Friday, February 7, 2025

Part I

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An Executive Order Against Anti-Christian Bias? Why This Move by President Trump Is Sadly Necessary—And Serious

Yesterday, President Donald Trump spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast. He made remarks later in the day. He issued an executive order entitled Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias. Now immediately, many in the mainstream media and others began to say, “Well, what kind of anti-Christian bias are we talking about here?” Christianity, they say, enjoys freedom of religion. Christians are protected by religious liberty protection. So what could be the problem? Well, the fact is that in an increasingly secularized society and with various agendas including moral agendas such as the LGBTQ agenda out in the culture, the religious liberty of Christians is very much at threat. And I can give you some concrete examples and the President actually gave, the White House gave, some concrete examples in the executive order, so just consider this. “In 2023, a Federal Bureau of Investigation memorandum asserted that radical traditionalist Catholics were domestic terrorism threats and suggested infiltrating Catholic churches as, ‘threat mitigation.’ This later retracted FBI memorandum cited to support evidence propaganda from highly partisan sources.’” 

And indeed I’ve seen some of that so-called evidence. Highly partisan is a very apt descriptor of what’s going on here. There are those who are simply saying, “Anyone who comes with strong conviction against what the cultural elites want in terms of a moral revolution, they are extremists and they are a threat to civil society.” But let’s just note, here you are talking about an official FBI memorandum. That’s so important here. This is an official FBI memorandum. It may have been retracted, but the point is it was written and it did call for at least the suggestion of infiltrating Catholic churches in the name of threat mitigation. Infiltrating Catholic churches. This isn’t the Soviet Union, this is the United States of America. There is a problem.

The second paragraph is this: “The Biden Department of Education sought to repeal religious liberty protections for faith-based organizations on college campuses. The Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sought to force Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith, and the Biden Department of Health and Human Services sought to drive Christians who do not conform to certain beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity out of the foster care system. The Biden administration declared March 31, 2024 Easter Sunday as Transgender Day of Visibility.” Every single word of that paragraph is true. 

Now, I do not want to insinuate that being a Christian in the United States in the year 2025 is somehow akin to being a Christian in the Soviet Union during the time of the Communist Party’s persecution. I am saying that what has been undertaken by the federal government is not only a violation of religious liberty, it is a violation of the US Constitution and thus I’m thankful that President Trump issued this executive order.

Is it released in a political context? Of course it is. If the President does it, it’s in a political context. The same thing for other executive orders handed down by any White House, including an entire set of executive orders on transgender issues we will talk about next week on The Briefing. But let’s step back for a moment and understand how this particular threat to religious liberty, this kind of threat emerges. And this is where Christians must understand that you cannot compartmentalize life into completely separate spheres. So, for example, there’s some people who say, you look at the LGBTQ demands, you look at the demands concerning non-discrimination in employment, and education, and say adoption and all the rest. There are a lot of Americans who simply say, “I think we ought to take all that into consideration. I think we ought to be able to say that you shouldn’t be able to discriminate against LGBTQ persons specifically in terms of those areas of life.”

That’s done in the name of the moral and sexual revolution going on around us. And let’s face it, as Christians, there are a lot of Americans who are in agreement with that revolution. But some people try to compartmentalize it and say, “That’s no threat to the church. The church can still teach whatever the church wants to teach. No one is telling the pastor of the local church what he can and cannot say.” But here’s where Christians have to understand, religious liberty is not just about whether or not the government says you can’t say that in the pulpit. It is not whether or not your church is free to organize its ministry. It is about where the compartmentalization falls apart and that is at those very areas, say, the foster care system or the adoption system or when you talk about an academic campus, whether it be, say, an elementary school or a college or university or when you’re talking about, say, the rights of employers when it comes to setting certain moral standards and expectations within their own businesses.

