Joel McDurmon spits truth, implicitly endorses Church Repent

"Even here, however, we are going to face opposition and pushback—largely from fellow evangelicals. I can think of only one remedy for this problem, and it has to start in the pulpits. Absent this initiative, it falls to parachurch ministries and individual Christians to state the truth. This is where we’re at." (Source)

So... when abolitionists said these kinds of things (three years ago), many in the Reformed crowd asked us who our elders were, which elders sent us out so as to say things like this, and whence our authority came to say things like this. Men like Marcus Pittman, Jon Speed, Shane Dodson, and Tony Miano publicly and hypocritically excoriated abolitionists for being consistent with the doctrines that we hold (and, actually, the doctrines that they themselves hold), called us "rebels", "nomads", a cult, and ecclesiastical anarchists. They said that since we are not part of the local churches in question, we had no business calling those churches to repent.

Now that one of their favorite polemicists is saying it, will they ask him the same questions and "cut ties" with him, dissociating from The American Vision?

Time will tell. But it would appear that time is running out for these guys' point of view. More and more people are seeing that their ecclesiolatry just won't cut it when virtually nobody is actually living for Jesus.

Using your language

So there's this:

When other groups who oppose you, start using your language, you know you're winning. #ControlTheConversation

— Marcus (@LawGrace) November 17, 2015

Then there's this:

And then there's this:
Facebook search for #bethedocumentary
Twitter search for #bethedocumentary

Yet it's Shane Dodson and Marcus Pittman who are changing the conversation? Some movie that 30,000 people, most of whom apparently ignored or forgot what it was trying to communicate, have seen?

But Pittman's main point probably isn't wrong. It's just funny who he thinks is winning.

More self-defeating hypocrisy from Babies Are Murdered Here and Marcus Pittman

Earlier this week a significant hubbub resulted from a confrontation between abolitionist Chris Rush from Minnesota and pro-life big-shot celebrity heroine Abby Johnson. Rush apparently attended an Abby J event with the intent of speaking to her about something related to abolition. He carried a GoPro in his hand to record part of it. When Abby J noticed the camera she tried to grab it and then, as he pulled away, told her some half-dozen friends standing around to grab it. Thus she did nothing less than inciting mob violence against an individual, attempting robbery of his property.

Since then she has lied about Rush and refused to claim any guilt for instigating a violent encounter.

Anyway, to substantiate his account of the incident, Rush put out the unedited video of the encounter. He lost his cool and self-control and did not regain it in what I would call a timely manner, and a few times used profanity a few minutes after the attempted robbery.

AHA Blog: Loving the Church - An Initial Reply to Justin Edwards

If the past is any indication, this will engender some whining on Facebook and zero substantive responses.
http://blog.abolishhumanabortion.com/2014/05/loving-church-initial-reply-to-justin.html

A public call to repentance of calling people to repent publicly

I'm not sure how this makes much sense. I'm not sure how deeply the author (either Marcus Pittman or Jon Speed) thought about the statement. I'm not sure how deep runs the foolishness, but I know that after months and months of plumbing the depths, we haven't found the bottom yet.

Now we're deleting comments. We have received your response, AHA leaders. We urge you to repent of "Church Repent." When you have done that and are in good standing with your respective local churches...we will talk. Until then...please take the hint and stop commenting here.

(source) (screenshot)

So, let me get this straight. This is a public statement, made by one professing Christian who is a member of a different local church than the persons the author is addressing, to other professing Christians, calling them to repent of and stop calling members of a different local church than the persons the author is addressing to repentance over perceived sin.

In other words, they're publicly calling me to repent of publicly calling people to repent.

Sometimes...just, what do you say anymore?

Really, since that statement makes no sense, Christians who love God with all their mind should publicly call the Gospel Spam guys to repent of publicly calling to repentance Christians who publicly call professing Christians to repentance.

