The King's Hall - Optimistic Eschatology with Chocolate Knox

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00:00:36.160 On June 25, 1950, the United States Marine Corps was called upon to go to war once again.

00:00:43.800 They were called to Korea.

00:00:46.300 The 1st Marine Division needed to be quickly restored to combat footing from the short break since World War II.

00:00:52.300 Major General O.P. Smith handpicked what some considered to be the greatest leatherneck in 1.00

00:00:59.020 history to the job. This man's name was Louis B. Puller. However, most Marines know him as 0.97

00:01:05.780 Chesty Puller. Some say that he earned his nickname due to his perfect posture and that

00:01:10.600 his chest resembled a full-size beer keg of lead brick, raw muscle, and horse steroids.

00:01:16.860 Another account says that his original chest had been shot away and that his new chest was a steel

00:01:21.840 plate. Chesty Puller was fiercely loyal to his men. His motto was, lead by example, and proved

00:01:28.540 that was not an empty slogan. He would deny the comforts that came with his officer's rank in

00:01:33.520 order to stay with his men. He would carry his own mess gear, pack, and bedding roll while marching

00:01:38.520 at the head of his battalion. He slept where his men slept and ate where they ate. So when he was

00:01:44.180 tasked with leading the First Marines into battle, he led in a manner that furthered his legendary

00:01:49.140 status. After Chesty and his men had been dispatched to a remote area in North Korea to

00:01:54.760 search for the enemy, they had just set up camp near Chosin Reservoir when suddenly the Chinese

00:02:00.500 People's Liberation Army surrounded their position. Journalists in the Marine camp confronted Chesty

00:02:05.940 demanding to know what he planned to do. Chesty calmly replied, we've been looking for the enemy

00:02:11.400 for several days now. We're surrounded. That simplifies our problem of finding these people

00:02:16.560 and killing them. Chesty was so confident that the enemy was just where he wanted them, 0.98

00:02:21.520 that when a major asked about a line of retreat, Chesty radioed the base's artillery commander

00:02:26.380 and ordered him to fire on any soldier who abandoned his position. He and his men fought

00:02:31.540 every step of the way. Chesty not only succeeded in saving the living men, but brought all of the

00:02:36.880 wounded and dead back home. They destroyed seven Chinese divisions. For his service in Chosun

00:02:42.340 Reservoir, the Navy rewarded Chesty Puller, his fifth Navy cross. The King's Hall podcast exists

00:02:49.800 to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world. Now that ladies and gentlemen is the kind

00:02:58.120 of ethos and spirit to which we are commending you when we talk about the doctrine known as

00:03:06.060 post-millennialism and by the way chesty puller dan he was a hard man he how is eric advertising

00:03:13.480 his own podcast i think no i mean the number of that was his fifth navy cross and a lot of people

00:03:19.020 say he was he was uh he was screwed because he it's the next lowest reward or award from the

00:03:26.900 medal of honor of honor and they say he should have won it and there's a lot of controversy 0.91

00:03:31.000 maybe multiple times but i mean he won five wow five the the man legend yeah he served for 37

00:03:38.640 years before he was medically retired and then the u.s went to war in vietnam and he recommissioned

00:03:43.840 and they said you can't come back they were like chesty i'm sorry you can't come back the viet

00:03:48.160 kong it would be unfair yeah i mean he the stories about this guy if you're if you're a marine you

00:03:53.480 know like way more about him than i just learned about him like 15 minutes ago and wrote this

00:03:57.580 story. So it's amazing. Look them up. Chesty Puller. Chesty Puller, I think, embodies one of

00:04:03.860 the main, you know, I use the word ethos at the beginning here that we're aiming for in cultivating

00:04:10.660 in this show and that we believe will not only is essential to Christianity, but it's definitely

00:04:15.760 essential to Christendom. If you want to see any kind of Christendom established, you're going to

00:04:21.640 need a lot of men and women who have that same spirit that say, oh, we're surrounded. Well,

00:04:28.120 we've got them right where we want them now. Like, well, now they, they certainly can't slip

00:04:31.800 away again. This, this simplifies our task. And, and to me, like we're recording this in

00:04:38.000 the heart of Ogden, Utah, where we're like, you know, I, we say 2% Protestant Christian or so

00:04:44.280 in this area. And even that is misleading because it's like 2% Protestant Christian.

00:04:49.480 and and we're always talking about reformed catholicity there are like 18 reformed christians

00:04:55.320 in the entire state of utah you know like vanishingly few and probably like 60 of them

00:05:01.960 are mad at the other 40 for some reason or the other in classic reformed fashion so you know

00:05:07.220 we definitely identify with that being surrounded but the reason that we shared that story at the

00:05:12.280 beginning of this this episode is because in this episode uh you're going to hear a lot about

00:05:17.560 post-millennialism. You're going to hear a lot about even, you know, theonomy and theonomic

00:05:22.920 post-millennialism in an interview with Chocolate Knox, with David Shannon, that our very own Eric

00:05:29.360 Kahn sat down and recorded with him. And so we wanted you to, you know, we wanted to frame it

00:05:35.040 up front here by kind of giving you a definition and the spirit, like the letter and the spirit of

00:05:41.100 what we're telling you to aim for in this podcast. And so the spirit for certain, and we've

00:05:47.920 emphasized this several times, is that we want you, whether you end up actually agreeing and

00:05:54.420 saying, yes, I'm post-millennial or theonomic or whatever, or if you're like, no, I'm historic

00:05:59.960 pre-millennialists or I'm a millennial and I'm kind of optimistic, but whatever you land on,

00:06:05.600 we want you to have this spirit. And we believe that you ought to have this spirit where you say,

00:06:09.880 no, no matter what I think is going to happen in the future, I know my task and my task that

00:06:15.540 the Lord Jesus gave is to make disciples of the nations and to baptize them, to teach them to

00:06:21.660 obey all Christ commanded. And so I better start doing that right here at my feet in my own life

00:06:26.960 and in my own house and in my own church and in my own region, uh, in the hope that, that I guess

00:06:33.660 if you're like premillennial, maybe in the hope that you're wrong, but, uh, in the hopes that

00:06:38.960 you would see ground taken in your lifetime, even if you don't expect as we expect for the majority

00:06:46.060 of the world to be converted in history, even if you don't expect that as we expect, we would hope 0.99

00:06:52.100 that you would want that, that you'd look at that and you'd say, that'd be great. I'd be for that.

00:06:56.240 Let me quickly define post-millennialism since it might not have been very precisely defined

00:07:02.940 in the interview, you know, as these things go.

00:07:06.220 So post-millennialism is the belief,

00:07:08.960 it's the eschatological position

00:07:10.660 that Christ will return at the end of the millennium

00:07:14.420 that's described in Revelation 20.

00:07:16.160 That's where it's called post-millennium.

00:07:18.180 And specifically, there are multiple versions

00:07:20.800 of post-millennialism.

00:07:23.040 The one that is, I think, probably popular today

00:07:26.240 and that I hold, I actually haven't asked these guys

00:07:28.560 if they both agree with this,

00:07:29.980 but I believe that we're in the millennium now, right?

00:07:32.540 We all on the same page there.

00:07:33.900 There's some version of post-millennialism that believes there will be a literal thousand

00:07:37.560 years in the future that will be in like inaugurated at some moment, maybe a tipping point where

00:07:42.900 the world is more Christian than not. 0.89

00:07:44.580 We, we, the golden age, yeah, the golden age. 0.99

00:07:46.680 We believe that the, the, the millennium, the thousand years of revelation 20 is describing

00:07:51.440 the entire period of what we might call church history from the death, burial, resurrection,

00:07:55.940 ascension, the judgment of Jerusalem through the return of Christ. 0.71

00:07:59.780 And that during that period, though there will be many ups and downs, that the story of history will be the story of the conquest of Christ over the nations by their conversion and subduing such that by the time Christ returns, he will return to a world where there are much, you know, many more Christians than not.

00:08:19.760 And in a nutshell, that's what post it's another way you could say it is that we believe the Great Commission will be successful.

00:08:25.680 Or another way to say it is Jesus said the kingdom of God is like yeast that was put into three measures of flour and it grew until the whole thing was leavened.

00:08:33.580 It's actually against the rules to use the Bible verses.

00:08:35.700 Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was thinking also the mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds.

00:08:39.840 And it grew into a great tree that shadowed everything and the birds nested in its trees.

00:08:44.220 It'd be unfair as well to mention the stone.

00:08:46.560 Or it's like Daniel.

00:08:47.360 It was cut out by no human hands. It strikes the clay feet of empire. And, you know, such that they blow away like dust while the stone becomes a mountain and covers the world. That would also be unfair to mention. Right. That would also be unfair. It's interesting. Chalk in the interview will say this, but I thought one of the things that was helpful on this point was he said, really, I'm just asking you and asking somebody to be, you know, post-mill or optimistic in their eschatology, really just asking you to believe the gospel will be effective.

00:09:12.740 that's pretty yeah that's that's pretty much what we're saying yeah right we're saying that the

00:09:17.680 gospel will save a lot of people so that another you know another unfair thing to say would be

00:09:23.160 that like when christ returns the world will not look like a field of weeds with a few straggling

00:09:29.560 strands of wheat suffering valiantly in different corners but then it will look like a wheat field

00:09:35.040 that yeah has some weeds in it but it will look like a wheat field right so i think he's talking

00:09:38.880 of the wheat and tares illustration i think he is no jesus you know is that in is that we're not

00:09:43.520 allowed that's in the bible i'm sorry that's in the bible you weren't supposed to apologize no no

00:09:47.800 no i know our our brothers that may hold slightly different eschatological beliefs would never think

00:09:54.000 that this is a weed field no they wouldn't the slow demise of humanity and the losing mission

00:10:00.900 of christ as he's ruling and reigning at the right hand you guys don't believe that do you

00:10:05.100 the long decline of creation into chaos. Yeah. Uh, no, I'm sorry. So you're going to hear a lot

00:10:11.920 about this, these kinds of things in the interview. And you'll also hear about, uh, theonomy

00:10:16.200 chalk. Correct me if I'm wrong, Eric. He, he came to be a theonomist before he was post-millennial.

00:10:22.200 Yeah, that's correct. So, uh, I think he said, uh, through Marcus Pittman, um, he had kind of

00:10:27.440 come into theonomy and, uh, again, not something he'll, he'll explain in here, but, uh, it's not

00:10:32.220 like he was primed for theonomy and post mill or anything. Yeah. He was a disby and a charismatic.