All of this is related to religious liberty. It can’t be separated from religious liberty. It’s not all the same question. The employment question may be a different question than the expression question, and that might be a different question than whether or not, say, Christian parents, a Christian couple would qualify for adoption. All of these things are separable to an extent, but the common threat is the secular culture telling Christians, you’re going to have to conform to this moral judgment against your conscience, or you’re not going to be able to participate in these arenas of life. That’s where the compartmentalization falls apart. But understand this, the LGBTQ activists, they fully understand that the compartmentalization argument is in their favor until they then turn right around and argue, no, we’re going to enforce this. Federal government must constitutionally enforce this in such a way that it does violate religious liberty.

And we also need to understand that among the intellectual elites, including some liberal constitutional scholars, there are those who are saying, we have a clash of rights here. And when the clash of rights takes place, one right is going to win over the other. And the synthetic LGBTQ rights are increasingly in some circles winning over the religious liberty, free expression of religion rights. And we see that on college campuses, certainly on elite college campuses, Ivy League campuses. We see this in major university campuses, even in public universities, we see where Christian groups are being told, “You’re going to have to allow,” as happened just a matter of years ago, already Christian groups are being told on campus, “You’re going to have to allow the full participation of LGBTQ students or you’re not going to be able to operate on the campus.” Or, “You’re not going to be able to be considered a tax-exempt organization.” You can just go down the list. This is how the coercive powers come towards Christians.

And you’ll also notice that the other side knows exactly where to aim. They know exactly how to win. If you can force a Christian campus ministry to accept LGBTQ members as LGBTQ members, that makes it virtually impossible for that Christian ministry to operate on biblical terms. And yet you couldn’t pass a rule saying, Christian ministries can’t operate on this campus according to Christian rules and Christian teaching. No, you have to do it the other way. You have to say, all organizations must conform to this teaching, this expectation and these rules. But there’s something else going on here. And at least some people would say, “Look, this is political speech. This is the White House speaking to its own political advantage to its own political base.” Is that right or wrong?

Well, it’s always right. Again, in a fallen world we should understand this is always right. When you are looking at the White House, you’re looking at a political institution. It operates in a political way. Politicians operate like politicians. Guess what? That doesn’t change the fact that we need conservative politicians if we hold to conservative principles, and we shouldn’t be embarrassed when a conservative administration releases something that will be favorably received by conservative voters or Christians who will be very happy when such an executive order as was handed down yesterday comes because we understand how important it is. Is it a political action? Of course it’s a political action, it’s involved in politics, period. No embarrassment. But I’ll also tell you this isn’t just a political action. This is a real and present threat to religious liberty and it does matter who is sitting in the White House. It matters who is signing the executive order.

It matters whether or not an administration is going to declare a transgender day of visibility, which by the way, coincided with Easter Sunday just this past year. The White House also announced that the president is establishing a task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias. And one of the interesting things about this task force is the level of the persons who were appointed to the task force. So if the White House is not serious about this kind of thing, I’m going to tell you how you can figure that out. It’s because the persons assigned to the task force are real low level, or let’s just say, low medium level appointees and officials throughout the federal government. When the White House is very serious, it’s reflected for example, in the kind of announcement made yesterday, the task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias is to be chaired by the Attorney General of the United States.

Other members of the task force shall include the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. But let’s just say that’s the beginning of the list, but that’s the most important part. Look at how many major members of the president’s cabinet have been appointed to this task force. That tells you something about the fact that this is real, not just window dressing. It also tells you something else. And that is that the Trump administration has learned, through perhaps its first term in office and frustrations in that term, what a whole of government approach looks like, which means you can’t just put this over in the Department of that because the department of the other thing will ignore it.

You got to put everything on the table, put everyone under the same rules and make everyone accountable to these rules and principles or that would just be window dressing. All right, so many other issues, they’re going to have to wait until next week because it’s time to take questions. And once again, I just want to express appreciation for all the listeners to The Briefing who send in such good questions. Can only take a sampling of them, but I try to get a representation of different kinds of questions that come in from just really smart listeners to The Briefing.

