The Auron MacIntyre Show - August 04, 2025


Is Democracy the Only Biblical Government？ ｜ Guest： Chase Davis ｜ 8⧸4⧸25


Episode Stats


Length

53 minutes

Words per minute

188.36482

Word count

10,060

Sentence count

603

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

27

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Pastor Chase Davis joins me to discuss the El Salvador Constitution allowing for multiple presidential candidates to run for re-election. What does the Bible have to say about this? Is this a good or bad thing? And what does it mean for Christians?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.500 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.
00:00:07.540 So in the last week or so, a story came out of El Salvador that the Constitution has been changed to allow the leader there, Bukele, multiple options for re-election.
00:00:19.020 There used to be some level of term limits, how many times you could be president of El Salvador, and they have changed the Constitution to allow for multiple re-elections.
00:00:30.640 Now, this is the way the American Constitution worked until after FDR, so literally for almost the entirety of America's existence, this was the law of the land.
00:00:41.740 And there was an unspoken rule, there's an unspoken tradition that because George Washington stepped down after two terms, you stepped down after two terms.
00:00:49.660 But that was not the law of the land until FDR violated that norm and ended up getting elected for a fourth term, of course famously dying in office.
00:00:58.000 Now, this is the American tradition and it has nothing to do with other democracies in which many, many democracies allow for as many elections as you want.
00:01:06.920 Think of several different democracies like Israel, where people have, you know, run the country for decades, right, without changing the government.
00:01:15.140 This is very common across many different democracies.
00:01:18.560 However, I had a weird experience, which I like I still knew this was out there, but I wasn't aware that it was as prevalent as it was.
00:01:25.740 I had several Christians tell me that this is dangerous and unbiblical and that kings are a deeply unbiblical thing.
00:01:33.180 And there, of course, Bekele is not a king in a technical or real sense.
00:01:38.020 But there, you know, the idea that he could get elected for, I guess, more than two terms made him a king.
00:01:43.440 And so, therefore, this is like some deep grave sin.
00:01:47.780 And not only is this evil, but me noticing that Bekele is actually a pretty good president, has radically changed the country, and maybe it would be a good thing if he continued to run the country, got me all kinds of accusations of being like a terrible character, a deep sinner, ignorer of the biblical truth.
00:02:03.980 And so I figured perhaps I should bring in someone to help me go through the relevant scripture and understand what the biblical truth is.
00:02:11.240 Does the Bible actually tell us that we have to have a liberal democracy in which the president is specifically limited to exactly eight years in office?
00:02:19.580 That seems to be the belief that many people have out there.
00:02:22.320 So helping me to sort out this apparently very complicated issue is Chase Davis.
00:02:28.300 He is a podcast host.
00:02:29.960 He is a pastor.
00:02:30.820 Thank you so much for joining me, man.
00:02:32.740 Glad to be here.
00:02:33.300 And yeah, this is an important topic to address because, you know, you might have been surprised by the reaction, but to me, being a pastor on the ground, for many evangelical Christians, this is an area that they're not really educated on, you know, and for good reason.
00:02:48.360 Pastors should focus on what they're preaching that week, but that leaves a lot of room for other voices to weigh in.
00:02:55.420 And so for a lot of American evangelicals, they've never really been trained.
00:02:59.320 You know, they've been trained maybe in a civics class one time on the American system.
00:03:03.300 But not a lot of political philosophy, especially not political philosophy in the Bible.
00:03:08.260 And so it's something I've taught on at my church multiple times to just help Christians think more wisely about God's word and how we should apply it to not only our civil sphere, but also our personal lives.
00:03:21.360 So thank you for having me on.
00:03:22.360 Of course. And to be clear, I don't blame anyone for default saying, hey, I think that democracy should be the norm or I prefer democracy or, you know, this is the best system I can think of.
00:03:33.700 That's fine. You can you can hold that opinion.
00:03:35.920 And also you can feel like reflexively that's the correct answer because of your tradition.
00:03:41.080 I'm fine with that. I am someone who believes in tradition and following tradition.
00:03:45.840 And so you default and say this is part of my tradition.
00:03:49.620 And so I believe this to be the best way.
00:03:51.440 I have zero issue with that.
00:03:53.260 The problem becomes when I have people telling me, no, this is what the Bible dictates.
00:03:58.500 This is God's unequivocal truth to every nation and every time throughout history.
00:04:04.500 And so if you disagree or you question this, you are in some way in violation, not of my personal preference, not of even our tradition inside this particular situation, but you are in violation of God's truth.
00:04:18.820 You are in some way sinful and erring in your understanding of the Bible.
00:04:23.100 And so that's that's really what I wanted to get into today, because, again, I have my own problems with liberal democracy, but I understand people who, you know, knee jerk say this is the system and this is what we have done for many years and this is what we should do.
00:04:35.740 Totally get that. But let's get into, I think, for the first thing, the best place to start.
00:04:40.240 I have two sources I want to pull from today.
00:04:42.800 First is going to be the relevant Bible verse that I think most people, the relevant passage most people are pulling from.
00:04:49.420 So I'm just going to read this really quickly.
00:04:51.000 Everyone, bear with me, we are reading the scripture on a podcast.
00:04:54.420 I know we're probably violating several rules, but hang on, YouTube.
00:04:58.220 So this is going to come out of First Samuel, chapter eight.
00:05:03.300 And it says, and it came to pass that that when Samuel was old and he made his sons judge over Israel.
00:05:10.100 Now, the name of his firstborn was Joel.
00:05:12.160 The name of his second, Abijah, I'm going to say the name is wrong.
00:05:15.180 They were judges in Beersheba and his sons walked in, not in his ways, but turned aside from Lucre and took bribes and perverted judgment.
00:05:25.840 And then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said unto him,
00:05:33.240 Behold, thou art old and thy sons do not walk in thy ways.
00:05:36.660 Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.
00:05:41.160 But the thing displeased Samuel when he said, give us a king or when they said, give us a king to judge us.
00:05:49.520 And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.
00:05:51.480 And Lord said unto Samuel, hearken unto their voices of the people and all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, they have rejected me, and I should not reign over them.
00:06:01.480 According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them out of Egypt, even to this day, wherewith they have forsaken me and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.
00:06:14.440 Now therefore hearken unto their voices, however, yet protest solemnly unto them and show them the ways of the kings that shall reign over there.
00:06:23.780 And then Samuel gives the famous speech about how the king is going to take your sons and your daughters and part of your field and demand all these things of you.
00:06:33.420 All the things that they're warning about what a secular kingdom will ultimately do.
00:06:37.620 Now amazingly, amazingly to me, Chase, people look at this verse and they see it as specifically an attack on the idea of a king itself, that the particular form of monarchy is the form that is being rejected here.
00:06:55.780 And instead, I guess they assume that God was telling us that we should have a liberal democracy.
00:07:00.640 Now, perhaps it would be best to provide some level of context for what's going on in Samuel here, a little bit of biblical history.
