The NXR Podcast - THE LIVE STREAM - Why Churches That Compromise Always Die

00:00:00.000 church history teaches us that each generation of christians will face unique assaults upon

00:00:07.420 biblical truth these attacks rarely manifest as open rebellion to core christian doctrine but

00:00:13.540 instead especially in our age often take the form of subversive deception and misplaced emphasis

00:00:21.300 they wear the guise of love acceptance and inclusion all the while tearing down foundational

00:00:28.860 truths that safeguard true virtue. Even the smallest of compromises from the greatest of

00:00:35.860 institutions have ultimately resulted in their downfall to theological liberalism

00:00:41.280 and neo-orthodoxy. Tune in now as we discuss the importance of taking a stand

00:00:47.220 on the issues where the battle rages the fiercest.

00:00:58.860 All right. Well, welcome back. Good to be here. We're going to discuss today and get into a

00:01:05.940 little bit of church history. I hadn't planned it, but last week you mentioned you really got

00:01:10.600 to know your history. The Bible gives us everything we need, most certainly for life

00:01:13.980 and godliness. But in God's grace, he often uses history to illustrate, to explain, and to

00:01:20.640 demonstrate the principles in it. So now, 2,000 years into the rule and the reign of Christ since

00:01:25.220 his resurrection. We have the Bible. It's sufficient for all of these things. And God

00:01:29.900 has multiplied and heaped upon it church history for us to learn from, to grow from, to see these

00:01:35.300 principles in action. So we're going to look at a couple of case studies then and get into

00:01:38.580 not just the past, not just looking in the past and going, oh, hindsight's 20-20. Shouldn't have

00:01:43.080 done that. Shouldn't have done this. But in the last segment, getting into what are the current

00:01:46.360 issues where the battle rages the fiercest now. So we're going to jump into some history,

00:01:50.400 old Princeton specifically. We're going to look as well at the Anglican church, the Episcopal

00:01:54.000 church, their decline? And then where right now do Christians need to take the strongest stand

00:01:59.060 on biblical truth? So the first example we're going to get into, and it's a really interesting

00:02:03.140 time period in history. So you had the Reformation in the 15th century, and what exploded out of

00:02:08.380 there was a lot of great scholarship. Calvin, a personal favorite, just an incredible, probably

00:02:13.160 one of the greatest minds, I would think, in all of Christian history. His intellect, what he built

00:02:17.560 up there in Geneva. So you had Calvin, you had Theodore Beza, Francis Turretin, these stalwart

00:02:22.840 reformers and that leads obviously at some level to the enlightenment and what starts happening in

00:02:27.900 the mid 1800s is the school of higher criticism in germany so this would be friedrich schleiermacher

00:02:33.800 for example who gets into the bible and begins to read it through a psychological lens and saying

00:02:37.780 well instead of it having this clear meaning and this application and being primarily about god

00:02:43.180 we need to read it psychologically and we need to read it as the fusion of the ego and the spirit

00:02:48.180 and them being brought together.

00:02:49.900 So this school of thought—

00:02:50.940 Sounds like a precursor to Karl Barth.

00:02:53.060 That's exactly what it is.

00:02:54.420 Barth then reads—in some ways he wants to push back against Schleiermacher,

00:02:58.700 but he reads a lot of Romans, his first book that was the most explosive,

00:03:02.760 through Schleiermacher, through that alienation that Schleiermacher talks about.

00:03:05.500 So you have German hierocriticism happening in the 1800s,

00:03:08.460 growing in Germany, in Europe.

00:03:11.000 But then in America, in 1900, so the start of the last century,

00:03:15.680 I think only 124 years ago, America was 97% Christian.

00:03:21.160 We were 97% Christian.

00:03:22.420 That's mostly Protestant, too.

00:03:23.880 When?

00:03:24.260 What timeline?

00:03:25.320 1900s.

00:03:25.760 The year 1900, we were 97% Christian.

00:03:28.880 That dropped to, I think, 70% by 1960s, 1970s. 1.00

00:03:33.120 So really, in many ways, a good time.

00:03:35.120 There was an explosion of innovation.

00:03:36.900 I think of the car, the airplane, travel, international economics.

00:03:41.120 Obviously, two world wars did the number on that.

00:03:43.640 But the 1900s was a good time, and specifically for Protestants, specifically Calvinistic doctrine and research and theological writing, we had some of our best minds.

00:03:53.720 I think of A.A. Hodge and Charles Hodge at Princeton Seminary, B.B. Warfield, the lion of Princeton he was called, fighting for biblical inerrancy.

00:04:02.080 A personal favorite of mine, Gahardus Vos, probably one of the greatest exegetes, at least in the English language, Kuyper and Bavinck over there in the Netherlands. 0.92

00:04:10.480 So it was a really good time in many senses of Christendom.

00:04:13.640 You had these stalwart institutions, and they looked pretty invincible.

00:04:17.360 Do you have something to say, Michael?

00:04:19.200 So, going to the 19th century, what happens is it begins to be a movement for the revision of the Westminster Standards.

00:04:26.060 So, B.B. Warfield, Voss, they would have confessed the Westminster Standards of Faith,

00:04:30.580 the Westminster Confession coming out of England in the late 1600s from the Westminster Divines.

00:04:36.260 And this group came about, and they said, we want to make some revisions to the Westminster Standards of Faith. 0.90

00:04:41.420 And this is what they'll always do.

00:04:42.780 This is what subversion always takes the form of.

00:04:45.340 So they come to the Westminster Confession, to the General Assembly, and they say, we

00:04:48.880 want to make some revisions, and we want to do so to do a better emphasis on the love

00:04:53.060 of God.

00:04:53.620 We think that not including these parts about the universal, non-salvific love of God, which

00:04:58.560 is true, God loves the world, that in doing so, we would be better equipped to do missions.

00:05:03.660 We want to take out the parts about potentially non-elect infants, as well as the Pope not

00:05:07.620 being the Antichrist.

00:05:08.940 So they came in and said, we don't want to downgrade Holy Scripture at all.

00:05:11.880 We want to make some modifications, though, to these Westminster standards.

00:05:14.500 And what is this going to do?

00:05:15.860 It's going to help us connect better.

00:05:17.060 It's going to help us evangelize more.

00:05:19.500 It's not going to impede us when we send missionaries out of missions.

00:05:22.640 And they have to tell people, like, well, God has a specific love for those that he's elected, chosen in Christ to die for.

00:05:29.600 1903, it passes.

00:05:31.200 Voss, Warfield, others, they were extremely resistant to it.

00:05:34.220 Voss wrote that all heresy starts as a half-truth.

00:05:37.420 So is the case here.

00:05:38.920 And they were completely correct. 0.98

00:05:40.400 In 1929, the Presbyterian Church in the United States ordained women.

00:05:44.900 So this was 29 years, or 26 years, just from the revision of the Westminster Standards.

00:05:51.140 You then had mid-1930s Jay Gresham Mason was kicked out because he formed a missions board

00:05:56.780 that wasn't aligned with the liberal drift of the denomination.

00:06:00.500 And then you have the PC, specifically the USA today.

00:06:04.000 PCA kind of came out of a 1970 split.

00:06:06.700 PCA is doing okay.

00:06:08.340 Our last episode talking about some PCA ministers,

00:06:10.980 things may not be so well over there.

