& Forcing LGBTQIA+ Inclusion Audit on AMERICAN Churches
By Rev Thomas Littleton9/15/2018
ALBERT MOHLER, KEEP YOUR SEXUALLY-CONFUSED DISCIPLES AWAY FROM OUR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
CHRISTIANS, THIS IS WHERE THE PERVERTED REVOICE MOVEMENT IS HEADED AS SBC CHURCHES OF MARK DEVER, TGC AND AN ERLC COUNCIL MEMBER’S CHURCH PROMOTE TIM KELLER’S ABSURD AND EVIL “LGBTQ+ INCLUSION CHURCH AUDIT.”
It has long been this writer’s view that knowing the eternal love and compassion of God and His nature to forgive—to forestall judgment, acknowledge humble repentant hearts and to be, the wonderfully articulate word, “Longsuffering,” in the language of King James—that God’s judgment is best understood by what He will not tolerate. What is it that brings His divine posture to alter toward a person or a people? This author thinks to have a clue. When protecting innocents is no longer a law of a society, God’s holy anger arises. Once this level of evil is reached, the reality is that God is more merciful to judge a person or a people or a nation than to allow it to continue.
In America, the Evangelical leadership of Albert Mohler, Russell Moore, Tim Keller, The Gospel Coalition, The Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission of The Southern Baptist Convention have lately presumed to take on the task of remodeling God’s design for the family. They now attack the “Idolatry of Family” and assert we must replace it with an inclusive and expanding village Church family. In America, the end of innocence may be at hand, bringing God’s judgment with it. Let us look soberly at where we have arrived in the parade of exhausting and relentless forced conversations and endless conferencing led by the court jesters we have allowed in leadership.
In 2014 Dr. Albert Mohler, head of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, took upon himself to deliver the Evangelical Church to the Gay Rights movement. Mohler announced at his protégé, Russell Moore’s ERLC Conference on “The Gospel, Homosexuality and the Future of Marriage,” to the Gay Lobby they had invited in, as well as to a trusting Church, his decision to Repent of denying what he had previously stated—that a revisionist “discovery” of sexual orientation was giving ground to undermine the entire Biblical claim of truth.
What makes his public abasement so hypocritical is that he had declared in his own words what was at stake in HIS 2005 writings on “Homosexuality in Theological Perspective.”
In 2005, Mohler stated:
“By employing circumventions, circumlocutions, and contortions the text’s meaning is revised so as to negate its judgment upon homosexuality. The critical issue used as a hermeneutical device by the revisionist is the concept of sexual orientation. The modern “discovery” of sexual orientation is used to deny the truth claim clearly and inescapably made within the biblical text.”
However, in 2014 he stated:
“The concept of sexual orientation is not only helpful, it is in some sense essential. Even those who argue against its existence have to describe and affirm something tantamount to it.”
The 2014 article in which Mohler attempted to squelch the uproar over his comments in the ERLC conference did not help much, if we hold up to scrutiny his glaring contradictions, given his clear 2005 statement that the Orientation argument of the “Revisionist”/ gay lobby activist theological efforts was the foremost device in the well-defined revisionist hermeneutical effort to circumvent Biblical opposition to the normalization of homosexuality. Albert Mohler, are you not in fact giving up, and repenting of, the Evangelical stand to assert that the Word of God carries more weight in the theological discussion of homosexuality than the modern construct (though scientifically unproven) concept of Orientation? Are you not the one now practicing circumventions, circumlocutions, and contortions of the text?
MOHLER AND FRIENDS BOWING AT THE WRONG ALTARS
Altar One – The American Psychological Association
In 2010, Mark Yarhouse and Stanton Jones became the gold standard bearers for The Gospel Coalition and all its affiliates, including Albert Mohler, on all things LGBTQIA+ for the Church. Then the incrementalism began in earnest toward changing the Evangelical view of homosexuality and gender issues. This radical decision was made behind the scenes by a handful of self-appointed fellows, like Tim Keller and Albert Mohler, but has become broadly applied to us, to our churches, and to our pastors under the influence of their seminaries, writings, media and conferences. The June 2018 Living Out Conference of Keller along with July 2018 Revoice conference of long time Mohler disciple and employee at SBTS, Nate Collins, brought some of the depths of these efforts at change, and their carefully masked goals, into clearer view. Not only is sexuality and gender a prime target but so is the Christian /Biblical concept of family. And on what does the overhaul of all things Biblical in this realm have its basis?
