The Eric Metaxas Show - Lucas Miles

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

Lucas Miles shares his newest book, "Woke Jesus: The False Messiah Destroying Christianity," which pulls no punches as it dismantles the fallacy of progressive Christianity.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's Legacy PM Investments. Welcome to the Eric Metaxe show. Have you heard that some people have a nose for news? Well, Eric has a nose for everything. That's why this is called The Show About Everything.

Now welcome your host, who definitely passes the smell test. Eric Montaxon. Hey guys, we better start the show. Okay, do it. People are tuned in. I think we better start now. Ladies and gentlemen, Albin, Chris Himes, I don't know where to begin.

I am right now at the Dallas airport, at the Dallas Airport Hotel, where I stayed last night. Because I've been on a journey. You know, there's that Johnny Cash song. I've been everywhere, man, I've been everywhere, man, president. That's been my story this week. I have not been home. I left, I put it on Twitter, I guess, and on my newsletter.

So if you go to EricMettaxas.com and you get my newsletter, you saw all this stuff. I left Memorial Day. I flew from New York City. And it seems like years ago. But I had to go, as some of you know, Jack Hibbs, Pastor Jack Hibbs. had a, had a pastor's conference based around my book letter to the American church, which, Alvin, I see you're holding. I am holding that book right in my hairy hands.

He had a stolen book or did I? No, I don't, I think, I think it's legitimate. It's your copy. So, so I'm in, I'm in Los Angeles, California. And I, I then spoke at Jack Hibbs's church Wednesday night. He had a thing. And again, I sent this all out with my, my newsletter. But then I thought, you know what?

I got to be in New Mexico. over the weekend, which was, you know, this past weekend. So I said, it doesn't make sense to go all the way back home to New York. So I stayed an extra day in the L.A. area. And then I had to fly to New Mexico. And I talked to my friend Skip Heitzig. And I said, Skip, I've spoken in his church in Albuquerque many times. I said, I'm going to be, I have to be in Portales, New Mexico on Sunday.

I'm doing an event in Portales, New Mexico. New Mexico, would you want me to speak at your church on, I don't know, maybe Saturday night and Sunday morning? And then I can drive to Portales. And I look on a map, and it's a three and a half hour drive to Portales. And Skip Heitzig, who's lived in New Mexico most of his life, said, where's Portales? Like it's this tiny, tiny. So I was booked to speak there yesterday at a fairgrounds. I'm not making this up.

This really happened. So anyway, I made my way from Los Angeles to Albuquerque. I spoke in Skip Heidzig's church on Saturday night and Sunday morning. And then now, this is. This is the part that it sounds like I'm making it up. Skip Heidzig said, you know, Eric, you'd only be able to speak at the first morning service on Sunday, which is yesterday. But I've got somebody who's got a plane, and he says he'd love to fly you from Albuquerque to Portales. That way, it's only an hour through the air.

So yesterday, I, after preaching Sunday, sorry, Saturday night, yesterday I spoke at the the 9 a.m. service, signed books. It's so wonderful. I meet people. It's just a joy. Spoke at the second service. So now I'm pretty tired. We had to go to the airport. We had to a private airport and I got on a twin engine Cessna. I don't want people to think I'm flying around in a private jet like John Kerry, twin engine Cessna. And that sucker took off. And there was some weather. I like it when the pilot like tells you his weather concerns, like how we could die and we're going to try to avoid that weather and stuff. So anyway, we didn't.

And the fact is that I landed in Portales. And Portales is so small that there was no one at the airport to greet us. The airport was closed. You just land. And there was a guy there from the fairgrounds to pick me up to take me to the fairgrounds to speak in Portales. It really was unlike anything I've ever experienced before. When I hear fairgrounds, I think they're going to give you some face painting and then

No, no. The thing is there was nothing happening at the fairgrounds. There was no one at the fairgrounds. So I thought maybe I'm going to be murdered. I don't know what's going to happen. But there was no one at the fairgrounds except there wasn't this event. And, you know, there weren't a ton of people, but they were there to hear me speak. And there had been other speakers before me.

but it was just, it was just crazy. And this was yesterday. So if I seem tired, obviously it's because I'm tired. And so, but the thing is, so after that, I then had to be driven an hour and 45 minutes. This is now after I've spoken three times in one day, twice in Albuquerque, once in Portales, in the sun at the fairgrounds. The people in the audience, they had umbrellas to shield them from the sun. but as the speaker, I did not have an umbrella to shield me from the sun.