00:10:37.840 I'm excited for you guys to hear his story, man. It's, it's awesome. And, uh, theonomy for those

00:10:42.320 of you who are maybe unfamiliar is, uh, the belief that the, the, the old Testament law,

00:10:46.720 particularly the mosaic law, the mosaic civil law is valid and binding today that we should

00:10:53.140 be pursuing obedience to that civil law. And, uh, there are lots of flavors of theonomist. So,

00:10:58.860 we're not saying in this podcast that you, we're not giving a large defense of theonomy or saying

00:11:04.440 you need to be a particular kind of theonomist. And in fact, we're going to talk about some pitfalls

00:11:09.080 in a future episode that we would do well to avoid when it comes to even these beliefs that

00:11:14.360 we're talking about today. We are very excited for you to listen to this interview, to learn

00:11:19.500 more from Choc. You'll hear that Chocolate Knox has spent a lot of time at the feet of some great

00:11:24.300 teachers. And actually along the way, you're going to learn why he is called chocolate

00:11:28.800 Knox. Is it because of his favorite candy? I can't. I think it's not at all. Is it because

00:11:34.820 he likes chocolate like Willy Wonka? Also, no. Okay. Maybe I'm confused. Anyway, let's

00:11:41.340 cut to the interview. Well, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Eric Kahn, and we

00:11:51.280 have the one, the only David Shannon Chocolate Knox. Now, Chalk, first question, as I'm so glad

00:11:57.300 you're here. Is Chalk Knox your DJ name? How did you get this name? Oh, wow. DJ name. No.

00:12:03.000 If I had to DJ anything for you, it would be horrible. So I was going to Greenville Presbyterian

00:12:09.180 Theological Seminary in South Carolina. I was growing my beard out at the time and it was much

00:12:14.740 longer than it is now. And some brothers said, man, your beard is so long and so big. We got to

00:12:20.380 give it its own name. So your beard actually got the name. That's how my beard got the name. And

00:12:25.260 they got the name because I have a huge passion for the black church and black culture. And I

00:12:31.100 want to see a revival, a reformation happen inside the black church. That's been my heart,

00:12:35.780 my passion, my desire when I became reformed. Because when I became reformed, it was like

00:12:40.320 this whole new world of Christianity thought I knew, I didn't know. And if I had these elements

00:12:46.720 and these pieces, I could be living a more amazing Christian life, right? It made sense of the Bible

00:12:51.900 for me. And I was like, if we can, if everybody in my circle, my charismatic black circle can have

00:12:56.900 these things, that would be amazing. We'd take over the world. And so I had a huge passion for

00:13:00.960 the black church. Everybody in seminary knew that. And I started, I didn't see anywhere inside of

00:13:06.940 the reform world where your culture and your nationality was something that you could be

00:13:13.660 passionate about without losing Christianity, right? I didn't see that anywhere. Nobody was

00:13:17.900 claiming that except for John Knox. And I remember reading John Knox and John Knox saying,

00:13:22.780 give me Scotland or I die. He had a huge passion for his Scottish people and he held it together

00:13:28.640 the same way that Paul held together his passion for his kinmen. And I was like, oh, you can have

00:13:33.840 both of these things and not be a heretic. Okay. All right. I love that. And so everybody knew that

00:13:40.120 seminary. And they're like, you know, let's call it his beard, the chocolate Calvin. And I was like,

00:13:44.220 yeah. And then I can't remember who it was. I think it was Piper who was like, Hey, let's call

00:13:48.940 it chocolate Knox. And I was like, yes, yes. You know, I love Knox. You know, my patch for the

00:13:53.780 black church is like, let's call it the chocolate. I'm like, yes, that's it. This is a Chuck. So my

00:13:57.560 beard is actually named the chocolate Knox. And that's how I got the name. This episode of the

00:14:01.380 Kings hall podcast is brought to you by our sponsor reformation heritage books. And this

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00:15:34.200 yourself or your family today. I think it's even more legendary because of the beard status,

00:15:39.480 I think. And you know what? We need more knocks in our day. Let's face it. I was reading something

00:15:44.500 the other day and it was kind of shocking because he was talking about Mary, Queen of Scots. And

00:15:49.680 he's like, she's a whore. She's unfit to lead. And we're going to pray her down. And I was like, 1.00

00:15:54.120 wow, it's bold. It's very, very bold. You know, the biggest thing from Knox that I took away with

00:15:59.020 is how to pray. I wanted to, I wanted to, you know, so praying in the charismatic world was

00:16:05.020 one thing, but I realized becoming reformed praying was something else. It was, we talk

00:16:10.220 about bringing lawsuit to help keep our government at bay. And I started realizing that prayer was

00:16:15.240 another form of bringing lawsuit and asking God to come and vindicate. And so, and I learned that

00:16:21.220 from Knox, you know, when you have pagan leaders that are scared of a praying man, 0.95

00:16:26.220 that's the kind of person that you want to be in society where they know that you are going to go 0.54

00:16:32.000 talk to the Lord and they are afraid of your heart's desire and prayer to God because they

00:16:39.000 know that he'll vindicate you. And I was like, I want some of that in my life. Like how do I want

00:16:45.220 I want the governor of Idaho to be like, are those praying people over there?

00:16:51.360 Watch out because they're God answers.

00:16:53.240 Terrified.

00:16:53.720 I'm terrified.

00:16:54.880 Exactly.

00:16:56.120 You know, and it's good to have a, be a great writer and people terrified of your writing

00:17:00.380 or your stance or your words.

00:17:02.080 But I think I want people to be even more terrified of the fact that we're praying people

00:17:06.800 and that God answers our prayers.

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00:17:20.200 side hobby generating a couple hundred dollars a month but because of their partnership with us

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00:17:35.960 thousands of like-minded people and grow your company, we'd love to partner with you. Email us

00:17:40.720 at advertising at newchristendompress.com. Oh man, it's so huge. And it's something that I

00:17:50.380 think ties into something we're going to talk about in today's show with Postmill Theology,

00:17:54.580 but it really gets down into the weeds on these issues of if you want to see Christ's kingdom and

00:18:00.340 dominion on earth, it's something fundamentally, and I've been coming face to face with this in

00:18:04.280 the imprecatory Psalms. The dominion tool here is prayer. This is something that we're praying for.

00:18:10.740 One of the things I want to ask you, I'm guessing you weren't born with a golden spoon in your hand

00:18:16.060 and you weren't born with post-mill theology. So how did you, I just talk about your eschatological

00:18:22.780 journey, if you will. How did you come to this persuasion? Yeah. Growing up in a black charismatic

00:18:29.080 church. My parents were both missionaries, so I spent a lot of time traveling. And so we spent a

00:18:35.520 lot of time going to places in Mexico that were slums, torn down back in the 80s, early 80s,

00:18:42.880 and bringing the gospel out there. We would bring food and we would preach. And my parents,

00:18:47.140 being charismatic, would lay hands on people and pray for their healing. And we would see some

00:18:52.540 healings and other times we wouldn't. And, you know, so I grew up around that kind of culture

00:18:57.320 environment, I didn't know. I didn't know much about eschatology except for two things. I knew

00:19:04.780 that as charismatics have this kind of weird disconnect where it's like, we know that the

00:19:10.480 power of God moves here on earth and we know that we can reach out to it and use it. But then at the

00:19:16.160 same time, we're waiting for God to come and rescue us out of this place. So it's like this weird.

00:19:20.940 Yeah. And so it's this weird thing of we know the kingdom is coming here on Earth, but Lord, hurry up and get us out of here for these people, you know, destroy everything.

00:19:31.360 And so growing up like that, when I became reformed, I didn't bite into a post-meal eschatology immediately, even becoming reformed.

00:19:40.820 I kind of I went more dispensational than even I was as a charismatic.

00:19:44.660 and it wasn't until

00:19:46.920 meeting Marcus Pittman

00:19:49.180 where two things happened to me

00:19:51.040 I was working at Wretched TV

00:19:52.920 with Todd Friel

00:19:53.700 producing a TV show over there

00:19:55.300 and Marcus

00:19:56.500 we hired Marcus to come in

00:19:57.920 and Marcus

00:19:58.500 solidified two things

00:20:00.480 that were kind of loose

00:20:01.220 in my theology

00:20:02.420 since the charismatic world

00:20:03.700 which was theonomy

00:20:04.600 and then he added

00:20:06.320 a whole other element

00:20:07.460 which was post-millennialism

00:20:09.000 yeah

00:20:09.440 and so with theonomy

00:20:10.500 what he did was

00:20:11.180 so as a charismatic

00:20:12.160 you grow up

00:20:13.720 with a very strong commitment to God's law, Old Testament, we are the head, Deuteronomy 28,

00:20:20.680 we're the head, not to tell, high above, not belief, blessed when we go in, blessed when we

00:20:24.540 come out. So you hold to all those promises of the Old Testament and the law, but you don't know how

00:20:29.780 to use and apply it. So I hadn't, nothing in Reformedum did anything with that worldview,

00:20:34.960 except to try and unhitch it. You know, the dispensational side wanted to unhitch the Old 0.96

00:20:39.540 Testament from the New Testament in some ways. When I met Marcus and he started bringing the

00:20:43.620 theonomy to me or solidifying theonomy for me, because I already was a theonomist.

00:20:47.660 I just didn't know it.

00:20:48.720 I started seeing how the theology of God's law started fitting inside of the new covenant

00:20:56.760 and how the rest of the world, God gave his law so that we could actually start applying

00:21:02.280 what it looks like practically to love God and to love our neighbor.

00:21:07.100 So you don't have an, you don't have a layout of what love looks like to God apart from

00:21:12.440 his law. And you don't know then if you've offended or if you've loved your neighbor apart

00:21:17.660 from God's law. So you don't steal, you don't kill, you don't commit adultery, right? Love

00:21:22.680 isn't just some abstract word that's floating in the heavens. It's based on all your feelings and

00:21:26.400 emotion. It's actually real tangible things, right? Love does something. It seeks the good

00:21:32.080 of your neighbor, right? And so when he started filling out those positions of how God's law

00:21:37.400 applied in the new covenant. And in this world, I started seeing, wait a second, the Bible starts

00:21:43.860 to apply very directly in a legal sense to everything that I'm doing, not just in a spiritual

00:21:50.420 sense, but risen from the dead and said, all authority is given to him. Go and make disciples

00:21:55.940 and teach them everything I've commanded you. Well, then I have to teach people what it looks

00:22:00.560 like to love their neighbors in a legal sense, what it looks like to honor God in a legal sense,

00:22:05.920 not just a spiritual sense.

00:22:07.340 And then what happens when someone doesn't love their neighbor in a legal sense?

00:22:11.580 Because Jesus isn't just Lord of the spiritual world.

00:22:14.380 He's actually King of the world.

00:22:15.520 And all the other Kings are going to come and cast their crowns down before him.

00:22:19.040 This is a reality right now.

00:22:20.260 He's actually ruling the rainy.

00:22:21.680 So then if that was,

00:22:22.460 if the enemy hits there,

00:22:24.380 then post-millennialism is not a far stretch then at all.

00:22:28.340 Like it's,

00:22:28.780 it's,

00:22:29.380 it's just the,

00:22:30.520 it's just the fallout of what happens as people continue to live faithfully.

00:22:33.980 And as the gospel is proclaimed faithfully, post-millennialism is a natural outworking.

00:22:39.980 And so that's kind of how I came to post-millennialism was through kind of Marcus settling for me

00:22:46.920 a theonomic perspective.

00:22:48.460 And then naturally, that only has a trajectory.

00:22:52.960 And so it's like, well, that just makes sense.

00:22:55.000 There's no other.

00:22:56.160 I wasn't studying eschatology.

00:22:57.920 I was studying the fallout of the gospel, right?

00:23:00.500 That's what I was like. If the gospel does what it says it's supposed to do, then it actually is connecting again the mandate that God gave Adam in the beginning.

