Mark Driscoll has let it be known that the Jimmy Evans prophesy given to him on October 20, 2014 is coming true now (relying on a Jimmy Evans prophesy rather than his own predictions post-Mars Hill may have some prudence, of a kind)

For those who don't recall ... 

https://wthrockmorton.com/2014/10/24/mark-driscoll-gets-prophetic-word-at-gateway-conference/
https://wthrockmorton.com/2015/12/16/remembering-the-prophecy-about-mark-driscolls-new-church-and-daddy-issues/
https://www.instagram.com/p/uayA_TmqUN/

Mark Driscoll has recently tweeted a clip of receiving a prophesy from Jimmy Evans on October 20, 2014.  It is not the custom of Wenatchee The Hatchet to refer to tweets but in this case when the tweet is Driscoll stating that Evans' prophesy is already coming true here in 2023 and providing a clip with a transcript, well, it's of documentary interest.

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1635283361932652544

Most pivotal moment of my life. Already seeing Pastor Jimmy’s prophecy come true as we continue to reach tens of millions every year with Bible teaching.
7:15 AM · Mar 13, 2023  123.5K Views

transcript after the break

Mark Driscoll sure seems to have scaled back his idea of divine sovereignty since he left Mars Hill

because the Driscoll I met twenty years ago is not the person I can imagine ever tweeting ... 

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1572768606995492864

for those who can't read the image it reads:

If God’s men don’t seek leadership and dominion, Satan’s men will.

7:03 PM · Sep 21, 2022

But didn't Driscoll used to pour contempt on theonomists and reconstructionists back in Confessions of a Reformission Rev back in 2006?

Confessions of a Reformission Rev
Mark Driscoll, Zondervan 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27016-4
ISBN-10:0-310-27016-2

page 130

Some of the fired-up young guys went too far and started acting like young bucks in rutting season, wanting to Jock horn with me and the elders. Many went into extreme forms of Calvinism and wanted to debate things like theonomy and other dumb things that only white guys with high-speed Internet connections to bizarre websites could get into and were causing division. If you don't know what theonomy is, don't worry, becau e you aren't really missing anything. Basically, it is the belief that the church should rule the world, including the banking system, government, and so on, and enforce Old Testament law like Israel did. The young rabid Calvinists who were pushing for this doctrine did not yet own homes, most did not even have wives, a11d some still lived with their mothers. I tried to set them straight by telling them to get dominion over their room before they took over the world, but like most fools, they were not deterred.

Driscoll's recent stance may not mean he has become either a postmillennialist or a theonomistic reconstructionist but that doesn't mean you have to endorse either to have an essentially dominionist take on culture.  In other words, he's still about "going upstream and influence culture" even if the new jargon has become "kingdom down and not culture up".

the theme at Mark Driscoll's twitter feed this week is fear (update 9-4-22, toward a proposal that the Driscolls now use forgiveness teaching as a form of apotropaic magic)

Although he's known to block any number of people on Twitter from viewing or responding to his tweets, the fact that Wenatchee The Hatchet isn't even on Twitter and never plans to be means, paradoxically, that it's never been that hard to keep tabs on his tweets.

For whatever reason, since the August 26, 2022 Mike Cosper interview with Dan Allender in The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill series came along ...

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/bonus-episode-conversation-with-dan-allender.html

...Mark Driscoll's tweets are full of talk about fear.

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1563601993246990336
Pastor Mark Driscoll
@PastorMark
Fear will come upon you, but you can't let it in you.
11:59 AM · Aug 27, 2022

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1563964381196652545
Pastor Mark Driscoll
@PastorMark
There’s always something to fear. You can look out in fear or look up in faith.
11:59 AM · Aug 28, 2022

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1564327027188056066
Pastor Mark Driscoll
@PastorMark
Faith and fear can't coexist.
12:00 PM · Aug 29, 2022·

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1564689660672184323
Sometimes fear does more damage to you than the person or thing you're afraid of.
12:01 PM · Aug 30, 2022

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1565052048160264193
When the spirit of fear oppress you it turns into false prophecy over your life.
12:01 PM · Aug 31, 2022

Other people can do the screencap thing if they like.  

POSTSCRIPT ... 9-1-2022

Still running with the theme as of 

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1565414436038479872

You need to stop worrying about the outcome and instead worship through the process.

12:01 PM · Sep 1, 2022

POSTSCRIPT 9-4-2022

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1566501851457019904

Forgiving others allows us to move on into the destiny that God has for us.

