“Pastor” Mark Dever & “Pastor” David Platt Recommend A Book By Two Progressives That Mock Christians as Racist For Believing in Original Sin

Note: The following is an excerpt from Brannon’s latest best-selling book, 

Marxianity, that you can order now at marxianity.com 

The book is 336 pages with almost 400 footnotes to back up what he is reporting.

You can also order sabotagethemovie.com in which the last of the six hours is an overview of Marxianity, and further reveals the biblical compromise of groups such as Together For the Gospel, The Gospel Coalition, and men such as Al Mohler, Ligon Duncan, Tim Keller, Matt Chandler and Mark Dever, among others. 

 

At the Together For the [cultural marxist] Gospel conference In April of 2018, David Platt quoted from, praised and recommend the book Divided by Faith. Platt’s mention of the book Divided by Faith is significant. The full title is Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, and it’s co-authored by Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith. In 1991, Christian Smith published The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory, in which Smith praises liberation theology. The book’s Amazon description says that “in this book, Christian Smith explains how and why the Liberation Theology movement emerged and succeeded when and where it did.”

This same book has been praised in a book review by extreme Calvinist, Mark Dever of 9 Marks that is also on the council of The [cultural marxist] Gospel Coalition. In review of Divided by Faith Dever says the book was instrument “in helping me to perceive and explain what’s wrong in our country, and even in our churches, this book has helped me immensely.”

So, Platt is promoting a book—one that’s being sold at a Christian conference no less—written in part by an author who openly endorses liberation theology, the theological mixture of Marxism with Christianity. Knowing the content of Divided by Faith also helps to understand where Platt gets some of his worldview. On page 47, for example, Emerson and Smith reveal their view of the root problem of racial issues in the church: 

 

[quote] We must account for the premillennial view that had come to dominate the American evangelical worldview and played a role in limiting evangelical action on race issues. [end quote]

 

It’s a remarkable statement. The authors argue that if you have a premillennial worldview—one they say dominates in evangelicalism—that you have a limited response to racial issues. In other words, if you believe in the pre-tribulation rapture of the church, you don’t really care about racial issues. It’s another way to say that most evangelicals are racists. 

This is the same kind of cultural Marxism espoused by Tony Campolo in his 2006 book Letters to a Young Evangelical. A Neo-Marxist, who promulgated Marxism starting in the early 1970s along with Ron Sider, Campolo has been in favor of most every communist revolution in South America. Campolo’s buddy, Jim Wallis, has even referred to anti-communists as “individuals who are working on the side of the dark forces.”

Although it’s not new to see men like Tony Campolo declaring that if you believe in the rapture of the church, you don’t care about this world and are likely a selfish racist, it is new coming from the likes of David Platt. The book he recommends, Divided by Faith, spreads the accusations wide:

 

[quote] According to this [premillennial] view, the present world is evil and will inevitably suffer moral decline until Christ comes again. Thus, to devote one’s self to social reform is futile. The implications of this view were clearly expressed by Billy Graham. [end quote]

 

So, the book also attacks Billy Graham because he believed in a pre-tribulation rapture, as did most of America’s best-known Bible teachers: Adrian Rogers, Charles Stanley, John Whitcomb, Dwight L. Moody. 

The dispensationalist view is not extremist. It has been the worldview of the most well-respected evangelical Bible teachers of the last century. Yet, Divided by Faith maintains that you don’t care about race issues if you believe in the pre-tribulation rapture—even though many white, pre-tribulation dispensationalists have fought on behalf of the civil rights movement. Many have started pro-life clinics to save unborn babies. The baby killers, though, come from a line of racists such as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Along the way, she worked with a Nazi doctor, gave speeches to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan, and called minorities “weeds that need to be eradicated.” The “weeds” she most hoped to eradicate were American blacks. 

On the other hand, the people who have started some of the strongest pro-family organizations to deal with social issues like abortion, active euthanasia, and the lack of quality education in our inner cities have been white Christians such as Beverly LaHaye who founded the pro-life Concerned Women for America. So, the idea that people who hold the dispensational belief of a pre-tribulation rapture of the church are racist and don’t care about society is simply a lie. 

 

Progressives’ “Good” View of Man 

 

On page 76 of Divided by Faith, the authors make this observation: “Progressives view humans as essentially good.” Because David Platt recommends the book, the statement stands as yet another reason to question Platt’s theology. 

Contrary to what Emerson and Smith affirm, the Bible says of mankind: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, NKJV). Man is not ultimately good. We are all sinful and fallen, subject to original sin. Because of one man, Adam, sin entered the world. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, NKJV). 

All men and women are infected with original sin, and the solution is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He alone lived a sinless life that was then credited or imputed to those who are saved as though we lived His sinless life. But Divided by Faith digs the errant theological hole even deeper. Here’s how the quote continues: 

 

[quote] Progressives view humans as essentially good, provided they are released from social arrangements that prevent people from living happily, productively, and equally—for example, racism, inequality, and lack of educational opportunity. In this view, although individuals are pivotal, they are shaped in profound ways by social structures and institutions. [end quote]

 

Emerson and Smith are saying that man is not inherently evil. People do bad things because they are products of their environment. Yet, this is what secular humanists, many cosmic humanists, and New Agers believe. Man is ultimately good. Therefore, if you set up the right environment—e.g., big government, redistribution of wealth, progressive socialist ideals—then men will spiritually evolve, and along with them, society. Morals, too, will evolve. Eventually, people will just, simply be good. If we do away with racism, income inequality, and other interferences, we will progress to a socialist utopian society. Evil will disappear, and we’ll create heaven on earth. 

The authors of Divided by Faith disdain, however, the biblical doctrine of original sin this way: 

 

[quote] White conservative Protestants are accountable freewill individualists. Unlike progressives, for them individuals exist independent of structures and institutions, have free will, and are individually accountable for their own actions . ..Quite unlike progressives, evangelicals believe there are right and wrong choices as determined by a divine lawgiver. Because evangelicals distrust basic human propensities (as a result of the doctrine of original sin), they view humans, if they are not rooted in proper interpersonal contexts, as tending to make wrong choices. For this reason, for evangelicals, relationalism moves to the forefront. [end quote]

 

They’re quite right. We believe that moral rightness is defined by the character and nature of God and reflected in His moral law. That which goes against the character and nature of God is sin. This is the “relationalism” which Emerson and Smith deride—relationship to ourselves and others based in relationship with God. 

Divided by Faith further implies that people who believe in the biblical doctrine of original sin are likely racist: “According to one congregational man, race problems exist because “it is an issue of original sin.” From their convoluted thinking about biblical doctrine, they concoct the notion that if you do not believe that mankind is ultimately good, you’re a racist. This is the cultural Marxism they’re selling at Together For the [cultural marxist] Gospel conference and that is being praised by Platt and Dever of Together for the [cultural marxist] Gospel. Remember Platt and Dever are also on the council of The [cultural marxist] Gospel Coalition that has infected thousands of churches in America with their extreme Calvinism, social justice and cultural marxism.
 

Note: The following is an excerpt from Brannon’s latest best-selling book, 

Marxianity, that you can order now at marxianity.com 

The book is 336 pages with almost 400 footnotes to back up what he is reporting.

You can also order sabotagethemovie.com in which the last of the six hours is an overview of Marxianity, and further reveals the biblical compromise of groups such as Together For the Gospel, The Gospel Coalition, and men such as Al Mohler, Ligon Duncan, Tim Keller, Matt Chandler and Mark Dever, among others. 

 

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