Over the course of several years, Mark Yarhouse of Regent University and Stanton Jones of Wheaton applied the findings of the APA’s study of 200 people with unwanted same sex attraction and added a limited study of their own to conclude that sexual orientation seldom changes and therapeutic efforts within the church and ministries to change it are ineffective and likely harmful. Their additional work is discussed in this article and included just 98 people. With, according to the article, 61% of people in the study who remained involved, the findings seem to indicate the opposite—that of those involved the findings indicate significant change — “a reported 23 % success and 30% no longer self-identifying” as gay. Yet the conclusion is that little or no significant change is possible or should be expected. Armed with their conclusions from this study, this wing of the Christian psychological community was commissioned to then begin the work of making the Church compliant with their APA work and to try and undo human and Biblical history and reliable text. That is truly some amazing self-importance on the part of Mohler, Keller, Moore and others as they employ and embody the language of some flimsy reasoning and hermeneutic clearly attuned to current politically correct cultural narrative and dressed in theological garb for leading you and me and our churches and families down this path of compliance.
Altar 2 – Deconstructing the Idolatry of the Nuclear Family and converting to “IT TAKES A QUEER VILLAGE”
In the 2005 article linked above by Albert Mohler on “Homosexuality from a Theological Perspective” part two, the full quote on the Biblical cost of losing the battle over the asserted “discovery” of Orientation is drawn in part from the pro-homosexual writings of liberal Drew University School of Theology professor, Janet Fishburn. Here is the full quote:
“The critical issue used as a hermeneutical device by the revisionist is the concept of sexual orientation. The modern ‘discovery’ of sexual orientation is used to deny the truth claim clearly and inescapably made within the biblical text. For example, in regard to the Romans one text Janet Fishburn of Drew University Theological School argues: ‘Yet some biblical scholars point out that this passage can only refer to the homosexual acts of heterosexual persons. This is because the writers of the Bible did not distinguish between homosexual orientation and same-gender sexual acts. If this distinction is accepted, the condemnation of homosexuality in Romans one does not apply to the sexual acts of homosexual persons.’”
The seemingly confused Mohler in 2014, about his own conclusions in 2005 over the Biblical cost of adopting the unbiblical concept of sexual orientation, is one unsolved mystery. The other is that Mohler disciples like Russell Moore and Nate Collins, among other Mohler allies, are now echoing the further teachings of Janet Fishburn of Drew on Confronting and Deconstructing the “Idolatry of Family.” Mohler is clearly not unfamiliar with Fishburn’s work or its pro homosexual assertions related to family and sexuality. Now his own disciples are serving up these offerings of pagan origin to the Church. Fishburn insists that the construct of the modern concept of family is more rooted in the American Dream and unduly hinders and constrains the freedom of the Church to cater to other forms of family and lifestyles of the alternative seeker. Fishburn rejects the traditional view of God as masculine and endorses the Goddess Sophia in her book, The Feminine Dimension of the Divine which “demonstrates how the feminine aspect of God was repressed in Christianity. The spiritual needs and interests of both men and women have changed enough to merit a new edition of this superbly crafted, scholarly study of Sophia.”
In Part One of his 2005 “Theological Perspective,” Mohler covers the roots and goals of the homosexual movement with clarity.
“What has followed has been a measured and strategic effort to win the legitimization of homosexuality, to promote homosexual themes in the media, to receive special entitlements as a legally protected class. Furthermore, the Movement has pushed for specific policy goals, such as the removal of all anti-sodomy laws, the recognition of homosexual partnerships on par with heterosexual marriage, anti-discrimination laws, and the removal of all barriers to homosexuals in the military, the academy, business, and the churches. In order to pursue these goals, the Homosexual Movement has organized itself as a liberation movement based on an ideology of liberation from oppression drawn upon Marxist foundations.”