12:02 PM · Sep 4, 2022

In his post Mars Hill writings Driscoll has leaned heavily on a teaching that says we(you) need to forgive people in order to be free of demonic influence and that if you don't forgive you are saying you want Satan instead of Jesus to reign in your life. It's an idea he had back in 2008, too, for that matter but within a post-Mars Hill context via Win Your War and tweets there's a different element to it.  Some Christians approach spiritual warfare as a set of instructions about how Christians corporately and publicly give witness to the reign of Christ as having already conquered the powers and principalities.  This shows up in books by Esther Acolatse, Daniel K Darko, Robert Ewusie Moses and other pastors and theologians from Ghana and Kenya.  Acolatse has noted that in some African church movements there is a tendency for Christians to treat spiritual warfare as a kind of medicinal individual one-shot deal. Another way to put it, since I've seen this pattern in my life back in my Pentecostal days is that there are a lot of Christians who regard spiritual warfare instructions in Ephesians 6 not as instructions for how Christian communities bear public witness to Christ together so much as a kind of anti-magic that is paradoxically magical.  

In Driscoll's post-Mars Hill variant on teaching about the need for Christians to forgive it's hard for me to shake a sense that he prescribes forgiveness as a blanket "You need to forgive them so Satan doesn't have a ground to attack you".  Yet to go by Mark and Grace Driscoll's statements in Win Your War and comments from people who have left The Trinity Church the Driscolls seem to still experience what they regard as spiritual attacks. As I've discussed in the past looking at Judges 9 and the afflicting spirit the Lord sent to King Saul in the Hebrew Bible we don't even find "demons" as conventionally understood from medieval European Christian diabology moving forward--instead we find the Lord occasionally sent spirits to afflict corrupt, self-serving and wicked leaders to torment them or deceive their prophets.  

This is a commonplace element in the Hebrew Bible when it comes to leaders being afflicted by the Lord for abuse or misappropriation of power but in the Driscolls' writings they chalk up any spiritual attacks they face to "intense seasons of ministry". The possibility that they opened themselves up to spiritual torment because of their abuses and injustices has,  to the best of my knowledge, literally never come up once in their twenty years of being public ministry figures together.  If Mark doesn't publicly confess he wronged people and leans on a forgiveness doctrine that functionally works as apotropaic magic the purpose of forgiveness may no longer even be about relational reconciliation or repentance at all in any Christian sense of the term, but a kind of protective spell-casting that is expected to protect the person who prays from being attacked).  

postlude to Throckmorton interview with Turner and Bruskas: Justin Dean tweets links to interview, discovers he's been blocked by Driscoll

Now I've written that I loathe Twitter in general and refuse to use it. This does not mean I don't keep track of things on Twitter that seem relevant to me.  So, for instance, it did not pass unnoticed that Justin Dean tweeted links to Warren Throckmorton's interview with Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskas.

Mark Driscoll offering signed sermon notes to people who sign on for the weekly list, Throckmorton notes. UPDATE Tweet removed

UPDATE 7-8-2019 the tweet has been removed
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1147718142770044928

Fired up to preach 9@11 am tmrw @thetrinitychrch! Want these signed sermon notes after I’m done? Get on the weekly list by sending your name and address to hello@markdriscoll.org

9:05 PM - 6 Jul 2019

if you want evidence of what once was ... Jacob Denhollander has a "just in case" capture.

https://twitter.com/JJ_Denhollander/status/1148008666643226624

Now back to the original content of the post.

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2019/07/07/want-mark-driscolls-autographed-sermon-notes-sign-up/

It got me wondering whether Charles Spurgeon would have made a similar offer.  Why do I mention Charles Spurgeon?  Because internal communication in the Mark Driscoll orbit at one point suggested, apparently in all seriousness, that Mark Driscoll could become the Charles Spurgeon of our era.  For those who don't remember that, head over here.

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2014/09/19/megachurch-methods-mark-driscolls-content-management-system/

Throckmorton has raised the question as to whether, depending on the contents and biblical text involved, the sermon notes were assembled by Mark Driscoll or might reflect material that was assembled by Docent Group associates who were working with and for Mars Hill Church.  

Something else about Driscoll's twitter feed of interest in light of more recent blogging on the topic of Driscoll and Mars Hill. 

