformed.
All you have to do is show up to the convention.
That's it.
Like, show up two days out of the year and vote, and you can have the most right wing Christian.
And the SBC will literally be, I mean, to the far right.
If that's what, if you get, if the far right folks come and vote at the convention, that's exactly what the SBC will be.
Yep.
I love it.
Dave's fault.
God wills it.
Take it back.
Yep.
All right, next question here.
This is a good one because you'll see a lot of guys do this.
This is from Ben Wooding.
What is the connection between the emphasis of the office of king, for example, King Jesus?
And he thinks it's to the detriment of priest and prophet.
So you'll hear Preston and those like, we're neither left nor right, but we're team King Jesus.
They'll kind of use that language, right?
All of Christ, we want King Jesus over everything.
But it seems there's something subversive in there.
What do you think?
Hmm.
I'm not familiar with him using that language, but I think that, I mean, he's also the prophet.
He's also the, let me give an example of him being the prophet.
Whenever he's talking to the rich young ruler, Mark's gospel tells us that, you know, the rich young ruler talks about how, you know, I've kept all these commands from my youth, which he hadn't, of course.
But, well, Mark tells us Jesus looked at him and loved him.
And then he says, Go sell all that you own, give it to the poor, come follow me.
And he goes away.
So that's the exact opposite of what Sprinkle argued about pronouns, for example.
Instead of telling people the truth, which is what the prophet does, that's what Jesus does.
He says, basically, blow smoke and smoke and mirrors and bait and switch.
And it really boils down to so.
I believe the Bible.
Like when it cuts people, then I need to preach it to where it's cutting because the gospel comes in and heals.
You know, the God who wrote it is all knowing and he knew from eternity past all my hearers who would ever hear me preach.
And he gave me a book.
All I have to do is preach it and be faithful and God will raise the dead and sanctify his church.
But if I try to get my mind in there and try to soften it, then that does not save people.
See, the Holy Spirit, God hasn't promised.
To save people through empty rhetoric, he's promised to save people at the preaching of his word, and uh, sprinkled does not understand that.
And he's making money, and um, you know, that I mean, I think you know, I don't want to.
If he was broke, he wouldn't be arguing the things that he's arguing.
He is not a martyr.
Like, here I am on the fringe, the outcast doing the Lord's work.
All right.
Well, that's very helpful.
Dr. Moore, we really appreciate you coming on the show.
Are there any final thoughts you want to give us?
And at minimum, at least allow the listener to know where they could follow you and keep up with your work.
Yeah, I just want to encourage y'all to just ask is it biblical?
Don't ask, how do I feel or do I like this?
You know, when you hear someone preach or teach, is this true biblically?
That's the number one question.
And I'm writing a book right now called 33 Days to Freedom from Lust, and you can find it on Substack or Patreon.
And you can read it as I write it for a $5 subscription with Patreon, and then you'll get a copy of it whenever it's published.
But I do believe in the power of the Holy Spirit that men and women can mortify the lust in their hearts.
You know, I don't know about y'all, but growing up, you know, my church loved me and taught us so many good things.
But one error that they taught us was that if you're a man, you're going to lust.
And that's just simply not true.
I don't find that in the Bible.
And so, in the power of the Holy Spirit, you can conquer that sin in your heart.
And so, I hope to walk people through that.
And I chose 33 days because the average, according to science, the least amount of time to develop a new habit is 21 days, and the greatest is 200 and something days.
Well, the average was 66 days.
And so, I thought I'd do 33 days and they could do the book twice, but I'm wanting to do a second volume later.
But some people, 33 days will be enough.
But the bottom line is, I'm just trying to help you train your affections.
Because, see, that's the secret to conquering and dwelling sin the two great commandments love God, love your neighbor.
The way you cultivate affection for God is through worship, through submitting to his word, reading it, singing his word.
And that, it's amazing.
Focusing on God, focusing on your neighbor transforms you, sanctifies you.
And this is why the devil was constantly, even through Preston Sprinkle, Telling people you constantly talk about yourself.
I mean, if you've ever run into anyone, any of these so called gay Christians, they talk about themselves all the time.
How can you ever overcome indwelling sin if you're talking about it all the time?
Stop talking about yourself.
The key to overcoming indwelling sin is talking about God and your neighbor.
But anyway, I want to help people with that.
And I've written a book called The Lust of the Flesh that I think will encourage and help folks.
If you're wanting, you know, some of the things we discussed, if you're wanting a What did church history teach on these issues?
And you want a layman version of that?
Pick up my book, The Lust of the Flesh.
And I've also got an article in the Master Seminary Journal that was published in December of last year.
And it's comparing Jesus's temptations to those who argue that same sex attraction is similar.
And because people always quote Hebrews, right?
Oh, he was tempted in every way like us, yet without sin.
I want to invite you.
So, listener, I'm not going to give it away, but go read the next verse, Hebrews 4 16.
And he tells you why he wrote Hebrews 4 15.
And it's not so you can look in the mirror and say, I'm like Jesus.
It's so that you can run to Jesus in boldness because he was tempted for you yet without sin.
And so I hope to help folks and encourage folks.
Be encouraged, friend, because Christ raises the dead.
He sanctifies his church.
Do you believe him?
Will you submit to him?
But that's all I've got, friends.
That's all I've got, folks.
You can find me on Twitter too.
But I appreciate you, men.
And y'all just keep.
Y'all be faithful.
Don't listen to, you know, always go and say, Am I faithful?
Am I faithful?
Am I faithful?
Because none of these guys are, none of our critics are going to hold their hand on Judgment Day, right?
Right.
Well said.
Real quick, just since you brought it up, I want you to address it.