So after all that was over, and it really honestly was delightful. I met so many wonderful people. I said, we can't believe in you're in Portales. And I said, neither can I. But I was. But I had to be driven from Portales to Lubbock, which is an hour and 45 minutes from Portales. Because at the Lubbock Airport, I had to catch a plane to the Dallas airport where I am now. so that in a few minutes after the show,

I will fly back to San Diego because I forgot some things. I need to go back. No, I'm speaking tonight. TPSA Faith has an event at a church in San Diego tonight. So tonight, Monday, June 5th, I'm going to be back on the West Coast speaking in San Diego. And tomorrow,

I fly home to New York City. But then on Thursday, we're going to be in the studio on Wednesday and Thursday. But Thursday afternoon, I got to fly to Denver because I'm speaking in Denver on, is it Friday? No. Yes, Friday. I'm speaking in Denver twice. So this is just the craziest, absolute craziest trip I think I've ever been on. This makes any other trip look like nothing.

And, but one of the cool things that I want to mention is some of you all know my book is atheism dead. And you know, the reason I wrote the book is Atheism Dead is because of James Tor, who lives in Houston, and because of Dr. Stephen Collins who discovered biblical Sodom. He's the, he's the archaeologist who discovered biblical Sodom. Oh, by the way, I never even mentioned what we're doing in this show. Before I tell you about Stephen Collins and my experience with him the other day, I want to mention today, today we're talking to Lucas Miles, an old friend who wrote a book. called woke Jesus. I should have said that up front. You can tell I'm tired. Woke Jesus. We're speaking to him as soon as we're done with this segment in two minutes. We're speaking to him about woke Jesus, which is amazing. Then we're talking to new friends

who made a film. Oh my gosh. It's called The Sound of Freedom. I won't spoil it for you. But we got that coming up. So I want to mention that. So just to go back. So Stephen Collins discovers biblical Sodom. So I met him. him previously when I spoke at Skip Heisig's church in Albuquerque. And that's what got me thinking, like, I've got to write a book about this. So I wrote, is atheism dead? Well, the other day I had dinner with him. And after dinner was Stephen Kirk because I happened, I find myself in Albuquerque, right? Stephen McConnell says, you want to go to the, to the warehouse to see the stuff I found at Sodom? Wow. And I thought, are you making this up? I get to, I get to like see this stuff.

So I should put this on Instagram or something. That's funny. during Pride Month, you can see what was found in Sodom. Here this weekend in the Rivertowns, they had all these parades, so you don't have to go to Disney World to get your kids groomed. You can come to the River towns. I didn't even think of that. Oh, my gosh. Oh, so I saw stuff.

This is not a joke. I saw pottery, and I took some pictures of it, with the scorch marks from the judgment of Sodom, 37 centuries ago. I saw it. I was there. I touched it. I took pictures of it. I mean, it is so mind-blowing. I couldn't believe that he let me look at this stuff, touch this stuff, take pictures of this stuff.

I was in the thing with, I mean, we'll talk about this another time, but it was just a joy to be with Stephen Collins. If you haven't read my book as atheism dead, folks, believe me, there's stuff in there. It's just amazing. Final reminder, before we go to our guest, Lucas Miles, go to my store.com.

Mystore.com. Almost all my books are available at my store. com. The Bonhofer poster, all kinds of stuff. MyStore.com. Don't forget to use the code Eric. See you in a minute. Hey, folks.

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in this bold, analytical, and readable book, Miles names, names, and dismantles the fallacy of progressive Christianity. Now, the reason I read that is to say, because I've read the book, I'm going to now have to pretend in my conversation with Lucas. So what's this book about? I know what it's all about. I highly approve, and it's a privilege to have Lucas. Miles as my guest. Lucas, welcome back. Hey, thanks, Eric. Great to see you. Congratulations on the book. Somebody had to write a book with this title. This is great. Woke Jesus, the false Messiah, destroying Christianity. So let me play the role of Ignoramus. What is this a book? What is this book about? Yeah, I really wanted to write what I would call the definitive guide to understanding wokeism and how it has invaded and really infiltrated the Christian church.

