The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - How Tim Keller & Russell Moore Got Evangelicals To Vote Democrat

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00:00:23.480 five-star review on your favorite podcast platform thanks all right here we are i'm going to go ahead

00:00:31.060 and intro the episode we have the following written after back-to-back terms of president

00:00:36.120 barack obama the republican party looked poised to turn in a new direction with a nomination

00:00:41.800 of donald trump however many evangelical elites such as russell moore timothy keller francis

00:00:49.240 collins and others balked and began to exert substantial efforts over the coming years to

00:00:56.120 convince evangelicals that voting for democrats was acceptable and even necessary to stop trump

00:01:03.880 orange man bad now new details reveal that this effort was not just an organic con conscientious

00:01:12.520 objection to trump's bombastic style but a coordinated and well-funded effort among some

00:01:18.360 of the evangelicals most influential figures to propagandize millions of conservative christians

00:01:25.220 tune in now as we are discussing in this episode how russell moore and timothy keller as well as

00:01:31.260 other names which will be mentioned throughout the episode how they got evangelicals to vote for

00:01:37.320 baby killers aka democrats wes he wrote our article for this week he's going to go ahead

00:01:43.720 and line out a little bit of the overview of this episode, what we'll be discussing,

00:01:48.240 take it away. Great. Thanks so much. Good to be here again. So we'll talk about today the divide

00:01:54.420 in evangelicalism that arose over Donald Trump, the behind the scenes, so behind the scenes,

00:01:59.900 the money and the influence that actually went into manipulating the evangelical vote,

00:02:04.580 and towards the end, Lord willing, we'll look at the year ahead. So it's election year again.

00:02:09.120 I don't know about you guys, I'm pumped. 2020, front to back, was just a ride. So it's so good

00:02:16.060 to be back in election season. We've never been more back than we've been before. Yeah,

00:02:21.760 than we are right now. It's going to be quite the year. Lord knows what's going to happen.

00:02:25.980 Just a brief note, we had planned to talk about the dynamic of Christians and how they should

00:02:30.560 relate to power. And so we are pivoting to this, to this new news, some interesting stuff that's

00:02:34.760 come out. But just really briefly to mention, I think you did a great job on Sunday talking about

00:02:38.860 it. When we say how Christians should think about power, power is a tool, right? So an axe can do

00:02:44.240 an incredibly good thing for you. It can chop wood, it can help you build a home, or it could

00:02:48.580 be used violently. Power should be thought of the same way. And there's many who would say, well,

00:02:53.560 Christians, our ethos, our motive is to lay down power. Timothy Keller, he literally said one time,

00:03:00.260 he said, it's in the nature of God to give up power and privilege. And so you'll be told by

00:03:06.160 evangelical elite, you should give it up. You shouldn't seek to attain power. You shouldn't

00:03:10.300 seek authority. You shouldn't seek control. But that's just not true. I would even say,

00:03:14.580 to even be capable of virtue, I think of self-mastery. You have to have some level of

00:03:19.360 control and power over yourself. That is a prerequisite to even being able to order your

00:03:24.520 house well, much less making a difference in the world. So, Lord willing, we'll get into that topic

00:03:29.420 some other time, do a full episode on it. But for this week, talking about Timothy Keller,

00:03:35.140 Russell Moore, other evangelical elites, how they got Christians, how they went after evangelicals

00:03:40.920 to vote Democrat. One quick note I wanted to add on this. Maybe you've never heard of Timothy

00:03:47.840 Keller or Russell Moore, for example. You would say, I don't know who these guys are. I've never

00:03:51.760 read a book by them. Who are they and why should I care would be the bigger question. The way these

00:03:57.560 kind of platforms work is that maybe you've never heard their name, but your pastor, for example,

00:04:01.900 say your pastor balked over COVID or balked over Trump. He was probably listening to these guys.

00:04:08.240 Timothy Keller's influence, he's sold millions of books. It's almost diffused. And so their ideas

00:04:13.260 and their thoughts and their ethics, they get absorbed to where they're almost the zeitgeist

00:04:18.040 of the moment. They're almost taken for granted because they're so influential.

00:04:25.160 Yep. Yeah, that's good. With the power thing, one of the things I wanted to note is even,

00:04:31.180 you know with this episode we are going to address that topic at least at at some level uh because

00:04:37.620 what's interesting is that you know a lot of the modern day evangelical elites they want you

00:04:42.520 the the plebe to give up power uh but notice russell moore and tim keller you know and and

00:04:49.180 francis collins and these guys um they're they're not leading by example um they they're telling

00:04:55.360 you to give up power but they very much are wielding power they have immense power immense

00:04:59.960 influence and they're wielding all of it as much as they can in terms of uh influence and platform

00:05:05.900 but also in terms of dollars and we'll get into that funding money um in order to uh in order to

00:05:13.100 secure a certain outcome namely that evangelicals would uh would vote for democrats so um and tim

00:05:19.760 keller you know he's he's got his you know he has an explanation where he said well i was registered

00:05:24.240 as a democrat for these reasons but it is public knowledge you can look it up you know i mean he's

00:05:28.760 Obviously, he's passed away at this point,

00:05:30.540 but he was registered publicly as a Democrat,

00:05:34.200 and he has his explanation for that.

00:05:36.500 I don't find it incredibly convincing,

00:05:39.120 but you'd be surprised,

00:05:40.340 some of the major evangelical leaders,

00:05:42.040 Tim Keller is not the only one

00:05:43.260 who are publicly registered as Democrats

00:05:45.520 and have been for decades.

00:05:47.920 I feel like I should address too, on that note,

00:05:51.740 I've had conversations with Christians

00:05:53.780 who have said, why would you be so shocked and opposed

00:06:01.320 to a Christian voting for a Democrat?

00:06:03.400 And I think some of this mentality comes from,

00:06:06.580 to be honest, I think it's a little bit uninformed

00:06:09.440 because the Democratic Party has from its beginning

00:06:12.300 been a problem, a sinful problem of racism

00:06:16.640 and anti-black freedom and segregationist

00:06:23.520 And also, as far as even their monetary policies, I think were extremely misguided.

00:06:29.880 But the Democrat, Republican or the progressive conservative issues that we face now are clear moral issues.

00:06:40.520 There's no way that we can say that voting for baby killers or people who advocate removal of body parts from so-called transgender children or totally open borders, abdicating duties of nations, these are obvious bright lines, right, where there is a right and a wrong on each side of them.

00:07:03.860 And so in that sense, people need to realize that the political issues that we face are not really political issues.

00:07:11.400 They are spiritual issues that are manifesting themselves in polls and elections, but they're clearly spiritual, moral, black and white issues. 0.59

00:07:19.600 Yep, absolutely.

00:07:21.620 Okay, so Wes, maybe kick us off with our, as we open this up, the divide in evangelicalism since 2015, really leading up to the 2016 election.

00:07:31.400 that was, I mean, that was the moment where, you know, these guys, you know, so, you know,

00:07:36.620 give honor where honor is due. So Aaron Wren, he came out with an article where he was summarizing

00:07:42.500 some of the findings. You remember the author of that book that he was, I forget the name.

00:07:47.860 What is the name?

00:07:48.460 It's a book called The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory, American Evangelicalism in an Age of

00:07:52.980 Extremism, authored by the man's name is Tim Alberta. I've skimmed the book itself. It's a

00:07:58.720 a pretty generic critique of how dare Christians, you know,

00:08:01.920 try to win back their country

00:08:03.520 and push back against legalism.

00:08:04.800 That's the point, right?

00:08:05.640 The book's intention was not really

00:08:07.740 to kind of expose evangelicalism, right?

00:08:09.940 It was Aaron Wren who came in and kind of mined it

00:08:11.700 for the data for what we're talking about today.

00:08:13.960 And what was some of that data?

00:08:15.500 So like backing up all the way to 2015,

00:08:17.840 there were meetings, right?

00:08:19.400 So last week, it's funny,

00:08:20.420 last week we talked about conspiracies.

00:08:22.240 And we didn't say there's no such thing as conspiracies.

00:08:24.620 We just said, look, there's like, you know,

00:08:27.440 on, on any given day, you know, uh, there's, there's a million conspiracies and 2 million

00:08:32.100 on Sunday. And so, you know, we, as finite creatures have to, we have to triage and,

00:08:37.100 you know, and prioritize, you know, and one of the things we talked about is what, what's going

00:08:40.500 to actually affect me at home, right? Not just who shot JFK, not, not to say that there's not

00:08:45.640 a truth there and not to say that there might not be, um, a truth that goes against the, you know,

00:08:50.840 the history that we've been taught. Um, but that truth, I'm sure it would have ripple effects and

00:08:55.180 implications and things like that, even for us today, but probably not to the same degree

00:08:59.320 as abortion affects today or completely open borders, you know, in a just a complete, you

00:09:07.200 know, invasion. That affects, especially for us living in Texas, you know, those kinds of things,

00:09:12.060 that affects our wives, our children at another level. So with conspiracies, we're not saying

00:09:17.040 that it's all just hogwash. We're saying, no, some of these things really, they're real. There's

00:09:22.020 something to it. But we need to triage and pick the ones that hit closest to home. And otherwise,

00:09:30.580 you can just lose yourself and you don't have any time in the day to actually be with your own wife

00:09:35.020 and kids because you're on some Reddit thread. To protect them. Right, exactly. So we're not

00:09:40.700 against conspiracies turning out to be true. Over the last few years, the difference between

00:09:44.800 conspiracy and the truth is three to six months. And so this is something that honestly, if it had

00:09:51.140 been mentioned um even just a couple years prior probably would have been viewed as a silly

00:09:56.460 conspiracy that a group of influential evangelical leaders are meeting together in person right like

00:10:04.000 almost like like this regular you know lodge or something you know like they term themselves the

00:10:09.540 outsiders they have a name and everything outliers what is it okay and so yeah they had a name for

00:10:16.260 their group they're meeting in person russell moore it seems like was brought in a little bit

00:10:20.020 later but he was he became a part of the group but uh the implication is that tim keller and

00:10:24.840 francis collins and some of these other guys uh a guy what was the name of the dude with the new

00:10:28.940 york david brooks uh columnist for the new york times yeah so you're talking about like when you

00:10:33.660 think of like the nih national institutes of health of which francis collins was the director

00:10:38.020 they have a 40 billion dollar budget so you have a massive government influence david brooks new

00:10:42.800 york times columnist massive traditional legacy media influence one of the best-selling apologists

00:10:48.700 and authors in christendom on the presbyterian side especially timothy keller on the baptist

00:10:54.300 side russell moore other attendees and the date of it because at that time russell moore was still

00:10:58.980 sbc head of the erlc yes he was head of their ethics commission um their meeting in 2015 now

00:11:04.940 trump didn't of course so we're in 2024 election year we haven't even had any primaries yet we

00:11:09.840 don't know who will be the nominee we have a good guess i think you could you could warrant a guess

00:11:13.940 for who it'll be. So they're meeting before Trump has even stood in a single primary and what

00:11:18.980 they're meeting about. So Bernie Sanders is a self-avowed, self-described Democratic socialist.