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1147188486748942337
Do you need to learn to honor God’s authority over all aspects of your life? This makes you a better Christian, spouse, parent, child, employee, and leader so that your life is blessed by God and a blessing to others: 


10:00 AM - 5 Jul 2019

Since Mark Driscoll has name-dropped Malachi by way of an image ... 

That's a reminder that the Docent Group writer Jed Ostoich shared in a podcast interview a while back how one of his last projects working for Mars Hill was providing research notes for Malachi.  What he shared was that he compiled a list of all the ways pastors liked to misuse Malachi in preaching and teaching and discovered, to his dismay, that all of the things that Mark Driscoll was explicitly advised not to do with the texts were what Driscoll decided to do with the texts in his preaching and teaching.  

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/no-compromise/jed-ostoich-interview--9uth6KQUOd/

It's something that is old news by now and is itself an interview from 2018, if memory serves, but enough time elapsed after the demise of MH that at least one Docent Group contributor who was contracted to Mars Hill said stuff on the record.  I'm not sure if you saw that but it's important to remind people that with autographed sermon notes from Driscoll you can't be 100% sure the research was stuff he did himself or had farmed out to Docent as, you've already noted, on a probably Mars Hill dime.  

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2019/04/no-compromise-radio-podcast-interview.html

All in all it's a little tough to imagine that "if" Mark Driscoll were a Charles Spurgeon of our time he'd offer to send signed sermon notes.  Even when I attended Mars Hill I didn't care to have sermon notes signed by any of the pastors.  

Although ... on the theme of Spurgeon ... I recall in a sermon of his about one of the Psalms Charles Spurgeon shared an adage that Caeser's horse is more proud of carrying Caeser than Caeser is to rid him.  Mark Driscoll does not seem likely to be a Caeser ... or perhaps even a Caeser's horse ... but Spurgeon's observation that there are those craven yet ambitious people who will display great cruelty in their quest to have power and prestige, even of a second-hand type that seems ... some twenty years after Mother Jones mentioned Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll that comes to mind. 

It may be historically interesting to close with a statement Mark Driscoll made in his Mars Hill sermon series on Malachi.

December 01, 2013
Pastor Mark Driscoll
http://marshill.com/media/malachi-living-for-a-legacy/where-is-my-honor
http://marshill.com/en/transcript/malachi-living-for-a-legacy/where-is-my-honor
MALACHI: LIVING FOR A LEGACY
 WHERE IS MY HONOR? 

...Mars Hill, I am convinced, utterly convinced that we are poised for the biggest year we’ve ever had. [emphasis added] And we’ve got some great leaders, and I’ve got a great honor today of sharing some of them with you. I want you to see who we’re talking about, and what they’re doing, and where they’re leading. We’ve pulled up their giving. They’re all giving, OK? They’re all serving, they’re all working, they’re all caring, they’re all trying. And you are helping them by giving generously and praying faithfully.
Incontestably 2014 was the biggest year Mars Hill ever had.

HT Jim West a NYT feature discusses social media bots and purchasing the appearance of influence, The Follower Factory

First off, hat tip to Jim West.

https://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/pastors-and-their-purchased-followers/

Because he just linked to something recently that's been a topic we've looked at here at Wenatchee The Hatchet in connection to former leaders from Mars Hill such as Mark Driscoll (currently following 3 and having 529k followers) and Sutton Turner (currently following 42.9k and having 44k followers). 

We've looked at Twitter usage and follower counts connected to former executive elders of the former Mars Hill Church (also known initially as Mars Hill Fellowship) here at the blog in the past.

Two posts spring to mind:

the following of Sutton Turner on Twitter, a new short story in screencaps tells a story of a Turner in September 2014 that does not mention Mars Hill so much
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-following-of-sutton-turner-on.html

The continual rise of Mark Driscoll's Twitter following, a short story in screen captures
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-rise-of-mark-driscolls-twitter.html

Well, the New York Times has a feature about the business of buying and selling bots and the appearance of popularity on social media.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html

I never plan to be on Twitter or use the platform.  It was of no real value at all and it's only utility, in my experience as a blogger, was that it was partly through Twitter feeds and blog posts I managed to identify that James Noriega and his family as parties most likely connected to the disciplinary case of Andrew Lamb at Mars Hill in later 2011 that became the basis for headlines in early 2012.  While the official Mars Hill public relations response was to say they were not discussing details of the disciplinary case to protect the identities of parties involved, I eventually wrote an extensive series of posts named A Confluence of Situations discussing how social media use within the culture of Mars Hill made it easy to put together a basic timeline of what happened when in connection to the addition of James Noriega to the leadership culture of Mars Hill; how and why that leadership was significant not only for the counseling arm of the church but also, and arguably more crucially, it's real estate acquisition history in connection to its growth model; and how the social media use of the Noriega family in tandem with Mark Driscoll sermons and coverage from the Seattle P-I made it fairly straightforward to connect the dots as to their respective statements pointing to them as the most probable and plausible participants in what became one of the landmark controversies associated with Mars Hill leadership and membership in early 2012.

