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00:00:30.000All right, we are back. So this is now episode four of a 10-part series, myself and Dr. Stephen
00:00:51.920wolf we are doing really going through the the book the case for christian nationalism and what
00:01:00.740we've done so far is we uh started with what would you say episode one i keep saying episode
00:01:05.280one was aristotle but it was a lot more than aristotle what what was episode yeah now i have
00:01:09.360to remember it felt like it was months ago that i did that um no hours ago um yeah like we was
00:01:16.700going to be the introduction but then it was some methodological stuff like why i didn't use
00:01:20.160scriptures, stuff like that. That's right. But then episode two, we got into defining
00:01:25.420nationalism and Christian nationalism. Episode three, though, became almost like a series within
00:01:31.340a series. I made my inception joke, you know, dream within a dream. We've got a 10-part series
00:01:35.500and then a mini-series, you know, within it. And so the last episode, episode three, was kind of
00:01:40.580like a part one answering the question, okay, so we've already talked about in episode two,
00:01:45.380what is Christian nationalism, defining that. But now, you know, to really understand that,
00:01:49.660we're discussing, well, but what is a nation? Especially for Americans, a lot of Americans
00:01:54.480can't answer that question or refuse to answer that question. So episode three, the episode
00:02:00.000immediately preceding this one was what is a nation? And we really focused on home and history.
00:02:06.420In this episode, we want to go a little bit broader and say that a nation is never anything
00:02:10.300less than a people in place. It's a particular people in a particular place. It is a home. It's
00:02:16.380not just a set of propositions or an economic zone. But it is true that nations are not less,
00:02:23.060but more than just people in place. And so we've got six different components, and you can
00:02:29.880push back on them or help me explain them or add some if you want. But six different components
00:02:36.200that I kind of teased out at the end of the last episode, and I got these from my friend Michael
00:02:41.080Belch. He's a part of our live stream that we do with Right Response Ministries and a part of the
00:02:45.520church that I pastor, Covenant Bible Church, and he's coming out with a book called The Biblical
00:02:50.000Case for Nations. And so he came up with these six L's. They all start with an L. Land, lineage,
00:02:56.860language, laws, loves, and liturgy. Land, lineage, language, loves, laws, and liturgy. So land and
00:03:07.660lineage, that's people in place. A nation's never less, but a nation is also more. What do you think?
00:03:15.520um i don't know if i'll go to remember all those l's but yeah i i would you do it your way
00:03:21.580i'll do my way yeah you do um yeah uh i mean like language for example uh is
00:03:29.320is pretty crucial that's the that's the example i i typically use when people try to say
00:03:37.220that all you need all you need to do is be a christian like everyone if everyone's a christian
00:03:42.600then you can form a political community. And so I say, well, there is no universal language. There's
00:03:48.240no language that the gospel prescribes, unless we want to all go to Hebrew or Greek or whatever,
00:03:54.080Latin, which would be kind of a lot of trouble. And so the gospel then does not destroy nation
00:04:02.720groups as linguistic groups. Like it's going to enter into an English-speaking people,
00:04:08.600with chinese-speaking people and uh that's going to be the way they preach the word is through the
00:04:13.520vernacular of that local place and the political community yeah so um and there's even like even
00:04:19.480though we uh we share the same language with england there's still many ways in which they
00:04:24.520they communicate things that we don't and vice versa so um that that changes in different places
00:04:30.040so i i think that's uh um i mean there's an argument for like why that we actually can be
00:04:36.460closer to england as as fellow states fellow nations because of a shared language um so yeah
00:04:43.940i think that's absolutely the case i don't know if i have any anything else that's fine
00:04:48.040does uh no that's fine okay no that's good um what this is kind of i don't know it's a little
00:04:53.900quirky but it's something that i i've thought about um i don't know maybe i shouldn't get into
00:05:00.140it it deals it deals with israel a little bit oh okay um it'll be fun it'll be okay i'm gonna do
00:05:05.920All right. So I don't actually even know your position. So I'm asking you here right on the spot. This is not something that's planned or rehearsed. And I don't even know the answer. But so I kind of have prescribed to, you know, other guys have held it. But a lot of times it's attributed to Jim Jordan, James Jordan.