00:11:26.520 He was on the ballot. Hillary Clinton, not a fan, not a fan of evangelicals, not friendly to their

00:11:32.820 policies. They're looking to be the next front runners up for the Democratic Party. So you had 0.91

00:11:38.120 two years of Barack Obama, who he billed himself as a moderate. He tacked hard left. He tried to

00:11:43.900 Bill himself as this unifying, moderate, bring both sides together.

00:11:47.940 He really wasn't that.

00:11:48.960 He had two years of really a pretty progressive president. 0.76

00:11:51.340 I mean, 2015 was Obergefell versus Hodges, the legalization of same-sex mirage. 0.83

00:11:57.220 So you had a rapid progressive influx of change, of cultural headwinds, 2015 going into 2016.

00:12:05.180 And the object of their concern, what was it?

00:12:07.820 Bernie Sanders, Clinton, progress—no, it was Donald Trump.

00:12:11.660 Somebody that had mean tweets on Twitter.

00:12:13.120 Possibly, even not specifically Donald Trump, but a conservative backlash to the leftward direction that the country had been going.

00:12:20.800 Because like you say, Trump wasn't necessarily the guy.

00:12:23.300 So they're already meeting, saying, what are we going to do?

00:12:26.160 How are we going to push the evangelical vote towards a more progressive mindset?

00:12:31.980 Right, and this is coming off, this is Deering, and then towards the end of two terms of Obama.

00:12:37.040 so they're watching one of the most you know or the most progressive president um in american

00:12:42.960 history and uh and they're saying and and there's and their their takeaway is not we're concerned

00:12:48.700 about this their takeaway is uh we're concerned that this might stop yep we're concerned that

00:12:54.760 like uh some ultra conservative guy might you know come in or whatever like so they're like how can we

00:12:59.580 how can we stay in this what's going to happen to us as we steward the slow decline like these men

00:13:05.740 you can give your thoughts but like they almost seem like they're stewards i think of the steward

00:13:09.140 of gondor yeah right he was just holding the throne not as a king not to rule well not to see

00:13:13.780 a renewal literally just to manage it slowly abandon your post yep and then it comes down to

00:13:20.060 it yeah abandon ship yeah that's what these men almost remind me of the ship is going out on the

00:13:25.520 west the sun is sinking we're entering it's probably going to be a tough couple not just

00:13:29.840 years but decades ahead and it looks like these men just wanted to keep the status quo above

00:13:34.740 everything else not someone to change it up not someone to flip the table even if it has some

00:13:39.060 negatives they just wanted to manage the slow decline of both evangelicalism i mean russell

00:13:43.960 more he said let cultural christianity die but what a dumb thing to say and what i want to get 0.56

00:13:50.200 across not all of them but many of them they hate the church yeah and in a sense god's people they 0.87

00:13:55.800 love nothing more than selling them out i think of uh david french with the new york times he's

00:14:00.940 getting his thousands of dollars to write against good salt of the earth christians to sell them

00:14:08.320 out to put them on blast to make them look silly these people don't love god's church they don't

00:14:13.320 love him they don't love his people um yep and when it becomes so obvious that they can't even 0.93

00:14:18.960 deny uh the ways that they have harmed christians um throughout you know the entirety of the

00:14:24.200 country it's uh there's not deep repentance there's not deep remorse there's not sorrow

00:14:28.260 there's not a sense of like, oh my goodness,

00:14:29.800 I hurt the people of God who I love.

00:14:31.640 Like David says, speaking of the saints,

00:14:34.200 he says, they are the excellent ones in all the earth

00:14:36.220 in whom my soul delights.

00:14:38.500 Like he delights in the people of God.

00:14:40.440 He loves them.

00:14:41.820 But Francis Collins, recently,

00:14:43.760 like the reaction is not godly sorrow

00:14:46.880 leading to repentance and deep remorse

00:14:48.620 for how he hurt the people of God.

00:14:49.780 The reaction is, whoops.

00:14:51.920 You know, like turns out like, you know,

00:14:53.580 we were thinking about how COVID would affect,

00:14:55.620 you know, New York City that's densely populated

00:14:57.640 and these kinds of things.

00:14:58.960 We didn't think about, you know, Ohio.

00:15:01.060 We didn't think about Kansas.

00:15:02.500 We didn't think about, you know,

00:15:03.520 we weren't thinking about rural areas, you know,

00:15:05.500 and it turns out, but here's the thing.

00:15:06.900 It's like, oh, you weren't thinking about it,

00:15:08.420 but there were hundreds of people that were

00:15:10.300 and we screamed at you and you heard us.

00:15:14.060 You looked us in the face.

00:15:15.340 You heard, you knew, and we know you know

00:15:17.720 because that you heard what we were saying

00:15:19.980 because you mocked us and told us to shut up

00:15:22.760 and deleted the emails and ran a campaign against us.

00:15:25.460 but like plenty of people did you so you weren't thinking about this well plenty of people were

00:15:31.140 and they put it on your radar to where you were thinking about it and you didn't care because at

00:15:35.720 the end of the day um that that you know blue collar conservative you know salt of the earth

00:15:41.580 christian in kansas uh doesn't doesn't matter as much as uh the person in new york city yeah in

00:15:47.040 your in your mind right like these these are people who um they love the chief seats and the

00:15:52.880 They love the people who can put them in the chief seats.

00:15:56.700 Flyover country doesn't matter to them

00:15:58.800 because these are just Neanderthals,

00:16:01.000 as Joe Biden said, like our president. 0.86

00:16:04.480 I mean, they hate you.

00:16:06.280 They hate the salt of the earth, blue collar Christian.

00:16:09.900 And back to the conspiracy type thing, 0.81

00:16:12.300 like maybe we'll get into the Illuminati one day,

00:16:15.340 but I think it's absolutely hits home, right?

00:16:18.920 It's absolutely something that's right on the nose

00:16:21.500 and relevant for us as Christians and our families, our wives, our children, our local

00:16:25.760 churches to talk about maybe not the Illuminati, but sadly the evangelical version of it, a group

00:16:32.340 that literally has a name that meets in person and did so for years during Obama's two terms and

00:16:38.080 says, this is not our big concern. Our big concern is this stopping with orange man bad because he 0.70

00:16:45.620 has, mean tweets, and how can we influence, leverage our influence, not just ours, but

00:16:53.120 with Francis Collins and the New York Times, and how can we leverage all cash, money, influence,

00:17:01.180 books, sermons, conferences, the whole nine yards to keep going in a political direction 0.81

00:17:09.100 uh that murders babies that eventually will uh will trans kids and um you know that that's what 0.90

00:17:16.600 we should focus on what gets us popular for about 10 years yep you'll get popular the rest of the 0.80

00:17:21.580 world will suffer in the coming decades but you'll have your moment you'll have your moment in the

00:17:25.740 spotlight right what is it ezekiel it's 36 or maybe 37 where it talks about you know wicked

00:17:31.780 shepherds and i know we'll get into john 10 the good shepherd the hired hand but like ezekiel uh

00:17:36.400 36 or 37, it says that, you know, God is angry with the shepherds of Israel because they don't

00:17:42.300 care for the sheep. They just eat the sheep. That's all that, you know, they're getting fat

00:17:47.080 off of, you know, the slaughtering of the sheep, eating the sheep, but they don't actually care

00:17:50.660 for the sheep. And I feel like that's, yeah, Tim Keller, you know, God rest his soul. We're not

00:17:56.560 trying to pick on a guy, you know, who died, you know, somewhat recently, but Tim Keller did some

00:18:01.540 good things for the lord early on i think he had some good things but uh his his last um last at

00:18:07.560 least decade of his pastoral tenure was um was wicked yeah it was bad it wasn't suited for some

00:18:14.140 others have pointed this out the negative world you think of there was a world where christianity

00:18:18.360 was a positive thing i think leading up to about 2008 he terms it then there's a world where being

00:18:22.620 a christian was you know it wasn't a knock on you but it wasn't necessarily like i want to hire this

00:18:27.820 good Christian, hardworking young man. And then we've really entered since about 2014, 2015,

00:18:34.180 Aaron Redd would say this, this is my takeaway, but the negative world, a world where it's a

00:18:38.800 negative mark. You're looking for a job or you're looking for an appointment. Oh, you're a

00:18:43.480 Christian? You believe in conservative values? You believe marriage is one man and one woman?

00:18:48.720 Ooh, you're not quite what we're looking for. And Keller was not suited for that negative world,

00:18:53.880 where it costs something many others too not suited for a world where they couldn't keep

00:18:58.180 their place at the high table their seat in the reputable market they couldn't have their cushy

00:19:02.700 seminary appointments and uh and it's being revealed the cover's off we now see what they

00:19:07.480 really were right all right um let's go ahead and cut to a commercial real quick and then we'll come

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00:19:38.980 and he governs kings

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00:20:49.260 we're gonna pick up now real quick before we move on to segment two um let's just briefly cover the

00:20:54.840 post-war consensus because that's a term that keeps getting you know uh thrown out there and

00:20:59.240 a lot of people probably don't actually know what it means could you explain a little bit of that

00:21:02.960 west and then i've got a couple things i can add yes absolutely so we talk about like trump's mean

00:21:07.900 tweets. The deeper reason underneath that, like we live in a post-World War II culture. The sky

00:21:14.320 is blue, the grass is green, and World War II has deeply affected just about everything about this

00:21:19.700 world that we live in. That's just the fact of the day. Something that came out of World War II,

00:21:23.760 so we saw the absolute destruction from Russia, from Europe, from Japan, even on our borders to

00:21:29.980 some degree. And the idea that came out of this, you can trace this in writings, you can trace this

00:21:34.540 in academia, is that these strong, ardent, I just want to say passions, love for religion,

00:21:42.780 love for family, love for nation, that these things can motivate us to do terrible things.

00:21:49.080 They're dangerous.

00:21:49.800 True, right?

00:21:50.580 They're dangerous.

00:21:51.700 Now, true virtue orders them rightly.

00:21:54.240 Our first love is God.

00:21:55.320 Our second love is family.

00:21:56.440 Our third love, nation is on the list, for example.

00:21:59.140 We order them rightly, so we don't put nation above God and do terrible things.

00:22:02.780 But the post-war consensus is this idea that to avoid, again, a World War II, a World War I, the atrocities that happened, to avoid that, what we need to do is we need to create a culture where our values are inclusion, our values are diversity, our openness.

00:22:23.220 We need to divulge ourselves, push down these ardent loves for family, for blood, for soil, for nation, for all these things in their own right that are good.