00:07:08.080 Were the Israelites operating under a liberal democracy before Samuel was asked to instate a king like other nations?
00:07:16.500 No, no, they weren't.
00:07:17.540 It's funny you mentioned this passage.
00:07:19.120 We're actually preaching through 1 Samuel at my church, the Well Church, and we just finished, before that, Judges.
00:07:24.400 And so Judges precede Samuel.
00:07:26.440 You have a series of Judges.
00:07:27.580 When we hear the word Judges, we think of a person in a courtroom today.
00:07:31.920 Back then, these were deliverers.
00:07:33.160 These were people God raised up to deliver his people from the hand of the enemy.
00:07:36.640 The people kept deviating, and God kept raising people up like Samson and Gideon and others.
00:07:41.080 And so after the period of the Judges, now you've got Samuel as the last judge, and his sons are corrupt, and things are corrupt in Israel. 0.72
00:07:47.820 And so the people cry out for a king.
00:07:49.660 And so what was happening then, and I think this is one of the challenges you're going to get into, Warren, and this is where I want your help, is when we have these modern frameworks for understanding how politics works, these words that are loaded with meaning, and we don't want to play too many semantic games, but it's important.
00:08:06.760 Words like monarchy, liberal democracy, dictatorship, whatever it may be.
00:08:11.500 We typically try to read back into the Bible, you know, what, well, that is this, one-for-one comparison, and that's not a really helpful way to understand the Bible.
00:08:22.340 What's happening in this passage particularly is that people are crying out for a king.
00:08:24.960 They want a king.
00:08:26.060 God is obviously displeased with that, but he eventually installs a king, and that's where we get King Saul and then King David.
00:08:31.500 Interesting kind of deviation there is that Saul's son Jonathan should have been next to the throne.
00:08:36.840 Jonathan is a great, great man of scripture, someone to emulate, shows great faith in God, and yet instead of doing the typical kingship, hereditary, the prince becomes the king, God chooses someone else, and Jonathan doesn't try to kill David.
00:08:51.580 David doesn't try to kill Jonathan.
00:08:53.020 They actually make a covenant with one another, and they form an alliance both politically and out of friendship, a spiritual alliance as well, and then David becomes king.
00:09:01.740 So the idea that monarchy on itself is unbiblical is laughable for two reasons.
00:09:07.160 One, we know that Christ rules in a type of monarchy, not just spiritually, but over the nations today.
00:09:14.720 So Christ is, you know, understood to be king.
00:09:18.040 He's Lord.
00:09:18.820 King of kings and lord of kings, some could say, as if there were other kings over which he reigned.
00:09:24.300 Exactly.
00:09:25.300 And then we also see that even though it displeased the Lord that the people wanted a king, he still let them have a king.
00:09:31.120 Now, God wouldn't allow his people to do something that was against, I mean, he would allow them to venture away from them in order to redeem them, but he wouldn't, like, install a system of government over his people that would violate some either creational norm or biblical norm.
00:09:48.440 Now, obviously, he wanted direct, in the time of the judges, there was more direct, what many people today might call theocratic rule.
00:09:54.480 But these judges were kind of intermediaries functioning as the ruler of God's people during that day, the deliverer of God's people.
00:10:02.980 And then they moved on to a monarchy, and that lasted for many, many years.
00:10:08.100 So, yeah, you really can't read liberal democracy back into the text.
00:10:12.000 We can get into the New Testament later, but, yeah, it's kind of, it's hard to explain, not because it seems obvious to us, but I really want people to understand, like, when we read the Bible, we really need to be cautious.
00:10:27.060 One, about taking our modern assumptions about who, what we experience and what we expect in our traditions, and then going, like, well, God must submit to those.
00:10:36.740 You know, God has to fit in my framework.
00:10:38.280 And I'm like, well, that's a really dangerous game to play, friend.
00:10:41.060 You don't want to do that with God's word.
00:10:43.100 You really want to submit your life to God's word in every aspect.
00:10:46.600 And you want to obey God's word and what God has said and what God has revealed.
00:10:49.900 And so what we want to do is question our systems based on God's word.
00:10:53.500 So we see various regimes and types of regimes in God's word that are permitted for God's people, especially in the Old Testament when it was more theocratic.
00:11:03.480 And so we have to just be careful that we don't read all these things back into scripture, which is a very common human instinct, especially as modern people.
00:11:11.640 We're very, we've got that chronological snobbery where we don't like to look back and admire and respect.
00:11:17.220 We want to, like, understand its relevance for today in our framework.
00:11:20.660 So I hope that helps, but that's some of the context that's going on.
00:11:23.760 Out of the period of the judges, 1 Samuel, there's a king.
00:11:26.200 It's not an anti-monarchy screed because eventually you get King David, who was one of the greatest kings who's ever lived.
00:11:33.940 Yeah, so, I mean, you can help me out here because obviously, you know, pulling, you know, the exegesis is more of your, you know, your strong suit, something that you are learned in.
00:11:43.340 But when I look at this passage, what I see is a people who were ruled directly by God.
00:11:50.660 Right. Like they were ruled through, as you say, the intermediary of the judges.
00:11:54.380 Right. This was not a democracy. These people are not voting on what they should be doing.
00:11:58.760 God is speaking in the, when you say theocratic, we mean in the truest sense.
00:12:03.920 God is speaking really directly to the people in the, in the most, you know, direct form possible.
00:12:09.840 It's not saying, oh, the, the molas are gathering together and, you know, sifting through scripture and trying to know, like God says, hey, here's this guy.
00:12:18.740 He is going to speak for me. Here is everything I want you to do one-to-one. Right.
00:12:23.800 So that was the way that they were being ruled and what they were rejecting.
00:12:28.640 And this is what, you know, again, when I read this passage, it says, you, they're not rejecting you, Samuel.
00:12:33.780 They're rejecting me. They're not rejecting rule by you and your sons.
00:12:38.120 By the way, what do you call it? When Samuel hands down the rule from himself to his sons, what would be the system we would call anyway?
00:12:45.920 But you're, you're not, they're not rejecting you. They're rejecting me.
00:12:50.520 So Samuel's already in a somewhat monarchical situation.
00:12:54.260 He is acting as the solitary leader. He is passing it down to his blood, but his blood has betrayed him.
00:13:03.560 They have not followed in his way. And so the people say, instead, give us a king like the other nations have.
00:13:10.040 Well, what's the difference between the kind of the semi-monarchical relationship Samuel has with the people here and the, the kings that other nations have?
00:13:20.100 They're secular, right? They're not getting direct rule from God.
00:13:24.260 They're establishing a state. They're creating a bureaucracy.
00:13:27.580 They're building a standing army, right?
00:13:29.820 It's no longer this like quasi-anarchical relationship with one leader who is hearing divine revelation.
00:13:38.300 Instead, it is a much more traditional monarchical structure in which you just have a secular king with a, with a established state passing on that power.
00:13:48.180 And so the warning to me here isn't like this specific form of government.
00:13:52.440 If they, if they had said we're rejecting God's government and we're writing a constitution where we all get to vote, I feel like we would get the same passage, right?
