The King's Hall - Stability & Sobriety

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Brian here with a big announcement from New Christendom Press.

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00:00:43.600 In the mid-1800s, mines were being opened all over the coal-rich hills of Pennsylvania.

00:00:49.920 The demand for coal power from the East Coast was ever-growing.

00:00:53.320 These mines built towns all through this coal region.

00:00:57.020 Centralia, Pennsylvania, was one such small town.

00:01:00.580 Things had changed there in the hundred years since the first coal mine had opened.

00:01:04.660 In the 1960s, there were about 1,200 people that lived there.

00:01:07.980 They had shops and a good local economy,

00:01:10.100 and had left the rough past behind that was so common amongst small mining towns.

00:01:14.740 Back then, the area was so rich in coal that some of the coal came near to the surface.

00:01:21.200 Ironically, it was the city council that ended up making the decision

00:01:24.680 that would cause the town of Centralia to become a ghost town.

00:01:29.760 The city council proposed a cleanup of the town landfill

00:01:33.100 in time for the Memorial Day festivities.

00:01:36.480 Their method of cleaning up the landfill was to burn it in big piles of trash.

00:01:42.180 Unknowingly, the landfill sat right on top of a coal seam

00:01:46.140 that was connected to 25 million tons of underground coal.

00:01:53.160 The fire spread into the ground, into the mine tunnels, and all through the city.

00:01:59.100 In spite of their best efforts, the fire has never been extinguished.

00:02:03.760 Over time, the temperatures of the ground grew.

00:02:06.240 It started with abnormally warm winter temperatures.

00:02:09.540 Residents didn't have to shovel their sidewalks.

00:02:11.840 They were even able to grow tomatoes in the late winter.

00:02:14.640 Then it killed the trees and the plant life.

00:02:17.860 Smoke began seeping into basements and toxic fumes steamed out of the ground.

00:02:22.380 The heat grew so intense, some parts of the town reached 900 degrees.

00:02:26.940 That fire is still burning underground and will burn for the next 250 years.

00:02:34.020 The King's Hall podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world.

00:02:44.380 Well, that Centralia mine fire basically made the city of Centralia a ghost town, right?

00:02:51.560 It went from over a thousand residents to a handful now living in that region today, almost swallowed up some of the citizens, you know, almost miraculously.

00:03:00.540 Nobody's been killed by it that we know of, at least.

00:03:03.460 I guess if some hobo wandered in and fell through a hole, we probably wouldn't be aware of it.

00:03:08.300 So why do we tell that story at the beginning of this episode?

00:03:11.400 Well, last week we looked at one of the shanty towns that we're going to need to clear from our job site if we're going to put up this great cathedral of Christendom.

00:03:21.620 And that shanty town last week that we covered was revivalism and decisionism, this culture of revivalism and decisionism, particularly that grew up over the last 200 years or so out of the second great awakening.

00:03:35.700 It's flourished in America, and it has been highly informative of much of the megachurch

00:03:41.560 culture, big, fast, and famous culture, much of the rot that has gone through the remnants

00:03:48.400 of the old Christendom.

00:03:49.660 The picture in my mind, as I'm thinking about what's happened to Christianity over the last

00:03:56.760 few centuries, is kind of like that Centralia mine fire, because we had this great, glorious

00:04:03.080 Western civilization that was really built by Christians doing Christian things, by Christians

00:04:09.500 doing Christian things. Some of the greatest art, music, and civilization that's ever been produced

00:04:14.140 in the history of mankind was produced by this old Christendom. But then, you know, many different

00:04:20.180 seams of coal under the ground, it seems like, caught fire and slowly burned out the foundations

00:04:26.780 underneath and crumbled from the ground down, really, that old Christendom. And so,

00:04:33.080 Today, as we think through our building project, we're not just asking where did revivalism

00:04:40.620 and decisionism go wrong, but what we'd like to do now is sort of counterpoint that and

00:04:46.100 say, well, contra revivalism and decisionism, what would we build?

00:04:52.840 Let's say we've cleared that shantytown out of the way of revivalism and decisionism.

00:04:57.440 What would we do differently today?

00:05:00.060 What are we going to build in its place?

00:05:01.360 and and so today we'll we'll organize this conversation around three fairly long-winded

00:05:08.220 sentences because i wrote them so they're fairly long do they have lots of commas just like 15 or

00:05:13.400 16 commas a couple m dashes semicolons semicolons they're not that long act they're not like paul

00:05:19.620 the apostle semicolon semicolons not semicolon semi-hemidemic waver you know what read your

00:05:27.580 sentence. Okay. I'll read all three of them and then we'll back up and go through each one of

00:05:32.380 them and unpack it and talk it through. So the first heading that we'll discuss today is that

00:05:38.700 where revivalism and decisionism produce unstable and emotionalistic disciples, the new Christendom

00:05:46.320 will be marked by men and women who are sober minded and stable. So we're going to talk about

00:05:52.240 some of the emotionalism of that model, why it needs to go and what ought to replace it.

00:05:57.580 Number two, where revivalism and decisionism produce a culture of apocalyptic thinking

00:06:02.960 and cultural decline, the new Christendom will be built on 40,000-year thinking and conquest

00:06:10.180 thinking. And then finally, where revivalism and decisionism produce a culture of restorationism

00:06:17.740 and novelty, the new Christendom will be marked by covenantal thinking and historically rooted

00:06:24.540 Catholicity. And so we're going to talk about the emotionalism of revivalism and what should

00:06:30.480 replace it. We're going to talk about the apocalyptic cultural decline narrative of

00:06:35.600 revivalism and what ought to replace it. And then we'll talk about the restorationism and novelty

00:06:41.480 and what ought to replace it. Let's start with that heading concerning instability and

00:06:47.720 emotionalism. Revivalism has tended to make an intense and emotional fervor sort of the default

00:06:56.960 vision for spiritual health, right? And we talked about this last week where the goals and the

00:07:03.240 setting for much of the revivalism of the second great awakening was camp meetings or church

00:07:08.080 meetings, community meetings that would be self-consciously aimed at whipping up the audience

00:07:13.620 into a fervor, right? An emotional fervor or an emotional anxiety, like deep wells of anxiety

00:07:20.540 into which they would offer this decisionistic gospel presentation as the answer. So maybe we

00:07:30.400 should start with this question, guys. How has revivalism promoted emotional instability? Where

00:07:37.400 have you seen this? And what has been the result of this? Maybe so that as we're saying what we

00:07:43.000 should build instead, we can kind of start with some of the bad things we don't want to see.

00:07:47.700 Yeah. You know, I was thinking about this question reading through the New Testament,

00:07:51.660 particularly the pastoral epistles. And Paul actually talks a lot about this with Timothy,

00:07:56.380 with a young man, you know, how to be stable. You don't want to be shifting on sand. You don't

00:08:01.700 want to be tossed to and fro by the waves. And one of the things that he always talks about is

00:08:05.720 doctrine, right? There's a doctrine that leads to godliness. There's a doctrine that produces,

00:08:10.640 And the word Paul uses over and over, in English at least, is soundness or health.

00:08:15.960 And so for the young man, especially young men can be tumultuous, right?

00:08:20.560 And a lot of young people tend to be given, I think, to the revivalism and the fervor of that.

00:08:25.840 Instead of that, we're really looking for doctrinal foundations.

00:08:30.240 So I think that's somewhere near the heart of the issue is being doctrinally rooted and grounded.

00:08:35.120 One of the things as I, in my own personal life, as I moved away from revivalism and

00:08:39.680 sort of the emotionalistic experiences we talked about last week, it really was being,

00:08:44.080 okay, now we're going to be more grounded in historical, reformed, Calvinistic thought.

00:08:49.220 It's less and less about your personal experience.

00:08:52.100 And then it's more and more about solid teaching.

00:08:56.360 So Dan, I know you're a pastor.

00:08:57.740 You do a lot of teaching in the church along with Brian.

00:09:01.160 Would you agree with that?

00:09:02.380 And have you seen that bare fruit in the life of the body as you're leaning more into sound teaching?

00:09:32.380 businesses thrive. So if you're a Christian business owner who wants to reach thousands

00:09:35.980 of like-minded people and grow your company, we'd love to partner with you. Email us at

00:09:40.540 advertising at newchristendompress.com. I just want to say both of you sound really stodgy

00:09:50.880 and boring and dry. What? Your long sentences with big words, man, snooze fest. I thought 0.59

00:09:58.160 you're like a twitter star these don't you have to be like pithy and punchy no no here so the

00:10:03.860 history actually history is a you got something you want to tell me i i do dan award you no points

00:10:10.140 and may god have mercy on your soul yeah may god have mercy on my soul actually i think that's

00:10:14.680 actually what you were saying to us no here's the thing you're you're right historic rootedness

00:10:21.160 does provide like a ballast in a ship prevents it from swaying too much one direction or another

00:10:26.140 Or like, I've heard the illustration that this emotionalism produces men that are like

00:10:33.460 drunk dudes riding a horse.