Abolitionist ecclesiology

It should be noted that not all abolitionists agree on EVERY SINGLE FINE POINT of ecclesiology.
Kinda like single-pastor Baptists don't agree with plural-elder Baptists don't agree with Presbyterians, etc. Yet somehow the two latter groups work closely, make documentaries, street preach together and all that kind of stuff. Hmmm. Why are Damon Rambo and his friends so quick to dissociate from abolitionists?

Abolitionists do tend closely to one ecclesiological point, however - we reject quasi-papism such as the type that Speed, Pittman, Miano, and Rambo represent. Take that to the bank.

Damon Rambo makes more of a hash of Scripture

---------------------------
UPDATE, 10 March 2017: 
Damon Rambo has made a public statement that looks mostly like repentance, so let's be gracious and give him credit for it. Combined with the fact that he has deleted the posts on his blog to which my own blogposts refer, I am noting the facts here in this update so that all may be informed of the current situation. Note that he has not taken down any comments on other blogs such as Gospel Spam, which probably means he has not done as rigorous and thorough a job of scrubbing his slanderous and wicked comments as I would ask if I had opportunity. Thus, my own posts will remain public and all links will point to Archive.org records of his posts until further notice. 
---------------------------

Damon Rambo, a pastor in Texas whom we've seen before around here, decided to add his ever so helpful thoughts to the comment box of Tony Miano's hit piece at Gospel Spam. It would appear that the "Angry Pastor" not only pastors angry, but blogs angry too.

I am not sure why Tony "exited the conversation" but I can say for myself that the first question out of my mouth would have been "Are you preaching under the accountability of a local church, with established elder(s) and a recognized membership." If he said "no," the conversation would have ended right there. Such people are in grievous sin, and until that sin is repented of, further fellowship, discussion, and hashing out of differences cannot be had. Those who deliberately reject the visible expression of Christ's Bride must be excommunicated from any secondary fellowship, until such time as the Lord brings them to repentance.

To give a little background as to what he means, a few good brothers in the Lord have attempted to kick-start reconciliation talks between the Babies Are Murdered Here / Street Preacher Guild / Gospel Spam / quasi-papist / anti-Church Repent and therefore pro-Church Apathy / Pharisee crowd, among whom Rambo evidently prefers to be numbered, and abolitionists against whom the aforementioned Pharisees have sinned in numerous ways. I was party to one of these attempts; the brother started a group Facebook chat which included three abolitionists and three anti-abolitionist antagonists, and posted therein an impassioned plea for a beginning to reconciliation and cessation of social media hostilities. Marcus Pittman left the chat within thirty seconds of the appearance of the chat. Tony Miano exited a couple of minutes later after stating to the organiser of the chat that he'd talk to him privately.

 

Anyway, from the screenshots and the way that the various sides are talking, it should be clear to any objective observer who is open to God-honoring reconciliation and who is not, who wants to engage in serious discussion exposed to the light of truth, and who wants to cut off discussion and debate.

Damon Rambo, according to his own words here, is another Pharisee who would impose an extra-biblical standard upon others. Here, he lets us know in no uncertain terms that he would have excommunicated Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli, as well as any believers who dared to speak the Gospel to someone else before the apostles appointed elders in their local church in Acts 11:19-25, Acts 13:44-52, and Acts 17:32-18:1, to say nothing of Philip the evangelist who was just sort of wandering around when the Holy Spirit directed him to evangelise the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, to say still less of the eunuch himself when he went back to his homeland and shared the Gospel with people there. If only Rambo had been around back then! The NT church would have been so much better organised and godly.

As a matter of fact, Toby's church is between elders at the moment. Rambo doesn't know the history of the church, doesn't know what they think about elders or whether they want elders. Why? Because he hasn't even cared enough to ask. He prefers to lob his tirades from afar, uncaring of the effect his dismissal has on the reader. This is not conduct conducive to demonstrating the NT qualifications of elder. Would the Apostle Paul be OK with blogging under the title "The Angry Pastor" or "The Angry Apostle"? Why doesn't 2 Timothy 4:1-2 read like the following?

