Recently, the YouTuber Real Talk with Jordan Riley published a video entitled “5 Dangerous Beliefs INVADING Our Churches!!” Normally, Jordan Riley’s content discusses lower-hanging fruit and hyper-charismatic cringe. Theologically, he falls in line with John MacArthur, who is tagged in the video title, and his channel has about 72K subs.
The five teachings expressed as dangerous and invading the church are as follows: Denial of Inerrancy of Scripture, Egalitarianism, Supersessionism, Easy Believism, and Ecumenism. One of those five is not like the others. Riley applies MacArthur’s interpretation of Romans 11, and a few other passages to justify the distinction. After playing a clip by MacArthur, Riley then emphasizes that the Church was not given a land promise like that given in the Old Testament.
Taking notice of this was a small Presbyterian YouTuber by the name of Nathan Beaty who runs the channel Theology Repair, whose content mostly consist of teaching Greek among other things. Yet he took the time to offer a thorough response to Riley through his recent video “Is Supersessionism a Dangerous Doctrine?”
For 48 minutes, Beaty offers an exegesis on Supersessionism while firmly contending that the belief is neither dangerous nor invading the church, arguing that it is instead the historic position. Regarding the land promises, he would contend that the New Heaven, New Earth, and New Jerusalem all constitute future land promises, while the Postmillennials (of which he is not) would argue that there is a land promise for the Church. He even uses the 1689 Federalism diagram on “Israel and the Church” to counter the “diagram” used by Riley. Nevertheless, his argumentation is that Riley was in ignorance of the subject and to include Supersessionism in with the other four clearly dangerous and invasive teachings is wildly incorrect. Beaty does not appear to do this out of a desire to punch up or platform build, but instead as someone who has appreciated Riley’s work in the past. He declines to state that dispensationalism is a dangerous doctrine.
Jordan Riley does good work when calling out the Charismatic, prosperity cringe teachers, but he tends to fire from the hip and rely on associations to justify claims that someone is a false teacher. Ironically, calling Supersessionism a dangerous teaching echoes the rhetoric of Michael Brown, whom he would call a false teacher. The reliance on associations is not the standard of this outlet, especially when for many of these questionable characters, there is far greater evidence available. This is made worse through lumping a complex theological argument into a five-minute clip on a video with a clickbait title.
Credit to Nathan Beaty for calling this out.