A more conventional understanding of how and why social media usage might be considered controversial in connection to pastors or churches would be that this is an appearance of influence that can be bought and sold. 

I admit I am simply not sold on the idea that people somehow need to use social media to be "engaged".  I'm particularly not sure I embrace the idea that Christians in church staff need to embrace social media.  They can if they wish to but there's book by Jacques Ellul I would recommend ... .

Driscoll on twitter 2-25-2016 "Forgiveness takes on person. Reconciliation takes two."

I generally have no interest in or use for Twitter.  Twitter has been one of those things that people get into and a line from Jane Austen's Emma just sticks with me, where half the people in the world take pleasure in things the other half can't even understand. 

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/702989451111170048
Forgiveness takes one person. Reconciliation takes two.
2:52 PM - 25 Feb 2016

Sometimes reconciliation takes a few more people than that, of course.

Joyful Exiles has been up since March 2012.  Also up since 2012 is Mark Driscoll's October 1, 2007 presentation to some leaders in which he said ...  :

http://004f597.netsolhost.com/Vision/10%20Throw%20Them%20Off%20the%20Bus%201.mp3
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/preaching-paul_edits1.mp3
October 1, 2007

... Too many guys spend too much time trying to move stiff-necked obstinate people. I am all about blessed subtraction. There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus and by God's grace it'll be a mountain by the time we're done. You either get on the bus or get run over by the bus (those are the options) but the bus ain't gonna stop. I'm just a, I'm just a guy who is like, "Look, we love ya but this is what we're doin'."

There's a few kind of people. There's people who get in the way of the bus.  They gotta get run over. There are people who want to take turns driving the bus. They gotta get thrown off cuz they want to go somewhere else. There are people who will be on the bus (leaders and helpers and servants, they're awesome).  There's also sometimes nice people who just sit on the bus and shut up. They're not helping or hurting. Just let `em ride along. You know what I'm saying? But don't look at the nice people who are just gonna sit on the bus and shut their mouth and think, "I need you to lead the mission." They're never going to. At the most you'll give `em a job to do and they'll serve somewhere and help out in a minimal way. If someone can sit in a place that  hasn't been on mission for a really long time they are by definition not a leader and so they're never going to lead. You need to gather a whole new core. [emphasis added]

I'll tell you what, you don't just do this for church planting or replanting, you know what? I'm doing it right now. I'm doing it right now. We just took certain guys and rearranged the seats on the bus. Yesterday we fired two elders for the first time in the history of Mars Hill last night. They're off the bus, under the bus. They were off mission so now they're unemployed. This will be the defining issue as to whether or not you succeed or fail.

So if reconciliation takes two people and it's been about nine years since the 2007 re-org Driscoll can tweet pious bromides about how reconciliation takes two people but reconciliation's easier to do if you're in the same state, assuming a person wants to reconcile.

But to go by other tweets Driscoll has done on forgiveness we can't simply assume reconciliation is seen as "necessary". A key perceived benefit of forgiving someone can be that you free yourself to move on with your life.

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346423376484638721
Forgiveness is a gift to your offender...and to yourself, freeing you up to move on with your life.
5:25 PM - 16 Jun 2013

Around that same time Driscoll also tweeted this opaque axiom, possibly intended for Mars Hill insiders since it seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the stuff you'd find in his twitter feed from that period.

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346724025164263425
Healthy transitions in relays & leadership come down to the handoff. Train up your successor.
Don't chuck the baton & storm off the track.
1:20 PM - 17 Jun 13

Now after the October 2014 resignation of Mark Driscoll it could sure seem to a lot of people that a healthy transition is not exactly what happened or there would still be a Mars Hill today.  It seems as though what Mark Driscoll did in resigning could be described as chucking the baton and storming off the track rather than going through a healthy transition and a hand off that allowed the relay to continue.  It's tough to know how cogent the analogy is since Driscoll always seemed more baseball than track and field. 