00:22:33.340 We need to push those down instead, exalt a place where diversity and inclusion.

00:22:38.440 And so to that end, the strong man, a strong leader who says, for example, Trump is very strong in immigration.

00:22:44.420 We need to keep our borders secure.

00:22:46.920 Immigration needs to be carefully vetted. 0.99

00:22:48.580 So we're letting in the right people that were benefiting our nation.

00:22:50.940 rhetoric like that sounds a lot like uh fascism from world war ii and so that's where that idea

00:22:57.640 came from was like well that's why the media constantly tied you know trump to hitler yep

00:23:01.800 right so like you know so that's that is the post-war consensus and just a couple things i

00:23:06.800 would add to that is like uh one when we say the strong man uh we're not saying in hitler being

00:23:12.520 kind of like the quintessential example of that we're not saying that hitler was uh truly according

00:23:17.480 to, you know, biblical definitions, a strong man. So we're not saying internally and in terms of

00:23:22.360 matter of the soul, you know, at a spiritual level that he was a strong man. Hitler was a 0.70

00:23:27.200 Christian. He was regenerate and he was godly. Like, that's not what we mean. And in the same

00:23:32.400 way with Trump, because I could see the objection coming. The counter would be Trump, strong man.

00:23:37.120 He tweets like a 14-year-old girl. You know, what's strong about that? You know, but when we

00:23:41.600 say strong man what we mean by that is um in terms of uh his policies and i would you know and i would

00:23:47.620 argue for you know his first three years being uh much better than his his last year and a lot

00:23:52.660 better than some of his rhetoric now some of it i like some of it i'm like oh come on dude like 0.96

00:23:56.800 you know like you like you're gonna you're gonna position yourself to the left of desantis dumb 0.99

00:24:02.600 like like that's just that's dumb um but trump does some dumb things but all that being said 0.99

00:24:07.920 The point is, when we say strong man, we don't mean strong like Jesus, truly strong by biblical 0.94

00:24:14.600 definitions, but we're just saying strong opposed to weak. So R.R. Reno would probably be, he'd be

00:24:19.980 the guy. So that's a book recommendation that I want to throw out there for our listeners. Definitely.

00:24:24.200 I would say two biggest books for me for 2023 that were really helpful was Defenders of the West,

00:24:31.020 Ibrahim, what's his first name? I forget. Something Ibrahim, but Defenders of the West,

00:24:36.480 It's chronicling, you know, the Crusades, but not super heady and historical.

00:24:40.660 He takes eight of the, you know, the most famous Crusaders, Richard the Lionheart and

00:24:46.060 Duke Gregory and, you know, and these guys, what's his name?

00:24:50.080 Ferdinand, a Spanish king.

00:24:52.480 And he says, you know, he says, all right, you know, these guys, this is what they did.

00:24:55.900 This is how they honored the Lord.

00:24:57.040 The Crusades you've been lied to with revisionist history.

00:24:59.500 They're not as bad as you would think.

00:25:00.900 And that's kind of in the same frame as the second book that I read, my two favorite books

00:25:06.020 from last year, was R.R. Reno.

00:25:08.400 I'm not saying they were published last year, but I read them.

00:25:10.620 R.R. Reno, Return of the Strong Gods.

00:25:12.960 And when he says the strong gods, super helpful.

00:25:15.520 When he says the strong gods, he's not talking about pagan gods like Thor.

00:25:19.140 He's saying the strong gods being lowercase g, gods, patriarchy would be one.

00:25:25.740 It's basically everything in line with nature.

00:25:28.020 that which is you know uh is natural order so patriarchy um opposed to uh egalitarianism

00:25:34.880 feminism um uh and then nationalism as opposed to globalism um you know so at all these different

00:25:41.760 levels uh you know uh religion as opposed to secularism and uh materialism darwinianism

00:25:47.940 tradition as opposed to modernism um you know modernity and so he's saying these are the strong

00:25:55.000 gods. And what he means by that is not that they're actually deities, but he's just saying

00:25:59.960 these are the traditions and the grid, the mold, the system that has sustained humanity

00:26:05.940 for thousands of years. And then the weak gods would be the opposite of all those things. So

00:26:12.420 instead of a strong national sense of loyalty, fidelity, and even pride in the right sense of

00:26:17.940 the term, it could be a bad pride, but it could also be a good pride. It's not inherent. Nationalism

00:26:22.780 doesn't have to be inherently, um, bad. It could be good, a good version of nationalism or a bad

00:26:27.000 version, but the alternative is globalism that, uh, that nations just get steamrolled into one

00:26:32.800 global orders, the WF, you know, think George Soros and those kinds, uh, for patriarchy, it would

00:26:37.520 be feminism, you know, uh, for, uh, religion, you know, again, secularism would be the weak God.

00:26:43.140 And, and to sum up the weak gods, as opposed to the strong gods, it would be inclusivism,

00:26:48.060 inclusivism and the way that you get inclusivism is by going against transcendent absolute

00:26:54.720 universal truth so anyone who is saying there is a standard above us even if they're not pointing

00:27:00.260 to the christian standard it could be islamic nationalism right islamic patriarchy right so

00:27:06.620 there are different versions of the strong gods i believe there are christian versions i believe

00:27:10.300 there are pagan versions i believe there are islamic versions and you know all these different

00:27:14.840 things. But anybody who would stand up and say, you know what? Strong male leadership is a good

00:27:20.120 thing. Feminism has done a number and we don't need it. Or nations are a good thing. We don't 1.00

00:27:27.440 want one global order. America is for America. America first. Make America great again. Or

00:27:32.180 anybody who would say religion is a good thing. Traditions of old is a good thing. That would be 1.00

00:27:37.800 someone who is a strong man. Again, internally, he might be weak. But a strong man using strong

00:27:43.060 rhetoric advocating for the strong gods. And my whole thing over these past couple of years,

00:27:47.540 if you want to know like what, you know, if you want to know Joel Webin's shtick,

00:27:51.220 that's basically underlining all the videos is I'm convinced that Reno is right. And I was

00:27:56.980 convinced before I even read his book, I didn't have all the rhetoric that he's used and that,

00:28:00.240 that's been helpful, but I feel like, um, there's a return to the strong gods. And I feel like a lot

00:28:05.360 of evangelicals, even some of the good guys. So I'm not talking about like Tim Keller and Russell

00:28:09.200 more types, but I'm talking about, you know, mid-Eva types that are in the Reformed camp that

00:28:13.420 are mostly conservative and mostly biblical, mostly faithful. I feel like what they're trying

00:28:19.040 to do right now is, I call it the Gandalf move, right? So that you've got the Belrog on the one 1.00

00:28:24.160 hand, you know, and you've got the, you know, Frodo and the ring and, you know, and the fellowship

00:28:28.040 of the ring over here, and they need to be protected. And there's a bridge in between,

00:28:31.620 and Gandalf's going to go to the middle of the bridge, standing between that which needs to be

00:28:34.840 protected and, you know, the threat and, you know, do the, you shall not pass. And I think that

00:28:40.760 that's kind of what Tim Keller did. And I think I see other guys doing that too. Now they're doing

00:28:44.980 it with better biblical language and they're doing it, you know, I don't want to put them

00:28:48.640 in the same category as Tim Keller, because they are more faithful than Tim Keller, at least,

00:28:52.680 you know, end of life, Tim Keller, you know, last 20 years till Tim Keller. But, but it's still the

00:28:57.960 same strategy of, so, so, you know, right now it's like we're in feminism. Well, we don't want, 1.00

00:29:03.640 we don't want people to go back, swing the pendulum, they see it as an overswing. So we

00:29:08.600 don't want it to overcompensate, overswing all the way to patriarchy, because that's bad.

00:29:12.400 So we're going to stand in the middle of the bridge with a bell rock and say, you shall not

00:29:16.800 pass, not feminism, not, you know, patriarchy, complementarianism, you know, or we're going to

00:29:24.380 stand in the middle and say like, yes, you can care about America, but not too much, you know,

00:29:28.800 so not nationalism, but being patriotic, you know, like, cause that's somehow that's okay,

00:29:34.120 but nationalism is terrible. You know, or so at every level, and I just, bottom line,

00:29:40.760 that dog won't hunt. I think that that's not going to work out. So what I think is all the

00:29:45.820 evangelical leaders in mid-Eva right now doing the Gandalf move, trying to stand in the middle

00:29:50.720 and say, you shall not pass. I think America, it's inevitable. I think RR Reno's right. It's

00:29:56.480 just going to jump right over them. And they're all going to go back. So I think the actual move

00:30:00.660 of Christian leaders should not be trying to carve out a middle way, which is a Tim Keller,

00:30:05.500 that is Tim Keller summed up in a nutshell. And I think, you know, again, Mediv, I'm not putting 0.78

00:30:09.780 them in the same category because I think they're carving out a better middle way, but I think it's

00:30:13.020 still a middle way. So it's a better third way, you know, maybe it's a fourth way, whatever you

00:30:17.220 want to call it. And fourth way is better than third way in this whole analogy that I'm painting,

00:30:20.700 but it's still another way. I think that the feminism to patriarchy, that return, inevitable.

00:30:26.700 Globalism to nationalism, inevitable.

00:30:28.900 And so for me, instead of standing in the middle and saying, well, don't do patriarchy or feminism, do complementarianism, you know, a rich theology that's been around since 1988, you know, like, I don't think that's the best move.

00:30:42.680 Instead, what I want to do is I want to get all the way over here where everybody's going anyway and where I think we're supposed to go, where I think God wants us to go.

00:30:49.480 And what I want to say is everybody's going to come back to patriarchy, and everybody's

00:30:55.180 going to come back to nationalism, and everybody's going to come back to tradition, and everybody's

00:30:58.320 going to come back to all these things, because this works.

00:31:00.940 This sustains societies.

00:31:03.540 But what I want to do is I want to come over here and say there is a transcendent, true

00:31:09.180 Christian, biblical version of all these things.

00:31:12.580 So these guys are standing in the middle, and maybe you hold off the bell rock for a

00:31:16.020 little bit, the bell rock being the masses, you know, and you're trying to hold them off

00:31:19.040 from what you see as an overcompensation,

00:31:21.480 overswinging the pendulum.

00:31:23.280 Maybe you hold them off for a little bit,

00:31:25.020 but I don't think that this strategy will work.

00:31:27.360 Eventually, all you can do is you can impede.

00:31:29.800 I think you can stall,

00:31:31.760 but you will not hold them off inevitably.

00:31:34.040 And then once they hop over you,

00:31:36.240 you know what they're gonna do? 1.00

00:31:37.300 They're gonna go from feminism, 1.00

00:31:38.700 you slow them down with your alternative 1.00

00:31:40.940 of complementarianism.