00:06:13.520 Machen obviously founded the OPC, which is small, but a stalwart.

00:06:17.260 But the PCUSA is cratered.

00:06:19.040 It's a shadow of what it once was.

00:06:21.140 Princeton Seminary used to train over 1,000 students.

00:06:24.860 Today it trains only 300.

00:06:26.900 Only something like 30% of them are actually going into Presbyterian ministry.

00:06:31.940 It's an institution that was once training 1,000 men a year

00:06:35.440 to send them out to Presbyterian missions,

00:06:37.620 to churches, to pastor, and to care.

00:06:40.480 It does that now with less than 300. 1.00

00:06:42.160 They're very Bardian.

00:06:43.100 So they wouldn't necessarily be theologically liberal. 0.68

00:06:46.580 They would be neo-Orthodox.

00:06:47.660 There's the Center for BART Studies there.

00:06:49.300 I've been to the seminary.

00:06:50.320 I've seen it.

00:06:51.420 And it was a Saturday in October, and it was empty.

00:06:53.640 You had Hodge Hall.

00:06:54.840 You had the chapel where Voss used to preach,

00:06:57.340 where Machen would have attended lectures.

00:06:59.380 You had this beautiful, robust campus

00:07:01.620 that used to be a stalwart for truth.

00:07:03.400 and there's of course other compromises that happened but the smallest of compromise in one

00:07:09.020 of the greatest institutions better than many seminaries we have now better than 99 of seminaries

00:07:14.040 we have now and the smallest of compromises began the slow decline said a lot there i have a little

00:07:21.080 more but well that's great i've just been enjoying story time with west yeah the history lesson is

00:07:26.980 fascinating yeah let's go ahead and break and then we'll uh we'll explain what you know the

00:07:30.960 implications and what some of that means. But let's go ahead and take a quick break for our

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00:08:18.820 The danger of centralized power is often represented by the word king.

00:08:23.900 As Americans, we hate the word king.

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00:08:54.120 We are free craftsmen, and we are honored to be your armor spread of choice.

00:09:13.000 All right.

00:09:13.840 Well, welcome back.

00:09:15.340 While we were just in that break, Michael,

00:09:17.380 you brought up a really good point about how the compromise seems so small in the moment.

00:09:22.980 Do you want to say more on that, specifically how ancient Christians used to think?

00:09:26.920 Remind us, what was that first compromise in 1903?

00:09:30.320 1903, General Assembly revised the Westminster Standards.

00:09:33.340 They wanted to make it slightly more palatable or effective for really nonbelievers who would hear it

00:09:39.920 and say, wait, God might love me differently than my neighbor.

00:09:42.660 right right maybe i don't have an electing love so they were removing they were changing that

00:09:47.740 language from the the two different types of love that god would have for humanity to emphasize the

00:09:53.200 general love that god has for all people so god's and and for the listener if they're wondering what

00:09:57.480 do you mean two types of love and this and that and the other uh there is a general sense in which

00:10:01.380 god loves uh all people on the basis of him being uh the creator of all god is not father of all

00:10:07.180 god is father of his son only begotten son the lord jesus christ and all those who have a union

00:10:12.520 with Christ by grace and faith in him. So that's the whole purpose of the doctrine of adoption is

00:10:19.080 that we are not physically born in our physical birth. We do not begin this life as children of

00:10:23.520 God. The idea of like, well, we're all God's children. The Bible doesn't teach a universal

00:10:28.180 fatherhood of God. There is a universal creatorhood. So God is creator of all people,

00:10:33.780 but he is not father of all people. He is father of the Lord Jesus Christ, his only begotten son,

00:10:38.900 and all those who are adopted in, grafted into Christ, who is the vine by grace through faith.

00:10:44.200 And so the Bible speaks of God's, a general sense of God's universal love for all his,

00:10:50.380 for all people on the basis of him being a universal creator and all people being made

00:10:55.300 in the image of God. I think of the Psalms, it says, not even just all people, but all creatures.

00:10:59.940 He has compassion on all he has made. He loves sparrows. He loves the lilies of the field.

00:11:04.080 So there's a sense in which we can say with a straight face and with a clear conscience,

00:11:08.500 before the Lord, we can say to a person without having any idea whether or not they're elect, 0.67

00:11:12.880 we don't have election goggles, I can say to my neighbor who is not a professing Christian,

00:11:18.740 God loves you. And that's a perfectly true statement. But when we speak of two loves of

00:11:23.960 God, not just one steamroll truncated, but two specific particular kinds of love, there's a

00:11:30.420 universal general love that God has for all people on the basis of him being all people's creator

00:11:36.440 and all people being made in his image.

00:11:39.060 But then there's a particular salvific love,

00:11:42.580 an adoptive love that God has for his sons,

00:11:45.700 those who are in Christ Jesus.

00:11:47.600 And what kind of love is that?

00:11:49.620 Well, it's according to, you know,

00:11:51.160 per John chapter 17 and Jesus' high priestly prayer

00:11:53.940 in the garden right before his arrest,

00:11:56.620 the thing that Jesus appeals to the father for

00:11:59.580 and petitions him for is an equal love

00:12:03.460 to what the father has for Jesus himself,

00:12:05.800 that they would share in my glory which is your glory uh that i i i pray that they would be one

00:12:13.200 even as we are one so he prays that we would have the same degree of unity for the church he doesn't

00:12:18.460 pray this for the world in fact here's the thing john 17 since i brought it up john 17 jesus

00:12:23.420 literally specifically imagine doing this in your prayer time taking the time to specify uh just so

00:12:29.620 so we're clear here god i am not he says i do not pray for the world yeah but for those that you have

00:12:35.440 given to me. And that really makes sense when you think about why would Jesus take the time

00:12:40.620 to pray for a group of people that he's not... Jesus, I'll say it like this, Jesus is about to

00:12:48.800 be arrested. He knows that. He's about to be betrayed. He's already said that in the Last

00:12:52.700 Supper with his disciples, looks at Judas, the one who dips his hand into the bread. And so he

00:12:57.340 knows he's about to be arrested and have a mock trial and be crucified. So he knows that he's

00:13:01.920 about to die. Jesus, therefore, is now, moments before his death, he's going to pray for the same

00:13:07.360 group of people that he's going to die for. A particular redemption, he's dying for the elect,

00:13:12.680 and right here, it's a particular high priestly intercession. He's praying for the elect. And so

00:13:17.620 that would just be one example of many that says that God has a universal general love for all

00:13:23.700 people, but a specific, particular elective and salvific love, adoptive love, for his people.

00:13:31.920 And not everybody is a child of God.

00:13:33.460 Yeah, and so, Wes, as you were talking about the decision that was made in the early 1900s, they went the wrong direction.

00:13:44.440 They softened.

00:13:45.360 But it made me think of a couple examples in church history where something seemingly minor was a catalyst, a pivot point.

00:13:51.740 And I was thinking of the pinch of incense that the early Christians were expected to offer.