Part II

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Is Inerrancy a Modern Word and Concept? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From Listeners to The Briefing

All right, one question from a listener. “Can you please address the doctrine of inerrancy if it is so key to this divide?” I guess she means between liberals and conservatives, particularly how this doctrine came about. She then goes on and says, “My friend is Orthodox,” capital O, “Eastern Orthodox, and holds that it only came about recently. I don’t agree. I believe that this also accounts for why he frequently tells me we’re not called to be biblical. We’re called to be Christlike.” 

All right, all right, heard all this before. Smart question, I appreciate this listener sending it in. So is the word inerrancy a modern word used about Scripture? And the answer is, well, yes and no. So if you’re looking for the exact word inerrancy, then that’s a word that really comes into the Protestant world in the 19th century in a big way. Although there are clear references to very similar words found for example in the period immediately after the Reformation. But if you’re asking as an idea is inerrancy, the clear belief that the Bible is God’s word without error, it is truth, it never errs. There is no error in it, it cannot err. That was basically I believe the faith of the early church.

I think you see evidence of that even inside the Scriptures. Furthermore, not only are we told that God’s word cannot be broken, that God’s word doesn’t fail. Furthermore, when you get into the thick of things, I’m just going to fast-forward to the reformation where you have a break between the Reformers and the Catholic Church. And I’m going to say the issue of sola scriptura, of Scripture alone, was key to that. And when you look at what say a John Calvin or a Martin Luther believed about Scripture, they clearly affirmed its inerrancy. They clearly believed that it could not and does not err. Now I want to be fair and say that an awful lot of the Catholics who are writing about Scripture would’ve said the very same thing. The difference was not whether Scripture was the inspired inerrant word of God in one sense, it was whether or not Scripture alone is the final authority.

But you’re really talking about the modern age when you have the rise of modern liberal approaches to Scripture known as modern liberal biblical criticism. It’s only when you have the scientific age, and you have the secular academy in particular, but also theological liberals beginning to undermine the authority of Scripture and to suggest that it is a human book, and because it is a human book, it contains errors. When you start looking at that, you recognize, well of course you have to develop new words all the time. And even in our modern times we’re developing new words. That doesn’t mean the ideas are new, it doesn’t mean you have to express them in a new way. You hear someone say something and you have to say, well, I need a word to say that’s not right. And so inerrancy comes out that way. What’s the opposite of inerrancy? Let’s just look at that squarely. It’s errancy. You either believe the Bible does or does not contain error, period.

And inerrancy is the position saying that it doesn’t contain error. And I would argue that it is a cognate. That is to say it is a family term which belongs along with infallibility. The Bible never fails to do what God intends for it to do. The total truthfulness of the Scripture, the fact that Scripture is God-breathed. How much of it? Every word of it. God’s word is inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is fully inspired and every word of Scripture is fully inspired. That’s known as the verbal plenary understanding of Scripture and that is totally consistent with the inerrancy of Scripture. And errancy is incompatible with an understanding of the plenary inspiration, the full inspiration of Scripture by the Holy Spirit. So this could be a very long answer.

I’m trying to keep it from becoming a really long answer, but you did throw a little twist in there about your Orthodox friend that was an Eastern Orthodox who says it’s a recent term. Well, in one sense it is, so is the term antibiotic, but that doesn’t mean that there was no such thought in times past. It does mean you didn’t need the word until a certain point. I believe it is absolutely true that when the apostles and the reformers and so many others throughout the ages have said clearly that the Bible is absolute truth, I think this is exactly what they meant. I think in inerrancy is a modern now necessary word in order to say what I believe the apostles believed about Scripture and even what Scripture claims for itself. And then the statement from your friend, quote, “We’re not called to be biblical, we’re called to be Christ-like.” That’s one of those slippery statements. I’m going to step back and wonder sometimes when I hear these things. Okay, let’s play that game for a moment. How exactly would you be Christ-like without being guided and instructed by Scripture?

How exactly would you even know what it means to be Christ-like except for the Scripture? That kind of statement, we’re not called to be biblical, we’re called to be Christ-like, is at the end of the day absolutely nonsensical and I don’t think we should go with anything nonsensical even for a minute. I also don’t know your friend. And so I’m not telling you that your friend is poorly intended here. I’m simply saying that statement isn’t true and it doesn’t wash and the statement, the words need to be seen for what they are.