00:05:24.740and, um, the, the partial preterist hermeneutic, uh, applied to the whole scripture, um, not the
00:05:33.400whole, but, but most of it in the new Testament and basically saying that pretty much every new
00:05:38.160Testament book of the Bible is written pre 80, 70, and then taking that and applying it even to
00:05:42.220Romans 11. And so saying, you know, there's certainly not, you know, as a supersessionist,
00:05:46.620a covenantal guy, both of us, I know, agree with that. Uh, there's certainly not any, you know,
00:05:51.420physical land promises for Israel in our future. But most covenantal guys, including the Puritans
00:06:00.580and a lot of the reformers, still held to a futuristic spiritual revival for Israel,
00:06:07.640ethnic Israel, according to the flesh, that eventually they would be saved. And Romans 11,
00:06:11.960that they're the natural branches. The true Israel isn't even the church. That's true in a sense,
00:06:17.340but the true Israel is Christ. He's the root. And the wild branches have been grafted in the
00:06:23.100Gentile nations. And eventually, these natural branches will be grafted in too. Well, I take
00:06:27.960the position that that actually already happened, that leading up to 80, 70, part of it going back
00:06:32.960to like the Olivet Discourse, that Jesus gave really, I think, some of the most profound and
00:06:38.360accurate prophecy in the ministry of Jesus and his earthly ministry ever. In Matthew 24, I tell you
00:06:44.560truly, you know, that not one stone will stand on another with the temple and that Titus, you know,
00:06:49.300he's going to come in. And he even says before this generation passes away, I don't think that's
00:06:52.700a metaphor, this type of generation, but you, you people. And sure enough, 40 years later, give or
00:06:58.520take, you have the destruction of the temple, you have the destruction of Jerusalem. And I think
00:07:02.880there were a lot of people there that remembered the words of Jesus and Jesus warned them, you know,
00:07:08.000don't go back and grab your tunic or this or that, but run, head for the hills. And so I don't think
00:07:12.980he was referring to his final physical return that actually is still in our future, but he was
00:07:17.760referring to a local judgment that could actually be physically escaped. That's why you don't go
00:07:23.300back and grab something because you actually could escape. And coming on the clouds, I think
00:07:27.260it's not like, oh, heaven's coming back. It's the final, the end of the gospel age, but clouds
00:07:32.060signifying judgment like in Isaiah or Joel chapter two. And so there's clouds and billows of smoke
00:07:36.860from the desolation and Titus sacking Jerusalem and the temple and all these things. And even
00:07:41.480And Josephus, you know, who sometimes is, you know, there's an argument to be made in terms of reliability, but Josephus, you know, had there were multiple eyewitness accounts that said that, you know, through the smog and the desolation, the destruction of Jerusalem, people saw through the smoke, saw what looked like silhouettes of chariots going back and forth.
00:08:01.520So there's a parousia of sorts. In a sense, it was a second coming of Christ, not in the flesh,
00:08:07.800not the final physical return of Christ, but Jesus did return. He did come in a second time
00:08:13.180in a spiritual sense through judgment and providence carried out through Titus and the
00:08:17.520Romans. All that being said, I think that Christendom that we've experienced from Constantine
00:08:24.160all the way up to present day, 1,500 years in Gentile nations in the West, and then beyond
00:08:29.640just christened them in the west and you know lots of gentiles being saved and china and brazil
00:08:33.600and south america and all these different places i i don't think we're waiting for a catalyst and
00:08:39.440i love the puritans probably you know more than a lot of guys um but i think they were wrong on
00:08:44.660this i don't think we're waiting for um a lot of them were post-millennial and so am i i know you're
00:08:50.060not but i don't think we're waiting on the natural branches to be grafted back in this this spiritual
00:08:55.260revival for ethnic Israel, according to the flesh, so that we can then experience this
00:08:59.260life from the dead revival among Gentile nations. I think Christendom has been life from the dead.