Okay, first of all, that's a big statement. It's a true statement. It's a sickening, deeply disturbing concept that wokeism, which is anti-biblical, has infiltrated. And when you and I say the church, we mean the evangelical church. That's the church we're talking about more than anything. So, yeah, so you wrote a book helping us understand what happened. Yeah, so this is, it's kind of a. historical deep dive at the start. We start in the 1700s and kind of work our way forward

from the Enlightenment. And I really think it's important that we recognize that this didn't just start. You know, sometimes you hear people talk about wokeism and they go, oh, that Obama, you know, this, this began before Obama. It's been around for a long time, sort of snowballing into this monster. Before Obama was, Satan was. It's fascinating. You're quite right. Because sometimes we think, oh, it was the 60s. It started in the 60s. It's like, well, yeah, In some ways you could say that, but it really started in the 20s. Some ways you could say that. You can go backwards and backwards and backwards.

There were, I mean, these really highly blasphemous ideas began in the 18th century. There is evil in the world, and you're helping us see how we got to where we are now. Yeah, actually, as far back as 1700s, we see this creation of what was, was known then as the historical Jesus biographies. So they wrote these these theologians in Germany specifically, wrote a series of biographies about the life of Christ, really elevating his humanity over his divinity in order to try to find a way to tell the story of the gospel minus the miraculous. And so Jesus sort of became the great social organizer or the champion of the state rather than the savior of the world. And this has been

snowballing. Of course, Marxism picked up in the 1800s, and, you know, the writings of Kant and Hegel also influenced this as well. That gives birth to the social gospel in the early 1900s, gives birth eventually to liberation theology in the Catholic Church, Black liberation theology in the African American Church, United States. And it works its way to critical race theory, now critical queer theory, and we're now have churches hosting, you know, drag shows on Sunday mornings. And so, you know, if people want to understand how we got here, that's really where the first half of the book goes before I move into more of the modern implications, and then ultimately what I call this quest for the biblical Christ, to see that the biblical Christ is not woke, but he does have the answer

to the injustices in the world. I mean, to talk about the idea that there are churches across the gamut that are leaning wokeward, it's a fascinating concept, right? Like when we talk about critical theory, critical race theory. You and I know, both of us know, that it is, by definition, atheistic. So it's a fascinating thing that they're people, they're ignorant enough to be leaning towards something that as it root, that has as its root, the idea that there is no God. If there is no God, how do you have any opinion on racism? How do you have any opinion on anything if there is no God, where do you get it from? But so I guess my question is, what do you attribute it to that people in the church could

be leaning in these very, very dark, wicked directions? Is it simply ignorance? Is it fear of man that they want people to like them? What do you suppose accounts for the church of all places leaning woke so that there are churches like this or churches leaning this way? or allowing it, you know, in parts of their church. I think it's important to understand that what the enemy has shaped here is really a hydra of, you know, these tentacles that are affecting the church in multiple areas.

So it's not just one thing or one stream. I refer to in the book that critical race theory in many ways is sort of a secularized version of Black Liberation theology. So before there was critical race theory with, you know, with Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw, we had James Cohn's writings. that were influenced by Marx, that were influenced by, you know, some of the various ideologies that came out of this critical theory. And so, you know, this is all built into where we are. I think that beyond all of that, though, it's important to recognize that the left has really, they've realized that they can't win elections unless they divide the church. You know, there was, I can remember back during the Obama administration, there was a big push where the Democratic Party said, we're going to take God out of the party platform. And they all stood up in a meeting and kind of declared that.