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be angry in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great anger and hot-temperedness.

I feel genuinely sorry for the congregation at his church, but then again, his expressions are probably not nearly as evil in person as they are online. It's a learned skill, to be sure. One would think a pastor could manage it. But in my experience, churches usually deserve the kind of pastor they have, which is also a pretty sad thing.

He also speaks out of ignorance when he implies that Toby's church lacks recognised membership. He doesn't know that either. He has no idea what sort of accountability structures are in place there. Notice that to him, "under the accountability of a local church" is code for "elders". When these men say "submitted to the authority of a local church" or something similar, what they have in mind is one or more elders who do what the Lord Jesus and the Apostle Peter said they should not do - lord it over their people.

I find it quite interesting that Rambo, as a Baptist, thinks that dissent from his preferred ecclesiology is "grievous sin", for which one ought to be excommunicated and for which reason one ought not to cooperate on any level of Christian service or ministry. Why doesn't he say the same things about Marcus Pittman, a Presbyterian, again? Where is the consistency?

Who said anything about Toby or any abolitionist "deliberately reject(ing) the visible expression of Christ's Bride"? Does he think that Toby is not a member of his church? What does he know about that church? He doesn't know anything. Apparently, dissent from his preferred ecclesiology is equivalent to deliberate rejection of Christ's Bride. Needless to say, this is an enormous accusation. Can Rambo substantiate it from Scripture? He hasn't yet. Can he show that holding to a differing ecclesiology merits the same treatment as one would show to a material heretic and an unrepentant sexually immoral professing brother? If he can't (and let's be clear - he can't), is Damon Rambo not acting as a Pharisee?

Philippians 1:12-18 -

Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else, and that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear. Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will; the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice.

BAMH

Please see here the notes concerning the ongoing hypocrisy of Marcus Pittman, Jon Speed, and the Babies Are Murdered Here group.

"There is nothing that can be done to make this a true church."

Note on 28 March 2014: Tony Miano apparently thought that I am a member of Door of Hope church. That was false at the time of his writing that and for months after. Miano would know that if he'd done even a modicum of research, to say nothing of due diligence, before posting his hit piece about faithful men and women of God. The way that his confident words flow smoothly from his ignorance is truly a sight to behold.


---------------------------------------

The Babies Are Murdered Here page (ie, Marcus Pittman of Crown Rights Media and Pastor Jon Speed of Syracuse, NY) continues to embarrass themselves and go back on their word by continuing to comment with considerable frequency on Abolish Human Abortion even though they said over a month ago that no matter what AHA would say, they were done talking about it.

Yet just today they have revealed their quasi-papist ecclesiology in a very strange statement. (In all fairness, it probably seems so strange because the men behind the BAMH documentary have shown themselves to be loose cannons who easily fall into foolish statements when caught off-the-cuff on Facebook.)

There is nothing that can be done to make this a true church.
(Source) (Screenshot)

The "this" refers to the church to which a fair number of abolitionists in Norman, OK belong.

This raises a number of questions for the author of this statement.

1) What is the author's answer to Matthew Martellus' article regarding the unbiblical nature of the "true church/false church" distinction?
2) What is the author's answer to the recent related questions raised by Steve Hays?
3) What precisely are the biblical requirements to be a true church to which the author refers?
Might they agree with what 9Marks says about what a church is and does?
To wit:

The church is the God-ordained local assembly of believers who have committed themselves to each other. They gather regularly, they teach the Word, celebrate communion and baptism, discipline their members, establish a biblical structure of leadership, they pray and give together. Certainly the church may do more, but it is not less than this.

The church to which the BAMH author refers does all of these things, and yet it is not a "true church" in his estimation. One could be forgiven for figuring that he won't allow it the title of "true church" because of personal animus, obstinacy, and/or a personal motivation to diminish AHA.