00:13:55.600 as they went into businesses even to do business it was just take your fingers do a little hoof 0.89

00:14:02.740 little hoof and that was to honor caesar right as you would go in and do business it was kind of

00:14:08.560 asking caesar that god caesar's blessing on the business that you're about to conduct

00:14:13.180 and they said this was common practice this was so common right this was so common in that time

00:14:19.260 that but they said no we can't wait a minute we can't do that because we're we're invoking

00:14:24.300 a blessing that only God has the right to give, the prosperity of a business,

00:14:30.660 the prosperity of a family, and we're invoking Caesar's name to grant that blessing as we do

00:14:36.440 that pinch. And for that rejection, when they refused to do that, that was what led to massive

00:14:42.300 persecution. And that was, there were Christians who did do the pinch of incense, and there was a

00:14:48.800 huge debate in the church about whether they should even be welcomed back into the body after

00:14:55.140 this all died down. They ended up doing so, but it required public repentance. The other one was

00:15:01.100 the Puritans. One of the big things that led the Puritans to separate themselves from the Church 0.99

00:15:07.060 of England was that the Church of England wanted them to perform the sign of the cross before they

00:15:11.860 took communion. It's like, well, that's not inherently a bad thing. They're like, no, it's

00:15:16.760 not, but you're requiring it. You're requiring that we do this. You're saying that if we don't

00:15:21.860 do it, we have not done the Lord's Supper in the proper way. And that binds our conscience. And we

00:15:26.680 will not tolerate that binding of the conscience. A lot of them push back. It doesn't make sense

00:15:32.360 because we're not in their context. We don't know the larger narrative of what was going on. They

00:15:36.020 were right to push back on this. We read it 200 years later and we're like, well, what's the big

00:15:41.500 deal but uh you'll you'll read some of the puritans uh like who are furious and making a very big deal 0.83

00:15:47.340 about uh kneeling in the supper right like we're not going to kneel and still to this day you know

00:15:53.020 episcopalians um you know roman catholics um you know some anglicans you know that but they'll you

00:15:59.780 know they'll come to an altar um come forward to receive the lord's supper uh from the priest and

00:16:05.260 they'll kneel right you know there's an altar uh for kneeling or a confession you know there's

00:16:09.520 churches, you know, even, you know, reformed churches, Presbyterian or reformed Baptist that

00:16:13.080 might kneel during confession. And I don't think that that's wrong. But to assert, you must do

00:16:19.000 this. Another thing is, you know, as they were trying to, you know, break the Puritans in England 0.99

00:16:26.580 at the time was mandating that they had to, on the Lord's day in their church gathering, they had to 0.86

00:16:32.400 read from the final scoreboard, the final scores and results of the cricket match that week out of

00:16:41.160 the sports almanac. But that was a violation of the Sabbath in their understanding. And to be

00:16:47.680 fair, I think that's probably the right understanding, regardless of what time period

00:16:51.200 you live in. But both Westminster and 1689, as it talks about the Lord's Day and the Sabbath,

00:16:57.980 I believe it's chapter 22 for the 1689 explicitly says that it's only for the only work that's

00:17:04.740 permissible are works of necessity and mercy and that recreation it doesn't just say that work is

00:17:10.820 not permitted working on the Sabbath but also recreation and so this idea that that in a church

00:17:16.940 service that the minister the gospel minister is going to be forced by the king or parliament to

00:17:22.620 uh to read uh the the scores of the football game that happened you know uh the day before it was

00:17:30.320 just um was unheard of it was it was a scandal um but the whole thing was again it was power

00:17:36.700 it was all these things it seems small so people are like well why not um well if it's small then

00:17:42.600 why are they pushing it why see see that's a two-way street that works both ways so you're

00:17:46.440 saying it's so small it's just a pinch of incense you know or it's just uh i mean it's technically

00:17:51.000 true that there is another there's two two kinds of god's love his love particular love for the

00:17:55.700 elect but there's also god's universal love on the basis of being a creator of all for for all

00:18:00.140 people he has compassion all he has made uh that's true why can't we say it okay but why is it being

00:18:05.700 mandated why is it being forced why is it being you know well it's just reading off the the score

00:18:10.040 of the sports almanac or it's just kneeling at the lord's supper or it's just you know pinch of

00:18:13.580 incense uh you know for caesar um yeah okay but that's a two that that game works both ways it's

00:18:20.140 just this little thing so why not um why not oblige okay but the reverse rhetoric is is just

00:18:25.160 this little thing why are they enforcing it why and and and the answer is uh because it's a battle

00:18:31.900 for authority it's a battle for authority yes uh even you know i think of you know with uh eo you

00:18:37.680 know in roman catholicism and uh the the schism you know over you know does the spirit proceed

00:18:43.200 from the father only or from the father and the son and we're you know we're uh christians and

00:18:47.760 westerners and you know and and right uh biblically right so we of course believe that the spirit

00:18:52.280 proceeds from both the father and the son you know and augustine argued that and that's you know and

00:18:56.740 that's that's the position uh but eastern orthodox guys were no the spirit proceeds from the father

00:19:01.600 only and on now with that issue i that one i don't want to completely truncate and throw it in the

00:19:07.020 same category as something that's trivial that one matters um however though on the big scheme of

00:19:11.740 things even though that one does doctrinally matter the processions of the trinity it does

00:19:16.020 matter. But even that one was elevated, I think, in the historical context was elevated, although

00:19:23.020 it does objectively matter at a theological level, it was elevated as the biggest fight in the world

00:19:28.080 because behind the scenes, again, what was really going on wasn't just a debate over theological

00:19:32.900 truth, but who has power. It's always power. It's always authority. So with all these little

00:19:38.760 uh you know compromises um the person who is is is um is demanding them the the party that's

00:19:46.780 always involved and say well can't you compromise can't you come um they they don't just want the

00:19:52.580 compromise they want you yeah they want power they want authority that's what they're going after

00:19:57.660 and the last thing i'll say on it with the pc usa it's so funny that in 1903 there's this whole

00:20:02.100 whole debate about uh the love of god and just this this small concession well and then you know

00:20:07.180 like maybe 10 years ago or so, I remember the PCUSA formally petitioning for In Christ Alone,

00:20:15.720 the modern hymn, In Christ Alone. And the bridge is, you know,

00:20:21.900 and on the cross where Jesus died, the wrath of God is satisfied. And they wanted to change the

00:20:28.260 lyrics because they wanted to print hymnals. And for their hymnal, for the PCUSA, they wanted to

00:20:32.700 say instead of on that cross where jesus died the wrath of god was satisfied they wanted to change

00:20:39.080 that to the love of god was magnified well is it true that in the cross of jesus christ in the

00:20:44.440 crucifixion of the son that that is um a uh one of the greatest demonstrations of the love of god

00:20:50.620 and therefore a a love magnifying moment of course it is of course it's true uh but the question is

00:20:56.220 why. Why do you want to change it? It is true that the love of God is magnified subjectively

00:21:03.620 in terms of manifestation, in terms of perception. As it were, the love of God is being magnified

00:21:08.840 at the crucifixion. And yet, also, certainly, the wrath of God for sinners is being

00:21:16.780 satisfied at the crucifixion. Both are technically true. But anytime someone wants to make a change, 0.89

00:21:23.680 um it it always is a good policy to ask why why and the reality is for the pc usa well we you know

00:21:32.740 10 years later we and we knew 10 years ago but certainly uh the verdict has come back in in

00:21:37.320 terms of motive and you know the reasoning why um it's because uh they wanted to say the love

00:21:42.520 of god is magnified rather than the wrath of god being satisfied because they want to uh deny the 0.66

00:21:48.020 wrath of god entirely and uh and be a gay affirming um well it's funny because denomination they 0.59