Today Mohler has helped to lay in Evangelical landscape the same sexual liberation and Marxist foundations he exposed in 2005. His disciple, Nate Collins, advocates that Christian families attend gay pride parades and events to understand and embrace Stonewall and what PRIDE means to the LGBTQIA+ community. While in 2005 Mohler warned of its total sexual liberation efforts,” Mohler now asks, “How did this happen? The origins of the Homosexual Movement as a major cultural force must be traced to the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan. Known within the homosexual community as the ‘Stonewall Rebellion,’ the riot took place as New York City police raided a homosexual bar. The patrons fought back in what would become the inaugural symbol of the ‘gay liberation’ movement. As the Village Voice reported on July 3,1969: ‘Gay power erected its brazen head and spat out a fairy tale the likes of which the area has never known …Watch out. The liberation is underway.’”
How has this radical departure from Mohler’s own understanding taken place? Clearly, he is bowing at the altars of Baal, and the saddest reflection of the problem is found in his radicalized disciples, Russell Moore, Nate Collins and others that SBTS is now producing. Yarhouse and the APA and Fishburn and Drew University are clearly playing a much more significant role today, in the shaping of the Church, the gospel, the family and discipleship, than the Word of the Living God in Mohler, Keller, and the TGC/ERLC circle. Smearing theological jargon and some carefully nuanced verses over secular and pagan ideology does not make it Biblical or a Gospel narrative.
RUSSELL MOORE & THE GAY PRIEST WHO WANTS TO “SHARE YOUR CHILDREN” CONFERENCE
In October 2018, the ERLC and Russell Moore will host in Dallas the “Cross Shaped Family Conference“ to which he has invited as speaker Sam Allberry, the self-professed and ever popular SSA/ Gay Priest of the Church of England. Allberry is co-founder of a ministry called “Living Out” for Gay Christians. Freshly off their promotion of the radical Revoice Conference and hosting of Tim Keller and his wife Kathy for a “Gay Christianity” extravaganza in London, Living Out stepped into the global spotlight to promote a Church Audit for LGBTQ+ Inclusion as its conference legacy.
“At our Identity in Christ conference with Tim & Kathy Keller in June 2018 we launched our Living Out Church Audit – a tool to help church leadership teams answer this key question: how biblically inclusive is your church? Unsurprisingly our focus is on those who might identify as LGBTQ+/ same-sex attracted: Jesus included all in a counter-cultural way and we hope this audit will help our churches follow his lead.”
Given Allberry’s role in this audit and the 9th question we are fairly compelled to ask to what purpose is an SSA/ Gay Celibate priest from the Church of England being brought in to lecture Southern Baptists on “parenting and family,” Allberry’s topic for the ERLC Family Conference? He is the Keynote Speaker for Saturday in the last meeting – the one big take away message that Russell Moore wants on the attendees’ heart and mind as they leave Dallas for home. “Keynote: The Church as the Family of God: Singleness, Same -Sex Attraction, and the Hope of Hospitality with Sam Allberry.”
This is disturbing on many levels but none so much as the Audit statement referred to above which is “Church family members instinctively share meals, homes, holidays, festivals, money, children with others from different backgrounds and life situations to them.” Southern Baptists let this settle in on you. Our chief Ethicist Russell Moore is producing a “Family Conference” with the crescendo message echoing the Revoice Conference, Allberry/ Keller’s church audit and Drew University Janet Fishburn’s left wing pro-gay redefining of family from her 1991 “Confronting the Idolatry of Family: A New Vision for the Household of God.”
LIVING OUT “BRITISH INVASION” OF AMERICAN CHURCHES
Sam Allberry @SamAllberry Sep 10
The @LivingOutOrg LOCAL course day conference for church leaders is coming to the US! Registration now live for our event in Boston. Tea will be available and we’ll try not to tax you for it… Find out more here: http://www.livingout.org/local-cambridge“The Living Out team will share their insight and stories as same-sex attracted Christians who hold to traditional Bible teaching on sexual ethics and who have spoken and written on this subject widely.Living Out is delighted to be bringing you this day of training in partnership with Capitol Hill Baptist Church and Del Ray Baptist Church who are hosting the day.
We ask that all who attend assent to the Evangelical Alliance Basis of Faith and its biblical and pastoral position with respect to homosexuality, summarised in these affirmations.”