But it sure looks to a lot of people like Mark Driscoll chucked the baton and stormed off the track rather than comply with the restoration plan he told Brian Houston he agreed to submit to.  Did he?  Did the BoE get to finish their investigation?  Was there even a report?  The fact that there is no longer a Mars Hill raises the question of how healthy the transitions have been. Even if the transitions have been healthy it's hard to shake the sense that in later 2014 Mark still chucked the baton and stormed off the track.  For a guy who spent his years at Mars Hill telling people to live for a legacy he seems less than eager to discuss his legacy these days. 

Finally ... here's another tweet on forgiveness from 2013. There are more caveats about what forgiveness is and isn't that Driscoll shared over the years.  Forgiveness doesn't entail reconciliation, obviously, it can also be a gift you give to yourself  so you can move on with your life (which may also not entail any reconciliation).  And there's an extra thing, forgiveness doesn't mean you can't avail yourself of law enforcement to punish the person who offended you, too.

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346683312452030465
Forgiveness is not covering up sin committed against us. If a crime is committed, you can forgive someone & still call the cops.
10:38 AM - 17 Jun 2013

Forgiveness does not, as some say, preclude temporal consequences.  Okay, that can be given ... but it's interesting to wonder whether or not this lexicon of what forgiveness is and isn't is easier for a person to be on the giving end rather than the receiving end. 

After all, it's easier to be on the "giving end" of a forgiveness that 1) may forgive but severs relationship, 2) "moves on" literally and figuratively, and 3) even invokes the power of law enforcement to punish the sinner after "forgiveness" has been given than to be on the receiving end of that kind of forgiveness.

And for a guy who up until recently said "It's all about Jesus", would Mark Driscoll want Jesus to extend THAT kind of forgiveness to him?

Mark Driscoll starts up the morning with a partial proverb about mockers and a city, a reflection on the half-verse meditations of Driscollian twitter theology

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/695990514286522368
“Mockers stir up a city…” Prov 29:8
7:20 AM - 6 Feb 2016  

He's got that first part but why not quote the second half about the wise turning away anger?  Is that implied automatically? Does Driscoll hope that in wisdom he can turn away anger?  Can it be turned away without admitting something, at least, about the previous 18 years of ministry he had at Mars Hill? 

It's the nature of twitter to try to traffic in wit but in order to traffic in wit you need a track record of reliable observation; and the limit of witticism is that it frequently goes just for the punchline rather than serious observation.

Proverbs warns that not everyone who invokes a proverb isn't a fool.  Consider a few chestnuts from Proverbs 26 (ESV)

7. Like a lame man’s legs, which hang useless, is a proverb in the mouth of fools.

9. Like a thorn that goes up into the hand of a drunkard is a proverb in the mouth of fools.
When the fool uses a proverb it is at best useless or at worst causes harm when used.  One of the ways this can happen is to mistakenly suppose that proverbs, observations about life compiled by sages, can be interpreted as actual promises of any sort from God.  Another way an axiom can be abused is by wresting it from its larger literary context and treating it as if it were a generalized observation.  Driscoll shared the following back in 2015 ...

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/12/driscoll-tweet-on-ecclesiastes-99-as.html

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/662255303715606528
The wife God gives you is your reward for all your earthly toil. Eccl 9:9
5:09 AM - 5 Nov 2015

Of course we've looked at the problem with such an atomized application before.  For those guys who would insist that the wife is a gift from God and a sign of God's favor, Proverbs can't be read separated from the rest of the Bible where Hosea was told to marry a prostitute; where Job's wife advised him to die; where Lot's wife became a pillar of salt; and where Ezekiel was ordered to not mourn publicly the death of his beloved wife.  We discussed a bit of that over here. In cultural settings in which you didn't necessarily get to choose if you were married proverbs could have different encouraging roles.  If you were arranged into a marriage to someone you weren't in love with but with whom you were to inherit a family estate the wisdom could be in making the best of a situation not entirely in your control and developing mutual good will. 

For a guy like Mark Driscoll, it seems, a passage from Ecclesiastes might as well be about the rationale for a white guy in America having a trophy wife.

Yes, on twitter it's easy to share the pious bromide version of a Bible verse.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/693454930846322688
…my God will hear me. Micah 7:7
7:25 AM - 30 Jan 2016  

The pattern so far, however, can look like pulling just the half of the verse that seems emotionally resonant to a dude.  Just paraphrase half of one verse from Micah 7 misses out a few parts.

How about verse 9?