00:21:54.440 allowed affirmations man this would have been i think it was still in the 1900s so they allowed 0.80

00:21:59.340 them but not every minister ordained in the pc usa had to agree with it but they're getting scared

00:22:04.860 because of redeemed zoomer and some of these reconquista guys that are coming in and saying

00:22:08.360 like no we want to take back our presbyterian heritage these buildings in the church not our

00:22:12.500 movement god bless them they're so concerned about that that now they're about to change i think at

00:22:16.360 the general assembly this summer put forward a proposition that ministers must affirm lgbtq wow

00:22:22.860 so you can imagine the guys in the 90s when they was coming out and and i'm sure they signaled like

00:22:27.200 this will never mean you have to agree with that i'm sure they said that we're just allowing for

00:22:31.120 different brothers and sisters at different convictions and now in 2024 who could have

00:22:35.520 foreseen it it's going to be required uh one note is too the puritans um the covenanters

00:22:42.840 it cost them a lot to take the stands they did to think of a man specifically john bunyan he was

00:22:48.360 in prison for 12 years because he refused to be believe it was licensed he didn't have a license

00:22:53.960 to preach when he was thrown in prison for the first time my dates might be a little off his

00:22:58.120 first wife has died had died and he had four children and one of them was blind so he actually

00:23:02.560 remarried and his second wife was pregnant when he was thrown into prison for the first time so

00:23:06.800 she is living off what little charity their little church could afford his salary for making shoelaces

00:23:12.360 because he's thrown in prison

00:23:13.340 because he just wouldn't be licensed

00:23:14.500 by the Church of England

00:23:15.780 and she actually gave birth to a stillborn.

00:23:18.420 Can you imagine anyone having a greater reason

00:23:20.860 than to just on that issue say,

00:23:23.580 you know what?

00:23:24.860 I'm gonna give in on this one.

00:23:26.700 I feel like every week I mentioned communism. 0.54

00:23:28.940 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Gulag Archipelago, 0.97

00:23:31.660 he says, every man always has handy 0.70

00:23:33.980 a dozen glib little reasons

00:23:36.300 why he is right not to sacrifice himself.

00:23:38.980 Every generation is going to be full of men.

00:23:41.320 It couldn't be me.

00:23:42.360 Well, someone's got to take a stand, but I'm not the right person.

00:23:45.960 I have too much to lose.

00:23:47.680 Solzhenitsyn draws that line.

00:23:49.120 He says, you know how we got communism?

00:23:50.900 Everyone said, oh, I'm not the one that can take the fall.

00:23:53.540 But our Christian heritage is John Bunyan, who now, he is the author of the second greatest selling book in the world.

00:23:59.800 Pilgrim's Progress.

00:24:00.740 Outside of the Bible.

00:24:01.360 I said second.

00:24:02.280 The Pilgrim's Progress.

00:24:03.540 We remember him and celebrate him.

00:24:04.240 Well, I just wanted to make you think of somebody who will assume the purpose-driven life.

00:24:08.520 I thought it was, yeah, Rick Warren.

00:24:10.760 Yeah, Rick Warren.

00:24:12.760 No, you're right, Wes.

00:24:13.820 And it's two things.

00:24:14.600 Everyone assumes I'm not the one who needs to take a stand.

00:24:19.260 But then also, as we said in a previous video,

00:24:23.900 it's, well, I'm not the one to take a stand.

00:24:27.280 And it's also very much, it's three things

00:24:29.520 that you can maybe categorize like this.

00:24:31.320 I'm not the guy to take the stand.

00:24:33.400 Another one is this is not the hill to stand on or to die on.

00:24:36.860 So I'm not the person who needs to take the stand.

00:24:39.620 This is not the issue to take a stand.

00:24:42.360 And then lastly, this is not the time.

00:24:45.560 Not the time.

00:24:46.000 Not the time.

00:24:46.780 It's the who, the what, and the when.

00:24:48.980 So I'm not the guy.

00:24:50.560 This isn't the issue.

00:24:51.880 And also from a tactical standpoint.

00:24:54.900 So personal standpoint, I'm not the guy.

00:24:57.960 The substance standpoint, the issue itself,

00:25:01.720 that's a theological standpoint.

00:25:03.220 This isn't the issue.

00:25:04.120 This is, yeah, sure, there's a right and wrong answer,

00:25:06.220 but it's just not, it's not the Trinity.

00:25:08.860 It's not inerrancy.

00:25:09.900 This is not the issue.

00:25:10.920 It's not worth spending our cultural capital.

00:25:13.260 And then lastly is a question of tactics and methods.

00:25:16.460 So a question of a person, a question of theology, and then a question of methodology.

00:25:21.760 But the coward will say no to all three.

00:25:23.680 He'll say, I'm not the guy. 0.96

00:25:25.780 You've got the wrong guy to take a stand.

00:25:28.120 And then on the issue of theology, he'll say, this isn't the hill to die on.

00:25:33.080 It's just not substantive.

00:25:35.260 The substance isn't worth fighting for, dying for.

00:25:38.280 and then lastly in terms of the methodological side of the equation he'll say this just isn't

00:25:44.780 the right timing it's not the right tactics it's not the right strategy and you said this in the

00:25:49.560 other video but i think it's worth saying again what are uh for for big eva cowardly types what 0.99

00:25:54.600 are the four stages of war four stages are there is no war going on there's nothing to fight that's

00:26:00.320 stage one stage two is the there actually is a battle going on out there but it's too early

00:26:04.720 it's not the right time to get in we don't want to waste our cultural we don't waste our capital

00:26:08.260 COVID. Yep, exactly. So stage one, there's no war going on. Okay, there is a war, but it's too

00:26:13.220 early. Stage three, there is a war going on and it's actually just too late. We're exiles, we're

00:26:18.220 pilgrims. Stage four, you're in the gulag wishing that you were back at stage one, back at stage two

00:26:23.600 and had the opportunity to fight. Right. And we see this all throughout history again and again.

00:26:28.020 Well, we're not going to take the stand on this. We're not going to take a stand right now,

00:26:30.420 both in the church and in society. But here's the crux. For men especially, do you want to be a man

00:26:37.380 that is remembered.

00:26:38.860 Do you want to be remembered

00:26:39.660 most certainly by your family,

00:26:41.280 but hopefully for doing good

00:26:42.400 that blesses other people?

00:26:43.900 If you want that,

00:26:44.900 then I can guarantee you

00:26:46.000 the path to being remembered,

00:26:47.980 the path to building that legacy,

00:26:49.680 the path to people saying,

00:26:50.700 look at the stand he took.

00:26:51.840 Look at his courage.

00:26:52.920 It's not exactly like you said,

00:26:55.180 well, I'm not the right person to do it.

00:26:56.520 Oh, it couldn't be me.

00:26:57.460 I have too much to lose. 0.94

00:26:59.200 All men should in a,

00:27:00.480 of course, subservient sense 1.00

00:27:01.560 to God's glory.

00:27:02.400 Psalm 8 says that

00:27:03.160 you've crowned man

00:27:04.120 with glory and honor.