that language has changed. Now we are seeing the Democratic Party sort of double down on they are the moral party. They are the true pro-life party because they care about a child throughout its life and they have open borders and that protects the lives of illegal immigrants. And so they're starting to position themselves as we are the spiritual party. But what they're doing is they're redefining God. They're redefining Jesus to present this woke Jesus who's, you know, double-vaxed and triple mask as opposed to the Savior of the world. And, you know, this is, this is sort of this new form of this distorted Christianity, kind of this neo-nostic framework that is, you know, attempting to, in the same way they redefine the Constitution or, you know, kind of had this revisionist history

with the Constitution. They're now doing that with Scripture and ultimately the gospel. And I think it's a power play. I think it's to divide the church. I think it's ultimately to win elections. I think that's true. And I was recently shocked because I think, look, there are a lot of people. We can just go back to Bill Clinton. There are a lot of Christians that voted for Bill Clinton. I found out recently, or really was reminded recently, you know, because sometimes you pick up stuff or you listen to what people are saying and you kind of miss what they're doing. When Clinton came to power, you know, pretending to be a moderate Democrat and so on and so forth, he installed as his,

Attorney General Janet Reno. Janet Reno made it priority number one to crush the pro-life movement, to crush Randall Terry and Operation Rescue. And when I heard that the other day, out of the mouth of Randall Terry, I thought, you know what? Shame on me that I didn't know that. And shame on everybody who voted for Bill Clinton who claims to be pro-life. because it's fascinating.

People will talk a certain game. They'll say certain things. And what they're counting on is that people aren't paying attention. Because if people really are paying attention, they can't vote for somebody who is not just, you know, open to abortion, but that it wants to crush the pro-life movement. So this has been part of the Democratic Party for some time. But like a little bit like my late in-laws, you know, they were like FDR Democrats.

Like the Democrats are the party, the people, they care about the people, whatever, they weren't tracking. And this has snowballed, really, to where we are today, where they are openly advocating for Marxism. Ladies and gentlemen, Marxism is not just, you know, secular. It's anti-God. And it is infiltrating the church. So part of how I see your book, since I had the privilege of reading it, is it's a wake-up call

to say to people, listen, you're responsible for this information. because there are really wicked forces trying to divide and confuse the church. And that's, you know, when you talk about woke Jesus, they're creating their own version of Jesus. Yeah, you know, one of the things I talk about in the intro to the book, as you know, Eric, is this, I have a quote from Irenaeus, the early church father he wrote against heresies in 180 AD. And Ironaeus in the second century of the Christian church, he's really critiquing the first century

Church. And what he says is that the reason why the first century church was not able to refute the heresy of Gnosticism was because they didn't understand it fully. And so he wrote a 600-page book called Against Heresies to help them understand it. And I think we're at the same place. I think for a long time the church has not understood communism, socialism, critical theory, critical theology. They've not understood, certainly, critical race theory. They've not understood critical queer theory, the outcomes of this. I don't think the church understands transgenderism fully in what's really driving this. And so until we wrap our minds around these things that are, what I call in the book, sort of untangle the fishing lines of heresy and orthodoxy to really see which is which,

to hold them in our hands and to really be able to call a spade a spade, I think the church is going to continue to stumble and struggle through this. So we have to educate ourselves. And that's really what I wanted to do through this book, was educate the church and then ultimately at the end empower them to push deeper into the biblical Christ. We are talking to Lucas Miles, author, of the new book, Woke Jesus, the false Messiah, destroying Christianity. We'll be right back with Lucas Miles.

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pastor, author, most recently of an important book. I know because I've read it. It's called woke Jesus, the false Messiah, destroying Christianity. So woke Jesus is about how wokeism, all of these bad ideologies, these atheistic ideologies have very cleverly, insidiously, diabolically infiltrated the church so that we have many figures in the church who have embraced these things sometimes totally openly. Other times they've just kind of let it in the door and said, yeah, we have a lot of black people in our church, so we're going to let BLM in. You go, whoa, whoa, if you love black people, you need to stand against critical race theory. You need to stand against the movement, the organization, BLM.

Don't you understand who they are? And a lot of pastors do not. And they have opened the door to this wickedness, which just in the case of BLM and, you know, the white supremacy stuff, whatever, it's really insidious. Because just enough of it sounds right that a lot of times, white people out of guilt, they go, well, I got nothing to say, come on in and preach your doctrine. Wow. That, it's just, it's incredible that this is happening. Yeah, Eric, it's really, it's almost mind-blowing the way in which you see this brought into the church. And I think you're right. It's hard to say in some cases, whether it's ignorance or, or it's

sort of agreement with how pastors have integrated this. If you look back on just pastors, major national pastors Instagram pages. And you look back at how many of them posted a black square in support of BLM. It's amazing. And what I haven't heard from one of them is for them to go back and say, you know what, guys, at the time, you know, we have a large population of African Americans in our church. And I wanted to show solidarity for what happened to George Floyd. And I was thought I was doing the right thing by aligning myself with this organization.