00:09:05.460We've been experiencing. And I think the reason why we've been experiencing it is because the
00:09:09.900natural branches leading up to AD 70 and at AD 70, I think some Jews were destroyed in Jerusalem
00:09:16.700as judgment, but I think a lot of them converted. I really do. And then in converting, they probably
00:09:21.580took heed to Jesus' words in Matthew 24, got out of Dodge, escaped the physical judgment,
00:09:27.240probably intermarried with different peoples and moved north outside of Jerusalem and all
00:09:30.280this kind of stuff and became other peoples and dispersed and were Christians. And I bet you
00:09:34.880this one's a little controversial, but I can't prove it and we'll never know. But I wouldn't
00:09:39.760be surprised if we find that some Christians in Palestine actually, turns out, are the posterity
00:09:46.160tracking back to, you know, Jews in 80, 70, that converted and ran away from the desolation. And so
00:09:51.660that's my thought. Now that said, when it comes to like nationhood, a lot of guys, when they're
00:09:59.540advocating, you know, they'll never advocate for America. Like I picked on Joel Berry in the last
00:10:03.360episode and you can never do that too often. Joel Berry deserves it. But so I'll do it a little bit
00:10:10.060now. You know, so I, he would never argue, you know, advocate for these things for America because,
00:10:15.780you know, he hates America, but he would argue these things for Israel because he loves him
00:10:21.800some Israel. And I've heard guys like Joel Berry, they would say, well, you know, because Titus,
00:10:29.140all the birth records were destroyed. Like I preached to Ezra recently. And it's like,
00:10:32.760if you wanted to go back and build the temple the second time, much less a third time,
00:10:37.000hypothetically, that I don't think will ever happen. But even the second time, you think of
00:10:40.800God's law being immutable and his standards never changed and all these kinds of things.
00:10:43.800like you had to you had to prove lineage you had if they didn't have the birth records they didn't
00:10:47.860get to be a part of the project they weren't hated or despised but i'm sorry you can't you
00:10:51.100can't come and you can't you can't do this because you can't prove that you're israel it's not your
00:10:56.560thing uh so going back and rebuilding the walls in jerusalem and the temple and all these things
00:11:00.820in the book of ezra and nehemiah um required proof well titus destroyed all the birth records
00:11:07.460and and you have like like not not 25 years it's not 15 minutes it's it's a quarter of a millennium
00:11:14.660it's like 250 years 240 years um before the entrance of the talmud and then picking back
00:11:20.740up with birth records and tracking family names and all these kinds of things and and and i've
00:11:25.340heard some guys this gets to nationhood i'm actually getting there with nationhood i've
00:11:29.820heard some guys say well it doesn't matter like uh people in place land and lineage
00:11:34.100blood and soil, God forbid, whatever. It doesn't matter. What matters is even if these were
00:11:41.240different people, it doesn't matter. They came back and they picked up the rituals and the
00:11:48.520customs and the culture. And so for all intents and purposes, they're Jews. And I think of that
00:11:54.400and I'm like, well, I think, because I like some of the obscure stuff like Nephilim and fairies
00:12:00.040i think that atlantis is uh the recrossed structure and uh in the sahara desert and if i go there
00:12:08.060and excavate and let's say i get lucky and i find different artifacts and i even find like some
00:12:12.460hieroglyphics and uh writings and stuff like that and i uh recover um atlantean the language and
00:12:19.140learn how to write learn how to speak it and me and the boys you know we go and and then we discover
00:12:24.520the customs and the culture, and we start practicing those things, then we're Atlanteans.
00:12:29.240Like, does nationhood work that way? Do people... No, I would just say no. Like, we could recover
00:12:35.940and appreciate, and we could even learn how to speak the language. And that's the whole thing
00:12:39.260with Israel. It's not just that the temple was destroyed, and the city was destroyed,
00:12:44.060and the birth records were destroyed, and you got a quarter of a millennium that passes with no line
00:12:49.620of, you know, keeping birth records and all these kinds of things, but they lost the very language.
00:12:53.840They had to relearn how to speak Hebrew.
00:13:15.620It's just language and just laws and just liturgy and just loves.
00:13:21.000And so you can go anywhere, and even peoples that don't exist anymore but have been lost to history, like Athens or whatever, you could go to a place, and if you can recover the language, learn how to speak the language, learn how to write in the language, find some old books, pick up the rituals and the customs and the practices, and even dust off the religion, then you are those people.