00:14:01.600 Because ultimately the reason that the people of Israel are adopting this form of government is because it's really the only form of government that exists at the time.
00:14:12.280 Monarchy is the oldest and most natural form of government, whether you like it or not in history.
00:14:17.700 And so there, if they had picked up and said, we're going to create a democratic republic and, you know, no, thanks God.
00:14:23.460 We don't care about your judges. We don't care about your word. We don't want to be ruled by you.
00:14:26.940 I feel like that would have been the same kind of problem.
00:14:29.700 Am I understanding the passage correctly? Is that a reasonable thing to pull out of that?
00:14:33.500 Yeah, that's a reasonable thing to pull out.
00:14:34.900 And one of the challenges that they were facing was that they kept having incursions from enemy forces and other nations coming at them.
00:14:41.420 And they didn't trust the Lord. They didn't trust. He kept raising up judges.
00:14:45.640 And instead of turning to God in repentance and walking faithfully in his ways, they became envious of the other nations because they kept seeing these incursions pop up and cities dominated, decimated, various evils taking place.
00:14:58.400 And so they're like, well, maybe it's time for a king. And so they're not trusting the Lord.
00:15:02.480 That's the main takeaway. Now, God will use a king and Saul becomes a type of super judge over his people.
00:15:09.200 And, you know, you do reference kind of the theocracy. We talked about that a little bit, but there's still a priest involved.
00:15:14.760 So at the time you have a judge, you have the priestly class, you have a priestly tribe.
00:15:20.580 And so there's always going to be various offices in the Old Testament that Christ ultimately fulfills.
00:15:27.200 The traditional ones are prophet, priest and king.
00:15:29.340 And so you're going to have these figures be raised up amongst God's people at that time in order to both rule to to like a king would rule to speak his word, the prophet and to be an intermediary between God and man.
00:15:45.180 That's the priest and offer sacrifices and that kind of thing.
00:15:47.480 And so, yeah, it's it's totally fair to read it as them not trusting the Lord.
00:15:52.100 Now, what the warning I think you touched on a little bit, but it gets onto it in the passages that this king will take the people aren't really he's trying to warn people that this is what will happen when you have a king.
00:16:04.120 He will take he will tax. He will take your young men. 0.96
00:16:06.620 He will surround himself with the best guys you've got.
00:16:09.340 This is what Saul does almost immediately when he becomes king.
00:16:11.460 He picks the strongest, baddest dudes and he's like, you're mine now.
00:16:15.200 I can script you into my military and we're going to dominate.
00:16:18.360 And they do. They have some great military victories.
00:16:20.760 And God is warning them because before the way that God would achieve military victory through raising up judges and delivering them was not just necessarily through one man, but also through the people trusting him.
00:16:31.280 So instead of the king himself being in right relationship with the Lord himself, except for Saul towards the end of his life, the king would now pick.
00:16:42.500 Back then it was, hey, we're going this judge is raised up and we're going to follow the leader.
00:16:46.940 We're going to you know, and that's an act of faith and trust in the Lord that God has raised up this man.
00:16:51.280 We're going to follow him.
00:16:52.220 And now it's the monarch ruling over, conscripting, taxing, taking.
00:16:56.820 We see this with David.
00:16:58.380 We see this all throughout the kingship, the monarchy in Israel.
00:17:03.260 So one of the things that I, you know, I think ultimately is very important is recognizing that, as you say, we don't want to read back into the Bible the things that we feel.
00:17:15.180 Right.
00:17:15.380 So like, again, I, if you don't like monarchy, if you think monarchy is a mistake that ultimately it's outdated or it's not in your tradition, that's entirely reasonable.
00:17:25.220 But nowhere in this passage is there a biblical endorsement of democracy, a hint that democracy even exists.
00:17:34.540 Right.
00:17:34.780 The main thing, as you're pointing out, with the king taking, you know, that the warning that God gives for Samuel to then give to the people, that is a process of the establishment of a true state.
00:17:47.220 Right.
00:17:47.720 And people need to remember the nation and the state are not the same thing.
00:17:52.280 Right.
00:17:52.680 So we have the nation of Israel, which is a collection of tribes.
00:17:57.000 This is how true, this is what a real nation is.
00:17:59.880 A real nation is a collection of tribes with a similar background, history, language, religion, shared culture, heredity.
00:18:09.280 All of these things come together to form the nation.
00:18:12.620 This is, this is what was traditionally meant when we said nation.
00:18:16.280 What God is warning about through Samuel here is here is what it will cost you to create a state.
00:18:23.060 And here we can actually do a little bit of political philosophy out of the Bible.
00:18:27.020 Right.
00:18:27.340 Because this is something I've talked about in my book, The Total State.
00:18:31.440 This is something that other philosophers have talked about from Bertrand de Juvenal.
00:18:35.460 I'm reading Yoram Hazoni's book on nationalism right now.
00:18:39.280 He talks about this as well.
00:18:41.020 When you have to create a state out of the tribes, you have to, as you were talking about there and as the Bible warns, you have to take. 0.98
00:18:49.000 You have to take from the best.
00:18:50.840 You have to glean resources. 0.70
00:18:52.560 You have to become, in some ways, a parasite on the people.
00:18:56.500 You have to change their behavior. 0.93
00:18:58.160 You have to mold them to your will.
00:18:59.880 You have to wear away some of the individual liberty, some of the individual nuance, the particularity of the different tribes and the way that they live their lives.
00:19:08.380 Because now everybody needs to live under the auspices of the state.
00:19:12.160 They need to kick things back up to the state.
00:19:13.860 They need to conform their identity to the state.
00:19:16.620 You know, this is everything the libertarians warn about.
00:19:18.580 Right.
00:19:18.940 So, but they are right about something.
00:19:21.440 The state costs you something.
00:19:23.560 That is real.
00:19:24.380 Right.
00:19:24.580 And so what we're looking at here is also a move from what one could say as an anarchy, right?
00:19:30.820 God raises up an army when he needs it.
00:19:36.220 He gathers the people together when he needs it.
00:19:38.520 But there's not this permanent established structure.
00:19:41.780 There's not this bureaucracy.
00:19:43.020 There's not these institutions that perpetuate the state as we understand it until you instantiate the king.
00:19:50.480 And then the king is there, and the very first thing he does is secure his power.
00:19:54.120 And how does he secure power?
00:19:55.240 He takes part of your money.
00:19:56.540 He takes your best men.
00:19:58.000 He puts your daughters to work.
00:19:59.520 He does all these things that take away from the power of your tribe and instead build up the state.
00:20:06.980 And so whether it be the state as a king, the state as an oligarchy, the state as a communist dictatorship,
00:20:13.880 the point is that God is warning you, if you step away from being governed kind of ad hoc through this tribal structure by me,
00:20:24.060 and instead you want to rely on the secular power instantiated in the state,
00:20:28.900 you are removing yourself from my blessing and governance directly,
00:20:32.380 and you are instead putting yourself in the hands of the state.