00:23:13.440 Right. So you got Paul talking about the second Adam.

00:23:16.780 Well, you have to understand a whole lot about the first Adam and what his responsibilities were and what the goals of the first Adam was to do.

00:23:22.840 He was supposed to be a reflection of heaven on earth.

00:23:25.700 He was supposed to go and take dominion over the earth.

00:23:28.400 He was supposed to go and cultivate the earth and do everything in the earth that God had

00:23:33.160 did in the garden.

00:23:33.920 So he was supposed to make the rest of the earth look like the garden, right?

00:23:36.620 That's what Adam was supposed to do.

00:23:38.220 Well, what happened?

00:23:39.000 Well, he sinned.

00:23:39.960 He fractured that ability to perfectly replicate what was in the garden in the rest of the

00:23:44.680 world.

00:23:45.140 And so God comes in and says, I'm going to fix this problem.

00:23:49.060 I'm going to give you a promise.

00:23:50.520 This we're going to fix this problem.

00:23:51.840 And that whole narrative of Genesis is still going to take place.

00:23:55.820 And so I hadn't really thought about the idea of eschatology so much as I thought about the idea of if God told us to go and make disciples and he said, teach them everything that I command you.

00:24:09.360 Then if we work that all the way out and we were consistent in proclaiming that message, then that has an outcome to the gospel that I wasn't actually thinking about.

00:24:19.500 Right. I was thinking we're going to get out of here.

00:24:21.020 We're going to get raptured out of here.

00:24:22.360 We're going to get gone.

00:24:22.920 But what happens, though, if the gospel actually does what it's supposed to do, changes people's hearts, and then God's law shows them what love looks like to the point that they say, oh, this is what it looks like to love my neighbor.

00:24:35.800 This is what it looks like to love God.

00:24:37.400 And this is what it looks like.

00:24:39.240 So when we don't love properly the civil law, when we don't love properly legally, what does the civil magistrate then have to do with that?

00:24:47.860 And then what does the church have to do with that?

00:24:49.960 And then how does the family engage with that?

00:24:51.940 Well, all that comes from theonomy. All of a sudden I had a culture of Christian growth and success built around God's law.

00:25:00.920 Well, that's not a hard jump then to post millennialism. Right.

00:25:05.020 That's not like, well, it must be the case, because if God's law, if the gospel does what it's supposed to do, Jesus is actually reigning and ruling right now from heaven.

00:25:14.220 and we apply God's law to every situation,

00:25:17.560 then that's gonna have an outcome

00:25:19.440 the same way that the gospel has an outcome

00:25:22.180 unless people aren't connected to the world

00:25:24.680 that we're currently living in.

00:25:26.280 Unless people are somehow disconnected from the world,

00:25:29.800 then the gospel works to change people's hearts

00:25:32.000 to want to obey God's law in culture, in society,

00:25:36.560 in their legal systems.

00:25:38.500 The trajectory was a no-brainer.

00:25:40.260 Yeah, it makes total sense.

00:25:41.240 I hadn't quite made that connection in the same way

00:25:43.240 between theonomy and postmill obviously you find a lot of guys in the camp that are you know adhering

00:25:47.720 to both things but you're absolutely right if you're going to take dominion you have to do it

00:25:51.360 according to something and so we're saying according to the law of god i'm wondering

00:25:55.900 were there if you remember back in that time period um you're going through postmill theonomy

00:26:01.980 do you remember any specific objections that you had oh man bro i was loaded with objections

00:26:10.040 Matter of fact, there's a book that has all of the objections.

00:26:14.580 Well, it wasn't just that I was loaded with objections.

00:26:16.200 You got to remember, I was working at Wretched TV at the time.

00:26:19.000 I was working with Todd Friel, huge MacArthurite, and also a dispensationalist himself. 0.70

00:26:25.420 And so as I'm working through this process, I'm actually having opposition.

00:26:30.240 Me and Todd used to talk for hours against theonomy.

00:26:34.380 He would be so opposed to it.

00:26:35.680 He was against postmillennialism.

00:26:37.580 I'm fighting for because I said, this makes sense with everything that I know.

00:26:41.500 And so all the questions came up.

00:26:43.940 One of them was like, Jesus said, his kingdom is not of this world.

00:26:47.080 That was one of the big ones.

00:26:49.160 Another big one was, what do we do if there's no rapture?

00:26:53.780 Like those two things were probably the biggest, the biggest problems.

00:26:57.740 Because when you start saying Jesus' kingdom isn't of this world, then you start leaving

00:27:01.560 the recreation of the world outside of the gospel, right?

00:27:05.480 Like you, which means, which means this is what's really crazy.

00:27:08.700 You start removing the gospel away from the creation itself from Genesis. 0.50

00:27:14.680 And so I, I didn't think about it then, but I was like, Hey, that's a good point.

00:27:18.440 Jesus did say his kingdom wasn't of this world.

00:27:21.000 And that's where I got to give uncle Gary DeMar so much respect and so much love.

00:27:26.420 Cause I hadn't read any of his books.

00:27:28.320 I had went to his office and met him and I sat down with lunch for him and just started

00:27:33.240 banging out these questions.

00:27:35.480 And he's like, you have a misreading of the text.

00:27:39.020 And so you're reading into the text.

00:27:40.820 You're isogening the text.

00:27:41.800 Yeah, his kingdom isn't of this world.

00:27:43.760 His kingdom doesn't operate the way that this world operates.

00:27:46.780 His kingdom doesn't draw its power from this world.

00:27:50.500 His kingdom is over this world.

00:27:53.580 And that's why he's saying, if my kingdom were of this world, I'd be acting like you

00:27:57.800 and my people would fight the same way that you guys would fight.

00:28:00.900 And I was like, oh, oh.

00:28:03.220 I as a person who has worked so hard to to get a grammatical historical exegesis of the text

00:28:10.640 I am eisegeting the text because of the way that somebody else told me to read it

00:28:16.180 yeah and I was like it opened up everything for me I love it and what you mentioned with Gary

00:28:21.460 DeMar man I can't think like so I've gone through the cycle too right where you're having all these

00:28:26.640 objections and he was kind of the go-to like I just google American Vision Gary DeMar whatever

00:28:32.720 passage you have an objection on i would read it and the thing is i wasn't i was not at all coming

00:28:37.280 from like a fanboy perspective i was coming from the perspective i should genuinely just want to

00:28:41.920 understand what the text says and like you know second peter three i'm like well wait a minute

00:28:46.640 what is he talking about and then i go and read gary demar and i'm like i actually buy that

00:28:51.880 argument i think i actually think that he's right he makes a really good a really good case so i'm

00:28:57.440 curious how you originally met gary and then just talk about that relationship now he's uncle gary

00:29:02.660 to you yeah just talk about that relationship and like how that impacted you as well man that's

00:29:07.600 funny so you know with uh wretched i was working with kirk cameron doing some things with them

00:29:12.540 because they were they actually started way of the master and then they started way of the master

00:29:16.120 radio which is where they brought todd in and then way of the master tv well through that

00:29:20.200 relation with kirk kirk did an interview with a guy by the name of darren doan darren doan is a

00:29:25.820 filmmaker who um was doing punk rock music video he's like the punk rock music video god right like

00:29:31.980 If anybody remembers punk rock and saw anything punk rock, they saw Darren Dome video probably multiple times.

00:29:37.280 He's got 525 videos he's done, music videos, and he was making movies with Kurt.

00:29:43.320 And he did this interview with Kurt Cameron.

00:29:45.480 Kurt Cameron looked cool, not just famous and well-known from Growing Pains, but Kurt looked like a dude.

00:29:53.660 He looked like a G, and I was like, what did this guy do?

00:29:57.760 Because I know Kurt, right? 0.91

00:29:58.760 I knew Kirk before.

00:29:59.640 So I'm watching this interview and I'm like, this filmmaker is breaking all the rules.

00:30:03.600 He's fantastic. 1.00

00:30:04.860 And he doesn't seem built like the typical form of Christian man. 0.68

00:30:09.040 He doesn't seem soft. 1.00

00:30:10.340 He seems a little rough around the edges.

00:30:13.720 Like he might punch you while he's trying to get you saved or drown you while he's trying to baptize you.

00:30:17.620 You know what I mean? 0.87

00:30:18.980 That's right.

00:30:19.960 And so I hit up Darren and went to his film school and said, hey, I want to go to your film school.

00:30:25.860 He said, come out for 12 days and meet me.

00:30:29.200 And so we connected.

00:30:30.580 And when he realized I was in Georgia, he said, bro, you got the baddest theologian in the southeast in your state.

00:30:37.540 You guys need to connect.

00:30:38.960 And I'm like, who?

00:30:41.580 No idea.

00:30:42.760 Hadn't heard of American Vision, really.

00:30:45.260 I heard of Vision Forum, but I hadn't heard of American Vision.

00:30:48.320 Hadn't heard of Gary DeMar.

00:30:49.640 He really hadn't, you know, that was an era that I wasn't in, probably in the late 80s.

00:30:54.620 And so I went to their studio with Marcus Pittman because Darren was like, hey, you

00:30:59.540 need to go connect with him and say that you'll do videos for those guys and get them updated

00:31:03.100 with some of their videos.

00:31:04.360 And so we went to go meet studio in Dallas, Georgia, was it?

00:31:09.400 I remember Uncle Gary checking out.

00:31:11.780 He was already done.

00:31:13.000 He had paid his dues and he had written his books and he had his fights.

00:31:20.440 I'm just now coming to the game as a young cat with a talent.

00:31:23.620 it. I'm like, Hey man, you, you have to, you can't leave, man. Like we need you out here.

00:31:28.380 These streets is rough, bro. Cause it was just new for me and, and it hadn't hit. I think that

00:31:36.380 now it's gone commercial in the sense, but it hadn't hit that commercial. It was American vision

00:31:41.520 and post-millennialism was really an underground game that the dispensationalist never really

00:31:46.980 wanted to have a debate on after the nineties, right? They were done. It was over. And so I was

00:31:52.020 coming in saying, man, you guys got to make videos. And Uncle Gary's like, nah. I said something about

00:31:56.960 dispensationalism as we were leaving. And he was like, let's go to lunch. And we go to lunch and

00:32:02.500 for an hour and a half, this dude just lights up every worldview that I was holding into

00:32:09.140 dispensationalism. And he did it angry and loving. And that's how he got the name Uncle Gary.

00:32:15.700 Because he was like your uncle that was like, boy, what's wrong with you? Sitting up here doing

00:32:18.820 this stuff and smack you in the back of the head and pull you in yeah you ain't gonna be representing 0.96

00:32:22.920 me like this you know i love your behind get over here and do this it was just like and he was and 0.96

00:32:27.180 he had kind of like that older uncle kind of feel where it's like i love you i'm not gonna let you

00:32:32.140 out here looking crazy and so about six months after i met uncle gary i went to go work for him

00:32:37.420 uh to make how to answer the fool the first documentary i made yeah for american vision

00:32:41.540 but that's how he that's how he got to know uh gary and and that's how he got the name uncle 0.90

00:32:45.640 Because you talk about dispensationalism, you can get him angry and he gets angry and he would go off, man.

00:32:52.400 And and so that's how. And so the the big was biggest one for me was Jesus's kingdom not being of this world was one.