00:10:35.420 You know, they're just like swing from one side to the next.

00:10:38.480 But what it's done personally to me, and it's, we'll talk about assurance, I'm sure, throughout

00:10:43.900 this whole thing, assurance of salvation, you're standing in Christ, things like that.

00:10:49.000 Is that if, growing up, I was instructed, you know, you're supposed to have these experiences.

00:10:54.900 how are you feeling? How are you doing with your relationship with God?

00:11:00.120 Expecting some sort of like miracle to happen. Yeah.

00:11:02.860 When I sit down and read the Bible in the morning in my quiet time, I'm like, boy,

00:11:06.980 I'm, I'm in Leviticus in my Bible reading plan and I'm not feeling it this

00:11:12.200 morning. What's wrong. I must not be right. Yeah. God, what is going on?

00:11:16.880 What am I doing? Why are you far from me?

00:11:19.460 I start sounding like David in one of the Psalms, you know, that's like,

00:11:23.020 don't depart from me. I'm like, no, dude, you're just, you need to tell your emotions,

00:11:28.160 you know, to obey your knowledge and to obey your doctrine. You need to have your emotions

00:11:36.040 bridled. And so what it really did to me, and I know what the fruit that is produced in other

00:11:42.440 people that I've pastored is that the expectations aren't on the emotional experience.

00:11:49.420 The expectations aren't on yourself.

00:11:51.520 You're not self-focused when you're doing things like reading the scriptures because

00:11:56.260 they're not primarily about you.

00:11:59.140 You're not reading yourself into the story all the time, right?

00:12:02.520 It's God declaring in his word who he is and what he's like and what he's done and what

00:12:08.200 he'll do and things like that.

00:12:10.020 And so it's really given me a better grounding or a rootedness to provide stability.

00:12:15.960 And I know, you know, like you said, it's done that for you as well. The historically rooted portion of it, I think is really important because when you, when you look with humility at the past, assuming that, you know, people in the past weren't just dirt munchers, you know, that they actually built some of the most amazing buildings, wrote some of the most amazing works of literature, performed some of the most beautiful music.

00:12:41.440 You can look back at them who've thought great thoughts that have been around for hundreds of years that have proven themselves.

00:12:48.000 And you look to those men and think, okay, what great thoughts have these men thought?

00:12:52.660 What did they think about the scriptures?

00:12:54.800 What is my inheritance of the faith?

00:12:57.260 What are my spiritual fathers and mothers thinking in the past?

00:13:03.960 And have produced the fruit that we've seen over a few hundred years.

00:13:07.660 and that's why we're really skeptical of anything that's modern

00:13:10.720 is because the fruit is bad.

00:13:13.080 And so that's what I would say as far as the sorts of changes

00:13:17.060 that have happened to me personally

00:13:18.940 and the teachings that have produced fruit in the church.

00:13:22.460 Yeah, I think one of the other things, Dan,

00:13:23.940 as you were talking about that, that really came to mind,

00:13:25.680 I was listening to a podcast the other day with Arnold Schwarzenegger,

00:13:29.420 and we'll need some sound effects on that one, Brian.

00:13:32.220 Wow.

00:13:32.660 Absolutely, yeah.

00:13:33.520 This is me, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

00:13:35.320 I'm the Schwarzenegger.

00:13:36.140 Were you being serious?

00:13:36.960 It was actually really good

00:13:39.840 So one of the things he talked about

00:13:41.720 By the way, why is it

00:13:43.640 Everybody can do an Arnold Schwarzenegger

00:13:45.680 Run

00:13:46.280 Go

00:13:48.680 Get to the chopper

00:13:50.620 Impression, but he can't say California

00:13:52.960 Yeah, it's weird

00:13:54.340 Anyway, sorry, continue

00:13:55.480 Yeah, that's a good question

00:13:56.620 We'll have to see if we can reach out to him

00:13:58.500 Next episode

00:13:59.460 Arnold will have him on

00:14:01.300 We'll get some sound design for that one

00:14:05.160 Yeah, there you go

00:14:06.020 So, yeah, one of the things he was talking about, though, in the podcast was the guy

00:14:11.220 asked him, he said, you know, I don't know how how old he is now, 70s, something like

00:14:15.640 that.

00:14:16.400 He's getting up there, but he's still working out universe.

00:14:18.980 Yeah, he's still working out, works out every day.

00:14:21.200 And the guy asked him, he said, why do you work out every day?

00:14:23.580 And he said, because I did yesterday and the day before.

00:14:26.780 And I did that every day for the last 30 years.

00:14:28.780 That's what I do.

00:14:29.480 That's my routine.

00:14:30.900 And you'll hear this a lot in the fitness communities.

00:14:33.160 like a lot of young guys a lot of guys who aren't trained they want to rely on motivation

00:14:39.160 am i motivated today to go to the gym and the guys who are really good they're at the top of

00:14:44.860 their game physically they will all say it's not about motivation it's about discipline

00:14:49.540 it's about self-control it doesn't matter if you feel like going to the gym it's almost like

00:14:54.840 neverland or like peter pan like find your happy thought yeah just hold it hold that happy thought

00:14:59.740 in your mind. Yeah, that's right. And then you work. No, that's, that's not how it works.

00:15:03.800 And that's the reality. Um, we, we mentioned the book desiring God, but you know, again,

00:15:08.260 that, that focus on your religious experience being like kind of the grounding for how you're

00:15:13.020 doing. And the reality is as, as we grow up and as we become men, I mean, what do I know I do to

00:15:19.440 my boys? What do we say all the time? We say, you know, they'll say, but dad, I don't feel like it.

00:15:23.860 And I look at him and I said, it absolutely doesn't matter. It's our duty and we're going

00:15:26.600 to do it. Yeah. And we're going to pray for strength and we're going to do it again, back

00:15:30.380 to this principle of maturity means discipline, not necessarily relying on how you feel in the

00:15:34.900 moment. Yeah. Revivalism has produced emotional instability in the sense that the very environment

00:15:43.040 and call to action that you're continually hearing is like, you know, get to the next level with God,

00:15:48.660 recommit to God, get, you know, you're not zealous enough. I think this is even the great

00:15:53.960 grandfather of things like radical David Platt and some of this stuff where it's like you're the

00:15:59.200 real Christians are you know overseas missionaries and they're continually like when they when they

00:16:04.840 worship God they're raising their hands and they're swaying with the music because they're

00:16:08.900 just overwhelmed with emotional response to God and spiritual fervor and all that sort of thing

00:16:14.420 but the the reality is God hasn't actually made human beings to work like that right like God

00:16:20.540 hasn't actually made people to live there for very long. And even if you think about it,

00:16:28.540 if you make that the standard, then you will be tempted to continually try to create that.

00:16:35.960 Or if you can't create it and you know in the culture of whatever group of people you're in,

00:16:40.880 if you're in group, your tribe is like, well, all of the greatest among us are, you know,

00:16:46.760 they're continually weeping during worship or they're continually, you know, in their quiet

00:16:50.100 time they're having visions and prophecies and etc what are you going to be tempted to do yeah

00:16:55.520 make stuff up pretend yeah on a show yeah you're absolutely right i think one of the books that i

00:17:02.360 read on this years ago it kind of brings these you know revivalistic culture versus whatever

00:17:07.520 we're talking about here it's the collision of these two cultures it's a short book but

00:17:12.840 definitely recommend it was kevin de young and it was called just do something so this especially

00:17:17.920 comes up with the will of god stuff book and um so kevin was talking about all these kids i think

00:17:22.920 he was near michigan state at the time all these kids that would come to church and they're like

00:17:26.760 what's the will of god for my life and he says you know they're looking for a liver shiver they're

00:17:32.440 looking for this experience they open the bible a calling like a deep calling yeah god i've been

00:17:37.900 having dreams a still small whisper i turned to esther and it said for such a time as this

00:17:43.160 and i knew that i was to dump i need to go and i need to dump her yeah so in in the book he

00:17:51.100 compares that to kind of the traditional reformed view of like how do you make a decision but again

00:17:57.080 it's really this revivalistic versus stable reformed historical covenantal view of life

00:18:01.920 coming together one of the things he points out is he compares those young people doing that

00:18:06.060 to his grandfather and he's you know dutch reform people in michigan he said look they literally

00:18:12.080 they were like well where can i get a job and so that's where i'm going to work

00:18:15.700 there was not this agonizing over what is my emotional destiny yeah what's my destiny

00:18:21.600 they were like well this woman was a friend of mine and she wasn't dating anyone so i dated her

00:18:28.700 and i liked her so i married her and that was it and that was it and what you find is that was

00:18:34.200 actually far more stable yeah though less emotionally exhilarating so getting really

00:18:39.340 practical. What we're talking about over against revivalistic emotional instability is that

00:18:45.560 a true Christendom that's durable and lasting is going to, like we've been saying the whole time,

00:18:50.220 it's going to be built on men and women who are mastered by the spirit of God, who are just

00:18:55.240 godly Christians living as godly Christians in the vocations and duties that God has given them.