00:20:36.120 The state will now be your master instead of God directly.
00:20:39.360 I feel like that's the message that we're seeing, and that's the political lesson we can learn here.
00:20:44.300 Whether you prove of monarchy or whatever other system,
00:20:48.500 the creation of the state itself will remove many of these freedoms from the tribes of the nation.
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00:21:25.660 Yeah, I think that's well said, and I do think it's framed a little negatively because we're forgetting that the state,
00:21:34.980 if we're going to call it that, the regime, the monarchy, was also meant to be a blessing.
00:21:40.460 So it was a means of protection.
00:21:42.520 It was a means where it wasn't just secular.
00:21:45.060 It was the king was supposed to be a godly man who represented God's law, who followed God's ways.
00:21:54.080 And we see Saul walk away from that.
00:21:55.420 David is called a man after God's own heart, writes many of the Psalms.
00:21:58.940 And so this is a man who is a good king.
00:22:00.820 And so people may hear what you just said and be like, well, there it is.
00:22:04.320 See, state bad.
00:22:05.580 We want direct rulership of God, which I don't think people actually want.
00:22:09.200 But in the libertarian streak, they may spout off against that because they hate the state so much.
00:22:15.060 Which is understandable.
00:22:16.360 But we also need to remember that God has permitted the state to exist, that even in a prelapsarian Adam, before the fall, there would have been kind of a political instinct.
00:22:27.980 They're going to have kids.
00:22:28.980 They're going to have generations.
00:22:30.640 There's going to be a means of organizing, of social conformity, of social behavior.
00:22:35.240 And so even in the tribal system, there's going to be some kind of hierarchy.
00:22:40.900 It wasn't just chaos.
00:22:43.040 They're going to organize themselves.
00:22:44.360 They're going to have people that rise up.
00:22:46.700 They're going to have families that are more well-endowed, all this kind of stuff.
00:22:50.160 And so the state and the biblical sense, especially with Saul and David and Solomon and so on, it is designed still to uphold the supremacy of God and that they should honor God in all of their ways.
00:23:04.380 And you're right.
00:23:04.820 Now there's going to be, rather than more direct, it's going to be kind of mediated lordship by God.
00:23:11.120 But ultimately, the king is still supposed to be serving God.
00:23:13.780 Yeah, and I should clarify, when I say anarchy there, what I mean is formal anarchy in the sense of a lack of formal state.
00:23:22.060 Obviously, there is still order in the sense that people are under God, right?
00:23:25.820 And many people will refer to, for instance, medieval Europe as being a feudal anarchy because you had kings, you had lords, you had these fiefdoms.
00:23:35.780 But there was not a centralized power on a regular basis because they just couldn't upkeep it.
00:23:43.840 They didn't have the logistics to maintain it.
00:23:46.060 So it's not that there was no hierarchy.
00:23:47.940 There was no government.
00:23:48.860 But there was no central state in the formal sense.
00:23:52.740 And so many people refer to that as anarchy.
00:23:54.980 And it's also important what you just said there about the king being under God, right?
00:24:00.340 That's still being serving God.
00:24:01.700 Because many people will have a hard time, what's the difference between a dictator and a king?
00:24:07.140 And it might just sound, oh, well, it's just fancy title, right?
00:24:10.360 Otherwise, they're the same thing.
00:24:11.440 It's just a despot.
00:24:12.420 But actually, the principle of a king is much different.
00:24:16.000 Usually, the king is ruling in some relationship with the divine.
00:24:21.740 He is anointed by the church or he's anointed by God.
00:24:26.200 He is given his ordination by the priests.
00:24:30.600 There is some way in which he has a direct relationship to the divine.
00:24:35.360 He owes more, right?
00:24:37.240 And of course, usually generational.
00:24:39.940 It's tied to passing it down.
00:24:42.280 There's the bloodline.
00:24:43.740 And so it's much more formal.
00:24:45.520 It's much more tied to the well-being of the entire nation and not just taking what you want at the time.
00:24:52.160 And very importantly, like we said, tied to the idea that you are ultimately still serving the divine in some real sense.
00:24:59.140 Now, obviously, many kings fail in that task.
00:25:01.700 But, you know, many presidents fail on their task.
00:25:04.080 The point is that is the way it is supposed to be ordered.
00:25:07.040 And that is the distinction we're making.
00:25:08.440 So to be clear, Bukele couldn't be a king first because, you know, just getting reelected, it doesn't make you a king.
00:25:15.360 But otherwise, FDR is absolutely a king.
00:25:17.940 But also, importantly, he can't be a king because he is not in direct relationship with the church, to my understanding.
00:25:27.700 He is not receiving his mandate under the supervision of a formal church.
00:25:34.480 And that's, I think, why we don't have a lot of real kings at this point.
00:25:39.240 Even the people who are LARPing as kings, like in England, don't actually act as if they are under or in relationship to the authority of a church in any way.
00:25:50.960 Obviously, the English church is a little different because the whole point is they didn't want to be under the authority directly of a pope.
00:25:56.100 But the point being that these monarchs that are often held up today seem so, you know, vestigial because they no longer have any authority tied directly to the divine.
00:26:09.240 And that's really what makes a difference.
00:26:10.680 Maybe we'll return to that at some point.
00:26:12.280 Maybe at some point, you know, these monarchs will be revested with that and that might give them the legitimacy.
00:26:19.380 But until then, yes, a strong man does more or less just become a dictator because there is that no divine connection, which I think is really critical for the spirit of the monarch.
00:26:30.360 I have a passage from Joseph de Maester here, if you'll bear with me for a second, that I'd like to read because Joseph de Maester is himself.
00:26:37.840 He is a big fan of monarchy, right?
00:26:39.880 Ultimately, he believes monarchy is the best system.
00:26:43.020 However, he says there is no best system for every people.
00:26:46.120 And he's a deeply Catholic thinker.
00:26:49.380 When it comes to this, so Protestants might run fleeing.
00:26:53.320 But I think he gives us some deep insights as to what we need to think about when we think about governmental systems as Christians.
00:27:02.020 So this is, I believe, from his discussions on sovereignty.
00:27:06.600 He says, the same power that is decreed social order and sovereignty has also decreed different modifications of sovereignty according to the different character of nations.
00:27:15.980 Nations are born and die like individuals.
00:27:18.060 Nations have fathers, and in a very literal sense, and teachers commonly more famous than their fathers.
00:27:26.920 Although the greatest merit of these teachers is to penetrate the character of the infant nation and to create for it circumstances in which it can develop all its capacities.
00:27:36.060 Nations have a general soul and a true moral unity which makes them what they are.
00:27:41.060 The unity is evident above all by language.
00:27:45.940 Their creator has traced on the globe the limits of nations.
00:27:49.200 These boundaries are obvious, and each nation can still be seen straining to fill entirely one of the areas within these boundaries.
00:27:56.520 Sometimes invincible circumstances trust two nations together and force them to mingle.