But, you know, Jesus being tempted and being a merciful high priest, the temptations that Jesus experienced were external temptations.
Like, he's tempted.
I thought about, you know, I preached to this recently.
We're going through the gospel according to Matthew.
And so we looked at, like, Christ and his temptation of the wilderness, and he's tempted by bread.
It's 40 days of fasting, 40 days and 40 nights.
He's hungry.
Eating food when you're hungry is not, there's nothing inherently sinful about that.
It's an external temptation.
Even the kingdoms of the earth, when Satan shows up, Jesus did have a desire to rule the kingdoms of the earth.
He has zero desire to attain that through idolatry and worshiping Satan instead of God.
But that also, likewise, there's nothing inherently sinful about that.
If you're Christ, you know, and you actually are king and the nations literally are your inheritance that God's promised to you, then there's nothing inherently sinful.
And again, it's external, it's outside of your flesh.
It's not something coming from within you that contradicts God's will, but it's something external.
I'm hungry.
There's bread.
I've been promised the kingdoms of this earth as my inheritance.
I'm now looking at them.
And I'm not tempted at all by the shortcut avenue that Satan's offering to me, but I do desire.
The nations, kingdoms of this world.
And then the temple, that was basically a way of putting God to the test so that miraculously it's a crowded area everybody would see, and that God would hold Christ up if he chose to throw himself down from the temple, that he would hover and would not strike his foot against the ground so that this crowded place, all the foot traffic, all the people would, it would be a quick shortcut of revealing that he really is the Son of God, that people would see his true identity.
Likewise, there's nothing inherently, if you're Jesus, inherently sinful about wanting.
The people to know that you truly are the Son of God and for them to worship you because you are worthy of worship.
And that's what's right.
It's also what's best for them, for that people would recognize Christ as the Son of God and worship Him.
So all these are external temptations.
Jesus was not, however, internally, He did not have imputed sin.
He didn't have original sin.
He was not ever internally tempted in terms of the three big temptations of worldliness that 1 John describes the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.
Jesus was never tempted towards sexual immorality.
He was never tempted towards lying.
He was never tempted because of the impeccability.
That's a doctrine that we hold.
It's not just that Christ did not sin, he could not sin.
He's God.
The divine nature would not allow Christ to sin.
Is there anything that you're a better theologian than me, Jared?
Did I get that right?
Because when we talk about Jesus' temptation, I do want the listener to know he was tempted.
In such a way that he can associate with his people as a merciful high priest.
At the same time, though, he wasn't tempted the way that we are as sinners.
Well, you're right.
You're right.
I mean, everything you said was right.
The difference is that we are tempted like Jesus whenever we're offered a good thing through an evil means, like an external temptation, and we reject the evil means, we have no desire for the evil means.
So you need to provide for your family.
And let's say you're without work and then somebody comes and says, hey, sell these drugs for me.
And you're immediately rejecting the evil means, but you desire to provide for your family because God has designed you for that purpose and called you to do it.
And that's the thing like all the, you know, the devil offered the first David, offered him laziness, sexual immorality, adultery, murder, and those things that he tempted him with.
And then with the second David, or the true David, he offers food.
Angel protection and to be the king of kings.
You know, and so you have inherently good things.
And then in the Garden of Gethsemane, people point to that a lot.
Well, in the Garden of Gethsemane, I mean, what would people, you know, what would they have Jesus do?
Do they want him hopping and skipping to the cross?
Like Matthew Lee Anderson, who's a professor at Baylor and was a member of the board of Revoice, he would argue that Jesus' desire to disobey his father in Gethsemane.
But if you look at Luke 22 42, it says that Jesus begins his prayer with, If you are willing.
He wants to do his father's will, but he does not want to become sin.
He doesn't want to drink his father's wrath.
He doesn't want to suffer at the hands of lawless men.
He doesn't want to die.
He shouldn't want to do any of those things.
Like imagine Adam, who before he sinned, imagine him in his holiness saying, God, pour out your wrath on me.
Right.
That would be inherently sinful for him to have that desire.
So Jesus shows us perfectly.
And that's something else.
Like, we're going to correct Jesus.
We're going to say that Jesus could have had a better desire in the Garden of Gethsemane, a holier desire.
I mean, it's nuts what people are willing to do to justify an evil sin in their heart, like evil in their hearts.
And then the cry of dereliction again, very similar when Jesus cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Correcting Jesus In Gethsemane00:01:35
Um, what should he cry out?
Like, what's the alternative?
He wants perfect fellowship with his father through his humanity, and he's treated like a sinner on the cross, and sin is placed on him.
And so, the father withdraws his love from his son pertaining to his humanity on the cross.
So, what is the holy, righteous response for Jesus to scream out?
Right?
Like, that's a perfect response.
He doesn't want his wrath, he shouldn't want his wrath, right?
I mean, Jesus teaches us perfectly.
Let me say it this way.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, it was holy for Jesus to desire his father's will, and it was holy for him not to desire his father's wrath.
It's both.
It's not either or.
It's kind of like with my mom who died of Parkinson's in 2022.
I should want her to be with Jesus, but I shouldn't want her to leave me.
I think both are holy desires, right?
Yeah, that's good.
Well said.
All right.
Well, there you have it.
Somebody in the chat, Charles A. Monaghan, he said, Joel has a fine way of extending outros and closing remarks into a whole other segment of the show.
But yeah, there we go.
We did it.
All right, Jared, thank you so much for coming on the show.
We really appreciate you.
Keep up the good work.
Amen.
Thank you so much.
Y'all keep turning the page and saying what the Bible says.
All right.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
Will do.
Listener, thanks for tuning in.
God bless you.
And Lord willing, we will see you again this Friday.