00:31:42.140 Maybe you slow them down for five years,

00:31:43.380 but eventually they red pill faster,

00:31:45.680 past complementarianism,

00:31:47.620 and then they go over here to patriarchy, but all the Christians have said complementarianism

00:31:52.580 is the Christian option. So when they skip and they say, well, complementarianism doesn't have

00:31:57.580 teeth, it's weak, it doesn't make sense of the world. I see these gaping holes. It makes some

00:32:02.440 sense, but then there's no answer to this question and this question. Then they go over here and they

00:32:06.340 say, well, patriarchy, that one actually makes sense, but there's actually no Christian version 0.97

00:32:10.760 of patriarchy because all the Christians opted for this Gandalf Middle Road. And so when they 0.97

00:32:15.300 get into patriarchy land, what are their options? Islamic patriarchy, Andrew Tate patriarchy, 0.97

00:32:20.580 but I repeat myself, you know, Rolo Tomasi patriarchy, you know, it's Joe Rogan, you know, 0.96

00:32:28.420 and so there's nothing but non-Christian options. Same with nationalism. So it's like, well, 0.64

00:32:34.180 be patriotic, but nationalism is bad because, you know, Hitler was bad and he was a nationalist,

00:32:38.840 and maybe that holds people off for a while, but then they realize, again, there's problems with 0.65

00:32:42.420 that and then they hop over here and again your only options all the christians opted for this

00:32:46.720 middle way so there's no christian option no significant christian you know influence and

00:32:50.740 leaders over here and so when they land into nationalism they're actually more likely uh to

00:32:55.740 say whoa hey maybe hitler wasn't so bad you know and like oh you know and so what i'm trying to say

00:32:59.860 is no let's get over here christian nationalism christian biblical patriarchy biblical tradition

00:33:06.600 biblical, you know, and just skip to the punch and doing it because that's where the people are

00:33:13.060 headed. But I don't want it to sound like that's the only motive. That is a motive, but it's not

00:33:16.460 even the chief motive. The chief motive is, I believe this is what the Bible teaches and I

00:33:20.440 want to be obedient to God. So all that being said, the post-war consensus is embracing the

00:33:25.260 weak gods of inclusivism. You can do that with statements, with ideas, right? So there is no

00:33:30.660 transcendent truth. You know, you could be right, your truth, right? Truth becomes relative. So

00:33:35.760 So weak on, in terms of just truth in general, weak on borders, it's not nations, it's globalism, it's not patriarchy, it's feminism, it's not capitalism, it's socialism, it's not like at every single level, it's weak.

00:33:48.560 And when I say weak, think weak as being synonymous in this framework with inclusivism, include, include, include, include.

00:33:55.700 And it's because the last guy who made strong dogmatic claims, well, that dude was Adolf Hitler, and you don't want that.

00:34:03.000 And so, and that's where we've been, not just in America, but in the West, the post-war

00:34:06.580 consensus is basically the argument that for at least 60 years, if not longer, but at least

00:34:11.160 the last 60 years, we have all, even if we're not conscious of it, we've all suddenly given

00:34:18.100 our consent to some degree or another that strength, especially strength in a man in

00:34:24.280 a position of power is bad.

00:34:26.980 The populist.

00:34:27.560 And we just, the populist is bad.

00:34:29.240 And then all we did was, the evangelical version of that, is we just wrapped that in Christianese.

00:34:35.460 So I have something I want to say about that, and then I'm going to pivot us back to getting into the funding behind that.

00:34:42.260 Because I think that what we see going on with the evangelical power plays, not power plays, but what we're talking about with your article today, Wes, is a result of the post-war consensus.

00:34:56.440 And what I want to say, I've been thinking about what you said just now a lot, Joel.

00:35:01.300 And in some ways, we, and we being the church, we are in a unique position because the

00:35:09.720 deconstructionists and the post-war weakness has kind of destroyed a lot of presuppositions.

00:35:16.720 People don't have a presupposition about morality, except that it's not there.

00:35:20.500 People don't even have a presupposition about gender anymore, right?

00:35:23.740 And so we actually, if we, the church, will take advantage of the time that God has put us in, we will rebuild these things in a godly way.

00:35:35.760 Gender has just been assumed as an order of creation. 0.84

00:35:38.720 Praise the Lord. 0.98

00:35:39.380 That's been how it is for all of history.

00:35:41.860 But rarely has there been a time in history where gender is grounded in the lordship of Christ or where national duty is grounded in what the scripture objectively teaches.

00:35:52.520 It's been the default strong position, but we, the church, and we're losing it because people are going to Andrew Tate, and they're going to Jordan Peterson, and they're going to this or that, and it should be the church informing people what it means to live and to have the proper loves that God has given to us.

00:36:10.640 Now, that being the case, I want to read a quote because it's so interesting to me.

00:36:15.640 In 2008, WEF in Davos, they invited Rick Warren to go and speak.

00:36:22.520 And Rick Warren started his talk by saying something along the lines of, there are these great issues that humanity faces that no single nation has been able to tackle.

00:36:34.100 And he listed pandemics, he listed poverty, he listed, you know, economic inequity, things like this.

00:36:40.520 And he said, because we haven't been able to tackle these to this point, it behooves us to partner together.

00:36:47.860 And what he meant was international government forces, international business, and international religious movements.

00:36:55.880 And this is what he said.

00:36:57.280 He said there is a role for the public sector.

00:36:59.780 There's a role for the private sector.

00:37:01.200 There was a role for the faith sector.

00:37:02.600 And then he says the governments or the UN ought to set the policy for what needs to be tackled globally.

00:37:10.360 Then he said the enterprise, the commerce, the business sector needs to kind of come

00:37:16.780 up with new, ingenious ideas of tackling problems.

00:37:19.780 And then this is what he said the role of the church in this open, post-war kind of

00:37:25.420 global neighborhood world is.

00:37:27.660 He says, but then also, houses of worship have things that businesses and government

00:37:34.540 will never have.

00:37:35.800 In the first place, we have universal distribution.

00:37:38.680 The church was global 200 years before Davos started talking about globalization, and then

00:37:44.020 he said, we have 2,000 years of credibility where we can tell our people to go do this

00:37:49.600 because the government told us, and they will believe us.

00:37:52.380 He handed the WEF the credibility of the church and the goodwill of the regular average person

00:38:02.280 sitting in the pew, the blue-collar Christian, and said, these are totally at your disposal.

00:38:08.180 And if we wanted to, that was 2008.

00:38:09.540 That was even before the Russell Moore.

00:38:11.380 Yep, that was Rick Warren.

00:38:12.400 It was Rick Warren.

00:38:13.620 Yeah.

00:38:14.580 Hmm.

00:38:15.460 Yeah.

00:38:17.100 Not shocked.

00:38:18.900 Sad, but not shocked.

00:38:20.100 Yep.

00:38:20.880 All right.

00:38:21.740 Wes, pick it back up with segment two now.

00:38:25.240 Evangelical elite saw Trump as the biggest threat

00:38:27.200 and the dark money funded years of propaganda.

00:38:29.860 Let's get into some of that.

00:38:31.040 Yes.

00:38:31.520 So 2016, Trump is elected.

00:38:35.120 They did not just take their ball and go home.

00:38:37.420 well, we had a good run. We tried to dissuade the evangelical vote. They came out actually at a

00:38:41.340 little bit stronger level than they had even in the past. And so it wasn't effective, at least

00:38:45.480 in the short term. However, these initiatives, so aimed at educating evangelicals, aimed at

00:38:51.500 persuading the vote, aimed at political engagement, they continued. And so 2020, obviously COVID

00:38:57.260 happened. And what we actually see, Aaron Wren revealed this, is that what these, what Curtis

00:39:02.620 Chang is a good example. He's an individual that's a consultant, David French. They began getting

00:39:07.200 together and forming these initiatives and what they did is they actually went to they went to

00:39:10.520 christians first of all they said hey right they were looking for funding they went to christians

00:39:14.180 said hey could you fund this we want to put together david chang russell moore curtis chang

00:39:19.600 russell moore and david french curtis they wanted to put together a curriculum for christians so go

00:39:23.760 to christians will you fund this and they said no we're not interested in funding this and so they

00:39:28.380 actually went to the secular investors secular investors he said all of them said yes then you

00:39:33.520 got into obviously covid and the vaccines well the government paid individuals one of them being

00:39:38.320 curtis chang and others uh money undisclosed sums to put out videos to aim to convince communities

00:39:44.240 of faith to get vaccinated another example of this i lived in new jersey at the time

00:39:48.320 um i saw events i have screenshots there was these events being held called grateful for the shot

00:39:53.620 food fun games vaccines being held at hope of dominion and glory administered at the event

00:40:00.760 So come to the site.

00:40:01.700 At a church?

00:40:02.280 Yes.

00:40:02.660 Come to the site.

00:40:03.600 Come to our church.

00:40:04.760 Listen to some music.

00:40:05.740 Play some games.

00:40:06.840 We're grateful for the shot being paid by the New Jersey Department of Public Health to hold these events.

00:40:12.160 And so we talked about influence, obviously, backroom, 2015.

00:40:16.280 But that continued to grow.

00:40:18.080 And just 2020 election, there's a lot of issues with it.

00:40:21.360 But I mean, Biden was elected, and it's not unthinkable to think that five years of telling Christians, this man is terrible. 0.98

00:40:29.260 Trump is awful.

00:40:30.440 Of these evangelical leaders telling Christians. 0.99

00:40:32.640 Yes, right.

00:40:33.360 These evangelical leaders telling Christians, 0.65

00:40:35.260 Trump's terrible.

00:40:36.080 How could you do this?

00:40:37.000 How could you support him?

00:40:38.180 That it finally saturated the ground enough

00:40:40.920 that in 2020, at the very least, they stayed home.

00:40:44.400 Maybe they voted against him.

00:40:45.440 I'm sure many did, or they at least stayed home.

00:40:48.160 And now we see where we are.

00:40:49.300 And just didn't vote at all.

00:40:50.300 Yeah, totally.

00:40:51.020 Yeah, and that's not to mention, you know,

00:40:52.740 rigging an election and mail-in ballots

00:40:54.440 and ballot harvesting.

00:40:55.980 Yeah, exactly.

00:40:56.640 And machines, you know, just accidentally,

00:40:58.480 you know, saying, oh, this was a pile for Biden.

00:41:00.440 So there's all those things as well. But aside from the freest and safest and surest election of all time, absolutely. Let's just say that the election was 100% legit, which, again, if you believe that, I've got a bridge, I'd love to sell you.

00:41:15.900 But let's say it's 100% legit.

00:41:18.780 Well, just at a human level, yeah, Biden could have won by just by knocking out the evangelical voting block, or at least weakening its legs, hamstringing it.

00:41:29.320 And who did that?

00:41:31.020 Evangelical leaders.

00:41:32.360 Russell Moore, guys.

00:41:33.680 Absolutely.