00:28:01.320 Then their constituent principles penetrate each other and produce a hybrid nation, which can be either more or less powerful and famous than it was when it was a pure race. 0.57
00:28:10.200 But several national national elements thrown together into the same receptacle can be harmful.
00:28:15.280 These seeds squeeze and stifle each other, and men who compose them, condemned to a certain moral and political mediocrity, will never attract the eye of the world in spite of large numbers of individual virtue until a great shock starting one of these seeds growing allows it to engulf the other and assimilate them into their own substances.
00:28:33.220 Sometimes the nation lives in the midst of another, much more numerous, and refuses to integrate because there is no sufficient affinity between them and that preserves their moral unity.
00:28:45.980 When one talks of the spirit of the nation, the expression is not so metaphorical as is believed.
00:28:51.460 From the different national characteristics are born the different modifications of government.
00:28:56.220 One can say that each government has its separate character.
00:28:58.980 For even those who belong in the same group and carry the same name reveal subtle differences to the observer.
00:29:05.880 The same laws cannot suit different provinces that have different customs, live in opposite climates, and cannot accept the same form of government.
00:29:13.040 The general objects of every good institution must be modified in each country by its relationship with the spring as much as the local situation as from the character of its inhabitants.
00:29:23.720 It is on this basis of these relationships that each people should be assigned a particular institutional system, which is the best, not perhaps itself, but for the state in which it was intended.
00:29:34.940 There is only one good government for a particular state, yet not only can different governments be suitable for different peoples, they can also be suitable for the same people at different times, since a thousand events can change the interrelationship of a people.
00:29:48.580 So he's saying here, God has gifted a particular character.
00:29:53.040 Claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament.
00:29:56.120 I've been visualizing my match all week.
00:29:58.640 She was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car on her backhand side.
00:30:04.660 Good thing Claudia's with Intact, the insurer with the largest network of auto service centers in the country.
00:30:10.360 Everything was taken care of under one roof, and she was on her way in a rental car in no time.
00:30:14.780 I made it to my tournament and lost in the first round.
00:30:18.260 But you got there on time.
00:30:20.120 Intact Insurance, your auto service ace.
00:30:22.400 Certain conditions apply.
00:30:24.040 To the nations.
00:30:25.040 Each nation has such a different character that when it transgresses its boundaries, the natural boundaries that God has drawn for it, one has to subsume the other.
00:30:32.840 Because if it doesn't, ultimately there will be no greatness.
00:30:35.780 There can be no unity.
00:30:37.100 And so this constant push against the different characters of the nations will keep it from forming its type of government that actually suits it.
00:30:43.180 And he says there is a specific best form of government because God has placed that character on the nation.
00:30:48.640 But it is different for each people at different times.
00:30:51.760 In fact, he says even the same nation will have different types of government across its lifetime because it will change.
00:30:58.480 And so God has ordained, yes, there is a correct form of government, but it must be understood in the tradition and conditions of that specific people.
00:31:08.140 The nations are not uniform, and therefore the government that rules them cannot be similar.
00:31:13.380 What do you think about that passage?
00:31:15.600 Do you feel like that is reasonable given your understanding of the biblical layout of governance?
00:31:21.520 Yeah.
00:31:21.820 I mean, what we see in the people of God in the Old Testament particularly, and like I said, we can get to the New Covenant if we want.
00:31:27.680 But in the Old Testament, we see different regimes, if you want to use that word, or different forms of government that are best suited for those people at that particular time.
00:31:36.240 We even see this in our American tradition.
00:31:38.640 You'll have to check me on this.
00:31:40.940 I think it was John Adams who talked about the American system being best suited for virtuous people and unvirtuous people being not suited for the American system, which raises all sorts of alarm bells in my mind.
00:31:50.900 Because, okay, so what is he implying then if we become an unvirtuous people?
00:31:54.220 I still think we retain enough of our history and our traditions to where it can be retained.
00:31:59.140 I'm not LARPing for monarchism in America or anything like that, but there is a real appropriateness to the fittiness of the people and what those people are capable of.
00:32:09.540 Are they capable of self-government?
00:32:11.040 If they're capable of self-government, that opens up some possibilities for how they experience the state, how they experience the lordship of Christ, the king of kings mediating through a king or a constitutional republic or whatever it may be.
00:32:25.260 And so, yeah, it totally coheres with my understanding of the biblical text, of not just the biblical text, but how God has worked this side of the covenant, this side of the resurrection of Christ throughout time through Western civilization.
00:32:38.760 And so there can be various things.
00:32:40.120 I would be curious, Oren, if I can ask a question.
00:32:43.780 One of the things I'm curious about, when people today throw around the phrase dictator, you know, this is very common to call people we don't like a dictator.
00:32:53.300 They're acting dictatorial, especially, you know, leftists towards Trump or even with Bikile and El Salvador. 0.97
00:33:00.620 What's like a traditional political understanding of what a dictator is?
00:33:04.340 Because you differentiated earlier between monarchy and dictator.
00:33:07.540 I would be curious to hear more specifically about dictatorship.
00:33:12.300 Sure.
00:33:12.480 So Aristotle's classic formulation for governments is there are three types, right?
00:33:17.260 There's the rule of the one, there's the rule of the few, and there's the rule of the many.
00:33:23.720 And then in each one of those three options, there's a good and a bad, right?
00:33:28.480 So the rule of the many that is good is a democracy in which the people are more or less working for the total good of the society and in which they are usually represented rather than a direct democracy.
00:33:44.800 And then there's the just complete democracy where it's mass democracy.
00:33:48.640 Everyone just votes whatever they want for themselves and they don't care.
00:33:51.640 When it comes to the rule of the few, you have the aristocracy versus the oligarchy.
00:33:57.300 The oligarchy is ruling in their own interests as where the aristocracy is ruling in the interest of the people in the nation.
00:34:03.260 And then when it comes to the rule of the one, the difference is between, again, you'll see in each one of these governments, it's he who's ruling in favor of the nation.
00:34:13.100 He is the king.
00:34:13.840 In fact, this is what is identified as the best possible governments, is the benevolent king, as opposed to the dictator who is ruling.
00:34:21.220 Now, they wouldn't have used the word dictator because dictator was actually an office in Rome, it was an official constitutional office that was used to suspend the two co-consuls and give one man total rule in a moment of emergency.
00:34:36.120 However, tyrant would have been the word that they would have used at that time.
00:34:40.100 But the point is, it's always, are you ruling for yourself and your benefit?
00:34:44.280 Are you ruling for the people?
00:34:45.600 Now, a lot of people won't like that because those differentiations are qualitative, right?
00:34:52.180 They are not absolute.
00:34:53.540 They're not definitional.
00:34:54.580 The only difference between the best form of government, according to Aristotle, and the worst form of government is if the guy in charge is a good person.
00:35:02.760 That's it.
00:35:03.520 That's all there is to it, right?
00:35:04.940 And that means, and this is what it's all about with Aristotle, virtue is all that really matters, right?
00:35:11.560 Whether it's the one, the few, or the many.
00:35:13.480 The many can rule virtuously if they rule in the interest of the nation and the people.