ALLBERRY’S CHURCH INCLUSION AUDIT COMES STATESIDE
MARK DEVER’S CAPITOL HILL BAPTIST AND ERLC COUNCIL MEMBER GARRETT KELL’S DEL RAY BAPTIST
Living Out will soon be coming to the U.S. to conduct their Church and Leaders training course, “teaching with the tools [church audit] to help church leaders better equip their churches in exercising the gift of true welcome and hospitality for all.” The LOCAL course will be held in the Washington, D.C. area on November 14, sponsored by the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Alexandria, VA whose senior pastor is Mark Dever, founder of 9Marks, cofounder of Together for the Gospel, and a Council member of The Gospel Coalition.
One outstanding irony about the Living Out Church Inclusion Audit first being implemented in the U.S. at Dever’s Capitol Hill Baptist is that Albert Mohler, who has played the central role in bringing this LGBTQIA+ compliance on the American church, has family members who work in political organizations in DC who are also part of this church. Is Dr. Albert Mohler ready to share his grandchildren with the LGBTQIA+ who decide to call Dever’s church home in this new welcoming environment? It is not uncommon for those who breathe the rarified air of the evangelical elite to force such issues on the congregants but have no interest in investing their lives and families in the harmful policies. Perhaps this is simply some quiet but costly Divine reminder to Dr. Mohler. Will it make any difference? Meanwhile the work of TGC and the ERLC appears to be to introduce the Living Out Inclusion Audit into ALL of their affiliated churches, which will include many SBC churches and most of the PCA.
The institutional Church is all but gone. It is time to get your families out! This warning cannot be made more honestly and with a heavier heart. PCA and SBC Evangelicals, beware and hold on tight to your Biblical bearings because they are under absolute assault in the name of “the Cross and the Gospel” by some of our most popular and celebrated alleged churchmen. If your pastor – your family’s minister or, God forbid, your children’s youth minister – is attending this conference then it may be time to call them in, inquire, and possibly send them packing if they are drinking the leftist Kool Aid of redefining family that Russell Moore is serving up. If this LGBTQIA+ train is unstoppable, it is time for all thinking people to get their families, their children, their tithes, and their bodies out of SBC, PCA and other churches under the sway of The Gospel Coalition and the ERLC.
TIM “GLOBALIST SUSTAINABILITY GURU” KELLER AND HIS LONDON CONFERENCE
Tim Keller left his Redeemer Church pulpit in July 2017 and is now the globetrotting ambassador of global sustainable Christianity. Like Pope Francis, Keller appears all too willing to sign us up for the full spectrum of “thriving cites, human flourishing, urbanization, principled pluralism, common good collectivism and universalism.” Tim Keller is quickly detaching himself from his either onetime or merely perceived conservative PCA moorings. His choice (with D.A. Carson, TGC cofounder and Albert Mohler of SBTS, as discussed above) of Mark Yarhouse to bring the APA-compliant views on LGBTQIA+ into the conservative Evangelical community, pastors, seminaries, and campus ministries in 2010 was pivotal to ushering in the new Gay wave in modern Christian Church culture. They have made the issue and their nuanced talking points nearly inescapable. Even CRU, InterVarsity, RUF and other campus ministries are no longer a refuge for your teens from the TGC narrative which is undistinguishable from the ideology taught in the secular cesspools of American academia. Soon your church youth group and children’s ministry will not provide refuge either, thanks in large part to these calculated and nuanced efforts.
Once Keller hit London we were all in for a surprise. His work with Sam Allberry and Ed Shaw (both of whom write for TGC) and Living Out, a “ministry for Gay Christians” has been ongoing for at least 5 years, but the game changer came in the form of the Living Out Church Audit linked above. Keller and the gay but celibate Anglican priest Allberry and Shaw are advocating for a self-imposed litmus test for LGBTQIA+ inclusion in churches. Under its confines, church pulpits and private conversations and even attitudes, either perceived or real, of a (subjective term) derogatory nature will not be tolerated in our churches. NOTE – the test for tolerance is intolerance.
Sexual minorities will never be withheld from positions of ministry or from exercising their gifts in the local church. Keller and Allberry’s audit will assure no one is ever expected to seek deliverance or healing from homosexual desires (labeled Same Sex Attraction and Sexual Minorities).