00:19:02.620 And so what you're describing is actually, I think, really practically helpful is that when

00:19:07.080 you're thinking about, okay, how can I, how can I walk in alignment with this? And basically what

00:19:12.400 you're describing is saying, well, you start with your duties. You start with your duties from how

00:19:17.540 God created you. Yeah. Start with general principles. Yeah. This is actually an old

00:19:21.600 Martin Lloyd Jones. He would always say this as a doctor, start with the general. Okay. I know as a

00:19:26.700 man, I'm called to do X, Y, and Z in scripture. That much is clear, right? Cause we always want

00:19:32.080 going to start with the like hyper specific. Yeah. Does, what is the will of God to be in the

00:19:36.680 military or in a special branch of the military? Yeah. Or should I take the, take the job with

00:19:42.400 Amazon or should I, you know, go be a grocery clerk or. Yeah. And ultimately the things that

00:19:47.040 God has made clear is right. As a man, we talk about it all the time, but you're to be a provider

00:19:52.840 and a protector. Can you do that? Wherever, you know, what does God say? You know, whatever your

00:19:56.940 hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Yeah. So can you find a job and can you do that job

00:20:02.760 with all your might? That's the question. Yeah. And will this job provide for your duties for you

00:20:07.540 to fulfill your duties? If so, well then great. Start there and maybe you'll find something better

00:20:13.720 and maybe you'll plan, you'll think strategically and you'll get the next thing. But so much of our

00:20:18.720 Christian culture is rooted in this kind of mystical spiritual emotionalism where it uses

00:20:23.640 your emotions as sort of like the weather vane that point you. And the problem with that is that

00:20:29.860 that's not what God designed our emotions to be and do. Well, you know, it's interesting because

00:20:35.680 we've said before that culture, the stream flows out of the church, right? And you can tell

00:20:41.900 downstream, even in the world, the way that they act, what's coming out of the pulpits. And so it

00:20:46.940 should be of no surprise to us that within the megachurch or the mainstream Christianity

00:20:53.060 sort of culture that you see similarities with the secular world in which they will

00:20:59.820 try to have some sort of experience to bring up feelings of virtue or of purity.

00:21:08.680 And you see these overt displays, whether it's on social media or in person with, I

00:21:15.220 I don't know, say like COVID and wearing a mask or having Ukraine and the Ukraine flag in your social media page or something like that.

00:21:25.860 And so you can see all these virtues signaling throughout all of the culture because of the same sorts of things that the church has been discipling people over a long time.

00:21:36.060 is instead of doing something productive in your duties,

00:21:39.400 is that you're always chasing the next emotional high

00:21:42.600 to feel like you're doing something for the greater good.

00:21:45.860 And so you can even see that seeping into the church culture today.

00:21:49.320 And they are forgetting their duties.

00:21:51.040 And so that's why they swing wildly from one thing to the next.

00:21:54.460 I was going to say, I think another fundamental principle

00:21:56.600 that I would kind of use to underpin all of this

00:21:58.920 is Matthew 28, right, in the Great Commission.

00:22:02.900 We want to teach them all that Jesus commanded.

00:22:06.060 And I had an Old Testament professor say this and he said, no, pause, don't just read over that, but pause and think about this for a minute.

00:22:11.400 How long would it take you to teach someone and to obey it all that Jesus commanded?

00:22:18.440 We're talking about lifetime work, right?

00:22:20.880 You're talking about stuff that's going to take a lifetime.

00:22:23.380 So then I want to apply that, Dan, to this situation on politics.

00:22:27.240 It's really easy to slap a Ukraine or France or whatever the country of the moment is, slap a profile, you know, a little image on there.

00:22:35.880 I support the current I support whatever the current thing is but you know what's really hard

00:22:40.000 is to like read Samuel Rutherford on politics government king and the law of God that's you

00:22:46.040 know that is going to take a long time you're not going to arrive at a political position overnight

00:22:50.140 but I think where we are culturally is we have people who've been catechized by the culture

00:22:55.100 like Pavlov's dog you just shake the bell and they're like okay we'll do whatever they just

00:22:59.160 told us to respond to and what we're actually saying is we want to be guided by principle not

00:23:03.900 emotion fundamentally um i would say that emotions are as check engine lights indicators on the dash

00:23:12.300 they're helpful but they're not good when they're a compass yeah they're not good when they're the

00:23:16.920 directions yeah and so you don't want to steer your life based on your emotions but again it

00:23:21.960 gets back to this whole thing of if we want to dig into subjects all the world for christ you

00:23:28.640 want to dig into these subjects political and otherwise it's going to take a lot of work a lot

00:23:33.800 of reading, a lot of study, a lot of conversation. And when you've been trained by, you know,

00:23:38.660 instead of being trained by your duties and the word of God and all that Christ commanded. So,

00:23:43.160 so what has Christ commanded me to be and do as a man, a husband, a father, a churchman?

00:23:48.560 What has God commanded, you know, a lady to do as a woman, a mother, maybe a wife,

00:23:54.140 you know, a worker at home, all of these things, you know, instead of being trained by our duties,

00:24:00.020 plus the scriptures, aiming for long-term plotting stability in that. We've been trained by

00:24:06.320 emotionalism. So let's make decisions based on emotionalism and let's make the target that we're

00:24:11.140 aiming for this spectacular, big, spectacular, radical things for Jesus. And that's what

00:24:18.160 spiritual health looks like. You know, this is why you see, I remember some years back,

00:24:24.520 there was a young lady in the church and she was coming out of high school, going in her,

00:24:29.280 you know adult years just right on the cusp there and uh it was like the thing that she was convinced

00:24:38.060 she needed to do was find the mission field where she could go was it ywam or was it this thing or

00:24:43.440 was it that thing and i remember that or a household yeah and the pastors were like i just

00:24:48.200 remember as we were counseling the father and and like trying to trying to point the ship but knowing

00:24:52.560 that we're not going to make the decision for her and for the family it's like what about just

00:24:57.700 stable steadfast pursuing of things like well maybe being a wife and being a mother and

00:25:05.460 maybe what about that it's just not flashy enough but it's not it's not as flashy as going overseas

00:25:11.760 on the missions field and and that sort of thing well think about the language even right so david

00:25:16.460 that whole movement radical yeah um even uh mark driscoll i never really liked the language but

00:25:21.780 they're like be a rebel for god and i get where he was going with it but this this whole language

00:25:27.840 of rebellion and radical yeah and realistically what we're saying is faithful and plotting

00:25:32.820 yeah exactly yeah and a lot of what we've been captured by and where we see a lot of fruit in

00:25:38.680 in our church and just through our our ministries and is that part of the issue has been the framing

00:25:46.220 of the missio day, the framing of, of the vision for Christianity and for even the individual,

00:25:54.460 what do you exist to do? And so when we tell women, you know what you should do,

00:26:00.160 you should be workers at home. That sounds terrible to a lot of women. It sounds really

00:26:06.300 boring. It's a lot better to climb the corporate ladder to, you know, to make the next big sale or

00:26:11.360 to do whatever the heck it is you want to do.

00:26:13.580 And it sounds inglorious to stay at home and cook dinner,

00:26:17.120 but it's all in the framing of the vision.

00:26:20.220 You were made for a purpose,

00:26:22.120 and I know we'll get really practical about this,

00:26:25.040 but the fact that women, you stay home, you have babies.

00:26:29.520 You can create eternal beings.

00:26:32.040 They have eternal souls.

00:26:33.900 You make life in your body,

00:26:36.420 and then you sustain life with your body,

00:26:38.940 and that eternal soul will go on.

00:26:42.320 Obviously it's eternal.

00:26:43.420 It will live forever.

00:26:44.880 And your children and your grandchildren

00:26:46.920 and your great, great grandchildren will,

00:26:49.880 and your descendants will fill the land.

00:26:51.620 I mean, if God causes you to prosper,

00:26:53.940 you know, God bless you.

00:26:55.180 That's the mission.

00:26:56.200 And so this is why it's so attractive, right?

00:26:59.860 And this is to the eternal creature

00:27:02.980 is because you can outlast your own life.