00:13:45.040you become the nation of israel you become and and it's i think that's we were talking about in
00:13:50.560our last episode i think that might be the correlation the connecting point between the
00:13:54.800dispensational i love myself some israel zionist who also at the same time is propositional
00:14:00.480nationhood for america because i think the propositional nationhood for america is the
00:14:04.560whole way you get modern day israel because there's a massive gap and that's the only way
00:14:09.100can happen. So, language matters. Laws matter. Liturgy matters. Loves matter. But I'm of the
00:14:17.560persuasion that even if I could recapture all those things from the Atlanteans with me and my
00:14:22.700buddies, we still wouldn't be Atlanteans. What do you think? Yeah, if you're coming from the outside
00:14:30.380and you're intent upon adopting a national way of life, the nation has to be there.
00:14:39.100there so it's like ruth coming into to become your people or my people your people um there
00:14:47.040has to that has to you can't just create this thing and then declare i'm israel or i'm atlantean
00:14:52.700or yeah that's not going to work um that there's about ruth really could become israel yeah but
00:14:57.660she could only become israel because there was an israel there was an israel that existed there
00:15:01.340was a people in which she could kind of graft herself integrate into and then her descendants
00:15:06.100as well exactly um yeah that's interesting i i actually i i don't know i uh if it's like
00:15:14.040if there's if people have thought that through though because i think most people think that
00:15:19.120the jews in israel are jewish 100 by descent the reformers thought that like they you know
00:15:25.040yeah yeah i know i'm taking my position is thoroughly orthodox it's not it's not heretical
00:15:30.280it's a it's what i would call a hard supersessionist uh position and i would say the
00:15:36.220reformers and puritans were soft supersessionist and i i fully recognize that the soft supersessionist
00:15:42.280position is uh the majority opinion within the reformed tradition and that says something when
00:15:47.280you're going against the majority opinion of the reformed tradition but the opinion i'm having
00:15:51.920could be wrong uh but it's not a heretical unhinged position yeah yeah and i i don't you
00:15:58.420know that's actually the the question itself i haven't studied enough to come down on a definitive
00:16:03.180answer and the main reason is so for me in theology i i focus on the theology that i think
00:16:09.340is most relevant for my political thought and so there's a lot of things i don't know in theology
00:16:13.880and there's some things in theology that where i sound like i'm a theology whiz when i'm really not
00:16:17.700and like broad and totality of it but um one reason i haven't studied that issue is i think
00:16:23.520it's not politically relevant um well yeah for today for all intents and purposes israel what
00:16:28.880what i'm don't don't hear what i'm not saying um it doesn't matter for you know they are a
00:16:34.780legitimate nation state they are a people today yeah there's a disconnect to biblical israel or
00:16:39.840not yeah there's still a people and for me as a post-millennial guy i believe all the nations
00:16:43.780eventually will be saved including this nation of israel whether they can track it back all the
00:16:47.820way or not yeah so i'm not i'm not saying that you know why do you care about i'm saying that
00:16:51.280is that we should not consider that question as politically relevant, whether you fall on this
00:17:00.300side or that side. I mean, dispensationalism becomes politically relevant. That's why it's
00:17:04.660kind of dangerous that way. But in this position, it's like when people kind of fall on the side of
00:17:10.280there will be a mass conversion of Jews, they tend then to push back, even if they're kind of
00:17:15.340on our side, I guess, they'll push back and say, well, if we're going to have a Christian,
00:17:19.840we can't have a christian nation or if we do have a christian nation has to be kind of maximally
00:17:24.540religiously uh like tolerant and and uh have religious liberty why well because you might
00:17:30.020have a handful of jews exactly i've asked the question all the time it's interesting that
00:17:34.480it's like well then then what about jews and i'm like well they're like they're like three percent
00:17:40.260of the population right like why why so you're saying we can't have a christian nation if we're
00:17:45.780like if we're like 97 percent christian which of course we're not now but if if we were as in
00:17:50.820people who identify with some sort of christian confession or whatever and but there's three
00:17:56.740percent jews you're saying that the three percent have to dictate to us that we can't have a
00:18:00.380christian nation i mean certainly we can we can tolerate what christians say today they literally
00:18:04.680say that and that's why i'm constantly asking it's also because of like world war ii and like
00:18:09.040they think it's a very like if i if i answer if i answer on the side of like you know like yeah
00:18:14.960we'll have a Christian nation and people will tolerate synagogues.