00:32:58.860 The other one was what do you do if there's no rapture?

00:33:01.420 So let's say that the rapture, if we are kind of gathering our things and getting things together and trying to hold things down until the rapture, buckle down to the rapture gets here.

00:33:09.920 If there's no rapture, I got a whole bunch of stuff and my whole mindset and my whole

00:33:14.140 world is wrong and I don't know what to do with it anymore.

00:33:18.780 That was the worst one because I was waiting for the rapture.

00:33:23.000 I was waiting for things to get worse.

00:33:24.220 And so there was, and our doctrine was telling us, hey, don't even worry about college.

00:33:29.340 Don't worry about even marriage.

00:33:31.300 You don't know when Jesus is coming back.

00:33:32.940 There was a lot of that in our circles.

00:33:36.080 And so building and planting trees and thinking about the future, the future, you could be out of here.

00:33:41.940 There's no point in thinking about the future.

00:33:43.660 And when Uncle Gary showed me and started talking to me what needed to be done, he's like, you go to work.

00:33:48.620 He's like, that's what you do.

00:33:49.460 You go to work.

00:33:50.340 And it did.

00:33:50.920 It took years for that to make sense to me, you know.

00:33:53.620 So, yeah, man, I can't uncle.

00:33:56.280 I can't recommend Myth, Lies and Half Truth by Uncle Gary enough.

00:33:59.640 Like that book was it.

00:34:01.800 Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you, too.

00:34:03.260 So it's like there's a lot of people.

00:34:05.000 So you get introduced to Uncle Gary.

00:34:07.460 Obviously, now you're at Christchurch.

00:34:09.440 You got a lot of post-mill thought going on around you.

00:34:12.340 If you were going to point somebody to like, you know, a few works, a few people, I think Uncle Gary is definitely one of them.

00:34:19.600 I know Doug's written some stuff.

00:34:21.080 You and I have talked about David Chilton.

00:34:23.220 I'm just curious, kind of like where, I mean, for me, honestly, like David Chilton, Paradise Restored, that's probably, I've heard, I haven't read Days of Vengeance, but everybody said they're like, this is it, opus magnum.

00:34:35.000 Yeah, it's the bomb.

00:34:37.320 There's nobody.

00:34:38.820 I know why it went out of print, because if I was a dispensationalist, I'd do everything I can to make sure nobody has that book.

00:34:44.520 I mean, there's no one.

00:34:45.200 It got raptured.

00:34:48.400 That book, and here's the thing, I'm just now reading that book.

00:34:52.000 Yeah.

00:34:52.160 And it's probably the best exegesis on the topic I think you can have as far as exposition of the book of Revelation.

00:34:59.620 It's phenomenal.

00:35:00.720 Of course, like you said, Uncle Gary, but I think Doug Wilson's book on a primer on worship, for whatever reason, man, all the stuff that the places where I'm at now, I never read the main books to get there.

00:35:12.080 I had to read other books because for me, it wasn't about one topic.

00:35:15.720 I had to have all of my Christianity reshift, right?

00:35:19.040 I had to have everything reshift. 0.96

00:35:21.040 And when everything reshifted, theonomy made sense.

00:35:24.300 Then postmillennialism made sense.

00:35:26.620 Then, you know, fatherhood and all that stuff made sense.

00:35:29.360 I had to have a radical, evangelical Christian shape in my theology.

00:35:34.640 And I think A Primer on Worship was one of the books that did it for me.

00:35:39.180 The other thing, and the reason that that book did it was because Doug does something

00:35:43.980 that most theonomists don't do well.

00:35:47.060 Most theonomists live in a legal, very legal world, but then they don't show you how the

00:35:52.820 law applies in reality or in the daily world, right?

00:35:55.940 So they tell you how it applies legally, but then there's a law that's kind of works daily out, you know, and Doug takes the theonomic principles and shows you how they daily operate and work out.

00:36:08.840 And so a primer on worship started showing for me how important culture was and relationships were from, you know, the Christian church and the foundation of that and then how that operated out on a daily basis.

00:36:23.940 And if I didn't have that culture that I wanted, how to create it where I was at.

00:36:30.040 And that was, that did something that it put the responsibility on me that if I saw it

00:36:35.640 to man up, grab your family, have family worship, invite people over for Sabbath dinner, sit

00:36:42.880 down and sing and fellowship because that's where the power was, right?

00:36:47.780 It showed me where, where faithfulness was, where the power was.

00:36:51.100 So a prayer room on worship was phenomenal for me because I was in Georgia at a Presbyterian church.

00:36:56.080 I was doing all the things that I thought I was supposed to do as a good reformed person.

00:37:00.560 I became Presbyterian.

00:37:01.720 I baptized my kids, you know, holding the biblical law.

00:37:04.400 I did all the stuff, but I was doing it and didn't know that there was a foundation to even that.

00:37:10.560 Right.

00:37:11.040 And what does that look like? 1.00

00:37:12.480 And it just gave all those things legs.

00:37:15.120 It's such a huge thing.

00:37:16.160 And this is one of the questions that I've had.

00:37:17.760 I was thinking through this issue as well as it played out in my life.

00:37:20.840 but it's not as much just a theological argument.

00:37:24.180 I think that's something that's missed.

00:37:25.920 And if you look even at like the early Reconstructionists,

00:37:28.780 there was a lot of infighting.

00:37:30.920 I wasn't around for a lot of it,

00:37:32.620 but you talk to a lot of the pastors who were there

00:37:35.060 and they're like, yeah,

00:37:35.840 those guys were kind of notoriously hard to get along with.

00:37:38.800 Did a lot of great work, groundbreakers.

00:37:42.040 But sometimes when you're the frontiersman,

00:37:44.060 you're the guy pushing the edge.

00:37:45.460 You're maybe not the guy who is going to bring everybody,

00:37:48.000 you know, together in the long run to get, to get stuff done. So one of the questions that I've

00:37:52.880 often asked is like about Moscow is a good example. You've been there. It's this question

00:37:58.320 of how you see it actually changing people's lives. So I want to ask you that question before

00:38:02.500 I do, I think to something you said earlier, dispensationalism, the problem is at least for

00:38:08.280 me, I had absorbed it osmosis of an environment, even though I didn't, I could not explain,

00:38:13.740 I didn't even know what it was theologically.

00:38:15.900 So now we're talking in the reverse.

00:38:18.200 And that's what I want to ask you.

00:38:19.640 How is Post Mill about culture, not just about eggheaded theology?

00:38:24.300 So I'll tell you about an event.

00:38:26.240 There's a story.

00:38:27.520 Me and Marcus are theonomists.

00:38:30.020 We're working with Darren Doan on a film shoot with Kirk at Liberty University.

00:38:34.220 And we're just in the elevator going up to, you know, this.

00:38:37.680 So this happens all in the elevator conversation.

00:38:40.380 Me and Marcus are just theonomists.

00:38:41.820 It's just like, ah, the biblical law, this, biblical law, this, and this is theonomy, this, and this is theonomy, that.

00:38:45.360 And Darren's over there in the corner listening.

00:38:47.240 And we're three floors away from getting off.

00:38:50.480 He's like, all you post-mill theonomists, all you ever do is talk and none of you guys work or do anything.

00:38:57.320 He got off the elevator.

00:38:58.800 Me and Marcus stayed there with the doors closing because he was right.

00:39:03.580 He was right.

00:39:04.700 We just had a bunch of great ideas, but we had no work.

00:39:08.500 We hadn't built anything.

00:39:10.280 and that at that moment it hit me and it's like I don't have the thing that I say that I think

00:39:16.940 that I have one of the things that being out here in Moscow has showed me is what it looks like

00:39:24.080 for your worldview to commit to the planet that God has placed you in and I and not just in

00:39:30.960 building institutions but building your family like what is what does it look like for a husband

00:39:37.200 to love his family, what does it look like for a husband to love his wife? Do you expect to have

00:39:42.860 a fruit that you didn't plant? Right? Like, you know, all those things, it really hit the ground

00:39:49.160 where I started seeing men love their children in a way where I hadn't seen before, where I'll

00:39:56.720 use Gabe, you know, I don't compliment Gabe enough, but I'm gonna give him a serious compliment.

00:40:01.840 When I got here, I watched Gabe take joy in being a father and being a husband in a way that I can't verbalize well.

00:40:12.260 It was rooted in the foundations of how he acted with his kids and how he disciplined his kids and how he, you know, it wasn't odd for him to say, hey, I'll be right back.

00:40:22.880 Grab his kid, go to the bathroom, correct him and come back like nothing had ever happened and just keep going through the motions.

00:40:28.960 And most of the times you would see is such a big disruption.

00:40:31.500 Oh, I'm sorry, everybody, please forgive me.

00:40:34.740 I just have to.

00:40:35.480 And then they make this announcement that they got to go discipline their kid.

00:40:39.220 And then they, and so they, and then it's just interrupts everything.

00:40:42.020 It was, this is the flow of everything.

00:40:45.360 It wasn't odd, you know?

00:40:47.160 And then the same way in, in encouraging brothers to engage with their families, you know, you

00:40:53.240 don't just come and step yourself in somebody's family in the South.

00:40:56.240 You know, hold on, man, this is my room right here.

00:40:58.960 You stay out there with that.

00:41:00.420 And you can offer maybe a slight suggestion over a little note and say, hey, I was just watching it.

00:41:06.600 It's not the same way.

00:41:07.900 It was like, hey, man, look, I ain't trying to be the guy to your business, but I am seeing that.

00:41:13.180 I saw a little thing with you and your son.

00:41:14.780 I'm just saying that's not healthy.

00:41:15.880 If you want to go have this trajectory, that's not a healthy way to go.

00:41:19.640 You know, and the way that they correct is a coming alongside and support, you know, and it was just it gave a tangible reality.

00:41:28.280 what it looks like of the kingdom of God here on earth working its way through the loaf.

00:41:35.240 It was the first time that I had seen my theology and my worldview touched down on earth.

00:41:41.140 Even my theonomy, what does it look like?

00:41:43.140 And it made me feel like I didn't have to have it immediately.

00:41:47.600 So part of what happens in Reformed, folks, we go through this cage stage once we learn something new

00:41:53.000 that we like right now, immediate, like we got to have it right now.

00:41:57.360 That's right.

00:41:58.280 And I saw that there's a certain comfort in learning that it was faithfulness and faith.

00:42:04.420 That's the main thing, man.

00:42:05.700 If I can say, if I had to drill it down on one thing, it was faithfulness and faith,

00:42:09.140 believing that the gospel works and that over time, the gospel is going to work through

00:42:14.320 a human being in such a way that he is perfected into the image of Christ.

00:42:19.460 You learn to believe that and not just, you don't lose faith.

00:42:23.720 You say, okay, well, the gospel is real.

00:42:25.540 So it's just going to take some time.

00:42:26.760 I'm going to come by my brother and be like, hey, man, try this out.

00:42:30.400 I call it the keeping up with the Joneses of sanctification, right?

00:42:35.260 But it really was understanding, a relearning that faith is not just something that I assent to in my head, but it is a believing God about his promises here on earth.