00:35:19.520 The few can rule virtuously.
00:35:21.320 The one can rule virtuously.
00:35:23.200 He says, ultimately, that one king being virtuous is the best form, but he acknowledges that all of these forms can be virtuous, right?
00:35:31.560 And all of them can be destitute, right?
00:35:36.840 They can be terrible if they are ruled not in the interest of the people.
00:35:41.480 And so it's never a question of, is there just this one form?
00:35:45.880 It's always a question of the character of those that are actually ruling.
00:35:50.580 Now, you've mentioned a couple times the New Testament here and the New Covenant.
00:35:55.060 And that's, of course, also very important because one of the things we hear on a regular basis is that desiring to rule or recognizing the need to rule is ultimately sinful, right?
00:36:06.520 God said, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
00:36:08.480 And so you're just supposed to be ruled by your enemies forever.
00:36:12.260 You can't have any Christian kingdoms. 0.99
00:36:13.960 They're all unbiblical. 0.99
00:36:15.400 You can't have Christian rulers because you've got to be ruled by Caesar. 0.99
00:36:18.640 You have to be ruled by a murderous pagan. 1.00
00:36:20.240 That's what the Bible, that's what Jesus told me. 0.59
00:36:22.980 It says it right there in the Bible.
00:36:24.560 And that's another thing that gets thrown at me on a regular basis.
00:36:27.440 If Christians desire to be ruled by Christians and live under Christian norms, Christian laws, and a Christian culture, they are somehow violating the Bible itself. 0.93
00:36:38.260 In fact, I was called a man of very low character for pointing out that that is very much not what the Bible says at all here this weekend.
00:36:45.700 So maybe you could tell us, is the Bible, is Jesus just telling us we have to be ruled by foreign despots who hate us forever?
00:36:52.260 Is that the mandate of the Bible?
00:36:54.600 No, and this is one of the most disgusting misanthropic interpretations of the New Testament I see that is so common amongst evangelicals, and I believe they're well-meaning Christians today, is it's a masochistic reading of many of the things Jesus taught.
00:37:12.040 But when we talk about, if we want to get kind of philosophical, when we talk about politics and regime and this kind of stuff, we always want to come back to the nature of man, anthropology.
00:37:24.020 God made us with a body and a soul.
00:37:26.580 And so our soul, we need to be reconciled to our maker through Jesus Christ.
00:37:30.340 And that's been accomplished by the cross, the resurrection, his ascension, where he's seated on high today at the right hand of the Father.
00:37:36.000 The body, we should have rulership over.
00:37:39.260 Paul exhorts us to have mastery over our own body.
00:37:42.120 So rulership always starts with ourselves.
00:37:44.400 We need to be governed.
00:37:45.260 And of course, we as Christians believe that that governance can truly only be found when we repent of our sins and become a new creation in Christ.
00:37:53.060 And we're filled with the Holy Spirit and able to exercise dominion over our own bodies, over our own lives.
00:37:58.160 And so we should be exercising rulership over our bodies and the next sense of the home.
00:38:02.480 We should be, as men, the head of the home, we should be exercising rulership and authority in the home.
00:38:07.160 And of course, that can get contorted in our day.
00:38:09.080 That's a screed that's often thrown at Christians, which is totally not only uncharitable, but untrue.
00:38:14.920 Men should exude a masculine presence in the home as a good father.
00:38:19.880 And then you extend it from that.
00:38:21.640 You get two realms.
00:38:22.780 You get the church and the state.
00:38:24.580 And in the church, there's various forms of church government.
00:38:26.900 There's lots of fun fights we can have about different forms of church government.
00:38:30.960 But same thing in the state.
00:38:31.940 There will be a ruler.
00:38:33.560 And so the question I always ask Christians is we want to evangelize the nations.
00:38:37.020 We want to see more people come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:38:40.240 What happens if we win?
00:38:42.220 What happens if that nation becomes Christian? 0.98
00:38:44.880 Then we will see Christians come into power. 0.98
00:38:47.620 And unfortunately, many Christians have been so browbeat about this idea of either seeking power or having ambition or, you know, aspiring to rulership.
00:38:56.900 Which Paul endorses explicitly for men who aspire to the office of elder.
00:39:01.640 This is a good thing.
00:39:02.640 That's rulership.
00:39:03.520 That's exercising authority.
00:39:05.140 There is nothing in that we should never, never misinterpret and twist Jesus' words.
00:39:12.160 Even when he encourages us and tells us amongst his people, we should be as servants.
00:39:16.300 We should love one another.
00:39:17.660 We should serve one another.
00:39:18.920 And he exhorts and gives us the vision of the kingdom where the first shall be last.
00:39:23.600 Those do not diminish his creation.
00:39:25.800 Those are not contra creation because he is the word of life that spoke creation into existence.
00:39:30.520 And so in creation, we see a natural hierarchy.
00:39:33.420 We see rulership.
00:39:34.380 And it's not wrong at all for Christians to aspire to be governed in a Christian way.
00:39:39.420 No Christian father would say, well, it's bad for me to rule.
00:39:43.400 Therefore, I want other people to come rule my home for me. 0.81
00:39:46.080 That would be totally psychotic.
00:39:48.880 We want to exercise good biblical rulership wherever we are.
00:39:52.140 And so as Christians, of course, we can pursue power and authority.
00:39:55.460 We should do that under the Lordship of Christ.
00:39:57.120 We should do that with biblical virtue, but this is one of the most frustrating things
00:40:03.080 I encounter as a pastor, just because so many people have been beat down by these woke 1.00
00:40:07.720 scolds and evangelicalism like Russell Moore, David French, even more broadly in the literature
00:40:12.860 when we talk about pietism and the nature of true spirituality in Christ.
00:40:17.180 There's all these pietists who are just really sad people. 1.00
00:40:21.560 They seem to live powerless lives as if that's a virtue, as if losing is a virtue.
00:40:26.500 And that's not at all what it means to be a Christian.
00:40:29.680 That makes me really sad for a lot of people, but also very angry, hopefully righteous anger,
00:40:33.880 because that's a total twist in the scripture and how we're to understand rulership.
00:40:38.620 Yeah, and you brought up David French, you know, so I guess we have to, you know, after you.
00:40:44.940 Sorry, I should show Christian compassion here.
00:40:47.440 The point is, one of the things that David French is very keen on, which I hear echoed
00:40:53.020 by many spiritual boomers, as we discussed, it's not all the boomers.
00:40:58.580 There are actually plenty of boomers who don't believe this, but there are many people like
00:41:02.680 David French who grew up in a Christian society, had the benefit of generation upon generation
00:41:11.540 upon generation of what a Christian society brings and all the things that it blesses its
00:41:18.300 people with.
00:41:19.260 And they've decided that actually the most virtuous thing is to be persecuted.
00:41:24.340 And so Americans who are Christians should ultimately really welcome this moment in which
00:41:30.280 they could finally be persecuted.
00:41:31.860 Now, David French won't be persecuted.
00:41:34.180 He got his, right?