00:41:34.580 And one more name to add to the list, sadly.

00:41:36.980 God's used him in many ways, and I'm grateful for him.

00:41:39.120 And I want to put him in the same category as Russell Moore, Tim Keller, those guys.

00:41:43.040 But John Piper, he should be mentioned.

00:41:45.900 John Piper, one of the articles that he wrote before the election, right before the election.

00:41:51.980 And so it was pivotal.

00:41:52.960 I mean, he was trying to influence Christians to do something in regards...

00:41:55.280 It was right before the election.

00:41:55.980 Yeah, it was right before the election.

00:41:57.680 And John Piper has massive influence.

00:41:59.020 And he had stayed out of it the whole time.

00:42:00.460 Exactly.

00:42:00.920 He was doing great.

00:42:02.100 John Piper, he really is great in a lot of ways.

00:42:05.040 Terrible on politics, though.

00:42:06.300 He's just bad on politics.

00:42:07.360 He just needs to stay out.

00:42:08.900 But he wrote this article right before the election.

00:42:11.860 He has massive influence with a ton of Christians.

00:42:13.760 And I just can't believe this didn't affect how at least some people voted.

00:42:19.780 I bet you that some people, just like Wes said, either said, well, then I guess I'm

00:42:23.520 just not going to vote at all, or I'm going to vote for third party.

00:42:26.120 Too complicated, I can't do it.

00:42:28.220 Or maybe even that was the nail in the coffin, add that to all the work that Russell Moore 0.50

00:42:33.200 and Tim Keller have been doing, and we just conjured another Christian vote for Biden.

00:42:38.300 The conscience, the Christian is sitting there and knowing, I can't vote for a guy who's

00:42:43.080 the most pro-abortion president of history, surely I can't, but Tim Keller assuaging the

00:42:50.420 conscience a little bit, Russell Moore assuaging the conscience, and then John Piper, of all people

00:42:56.300 who's always been a defense of the unborn for decades, but then assuages the conscience,

00:43:03.160 puts the finishing touches, and this is how he did it. He didn't do it by saying, you know,

00:43:06.060 abortion isn't bad. He didn't minimize the evils of abortion. But what he did was he, in my

00:43:13.260 assessment, in this article, he wrongly maximized, increased the evils of a nasty Twitter account.

00:43:20.340 And he put them on par. This was essentially, I'm summing up the article. This is obviously,

00:43:23.940 this is not verbatim. It's not a quote. But in summary, I think this is fair. He said,

00:43:28.940 you know, we know that Biden's bad because we know abortion is bad. It's murder. And he didn't

00:43:34.420 pull that punch, it's murder. And murder is really, really bad. But you know what else is bad?

00:43:39.300 Arrogance, pride. And you know what? That's maybe harder to measure because we can look at exact

00:43:44.360 numbers annually through Planned Parenthood and through this and through that and see how many

00:43:50.080 babies have been killed. And it's maybe harder to quantify the effects of arrogance. But arrogance,

00:43:57.460 when it's in the highest office in the land, namely the Oval Office, and it's millions of

00:44:02.960 people are seeing, you know, your attitude and your rhetoric and your this, well, that could

00:44:08.060 lend towards further division and division could lend towards factions and that could lend towards

00:44:12.320 riots and that could, you know, and that can lend towards, you know, this and that and the other and

00:44:16.120 all these negative effects. And you know what? That's really bad, too. And he pretty much just

00:44:19.980 left it there. And he didn't say, of course, he didn't say, you know, like, so therefore,

00:44:23.160 you know, vote for Biden. He didn't say that. But what he the whole purpose of the article

00:44:26.800 was was it said we definitely shouldn't vote for Biden. But I'm here to tell you that that

00:44:32.820 there's just as much reason not to vote for Trump. And I guarantee you that a bunch of people that

00:44:39.020 year just decided not to vote. Now, here's the gaping hole in Piper's argument. The gaping hole

00:44:44.880 is what I would say is he created a false dichotomy because what he's implying is this.

00:44:51.200 On the one hand, you have murder. On the other hand, you have pride. But what that assumes is

00:44:58.400 that there is actually such a thing as a humble murderer that joe biden because what he's assuming

00:45:05.280 there is that uh trump is arrogant but here's the implication he's arrogant and biden is not

00:45:09.940 not right so on the one hand you have and what's the absence of of you know arrogance and pride 0.98

00:45:14.860 so you have a humble baby killer and then you have a arrogant you know uh prideful non-baby

00:45:23.980 killer and what i want to say is that uh you cannot be pro-abortion apart from pride what 0.97

00:45:30.580 radical radical arrogance so all you're talking about at this point is not pride versus murder

00:45:36.660 because there's no way that you can argue that the most pro-abortion president in our history

00:45:42.400 is somehow humble yeah right he's you have to have pride to do it is such it is by nature a

00:45:49.140 prideful position um and and so they're both prideful all you're talking about is tone and

00:45:56.020 and but but that works with evangelicals because that rhetoric had been worked for so many years

00:46:04.220 by this point the tone police tone tone every gospel coalition every other article tone tone

00:46:09.520 well it's not what you said but it's how you said it it's you know it's your tone it's your rhetoric

00:46:14.560 And so then Trump comes in and, you know, and he's got an abrasive tone, I'll admit.

00:46:19.980 And so, boom, we were ready to say, you know what? 0.66

00:46:22.520 We've got one president who kills babies and another who has bad tone on Twitter.

00:46:27.800 And really, who's to say which is worse?

00:46:30.140 All right, let's pause for a second, go to our final commercial break, and then we'll

00:46:33.600 come back.

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00:48:02.000 All right, so we're back.

00:48:04.040 And here's the deal.

00:48:05.900 This isn't just, we're back more than we've ever been.

00:48:10.460 We have another election coming up.

00:48:12.100 This isn't just, man, this happened in the past.

00:48:15.160 That's terrible.

00:48:16.580 They're going to try, at least at some level,

00:48:18.400 the same thing again.

00:48:19.580 So I think about COVID.

00:48:20.560 COVID did a great job.

00:48:21.540 We talked about this,

00:48:22.200 but it disrupted specifically for mail-in ballots,

00:48:25.540 the purpose of voting in a non-traditional way

00:48:27.680 that lended to disinterested voters, being registered to vote, getting out the vote.

00:48:32.440 So we've got another election year coming up. Probably even, I would say, even more is on the

00:48:37.620 line than it's been. And so there's a couple of principles for Christians to keep in mind.

00:48:41.880 You're thinking through voting, hopefully praying about it somewhat. One of the big ones is don't 1.00

00:48:46.800 overcomplicate it. Don't overcomplicate voting. Commit it to the Lord. I think of the different

00:48:52.500 neighbors to think of, because the first commandment, love God. Love Him with all your heart,

00:48:56.840 your soul, your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. So you're thinking about

00:49:00.840 voting. Well, how should I vote, and how should I process through the different ways to think about

00:49:04.480 this? Your unborn neighbor. My brother is in the military, for example. I don't want him going to

00:49:10.020 another war that started. Two wars have started. Biden's watch. Yep. There was no wars during

00:49:15.460 Trump's watch. Not a coincidence. Think about your neighbor. Think about your family member

00:49:18.640 in the military. Think about fathers trying to feed their families, trying to put food on the

00:49:23.560 table. These are some of the principles that Christians should say, like, wait, I want to

00:49:27.660 love my neighbor well. I can do it in a small part, admittedly, in a small part with my vote.

00:49:32.400 Those are some of the things to think about. Your neighbor, loving them, and loving them well.

00:49:36.720 Yep. Yep. So voting does matter. Unfortunately, we, our system, I think, is flawed in many ways,

00:49:41.920 but we have a two-party system, and Jesus is never on the ballot. And so we're dealing with

00:49:47.560 you know, finite men and, you know, not just finite, but fallible fallen men. And so it is

00:49:53.840 in many ways, the lesser of two evils. Now, I think that's, you know, we were talking before

00:49:57.920 we started recording offline a little bit. I think that's why at a large level that primaries

00:50:03.780 really matter. So if you're, because on one hand, Michael was saying this earlier, you know,

00:50:07.380 Wes and I were talking about, you know, voting for the lesser of the two evils. And I think that

00:50:10.980 that is the way to go when it comes to a general election. But there is a certain level, Michael

00:50:16.940 brought this up that like we'll add us if we'll always vote for the lesser of two evils no matter 0.60

00:50:21.620 how evil that lesser of the two evils is uh then what that tells you know the gop is it just gives

00:50:27.260 them a free pass and says all you have to do is be a little less evil or at least you know

00:50:32.180 detectably less evil than than the you know the dnc candidate and so um it gives them um a free

00:50:39.680 pass to impunity with with immorality and so i think you know the primaries is where we go out

00:50:45.660 and we say, no, this guy is not going to win the primary.

00:50:49.440 He doesn't get to make it to the general 0.94

00:50:51.520 because he's degenerate. 0.91

00:50:53.840 So that's, I think, where evangelicals can pull

00:50:56.000 on the levers of power that we have and say,

00:50:58.820 nope, the most Christian candidate,

00:51:01.340 the most Christian candidate.

00:51:02.700 So that's where we can really work.

00:51:04.460 And then also, I think, at the local level,

00:51:06.620 local elections, those kinds of things.

00:51:08.520 I think of Dusty Devers in Oklahoma, state senator,

00:51:11.240 as a Christian nationalist.

00:51:13.800 And people are like, you can't run.