I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause
and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication.
It'd be easy to focus on the latter two thirds, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me; he will bring me out to the light and I shall look upon his vindication.  That part could be appealing.  What about "I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him"?  Did Mark Driscoll wait and bear the indignation of the Lord because of his sin? Or did Driscoll decide to take matters into his own hands and resign?  Let's consider that we can take at face value the assertion that God said "a trap has been set" but why did Driscoll ignore so many passages in scripture in which the Psalmists asked God to deliver him from traps rather than talk about how he needed to deliver himself?  What about the detail that in many cases when God warned that a trap had been set it was a trap that could not be escaped?  Ironically even when warning Ahab a trap had been set Ahab's disobedience to God meant he marched into the trap anyway and met his end.

Over the years at Mars Hill Mark Driscoll would occasionally prepare to launch into a joke but include a proviso, "My wife told me I shouldn't tell this joke but I'm gonna tell it anyway." Mark Driscoll spent more than just a few minutes here and there playing the role of a mocker who stirred up the city of Seattle.  Back in those days he'd say we all need to stop taking ourselves so seriously.  For whatever reasons Mark Driscoll seems to be aiming for the earnest, sincere and serious thing this time around. 

As optimism for a new year goes ... Driscoll tweeted ...
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/691295412775456771
Surely there is a future… Pr 23:18
8:24 AM - 24 Jan 2016  

Well, there's only a future in that one verse in connection to instructions from preceding verses.  These include:

13 Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
14 If you strike him with the rod,
you will save his soul from Sheol.

15 My son, if your heart is wise,
my heart too will be glad.
16 My inmost being will exult
when your lips speak what is right.
17 Let not your heart envy sinners,
but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day.
18 Surely there is a future,
and your hope will not be cut off.

Would Driscoll consent to being the child who gets struck with a rod? Unpleasant as it's described as being that rod is described as saving a child's soul from the grave.  Driscoll might insist that Sheol is better interpreted as Hell.  Okay, then. If so, then Driscoll gets to be the one who can consider whether avoiding the rod of discipline because he's claiming a trap has been set could have been done in a way that imperils his soul (for those who believe he has one, at least).

Then there's the 15-18 segment.  You have a future and your hope will not be cut off if you have gained wisdom and your lips speak what is right and your heart does not envy sinners and continues in the fear of the Lord.

How well does someone who went along with Mars Hill contracting with Result Source to rig a place on the New York Times bestseller list for Real Marriage fit that?

None of this is to say it's impossible for even a Mark Driscoll to have some shot at restoration to a ministry of some kind.  I wrote a few times that if he'd chosen to be a regular rank and file tithing member of a church, one he didn't start, and submitted to just being a normal guy for half a decade before being reinstated to a ministry capacity that would be a good thing. 

He didn't do that.  He not only bailed on participating in a restoration plan he said was proposed by the board at Mars Hill, he retroactively claimed it was at the behest of God.  If so that would have been information to have lead with in his resignation letter, not something to share repeatedly on the conference circuit in 2015.  That's easy for people with no intimate sense of the history of Mark Driscoll's leadership style to accept at face value in a charismatic scene.  But for anyone who heard Mark say in 2014 that you can't just take at face value any claim from some guy who says "God told me" it looks like Driscoll's new career depends on ignoring just about everything he spent 18 years at Mars Hill advising people to do.

Can Driscoll say that having the NYT rigged for Real Marriage didn't even possibly reflect a heart envying the success of sinners?  Or is rigging a best seller list not a sin?  Would there be a defense to be made for that?  The BoAA tried making a defense that the Result Source plan was not technically illegal. 

But if Driscoll wants to keep going with one-liner Bible tweets, how about this golden oldie from the NAS reading of Proverbs 13:11
Wealth obtained by fraud dwindles, But the one who gathers by labor increases it.

Or the NIV
Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow.

If Driscoll wants to do theology by way of twitter Proverbs 13:11 seems like a great verse. He won't even have to cut out half the verse.

POSTSCRIPT
12.40pm

Of course someone noted the following:

He who is often reproved,

yet stiffens his neck,

will suddenly be broken beyond healing.

-- Proverbs 29:1

 

 

Driscoll at conference today after leaving MH as elder and member? Throckmorton notes Charles Campbell tweet

From the March 2014 statement ...
http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/03/MHCletterMD.png
...
To reset my life, I will not be on social media for at least the remainder of the year. The distractions it can cause for my family and our church family are not fruitful or helpful at this time. At the end of the year, I will consider if and when to reappear on social media, and I will seek the counsel of my pastors on this matter. In the meantime, Mars Hill and Resurgence will continue to post blogs, sermons, and podcasts on my social media accounts, but otherwise I’m going offline.