And since then, I've learned that BLM is an organization. and since then I've learned that BLM as an organization is a Marxist anti-family pro-trans organization. And I recant this. I repent of this. I'm still in solidarity with my black brothers and sisters here for, you know, police reform or different things like that. But you know what? I reject this thing that I support it. I've not seen one of these pastors do that.

In fact, they've doubled down. They continue to leave this on their page. They've never clarified it. Some of them even went as far as to march alongside the BLM. Listen, let's be honest. They're afraid. They are afraid. They don't know what they believe.

And they're scared to either to reveal their ignorance or to upset anybody. And I mean, look, you know me. I wrote a book called Letter to the American Church where I'm basically saying, listen, ladies and gentlemen, we've seen this before more than once. But clearly we saw it happen in Germany in the 1930s. The pastors, many of them just said, you know what? I don't want any trouble. I'm just going to go along with the narrative.

God was against that. That was absolutely against the will of God, but they were scared, they were confused, and they said, we think if I just keep my nose down and kind of go with the flow, I will come out safe on the other side.

That didn't happen in Germany, and that's exactly what is happening now. And you give us chapter and verse in your book, which I don't do, about how it's happening. What are these issues? So let's go through more of what you say in the book about, you know, so-called woke Jesus, this Jesus that's being presented to us who is not the Jesus of Scripture. That's a scary thing.

Yeah, I think some of this comes from a misunderstanding or sort of a abuse of scripture in some ways. You have passages like Romans 13 that people will try to place a part. Christians is sort of this blanket responsibility that they have to do every single thing that the government says, which is not really what Scripture presents. What we see in Romans 13 is we see a righteous state that is described. We see a state that has the best interests of the people that punishes wrongdoing, that rewards righteousness. And that's not the state that we see today. That's not the state that we have in the current administration. Throughout Scripture, we see so much, you know, civil disobedience, whether it's from, you know, Daniel or Joseph or other figures

of taking a stand, living out their faith in a New Testament. We see all sorts of this. I mean, Peter and John, they get punished. The state tells them to stand down. They go out and they preach the very next day. We as believers are not called to just, you know, you know, sit in our house and just pray and never act and never do anything. And it's really, it's made the church impotent. It's made the gospel, I think in many ways, really submissive to the state, which is exactly what the left wants. I mean, just recently I was reading the book of Esther. There is a story of civil disobedience because of faith in the God of the Bible. Mordecai will not bow to Haman because it conflicts with his religious beliefs.

So when you're asked to choose between God or the state, it's pretty clear only from the book of Esther. And why is that book in the scripture? Well, for one thing, it's to show us how to behave when the state tells you to do something that goes against your values. But what's funny is they didn't have religious liberty in the world in which, you know, Ahasueras was the king. They didn't have religious liberty. In America, we have religious liberty. We have it enshrined in our documents that you have been given legally the right to stand against anything that would push you to violate your beliefs. So it's enshrined in our documents.

It's enshrined in the scripture. And many Christians, like the ones you're describing in the book, Woke Jesus, they didn't read that. I don't know what in the world they have read. The book is Woke Jesus by Lucas Miles. We'll be right back. Are you tired of not getting a good night's sleep? Well, my friend, Mike Lundell, has created the perfect solution. He didn't just stop at the pillow.

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38-5057 or go to mypillow.com now and use promo code Eric. Welcome back talking to Lucas Miles, pastor, author, most recently of woke Jesus, the false Messiah destroying Christianity. What is in your first chapter you talk about the luminous Jesus? What is that referring to? Yeah. So the Gnostics were one of the first heresies to face the church. And they rose up really within the ranks of Christianity.