00:51:15.660 on that platform and win. But he did. Now, it does help that it was Oklahoma, but God bless him. He

00:51:21.480 did. And that's a start. That's what we need. And that's a good start. Dusty is awesome. He's a

00:51:25.140 friend and he's doing great things. And so that's where I think Christians can say, no, this guy, 0.94

00:51:30.100 this guy, this guy. So in the primaries, working with that and then local elections. In the general

00:51:34.820 election, I really do think you vote for the lesser of two evils in love for neighbor. So one of the

00:51:40.320 ways that I want to love my neighbor is for my neighbor not to be killed. And if one guy, because

00:51:44.900 of his policies, is going to kill a million of my neighbors, and the other guy's going to kill 0.91

00:51:49.400 500,000. Well, that guy who's going to kill 500,000, he's not righteous, but I can love 0.97

00:51:53.940 500,000 neighbors by keeping them alive by voting for that guy. And I think I have an obligation

00:52:00.640 to do so. So all that being said, what we want to get into now, this is, I think, the most fun

00:52:05.780 part of the episode that Wes planned for us, and I've got lots of speculations, but I'll throw it

00:52:09.760 you guys first but what we want to get into is it's an election year yep it's 2024 um and and so

00:52:16.100 uh black swan events um that you know that they seem like you know like they're they're random

00:52:21.660 but they're not just like covet it was not a coincidence that it was 2020 um and so what what

00:52:27.140 do we foresee uh we don't have a crystal ball we're not prophets or the son of a prophet so

00:52:31.220 these are are not uh predictions that we're you know putting our name on saying this shall come

00:52:35.240 to pass you know thus saith the lord none of that uh but i do think that there's something to be said

00:52:39.680 for uh for just being wise and and looking ahead so we're looking ahead not as experts but as

00:52:45.160 generalists and saying it's an election year it's a heated contested election there's a lot on the

00:52:50.860 line for the regime in in both parties you know like because at some level there is just in our

00:52:56.280 nation just at this point controlled opposition right the gop most of it is just controlled

00:53:01.060 opposition underneath the overarching regime that's trying to plunge us into you know this

00:53:05.780 just this global, you know, world, you know, one world order that's just progressive, degenerate, 0.95

00:53:11.200 you know, lizard people. So that's, you know, I think I acknowledge that. Trump, I don't even 1.00

00:53:16.300 think, you know, obviously he wouldn't be an elder in our church, but I don't think he could be a

00:53:20.900 member in our church. We believe in regenerate church membership. We're Baptists, you know,

00:53:24.620 1689. And, you know, I would sit down to him and talk to him and I'm not saying God alone sees the

00:53:30.220 heart man looks at the outward appearance. But from what I've seen, not only do I not think he's

00:53:34.100 a mature christian i don't even know if i could say that he is a christian at all um but all that

00:53:39.100 said one thing i like about trump is that um that i don't think that he's a part of the regime i

00:53:44.660 don't think he's the control trump was not supposed to happen that's why they lost their

00:53:48.620 minds in 2016 is it was like this like we for years it was they gave us two options uh the

00:53:55.380 option we want and the option we don't want but he's still our guy right you can have you can have

00:54:00.700 the progressive degenerate guy or the guy who's conserving the progressive degenerate things that

00:54:08.960 were done 15 minutes ago. But they're both actually our guys. They're both within the machine.

00:54:14.920 And Trump, again, so this is not like Trump is some awesome godly guy. This is just to say

00:54:18.600 he wasn't a part of the regime. And do I think he could have done more? Yes. But do I think he did

00:54:24.300 more than any other Republican president in my lifetime? Also, yes. So all that being said,

00:54:29.860 you got trump right now as the forerunner for the for the you know the primary with the gop

00:54:34.580 um and it's an election year and we know what stunts they pulled last year with mail-in uh

00:54:40.220 voting and ballot harvesting all these things under the banner you know of covid um you know 0.97

00:54:45.320 2024 you're foolish so again no crystal ball no prophecies but we're foolish if we don't at least 0.88

00:54:51.900 think of possibilities reasonable possibilities it is not going to be a smooth year it is going 0.98

00:54:58.480 to be a crazy year but what i want to say is you know here's a little bit of a white pill wednesday

00:55:02.180 um when i say it's going to be a crazy year i don't mean it's all bad i think there's going

00:55:06.240 to be some awesome positive so i've got some predictions but let's start with you guys

00:55:09.280 black swan events and then also some positive predictions let's talk about it i do want to say

00:55:14.200 when we're thinking about black swan events and i have one um potential but in general in my

00:55:20.360 opinion they fall into two categories and both are an appeal to emotion one is an appeal to fear

00:55:25.380 like COVID was, right? Stay home. Don't go out. Don't do anything. Shut everything down. You're

00:55:30.700 all going to die, right? That's an appeal to emotion, but specifically to the emotion of

00:55:34.580 fear. The second one is an appeal to the emotion of empathy, right? And so that leads me to one

00:55:42.020 that God forbid it happened, but since borders and nationalism are such an issue, I think it's

00:55:49.740 possible that there could be some sort of disaster among immigrants here in america right where some

00:55:58.200 person is painted as a um uh some sort of nationalist or even christian nationalist who

00:56:06.460 does violence uh towards immigrants or some disaster at the border where a bunch of them die

00:56:12.140 trying to cross or thirst out in the desert something like that and this gets used as an

00:56:17.840 appeal to the emotion of empathy. See, if we just open the border, if we were just giving them

00:56:23.340 citizenship, if we were just giving them all the things that they needed or wanted, none of that

00:56:28.700 would happen. And those of you who are voting in any way in a sort of nationalistic pride sense,

00:56:34.040 you really should be not even just not voting, but should be marginalized and put on the fringes of

00:56:38.440 society. So that's one I have. That's good. Yeah. Wes? I think it's important to remember, too,

00:56:43.000 the margins we're talking about, they're really very small. It's really about four battleground

00:56:47.400 states and the deciding vote in those is probably under a hundred thousand i think in the last

00:56:51.620 election it was something like 79 000 it was less than that we're not talking about millions yeah

00:56:55.720 it was actually yeah i thought it was like 70 76 or something but when i ran the numbers again it

00:57:02.260 was actually uh it was actually 46 it was under 50 000 in terms of swings so what you're talking

00:57:07.060 there were seven primary uh swing states that were contested close calls and biden uh no it was like

00:57:13.020 11 actually and biden got seven out of the 11 or 12 something like that it was like 10 to 12 um and

00:57:18.640 biden got seven of them and out of the seven that biden got that turned blue barely uh if trump had

00:57:23.920 only gotten uh four of those or it might have been three it was like three or four of those uh then

00:57:28.580 he would have won at the you know the presidency at the electoral college and those uh those three

00:57:33.360 or four states that he would have had to win the margins and the popular vote of each of those

00:57:37.760 states, uh, collectively was less than 50,000. So, uh, and then, you know, to put, you know,

00:57:42.920 just a little bit of more application on here, can't help myself, you know, but I wrote a book

00:57:46.120 called fight by flight, you know, um, you know, get out of California, call me, call me California,

00:57:50.360 but, um, 6 million votes for Trump in California. And, and so it was really close. California's

00:57:56.760 coming around. Nope. Uh, 12 million for Biden, not even close. Uh, so, uh, but my point is, uh,

00:58:01.740 6 million votes for Trump in California. And to my shame, I was one of them because we left

00:58:05.440 California in December of 2020. And so just absolutely, you know, just flushing your vote

00:58:11.420 down the toilet, if you're voting for Trump, you know, in California, we're voting for, you know,

00:58:15.700 any, any conservative in California. But my point is, at the national level, outside of just the

00:58:22.100 state at the national level, it came down to three or four pivotal states, swing states going for

00:58:27.300 Biden and collectively 50,000. So 6 million wasted votes for Trump in one state, namely California,

00:58:32.200 and 50,000 is all you needed.

00:58:34.260 Now, 50,000, you take that, it's actually 1%, right?

00:58:37.400 So 6,600,000 would be 10%, 60,000 would be one.

00:58:41.720 So less than 1%.

00:58:42.960 If less than 1% of conservative Christian residents

00:58:47.020 in California had chose to leave the state

00:58:49.900 before November 2020 and move to one of these three

00:58:54.080 or four states respectively and cast their vote there,

00:58:57.640 you would have had a Trump presidency

00:58:58.960 instead of a Biden presidency,

00:59:00.300 even with all the shenanigans being played you'd have 13 u.s service members very likely still

00:59:06.300 living that died in afghanistan uh you probably would not have putin's uh invasion uh with ukraine

00:59:12.420 uh very likely would not have some of the stuff going on uh in the middle east with hamas and

00:59:17.440 you know and and israel um you would not have some of the policies that have been crammed down you

00:59:23.440 like i i mean it's in real terms it would be more loving for our neighbors and at first are in

00:59:30.440 triage our neighbors here because we are obligated to them first american neighbors uh but then also

00:59:35.880 we do live in god's universal neighborhood right the person on the other side of the planet is in

00:59:40.520 theological terms my neighbor now i have a higher first obligation to uh my wife as a neighbor than 0.60

00:59:45.960 some random woman who is also my neighbor but this one's my wife right and and then my kids not all

00:59:51.720 kids. I do have an obligation at some level to all kids, but especially my kids. And then beyond

00:59:59.180 that, I have a certain obligation to all countries, but first to my countrymen, to my kinsmen. And so

01:00:06.680 all that being said, in terms of love for neighbor, ironically, even love for our global

01:00:11.980 neighbors, right? So even the weak God's language of inclusivism, you know, we'll hate America,

01:00:17.120 but love you know the sudan uh well ironically it would have been better for afghanistan better for

01:00:23.580 like every single neighbor in the world if less than one percent of conservative six million

01:00:30.700 voters in california had left and voted in one of these states the whole world would have been

01:00:36.680 more left so that leads right into what i my guess would be for a black swan event would be entering

01:00:40.900 some type of global conflict uh ukraine is looking like they're probably about to lose the war uh

01:00:46.380 There was EU talk to Zelensky, and they essentially said, like, you need to be preparing for peace talks in the new year.

01:00:51.980 And wartime presidents actually generally proved to be generally pretty popular.

01:00:56.700 I think there's George W. Bush during the war on terror.

01:00:58.620 Actually, I think that a U.S. president has never been voted out of office during a war.

01:01:03.600 That's what I think as well.

01:01:04.480 Didn't want to say it just in case I'm wrong.

01:01:06.100 No, I've read that.

01:01:06.840 But to enter, for example, the war in Ukraine, we have to do this to push back against Putin.

01:01:11.500 And if you vote for this guy, if you vote for the Republican nominee, we're going to lose all the progress.

01:01:16.500 The world's going to be crushed under an iron curtain again.

01:01:19.500 That might be something. 0.83

01:01:20.580 The Middle East, same thing.

01:01:21.680 Like, we have to go in there and help out our neighbor.

01:01:23.520 And this guy won't do it.

01:01:25.960 I got your back.

01:01:27.460 Vote for me.

01:01:28.520 Forget.

01:01:28.820 Because, I mean, the economy, you can't even campaign on it.

01:01:32.160 You can't campaign on the economy, on infrastructure.

01:01:35.380 You mean if you're a Democrat.

01:01:36.700 Right.

01:01:36.920 If you're Biden, you can't campaign on those things.

01:01:39.240 So what are you going to have to do?

01:01:40.140 some type of like you mentioned an empathy event a disaster because again all you need is 50 000

01:01:46.080 100 000 to be safe individuals to to stay home they're reluctant voters right fine i'll fill out

01:01:51.980 the ballot margin is not high yep no you're absolutely right um yeah so you need some kind

01:01:58.100 of black swan event here's a couple of my i'll throw out my predictions again no crystal ball

01:02:01.300 you know i'm not i'm not prophesying here but just things to look for and and i do think it

01:02:05.680 matters, not to scare people, but just for us to be innocent as doves, cunning as serpents, wise.

01:02:13.820 And we can't just go in a bunker for 2024 and the rest of our lives indefinitely. So live your life,

01:02:20.300 but live it with courage, but also live it with wisdom and discernment. And so that's all I'm

01:02:27.100 saying. But with that, I have a few. So one, you have COVID 2.0, some kind of medical thing.