00:27:05.460 Men should seek for glory

00:27:06.760 to take a stand and to be courageous and to fight

00:27:08.740 where the battle's the thickest. And if you want

00:27:10.680 to be that man, then you are

00:27:12.640 not going to be that. If every opportunity that comes

00:27:14.740 to you, to take a stand, to 0.98

00:27:16.460 push back, to hold onto biblical

00:27:18.620 truth, it couldn't be me. Someone else

00:27:20.660 has to take this fight. Someone else has to do this.

00:27:22.840 Yep. And notice what Wes is saying. He's saying

00:27:24.560 if you, this is actually

00:27:26.500 part of my sermon notes for this Sunday coming up,

00:27:29.080 but Wes is saying if

00:27:30.180 on every issue and every opportunity

00:27:32.860 you say, I'm not the guy,

00:27:34.800 this isn't the hill to die on, and this isn't

00:27:36.740 the time, then yeah, you're making a mistake if you are rejecting every opportunity for courage.

00:27:45.300 But that's not to say, because the pendulum can overswing, that's not to say that you should be

00:27:50.680 fighting every single hill imaginable. And the reason why is not because truth doesn't matter

00:27:55.880 and not because we want to carve out nuance and room for compromise, everything that we've been

00:28:00.820 talking against thus far up until this point in the video uh but but there is something to be said

00:28:06.540 for um you can only um effectively defend so many hills at once like even you know like with with

00:28:13.900 generals and war and wartime strategies you know like the art of war you know and all these things

00:28:18.460 it's uh you can't spread your troops out uh too thin you have to say okay what uh what are the

00:28:24.960 areas uh that are are most valuable that must be defended and we're going to concentrate

00:28:30.000 great um our our our biggest efforts our most men our best artillery um at those places this

00:28:37.980 these are the hills that we cannot uh lose and certainly some of those hills um are are definitely

00:28:44.920 it can't be anything less than this but i would argue it's it's far more uh those hills certainly

00:28:49.420 include the trinity and inerrancy of scripture and the hypostatic union these kinds of things

00:28:54.740 but there are other hills beyond just the Apostles Crete, beyond just primary Orthodox

00:29:05.360 theology. There are cultural hills that are worth dying on, right? It's just a pinch of incense to

00:29:12.400 Caesar. Why does it matter? It's just a dirty diaper over your face, you know? It's just 15

00:29:17.500 days to stop. It's just women pastors. Right. It's just women pastors or not even that. Oh, 1.00

00:29:21.520 we'd never have a woman pastor. It's just a woman preaching under the authority of the elders, 1.00

00:29:26.020 right? It's just a woman preaching. It's just a pinch of incense. It's just a mask. It's just 1.00

00:29:33.640 15 days to slow the spread. But that's always the way it goes. And so having wisdom and being able

00:29:41.080 to see, okay, what is, because we can't fight a hundred battles simultaneously effectively.

00:29:46.960 right um so but then determining okay uh which of these battles um is most important and and to

00:29:54.800 answer that question you can't just look at the surface level of the issue and say what's uh what's

00:30:00.200 the biggest concession what's the biggest compromise uh you have to look behind uh what's

00:30:05.120 actually being demanded the concession that's being uh requested and say all right um which

00:30:11.240 which which one would be uh the foothold that that will let the enemy in the gate um and

00:30:17.540 covid was was one of those it's just a mask yeah yeah but but here's the thing um this is the

00:30:23.960 government telling the church what to do yeah telling the church it has to close telling uh

00:30:29.360 you what uh how you have to physically dress yourself at church um that to come to the lord's

00:30:35.140 table it requires nothing but faith plus mask um you know like and and that was that was a big

00:30:43.320 uh issue you know uh the woke stuff well it's just it's just loving people you know loving your

00:30:48.300 neighbor and not being a racist no no it wasn't uh loving black people that's not what they wanted

00:30:54.180 what they wanted is for you to hate white people they wanted you to hate the founders right well

00:30:59.740 it's just stonewall jackson didn't stop with stonewall jackson who was great by the way

00:31:04.800 But it didn't stop with Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee.

00:31:08.300 Then it moves on to Thomas Jefferson.

00:31:10.820 And Abraham Lincoln now is in question.

00:31:13.380 Last week, it was in the UK, they removed two statues of missionaries from a train station or something like that. 0.64

00:31:22.000 And they erected two statues of very tribal-looking black people. 0.87

00:31:26.180 Yeah, I did see that.

00:31:27.040 I did see that. 0.85

00:31:28.240 And I think that the point that we're trying to make here is some of these secondary issues might not be enough to send your soul to hell, but they are turning points that will destroy Christian organizations, Christian churches, Christian associations. 0.84

00:31:45.280 They are deadly and have the power to alter the trajectory entirely of something that is good and godly and going the right direction. 0.90

00:31:56.800 And because of that, they're worth fighting about. 0.96

00:31:59.800 We're not just saying the only thing that Christians can fight about are first-tier theological issues.

00:32:06.160 What we're saying is some of the secondary issues, like whether or not you obey the government's mandate and close your church,

00:32:13.660 those churches that closed for an extended period of time,

00:32:17.720 I would be shocked if the majority of those churches are not in decline now

00:32:22.860 and the churches that repented early or didn't close at all are growing.

00:32:27.480 These are huge issues when we think about the direction of a church

00:32:31.200 or a seminary or an institution,

00:32:33.280 and they're worth thinking carefully about,

00:32:35.160 they're worth having wisdom about,

00:32:36.600 and they're worth taking stands about in a strategic way, like you're saying.

00:32:39.660 Yep, agreed.

00:32:40.820 Let's go to commercial, and then we'll hit one last example 0.99

00:32:43.860 in women's ordination and what that did to the Anglican church,

00:32:46.420 the Episcopal church, and go from there.

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00:35:24.160 your free 30 minute consultation today. All right. So we've beat this drum a little bit,

00:35:31.280 especially about women's ordination compromises on biblical truth, like the love of God. But I

00:35:35.680 just want to really drive it home for a second. So the Anglican church in the 1990s had a big

00:35:40.180 brilliant idea, which was a little bit of a compromise here might help boost some attendance

00:35:44.360 numbers, get the kids back, reach the youth. So in the 90, the youth. So in 1994, they approved

00:35:50.520 the ordination of women and obviously their nomination is growing and doing great of course

00:35:56.720 not the once great british empire i mean again we were talking about john bunyan and the

00:36:00.740 westminster divines their legacy is anglican uh martin lloyd jones was an anglican minister

00:36:05.960 so this incredible legacy this church that stood for hundreds of years but in the 90s they began

00:36:11.100 to ordain women they began to blast same-sex unions in 2023 so last year uh they've now

00:36:16.540 decline, so between 18 and 24 years old, less than 1% of English youth attend church weekly.

00:36:22.780 They were 2.8 million, their number of baptized members in 1971. They've lost a million of those

00:36:30.560 and are down to 1.8 million. So in the UK, they began ordaining women in the 90s and now gone on

00:36:37.020 same-sex mirage. Their attendance, the people coming, I think it's an average of 57, will attend

00:36:42.700 of worship service in any given week.

00:36:45.120 In the U.S., the Anglican church,

00:36:47.160 it's more theologically conservative.

00:36:49.000 It's still not great.

00:36:49.700 They allow individual dioceses to ordain women,

00:36:53.000 but they've stood somewhat strong.

00:36:54.700 They're actually growing.

00:36:56.120 So we're not even talking like full-blown patriarchal.