REVOICE AND THE HERD OF FAMILY RECONSTRUCTIONISTS
Tom Buck wrote a piece on Revoice in which he pointed out the disturbing statement of its founder and longtime Mohler disciple, Nate Collins. Buck asks the same questions that we must all ask, on behalf of God and our fellow believers, as we confront the forthcoming talking points in efforts to revise the family. Tom wrote, “My hermeneutical alarms went off: ‘Will he go there?’ Yes, he will.” He then quotes Collins’ radical revisionist attacks on the Nuclear Family as idolatry.
“Is it possible gay people today are being sent by God like Jeremiah to find God’s words for the church to eat them and make them our own; to shed light on modern false teachings and idolatries?”
“Is it possible that gender and sexual minorities living lives of costly obedience are themselves a prophetic call to the church to abandon idolatrous attitudes toward the nuclear family, towards sexual pleasure? If so, then we are prophets. “
Collins is only one of the voices in the echo chamber from the Revoice circle, the Evangelical Covenant Church and Michelle Sanchez, discipling and spiritual formation minister at ECC.
There is also Masters Seminary graduate, Preston Sprinkle,
Preston Sprinkle@PrestonSprinkle Aug 9:
MoReplying to @wesleyhill @WSipling @NateCollins
“Yeah, this criticism of Nate’s statement (something I’ve said many times) is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Marriage isn’t redefined or diminished in the NT, but it’s no longer considered necessary for human flourishing. Many evangelicals don’t practically believe that.”
Here are some Twitter replies to Sprinkle and Wesley Hill:
Replying to @wesleyhill @WendyAlsup @NateCollins“Yes. You are right on. Family is an idol when it is insular and exclusive. It is a blessing and a gift when it is welcome, hospitable, and inclusive.”Replying to @wesleyhill @NateCollins“You’re right the nuclear family is idolized, if that is a husband, wife, and two or at most three children. Contraception and a love of comfort prevent many couples from embracing larger families.
“Conservatives (esp ev’s) seem to have a preoccupation with hidden “agendas.” I’m willing to bet you can trace a lot of the over-critique re race, sexuality, etc. back to the fear of “there’s an agenda!” The “gay” agenda, the “liberal” agenda, the “slippery slope” agenda.”
The list goes on and on. This brash statement born out of the twisted halls of left-leaning Drew Theological School and other revisionist theological circles is now on the front burner and we in the churches of America, and wherever the reach of these agents of change who are redefining family extends, are simply expected to be like a 6-year old at the dinner table being told to “eat it or else.”
THE NEW MANTRA OF OUR EVANGELICAL LEADERS APPEARS TO BE HILLARY’S “IT TAKES A VILLAGE”
MORE SPECIFICALLY “IT TAKES AN LGBTQIA INCLUSIVE CHURCH VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD.”
Russell Moore and Tim Keller have “done got out of hand folks.” It is enough. It is beyond enough and these men need to go find their homes in some liberal denominations that have already committed spiritual suicide with these self-induced poisonings of their collective souls. Enough, O Lord. Hear from heaven and deliver us from these men and their false expressions of care for souls, their Christless false gospels, their left-wing politics masked as “Gospel Issues” and their arrogant affronts to all that is of Divine Design. People of God, wake up. These agents of change have crept in unawares and are feasting on our fear in our feasts of love, spoiling the hearts and minds of our youth and feeding themselves on the flock. ENOUGH!
CULT TACTICS OF CONTROL: SEPARATION AND ISOLATION
Remember beloved it is NOT Christ who is making these manifold efforts redefining family, rather He defined it from the beginning in the clearest terms. “A man shall leave his father and mother and CLEVE unto his wife and those two shall be one flesh.” Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:7; 1 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 5:31. From this union of flesh children are born and parents – not TGC/ERLC affiliated churches – are called to and tasked with raising children. We are to train up our children in the way they should go, Proverbs 22:6, and to teach them to honor their parents which is a big Ten Commandment and one with promise and to admonish them to fear and follow the Lord, Ephesians 6:1-4. The nuclear family that is now in the crosshairs of Russell Moore’s Cross Shaped Family Conference is God’s construct and He will not have it deconstructed and redefined by Janet Fishburn or by the Kellers or Moore.