00:27:06.120 And it's ultimately not for your own glory.

00:27:08.940 so it's like revivalistic culture. It uses a truth to mislead. The truth is that you should

00:27:15.640 want to be a part of something glorious and radically glorious. You should actually want to

00:27:20.740 be participating in something that is in the aggregate, not mundane at all. It's glorious,

00:27:29.380 but then it uses that to say, and so you're every Sunday at church and every worship experience and

00:27:35.940 every devotional time and every day should be marked by radical emotional highs. And it should

00:27:42.320 be marked by, and what that actually produces is it, it's actually the spiritual cultural equivalent

00:27:48.460 of a meth addict, right? Or a heroin addict. Yeah. You're always looking for the next high.

00:27:53.800 They're artificially flooding their brain with pleasure chemicals and then living for that as

00:27:59.540 if that, and it just, it ups your level of normal. And so no wonder we're just depressed and feel

00:28:04.620 like we're not getting anything done.

00:28:05.700 It's the complete opposite of stability.

00:28:07.420 Complete opposite.

00:28:08.080 Those people, you know, and I've been that person,

00:28:10.720 at least in the spiritual revivalistic sense.

00:28:14.200 Pardon the interruption here,

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00:29:27.440 But with that said, back to the show.

00:29:31.120 I was just thinking about this, though, as we were talking about it.

00:29:33.440 dan you were talking about this i think fundamentally when we have collision but

00:29:38.560 between like brian and twitter particularly brian and christian twitter and even a lot of the stuff

00:29:45.000 i say in christian twitter what i think it's really happening is it's this revivalistic faith

00:29:50.260 versus reform sound historical things like again you can think of like the household versus

00:29:56.760 you know what whatever the thing in the moment in christianity is novel new and sexy yeah

00:30:03.720 Right.

00:30:03.940 Because what are we saying that really ticks people off?

00:30:06.740 Put some clothes on and be a mom and be faithful.

00:30:09.880 That's good.

00:30:10.440 That's really not a sexy thing.

00:30:12.000 Yeah.

00:30:12.500 In today's culture.

00:30:13.220 And so wrapping up this first section here, because we're starting to overlap with some

00:30:17.300 of the things that we need to discuss in the next headings here.

00:30:19.460 But when we're talking about, okay, anti-revivalist culture, anti-emotional instability, we're

00:30:27.260 talking about men who are emotionally stable.

00:30:31.220 they understand their duties, and they seek to obey God in the duties that God has given them

00:30:37.280 in a stable, plodding way. And so think about some practical ways, men, that you could fight

00:30:43.700 against this emotionalistic, do great things kind of mentality. A lot of you guys jump from job to

00:30:49.120 job way too quick. You're like thinking that the next job is going to be the answer or the next

00:30:54.160 move, or sometimes even like, oh, if I could just move to this place to be a part of this church,

00:30:58.180 or if I could just go do this thing. And it's like, before you hastily jump from thing to thing,

00:31:03.400 make sure that you are stable, right? Make sure that you are pursuing your duties. And then if

00:31:09.440 you need to move or if you need to make a change in order to pursue long-term fruitful stability

00:31:15.380 and obedience to your duties, then do that. But make sure that it's not a longing to be radical

00:31:21.460 or a longing to be, you know, like do something glorious for the kingdom. Make sure that you're

00:31:26.860 not actually still walking in the vestiges of the ways that we've all been discipled by this

00:31:31.620 revivalistic thinking. And same ladies, same for you. I think lots of women, again, young ladies

00:31:37.660 come up out of high school and they think, I need to go do something big for the kingdom. And it's

00:31:42.160 like, well, what if the big thing that you're supposed to do is to be a small, insignificant

00:31:47.080 part, little yeast cell in this whole great grand story that God is telling? And what if the whole

00:31:52.380 story is glorious, but our glorious part of it is just going to probably be pretty mundane a lot

00:31:57.600 of the time. Yeah. And what if mother Teresa was right? She said, if you want to change the world,

00:32:01.580 go home and love your family. Um, I think she was right. Um, and, and it's funny cause when you say

00:32:07.200 that a lot of, you know, women are kind of like, it's kind of like deflating like, Oh yeah, I guess

00:32:11.720 that's what we're going to go do. Yeah. It's like, am I, am I saying like, Oh, I just want to have

00:32:15.520 these really good emotional, spiritual times with God. And yet I'm sure with my kids. Yeah. I mean,

00:32:20.060 And usually the, the, the work that's most worth doing is not great in the moment.

00:32:25.360 I mean, the guys we we've talked about that build cathedrals, the work stinks.

00:32:30.460 Oh yeah.

00:32:31.100 Stone work stinks.

00:32:32.640 I've never done it, but I bet it stinks anyway.

00:32:35.980 I mean, rocks are heavy.

00:32:37.680 Yeah.

00:32:38.180 Kids.

00:32:38.840 They're not malleable.

00:32:39.920 I have so many kids at home right now.

00:32:42.140 They're so little and it's really hard.

00:32:45.160 Yeah.

00:32:45.560 My poor wife, man, she needs all the help she can get.

00:32:49.540 it's really hard it's it's kind of hard and you have moments that are great yeah it's ditch

00:32:55.420 digging work a lot of time but what you have to do is look beyond the moment you have to look

00:33:00.480 beyond the moment at the actual work that you're doing yeah look at what you're a part of and what

00:33:04.120 it's contributing yeah so so making meals uh going to a job that you don't really like

00:33:10.160 you know doing work that you don't think is that important in the moment it's not satisfying but

00:33:15.920 like you said, Brian, what if you're just, what if you're just that yeast cell and your job is to

00:33:22.360 do what you're supposed to do, your duties to the best of your ability, to the glory of God,

00:33:28.360 and to become really good at what you do. Even if it's, man, you're, you're doing data entry.

00:33:35.340 You're going to be the best dang data entry that's ever existed. Yeah. You will not stand

00:33:41.240 before obscure men you'll stand before kings yeah and ultimately be entering their data yeah

00:33:46.920 the data of kings you know no you're going to stand before the king of kings one day that's

00:33:53.340 right and and so it's all about beyond the moment yeah whereas revivalism is in the moment it's in

00:34:00.440 the moment what am i experiencing what am i feeling and there are guys you know i think we've all seen

00:34:05.540 this um particularly and i think even our tribes can tend to produce this kind of guy this is why

00:34:11.140 I'm specifically pointing at this,

00:34:13.260 you know, throwing a rock at this.

00:34:14.680 I think it's an idol

00:34:15.420 that's related to this revivalistic,

00:34:18.940 I'm going to do something big,

00:34:19.920 kind of emotionalistic thinking.

00:34:21.580 It's guys that they're not doing a great job

00:34:24.940 with their basic duties.

00:34:26.160 Like a man who doesn't provide for his family

00:34:28.640 has denied the faith

00:34:29.580 and is worse than an unbeliever.

00:34:30.860 Literally a verse in the Bible.

00:34:32.660 According to Paul.

00:34:33.520 Yeah, it's harsh in their vibe.

00:34:35.140 And then they're like,

00:34:35.900 yeah, but I'm going to go to seminary.

00:34:37.980 I should go to seminary.

00:34:40.020 I should, you know what?

00:34:41.140 I should spend $75 this week on new theology books to not read.

00:34:47.100 What's funny, Brian, is that's actually what I did.

00:34:49.680 I'm describing for past Eric.

00:34:52.100 I'm sorry, Eric.

00:34:52.560 No, it really is. 0.95

00:34:53.420 I mean, I would, I look back on that time period and I think, man, that was so foolish. 0.93

00:34:57.780 And just not having, you know, people around you. 0.83

00:35:00.560 I read Don't Waste Your Life and went to seminary at, you know, 19 years old and was like,

00:35:04.620 I'm going to be a pastor at 22 and this will be great.

00:35:07.320 Is that a bad idea, being a pastor at 22?

00:35:08.880 Yeah, I typically believe that elders should be a little elder.

00:35:13.040 I need to call my past selves.

00:35:16.320 We both need to call our past selves.

00:35:18.820 No, that's so true.

00:35:20.900 And God's gracious.

00:35:21.700 The other thing I wanted to speak to, though,

00:35:23.280 you were talking about making lots of life transitions.

00:35:28.040 Yeah.

00:35:28.560 I look back at my life, especially in the 20s,

00:35:31.300 but 20s through mid-30s.

00:35:33.780 And one of the things I would say is,

00:35:36.380 I didn't realize this for a long time.

00:35:38.880 it was much later that I started reading up on what was going on in job

00:35:42.660 markets and what was going on in corporate America and understanding like

00:35:46.300 I'm actually not the anomaly that people want to move every two and a half

00:35:50.920 years. And it's not even the want to it's that's what corporate life is like

00:35:54.440 now. That's the average job to move up, to advance.