00:36:59.080 It's just your level of biblical fidelity

00:37:01.120 to these key issues that are being compromised

00:37:03.220 will directly correlate to exactly like you said,

00:37:06.100 the strength and the health of your church.

00:37:08.140 I'm going to pull up a tweet here.

00:37:09.040 This is from Thabiti.

00:37:12.700 PGC writer. He might be on the board, big conference speaker guy. His book has most

00:37:20.580 certainly been in your church library. He said this, this was probably two or three years ago,

00:37:25.420 to summarize, I accept the Bible's teaching on the male leadership in the church. So he kind of

00:37:30.860 plays his conservative card, then says, I'm not a misogynistic, culture-warring pastor. I'm not a

00:37:36.520 culture warrior. I think women preaching and pastoring is a gospel issue. And certainly in a 1.00

00:37:42.100 sense women not being ordained is not a gospel issue the gospel is jesus given for sinners that

00:37:48.580 doesn't include women's ordination but most certainly you can see the well just the gospels

00:37:52.860 here and then pretending everything else is just all tertiary right there are things that are not

00:37:57.900 gospel issues like biblical sexuality that are right below in their importance of to your faith

00:38:05.020 to your functioning for the church actually to be a church uh it's not just gospel everything else

00:38:11.320 there is the gospel and then as we've been saying this whole episode these other truths matter they

00:38:16.460 matter for your church for your family for your health for your children and you can't just discard

00:38:21.340 them and pull that card he pulled out i'm not a culture warrior i'm not a misogynist i'm not a

00:38:26.280 misogynist yeah um no you're right that's good theological minimalism is uh you know a phrase

00:38:32.620 that could be used theological minimalism which ironically is uh i think one of the uh

00:38:38.260 unintended negative fruits that came out of fundamentalism that uh you know the fundamentalist

00:38:44.400 in the good sense you know there's you know that word is used uh most regularly these days as a

00:38:51.200 pejorative that's something bad you know you don't want to be a fundamentalist and we think you know

00:38:55.620 fundamentalist is someone who doesn't go to movies uh someone who doesn't use playing cards you know

00:39:00.000 somebody who doesn't smoke or chew or date girls who do you know and um usually a teetotaler or

00:39:05.860 something like that when it comes to alcohol.

00:39:08.380 But I'm using the term fundamentalist in terms of, you know,

00:39:12.460 a theological movement, a camp that, you know,

00:39:15.660 like Machen would have been a part of.

00:39:17.560 And a lot of guys, you know, Martin Lloyd-Jones, you know,

00:39:21.140 would have been a part of, you know, guys like that.

00:39:22.700 And, you know, Lloyd-Jones and Stott had, you know,

00:39:25.200 a big disagreement on whether or not, you know, with Anglicanism,

00:39:28.320 you know, whether or not to stay as a part of the church or to leave.

00:39:31.680 But the fundamentalist, you know,

00:39:33.160 the idea was that there was this massive rise and push at the time of liberalism and so uh the idea

00:39:39.560 is we're outnumbered and so we've got to uh we've got a circle uh link arms and form kind of a ring

00:39:46.520 you know a circle uh so that we can all watch each other's you know six you know so that you

00:39:51.560 get my back i'll get yours you know and um it's it's what you would typically do uh in a scenario

00:39:57.140 where you're being attacked by an opposing force

00:40:01.760 that is far larger than your own.

00:40:04.820 And so that was kind of the mentality.

00:40:06.440 And the mentality is we've got to get the circle tight, right?

00:40:10.380 The shield wall, if we're going to survive, 1.00

00:40:12.100 if Christianity is going to make it through

00:40:13.840 this massive assault of liberalism

00:40:16.460 and critical analysis of everything,

00:40:19.640 like, well, but does there have to be a virgin birth?

00:40:22.740 Does there have to be a bodily resurrection?

00:40:25.160 There was a ton of that going on in the early 1900s, and they were outnumbered in many regards.

00:40:35.100 So the mindset was, let's draw the circle tight, and let's defend what we cannot live without.

00:40:44.220 And let's narrow it down to as few issues as possible, as few hills that are actually worth dying on as possible,

00:40:51.700 so that the few of us, we can keep the shield wall tight around these, you know, seven or eight

00:40:58.020 issues because we fight for everything. If we fight for a robust Christian doctrine, we just,

00:41:03.900 we don't have the manpower. We won't be able to spread our forces that, that, that wide will be 0.99

00:41:09.100 spread too thin and we'll lose. And that was a mindset. And you know, I don't envy those guys

00:41:13.960 in that time. And, and so I don't want to just sit here as the, you know, the Monday, you know,

00:41:20.120 Monday morning quarterback and critique it. But I think, so I won't speak for them and what they

00:41:25.500 did and what, you know, but I think that that mentality has carried over and whether or not

00:41:30.360 they were right to have that mentality is maybe up for debate. But whether or not that mentality

00:41:36.940 should continue today, whether or not that should be our mentality, I do have a strong opinion on

00:41:41.840 that. And my opinion is no, I don't think it's helpful. I think that's part of why we have the

00:41:46.260 problem we have today is because of a theological minimalism. We would say that there's literally

00:41:50.680 only seven or eight issues that are actually worth having a conviction on, that are actually

00:41:54.840 worth defending. And so then what happens? We'll defend inerrancy, we'll defend the Trinity,

00:42:02.340 we'll defend this, that, and the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, but that's about it. 1.00

00:42:09.120 Well, then what happens is you get women pastors. What happens is you get gay affirming churches. 0.91

00:42:13.860 What happens is, you know, that you begin to bend on all these other things because— 1.00

00:42:19.940 They'll hollow out those truths from the inside.

00:42:21.480 Right.

00:42:21.760 Instead of from the outside, they'll just—

00:42:22.860 Exactly.

00:42:23.720 From inside your church.

00:42:24.200 And that's the irony, because you would think, oh, that's not even possible.

00:42:27.480 But you look, it's not a coincidence.

00:42:32.420 Some of the oldest churches in terms of, you know, ancient, historic stone church buildings

00:42:39.520 and some of the most stringent methodology

00:42:46.140 in terms of robes and tassels

00:42:49.460 and regular principle of worship

00:42:51.060 and like a very liturgical service

00:42:53.920 where they're coming in,

00:42:55.760 carrying this ancient Geneva Bible

00:42:58.760 from 500 years ago

00:43:00.200 and lots of kneeling and lots of standing

00:43:03.800 and drinking from a silver chalice

00:43:05.980 and you're not getting the plastic cups

00:43:07.820 and it's only wine

00:43:08.860 and not juice in the supper,

00:43:10.580 which I think a lot of these things are right.

00:43:12.700 And it's robes and tassels, clerical robes

00:43:14.580 and all these kinds of things.

00:43:15.580 And we're singing hymns and there's only an organ,

00:43:17.660 maybe a harpsichord, you know,

00:43:18.920 there's not guitars.

00:43:20.720 And a lot of these things I agree with,

00:43:22.420 but here's the irony.

00:43:23.540 There's all those things. 1.00

00:43:24.620 And then also you have a short-haired female minister.