I will also be doing much less travel and speaking in the next season. In recent years, I have cut back significantly, but I will now cut back even more. I have cancelled some speaking events, and I am still determining the best course of action for a few that I’ve committed to, as they are evangelistic opportunities to invite people to salvation in Jesus Christ, which is something I care about deeply. I will be doing very few media interviews, if any. Also, I’m communicating with my publisher to determine how to meet my existing obligations and have a much less intense writing schedule.

Does not being on social media mean not appearing on social media via third parties because ...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/20/mark-driscoll-rocks-the-gateway-conference/

http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/DriscollGateway.png

The person does look vaguely familiar.  image over at WT

So has Driscoll resigned eldership at MH after rejecting the restoration plan and left the church and has ... already showed up at a conference in Dallas Fort Worth? 

https://twitter.com/charl3scampbell/status/524366310558298112
CharlesCampbell @charl3scampbell Follow

Since someone's already been crucified for him, let's restore him with a spirit of gentleness @PsRobertMorris introing Mark Driscoll #GC14

6:07 PM - 20 Oct 2014

2 Retweets

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https://twitter.com/charl3scampbell/status/524367144532705280
 ·  1h 1 hour ago

Watching @PsRobertMorris love on pastors everyone else has shunned and misrepresented is amazing! I love my church #GC14

 

Driscoll ... a  pastor everyone else has shunned and misrepresented?  If Driscoll simply applied his axioms on spiritual warfare, bitterness and sex in marriage that he applied to others to himself the burden of proof is on Mark Driscoll to explain why he wasn't demonized in some fashion if he said that bitterness and a lack of sex in marriage were both satanic footholds in the category of the "ordinary demonic". That's not misrepresenting Driscoll, it's just quoting him accurately, in context, and proposing that that what's good for the goose must also be good for the gander.

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/08/from-earlier-this-year-mark-driscoll-on.html

If Mark hadn't taught what he's taught about those things none of this would be a matter for the record, but he taught the stuff he's taught and never repudiated it.  So just in case someone gets the idea that "everyone else" has shunned Driscoll there's a lot of people at Mars Hill who probably want him back and didn't want him to resign and leave the church as the BoE recently announced he has done.

tweeted bromides on what forgiveness isn't courtesy of Rachel Held Evans and Mark Driscoll, a paradoxical agreement

http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/twitter-theology-that-makes-me-sigh-54/

http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/twitter-theology-that-makes-me-sigh-54/rhe/

Rachel Held Evans
unconditional forgiveness does not require unconditional toleration of abusive behavior. This shouldn't be controversial.
Jim West, as expected, disagreed. 

What's interesting about the RHE tweet is how thematically similar it is to this:
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346683312452030465
Forgiveness is not covering up sin committed against us. If a crime is committed, you can
forgive someone & still call the cops.
10:38 AM - 17 Jun 13

Fascinating, so on at least this particular theme MD and RHE might be on exactly the same page.  And West would likely say they're both tragically and insultingly wrong. 

an old Sutton Turner tweet statement that has been lost to us.

https://twitter.com/suttonturner/status/508103553366638592
Sutton Turner‏@suttonturner

Jesus wants to expose your private sin, not to condemn you but to free you. @davebruskas #loveoneanother
9:05 PM - 5 Sep 2014

Of course the link is totally dead but the text has been preserved by Wenatchee The Hatchet, just because it could be done.  Executive elders past and present tweeting on freedom and sin ...

Of course Turner's resigned from being the "king" at Mars Hill Church and it remains to be seen who will fill in his roles of treasurer and secretary and whether these roles will be filled by one or two people.  Meanwhile, a little tweet that can be seen as a blast from the past.

Mark Driscoll tweets on forgiveness from the weekend of June 17, 2013 "Forgiveness is not covering up sin ... . If a crime is committed, you can forgive someone & still call the cops."

One of the things that has been proposed regarding Mark Driscoll is that he made some mistakes and he may have even sinned a bit but Jesus died for those sins and there's forgiveness for them.  But let us consider what Mark Driscoll's own tweets on forgiveness from days past might share with us about the nature of forgiveness.  Driscoll seems too practical and concrete to have twittered about forgiveness that weekend without some context and it may be worth revisiting what Driscoll had to say about forgiveness then. No, Wenatchee The Hatchet isn't going to explain anything at all about what may or may not have happened at that stage in Mars Hill history and comments are disabled so don't bother with trying to make comments.