00:35:58.460 You have to, you have to move jobs. What, what I would say though,

00:36:02.920 if I could go back to 20 is in order to be stable,

00:36:07.580 you have to have ground that is stable yeah so the thing is i've looked back on it and i said you

00:36:13.180 know what's interesting is the jobs are not stable but what is stable is finding a church

00:36:18.680 finding a community burning the boats being there planting your flags planting your roots deep yeah

00:36:24.380 and then saying you know what no matter what happens i can find work i'm gonna do my duties

00:36:28.680 here yes and so i would say for us like our family we bounced around for a long time and i didn't

00:36:36.020 understand it. And then of course we came here and, um, it, it sounds kind of cliche, but I think in

00:36:41.880 coming here, it was like, yeah, you have to have the kind of community that roots you. Yeah. And

00:36:47.540 then literally that, that is what is providing the bedrock of stability for the rest of your life.

00:36:53.960 So I think it really is a priority issue. Yeah. And again, as I was going through those decisions,

00:36:58.220 I was talking with Dan and I was like, I don't know what, cause my, that was my thinking. I was

00:37:02.040 like, well, I don't know what I'm going to do in the next three years. And Dan was like, well,

00:37:05.620 what are you doing in the next 50, a hundred years? Right. Like think different. Yep. So

00:37:10.100 I think that's one way that you can be more stable too. Yeah. Think about 50, a hundred years

00:37:14.720 and then you're going to have your duties that you need to do today. You got to feed your family

00:37:20.900 today, but make sure that you're actually also thinking about what you, your duties to your

00:37:27.300 family are for the next 50 years and a hundred years. And where can you do that? Church community,

00:37:31.980 brothers gang of men if you can't do that where you're at then we're not saying just stay where

00:37:36.980 you are don't don't ever move don't you know just be stable so don't move that's not worth saying

00:37:41.100 sometimes stability requires radical near-term action for the sake of long-term stability yeah

00:37:48.300 you have to look at the soil yeah and because i and i bring it up because i hear this from a lot

00:37:53.000 of guys where it's like you know we've been in this community forever and my wife's parents are

00:37:57.080 here or, you know, my husband's parents are here and, uh, the church is really bad, but you know,

00:38:01.700 we're just hoping for reform. Yeah. Keep hoping. And it's like, you've been there 15 years. You

00:38:07.640 haven't seen reform. Um, what are there, are there any signs that reform would come? No,

00:38:12.500 the pastor hates us. So do the elders. And, uh, yeah, this is where we're at. And so, yeah,

00:38:17.480 I think for that guy to find stability, he might actually have to, he might have to realize he

00:38:22.240 doesn't have it where he's at. Right. And then, and then, and at that point, then you're thinking

00:38:25.820 through, okay, well, are jobs stability? I would answer no, typically. Okay. So if that's not

00:38:31.880 stability, what is? Yeah, that's right. The job is not the stability. Church, community, you know,

00:38:35.940 I would argue like Christian education of some form, support there, and then you can start

00:38:40.680 branching out from there. And what happens when you have that, when you actually have that Christian

00:38:44.580 community, is that just like a plant that has really good soil and is in a really good ecosystem

00:38:49.880 that's functioning with the whole environment vertically, horizontally integrated, is that

00:38:54.560 you are more fruitful and you start, like the thing is, if you get to a really good church

00:38:59.240 community, a really good Christian community like this, your vocation may very well change

00:39:04.180 for the better, just because of the connections that you make through the church where all of a

00:39:08.200 sudden you're like, and even like the fact that the music that I do, I wouldn't have done it

00:39:12.420 without Dan. I wouldn't be doing, I wouldn't be doing. And now this is like a thing that I actually

00:39:18.060 do devote real time to, because it's actually like a, not a side hustle, but it's, you know,

00:39:25.020 it's, it's, I'm making productive property songs that I can put out in. And if people still listen

00:39:31.000 to them, maybe one or two of them in 50 years, I'll be able to say here, kids, here's a song,

00:39:35.380 you own the royalty rights to it, that kind of thing. I wouldn't be doing that if Dan hadn't

00:39:39.180 walked in the office and been like, Hey, that's not, that's not a bad setting of Psalm 100. You

00:39:42.740 should do that. Right? So you don't know, you just don't know the things that are going to happen

00:39:48.520 in terms of long-term growth and the direction that God will mold you.

00:39:53.400 If you're just lone rangering it somewhere, it's really hard to be stable as a lone ranger.

00:39:59.540 Yeah. And I think one of the things that revivalism has produced is radical individualism.

00:40:04.260 Yes. Yeah. And so every man is his own Island. He is looking for his experience, his

00:40:09.840 he's his own yeah he's his own doctrine man yeah i know that's a whole nother rabbit trail but

00:40:16.160 but when you find that sort of community but one of the one of the duties of men is to love your

00:40:22.500 neighbor and when you're in a community that has fertile ground you have like-minded people that

00:40:28.360 are rowing in the same direction and you love your people it creates a stability yes it really does

00:40:34.920 Because then there are men in our church who are thinking,

00:40:37.680 what would it look like to buy a city block in Ogden?

00:40:42.980 How could we provide housing for Christian brothers and sisters

00:40:47.720 so that they could actually live here?

00:40:50.420 Yeah.

00:40:51.220 And they're actually already afford to live here.

00:40:54.120 They've started.

00:40:55.120 And they've already started.

00:40:55.680 It's not even just like a thought.

00:40:57.220 But they're investing their time and their energy and their resources,

00:41:01.600 lots of money lots of time into building something not just for themselves but and in some cases not

00:41:11.000 even for their only for their generations but also for the community and so they're thinking

00:41:16.320 community minded and and for these guys they're producing a a ton of fruit and what it does

00:41:22.520 is it raises the level like you said yeah of the people around you because they see activity

00:41:28.220 happening. You're like, wait a minute. There's a lot of movement over here. What's going on?

00:41:32.400 Holy smokes. I want to do that too. Or how can I help? Or Hey, like, you know, you're sitting

00:41:38.480 around and you're not working. Would you like to work? Cause you seem like a capable guy. I mean,

00:41:43.280 there's so many opportunities. It's like this picture, picture you, you know, you decide that

00:41:48.500 you want to do something great. And the great thing you're going to do, let's say you're living

00:41:52.760 in 1400 Spain and you're like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go discover new worlds.

00:41:57.780 So you hop in a canoe and you start paddling your way out across the ocean and the waves

00:42:02.940 are lapping against you and you feel the wind blowing and you're like, this is glorious.

00:42:06.700 Look, I'm in my canoe.

00:42:08.240 I'm making good ground three, four miles an hour.

00:42:10.120 You start doing the math.

00:42:10.900 You're like, I'm going to, I don't know where I'm going to go, but I'm going to get somewhere

00:42:13.640 good pretty quick.

00:42:14.680 And then, you know, about 12 hours into the thing, you start realizing that you've made

00:42:18.860 a very poor decision and praise God though, you see approaching you from behind a great

00:42:24.100 galleon.

00:42:25.240 Is that what they're called?

00:42:26.120 Galleons?

00:42:26.940 A galley.

00:42:27.780 galley the big ship isn't it a galleon a spanish galleon sure look it up yes we're gonna go with

00:42:32.580 that yeah a great sailing that's where i would be galleys in the that's where the food is that's

00:42:37.920 right amen you know clinking glasses amen and you see it approaching you into life's failing and you

00:42:43.360 wave your hands and they come and they they pull your sorry butt into the big spanish galleon and

00:42:48.620 it is galleon by the way they're large multi-deck sailing ships first used by the european states

00:42:54.900 from 16th to 18th centuries.

00:42:57.200 Wow, so I'm anachronistic in my time frame,

00:42:59.540 but let's just go with it.

00:43:01.060 And they pull you up into it and you say,

00:43:02.720 wow, guys, thank you, where are you going?

00:43:04.100 And you see this deck, it's full of sailors,

00:43:05.880 there's like 60 guys up here making this big ship go

00:43:08.880 and they're like, oh, we're going on a quest of discovery

00:43:11.580 for the, we're questing for the new world.

00:43:13.620 And you're like, can I be in on this?

00:43:16.000 And that's what it's like, it's when you're,

00:43:17.920 if you're just saying,

00:43:18.800 I'm gonna go do something great for Christendom

00:43:20.580 and it's just you,

00:43:22.840 You're a guy in a canoe trying to get across the ocean.

00:43:25.480 But if you've got a church, even if it's 100 people, you could actually do it.

00:43:30.680 You might get there.

00:43:32.460 I feel like that whole story was just for sound effects.