00:21:15.000And we should just get—yeah, it's very frustrating. It's very frustrating that,
00:21:20.500yeah, like, you can have a society that tolerates people who are not Christians.
00:21:27.760you can grant them citizenship you can have them in in a formal sense capable of
00:21:35.240achieving anything anyone else can achieve like in american history there were to my knowledge
00:21:42.240there's there's never been a specific law targeting jews in america i could be wrong about
00:21:46.160that but but and jews did fairly well um in in the united states uh and but at the same time for
00:21:53.840most of our history we said that we're a christian people and no one had the second thought of well
00:21:59.460what about the jews right and so we should also so we don't have to then you know have a uh take
00:22:06.660mart mart like martin luther's or martin bootzer's program for the jews in the future we can we can
00:22:11.620grant religious liberty and toleration but at the same time saying you live here i mean if you want
00:22:17.440to be um publicly jewish in a jewish state where among jewish people there's you have the right to
00:22:24.220return um to israel um and we should not hinder them for that um but um and and actually that i
00:22:30.560mean it's people like like hazoni uh yarm hazoni right who said this clearly is that america is a
00:22:36.800protestant historically a protestant country he he has said that he wants christians to return to
00:22:44.660having like a strong assertive will for itself and a public christianity and and a return to a
00:22:52.580type of nationalism in which protestantism was a was the essential feature of it um and yeah and
00:22:59.540so that that's that's what i that's what i've always envisioned what you envision right um and
00:23:05.220so we should get away again it's like we don't have to go in the post-work instances this time
00:23:08.200But that is the driving mentality is that the moment you start getting these mental images of mustache man, it's like, oh, we can't have a Christian nation.
00:23:20.800So what I was going to say, you said, so basically, you know, what you said is I have no theological love for Israel.
00:23:25.820I don't really care, you know, as a political, you know, as it is a legitimate nation state.
00:23:30.380Now, whether it should have been, you know, reformed in the 1940s and whether it should have been there, plenty of arguments to be made on either side.
00:23:38.200however, in God's providence, this is the way it played out. God's sovereign over all things.
00:23:41.920It is what it is. They have a right to self-defense. They have a right to exist and not be,
00:23:46.520you know, blasted off the face of the map. So they are a nation and whether or not other Western
00:23:50.820nations like ours should have some kind of, you know, partnership with them, that's, you know,
00:23:55.180that just depends on the situation, you know, and like what's going on. And that could be wise.
00:24:00.000In other cases, it could be foolish. But theologically, there should be no Christian
00:24:07.060nations like America shouldn't have any theological obligation or motivation to be
00:24:15.360about it. And so this is the last thing I was going to say on that. So I agree with everything
00:24:18.400you said. Part of though, what landed me on hard supersessionism as my position with Romans 11
00:24:25.880is first and foremost, the God-breathed text. I really feel like it makes that hermeneutic
00:24:31.780applied to Galatians, applied to the book of Hebrews is integral, the whole book. The whole
00:24:39.820book of Hebrews, the book of Galatians, and then also Romans chapter 9, 10, and 11, those would be
00:24:47.000some of the key texts and Ephesians. That hermeneutic seems to be the most consistent and
00:24:52.560has the most, just the best way of resolving all those texts in a consistent manner for me. And so
00:24:59.340the exegesis persuaded me beyond that. So that's number one. I really was persuaded, I think, by
00:25:04.560the word of God. But secondly, secondly, one of the things that persuaded me is even if you're
00:25:12.760not a dispensationalist and you don't think there's any future land promises, physical promises for
00:25:17.140Israel, by simply holding to a future, an our future, in Paul's future, because I date, you
00:25:23.600know, the writing of Romans, probably like 80, 50, 80, 55. So it was in Paul's future, 80, 70. But
00:25:28.620But if you think it's in our future, that Romans 11 is indicating a future, not land promises, not physical, but a spiritual revival for Israel, not in Paul's future, you know, 20 years down the line, but still in our future, then one of the things that has to happen, especially, and here's, see, for you, you can get out of this as an all-male guy, but for some of the post-male guys, especially the ones who are like, it'll be 50,000 years before Christ returns.