00:42:50.360 I really start believing that, Lord, let your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

00:42:55.160 and because I believe that I act a certain way, right?

00:42:58.960 Because I believe that reality,

00:43:01.040 the things that I do every day,

00:43:02.420 I know that my kids are going to be sanctified

00:43:05.380 and grow up to love Jesus

00:43:07.520 and work and live in this world

00:43:09.640 the way that Adam was supposed to

00:43:11.280 because of the work of the Holy Spirit through the gospel.

00:43:14.280 I have faith in that.

00:43:15.420 And so I do the things every day

00:43:16.840 that lead to that outcome.

00:43:19.740 And so I haven't,

00:43:21.400 it's been a very unique experience,

00:43:23.540 very unique experience.

00:43:25.160 Um, I think I answered you. I hope I answered your question.

00:43:28.180 Yeah, you did. Absolutely. That, and it is so big. I think that, uh, one of the things that

00:43:33.260 we tend to do with, with our cage stage syndrome, uh, in reform camps is we fail to recognize,

00:43:40.500 and this, this gets back to sphere sovereignty, which I want to ask you about, but it really

00:43:44.320 gets back to, okay, if I have to take dominion, where do I start? Well, what spheres do you have

00:43:49.120 authority in? Right. Number one, yourself, there can be no, we have a, in the King's Hall,

00:43:54.860 we talk about, uh, he who conquers must conquer himself. So this, this idea that if you want to

00:44:00.280 take dominion of the earth, you can't control yourself, you know, your body, your thoughts,

00:44:05.940 your deeds, your work, your home. I mean, you're hopeless to go actually take dominion. So I want

00:44:12.780 you to talk to me just a little bit about, okay, what is sphere sovereignty? I'm thinking of like

00:44:17.780 even a Gary DeMar book that's really good on this is God and government. It's got some stuff on

00:44:22.140 there about sphere sovereignty. How do you, how do you interact? But, but why is that important

00:44:26.140 as we're talking about post-mill dominion? Yeah. So let me go back a little bit. And

00:44:30.740 as you're talking about books that influenced me, as soon as I became a theonomist,

00:44:34.260 officially, I'd already had a good old Testament theology. I hadn't figured out how to place all

00:44:39.720 the things. And so case laws and biblical laws, how they worked out. I read so much Rush Dooney,

00:44:46.440 the tools Institute, the biblical institutes of biblical law from Rush Dooney was phenomenal for

00:44:51.620 me. And then, and somebody who worked out a lot of Rush Dooney's positions and angles was Gary

00:44:58.020 North, who just recently died. Gary North was extremely important in my development. Tools of

00:45:04.660 Dominion, that book. Oh my goodness. His, his, he's got a, he understood how to cross those

00:45:10.540 bridges and he was just phenomenal for me. And so I learned sphere sovereignty from those guys,

00:45:17.380 Rush Dooney, Gary North, and Gary DeMar, he learned, he helped me figure out how to verbalize it a lot.

00:45:24.160 But he's working out sphere of sovereignty in everything he does.

00:45:27.180 And basically what it is, it's an observation of how God runs, has designed the world to operate.

00:45:34.680 That's what sphere of sovereignty is.

00:45:36.780 God has designed the world with these four governments in place.

00:45:42.020 And those four governments, the family government, the state, civil magistrate, the church, and then the one before all of those is self-government.

00:45:53.160 And self-government is extremely important because self-government and the family are where morals are taught and expounded upon and culture is developed, right?

00:46:05.680 And so the church or the state don't develop culture.

00:46:11.960 That's just culture comes from the family because they're the only people who make people, right?

00:46:17.380 Culture isn't, people have a misconception of culture.

00:46:20.260 Culture is people, people and how they live with each other and what are their loves and desires, right?

00:46:27.080 That is what culture is.

00:46:28.260 And so in order to be able to make culture, the first thing you have to be able to do is to make people.

00:46:32.200 The church doesn't make people.

00:46:33.460 The civil magistrate doesn't make people.

00:46:35.680 The home makes people. Individuals make people.

00:46:38.480 And so the moral understanding of how we interact with each other comes from particular two governments first.

00:46:46.000 Right. That's the first place.

00:46:48.020 And what the church does, the church is a priest in one sense that that reminds people, this is what God's expecting of you.

00:46:57.060 Here is his standards. Here is his law. Fathers, mothers, civil magistrate.

00:47:02.020 magistrate, go then into your governments that you have and operate with this standard in place.

00:47:09.760 So then the family takes the word of God, which is the umbrella of all of this, and we start

00:47:14.960 exercising the morality, the doctrine, the teachings that God has for us and how our kids

00:47:20.660 operate with each other in our home first and with their parents, understanding first the

00:47:25.780 parental authority. Your parents have an office. You respect that office. So the home becomes a

00:47:32.960 government that shows how all the other governments operate and function. So you are practicing and

00:47:38.720 training in the home and building the culture that's going to be outside of the home. So self

00:47:44.580 government is super important because you're going to have to be able to be a person that embodies

00:47:48.800 all of the realities of those moralities and those teachings and disciplines and then model for

00:47:54.540 someone else what it looks like to be successful in those. And here's the crazy part, what it looks

00:48:00.340 like to fail in those. We always talk about what it looks like to be successful as a man and a

00:48:04.260 father. What we don't talk about is what it looks like to repent as a man and as a father. And

00:48:09.980 that's because we keep acting like this is a, we'll be absolutely perfect. It's like, no, no,

00:48:14.260 we'll be absolutely righteous because we repented and trust in the one who is perfect. And that's

00:48:20.560 where, that's where the standard is, son. It's not in, in, in daddy. I have an office that I'm

00:48:25.180 mirroring, trying to do properly and right. And you son, I want you to understand that there's

00:48:31.040 an authority above me that I'm submitting to self-government, church government, family

00:48:35.940 government, civil government. The civil government really just has an area. I don't know how much

00:48:41.360 your people already know about this. Cause I know you're already in tune to all this. You just tell

00:48:44.740 me when you want me to stop. No, yeah, keep preaching, brother. Okay, so I'll go to, we kind

00:48:50.760 of got self-government and family government. I want to, the church government, what's important

00:48:55.320 about the church government that people forget about is that being the priest, being the prophet,

00:49:00.100 they are, they help keep these spheres in one way or another operating and understanding where

00:49:06.080 their limits are. So we don't even understand sphere sovereignty apart from the word of God

00:49:11.680 and the educator.

00:49:12.780 So the church is a teacher.

00:49:14.080 It is teaching all these other governments

00:49:16.000 what God has required for you

00:49:18.140 and what it looks like to be successful

00:49:19.760 in these governments

00:49:21.040 so that God honors and blesses you.

00:49:23.220 And then if you don't keep this law,

00:49:25.240 he will curse you.

00:49:26.020 So they're kind of like the prophets

00:49:27.160 and the priests

00:49:27.640 that keep those things in line.

00:49:29.000 And they're responsible for the unity

00:49:31.080 of the body as well, right? 0.67

00:49:33.240 So they show what purification looks like

00:49:35.780 when people submit to the word of God.

00:49:38.380 Culture is like,

00:49:38.980 this is what discipline looks like.

00:49:40.400 And this is what loving discipline looks like.

00:49:42.740 And this is the hope that a government has is that you will repent, come to a rest restored place.

00:49:48.260 And so they have the word of sacrament.

00:49:49.900 They have those two things people take for granted so much.

00:49:53.680 The table, I believe, try not to get too in the skinny branches.

00:49:57.160 I believe the lack of our understanding of the table is why we have disunity amongst races and culture and society right now.

00:50:05.300 And what I mean by that is we miss, we've made the table something that it's not so much so that doing it wrong in this government has bled off into separations outside of that government in the civil matter that we shouldn't have because we don't know how to fellowship around the table.

00:50:20.380 The table is not designed to keep people who believe in Jesus out of it.

00:50:25.720 The table is designed so that people who believe in Jesus can come and feast together.

00:50:30.260 Now, that sounds like everybody says, oh, yeah, that's right.

00:50:32.520 That's right.

00:50:32.860 But then when it comes to Baptist Presbyterian divides, what do we do?

00:50:37.600 We make the table a place to separate and we haven't shown the world or disciple the

00:50:41.820 world.

00:50:42.740 No, no, no.

00:50:43.340 We have differences.

00:50:44.660 We view something.

00:50:46.080 We have convictions, but we view them differently.

00:50:48.520 But because we are Christians, we can come around at the table.

00:50:52.200 We can come around to the table.

00:50:53.440 And because we don't model the table properly, we have a fraction in the culture and society

00:50:59.520 at large.

00:51:00.740 We haven't figured out how to be unified between Presbyterians and Baptists and church membership.

00:51:05.860 How do we expect to model to the world how to be brothers and sisters in relationship as humanity? 0.98

00:51:12.000 That's ridiculous.

00:51:13.440 And so because we don't understand that, we are perpetuating the very culture that we want to fix. 0.91

00:51:20.480 We're perpetuating a culture that's divided.

00:51:22.420 And so I think once we understand the table and the word and we can get this unification of brothers and sisters across theological tribes, be unified at the table and understand what that means.

00:51:36.860 That's one of the reasons that I absolutely love the CREC, bro.

00:51:40.040 I don't know of another denomination that allows both Presbyterians and Baptists who have very strong convictions to come together in unity in a denomination, let alone at the Lord's table.

00:51:52.420 Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. You really wouldn't. And it gets to this point, Chuck, where, you know, reading Chilton, you read a lot of the biblical theology. And a lot of guys have said this, too. It's not just him. But I think this garden imagery, the temple garden imagery, the rivers flowing out, it's the rivers flowing out that transform the world.

00:52:11.720 but what we have to get right here is that worship is central to all of this so one of the things

00:52:18.600 that gets you know charged against post mill all the time is like oh so tomorrow you want to round

00:52:23.960 up the homos in the street and stone them and tomorrow you want to use basically you just want 0.99

00:52:28.520 to use the government to weaponize your faith and go hold everybody at force to do what you say 0.99

00:52:33.900 and it's not at all it's we're starting with worship we want people to be transformed by

00:52:38.800 the gospel by regeneration the holy spirit is working in and through that to create new people

00:52:44.240 new hearts new minds yeah just i guess if you would just unpack more for me and you really are

00:52:50.500 but it's like why is worship so central and why is it not let's just go hijack the government

00:52:55.380 tomorrow and then and then we'll hold people at force you know part i want to say this first

00:53:00.520 people don't understand that the government has already been hijacked what do you think the

00:53:05.480 resurrection did what what what what do they understand the resurrection to be all authority

00:53:11.100 in heaven and on earth has been given to me the government is already been hijacked it's dead and

00:53:16.520 it's falling and people don't even understand that and so the so that's first the other thing

00:53:23.860 is and people always want to put that theonomist that and in post-millennial say hey you guys are

00:53:29.700 just grasping for power to try and force people to do stuff it's going to happen eventually anyway

00:53:33.700 I don't care whose eschatology you choose.

00:53:36.440 The knee is going to get bent.

00:53:39.240 That's an escapable concept.

00:53:40.660 So I don't like the argument.

00:53:42.620 Whether it happens in time and space over a period of time or completely at one moment,

00:53:48.160 everybody has eschatology that the knees of pagans are going to get bent.