00:43:34.760 No.

00:43:35.380 Yeah, so you could sound engineer it.

00:43:37.020 I could hear the gulls and the waves and everything like that.

00:43:40.780 Dan, I could hear it too.

00:43:41.580 Okay, I'll let you talk.

00:43:42.920 But the illustration was apt.

00:43:45.860 I was going to say, totally worth it though.

00:43:48.280 Yeah, it was good.

00:43:49.060 Absolutely an apt illustration.

00:43:49.720 No, it's, it's so, so many decisions, Brian and Brian and I, and the elders of the church

00:43:54.900 and a bunch of other people have had to make decisions.

00:43:58.020 And we're like, if we make this decision, if we continue to reform the church, we're

00:44:01.660 going to lose people.

00:44:03.060 I mean, that's just, there's a cost to leading and making changes.

00:44:07.460 And ultimately we came down to like, we're convinced these are the right decisions.

00:44:12.200 And if we just had 10 families, if we had 10 families, 10 men that are in and they're

00:44:19.040 going to put their hands to the plow and we're all going to go the same direction man we could

00:44:24.300 gain so much ground oh yeah all it would take is 10 men so it doesn't even have to be a huge

00:44:29.920 you know everybody is attracted to these to these places like like moscow or or or wherever you know

00:44:36.560 like right and in a lot of ways uh i've heard i've heard this illustration before in um in some

00:44:43.080 places you keep your cattle penned with fencing but in areas like west texas they have thousands

00:44:49.580 of acres and so they have a well a watering tank and they keep the cattle close because there's

00:44:54.480 the water they have to go to water yeah and and in this time that we live in there are places

00:44:59.360 throughout the u.s that are like these watering holes right and so people keep going to these

00:45:04.700 places and the fact of the matter is i think that's great but you don't have to go to the

00:45:13.080 have an effect or to find a community just 10 men can be all the difference.

00:45:18.960 Yeah. And I think the other thing is, um, is we're talking about stability, uh, plugging in.

00:45:25.080 I think for a lot of guys, I've talked to them. I was this guy for a long time. Like

00:45:28.560 you see these communities from afar, you think, okay, it's too good to be true.

00:45:33.860 Um, you know, it can't possibly be that good. Um, and so literally for 15 years, we, we did

00:45:39.220 the Lone Ranger. Yeah. Sort of. I mean, we were part of churches and, you know, um, but to, to

00:45:44.640 find like what we're describing in this podcast, it's actually really hard, right? There's not

00:45:50.060 many churches. Um, we were talking to a brother the other day who said maybe 50 good churches,

00:45:56.660 like really good churches in America. There's a lot of big churches. Yeah. But how many churches

00:46:02.780 are actually a part of this legacy building historical, uh, church. And I think the answer

00:46:09.980 is not many, but, but the other thing that I would say to it is, you know, like for us coming here,

00:46:15.060 we, we literally had, you know, I think I was, you know, I was baptized as infant, but really

00:46:21.900 came to like faithful Christianity, 2006, somewhere in there. Yeah. Um, from that point

00:46:28.520 Until we moved here, pretty much every church was a disaster of some sort.

00:46:33.560 And I talked to other people and I think they've experienced similar things.

00:46:37.120 And so then you get this sour taste in your mouth where you think it's just not possible.

00:46:41.040 There's no good churches.

00:46:42.620 Yeah, you get really cynical.

00:46:44.180 And then we moved here and I was like, okay, no, it actually exists.

00:46:48.120 So I think part of it is hope for people.

00:46:51.000 You know, we talk about in post-mill theology, people will say, well, that's great in theory.

00:46:55.520 but I think people just need to experience that it is real um there are men pushing the plow

00:47:02.900 forward making progress yeah not everybody's losing right now that's right and it takes a

00:47:08.260 lot of like people also don't realize that it takes the cynics you know might come to a place

00:47:12.880 like Ogden and say and realize pretty quick that we're not there yet not perfect they'll start

00:47:17.680 meeting people they're like well you're not finished you're not a finished product yet you

00:47:20.780 don't agree with me on every single thing you're not you know that person wow they did something

00:47:24.860 I don't like. I don't think, you know, I, I saw, I heard a podcast that said that families should

00:47:28.840 do this for family worship and that family. Wow. I don't even think they're doing that at all.

00:47:32.420 And wow, they're credo Baptists over there. And he's a pedo Baptist. And all of a sudden it's 0.98

00:47:36.900 like, if you want to find something to fuss about, you can fuss about it. People don't realize though

00:47:41.860 that the best communities are just boringly ordinary, but what makes them glorious is this

00:47:49.200 shared vision and mission where it's like each one of us knows that we're not significant,

00:47:53.980 but we know that together, if we actually band together and aim for this just mere Christendom

00:47:58.780 kind of thing, God might actually do something glorious in our city or in our place over the

00:48:05.040 next hundred years. And what it's going to take along the way, it's like, we just had a meeting

00:48:09.300 this morning for, you know, an elders meeting early this morning. And we're talking about all

00:48:13.300 these problems in the church and discipline. And, you know, we got to reach out to that person and

00:48:18.960 we got to like counsel that person and we got to pull that person back. We got to get rid of that.

00:48:22.600 Like, I mean, that guy needs to, he, someone needs to thump him with their shepherd staff.

00:48:26.800 And it's like, this is every month at Refuge Church. This is every month at our church here.

00:48:31.100 We're doing that kind of stuff. And if you were here, you'd understand that. But the secret sauce

00:48:37.460 is this new Christendom is going to be built on 40,000 year thinking conquest thinking, but not

00:48:45.500 like I'm going to be Caleb by myself charging the hill necessarily, but recognize that Caleb is

00:48:51.560 like with the whole people that are crossing over into the land. Yeah, including his children.

00:48:56.560 It's going to be generations. So what revivalism has done, this is really, we've been already

00:49:00.820 talking about that second heading a lot. Let me remind you of what that second heading was,

00:49:06.060 and we'll continue the conversation here, that revivalism and decisionism produces a culture,

00:49:11.180 and just demonstrably has produced a culture of apocalyptic thinking and a narrative of cultural

00:49:16.980 decline. And so against that, the new Christendom is going to be built on 40,000-year thinking

00:49:23.840 and conquest thinking. So when you think about that Centralia mine fire,

00:49:30.520 this is another image that I get in my head when I think about what revivalism has produced in

00:49:34.860 culture. It's like that. And specifically, it's like this great massive coal seam burning under

00:49:39.740 your Christendom because the narrative is decline. The narrative is that the world is just going to

00:49:47.300 burn down. And then we're going to be like on a rooftop. We're going to be like the Vietnam

00:49:52.420 rooftop and the Apache helicopter is going to be the rapture. It's just going to like pull us out

00:49:57.640 while the world just finishes its final collapse. Well, even, even the non-dispiece, right?

00:50:03.380 Dispensationalism is obviously like, you know, Jesus come back tomorrow. Why have kids? It

00:50:08.180 It depends which brand, right?

00:50:09.720 But yeah.

00:50:10.600 Yeah.

00:50:11.120 All mill.

00:50:11.760 Yeah.

00:50:12.360 All mill, pre-mill.

00:50:13.880 But here's the real question to me.

00:50:16.600 So I'm almost 40 years old in my lifetime.

00:50:19.480 I can never remember anyone outside of Moscow in my experience in the Christian camp who

00:50:26.540 is optimistic about the culture, about Christianity, about the church.

00:50:31.500 Yeah.

00:50:31.900 Like, oh, things are going to be great.

00:50:33.760 Everybody.

00:50:34.440 Like you don't even know.

00:50:35.240 Yeah. From day one of my existence, people are like, it's getting worse. We're going to hell in a handbasket. I mean, you name it, hell in a handbasket theology has dominated the church culture. It's always, we're losing. So in the midst of that sort of thing, I think, yeah, naturally, you're not going to have people who are like, oh, let's build a 40,000 year plan. If you think you're losing, why would you?