00:25:56.140Think about this logically. If you're a long game post mill guy, but you're also like, there's a
00:26:03.120spiritual revival for Israel. And a lot of these guys hold to like a David Chilton golden age. And
00:26:10.840they think the golden age comes right after. So it's right at the end before the final physical
00:26:15.380return of Christ. And right after this revival, spiritual revival among the Jews. And a lot of
00:26:21.260think that it'll be about a thousand years, but they think that we've got a 50,000 year timeline.
00:26:27.000So think about this logically. We're 2,000 years in, 50,000 years is the timeline, and the Jews
00:26:33.460are going to get saved with this revival right before the last thousand years. That means we
00:26:37.480have, if my math is right, 47,000 years between today and the future spiritual revival of the
00:26:45.020Jews. And even if there's not a physical land promise, and it's just a spiritual revival promise,
00:26:50.560well one thing that has to happen for that spiritual revival promise to be fulfilled
00:26:54.720is they have to at least survive yeah right so for 47 000 years no intermarriage western
00:27:01.260christian nations with whether you know alliances military keeping them out of war uh no intermarriage
00:27:10.380like you know like kinism for for uh for uh thee but not for for me you know like at every single
00:27:16.660level and and you basically have to grant yeah special privilege yes you have to give them
00:27:22.080special privilege yeah and even if you only think it's a spiritual revival whereas like me and isker
00:27:27.360we both take the approach that i already espouse with the partial and so me and isker what it
00:27:32.420allows us to do is it doesn't require us to have any animosity or malice or hatred or anything like
00:27:37.440that but it also allows us to be like you're not special at all at all you're not less special
00:27:43.800you know but not at all and and and here's the thing even the guys are like well joel that's uh
00:27:50.180you i you're treating you're talking to me like i'm dispensational you're talking to me like i'm
00:27:54.340a zionist it's like well brother i i know you're not dispensational i understand you're covenantal
00:27:58.560i understand you're westminster you know uh federalism and blah blah blah i get it good for
00:28:02.880you um but here's here's what you even you with your position still require their survival so
00:28:08.980was like it's like a functional dispensationalism it is yeah that's that's interesting i mean i have
00:28:14.200noticed that uh yeah we we do we do very seriously uh attack the idea of um the the rejection of
00:28:24.920like interesting marriage like the but not but not for jews and there can i can see how there
00:28:30.560can be a theological motivation but if it if it is morally wrong in itself to attack that and then
00:28:37.060you're giving like a special almost release for for jews and we actually do that all the time i
00:28:42.300just read a wall street journal article written by a rabbi who was uh bemoaning the fact that
00:28:48.820jews in the united states are not marrying fellow jews right and they're not uh and the ones that
00:28:54.340do intermarry with non-jews are not raising their children we have an ethnically jewish guy in our
00:29:00.580church and of course he's converted he's a christian um and he doesn't do the you know
00:29:04.200the messianic jew thing because he's like no i'm christian amen amen yeah um and so he you know he
00:29:10.140was a part of the church for a while and moved ended up moving on but um but i you know he was
00:29:14.980married to um uh you know white lady who's not jewish yeah i don't know what her exact ethnicity
00:29:21.180is but um she looked kind of irish to me but uh anyways uh i i asked him about it and he uh i was
00:29:28.180like did you get some flack he's like he was like you you wouldn't believe yeah like i my parents i
00:29:35.440might i i i might as well have just killed them you know like uh it was they could you know my
00:29:42.360parents my aunts uncles like it was it was received as like the most deeply disrespectful
00:29:48.700heinous thing that i possibly could do because all these christian nations view israel is very
00:29:55.340very special. And Israel certainly views Israel as very, very special. But the thing is, if you
00:30:03.380have that, if you've carved out that space for yourself or others have carved out that space for
00:30:08.640you, then yeah, there are certain assumptions baked into the pie. We can't let Israel get
00:30:17.660blown off the face of the map by Lebanon or Iran or whatever. We've got to come to their aid
00:30:25.860militarily. We need to send billions of dollars every 15 seconds. Every election, you've probably
00:30:34.620seen the memes where it's like, who's going to win this election in America? And it shows all
00:30:38.02050 states are the same color. And it shows Bibby. And he's like, the true winner of every American
00:30:46.720election i do think like logically though i i think you could i don't think it has to lead to
00:30:51.540that uh logically from that position i can see how someone would get there but i think you also
00:30:57.580could say that you actually don't have any theological obligation to any anyone because
00:31:03.320it's a matter of providence that there will be jews such that they could mass convert yeah but
00:31:08.920it's a matter of providence that god would save people but we still do evangelism a matter of
00:31:13.440providence that god you know answers the need of people but we still pray i think that's yeah even
00:31:18.300the providential calvinist would still say yeah like if it is god's if it's god's will and he's
00:31:23.540providentially going to bring it about he's still going to do so through human agency and means and
00:31:27.140we have an obligation to you know yeah i mean i i yeah i can see i can see how that could lead there
00:31:33.380but i'm that that didn't that didn't strike anyone in our tradition that that that's the case i mean
00:31:37.920of course modern israel did not exist but it does today somehow yeah it does yeah that's but you're
00:31:43.420I'm with you. The reformers believed it was going to happen. Ethnic Jews still exist. They're going
00:31:47.820to be saved. It hasn't happened already. It's going to happen in our future. It's going to be
00:31:51.060a wonderful thing. And if you're going to live in this Christian nation, you got to play by the
00:31:54.860rules. They were able to do it, but we can't for some reason. And I think that has to do with
00:32:02.760nationhood. Back to our topic. I really do. I think part of it has to do with dispensationalism.