01:02:33.640 right um because here's the deal so you got to think again as a generalist um you got to think

01:02:38.620 all right what what's going to be the play the play is uh keep biden you know in the white house

01:02:43.700 or you know really keep whoever's you know behind biden um as i'm convinced by i think biden has

01:02:49.420 literally been dead for at least a couple years now and they just have like some kind of like

01:02:53.460 robotronics that like you know like a rumba that causes him to you know barely move around the room

01:02:58.620 so anyways um they don't even need him alive at this point it's just like they've been putting 0.76

01:03:02.780 lipstick on that corpse for a while um but you know keep keep the uh the dems in the white house

01:03:08.500 and uh so how do you do that well you need um i'm just i'm just gonna say it um you need

01:03:16.120 the peanut gallery of the country to vote that's how democrats get in office right that's the only

01:03:21.280 way democrats get in office by um i'm gonna say um women voting if you don't say it i'll say it

01:03:28.720 women voting the lowest iq in the country voting the poorest voting uh basically you need the

01:03:34.960 people who contribute the least the people who are most emotional um the people who contribute 1.00

01:03:41.760 the least uh people who are here illegally who aren't even citizens um that's you need the the

01:03:48.800 dredge of society to vote that's how democrats win elections because when people who care about the 0.80

01:03:53.460 country vote if only people who could care about the country could vote uh we would never we would

01:03:59.080 have a republican president always democrats cannot win without getting people across the 0.78

01:04:04.760 border without women voting uh without you know one day i think there'll be a play to lower even

01:04:10.020 the age um of voting that's what they talked about right yeah absolutely they need they need 14 year 0.59

01:04:15.580 old minority trans girls yes to vote to win an election because that's the only person who has 0.96

01:04:22.960 the intellectual capacity to think that it would be a good idea to vote for a democrat period so 0.59

01:04:29.720 all that being said um the play is it's an election year dims want to stay in office

01:04:34.440 they need uh the the lowest of the low to vote so you have to what what do you do so thinking like

01:04:40.320 a generalist here um what you do is you have to make it easier to vote so uh whether it's um

01:04:46.060 covid 2.0 hey we can't go out because you know we got to stop the spread so you can't go in person

01:04:52.260 mail-in. Mail-in is easier than putting on pants, right? Putting on pants, that's something that

01:04:57.720 people with jobs do, right? But you don't have time to put on pants in the morning when you've

01:05:02.440 got a whole Netflix season to binge that day and collect your unemployment check. So that person

01:05:07.780 doesn't go out to vote. That person mails in a vote. And it's not just that like, oh, it's easier

01:05:12.020 to mail-in than go in a vote. The mail-in, here's the thing about the mail-in is it allows, you don't

01:05:16.220 even have to fill out the ballots because the same person who won't go, oftentimes that person won't

01:05:20.460 even mail in their vote but what it allows is for ballot harvesters to go around and knock on go to

01:05:25.480 an apartment complex where they they can literally look at the building and say i know that all or go

01:05:30.160 to um uh funded housing you know where i know every single one of these people are on welfare

01:05:35.000 and uh can i can i just hey you don't want uh trump to be president do you that guy's a racist

01:05:40.900 right you know like biden wants to unite the nation you know and and and you want to take

01:05:45.240 away your benefit yeah exactly and yeah he wants to take away your benefits uh i'll take it for

01:05:49.200 you can use i just need you to sign like and so that's you know and that's that's not even

01:05:53.360 including like actual machines you know straight up you know miscounted fraud and so so my point

01:06:00.800 is uh what what can we expect this year anything that would make it so this is this is the key

01:06:06.080 anything that would make um give some kind of logical reason justification for not going in

01:06:12.120 person in public to vote so uh disease can do that here's another one uh mass shootings right so um

01:06:20.980 uh so fbi just playing this out again i'm not prophesying this is literally just a random

01:06:25.340 example not saying it's going to happen but uh fbi right which we know is totally legit

01:06:29.880 but like fbi you know they say well we've gotten a bunch of uh we uh hacked into you know a uh

01:06:36.660 signal threat, you know, or a bunch of emails that we came across where there's a alt-right

01:06:42.220 wing Nazi extremists that have said they're going to be shooting up voting booths, you

01:06:46.880 know, and so, and then we disclose which voting booths, but it's, you know, three, three or

01:06:51.960 four voting booths.

01:06:52.640 It could be in these four states, though.

01:06:53.840 And these, yeah, exactly.

01:06:54.960 In this state, Pennsylvania, you know, or Michigan, and exactly, these coincidentally,

01:07:00.720 conveniently, and so what we have to do is in these states, we just, we have to, because

01:07:05.380 this is the this is the the play it's always um public safety for individual liberty public safety

01:07:10.880 for individual uh give up being traded exactly that's the trade right so cost cost uh benefit

01:07:16.280 analysis it's uh give us your individual liberty we'll provide your public safety so in those

01:07:22.600 states i'm sorry but uh for the safety of the public you guys get it right you know we're just

01:07:27.000 looking out for for the safety of the public uh we're gonna have to do all mail-in voting this 0.97

01:07:31.880 year no uh no voting use no in person and then lo and behold all the dnc little henchmen come out 0.72

01:07:38.400 and they're doing the ballot harvesting so that so shootings uh uh uh medical covid 2.0 uh you

01:07:45.680 know both of those are are easy so that's what i would be thinking now with that um there actually

01:07:51.380 could be some real shootings some real shootings so like i already told my wife again living with

01:07:56.740 courage, but also not living with a tinfoil hat, but also not living foolishly. And so I've

01:08:04.200 already told my wife, hey, this year, we're going to be a little bit more careful. We're probably

01:08:08.060 in 2024, the way our nation is right now, and with it being election year, we are probably not

01:08:14.380 going to go to large public events. This is not a year for us to go to some big concert, as an

01:08:20.260 example you know uh you know or to this or that uh because i see this as being um it's been 0.98

01:08:26.320 happening for a while now some transgender you know shooter shoots up a christian school or

01:08:30.240 something but especially this year especially this year uh so this year uh we're gonna you know we're

01:08:36.460 gonna you know play it a little closer to the chest we're gonna be a little bit safer uh we're

01:08:41.300 still gonna we have our friends our community we'll do play dates go to people's homes and do

01:08:44.800 this but probably not going to go to a large public event uh with multiple thousands of people there

01:08:49.960 in the year 2024.

01:08:53.040 So anyways, what do you think, Wes?

01:08:55.180 No, that's great.

01:08:56.000 And you got to think of it,

01:08:57.420 at the end of the day,

01:08:58.320 it's not a physical war,

01:08:59.460 it's not a civil war,

01:09:00.200 but there's a very sense in which

01:09:01.220 we're at war for the soul of the West.

01:09:03.500 And it's going to take sacrifice

01:09:04.660 and it's going to take hard work and diligence.

01:09:07.200 So first ordering your home rightly

01:09:08.760 and then working to order your church 0.53

01:09:10.340 and your community.

01:09:11.420 But that's going to take,

01:09:12.400 well, no, we're actually not going to go

01:09:13.620 to the water park.

01:09:14.400 We're not going to go to these concerts.

01:09:15.900 We're going to take personal sacrifice

01:09:17.220 to fight for the soul of the West.

01:09:19.700 We'll see what happens. The Lord knows. The Lord can bring revival. He even used flawed men like

01:09:24.400 Donald Trump to just invigorate and stir up the will of the people for good so God can use Donald

01:09:30.760 Trump. And he may, and we may see a great renewal in this land. But it's going to take so many

01:09:37.060 individual households making sacrifices exactly like you said, to bring their wife home, to have

01:09:42.820 children, to have a job, to work hard, all at a local level. Lead family worship. To bring into

01:09:48.860 something more. Yep. No, you're absolutely right. And with that, quick plug for this Sunday,

01:09:53.260 but if anybody's in the Central Texas area, we're in Georgetown, Texas, about 45 minutes outside of

01:09:59.500 Austin. We'd love to have you, Covenant Bible Church. Check it out, covenantbible.org. But we

01:10:03.360 just started last Lord's Day, a new series preaching through the book of Ezra. And this

01:10:08.000 week, I'm actually, Ezra chapter one talks about King Cyrus. A lot of people have likened Trump

01:10:12.360 to Cyrus. It's debatable whether or not Cyrus was actually regenerate. He knew about the Lord. He

01:10:17.600 He knew he was the God of heaven, the true king of all kings, you know, those kinds of

01:10:21.440 things.

01:10:21.640 And he recognized that God, the Hebrew God, Yahweh, that he was the true God, God of gods,

01:10:27.440 king of kings, and that he's the one who had sovereignly given to Cyrus the authority 0.58

01:10:31.800 and the civil, you know, power that Cyrus had and that he was supposed to use it in

01:10:35.820 order to empower the people of God, namely the Israelites, to build a house for his name,

01:10:39.440 to go and rebuild the ruins of Jerusalem.

01:10:41.220 And that's where we are right now as a country.

01:10:43.040 It's, you know, rebuilding the ruins, that we were a Christian nation in many ways.

01:10:48.040 And I think, you know, that right now we're a Christian nation currently in the process

01:10:51.160 of apostasy.

01:10:52.400 We're currently, because of that, we're under God's judgment, and not just under his judgment,

01:10:55.960 but even a stricter judgment because of his many blessings, because of our founding.

01:11:00.560 Which is the theme of next week's video, by the way.

01:11:03.100 Great.

01:11:03.480 Awesome.

01:11:03.860 Living Under Judgment.

01:11:04.600 For Wednesday, for the live stream.

01:11:05.760 Great.

01:11:06.280 Living Under Judgment.

01:11:07.080 Awesome.

01:11:07.640 So next Wednesday, 4 p.m. Central Time, Living Under Judgment.

01:11:11.060 This Sunday, though, if you're anywhere in the Central Texas area and you don't have

01:11:14.040 a solid church home, we would love for you to join us.

01:11:15.960 Go to covenantbible.org.

01:11:17.880 But what I'm going to be talking about is just like Wes said, is the Cyrus thing, you

01:11:21.080 know, that this civil political leader, like a Caesar type, that whether he's regenerate

01:11:28.740 or not, God uses him in his sovereignty because God directs the heart of a king like many

01:11:33.580 waters.

01:11:33.940 God has a sovereign power over all people, including kings, and uses it for the good

01:11:38.460 of his people, the good of the church.

01:11:40.160 But what's unique that I'm going to be addressing in Ezra chapter one, the latter part of the

01:11:44.420 chapter this next week, is that Cyrus is not enough.

01:11:47.900 So it says that, you know, the same God who divinely stirred up the heart of Cyrus to

01:11:52.180 do good to the people of God that they might build, rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.

