The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - How To Ensure The Enemies Of God Never Win Again

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00:00:26.800 Christianity in the West has gone from the center of civilization to the margins once it shaped laws

00:00:35.560 culture and the moral order today it's viewed with suspicion or outright hostility the world

00:00:43.900 we live in is not the same as it once was in the 1950s in fact it's not even the same as it was

00:00:51.040 in 2010. The institutions that once carried a Christian foundation have either been conquered

00:00:57.820 or turned against us. And yet, many evangelicals still cling to the illusion that we can engage

00:01:05.620 the culture on neutral ground, as if we're still in charge, as if the world hasn't already chosen

00:01:12.860 sides. But this is not the first time the church has faced such a crisis. In the 9th century,

00:01:19.980 Alfred the Great ruled a crumbling England. Viking invaders weren't just burning towns, 0.86

00:01:26.320 they were burning churches. Christian civilization itself was at stake. But Alfred didn't accept 1.00

00:01:33.140 defeat. He didn't surrender his people to the whims of the pagans. Instead, he built, he fortified,

00:01:41.200 he created Christian strongholds, boroughs, that became centers of resistance and renewal. 0.86

00:01:48.180 And because of that, England was not lost. 0.96

00:01:52.900 We have entered into negative world, where compromise leads only to decline,

00:01:58.620 and surrender guarantees our destruction. 0.99

00:02:02.300 The question is no longer whether we should build strong Christian communities. 0.99

00:02:06.700 The question now is whether we will have the courage to do so before it's too late.

00:02:12.420 This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and Reese Fund,

00:02:19.440 as well as our Patreon members and our faithful donors.

00:02:23.340 You can join our Patreon by going to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries,

00:02:30.360 or you can donate by going to right response ministries.com forward slash donate.

00:02:37.240 So today we lay out the strategy.

00:02:40.260 what Alfred's Borough System teaches us, that is, how Christian civilization has survived

00:02:47.120 and even advanced in hostile times, and the non-negotiable steps that we must take

00:02:54.340 if we are to reclaim ground. Tune in now.

00:03:10.260 all right all right we are back ga good afternoon um real quick do us a favor and uh like the video

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00:04:02.800 or spotify whatever podcast platform you like so subscribe to youtube follow us on x at right

00:04:08.240 response m and uh for today for this particular video help us out by liking the video right now

00:04:14.420 while we're still live like the video and share the video okay uh this one is uh this episode has

00:04:20.520 been outlined by uh michael belch and so he's gonna lead us off okay great well really excited

00:04:26.740 to have this conversation. And this thought started from a few weeks ago, we had some guys

00:04:32.940 in town, we were just talking about what it would take to continue the emphasis of building Christian

00:04:39.180 boroughs throughout the nation. And it's not an idea that's new to us. It's an idea that's been

00:04:45.180 talked about in our circles at the New Christendom Conference, and people have written, people have

00:04:50.420 spoken. And one of the things that I want to point out with our episode today is it's not actually

00:04:55.740 new in history. The idea of having Christian burrows is not a new idea in history. Now,

00:05:01.180 they weren't exactly the same, how they've carried out in the past, but there are some

00:05:05.280 definite carryovers that we can see as we look at what happened down through history.

00:05:10.500 One of my main takeaways from the research I did and my goals for the episode today

00:05:15.700 is just for us to not despair, right? Like the church, and I don't mean necessarily the

00:05:21.260 institutional church, the people of God and Christian civilizations have faced many terrifying

00:05:28.820 enemies in the past. And lo and behold, they implemented smart, wise, and effective strategies

00:05:36.680 to defend themselves and then to begin to beat back their enemies. And so when we think about,

00:05:42.600 sometimes we're very short-sighted. Muslims. Yes, we're going to get into the Spanish 1.00

00:05:48.200 reconquista um but one of the things that we we do we're so short-sighted we think oh no one's

00:05:53.800 ever faced this sort of thing before right no no no actually take a deep breath right this is this

00:05:59.620 not this exact scenario but things like this have happened that's such a consolation too because

00:06:03.820 there's been so many times in biblical history just reading the old testament of course it's

00:06:07.760 god's word but reading the bible is a constant source of encouragement but then seeing that

00:06:12.880 oh it's not something that god did for a season you know and then and then he stopped with the

00:06:17.260 closing of the canon, but reading church history as well. There have been multiple, multiple times

00:06:24.120 in, you know, different times with different people in different places where against all odds,

00:06:30.620 the Lord, he wins by many or by few. That happens again and again. And it's easy for a lot of people

00:06:36.100 to, you know, to look at our current situation and to say, well, you know, like even when we're

00:06:43.100 winning, it still would be losing by any standard of Christendom just 50 years ago, much less 100

00:06:51.520 or 200 years ago. There's no way that we can win. We're surrounded on all sides. You have atheism

00:06:58.060 and secular humanism, and you have mass immigration. You have all these different things.