00:43:30.320 My point is the most historic traditional churches

00:43:35.340 in terms of building and all the optics

00:43:37.600 in terms of their building in terms of their liturgy in terms of their methodology in terms

00:43:42.280 of the dress the attire the clerical robes uh candles being lit you know the whole nine yards

00:43:47.620 um but uh they're very traditional um but in terms of their substance the theology uh they're 0.97

00:43:54.960 they're the homo jihad they're like they're as liberal as you could possibly get and then you 0.95

00:44:00.160 know and then it's this you know cowboy church that uh that you know if you talked about the 0.97

00:44:05.140 regular principle they wouldn't know what the heck you were talking about um but the cowboy church

00:44:09.380 uh they at least know that you don't ordain a gay minister yeah you know and so that so anyway so my

00:44:14.940 point is like um because you would think right because those churches i'm describing gay affirming

00:44:19.700 pc usa churches you know what they do on sunday they uh they recite the apostles creed the

00:44:25.360 apostles creed was not a bulwark um against uh ordaining female and gay pastors uh and and

00:44:32.520 here's the thing i'm not knocking we recite the apostles creed in our church it's part of our

00:44:36.220 liturgy so i'm not knocking the apostles creed i love it that that's just i think that's a good

00:44:40.200 example to prove my point um theological minimalism saying uh we only will speak up

00:44:46.220 for top tier orthodox issues which is what the apostles creed addresses and that's its purpose

00:44:52.200 it's a creed not a confession it's meant to be narrow short brief concise top tier orthodox

00:44:58.820 issues. But my point is you can go to a church and recite the Apostles' Creed week after week

00:45:03.980 after week for 50 years, and Sally is your pastor with blue hair, and her son sits in the front row

00:45:12.360 with his boyfriend. There's another element here too, and that is the church has always refined

00:45:18.600 its doctrine in response to false teaching. And so a lot of what happened over church history

00:45:24.860 was men of discernment looked at what someone was saying and said, wait a minute, that's not

00:45:31.320 only a problem, but that's a problem that affects how we understand the fundamental reality of

00:45:37.440 salvation, of who God is, of who man is, of who Christ is. And we should expect, as the church

00:45:45.980 goes through history, that new issues, errors, heresies are going to arise, and it's up to

00:45:52.400 discerning men to realize this is not just some whack kook idea. This touches on an essential

00:45:59.040 truth about who God is, who man is, and what God is doing. And so when we look at a lot of the

00:46:04.900 issues, even women's ordination, I'm not going to say that you're going to hell if you disagree

00:46:10.920 with the patriarchal position on this, but you have missed something fundamental about the creation

00:46:17.700 order, you have missed something fundamental about Paul's argument that man was created first,

00:46:24.440 that woman was created for man. When you get into sexuality and gender, you miss something

00:46:29.980 absolutely fundamental, which I think through our time will become Orthodox Christian belief.

00:46:38.140 The church has to refine what the Bible says about what it means to be a man and what it

00:46:43.240 means to be a woman and in the process of refining that um now we look back at the arguments about 0.84

00:46:50.020 the trinity we said well obviously right but the men who fought that and arius was winning for a

00:46:55.520 long time arius was it was the official position of the roman emperor it's like half the empire

00:47:01.080 yeah yeah half the empire went arian and he had i think two different emperors

00:47:05.760 affirm his position and that was the law of the land it was a long battle and and yet uh by god's

00:47:13.060 grace and by the tenacity and perseverance and courage of christian men now the church says oh

00:47:18.200 well look obviously right and and and what we are in the process of right now in part

00:47:22.900 is getting to the point where in 300 years people say yeah obviously men and women are different

00:47:28.320 obviously women ought not be ordained that's just so so like why would anyone ever think

00:47:32.840 differently right but no these are the battles of our time that that directly affect how we

00:47:39.460 understand how god has made mankind what god did when he created nations all of these are battles

00:47:44.300 that the church needs to refine and they're important battles yep everybody wants a tailor

00:47:49.320 made solution too maybe you're listening to this like okay what's the confession that i can confess

00:47:53.580 that will guard me against this error or how do i guard against liberalism is laying out all of

00:47:57.880 these things but as you can see from the revision of the westminster standards in the 1900s there's

00:48:02.700 nothing that you can just set in stone and leave it there and will serve as the bulwark we're

00:48:07.460 living stones as christians and jesus uses the example of old wineskins and new there's always

00:48:12.820 going to have to be each generation freshly fighting for the truth right most orthodox

00:48:19.180 churches or i'm sorry most uh compromised churches have an orthodox statement of faith in their

00:48:24.660 basements on their website yeah you know uh so yeah it's it's not just a formula like if we adopt

00:48:29.860 this um you know this policy or we adopt this confession then then we're you know we'll always

00:48:35.740 be good uh what you need with each generation that's um that you just there's no substitute

00:48:42.640 for is um not just good policies or good confessions but you need good men you have to

00:48:47.680 have good leaders um and not just good leaders of yesterday uh you know and then and then men who

00:48:55.240 just point back to them you have to have leaders today you're always going to have to have uh

00:49:00.360 leaders, uh, present, present day leaders. Um, and here's the thing about present day leaders,

00:49:06.480 um, present day leaders, uh, a lot of times they're, um, they're not appreciated until

00:49:12.480 they're gone. Right. I was about to say that they're not appreciated in their day. They're

00:49:16.460 appreciated, um, after, you know, very few people, um, get to receive, you know, uh, the praise for

00:49:24.280 being the hero in their lifetime. Um, it's usually, you know, that's what Jesus said, you know, it's

00:49:29.740 like what are you basing that off of well you know one example would be the words of christ

00:49:33.360 like jesus said like you know of of the jews he said was there ever a prophet that your fathers

00:49:38.360 didn't kill you build the tombs of the prophets now so you your father's sons the posterity of 0.62

00:49:43.960 your fathers your fathers killed jeremiah your fathers killed the prophets uh but you uh you

00:49:49.460 honor them now and you exactly what you said michael that your your general sentiment is of

00:49:53.980 course it's universal it's a it's common knowledge that jeremiah was a true prophet of the lord and

00:49:59.580 it's common knowledge that isaiah was great and it's common knowledge that um yeah sure now it is

00:50:05.640 but at the time um all these men were hated they were all rejected um so it's it's always the

00:50:14.100 position to look back and appreciate uh former leaders after they're gone um but but if you're

00:50:21.440 looking for okay but uh we we can't just have an appreciation for former leaders we have to have

00:50:26.680 present leaders and uh and one mark of president i'm not saying this is the sole mark the the only

00:50:32.240 one but one mark of if you're looking for well who who's faithfully leading today is who's uh

00:50:38.220 who's willing to uh be despised today who is uh who's willing and you know that's that's all right

00:50:45.380 and i would i would put stephen wolf in this category and here's let me you know i know it's

00:50:49.440 random to bring him up right here at the end um but uh let me just be clear uh i i don't agree

00:50:55.440 with Stephen Wolf on plenty of things, doctrinally.

00:51:00.540 But I do find it curious, right?

00:51:02.680 So I'd be a little bit more

00:51:03.620 on the Vantillian presuppositional side.

00:51:05.620 He's more on the Thomas Aquinas side.

00:51:08.880 He's gonna give more emphasis to natural law

00:51:10.900 that I'm gonna, you know,

00:51:12.440 I have sympathies for natural law,

00:51:13.780 but I'm always gonna rest my head

00:51:15.520 at the end of the day and saying,

00:51:16.820 well, yeah, but God wrote a book, you know?