Part III

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What Do We Make of the Reference to ‘Other Gods’ in Exodus 12? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From Listeners to The Briefing

Okay, next, a question coming in from a young man. He says he and his wife listened to The Briefing and I appreciate him sending this question and I appreciate the fact they listen. And he says that his friend and he had just completed the McShane Bible reading plan, they just read Exodus and then he asked a question, “What do we make of the reference to other gods that we see throughout the book?” Then he mentions Exodus 12:12. The issue is this. The Old Testament is really clear that there is only one God and that there are no other gods. So the claim about God is not that the God of the Bible is more powerful and outsmarts the other gods and defeats them in battle. No, the claim is there are no other gods. At the same time, there’s rebellion against the one true and living God and idolatry is a form of that rebellion.

And idolatry is powerful. It’s a very powerful negative thing, a very powerful and deadly sin. But you also have idols named and sometimes those names come up again and again and they’re spoken of. And it is virtually impossible to invoke that name without someone perhaps even being confused about whether you believe that idol is real or not. And here’s what’s interesting. We don’t believe they’re gods, but we do believe an idol is an idol. And so keeping the categories straight is just really important.

Now, the liberals want to claim that the Old Testament is a polytheism that leads to a henotheism in which Israel’s god is just more powerful than the other gods and it eventuates in a monotheism. I think this is a misreading and a misrepresentation of Scripture, but we do need to understand that the Bible simultaneously says that the idol is a nothing but then nothing may have a name and it may have been carved into a shape. Isaiah chapter 44 makes that just incredibly clear. But in the book of Exodus, it’s really clear there are no other gods and we are to have no other gods, pretender gods, before the one true and living God. He is alone God. So an idol is a nothing, but we do need to understand that idolatry is deadly. So the idol is a nothing but idolatry is not a nothing. And that is very, very similar to the Shema in the Old Testament. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God, the Lord is one.” That’s a simple definitive statement. Deuteronomy chapter six.

Part IV

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What Should I Do About the Boring Parts of the Bible? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From Listeners to The Briefing

Okay, next. Every once in a while you just get a really honest question and I’ll tell you sometimes the most honest questions come from young people. It’s a sixteen-year-old girl, sixteen-year-old young woman who writes in. She says that she has three sisters and a dad who is a pastor. She says, “I’ve grown up reading the Bible a lot and there is some pretty heavy stuff in it!” Exclamation point. Well that’s emphatically true. She then says, “What should I do about the boring parts of the Bible?” She says, “I know that all Scripture is profitable for teaching, correction, and training in righteousness, but sometimes that verse just doesn’t make sense.”

“For instance,” she says, “I’m reading in the Old Testament and I’m reading through Exodus. Why do we need to know what they’re making the temple with or how they sacrifice bulls, which is disgusting,” she says, “as well as boring. How is that profitable for teaching correction and training in righteousness?” I love an honest question. This is an honest question. I’m thankful I have an answer to her honest question and my answer is this. Rightly understood, there are no boring parts of Scripture. Rightly understood, all of Scripture culminates in the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So what am I saying? I’m saying that when you go through Exodus, and I just recently concluded a very long series of expository lessons in Numbers that are on my website, it’s exactly what you’re talking about. Large sections of the book of Numbers are actually even recapitulations of the Old Testament law right down to details.

And when you look at the details concerning the tabernacle, just remember that what God is telling his people is that he’s very scrupulous. He’s very particular. He’s going to tell them how he is to be worshiped because it’s the opposite. This ties to the question before, it is the opposite of idolatry where human beings apply their creativity to decide how they will worship an idol. God says, I’m not an idol. I will tell you how you worship me right down to exactly how the instruments of worship are to be constructed out of what elements, how things are to be designed even on the walls of the temple. And even before that, of the tabernacle. I’m going to tell you because you didn’t create me, I created you. Now, if that is a background, it actually turns pretty interesting.