00:53:53.080 It's not like a new idea and concept.

00:53:55.240 We all are expecting it at some point.

00:53:57.540 That's part of what the joy is, is that every king is going to have to bow to Jesus Christ.

00:54:02.540 You just have delayed the process because you don't believe what Jesus did was powerful in the resurrection.

00:54:08.360 I believe that the resurrection actually accomplished something in real time and space.

00:54:13.060 The difference is, is that I think people look at post-millennialists like abolitionists, and they read us the wrong way.

00:54:21.800 We understand when they said to Jesus, Lord, what is the kingdom like?

00:54:27.160 It's like leaven in a loaf of bread.

00:54:29.980 Totally transformative. 1.00

00:54:30.760 And so when people are saying they was like, no, no, no, we are not expecting for some flip switch to flip and overnight we're killing homosexuals. 0.99

00:54:39.900 We're expecting the demise of homosexuality because we know how Jesus makes enemies his friends. 0.99

00:54:46.000 He dies for them. 0.99

00:54:47.660 And so we we go and proclaim this is what I mean by faith and faithfulness.

00:54:52.120 We go and proclaim the gospel that there is a new king in town.

00:54:57.080 Your contract of this world is now done and over with.

00:55:00.500 Jesus has risen, risen from the dead.

00:55:02.460 It is his world.

00:55:03.460 And now he commands all men everywhere to repent and believe that and then come to a

00:55:09.420 better kingdom.

00:55:10.460 So we actually believe right now that the kingdom that we're living in, the world that

00:55:14.920 we're living in is a real kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ that has a trajectory of success

00:55:21.980 coming to it as the message is spread.

00:55:24.040 So let me use this example.

00:55:25.520 Let's say that we went and there's a war right now in Ukraine. 0.57

00:55:29.080 Let's say that Putin takes the capital of Ukraine right now because you got all Ukraine fighting.

00:55:34.380 Everybody's fighting. There's soldiers everywhere in Ukraine fighting.

00:55:37.380 And he takes the capital of Ukraine. He claims Ukraine as his own now and is officially Russia, too.

00:55:44.240 There might be pockets in Ukraine that have not submitted to that or choose still to overthrow that.

00:55:50.820 But the reality of what they're trying to overthrow, they can't.

00:55:55.140 It's done. It's solidified. That has happened.

00:55:57.920 People need to see that as Christ has come and conquered the world, the one that we're

00:56:02.060 living in, he lived in it, he died in it, and he rose from the dead in this world and

00:56:08.320 has now claimed the power of this world.

00:56:11.000 In 1 Corinthians 10 or 15, the enemies of Jesus are now being put underneath his feet.

00:56:18.160 And so we actually believe that's what God is currently doing.

00:56:22.000 And one of the ways that we believe that is saying, you know what?

00:56:25.980 how we operate and love each other

00:56:28.420 in this new world that Jesus has died for

00:56:31.100 and since this is his world

00:56:32.040 is that we follow his law. 0.80

00:56:33.740 And so killing babies is wrong.

00:56:35.460 If you are a pro-life person, 0.96

00:56:37.260 you are a theonomist.

00:56:39.260 If you're a pro-life person,

00:56:40.560 you are post-millennial.

00:56:42.040 You don't have any other options. 0.99

00:56:45.160 Why is it wrong to kill another human being?

00:56:47.540 Why is slavery wrong?

00:56:49.300 Well, because Jesus rose from the dead

00:56:50.920 and he says in his world,

00:56:52.500 that is not okay.

00:56:53.780 You can't do that in the new kingdom.

00:56:55.400 this we always talk about the kingdom coming to earth but this is a new kingdom we are literally

00:57:00.680 living in the kingdom and this is what jesus has commanded all men everywhere to do is repent you

00:57:05.700 can't make that command unless you are king of the world right and so man what what we're operating

00:57:11.620 in doing every day is submitting to that king if there's another king that might be a holdout

00:57:16.540 in one of these fractions of the world we're saying hey do you know that jesus took over the

00:57:20.940 world. Do you know this is his world now? And that he is calling you to submit to him, which is why

00:57:27.660 slavery is wrong, sir, which is why adultery is wrong, sir, which is why homosexuality is wrong, 0.93

00:57:33.720 sir. And we believe that the gospel is going to work its way out. So we don't have a problem 1.00

00:57:38.460 taking time over generations to live faithfully so that the gospel works its way through the loaf

00:57:45.380 so that every nation gets the message

00:57:48.820 that there's a new ruler in town. 0.67

00:57:50.880 So yeah, will homosexuality be illegal? 0.92

00:57:52.840 Absolutely. 0.99

00:57:54.020 It will be because Jesus is king

00:57:55.700 and his message is powerful.

00:57:57.360 It changes the hearts and minds of people.

00:57:59.600 Will people get killed for having abortions at one point?

00:58:02.840 Yes, absolutely, because the gospel is real

00:58:05.540 and God has no problem.

00:58:08.800 I mean, think about this for a second.

00:58:10.140 I know I'm talking about it,

00:58:11.100 but think about this for a second.

00:58:12.840 How long was it before Jesus came to the earth and died?

00:58:17.180 4,000 years, something like that?

00:58:18.700 Yeah.

00:58:19.140 4,500 years, something like that.

00:58:21.000 He has no problem with a 4,500-year plan, okay?

00:58:25.540 1,000 generations, that's a long game.

00:58:28.500 That's right.

00:58:29.380 He has no problem.

00:58:30.920 And we need to, in our microwave generation, be like, you know what?

00:58:35.080 God has no problem.

00:58:35.920 How long does it take for an apple tree to get fruit?

00:58:38.260 It might take some time, right?

00:58:39.940 If, you know, we're so disconnected from the world that we forget that God doesn't have a problem using time to bring forth his glory, his blessing, his reality.

00:58:50.400 And so when the Bible says, when the time had come, Jesus enters the scene, right?

00:58:54.680 And when the time has come, all the world will be filled with the glory of the Lord like the oceans, right?

00:59:00.760 And so that covers the sea.

00:59:01.920 So we got nothing but time.

00:59:04.560 So I don't have, this is why I can be gracious to my Baptist brothers who don't baptize their kids.

00:59:08.520 They got nothing but time to become Presbyterians.

00:59:11.520 Well, it's actually interesting too, because when you look at the time element, you know,

00:59:15.840 in dispensationalism, it's the exact opposite.

00:59:18.160 They're saying we don't have time.

00:59:20.060 And so any efforts you would make end up being like sort of like either drastic or I think

00:59:25.980 that's why they sometimes envision that what we're talking about is, well, since we only

00:59:30.280 have five years left, how are you going to get it all done in five years?

00:59:34.100 And our simple answer is we're not.

00:59:35.800 We have a thousand generations or, you know, uh, whatever's left of that thousand generations

00:59:41.280 to get it done.

00:59:42.560 The, the other thing I want to ask you about, okay, is we've been talking a lot about cultural

00:59:47.560 engagement.

00:59:48.460 You're involved with cross politic.

00:59:50.300 You've been doing stuff with Jason Whitlock.

00:59:52.900 And, um, one of the things that I got to thinking about is, is we've talked about it in the

00:59:56.400 past in reform camps and post mill is no different.

00:59:59.500 We can sort of be in our, our little ghetto where we use our language and we talk our

01:00:03.500 language to each other. And it's kind of becomes to the rest of the world, it becomes Christianese

01:00:07.820 nonsense. I'm convinced we need to really be thinking about how do we communicate, you know, 1.00

01:00:13.480 ethos, pathos, logos, how do we communicate fully post-mill theology to, to the culture that we're

01:00:19.520 in? Man, that's a big question. Here's, here's, here's my, here's been my, we have to not be

01:00:25.720 afraid of sin. We have to believe that being around sinners doesn't make us sinful, but that

01:00:35.420 our Christianity rubs off on them. And part of that is understanding humanity. There's two things

01:00:41.580 there. So I've become more Christian humanist probably in the last six months than I probably

01:00:47.020 ever have before, because I've learned to enjoy the beauty of a human that God has made. Even

01:00:54.520 those that are not Christians. That has become so amazing for me. So now I look at guys like

01:01:00.640 Elon Musk or I look at the people who made Twitter and Facebook and I look at all these

01:01:04.340 people and I'm like, wow, God, I want to revel in his creation that he's given man these kind

01:01:09.720 of minds to make and to gather people and to create tools for us to communicate. Because

01:01:15.780 I'm post-millennial, I see like all this is going to be great for the kingdom, but I'm also seeing

01:01:19.400 the beauty that God has put inside of man. Eternity is put inside of man to fall in love

01:01:26.080 with humanity again and spend time around humans that aren't like me. Right. So part of it is for

01:01:35.400 us to get out of our Christian ghettos physically, not just thinking differently and to say, what's 0.97

01:01:40.260 the language they use? And then think like them. And how do I translate my Christianese into the 0.97

01:01:44.520 secular ease. That's not, that's not, that's not really the key. You really have to, if you're

01:01:50.820 going to garden, you have to go put your hands in the dirt, period. If you want to communicate to

01:01:56.960 people, you're going to have to be around people, be with people. This is what we miss when Jesus

01:02:02.160 is sitting there with the adulterers and the fornicators and with the, the, the, the unrighteous 0.91

01:02:07.280 he's in there with them. And we tend to think, Oh my goodness, if we touch a leper, we're going to 0.98

01:02:13.840 get leprosy. Oh no. Um, but we forget like the gospel is the contagion one, right? That's the

01:02:23.000 thing. Right. And if you are believing the faith, if you're faithful and believing that

01:02:30.000 they should be running from you. Oh man. Like, Hey, Hey, Hey guys, what y'all doing over there?

01:02:35.940 I used to watch my mom and she, she's not postmanial. She's just a Christian who believes

01:02:39.820 the gospel. She used to go over to the drug deal in the corner and talk to him, say, hey, baby,

01:02:44.060 what you doing? What you doing out here? Just sitting there having a normal conversation. Well,

01:02:48.260 I got to make money. I got to do this. It's like, really, do you? You know, there's more than one

01:02:51.300 way to make money. Is this worth your soul? I don't know if I have a, you know, and just sit

01:02:55.400 and just the real, I embrace that because that's my parents. We're missionaries. The real world

01:03:03.200 engagement, looking to be somewhere. And this is why I think if I am politics and Christians,

01:03:08.460 We need to be in it a lot more. That's an easy way in our local communities where we meet people who are not Christians, who are looking to advance a form of human flourishing. Right.

01:03:19.780 And it's like, okay, here's our connection.

01:03:22.360 We're both humans and we both want human flourishing.

01:03:25.860 Oh man, I know the best way we can have human flourishing and willing to go to the table

01:03:33.140 and conversation and drink beer and have coffee and have people over to see what human flourishing

01:03:40.840 looks like in our homes so they can see what human flourishing looks like in the culture.

01:03:44.680 That's what Titus talks about. 0.96

01:03:46.440 The way that we win the world is through our wives beautifying the homes, educating our children to love Jesus.

01:03:54.860 And that shining so far in the world that it shuts their mouths about the testimony of Christianity.

01:04:01.660 And so our homes need to be an open place for people to come.