00:41:35.540 He lived through the good time where he got all the benefits of being in a Christian society.
00:41:40.240 However, you, you know, you, Zoomer, you know, the one without a house, who can't find a
00:41:45.100 wife, whose, you know, immigrants have taken all of the possible jobs and filled all of 1.00
00:41:48.980 the colleges and made it very difficult for you to buy a home.
00:41:52.260 And you, you, Zoomer, it's your turn to be persecuted.
00:41:56.180 What a blessing that David French, you know, just one of those blessings of liberty that you're
00:42:00.520 going to be receiving here.
00:42:01.600 I hear this all the time.
00:42:03.320 And it's, again, hopefully a righteous anger, but it does anger me because it's just this deep
00:42:09.680 ingratitude to your ancestors.
00:42:12.440 Yeah, I know my ancestors built this.
00:42:14.540 Yes, I know generation upon generation of men and women died and bled and sweat and, you
00:42:21.540 know, just gave up so much.
00:42:23.280 So I could live in a society in which I could practice my Christianity and, you know, reap 0.98
00:42:29.160 the fruits of virtue that grew out of that Christian practice.
00:42:32.800 But I refuse to hand that off to my children.
00:42:35.840 And not only do I refuse to hand that off to my children and do the work necessary to
00:42:40.080 hand that off to my children. 1.00
00:42:41.280 I am going to accuse you of somehow being unbiblical in your desire. 0.94
00:42:46.100 You are sinful in your desire to hand a Christian society off to your children. 1.00
00:42:52.380 I'm sorry, but I think that is sinful.
00:42:56.520 I think that is a direct violation of your biblical duty to your children, to the generations, 0.96
00:43:02.920 to your nation, to your people, and to your faith in your God.
00:43:06.220 Like, I cannot think of a more ugly way to shirk your responsibility as a patriarch, as
00:43:13.600 a matriarch, as somebody who is vested by God with a legacy of his people.
00:43:19.380 And as Christians, you are the people of God.
00:43:22.260 But I just can't think of a way to, a more ugly way in which to shirk that responsibility. 0.95
00:43:27.980 It's so gross to me. 0.97
00:43:29.380 Oh, it's absolutely disgusting. 0.90
00:43:31.040 It's perverse. 0.53
00:43:32.260 And these people, what they have in mind is somehow this vision of if we're persecuted
00:43:35.840 enough, then maybe one day somebody will get saved because they recognize how good of
00:43:39.720 losing, how good at losing we are.
00:43:41.880 And then what happens?
00:43:43.480 You know, let's say finally we get to the end of the road and we're all in camps because
00:43:46.820 we're Christians and we've been persecuted. 0.99
00:43:48.500 And one of the guards says, you're just such a beautiful loser. 0.99
00:43:52.300 What is it you have that makes you so good at losing? 0.96
00:43:55.140 And then we invite them to know the Lord.
00:43:56.540 Let's say it's the leader of the camp that we're in.
00:43:58.660 And then that person has authority.
00:44:00.420 What is that person supposed to do with his authority?
00:44:03.080 Is he supposed to set us free?
00:44:04.740 No, he should join us in the camp.
00:44:06.800 You know, so it's like they have no vision.
00:44:09.200 They hate humanity.
00:44:10.420 I mean, you have frustration on the ancestral component, which I too share as an American.
00:44:16.700 And I have more frustration on the spiritual side.
00:44:20.300 This is false teaching.
00:44:21.860 That's what it is.
00:44:22.880 It's a contortion of the beauty, actually.
00:44:26.160 And when I say beauty, I want us to understand it rightly.
00:44:28.700 The high reverence that we should have for martyrdom, whether it's in Syria, Nigeria,
00:44:33.420 wherever it is, like in Seattle recently, there is a high view and a high status, even in
00:44:37.800 Revelation, placed on martyrdom.
00:44:39.460 We should not diminish that by somehow making that the norm and the standard.
00:44:45.500 And that's why I say these people have a persecution complex, a martyrdom complex, where it's not
00:44:52.220 as if we hold the biblical truth and we honor God's word and we say, yes, if somebody dies
00:44:56.460 for their faith in Christ, they should be, you know, revered.
00:45:01.700 As a Protestant, I don't think a saint, but, you know, there's an honor there that the Bible
00:45:05.980 gives them.
00:45:07.400 Instead, what they say is almost a masochistic, that's why I call it misanthropic, is because
00:45:12.260 it feels like they just hate themselves.
00:45:14.900 They hate rulership.
00:45:16.820 They hate exercising authority.
00:45:18.580 They think all of it is just bad.
00:45:20.900 And they actually want to be beat.
00:45:23.920 And I'm like, that's not how the Bible talks about it.
00:45:26.080 Of course, when we are persecuted for our faith, God, we should find a light in the Lord
00:45:29.920 and trust the Lord and know that God is glad that we are standing strong and courageous
00:45:37.600 in the face of opposition to his ways.
00:45:40.440 But we should never hold that out to be, that's the end goal of humanity.
00:45:45.620 The chief end of man for them isn't to glorify God and enjoy them forever.
00:45:49.380 The chief end of man is to be persecuted.
00:45:51.760 Like that is just a demented way to go about your Christian faith. 1.00
00:45:55.280 Well, and like you said, on the spiritual perversion side of this, it feels like an effort to warp
00:46:01.860 the Bible and misrepresent the Bible as biblical cope for the fact that you didn't do your
00:46:07.180 job, right?
00:46:07.940 Like you believed that the institutions of America were just like inherently Christian
00:46:14.620 and would be Christian forever. 0.90
00:46:15.800 And so you couldn't be bothered to get involved.
00:46:17.780 You didn't want to go to the city council meetings.
00:46:19.920 You didn't want to run for office.
00:46:21.380 You didn't want to put yourself out there.
00:46:23.060 You didn't want to take on responsibility.
00:46:24.340 You wouldn't get involved in building your community.
00:46:27.520 You just couldn't be bothered.
00:46:28.720 It was more important to work the extra hours, go on the extra vacation, you know, watch the
00:46:33.180 extra TV, whatever it is.
00:46:34.880 And now that the bill is coming due, now that finally the fact that you shirked your responsibility
00:46:40.180 to rule, the fact that you shirked your responsibility to build a better society for your children and
00:46:46.320 pass on your values, now that that bill has come due, you need a way to justify the fact
00:46:52.860 that you basically discarded that responsibility.
00:46:56.020 And so your answer is, oh, well, the Bible says I can't do it.
00:46:58.600 The Bible says it's actually better for me not to do it.
00:47:01.640 Actually, I'm holier than you for not taking on those burdens.
00:47:05.120 I am a much better person than you.
00:47:08.040 And actually, you, if you were a good person, would be embracing this opportunity for persecution.
00:47:13.760 Again, not that there isn't a value, of course, in a blessing on the martyrs.
00:47:19.800 But ultimately, this is the cope, right?
00:47:23.500 And this is also something we could probably wrap up on before we go to the questions of
00:47:27.740 the people.