From other statements Pittman and Pastor Speed have made, I know that their stated reason for saying things like this is that the church doesn't currently have elders, and it is unbiblical for a local church to appoint elders by itself, from within its own congregation.

How does this make sense, however?
a. Imagine three Algerian men who separately receive an Arabic New Testament while traveling in France, take a ferry back to Algeria, then the Lord saves all three of them in a short span of time.
Later, in God's providence, the men meet each other and discover they are followers of Jesus, and resolve to follow the NT pattern and commands and meet together regularly for fellowship, encouragement, prayer, worship, and Bible study. Yet because of their isolation and the persecution around them in society, they don't meet another Christian for 10 years, and no Christian older than them for their entire life.
A church? Or not-a-church?

b. Where is the prescriptive teaching in the NT, anywhere, that elders/overseers are only valid when they are appointed by pre-existing elders?
Counterexamples are obvious in history.
Who appointed Martin Luther? Zwingli? Calvin? Do you count by-then apostate Roman ordinations? That's pretty ironic.
Athanasius was removed from his bishopric several times and exiled, yet came back. Does BAMH have some evidence that another elder came alongside and re-appointed him? Does excommunication not mean anything? If church structures are only to be followed in some cases, where is BAMH's definition and explanation?

c. On a related note, Pastor Speed is a Baptist. Does he claim an unbroken chain of elder-to-elder ordination all the way back to the apostles?
Why wouldn't the same criticism be applicable to whoever his episcopal (small-e) forebear was? And wouldn't that mean that his own ordination as elder is invalid, as there would have been nothing that could make that earlier church a true church?

d. Why is it that the men of the earliest church in Acts didn't show an above-all-else interest in establishing elders?
Acts 11:19-25 - Barnabas goes and helps preach the Gospel in Antioch, and yet doesn't stay to establish elders. Rather, he leaves to look for Paul. And yet there comes to be a church in Antioch (as soon as Acts 15:30). How?
Acts 13:44-52 - Paul and Barnabas are driven out of Pisidian Antioch after only about a week.
According to the qualifications for elders in Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3, an elder can't be a new convert. I suppose we are to assume that no church existed in Pisidian Antioch at that time? Just... a ragtag bunch of people who loved Jesus?
Acts 17:32-18:1 - Paul sees converts in Athens but doesn't stay to train any elders.

e. The Ethiopian eunuch, converted by Philip on the way back to Ethiopia, could never have been a member of a true church, at least not for the years until someone in the chain of ordination running back to the apostles also made it down to Ethiopia to be the elder.
Acts 8:39 - When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing.
I guess the Holy Spirit got a little impatient and forgot that it's a good and wonderful thing for believers to worship together in local churches. He had a brilliant opportunity to delay whisking Philip away until Philip had been able to train the eunuch as an elder himself, then officially ordain him. Instead, the Holy Spirit wasted His chance.

f. Of course, that raises the question of when Philip himself was ordained to do evangelism work. Acts 6:5 indicates that he was selected to serve the daily allotment to the widows on the Jerusalem church's support rolls. No indication is given that he was duly appointed for evangelism ministry.

g. Which means the Holy Spirit was in error for sending him to the eunuch in the first place in Acts 8:29.

h. Which also means that Philip did an evil, rebellious, cowboy thing by preaching the Gospel all by himself in Samaria in Acts 8:5-8.

i. Which means that Peter and John should have rebuked Philip for going way above his pay grade when they arrived in Acts 8:14-17. But they didn't. Another opportunity wasted!

j. Speaking of which, not just Philip but a whole bunch of people were in sin for preaching the Gospel without a license in Acts 8:4. The text seems to speak commendably of them, however. Hmm. Weird.

k. Titus 1:5 - For this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you...
There weren't elders in Crete before Paul sent Titus to appoint them.
Were there no churches? Where then were the Christians at that time?

l. Why do the long lists of qualifications for the office of overseer in Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3 include such things as "if anyone desires to be an overseer" but mention nothing about another elder of some other visible local church, unrelated to the church in question and not a member of it, appointing the elder? Is it not, rather, true that if someone is qualified and if one desires to be an overseer, he has fulfilled the biblical qualification?