01:04:06.340 We need to be involved in society where we are currently not, where Christianity currently isn't.

01:04:11.180 And we just need to fall in love with humanity in the same way that Jesus fell in love with humanity, that he was willing to die for it.

01:04:17.340 That needs to be our desire first.

01:04:20.280 So we go hang out with where the sinners are.

01:04:22.320 We go hang out with the pagans.

01:04:23.640 We're not afraid of the sin because we know someone who eats and kills sin and has died for sin.

01:04:29.960 And we don't believe that.

01:04:31.700 We think, oh, if we're around them.

01:04:33.920 And so that's the first thing I think, man. 0.53

01:04:35.560 Like, Eric, that's the if we can get Christians and not be afraid of the sin and then and then just be like, yeah, you know what?

01:04:43.320 I know people who had all kinds of problems, but I know a gospel that transforms human people to act differently.

01:04:50.740 I guess what I was thinking about was the scandal of the gospel, too.

01:04:53.720 We got to embrace that. 0.71

01:04:55.040 Yeah, we got it.

01:04:56.080 We got a the world has a thing right now where they don't believe in forgiveness and forgiveness is a scandal to the world right now.

01:05:03.940 And it's finally made complete sense for me why Paul had to say, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it's the power of God to salvation.

01:05:14.260 Right now, that should ring hard in our domes because the way the world looks at forgiveness and repentance is a scandal.

01:05:24.880 How dare you say that your slave owner and you could live in fellowship and be forgiven?

01:05:32.880 How dare you?

01:05:33.940 how dare you that's a scandal no that's exactly right it um as you're talking about the scandal

01:05:40.880 too yeah it it really made me think of you know just the way that we interact with people

01:05:46.100 um and with ideas and you got into the cultural spaces and one of the things that i don't know

01:05:51.660 if it's just instinct or actually trained to do i don't i don't want to blame it all on my baptist

01:05:56.600 background but it was consistent with my baptist background where it was like that's the dirty and 1.00

01:06:01.100 the unclean. We just kind of stay over here in our Wednesday night Bible studies. And all that 1.00

01:06:06.040 stuff can be helpful and good. But one of the things that I've started to realize, well, two

01:06:09.940 things. Number one is a lot of the ground that we've seated, like going to community town hall

01:06:15.160 meetings, going to political meetings, asking to speak about sphere sovereignty. It's amazing how

01:06:20.220 many times, honestly, they'll be like, yeah, come speak. And you're like, wait, what? We seated this

01:06:25.760 ground for no reason. So that's number, that's number one. But then it gets to my second question,

01:06:31.780 which is what does post-mobile theology have to say to things like wokeness and CRT? You're

01:06:37.260 starting to talk about this with, you know, breeding, I think wokeness and CRT, it's breeding

01:06:43.060 division. I was talking to a black pastor in Alabama two days ago. He said, CRT has mainly

01:06:49.500 been aimed at white people to dupe them, to, to buy into this lie of division. And, and he said,

01:06:55.360 He said, we just don't have enough people who can speak out about it.

01:06:58.940 And I don't know if you'd agree with this or not, but he said, you know, part of the 0.60

01:07:01.980 issue is if you're white, you're like not allowed to speak out against it.

01:07:05.500 And so it's going to take black pastors and some black men to stand up and say, because 0.89

01:07:08.900 to some extent they're allowed to speak in their communities, whatever.

01:07:12.440 But again, back to this question, how does post-mill dominionist theonomy, how does it

01:07:17.080 deal with CRT?

01:07:18.720 Yeah, it goes over its head.

01:07:20.280 It doesn't acknowledge it.

01:07:21.400 So part of part of what critical race theory and intersectionality and wokeness believes is that it's impossible for sins to be forgiven.

01:07:30.800 That's that's that's at the very heart of it.

01:07:32.620 That's what it says.

01:07:33.240 And so you have to go get restitution some other way forever.

01:07:36.620 There has to be a scapegoat.

01:07:37.800 Right.

01:07:38.000 And so it doesn't see a community where the gospel actually restores relationships between people.

01:07:45.000 It doesn't see a community where, let's say, there really was some real sin, some real problems.

01:07:51.400 It doesn't see a community where Paul tells a slave to go back to his master and then tells the master, remember, you have a master that you need.

01:07:59.600 It doesn't have a world where the where those kind of relationships can be worked out.

01:08:04.540 And here's and here's a and here's a.

01:08:06.320 And so this goes back to what I was saying earlier. 0.54

01:08:08.300 The reason that CRT, the reason that wokeness has that world is because the Christian church has proclaimed that world. 0.75

01:08:15.840 It hasn't proclaimed. 0.94

01:08:17.880 Look, what does the Bible say?

01:08:19.000 It says, how can they believe on whom they haven't heard?

01:08:23.220 How can they hear except they have a preacher?

01:08:25.720 And how can they have a preacher except he be sent?

01:08:28.600 What is he sent with?

01:08:30.220 The message of reconciliation.

01:08:33.320 That is not the proclaimed message right now.

01:08:36.160 The preachers have abandoned the message because of the scandal of the gospel.

01:08:41.760 The churches, postmillennialism, in one sense, it's not even just postmillennialism.

01:08:47.000 And post-millennials just believes in the gospel at the end of the day.

01:08:49.740 But it's believes in the gospel all the way through, all the way up and all the way down.

01:08:53.480 And it's believing the restoration of the gospel has taken place.

01:08:57.120 The restoration of man to God has taken place in the person of Jesus.

01:09:00.980 That is not inside of woke theology.

01:09:02.920 That is not inside of intersectionality and CRT.

01:09:07.580 And so what it does is that as you believe that reality, the way that you engage with other people is completely different.

01:09:14.880 And because of I want to make sure that when I'm talking about postmillennialism, when I'm talking about the gospel, I am talking about the enemy underneath all of this, too.

01:09:24.260 I'm talking about God's legal standard, God's law and how we engage with each other.

01:09:28.060 So then now we have a standard on what is justice.

01:09:32.360 Right. So when you have true restoration, we in order to have restoration, we have to say, what were the crimes?

01:09:38.360 What's the punishment? And then how is and then how is it resolved?

01:09:41.420 Well, the crime is that you sinned against the holy God.

01:09:43.800 And how is it resolved?

01:09:44.840 Jesus was punished for your sins.

01:09:46.800 He took your sins and he rose again, burying them, has given you a full family relationship

01:09:52.280 in his resurrection to the father with these other folks too.

01:09:56.660 It's all been restored.

01:09:57.500 There's no more sin between the two of you.

01:09:59.000 You're good.

01:09:59.360 You're good.

01:09:59.940 You're good.

01:10:00.620 And with that reality, he says, and this is how you live together with one another, right?

01:10:06.320 This is how we fix problems.

01:10:07.640 We have a problem in the church.

01:10:08.860 People aren't getting food. 1.00

01:10:10.000 They should be getting food because these women are taking food. 1.00

01:10:12.600 They're just throwing away the feasts. 1.00

01:10:14.140 It's not that we don't have problems, but we know how to fix it.

01:10:16.980 Get some holy man from among you to work this out through the scriptures.

01:10:20.800 So what it does is creates the community, creates the family, creates the structures

01:10:25.880 in a society that has rejected all those things, abdicated all those things.

01:10:30.560 And it starts to model for the world what the gospel looks like in time and space.

01:10:36.440 And we've forgotten that as a church.

01:10:38.520 We've forgotten, this goes back to the table.

01:10:40.180 We've forgotten what unity looks like around a person.

01:10:44.060 We forgot that he invites us to the feast, regardless of our theological differences.

01:10:48.760 The dividing marker isn't your theological tribe.

01:10:52.460 The dividing marker is blood of Christ or no blood of Christ.

01:10:55.640 You got the blood of Christ come into the table.

01:10:58.560 This is what unity looks like.

01:10:59.660 And then as we sit here, let's work through biblically how we love one another.

01:11:04.920 And so post-millennialism is that reality being worked out from the church and the family into society.

01:11:13.180 So that critical race theory dies a death of a thousand cuts of love to each other.

01:11:19.180 You know what I mean?

01:11:20.400 And it doesn't, you know, and so it takes in, Pastor Wilson says this, he's like, love covers or it confronts.

01:11:27.880 It covers or it confronts.

01:11:29.700 And so it either covers a person's sin and says, you know what, brother, I know you didn't mean it like that.

01:11:34.760 And even if you did, I forgive you.

01:11:36.340 I love you.

01:11:36.760 We're not even going to deal with it.

01:11:37.860 Or it says, you know what?

01:11:38.920 That's a problem.

01:11:40.020 Let me go to my brother.

01:11:41.100 Matthew 18.

01:11:41.860 Hey, man, we got a problem.

01:11:43.580 I love you to death, but this is an issue between us.

01:11:45.760 Let's work it out.

01:11:46.800 And it does it within the authorities that are responsible for taking care of the problem.

01:11:52.780 It doesn't do.

01:11:54.080 It puts all those things right.

01:11:55.300 Those fear of sovereignty that we were talking about.

01:11:57.400 It puts it right and say, okay, who is the person I offended?

01:12:01.020 I go to that person.

01:12:02.420 If it's a civil issue, okay, we deal with it there.

01:12:04.400 But it keeps things in place where the civil government isn't managing all the problems with everybody everywhere.

01:12:10.960 It isn't Machiavellian where we say all the power needs to be central in one place.

01:12:15.020 No, Postmillennium splits that power and says there's a real government of the family.

01:12:18.900 There's a real government of the church, a real government of the individual, a real government of the civil magistrate.

01:12:25.500 Where is the offense at?

01:12:26.900 And then let's deal with that offense in that government and then let's keep moving.

01:12:31.660 And so it really separates the powers so that the government, the civil magistrate, isn't worried about your health, welfare, isn't worried about your job issues, isn't worried about economics.

01:12:43.440 It isn't worried about you can't get hired.

01:12:45.920 That's none of his business.

01:12:47.080 It's just none of his business.

01:12:48.040 That's between the government of the families, the government of the church, the government of the self.

01:12:53.420 Right.

01:12:53.980 That's where that stuff gets worked out.

01:12:55.820 And the government says, unless there was a civil crime that was done to someone, I don't have no duties in there.

01:13:00.840 So it works out the realities of the new kingdom internally from the ground up.

01:13:06.060 That's probably the best way to say it.

01:13:07.440 I said that took so long to say that.

01:13:10.160 That's OK.

01:13:10.880 I love it.

01:13:11.900 OK, so I want to I've got, let's see, three questions, I guess, in my head.

01:13:15.980 I got two quick reacts and then I got a question to finish on.

01:13:19.700 So the quick reacts are cultural.

01:13:21.540 I want to see how good your cross politic game is today.

01:13:24.640 We'll see how on top of things you are.

01:13:26.780 So number one, this is old news, but I want to get your post-mill theonomistic take on this.

01:13:32.760 Okay.

01:13:33.480 Did Will Smith really slap Chris Rock and was it real? 1.00

01:13:37.820 And what should a post-mill Christian think about this? 1.00

01:13:40.340 Yeah, that's a good question. 1.00

01:13:42.000 So yes, it was a real smack.