00:47:28.200 But I've tried to explain this to people before.
00:47:30.720 The reason the Bible doesn't have a guide, the New Testament doesn't have a guide for
00:47:35.840 Christian rulers, for a Christian kingdom, is that the Bible, you know, the New Testament
00:47:41.540 specifically is being written in a specific time and place in which that option did not
00:47:46.480 exist, right?
00:47:47.620 We have Christian kingdoms that would come very quickly after the New Testament, right?
00:47:52.980 We have Ethiopia, we have Armenia, like these Christian kingdoms, these early Christian 0.88
00:47:59.520 kingdoms would come online very quickly.
00:48:02.240 So even then, like it doesn't even work if you think of it this way.
00:48:06.060 But in the Bible itself, it's true that there is no layout like this is exactly, you know,
00:48:11.200 in the Old Testament, it tells you how to build Israel, right?
00:48:14.740 It tells you how it should be governed, what the laws are going to look like, what the government
00:48:17.880 structure should be, all kinds of, you know, how you should be measuring in cubits the
00:48:22.760 inches, but you know, whatever, like, you know, it's very specific.
00:48:25.480 None of that exists in the New Testament.
00:48:26.920 And so a lot of people are like, well, the New Testament just has nothing to say about
00:48:30.760 politics, and therefore we should just never be involved in politics.
00:48:33.860 And I just want people to understand, like, that is not the message of the New Testament.
00:48:38.540 Like the New Testament, just because it does not have down to the number of cubits in the
00:48:42.960 temple, how you should be, you know, creating your political order does not mean that it did
00:48:48.020 not understand that at some point there would be a Christian order and you would have a role
00:48:51.680 to play in it.
00:48:53.280 Yeah.
00:48:53.540 I mean, and it doesn't, the New Testament doesn't wipe out the Old Testament.
00:48:56.760 Christ came to fulfill the law, not abolish it.
00:48:59.160 And so even the cubits one is a funny example with the roof and how we should, in God's law,
00:49:05.400 prevent people from falling off of roofs.
00:49:07.480 There's principles in there that Christians, Christian civilization and kingdoms have derived.
00:49:13.180 They understand why God would say that, and then they seek to apply it in their particular
00:49:17.220 context in a particular way.
00:49:19.280 And so, you know, it's almost heretical to treat these, the Old and New Testament is so
00:49:25.540 different that there is nothing that the Bible has to say because we're New Testament
00:49:30.160 Christians. 0.51
00:49:30.740 That's not how any of this works.
00:49:32.740 You don't do that.
00:49:33.700 That's not what Jesus taught us to do.
00:49:35.720 And it's definitely not what the New Testament writers did.
00:49:38.760 They constantly reference the Old Testament.
00:49:40.720 There are principles in the New Testament, like you said.
00:49:42.820 Now, we don't want to get carried away.
00:49:43.960 One thing you did say, and I agree with you in a sense, it was written to a particular
00:49:47.900 people at a particular time and place.
00:49:50.620 We don't want to limit too narrowly the application of the New Testament.
00:49:55.480 Oh, yeah.
00:49:55.720 No, that's not what it meant at all.
00:49:56.980 I know that's not what you meant, but some hearers may misinterpret that to where, yes,
00:50:02.720 it was written to a particular time and place where they were disempowered, where they
00:50:05.640 did not have power.
00:50:06.200 And like you said, within 350 years, we've got Constantine, who becomes a Christian and rules 0.65
00:50:10.160 Rome.
00:50:10.880 And this gets into answering questions that we didn't get into about empire, you know,
00:50:14.660 is can an empire be Christian and what does that look like?
00:50:17.060 But there are principles in the New Testament, whether it's from Romans or other places, about
00:50:21.000 how Christians should enter after the state.
00:50:23.080 And so, yes, the message of the Bible, ultimately, while we have these political examples, we
00:50:27.400 have things we can drive for political philosophy, which our founders did.
00:50:31.220 They felt very free to do that.
00:50:32.880 And very much they were honoring God in doing that.
00:50:35.640 But it is a way to understand how God has worked and God works in history to save humanity.
00:50:41.980 And he's done that ultimately in Jesus Christ.
00:50:44.280 And he's coming again.
00:50:45.760 And we didn't even get a revelation, the implications for where we're going in all of this in eternity,
00:50:51.260 being with our Lord, if we are Christians and enjoying the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.
00:50:56.920 But, yeah, that was kind of what I wanted to make sure we got to in the New Testament because
00:51:02.240 we don't want to get, we don't want to misinterpret the New Testament to be totally different
00:51:06.440 than the Old Testament.
00:51:07.020 So we cut ourselves off like these heretics that cut off the Old Testament completely. 1.00
00:51:10.360 And we also want to make sure that we can then apply the New Testament appropriately to
00:51:14.260 any kingdom or non-democracy that we find ourselves in to operate as Christians faithfully,
00:51:20.320 pleasing God in that system while pursuing influence and power so that we can have and see
00:51:25.040 more Christian influence in society.
00:51:26.920 Absolutely.
00:51:28.680 All right, guys.
00:51:29.320 Well, we're going to head over to the questions of the people real quick.
00:51:31.580 But before we do, Chase, where can people find your podcast and your other great work?
00:51:37.200 They can find my podcast at Full Proof Theology.
00:51:39.300 That's F-U-L-L, Proof Theology.
00:51:41.340 I release episodes weekly.
00:51:42.480 You can find all my work at jchasedavis.com.
00:51:44.800 It's my website.
00:51:45.880 And I tweet at jchasedavis.
00:51:48.800 All right.
00:51:49.540 Let's go to the questions real quick.
00:51:52.400 Philosophical Thirstworm says,
00:51:53.360 Yeah, I've said this many times, but the Anglo temptation is to replace God with contract 1.00
00:52:07.380 law, which is also why the Anglo, even the Anglo version of monarchy is one bound by a
00:52:14.440 contract, right?
00:52:15.280 Bound by the Magna Carta.
00:52:16.940 It's deeply in our bones.
00:52:18.740 And so this is one of those things you just kind of have to accept about who you are as
00:52:22.780 a people.
00:52:24.120 You know, that temptation is always there with us.
00:52:26.180 And to some extent, this will reflect itself in our governance, just like Joseph de Maestro
00:52:31.240 talked about, the spirit of the nation and the way in which it will gather itself under
00:52:35.500 that type of way of being, but also remembering that that flaw can, like all flaws, draw us
00:52:42.560 towards sin.
00:52:43.420 And obviously the replacement of God with that is its own very deep problem.
00:52:48.000 And then Matt here just with a donation.
00:52:52.580 Thank you very much, sir.
00:52:53.400 Very much.
00:52:53.860 Appreciate it.
00:52:55.740 All right, guys.
00:52:56.480 Looks like that's everything for today.
00:52:58.560 I want to thank everybody for coming by.
00:53:00.660 Of course, you need to be checking out Chase's work.
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00:53:20.760 Thank you everybody for watching.
00:53:21.840 And as always, I will talk to you next time.