The idea of replacing family with a group of members from a tightly ordered sect is nothing new. Cults love to separate their members from family ties to isolate, destabilize and control them. Is the SBC and PCA leadership wanting to replace family with their new wave of the Fishburn Family Values? Are we now to believe Hillary’s ghost written book (whose actual author is now exposing as a fraud) is the prophetic voice for the inclusive church of the future? Redefining the nuclear family will lead to making children wards of the State.
How did we get here? The answer is simple really. We have not been paying attention – have not vetted the carefully crafted messages we are being fed with Scripture – and we have infiltrated leadership. It is really that simple. The remedy may be more complicated and seem to some to be severe. The fact is this overhaul is just getting started and it will not end anytime soon unless we either rise up and “throw the bums out” or “leave them alone” and exit the harlot churches. We are reaching critical mass and meltdown is imminent. We cannot remain in a state of constant siege from within.
LEGAL RAMIFICATIONS OF REDEFINING MARRIAGE AND FAMILY: YET UNSEEN – BUYER BEWARE
Few in the Church have really thought through where Obergefell and redefining marriage has left us. Now we see church leadership wanting to lead an assault on the nuclear family and redefine it from within. To ascertain the gravity of this issue we need only listen to the lead family judge of England in his boast “We Should Applaud the End of the Nuclear Family and Welcome the Reality of Single and Same Sex Households.” Remember Sam Allberry lives in this brave new world in the UK and, with the help of Tim and Kathy Keller, just gave us the Living Out Church Audit about the broader “Church Family” and “sharing of children.”
Under fire: Sir James Munby
England’s chief family court judge pictured above is applauding the very thing that ERLC and TGC and Revoice are just introducing into the conservative Evangelical church in America. Listen to his assertions and join his sobered critics in consideration of what is happening before our very eyes.
“The country’s most senior family judge was under fire from politicians and colleagues yesterday after saying that the collapse of the traditional family was to be welcomed.“In a speech Sir James Munby, president of the Family Division of the High Court, said there was a new reality of single parent households, same-sex marriages and adopted families.“He said this was ‘a reality which we should welcome and applaud’.
“The applause for new forms of family life, delivered in a lecture at Liverpool University and published at the Weekend, is a step further than any major figure in public life has yet travelled in the direction of rejecting the two-parent family as the best pattern for raising children.”
Note Judge Munby’s inclusion of adoption which may seem like one of the more favorable issues that Russell Moore’s Cross Shaped Family Conference is promoting. But there is something more in the wings with the Russell Moore concept of family which is evident in his use of Revoice speaker and ERLC consultant LGBTQIA+ / Race strategist Branden Polk’s advisory firm at the table with Moore’s ERLC 2017 “Christ Centered Parenting Conference,” and other conference and policy planning. LGBTQIA+ adoption is one of the key goals of the Fishburn style confronting of “Idolatry of Family” and key elements of redefining it. Russell Moore needs to put all his cards on the table here. Or better yet, again, he just needs to leave the table and the discussion.
CONCLUSION
The sad reality we must face is that, as radical as the “Queer and Trans Christianity” of Revoice was, as well as their supercilious “treasures of queer theory, culture, and literature into the church and the future New Jerusalem,” these objectionable and unthinkable additions to the conversation the ERLC, Moore and Mohler began in 2014 are only the tip of the rot and decay now evident in some of our own seminaries and they are only a glimpse of where their conversation is intended to lead a trusting and unsuspecting Church. Only God can reach these men’s hearts and dispel their delusions or humble their arrogance and self-deception. It is possible that, instead, God will determine to judge and remove them; but until then we must simply ask – as we await such divine determination – “Will we follow these men and allow our churches, the family as God created it, the good news of the Gospel and our Children to be redefined by them or will we say ‘enough’ – and either remove them or leave them to their own fate?”
It would help us all to recall that God is not absent in His momentary silence nor is anything hidden from His gaze. The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and it cuts through all the finely-honed ERLC, TGC, SBTS, APA, Mohler, Moore, Keller, Yarhouse rhetoric the present floodtide of which is attempting to drown out the true Gospel. Who do these men think will really have the final word in matters pertaining to God’s House, Gods people, and His holy created order? Perhaps some long overdue judgment is waiting in the wings just off the Evangelical stage.
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