It was sort of a hybrid of Judaism, Christianity. and Zornastronism and different pagan faiths. And there was a group of Gnostics that Augustine writes about, called the Manichies. And what they called Jesus was Jesus the Luminous. And they referred to him as this because they said that he awakened Adam. And it basically, within Gnosticism, and this is why I believe that wokeism is a neo-nostic framework,

is that Gnostic framework, is that Gnostic belief that Yahweh, the Creator, when he made man as a physical being that he put their spirit in a creative body and as a result, that they were basically put in this state of oppression. It was a systemic oppression, because we were subject to creation at this point when previously they believed that we were a spirit. So they believed that Jesus came in order to free us from the oppression that Yahweh put us in. So they didn't believe in the Trinity. They didn't hold to that. And so Augustine and Ironaus and other, you know, early church writers, they dismantle Gnosticism. They show that it's anti-biblical.

They show why it's really leading to division in the church and the world. And I think that what we have today is very similar to this. It's wokeism is focused on oppression. And it doesn't always see that God is the one who is oppressing us. It might be the white man. It might be the state. It might be different things. But there's always this nature of oppressor and oppressed.

And all in that, you know, we see that in critical race theory. We see that in critical queer theory that straight people are oppressing queer people or transgender people, that in critical race theory, that whites are oppressing blacks. And it's really a, you know, in many ways, this sort of framework, it's a perceived framework. It doesn't really exist, but it relates to that gnostic substructure that we saw for the very first in the first century against the church. Well, there's nothing new under the sun. These things come back over and over in different guises. Obviously, we see this in Marxism. Folks, when we're talking about Marxism and communism,

they are always creating this two-tiered thing of the oppressor and the oppressed. The oppressor and the oppressed. And the oppressed are always noble victims, and the oppressors are just evil. But what's interesting to me, Lucas, about your book, Woke Jesus, is you're talking about a system that basically says, something as anti-biblical, anti-God as you can possibly say, which is that a group of people is evil. If you're white, there's nothing you can do to get rid of the evil that you are carrying

around. You're oppressing people simply by the color of your skin. That's an unbelievable condemnation of people, not of their behavior, but of people themselves, which is, of course, ironically like saying black people are evil, Jews are evil. When you start doing that, you are, you are in the most dangerous satanic world. You've stumbled into that. And you are writing in woke Jesus about the church. Churches have stumbled into that kind of thinking. And here's the problem with it in a Christian framework. If you really hold to this idea of wokeism or critical theory within a Christian framework, you cannot any longer suffer for Christ. It actually robs God of the glory of being able to suffer for him.

Because what? Your suffering is always as a result of your skin color, your sexual preference, your country of origin, your immigration status. We're suffering for all these human reasons rather than suffering for Jesus. And so wokeism at really just a basic level, it is a very knee-focused victim mentality that robs God of the one thing that we can give him in this life, and that is our devotion in the face of suffering and persecution. and it takes that from him and it makes it all about us in the process.

And so this is, I think, a phenomenon that we see across all the spectrums of critical theory, but it has invaded the church. I mean, so much so we have a sitting Bible College president who refers to Jesus as a symbol of alienation for their students of color on their campus. Wait a minute. This is. Can you name? Yeah, I can unpack that.

I referenced that of the book. And, you know, we've, what college are we talking about? Yeah. So at Biola University, Barry Corey refers to a mural of Jesus on a side of a biola building as a symbol of alienation in reference to their students of color. And in one of the reasons that they need to consider taking down this image of Christ. When we have a Bible college president who is stating that a picture of Jesus that actually is rarely sat in for, or the artist to be able to use somebody who was authentic to, you know, as closely as authentic as possible to Jesus's skin tone, that we're now calling that a symbol

of alienation. That's a major problem within Christianity. Well, see, this is, I always say this. And everywhere I go, I'm giving speeches on a letter to the American Church, which deals with a lot of the stuff that you're talking about here. And I always say that good guys are getting you wrong. Barry Corey's a good guy. There are people out there.