God is a God who is interested, even determinative, of the smallest details of his worship. We don’t invent our worship. We obey worship. Now the second thing has to do with some of the bloody parts of the Bible. And for example, I love the way this young woman wrote, says she’s looking at parts that she says are disgusting as well as boring, such as how they sacrifice bulls. Okay. It comes back again to the scrupulousness of God. It comes back to the fact that a biblical understanding of worship means we don’t come up with how we worship God. He tells us how he’s going to be worshiped. And in the Old Testament, the worship had a great deal to do with sacrifice, the entire service of the people of Israel devoted to this enormous sacrificial system and the constant exposure to the blood that was required of sacrifices.

And you say that’s icky and you also say boring. I’ll simply say I’ll go along with you with icky from a certain perspective, but not with boring. It’s not boring to me. I understand what you mean, however. I simply want to say this. All of that in all of its detail is to demonstrate again how specific God is in how he will deal with his people. And his people are told, you’re going to sacrifice an animal just this way. You’re going to do it. Here’s who’s going to do it. Here’s when they’re going to do it. Here’s how they’re going to do it. And remember that the blood of the animal was a substitute for God’s wrath poured out upon the Israelites themselves. And so the animal was a sacrifice in that sense. And you say it’s just over and over again. It’s animal after animal. It’s blood after blood.

Well, that’s the purpose. It is to point us to Christ and it is to point us to the cross where Christ, the perfect ultimate sacrifice, shed his blood for the forgiveness of sins. And of course, the Lord raised him on the third day and thus he is not only Savior, he is Lord. And that is why when Christians come together to worship, we worship as redeemed people. There’s a once for all sacrifice that was accomplished on our behalf for our salvation. We don’t come with animals preparing to sacrifice them, nor do we live under the law of how exactly a church building is to be constructed right down to the decorations at the floor level. That is not how we operate as the church, but we only got here because of God’s purpose that culminates in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So let me tell you, how do we read the Old Testament as Christians? We read the Old Testament as promise. We read the New Testament as fulfillment. We read the Old Testament in terms of sacrifice. We read the New Testament in terms of the atonement accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. And we read the Old Testament, every word of it, much of it repetitive, intentionally repetitive, all of it, crying out for something yet better. That’s one of the reasons why I went verse by verse, word by word, even through the entire Pentateuch, to make the point. We need every word of this in order that we might rightly yearn for Christ. Oh, and one other thing, this young woman, when she asked about the sacrificial system, she says that she finds it disgusting. My response to that is you are supposed to. It is supposed to be a graphic demonstration that took place uncountable thousands of times in the history of Israel when Israel had to come to terms and even to visual and say sensory perception of how disgusting sin is.

So I just want to say it turns out that one of the words you might not have considered most important in your question is, I think, in theological significance of great importance.

Part V

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Should Women Join the Military? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From a 14-Year-Old Listener to The Briefing

Okay, finally I got another question. I’m going to try to deal with it quickly. It’s from a fourteen-year-old girl, a fourteen-year-old young woman who writes and she says she’s interested in joining the military. She’s really interested in going to West Point. That’s the US Military Academy at West Point. “But recently I’ve realized that several of my Christian friends in Paris do not believe women should ever join the military, let alone go to West Point.” She says, “I know that men and women’s bodies are created very differently, so it really isn’t suitable for women to join in branches such as infantry. But what about other careers within the military such as finance manager, military intelligence, et cetera? Do you think it’s right for women to join the military?” 

Well, you just answered the question. There are distinctions within the military. I will say that I do not believe that women should be put into combat, period. But the military now includes jobs that go far beyond combat in the name of national service. So the word military now doesn’t mean in every case combat in terms of direct involvement, it can mean many other things. And that’s where I think with discernment, a Christian young woman in obedience to Christ is going to have to figure out exactly what is a proper role in the military and what is not. I really think the key issue here above other issues is combat, and other issues I think can be worked out with discernment and in the fellowship of other believers trying to think this through consistently and biblically. And I want to tell you, I admire your commitment to this nation and your aspiration. I think it’s a sweet and noble thing, and I thank you for writing me.