This statement from BAMH reveals a pharisaical attitude - binding on the conscience of believers a requirement that the Bible does not itself impose.

When "last word" doesn't mean anything

Pastor Jon Speed and Marcus Pittman of Babies Are Murdered Here made a video last month about Abolish Human Abortion.
There are many pieces of material in the video that are false and easily refuted, but we have wanted  to carefully prepare a substantive response, so it is taking a little longer than we hoped. We have only one full time abolitionist to BAMH's at least 2 full timers, after all, and quite a few other full time evangelists team up with BAMH.

However, I post this brief clip of the full-form video, starting at the 12:35 mark or so, to show Pastor Speed's hypocrisy.

First, the clip that is most relevant for our purposes today:



Note his words about no matter what response AHA should make.
Note also that this video was posted 27 March 2013.

And now, I present to you, dear reader, some obvious counter-examples.

(Link, screenshot captured 29 April 2013. 29 April 2013 comes after 27 March 2013 on the calendar.)

 (Link, captured 29 April 2013) Note the other abolitionist who noticed BAMH's hypocrisy.
 

Captured 05 April 2013.

Another thread, 31 March 2013.

Some other passive-aggressive status updates and such that obviously are aimed at AHA:

"...with nobody in command" (screenshot)
Almost two weeks after (screenshot)

Judge for yourself who is being honest here.

On Marcus Pittman and vendettas

Recent events have led me to ponder the following questions: What good is it to say that one is submitted to a local church's leadership if one persistently speaks folly and heaps shame upon that church? What good is actually being submitted to a local church's leadership if that church never helps the submitted person see where he is saying foolish things in widely public arenas?

That's where I am with regard to Marcus Pittman of Crown Rights Media, an organisation that I (and we at Abolish Human Abortion) have wanted to like and with whom I (and we at A//∀) have wanted to work closely. Yet Pittman and his compatriot(s) have been busily engaged in driving us away from them.

This latest example has left me shaking my head more than most of the other examples I've seen.

I had been in a conversation on the Facebook page of the director of the Abolitionist Society of Oklahoma's director, T. Russell Hunter, with an inquirer who was asking me about ecclesiology and whether an individual Christian would ever be in the right if s/he were to call out sin in another group of people who regularly meet in a building on which the sign includes the word "church".

As part of my answer, I told her this:

We don't need to be ordained by some ecclesiastical body, touched on the shoulder with the Scepter of Ecclesiastical Approval, to do what Jesus said.
We need to just go ahead and do what Jesus said.

This is, as far as I'm concerned, a no-brainer. Who seriously thinks that no Christian should do anything until his pastor tells him? Are we to demonstrate no initiative of our own before loving our neighbor? Does Marcus Pittman phone his presbytery to ask them whether he should share the Gospel with Joe Doe on the street (and I'm talking about when he doesn't have a HD camera with him)?

Yet Pittman, though having long since left off any participation in that thread, was waiting with bated breath for someone to say something he could sink his claws into. And in my comment, for whatever reason, he found it!

What the Anti-Church people say "We don't need to be ordained by some ecclesiastical body, touched on the shoulder with the Scepter of Ecclesiastical Approval, to do what Jesus said. We need to just go ahead and do what Jesus said."
What Jesus Said - "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you."

This is simply laughable.
I am good terms with every church I have ever attended. I recently left one church to join another immediately, and my current church received with joy my family and me into membership 4 weeks ago. My church has two elders.
Yes, I am a credobaptist and thus am a member of a Baptist church. I don't see Pittman ripping Dr. James White with the same type of sloganeering and pathetic fault-finding just because they differ in ecclesiology.