00:50:58.780 some of it it's like you know imagine a distiller making a barrel of whiskey and he's putting the

00:51:06.880 you know just fresh spirit into the barrel and he's filling the thing up and if someone was like

00:51:12.140 that whiskey's not very good yet and he's like i know yeah just throw it out course it's not good

00:51:17.780 oh that was a terrible terrible scottish accent yeah i'm not good at that accent and and he's

00:51:24.100 like just wait like you guys we're in early church history still i'm convinced like we're still in

00:51:28.880 early church history here we're the like maybe the whiskey's just starting to take on a little

00:51:33.000 bit of color from the from the freshly charred oak barrel that it went into yeah taste it and

00:51:38.780 you know drop a little what's the what's the little thing that they use to pull out they use

00:51:42.680 the dropper to pull out glasses as if you've ever seen a master distiller go through he's going

00:51:48.160 through the warehouse of barrels various ages that are they've been aging for you know various

00:51:52.980 number of years, different barrels, different Oak, different, different, uh, batches. So they're

00:51:58.340 all different. And he's pulling out just an ounce or two at a time. Actually, they're pretty big

00:52:02.540 pours. That guy must be like wasted all the time, but you know, and they're trying it like, no,

00:52:06.880 this one's not ready. This one's not ready. And I just picture the Lord Jesus doing that with this

00:52:11.240 church, you know, where we're this big barrel that's just, and he's like, Oh, it's got, it's

00:52:16.040 getting some color on it now. And we're the equivalent of like the Octomor five, five year.

00:52:20.820 It's been in for a minute, although that one was finished. So that's a bad example. Oh, man. Octomore is good

00:52:25.680 so good, you know, but that to me it's like

00:52:28.120 We the very opening of the first episode of the king's hall podcast

00:52:32.720 We talked about understanding where you are in the story

00:52:35.440 The prop one of the main problems with revivalism. I think we agree on this

00:52:39.760 and I want to hear what you guys think but

00:52:41.780 Is that the story that it's telling?

00:52:45.560 Is that it's that you're at the vietnam war the very end?

00:52:49.460 we've got maybe 15 minutes left of history at any given moment and everything's on fire and it's and

00:52:54.980 that's proof that i'm right by the way yeah and that's the thing anything bad is proof i'm right

00:52:59.760 and so i'm only gonna focus on bad things you know what you're not doing if you think you're

00:53:04.120 in the last 10 minutes of the vietnam war you're not building a christian hospital you're not

00:53:08.220 starting a christian school why would you do that the vietcong is like right outside the gates

00:53:11.760 yeah yeah it's interesting um and this may be totally tangential but it got me thinking about

00:53:18.000 what changed in the 20th century. Cause for a long time, the church was post mill. Yeah. And,

00:53:25.580 um, I'm reading Pat Buchanan's book, uh, Churchill, Hitler, any unnecessary war. And he

00:53:31.360 makes a statement in that book that I combined with a couple other theological things I've heard

00:53:35.140 about post mill where the post mill got, you know, non post mill guys who are evaluating post mill.

00:53:40.740 Yeah. They say, well, look, world war two taught us that, you know, post mill can't possibly be

00:53:44.820 true i never understood that comment and then i was reading pat buchanan and he says that world

00:53:50.860 war one and two was in large part the death of western christendom because you had all the i

00:53:56.700 mean these guys were all related and they're killing each other slaughtering each other 50

00:54:01.820 tune of 50 million people in two wars profess christians in both sides yeah basically like

00:54:06.920 white western christianity just slaughtering each other destroying senselessly um so i think that

00:54:13.300 put a dent in it and that is i think that is heavily shaped plus revivalism has shaped people's

00:54:19.880 view absolutely of the post mill yeah and i think so with revivalism we got 15 minutes left to live

00:54:27.420 world war three is going to happen that's that's i mean you hear nuclear it's going to be yeah we're

00:54:32.140 going to be nuked you know hopefully israel is going to be okay and you know whatever i don't

00:54:36.840 know what does this mean say i don't know well the antichrist makes a strong covenant with israel

00:54:42.040 And then the second, the three and a half year mark, he breaks it.

00:54:44.760 And then the second half of the great tribulation is marked by, you know, Israel's persecution.

00:54:47.980 I don't, I mean, I don't know if you, you recall from the last episode, but dispensationalist

00:54:53.580 premillennialism came about the same time as all of these other horrible movements, such

00:54:59.660 as Mormonism and Seventh Day Adventist.

00:55:01.920 It wasn't on day two of the creation?

00:55:04.500 No, it wasn't.

00:55:06.740 Let me interject my third heading.

00:55:07.980 Cause this is, we're, we're literally just, my, my outline was meaningless today and that's

00:55:11.560 fine.

00:55:12.040 like for this episode, but I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to let you finish your

00:55:15.820 thought, Dan. Okay. But this is a perfect example of it that revivalism and decisionism is it has

00:55:21.680 produced a culture of restorationism and novel theological thinking. Yeah. That's deep. It's

00:55:29.420 interesting. And Dan, I, I want you to continue. Yeah. Once again, in a moment, Eric will also

00:55:34.640 continue your thought. After we both interrupt. Yes. One interruption to set you up because I

00:55:40.000 love you so much we're cuing you so good right now we're just cuing you up cuing cuing me for

00:55:44.120 the thought that i don't really remember but but here's the difference you were talking about how

00:55:51.240 if you've got 15 minutes left did you just interrupt me while i was interrupting you

00:55:55.500 i really wasn't paying attention if you've got 15 minutes left how do i feel like i've been

00:56:00.520 bulldozed the whole episode i'm sorry here i am i finally had a thought

00:56:05.100 Kings Hall Civil War.

00:56:06.320 I'm going.

00:56:07.140 I'm going.

00:56:07.980 Okay, so you've got 15 minutes left.

00:56:09.640 You're not building schools.

00:56:10.800 You're not building hospitals.

00:56:12.260 You're not doing any of that stuff.

00:56:14.100 And then you're like, okay, Mr. Grand Vision Post Mill,

00:56:17.860 let's see this beacon of hope, Ogden, Utah.

00:56:20.900 And you come to the city and it stinks.

00:56:23.540 There are rainbow flags everywhere.

00:56:27.220 Right across the street?

00:56:28.060 Yeah, right across the street.

00:56:29.300 I mean, in high defiance of the holy and living God,

00:56:33.200 they are flying his symbol of anyway here we go by my candle so and then you come into refuge church

00:56:38.900 into the into the sanctuary about that okay all right that's after hours okay if you want to hear

00:56:45.240 about the candle that i may or may not make and you have to be a patron to hear the after hours

00:56:52.040 and the candle you guys so you come into the sanctuary of the somewhat derelict and somewhat

00:56:57.260 beautiful refuge church building and you hear the music and you're like wow I thought they were

00:57:03.300 singing glorious four-part songs when we're learning them we're learning there the cacophony

00:57:09.000 of children screaming sometimes outweighs whatever's being done in worship you're like

00:57:15.800 kneeling to confess and you hear my kid crying where are the tenants they're not confessing

00:57:20.280 they're actually sinning during confession you know there's all these things going on and you're

00:57:24.800 like wait a minute this is the post mill hope you know what's happening behind the scenes of the

00:57:30.060 small duties that are happening sunday to sunday every week is that in faithfulness the people of

00:57:36.000 god are coming together to worship the holy and living god being made and knit together by eating

00:57:42.320 the same food producing children that love the lord have a sense of place know their duties know

00:57:49.980 what they're for and they will have children, Lord willing, in five generations, Ogden,

00:57:56.680 Utah will actually be a beacon of hope because there will be Christians here.

00:58:02.840 There will be a hundred thousand Christians here, hundreds of thousands of Christians

00:58:07.800 here, Lord willing, all because of the small things that we do week to week.

00:58:13.080 That's the glorious mission.

00:58:14.520 And it looks not glorious in the moment.

00:58:17.060 And you guys might be like, you're deluded.

00:58:18.640 That's not going to happen.

00:58:19.400 Yes, I am deluded.

00:58:20.680 Here's the thing.

00:58:21.100 I have hope.

00:58:21.980 Here's the thing.

00:58:22.740 That the king of kings is sitting at the right hand of God.

00:58:25.180 Amen.

00:58:26.520 If we're wrong, we're not going to be wrong about the whole story.

00:58:31.960 We might be wrong about the next act in the current act of the next chapter in the book that we're in.

00:58:40.380 Actually, maybe, you know, America falls as an empire and there's just like mass unrest for 600 years.