00:32:09.200The reformers certainly weren't dealing with dispensationalism. So part of it's a theological
00:32:12.840problem, theological error, but I also do think that some of it has to do with our propositional
00:32:18.420nationhood idea, that they're a real nation, people, place, lineage, land, but we're not.
00:32:28.360So they have certain privileges that we don't. It would be consistent with the idea that the
00:32:32.380United States and the people who have historically lived here, they are here to facilitate other
00:32:38.020people having their identities. And this kind of goes back to what we talked in the previous
00:32:41.900episode and that that is it we don't have a people but we work such that other people can have a
00:32:47.020people themselves right so we're we're um yeah that that that would fit i'm just yeah um yeah
00:32:56.620the whole the problem is yeah i mean that's i haven't really thought about that before the
00:33:00.320the idea that that there is it's connected to our understanding of israel in that way
00:33:08.460huh um yeah i mean the idea of a propositional nationhood in the united states is only part of
00:33:15.140the story of course right uh which we'll probably get to at the latter series latter end of the of
00:33:20.340this um well anything more i know i completely derailed the whole episode but here's the deal
00:33:26.420was it interesting are you not entertained yeah so as long as it's interesting but
00:33:35.700this episode if you have any thoughts on no what is a nation yeah no i mean just back on that i do
00:33:41.080think like after world war ii there was there there was the never again mentality right and
00:33:45.780that never again mentality is specifically focused in on on jews um and they they can openly in the
00:33:53.460united states and you can read the wall street journal article that i read he actually he bemoaned
00:33:57.760the fact that there was assimilation happening among jews there is a culture among them um where
00:34:04.380not all of them but that that there is a that it would be wrong to assimilate because you're
00:34:09.100assimilating into a christian yeah and but they can openly do that that's one of the one of the
00:34:16.140the very and this is just like factually true like they can openly talk about how intermarriage is bad
00:34:21.540for them no one else can talk about that i mean well whites can't but even increasingly i think
00:34:27.260blacks cannot um and others like it's asians it's increasingly frowned upon for even even non-whites
00:34:33.140to talk about that in my experience, but not them.
00:34:37.700And so, again, I would treat the 3% of the population
00:34:46.100that's not Christian just as this abstract category.
00:34:48.920I don't care if you're Jewish or if you're Muslim
00:34:51.560or if you're Hindu, we're a Christian country.
00:38:35.560is because of this Judeo-Christian sentiment, and it has to be discussed, and it needs to be
00:38:43.620discussed by people who are not spiteful, or hateful, or, you know, immature, or, you know,
00:38:50.100it doesn't need to be discussed by jerks. But I'd like to think that me and you aren't jerks,
00:38:54.740and so I think discussing these things and just raising the question, you know, for the audience,
00:39:00.000the listener, to consider as well, like, I think could be productive.
00:39:03.640Yeah, if we give a pass on one group for not assimilating and essentially making themselves separate from the core, then it's not far from that to saying that anyone else who comes here can remain separate from the core.
00:39:22.980And then it's not far from that to say there is no core.