No, this isn't about ecclesiology at all. This is about Pittman (and to some extent his associates) doing what they can to find fault with anyone associated with Abolish Human Abortion.


I entirely and wholeheartedly reject and disaffirm the label "Anti-Church". How dare Pittman say this about a brother. This is a serious accusation of serious sin. One would hope Pittman would have some evidence. Alas, he has none.


Obviously in principle I agree 100% that "We need to just go ahead and do what Jesus said" includes joining and submitting oneself to a church with elder government. Pittman can (and, apparently, just might!) search in vain among the millions of words I've written for any indication I disagree with that.

That to which I object is the Rome-flavored idea that somehow we must await permission from our church's elders before obeying what the Scripture says.
Would Pittman's church's elders really prefer that he ding-dong them before doing good works? Do they need to be the source of every idea for doing good works in which anyone in their congregation engages? Or would they prefer that the congregants take it upon themselves to obey the Scripture with joy, of their own volition? Isn't the job of an elder tough enough without having to write an encyclical granting the faithful the right to obey Jesus every time a new specific possibility pops up?

There is nothing wrong with what I said. If Pittman were engaging his obviously prodigious intellect in fairness, he would see that and assent to it, but he is not inclined to be fair these days, not to brethren against whom he is an acting as an enemy. It is truly sad to see, and I am grieved.

Are abortive women murderers?

A powerful trailer for the upcoming documentary "Babies Are Murdered Here" has been making the Internet rounds, and the creators of the film have been busily promoting it, as well they should. It promises to be a very important addition to the abolitionist arsenal of societal agitation. If the trailer is any indication of the finished product, it is a very necessary and very solid rebuke to the fundamental problem that leads to abortion in the United States - a culture of uncaring, indifferent, sinful apathy that has pervaded not only the society at large but also most of the church and virtually all of "the church".
The creators of the film, among them Marcus Pittman, have made some noise recently in their proclamations that women who abort their child are themselves murderers.

We have some thoughts on the matter.

Legally speaking?
First, for mutual understanding, everyone must understand that these brothers who are labeling abortive women as murderers do not mean they are murderers in the legal sense. They do not mean that under the current structure of law relating to homicide these women must be arrested today and brought before a judge and convicted of murder in a court of law. This is a category mistake. Of course the way that American law currently reads would not support such actions. We all know this.
These brethren are digging deeper when they say this. The laws of any given society and any given government are transient and can change. The law of Almighty God never changes, however, and that is what they mean. God has made it very clear throughout His Word that He does not tolerate murder.

-Genesis 9:6 - (God said,) "Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man."
-Deuteronomy 5:17 - You shall not murder.
-Matthew 19:16-19 - And someone came to Him and said, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?” And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” Then he said to Him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not commit murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and mother; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
-Romans 13:9 - For this, "You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
-Revelation 21:8 - But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.
-Revelation 22:15 - Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.

God's law is higher than American law, higher than the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the Supreme Court of the United States. And it is very real, so in very real ways, those who violate it are guilty of that of which it convicts them.
Listen to the words of Jesus for an analogy.
Matthew 5:27-28 - “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

Looking lustfully upon someone to whom you are not married is not illegal in the USA. One could probably make a strong argument that it is actually encouraged. So a man who looks lustfully at women his entire life of 80 years, say, will never suffer any legal ramifications in a human court. Even if such a law were on the books, it would be nearly impossible to enforce and it would also land pretty much everyone behind bars.
But that man, at the moment of his death, will stand before God for judgment (Hebrews 9:27), and at that time, the fact that he never experienced consequences for his legalised sins during his earthly life will be no comfort for him at all. He will be found guilty for that sin of looking with lust, for in God's eyes, he has spent 80 years committing adultery.

In God's eyes, he is an adulterer.

He had no punishment on Earth, but his punishment in eternity will be more severe and longer-lasting, for it will be an eternal punishment.

God seeing you as a criminal is a much bigger deal than the society in which you live seeing you as a criminal.