01:13:43.660 He really didn't hit him and it was real. 0.69

01:13:45.760 And a post-mill Christian says, okay, what does God's law require when you destroy somebody's name, somebody's likeness? 0.95

01:13:52.640 How do you make it right? 0.89

01:13:53.900 How do you fix it?

01:13:54.920 And it also does something else.

01:13:56.720 It says Will Smith can be restored.

01:13:58.400 He can be forgiven.

01:13:59.700 He can be restored.

01:14:00.820 And we can move on past this without canceling him.

01:14:03.780 That's not what the gospel does.

01:14:05.160 It actually brings people back into fellowship after sin and it restores that.

01:14:10.340 And it also says, hey, brother, I know that you smacked me.

01:14:14.040 Is there something else going on in your family we need to be worrying about?

01:14:16.620 It cares about that person as well.

01:14:18.680 So those are the quick take on all that.

01:14:23.340 That's beautiful.

01:14:24.180 Okay, I got another quick take.

01:14:25.980 So we've watched Cam Newton get eviscerated for some comments. 1.00

01:14:30.860 Women, and certain kinds of women. 0.91

01:14:32.280 I won't use the word that he used. 0.99

01:14:33.820 You can look that up if you're interested. 1.00

01:14:36.360 But not nice women, okay? 0.98

01:14:38.620 We're talking about not nice women. 0.57

01:14:40.060 And Cam said some sort of patriarchal things about women.

01:14:44.720 I want to get your take on what he said.

01:14:47.240 And if you were alongside Cam, like you had his ear, what would you tell him? 0.95

01:14:52.120 Shut up first. 0.97

01:14:53.100 Like, don't talk. 0.99

01:14:54.140 That'd be the first thing I'd tell Cam Newton to do.

01:14:56.200 Like, you are not the person.

01:14:59.680 Just stop talking.

01:15:00.600 You go get hot playing football.

01:15:03.080 Go win some championships.

01:15:04.820 Go get married. 0.99

01:15:06.040 Have some kids and go baptize them.

01:15:07.720 That's what I'd tell Cam if I was sitting right next to him.

01:15:11.040 Yeah, because I think Greg Olson, right, was his teammate for a long time.

01:15:15.900 And Greg said he would always give him grief because Cam's got like four kids

01:15:18.900 with, I think, his girlfriend, not married.

01:15:22.260 So Greg would always give him a hard time about that.

01:15:24.620 Get married.

01:15:25.740 Go devote yourself.

01:15:27.480 Yeah, that's right.

01:15:28.980 But I do want to, there's a couple of things. 0.53

01:15:30.860 So a lot of people criticize Cam because of his hypocrisy.

01:15:33.860 I thought that was worth criticizing.

01:15:35.360 There's two things that I thought was really interesting. 1.00

01:15:37.000 Cam Newton compared these hot chicks, boss chicks,

01:15:43.520 to his mom and a woman that he wants to marry, a valuable woman.

01:15:48.180 He made a comparison. People forget that that's what he was doing. He wasn't just talking about women in general. He was talking about two different types of women. He was talking about these boss chicks who really want to be men and these other women who know what a woman is, who knows what a man is and wants to submit to a man.

01:16:04.040 what was interesting about the conversation wasn't cam newton it was what wasn't allowed to be said 0.96

01:16:10.880 if it was cam newton or not cam newton was just the hypocritical face that said something that

01:16:15.100 was close to truth right and it was interesting what wasn't allowed to be said about defining 0.67

01:16:20.400 what a woman was and all i could think about was we are not allowed in this current state

01:16:25.140 to talk about the metaphysical realities of our of humans men and women both human right but we

01:16:32.460 can't talk about it. We have removed the ontological realities and says, if there's anything that's

01:16:37.700 economically different about men and women, then therefore they're not human. That is what was

01:16:42.020 scary about the Cam Newton thing is that we are, we tend to all be Ketanji Brown Jackson and don't

01:16:49.700 know what a man and woman is. And it was really interesting watching Christians criticize Cam 0.86

01:16:54.980 and still couldn't define what a woman was. And so I could talk about a Cam Newton thing pretty 0.87

01:17:00.580 much all day so i'll shut up on that but yeah basically cam newton uh it's not a spokesperson

01:17:05.880 you want to have but what he said wasn't necessarily wrong it was just that he wasn't

01:17:10.200 allowed to make the comparison period uh last question though i have is as you look at this

01:17:14.640 cultural moment and you're looking at guys in our camp you're looking at post mill guys

01:17:18.920 or people who are at least interested in this yeah you know maybe i'm a disby but i want to

01:17:23.300 see dominion happen whatever great but for this camp how do we take advantage of this cultural

01:17:29.000 moment? Because I think, you know, like reading Doug Wilson, for example, for a long time, I was

01:17:34.020 like, you could kind of see for a long, long years where it's like they were saying things and people

01:17:38.180 were kind of listening and there was some, you know, momentum, but it seems like now there is

01:17:43.880 a real moment where people's, a greater number of people's eyes are open. So I want to hear if you

01:17:50.160 agree with that. And then what do we do? What can we do to capitalize on this cultural moment?

01:17:55.280 And I might be so simple, but I think the first thing I want to do is take joyful responsibility for the mess.

01:18:03.140 That's the first thing. When we are looking at our culture, I think it's easy for us to look at it, especially people in our camp or people outside of our camp.

01:18:10.780 We'll look at this culture and we'll say those people are a mess. Oh, my goodness. Those folks right there.

01:18:16.480 Oh, I don't think that we should do that. I think we should say, oh, my goodness, we are a mess.

01:18:22.840 And Lord, I will take joyful responsibility for this mess. That needs to be our context first, because responsibility and leadership comes to those or leadership comes to those who take responsibility for it.

01:18:36.740 Right. And so we want to take responsibility for it because we want to be able to fix the problem.

01:18:40.400 That's first. The second thing I keep saying this and maybe I haven't said it well enough.

01:18:44.860 I'll try and say it again. We need to believe the promises of God. We need to be faithful and have

01:18:51.800 faith in what God said is true. And that has an implication all the way down and all the way up.

01:18:58.700 There are promises that God has given to us and to our children in the word of God.

01:19:03.440 And we need to believe those and we need to hold to those and we need to baptize our children and

01:19:08.860 act like they're baptized and act like they live in the kingdom of God the same way they live in

01:19:12.880 the kingdom of America and treat them like citizens of the kingdom and expect them to

01:19:17.520 act like citizens of the kingdom and teach them their lineage of the kingdom, that they

01:19:22.240 are connected to Adam, that they are connected to Abraham, that they're connected to Jacob,

01:19:26.100 that they're connected to Jesus.

01:19:27.540 They're connected to Paul and uncle Paul is awesome.

01:19:30.220 And they're connected to Gary DeMar and they have a lovely lineage of covenant of men who

01:19:35.060 have been faithful and have not been faithful and have repented when they weren't faithful.

01:19:39.280 and this is what it looks like for you son in the future here goes your dragons here's the things

01:19:45.860 that you're going to kill and i'm going to build the weapons for you now and teach you how to use

01:19:51.460 them so that you know how to kill those kind of dragons believing the promises of god and having 0.97

01:19:57.340 faith does something it doesn't just assent to something in our mind you do something when when

01:20:04.060 you believe Jesus is king of the world and that this is his world and that your job is to get

01:20:10.440 busy being faithful in it, you go find around you, well, where am I not being faithful? In my home to

01:20:16.020 my wife? Do I have the kind of joyful that reflects the Trinity, right? Am I a joyful father? Do I

01:20:24.600 take pride in the loving of my wife and the loving in my children and the joy that naturally

01:20:30.380 reciprocates to their home that nobody ever sees. If once we cultivate that, then it's game over.

01:20:37.260 Our problem is what we're exporting, not what we're importing.

01:20:44.120 We haven't cultivated the joy of the Trinity in our home. And the whole purpose of mankind and

01:20:52.080 whole purpose of the world is to reflect the joyfulness of the Trinity and is to grow up

01:20:58.320 to the maturity of that joyfulness of the trinity and the place that that's modeled first is in the

01:21:03.580 home and so we need to cultivate and govern that sphere first really really well really really well

01:21:12.420 and until you get that done don't worry about nothing else i i think we might have talked about

01:21:17.760 this and then i'll end with this we talked about this i really love the example in um the first

01:21:23.100 Zorro. And as he's Zorro's learning to, to engage, he wants to get to the outside world where the guy

01:21:29.860 who killed his brother, you know, he wants to get to him, but there's this training area that was 0.50

01:21:34.180 made for him by the old Zorro with three or four different circles. And he puts them in the small 0.95

01:21:39.120 little circle in the middle. And he tells him, he's like, Hey man, this guy that you want to get

01:21:44.260 to, he's six circles out. You're not ready for that yet. You can't engage that yet. Cause you

01:21:49.260 don't have the training that you need to deal with him. This little small circle, that's the

01:21:54.140 circle that you work. You work that circle until you perfect that circle. And then after you

01:21:59.520 perfect that circle, you expand it to a bigger circle. Other challenges, you work that circle.

01:22:05.580 And then after you work that circle and you perfect that one, you move out a little further.

01:22:09.060 And that's the post-meal world, right? It's smart. It starts here and it builds out over and over as

01:22:16.020 you get better and perfected until the whole world is a circle, right? And then you're in it.

01:22:21.760 And then you get other enemies outside there that you get to kill, right? And you, because

01:22:25.740 you've been training, destroying little things, destroying tyrants in your home, right? Teaching

01:22:30.600 your kids how to do it. Hey man, we take that kind of stuff to Jesus, right? That's how you kill CRT.

01:22:35.680 You learn, you teach your kids to take sins to Jesus. They're brotherly offenses between brothers

01:22:41.260 and sisters and brothers and brothers, take it to Jesus, squash it, let him kill it and 0.96

01:22:45.960 then forgive each other and move on. 0.99

01:22:47.640 Right.

01:22:48.200 And so that is, that's how we need to engage.

01:22:51.860 And even if you're not post-millennial, that is nothing but the gospel itself.

01:22:56.420 You might not hold to my eschatology, but if you don't do that, applying the gospel

01:23:01.600 in your home.

01:23:03.020 And so whether you want to claim post-millennialism or not, I just need you to obey the gospel.

01:23:07.580 I need you to submit to the gospel and have faith that the gospel is going to work its

01:23:13.520 way out through humans as we submit to the Lord, man. That's awesome. Yeah. Some really good

01:23:18.340 thoughts. Well, Chuck, I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Thanks for giving us your time

01:23:23.620 and, uh, we will have to do it again sometime, bro. I can't tell you it's a privilege to be

01:23:28.100 here. I enjoy you and I appreciate you so much, man. So I, it makes me nervous coming out here.

01:23:33.060 be honest with you makes me nervous that's awesome that means you care that's what they

01:23:39.220 always told me if you're nervous that means you care i must care a whole lot then that's great

01:23:44.820 i appreciate brother thank you yeah yeah well thanks again for listening to this episode of

01:23:50.340 the king's hall podcast we are uh we want to thank chocolate knox for being generous with his time

01:23:55.140 and coming on and teaching us all and giving us so much to think about and uh we'd encourage you

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The King's Hall - April 29, 2022

Optimistic Eschatology with Chocolate Knox

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