00:51:18.460 And like, yeah, we can follow, you know,

00:51:19.940 the sun and the moon and the stars

00:51:21.320 and the migration of deer, you know,

00:51:22.960 but we could also just say Exodus 20.

00:51:25.440 and i kind of prefer that one special revelation um and so uh we're gonna have difference he's

00:51:30.720 presbyterian i'm not he's all millennial i'm post-millennial um and yet though here's the

00:51:35.960 irony uh it's it's the guys who uh who view themselves as the uh the biggest fan club of

00:51:46.540 john calvin that hates that's right r scott clark right when stephen wolf is 100 straight line

00:51:56.620 from john calvin yep yep straight line like i'm willing to admit that i'm taking a detour yes

00:52:03.040 i'm actually i'm willing to admit that all the theonomic guys and i would say i'm a general

00:52:07.940 equity you know theonomist the theonomic guys are detouring from calvin right we don't have a claim

00:52:14.000 on calvin we do we agree with his soteriology we agree with i agree with a ton of stuff with

00:52:18.360 calvin his view on the lord's supper i you know so i am a calvinist i have some i'm not it's not

00:52:22.620 like i have no claim to calvin uh but my claim to calvin is uh not nearly as sound as as steven

00:52:28.260 wolf's claim to calvin yeah uh me jeff durbin james white doug wilson like and and and i don't even

00:52:34.460 know if those guys they'll probably not appreciate what i'm saying right now um but i think if

00:52:38.380 they're honest and willing to admit um if you're just going to read calvin plain reading of calvin

00:52:43.740 and then read the case for christian nationalism by steven wolf um steven wolf is closer to calvin

00:52:49.700 than uh than greg bonson and uh and his you know his his by what standard or those kinds of and i

00:52:56.720 love greg bonson and i'm more on greg bonson's side than i am on steven wolf's side in the

00:53:01.080 particularities but that's my point is like who who is hated you know like that um i got a feeling

00:53:08.580 and again i like i you know i'm not saying this because i have a dog in the fight i'm not going

00:53:12.740 to get steven's not going to send me royalties i get i get no benefit by saying this all i get is

00:53:17.660 uh my my camp my team being mad at me for talking about this right now so i stand nothing but to

00:53:23.680 lose as a general equity theonomist guy you know singing praises of steven wolf um but mark my

00:53:29.620 words a hundred years from now yeah um if there if there is any book that was written in our

00:53:34.920 generation i think there will be few i think most books even the decent books that let's just be

00:53:39.520 honest uh they pale in comparison to former generations why you know john piper uh you know

00:53:44.560 love john piper but um a hundred years from now um you don't need to read john piper when you can

00:53:49.580 read john owen you just don't yeah um if there's any book from our generation uh books uh that will

00:53:55.620 be uh a hundred years from now still in i think regular circulation and use it will be uh the case

00:54:01.560 for christian nationalism by stephen wolf it will it just will and you can hate them and you can oh

00:54:06.420 you can cope and seethe and ah and i can hear the guys coping and seething you know through the

00:54:10.720 through the camera uh and again like i said i disagree with steven on multiple things um but

00:54:16.420 again if you're trying to identify leaders right bringing it back to the topic for today and

00:54:20.560 landing the plane if you're trying to identify not just leaders of of yesteryear it's easy to find

00:54:26.100 leaders who are already dead everyone hindsight's 2020 everyone can identify a leader once the

00:54:33.660 verdict has come fully back in once they've lived their life they've died they're safely buried six

00:54:38.080 feet under dirt and you know it's easy to identify a leader then it's hard to identify leaders today

00:54:43.560 so what do you look for well you look for here's the guys who um you know because jesus is in the

00:54:49.000 line of the prophets right he's in this direct line he's saying you're trying to kill me just

00:54:53.860 like your father's tried to kill them and meanwhile you're building tombs to the prophets

00:54:58.040 that your father's killed while trying to kill me behaving just like your father's and i do find it

00:55:02.720 ironic um you know uh calvin college you know and like you know we're gonna go uh we're gonna go to

00:55:08.460 geneva you know or whatever and we're gonna do a tour you know this kind of stuff uh meanwhile we

00:55:12.880 hate steven wolf the heidel blog which steven wolf literally it basically is just copy and paste john

00:55:17.440 calvin it's 400 pages of i mean it's it's almost i mean it's just it's just john calvin regurgitated

00:55:23.140 for 400 pages in a book so we're gonna go on a tour and visit calvin's grave and also tweet out

00:55:30.040 how much we hate steven wolf i would say that's a great sign and again i disagree with steven

00:55:33.920 on certain things but that uh that is a great indicator if you're looking for a leader and i

00:55:38.960 know this isn't popular that's how you know he's a leader c.a that's my whole freaking point is

00:55:43.980 how do you find that the leader is the guy that when you're podcasting and talking about right

00:55:47.780 now people are coping and seething yeah right that's uh there you go there's there's uh there's

00:55:53.100 your sign uh steven wolf is just one and there are many others but that's just one i'm just

00:55:57.140 showing you, how do you do it? How do you find leaders today? Not just leaders of yesteryear,

00:56:01.680 but today. Who's in the line of the prophets that were killed in their lifetime, that people

00:56:07.260 hated in their lifetime, and who today is saying, we love Calvin, we love Luther, we love this,

00:56:17.460 but we hate him. If his name wasn't on the book and I was just reading pages with no citation

00:56:25.740 out of the case for Christian nationalism

00:56:27.480 and then reading pages for Calvin.

00:56:29.700 It would be hard,

00:56:30.640 unless I had it perfectly memorized,

00:56:32.400 it'd be hard to say who was who.

00:56:34.120 Except for the United States references.

00:56:35.820 Yeah, there you go.

00:56:36.560 He modernizes it.

00:56:38.040 Oh no, I know.

00:56:38.580 Contextualizes it.

00:56:39.140 Yep.

00:56:39.660 All right, well, thanks for tuning in.

00:56:41.120 You wanna?

00:56:41.420 Yep, I can end with a quote.

00:56:42.740 I'll just say this too.

00:56:44.140 Notice too who's a threat to the regime.

00:56:46.040 Is R. Scott Clark on any lists?

00:56:47.780 Doug Wilson was visited by the FBI.

00:56:49.600 They know who he is

00:56:50.800 because he's a threat

00:56:51.740 because building up families

00:56:52.820 and churches and training men, 0.92

00:56:54.780 that's a problem.

00:56:55.740 uh are scott clark's on any list the regime does not care about the two kingdom escondido

00:57:00.900 westminster west they're not going to put up a fight communism comes to this land but there's

00:57:05.060 some other guys that will so yeah notice who's the enemy of the regime i'm going to close with

00:57:08.900 this quote it is attributed to martin luther it is not technically from him it says this it's

00:57:13.820 really good though if i profess with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition every portion

00:57:18.940 of truth of god except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that

00:57:23.940 moment attacking i am not confessing christ however boldly i may be professing christianity

00:57:28.940 where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proven and is steady upon all the battlefields

00:57:34.380 is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at one point it's the chronicles of the schoenberg

00:57:40.460 family so thanks for tuning in yep thanks for tuning in yep we'll see you guys again uh next

00:57:46.700 week.

The NXR Podcast - March 20, 2024

THE LIVE STREAM - Why Churches That Compromise Always Die

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