00:58:46.120 sometimes god decides to write that into the history it's like maybe there won't be an ogden

00:58:52.480 utah in 200 years because of world war six and we're like we've only had two yeah it's like a

00:58:58.580 farmer that plants and hope exactly sure but but what we're doing and what we're talking about is

00:59:03.980 how every single generation of christians ought to be thinking yes they ought to be thinking how

00:59:08.220 can i disciple the nations right where i am and hey my father doesn't give me meaningless tasks

00:59:13.460 that are impossible he doesn't say go disciple the nations and then intend to just be like oh

00:59:18.400 and by the way you're gonna utterly fail and be frustrated at it for your entire life at every

00:59:23.000 tent to obey me you're like thanks dad i think it's like no who comes every you know who gives

00:59:30.720 every good and perfect gift yeah oh he's just building his spiritual kingdom it's gonna be

00:59:35.120 really super spiritual don't get it's gonna be really super spiritual and uh oh yeah but um you

00:59:41.560 won't be able to see any of it like anywhere ever, but you'll be able to feel it if you emote

00:59:46.540 your way towards it. Spiritually speaking, it's like every generation, if we all live this way

00:59:51.540 and we all just said, what, what, what can I, what furrow can I plow the next two feet of in

00:59:56.240 my entire life? I'm going to be a small insignificant mayfly in the pursuit of this

01:00:00.860 glorious thing that God is building. And that to me is like, what revivalism does is it makes

01:00:06.480 every single Christian life because it's restorationist and it's all about novelty

01:00:11.420 and big and glorious things in every single Christian life. It's like it makes every

01:00:15.720 Christian life about what really the whole Missio day should be, where it's like my life will be

01:00:22.040 this glorious story where I do all these great, amazing things and I feel deep spiritual fervor

01:00:29.240 at every moment of every day. And then it just sets literally everybody up for failure.

01:00:33.840 yeah because that's not very few people do the all that impressive things the three of us very

01:00:41.320 you know take the whole of refuge church everybody here now it's very unlikely that any of us will

01:00:46.640 do something historically impressive like vanishingly unlikely yeah there are hundreds

01:00:51.680 of years of human history where there's like roughly nothing known how many total names did

01:00:56.920 you learn in in your first you know 12 years of education like a couple hundred i feel like you're

01:01:02.340 forgetting santa baby though that actually might endure that might actually endure i don't even

01:01:07.420 know if i've watched the whole video so i don't see dan hasn't even watched santa baby all the

01:01:10.900 way through i watched part of it it was funny my son my oldest my 14 year old actually in st

01:01:17.540 brennan's wrote a similar he said well you know brian did his so i wrote this poem oh yeah and

01:01:23.960 yeah it's none of it's repeatable oh no i was like wow we might need to do some discipline

01:01:30.040 We had something to confess on Sunday.

01:01:32.160 Let me say this.

01:01:33.020 It's definitely in the realm of we'll get you canceled.

01:01:36.780 One of the things, though, that I was thinking as you guys were talking about that,

01:01:39.840 I think we have to fight against generational amnesia.

01:01:42.760 I think we have to fight against the novelty rush of every year, new products, new everything.

01:01:48.400 You know, there's, you know, think about Twitter.

01:01:49.760 There's a new news cycle every five seconds on Twitter.

01:01:52.280 Yeah, seriously. 0.99

01:01:52.820 Like yesterday, I was like, get the jabber, you're the devil. 0.80

01:01:56.500 And then today I'm like, oh, yeah.

01:01:58.180 yeah yeah but today that was yesterday yesterday sorry yeah yesterday but today it's ukraine and

01:02:03.660 zelinski is a hero i don't even know who he is but he's a hero and we should worship him yeah i'm

01:02:07.960 crane we're crane ukraine we're all crane that's right so one thing that i would say just very

01:02:13.060 practically is uh be reading people i think on the agriculture side there's a lot of good people

01:02:18.760 that you can read who actually still embody this mindset uh i think of people like alan carlson i

01:02:23.680 think of Joel Salatin, Wendell Berry, C.R. Wiley. They capture a lot of this pietus, a godly piety

01:02:30.160 that looks to the generations. But I also think about people like David Chilton, Andrew Sandlin,

01:02:36.340 be thinking and reading as a way of thinking, but be reading and thinking in a generational way.

01:02:42.520 And over time, what I found is you slowly start to see the world differently. Yeah. You got to

01:02:47.320 train your mind for that. You start thinking of the world covenantally. Yeah. And you start

01:02:51.340 thinking of the world in historically rooted catholicity yeah where you start you know when

01:02:57.080 i say historically rooted catholicity i mean you start to see yourself as situated on some branch

01:03:03.440 of this great tree that is the universal church you start to see yourself as connected historically

01:03:08.960 that your roots go back all the way through the medieval church through the early church to the

01:03:13.880 to the apostles to you know and obviously christ is the vine this metaphor is not perfect but

01:03:18.820 but you start to see yourself connected to that. And in this long view, you start to see yourself

01:03:24.200 covenantally, like covenantally meaning what is God's covenant? What is he doing? What has he

01:03:29.300 said that he's going to do with this whole world? And how do I fit into it? Like, that's why at the

01:03:34.200 beginning of this whole thing, again, we started with such, um, emphasis on the story that God's

01:03:39.040 telling, because again, like so many of the things that will, any story that is not accurately

01:03:44.780 situating your ourselves in the story God is telling will ultimately produce a culture that

01:03:49.940 fails. Revivalism fails because it sees itself as this restorationist, like, oh, you know,

01:03:58.160 if you look back in church history, even 10 minutes, everything was wrong. And now we've

01:04:02.700 gotten to me in my crazy, historically novel doctrine that I received in a vision. And now

01:04:09.500 all of a sudden it's like, you see yourself as like a different tree from what the tree that

01:04:14.320 God has planted in the story that he's telling. And it's like any, any, any story that just doesn't

01:04:20.360 properly situate yourself in the story that God's telling the culture that it makes is going to be

01:04:24.820 terrible because God is actually telling a good story. Like this thing is actually a pretty dang

01:04:31.320 good story that we're in. That's right. I never would have included the reformation. Like my

01:04:36.360 story would have been much more linear, but, but then God was like, you know what I'm going to do?

01:04:40.580 i'm gonna have some popes and they're gonna have like mistresses like multiple popes at the same

01:04:45.280 time there's gonna be three popes three popes someone's gonna be selling get out of hell

01:04:49.740 people are gonna be selling get out of purgatory quicker uh coins or uh tickets in order to uh

01:04:59.080 build houses for the worship of me you know and he's like the story god's telling is really i

01:05:04.720 don't know where i'm going with this but anyway i think the story that god's telling is fascinating

01:05:08.220 and like a lot of the problems that we have are when we start oversimplifying and telling these

01:05:13.200 like restorationists they always end up where like we're the great white hope we're the great

01:05:18.160 hope that shows up and fixes everything and again so i want you to talk uh men being made for glory

01:05:24.180 men and women being made for glory and so it sounds like at some times we're disparaging

01:05:29.180 against glory against those moments where you're like you know you you just crave that that glory

01:05:36.100 that comes from the moment.

01:05:38.200 And so are we disparaging of glory

01:05:41.580 for men and women?

01:05:43.640 Dan, that is a great, great question.

01:05:46.060 And I absolutely see what you mean

01:05:47.540 because it might sound like we're saying,

01:05:49.380 don't be radical.

01:05:51.120 Don't do anything impressive. 0.92

01:05:52.700 Just be lame.

01:05:54.040 Do your paperwork and cook.

01:05:55.600 We literally talked about data entry.

01:05:58.240 Like that was our obey God in your data entry.

01:06:00.980 I feel like I could have used a better example.

01:06:02.940 No, it was a good example, actually.

01:06:04.140 but, but here, here's the thing. What you have to actually believe is that God in giving you

01:06:10.400 the duties he gave you to walk in for your whole life, like these normal duties as a husband,

01:06:16.100 a father, whatever, whatever vocation you have, a mother, a wife, God in giving you those duties

01:06:21.020 and telling you to obey him in them for your whole life, he knows what he's doing. He actually knows

01:06:26.080 what he's doing. And God really is bending all of creation and this whole story towards glory.

01:06:30.900 but what you'll find is that when you aim for shallow quick glories big fast and famous type

01:06:37.420 glories revivalistic emotionalist type glories me just manufacturing this great magnificent

01:06:43.020 unique call of god on my life that nobody else has and he told me in the watches of the night

01:06:47.340 you know through my liver shivers you know what we're actually going to end up doing is creating 0.94

01:06:52.580 a really lame stupid story because we're just not god like we're not god but if you just boringly 0.99

01:06:59.280 fulfill your duties, man, God will actually do glorious things. God will do glorious things. 1.00

01:07:07.120 He really like, men, you are the glory of God. Woman, you are the glory of man.

01:07:10.860 You really should want glory. You should be pursuing it rightly in the glory of God in your

01:07:15.560 life. But instead of wasting our time with this revivalist thinking that just manufactures fake

01:07:21.260 glory, we ought to pursue the real authentic number, the real authentic number, which is

01:07:28.000 obedience to the duties that God has given us in the place that he's deployed us. And so to wrap

01:07:33.780 it up, we say no to revivalist thinking. No, we say no. We say, get rid of that. Let's burn that

01:07:43.000 shantytown to the ground. And instead of that, let's build historically rooted, plodding, long 0.98

01:07:50.400 hall conquest thinking sober-minded stable christian catholicity amen amen amen well thanks

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The King's Hall - March 25, 2022

Stability & Sobriety

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