On Monday, June 17, 2013, Mark Driscoll posted a few tweets on forgiveness amid thoughts about
things like Father's Day.

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346683312452030465
Forgiveness is not covering up sin committed against us. If a crime is committed, you can
forgive someone & still call the cops.
10:38 AM - 17 Jun 13

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346724025164263425
Healthy transitions in relays & leadership come down to the handoff. Train up your successor.
Don't chuck the baton & storm off the track.
1:20 PM - 17 Jun 13

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346423376484638721
Forgiveness is a gift to your offender...and to yourself, freeing you up to move on with your
life.
5:25 PM - 16 Jun 13

Whatever happened in mid-June 2013 that inspired Mark Driscoll to tweet about forgiveness in the way he did is probably best saved for internal discussion, assuming that whatever inspired those tweets was something that should have inspired any tweets to begin with.

If you are a member of Mars Hill Church you may or may not have asked what on earth these tweets could have been about.

But what is striking about that first tweet is the forceful simplicity of saying that forgiveness does not mean covering up sins committed against us.  If a crime was committed we can forgive someone yet still call the cops.  Fascinating.  The tweet about transitions is just opaque and insider and not possible to interpret as having any meaningful context at all, though perhaps Mars Hill members past and present might be able to divine a reason for it.  That forgiveness is a gift to your offender and ... to yourself (?) is interesting.  Could that be construed as a type of moral therapeutic deism of some kind?  You don't forgive people to give yourself freedom to move on with your life you forgive someone who is contrite to restore relationship, don't you?  If the forgiveness Jesus modeled on the cross was forgiving all us sinners and then moving on with His life via resurrection how miserable it would be for us if moving on with His life was all He did.  No, Christians clearly affirm that Jesus didn't just forgive us our sins so He could move on with His life. 

This sort of reduction ad absurdum beloved by Driscoll is pertinent because it is a useful way to show the severe limits of "twitter theology".  Jim West has a whole set of posts on twitter theology that makes him sigh for the curious but go look that up yourself.  :)  Here the relevant observation is that Driscollian bromides on forgiveness seem geared toward someone who shares thoughts on forgiveness from the standpoint of someone who "forgives" in a way that severed a relationship and "moved on" without reconciliation, even though it might seem that a reconciled relationship would be the aim of Christian forgiveness. 

So if forgiveness does not necessarily entail or require reconciliation (go read the twitter responses for that); and if forgiveness doesn't preclude covering up sins; then a few possibilities may emerge from this.  First, if Mark Driscoll has sinned then forgiving Mark Driscoll does not, even according to the tweets of Mark Driscoll, involve covering up or ignoring that sins have been committed.  Second, since Driscoll made a point of saying you can forgive an offender and still call the cops would Mark Driscoll have wanted editors at Intervarsity Press to have dealt with him and Mars Hill Church according to that particularly Driscollian application of forgiveness?  After all, the citation problems in the Trial study guide weren't defensible under Fair Use and what would have "calling the cops" have been on an occasion of a citation error?  Something to consider   mid-2013 was, of course, months before the plagiarism and Result Source Inc. controversies.  It's worth asking whether Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church may be comfortable having a forgiveness that doesn't preclude a calling of cops. 

the following of Sutton Turner on Twitter, a new short story in screencaps tells a story of a Turner in September 2014 that does not mention Mars Hill so much

One of the curiosities about The WayBack Machine is that in the event that it captures a webcrawl of a Twitter account it isn't necessarily in English.  Let's take the twitter account of Sutton Turner.

From March 26, 2014.  Anyone want to find out what "Jarraitzaleak" might lead to?  Let's say we click on that and find out where The WayBack Machine goes?

It would appear to be "followers" in this case.
Now, let's see what Sutton Turner's Twitter profile looked like August 5, 2014

How about September 20, 2014?

2,559 tweets in August 2014 and now September 20, 2014 there's just ... 16 tweets?
Lot of scrubbing of the twitter feed there, Sutton.  Not much sign of Mars Hill or Mark Driscoll or ministry or anything like that. 

It's kind of fascinating, by the way, how Turner's twitter following just kept exploding this year after it turned out he signed the Result Source Inc. contract.  Was the notoriety of that good for getting a Twitter following?