Jim Daly, a focus on the family, who gave this great endorsement to a horrible book by Andy Stanley, where Andy Stanley is saying the exact opposite of what you're saying and what I'm saying. So there's confusion in the church, and you and I both believe that there are good people out there who can correct. They can repent, they can figure this out, and they can change. And the reason I say that is you dedicate your book for, my woke brothers and sisters, it's not too late to come home. There are people, good people, some of them friends of ours, getting this stuff a little bit wrong, a lot wrong, and we are hoping to wake them up and to say, you bought something, you didn't realize

what you bought and you don't realize what you're selling. Please be careful. Please understand what this is really about. Obviously, in your book, Woke Jesus, that's what you're trying to clarify. Yeah, look, I write this book because I love the church. And there are a lot of amazing men and women who have embraced the spectrum of woke ideas. There's somewhere in that process. And look, I don't think that Andy Stanley is a radical Marxist, but he's gotten it wrong on some things lately. He's drifted from, I think, a position of Christian orthodoxy. I don't think that Barry Corey is a radical Marxist, but in an attempt to try to go. Not even close. And I'm sure he's clarified that in the meantime. But this is bad stuff, folks.

And it requires real courage to stand against this stuff. This is what's so hard. And this is why I have sympathy for some of these folks who are getting it wrong because this is not easy. Hang on, Lucas. I'm sorry. We're going to go to a break. We'll be right back. And Lucas will finish those and other sentences. Don't go away. Folks, I'm talking to my friend Lucas Miles, pastor and author. The new book is Woke Jesus, the false Messiah, destroying Christianity. So you were just making a point and we had to go to a break. What was that point?

Yeah, I think it's important to recognize that there is a spectrum here that not everybody is erratic. And I think that the gospel at the end of the day that we see what the Bible tells us, the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. most errors in the church happen as a result of elevating either grace or truth. If you elevate a concept of grace over truth, you become a progressive. It's that empathy gone to seed, you know, it just takes on this sort of life on its own. If you elevate a concept of truth over grace, you become a bigot. And this, you know, this message of the gospel, it is a message of love.

It is the most inclusive message that history has ever been presented. in that Christ died for the sins of the whole world, but it's also an exclusive message because you have to receive him as Lord and actually repent of your old ways in order to participate in it. And I think that people, they want so badly to present the love of God that they oftentimes exclude the truth of God and they start falling into error. You know yourself how easy it is when you get into this business of Christian media, let's call it, this industry, you start knowing people and they're friends of yours and you don't want to call them out. You don't want to say something. So we just let stuff go for a long time. But ultimately,

I think that we have to, if we're going to correct this, we have to have those hard conversations. If we can't have them privately, we have to have them publicly. We have to, you know, maybe not invite certain people to be on the conference circuit, you know, for a time until we, until some things get straightened out. We really see where they're at. And I think that there has to be some correction, if we can use this word today, some discipline within the church, to be able to address this. Otherwise, although God wins in the end. it doesn't mean the church in America always thrives. And I think that in order for the church here to thrive,

we really have to return to a dependence upon scripture as our guide and really see it as the authoritative word of God. Well, and of course, a lot of these people who are getting wrong would say that they depend on scripture. People have misinterpreted scripture, you know, since there was scripture. Satan, I believe, quoted scripture. So, ladies and gentlemen, God is not fooled. we have to really understand that it is on you.

It's on you to choose. It's not so easy. You have to pay a price sometimes. And, you know, a lot of these folks that have drifted wokeward, somehow they have this kind of vague idea that they're doing the Christian thing, that they have kind of dumbed Christianity down to it's about love and tolerance and getting along with people for the sake of the gospel, whatever. And I think, well, yes, except sometimes that's dramatically unbiblical. Sometimes that's, it can go very wrong. And you just said it when you

said, you know, it's about love. I mean, I know this. Okay. In America, we always talk about Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you. Most people, their response is, who cares? I don't know, I don't even know what you're talking about. Why do I care that somebody who lived a long time ago, like, what do you, why should I care? I think sometimes you preach love and it becomes meaningless. We have to understand. Jesus loves us and died for us. Why?

Because there is satanic evil in the world. And most of us are controlled by satanic evil. And we are allowing satanic evil to crush human beings, to destroy lives, to do dramatically evil things. Unless you see that, then what does that even mean? So it becomes this kind of religious blather, which is why so many people have tuned out. They just go like, I don't even know what you're talking about,

and I don't care. I'm perfectly fine. Thank you very much. Until they see that they're not fine, then it becomes meaningless. We're going to go to another break, but we are going to come back more with Lucas Miles. The book is Woke Jesus.