01:11:56.960 That same God who inspired Cyrus also inspired Israel, the people of Israel that were currently

01:12:02.500 living in captivity under Cyrus and his rule, but not just the people of Israel in general.

01:12:08.740 There is some sense of that, but specifically targeting leaders in Israel.

01:12:12.580 And there's two primary categories of leaders in Israel that God stirred up their hearts

01:12:17.320 as well as Cyrus.

01:12:18.320 And it was the Levites and priests.

01:12:20.180 That's one category.

01:12:21.420 And the others were civil and political leaders from Judah.

01:12:25.760 So you have two houses, the house of Levi and the house of Judah, right?

01:12:29.900 The scepter, Jacob even prophesies this with his sons.

01:12:32.380 The scepter, civil rule and leadership is given to Judah. 0.93

01:12:36.000 The priesthood is given to Levi.

01:12:37.200 So what you have basically is this, God stirs up the hearts of politicians and pastors,

01:12:41.840 politicians and pastors. Cyrus is not enough. The people still have, Cyrus saying you can go,

01:12:48.680 you may go, you should go, and even resourcing the people of God to go still won't be enough

01:12:53.880 to make them go. They have to want to go. They have to have, and so you need to stir up the

01:13:00.860 people. You've got to have Cyrus giving permission, but you also have to have among your own people,

01:13:05.540 right? So you can have that foreign leader that's outside of the people of God, right? Like I said, 0.68

01:13:10.120 Trump, maybe not being regenerate. I would bet on him not being regenerate outside of the people

01:13:14.000 of God, but with this high office and a soft spot for the people of God. So you need that as a part

01:13:19.800 of the equation, but you also need within the people of God, your own local leaders, your own

01:13:25.320 heads of tribes, and you need the political leaders that are Christians at a local level.

01:13:32.500 you need your dusty deavers, but then you also need the Levites and the priests. You need your 0.86

01:13:37.040 spiritual leaders. You need local pastors. And if they're not on board, then the revival,

01:13:42.260 the rebuilding, the resurgence won't happen. And in 2020, yeah, some slowly boiling frogs in the

01:13:50.000 pot of hot water woke up and jumped out of the pot. Praise God for that. I'm super grateful.

01:13:54.460 But I think we're naive if we say, man, the left, they so overplayed their hands.

01:13:59.280 you know, uh, they'd done messed up, you know, and now, uh, we, we have this, a revival. Now

01:14:03.860 we're nowhere near revival. Um, there's a little bit of a pushback. There's a little bit of people

01:14:08.520 waking up and saying, man, I, I want revival. I want to go all the way back to 2014. You know,

01:14:14.960 wow. What, what are, but, uh, we're nowhere even close. And here's one of the reasons I would say

01:14:19.180 we're not close is that, uh, we had, we had Trump in 2020, uh, before we lost him. Uh, but we had

01:14:25.040 trump in 2020 uh but then uh we had uh david french and russell moore and tim keller and

01:14:30.380 we did not have the levites and the house of judah over here um and when covid when that play was

01:14:38.260 used in blm uh we didn't have the pastors yeah or the politicians the pastors by and large they all

01:14:44.740 folded you know they all failed um and and i'm not just saying they failed because we had no idea

01:14:50.020 what was going on, they failed for a few weeks. I'm saying they failed for like better part of a

01:14:55.160 year, some of them over a year. And again, I'm not saying some, I'm saying the majority, even

01:15:00.980 the conservative ones. And so I think we know that something, God is, that Aslan is on the move,

01:15:06.480 you know, that there's really a work when you have Osiris, but who may not be a part of the

01:15:13.400 people of God. He's a foreigner, but God softens his heart to have compassion on his people. So

01:15:20.000 you have Osiris, but then you also have not just the Christian prince. In this case, I would call 0.84

01:15:26.220 him the Caesar. But then what you have is many Christian princes, princess. Let me pull out my 0.98

01:15:34.620 patriarchy card, but princes, plural, multiple. It's not just one Christian prince, but you have

01:15:40.720 many Christians in politics at a lower level underneath the Caesar, but who are not foreigners,

01:15:47.660 but they're natives. And here's the thing about Zerubbabel. He was one of them. And then also

01:15:52.620 the pastors, the priest and the Levites. And so you've got them too. But one of these political

01:15:57.720 leaders, you got Ezra, he's the priest, but on the political side, the Judah leaders, but native,

01:16:03.440 not a foreigner like Cyrus, but native to Israel. What you have is Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel rebuilt

01:16:09.160 the rubbabel. All right. So you got Zerubbabel, but here's one of the things of his name,

01:16:13.800 Zerubbabel. What it meant was it was Shesh Bezar, I think, or Bezar. Shesh Bezar, I believe,

01:16:25.760 is the name that was given to him by the Babylonians where he was in captivity. And what

01:16:30.400 that name meant was joy in tribulation. So he was a warrior, but he was a jolly warrior. I think

01:16:36.920 that's significant. And then the name Zerubbabel, what all the people said about him and what that

01:16:43.100 name meant was um uh it was uh it was stranger i think it meant stranger in the land or something

01:16:50.180 like that what it meant was um a lot of people had been 70 years at this point uh meaning you

01:16:55.100 know two generations arguably three depending how you count two and a half like and the people had

01:16:59.980 settled in this is our home now um zerubbabel what was said of him even in his name is that uh

01:17:07.340 even though he was born and raised his whole life uh in captivity in babylon that's all that

01:17:12.920 for all intents and purposes that is life that is home but his whole life he felt like a stranger

01:17:20.200 he had a love for his heritage he did not spurn his heritage he had read the prophets he had read

01:17:27.100 jeremiah he had read isaiah he had read of the days of old and he wanted israel he knew that

01:17:33.240 going to israel would be costly because you have to rebuild everything it's going to be work but

01:17:37.820 i would rather work and have my home my heritage my lineage my history uh my forefathers that you

01:17:45.600 know like he had a love for his heritage and that was one of the big plays uh through the the

01:17:51.500 historians through the politicians through movies and hollywood and media one of the big plays for

01:17:56.720 the last 60 years was to get white westerners to hate their heritage to hate charlemagne to hate

01:18:05.560 king richard the lion-hearted to hate uh george washington and the founders to hate uh king

01:18:11.620 alfred to hate um and i i i think that people are starting to wake up but that's what it'll take it

01:18:17.780 a cyrus my whole point is to say cyrus is not enough trump is not enough and trump honestly

01:18:24.100 is uh i i would prefer cyrus you know so but like so that that would not be enough then you have to

01:18:29.860 have many christian princes and many christian pastors and in 2020 we did not have them

01:18:34.740 maybe we're going to end with this but the image is so good of the sword and the trowel

01:18:38.620 they get to nehemiah they're building and fighting so they're not just fighting it's not just we

01:18:42.960 oppose that we're just opposed to it they're building but while they're building they're

01:18:47.200 not head in the sand that's why i hope nobody comes for us they're defending their family

01:18:51.120 but building something else that's right amen all right well uh tune in next week just for

01:18:56.380 anybody who's maybe new to the channel just so you know um we've switched some stuff up so this

01:19:00.760 year, here's the program. We've got Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So three shows every single

01:19:05.780 week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, every single one of those days, it's 4 p.m. Central time. It'll

01:19:11.780 land on YouTube and Twitter. So you can watch live on Twitter as it airs, or you can watch live on

01:19:17.260 YouTube. And then everything eventually, and not eventually, that makes it sound like a month,

01:19:21.720 within hours goes to our podcast platform. So you can find us on Spotify, on Apple. And then of

01:19:27.760 course, everything's also on the website. That's rightresponseministries.com. And we have a free

01:19:31.960 app that you can download, whatever app store you use. Just look up Right Response Ministries,

01:19:35.960 and you can download the app. So everything will go to the app and the website. And then within

01:19:41.040 hours, it goes to all your favorite podcast platform, Spotify, Apple, whatever. But if you

01:19:45.860 want to watch it live as it's happening at 4 p.m. Central, it's Twitter or YouTube. So Twitter or

01:19:50.880 YouTube, 4 p.m. Central time, three shows a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Monday is what we

01:19:56.860 called Theology Applied. The interview, that's where I do a remote interview with notable guests

01:20:01.500 from all over. We've had Doug Wilson several times, guys like, I don't know, Brian Sauve,

01:20:06.940 guys, I've had Aaron Wren on the show. I've had multiple different guys, Michael Foster,

01:20:11.380 you know, A.D. Robles, John Harris, you know, all those guys. And so that's Monday, the interview,

01:20:16.880 4 p.m. Central Time. Wednesday is the live stream, and that's with Michael and Wes,

01:20:21.080 and we do that every single wednesday 4 p.m um and that's uh that that's live and so we're going

01:20:27.040 to be addressing current events and news that comes out you know like like the aaron wren article

01:20:31.220 over that book and so things that are fresh things that are happening right now um and and also some

01:20:35.800 things that that aren't but are pertinent and relevant uh and then friday 4 p.m central time

01:20:40.680 that's called the special uh the friday special is a season-based show so instead of just one

01:20:45.720 singular episode. It's a deep dive of anywhere from eight to 12 episodes, each about an hour,

01:20:51.220 40, 40, 60 minutes in length. And that's where I bring in, not just remotely, you know, piping in

01:20:56.180 through Zoom or something, but in-house in the studio, I'm going to fly out two guys. And right

01:21:00.720 now the first season, and it's quarterly, so it's going to be four seasons this year, Lord willing,

01:21:05.560 one season this quarter, Q1, and then Q2, Q3, and Q4. So from April all the way through March,

01:21:12.180 we've got nine episodes of the first season of the friday special and the first episode of the

01:21:17.900 first season aired last friday and for this whole season are my guests are uh andrew isker and adi

01:21:24.100 and we're talking about andrew isker's recent book that he published the boniface option uh which is

01:21:29.440 kind of the sword in the trowel uh but but the first uh being saint boniface the axe um and so

01:21:34.620 cutting down old donner's oak cutting down trash world clown world whatever you want to call it

01:21:38.740 And then building out of the ashes, Christodom, new Christodom. 0.91

01:21:44.440 And so that's running right now.

01:21:47.040 And a lot of people are watching that.

01:21:49.200 That show's doing really well.

01:21:50.500 And it comes out weekly, but it's all prerecorded.

01:21:53.080 So we recorded all nine episodes.

01:21:55.000 And if anybody wants to get an episode ahead of time, be able to not just have to wait

01:21:59.280 weekly every Friday, but binge watch the whole season.

01:22:01.900 You can join our Patreon.

01:22:03.380 You can go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries, patreon.com.

01:22:08.740 forward slash right response ministry. So thanks so much for tuning in. We hope you were blessed

01:22:13.360 by this discussion and we look forward to seeing you this Friday.

The NXR Podcast - January 10, 2024

THE LIVESTREAM - How Tim Keller & Russell Moore Got Evangelicals To Vote Democrat

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