00:07:04.280 Yeah, that's true. But there have been periods of times all throughout history where the church

00:07:12.640 has been in dire straits and God has, in his mercy, provided victory. Yep. So, when we think

00:07:21.360 about the fact that we are newly in negative world, right? I mean, this is less than 10 years.

00:07:28.460 This year will be 10th if you go by the Obergefell decision. Was that 2015 or 2013?

00:07:34.620 15. 15, yeah. So, we're coming up on 10 years. Really, I mean, that's just a blink, right? The

00:07:39.060 fact that we're in negative world now. The church has faced, God's people have faced negative world

00:07:43.440 many times, and they faced an invasion also. And the other thing that's encouraging to me,

00:07:48.400 before I dive into a little bit of King Alfred, is sometimes we think that, well, yes, the church

00:07:53.520 has advanced, but I look at places like Germany, right, where the church, and that was Martin

00:07:59.300 Luther, right, like that was the core of the Reformation. And now it seems like, well, it's

00:08:04.580 it's just gone. And so sometimes we have this historical perspective that the church just kind

00:08:09.540 of moves around. And then once it's gone away, it's just gone forever. We get that from the idea

00:08:14.920 of Jesus in Revelation saying, you know, repent or I'll remove your lampstand. So there is certainly

00:08:19.840 a biblical idea there where God can remove the presence of his people. But when we look at

00:08:26.660 history, we actually see times where Christendom has expanded and then enemies have attacked and

00:08:32.460 it shrunk, but it managed to re-expand, right? And this has actually happened multiple times

00:08:37.560 throughout history. And so when we think about America, do we deserve judgment? Do we deserve

00:08:42.160 to be obliterated for our sin? Yes, absolutely. But also what God said to Abraham, I think,

00:08:51.080 at the time, you know, for 10 people in Sodom, I would not destroy the city. And there are godly

00:08:57.120 people in our nation who still are committed to praying and working and fighting, beating back

00:09:02.040 the wickedness. And so I take great courage in the historical shrinking and expanding of God's

00:09:07.080 physical kingdom on earth. I always think of, would you spare the city, even if there were

00:09:12.500 10? And God says, yes, for 10, I'd spare the city. And I always think Lot should have had more kids.

00:09:17.480 That's right. He didn't have very many kids. If Lot and his wife had only had eight children,

00:09:22.660 boom, it's done. You're good. All right, go ahead. All right. So I wanted to look a little

00:09:27.940 bit at King Alfred, and this is not a deep dive into King Alfred, because that would be really

00:09:33.220 long. He's a fascinating character. But I wanted to look at his response to the attack that England

00:09:38.620 faced. So Alfred was the king of Wessex in 871. And during this time, late in the 9th century,

00:09:47.740 the Christian civilization in maybe not all of Europe, because Charlemagne was around at the

00:09:53.840 same time, but at least in England, was under dire threat. The Vikings had come over, and they were

00:09:59.360 not just raiding villages along the shore. They were actually starting to push into England from 0.52

00:10:04.880 the southern, southeastern coast, and pushing up into England, capturing territory. And this was

00:10:11.780 happening year after year, and the English people were losing a lot of territory. They were losing

00:10:17.580 a lot of lives, and they were losing a lot of territory. And just for a time frame, this timeline

00:10:21.640 of a Christian England. 0.51

00:10:22.860 That's about 250, 300 years 0.64

00:10:24.660 of where we're at as America right now.

00:10:27.180 You trace kind of the Christianization of England,

00:10:30.120 500, 600 or so becomes largely Christian.

00:10:32.800 So it's at the same quarter century,

00:10:34.920 quarter millennial mark that Alfred is facing this.

00:10:37.400 It's been established,

00:10:38.240 there's structures and everything in place,

00:10:39.720 but there's a pretty significant threat from the outside.

00:10:42.140 Yeah.

00:10:42.960 So what the people of England had been doing before that 0.86

00:10:46.680 was when the Vikings showed up, 0.92

00:10:48.600 they would muster their troops

00:10:49.700 and then they would try and go out and fight a battle

00:10:51.360 and beat them on the battlefield.

00:10:53.000 And what King Alfred realized was this is not working

00:10:55.740 because number one, we don't know where they're going to show up.

00:10:58.700 And number two, they are as likely as we are

00:11:01.000 to pick the terrain of the battle.

00:11:03.100 And so what he did was he started building

00:11:05.300 what at the time was called burrs,

00:11:07.780 from which we get burrows, burrs.

00:11:10.480 So when I refer to burrs, 1.00

00:11:11.660 I'm equating that to our modern idea of Christian burrows now. 1.00

00:11:15.140 And burrs were an interesting idea.

00:11:17.720 They were a fortified city.

00:11:20.480 They were a fortified city, and it wasn't just one or two.

00:11:24.180 He built a network of fortified cities, and the key was they were all no more than a day's

00:11:30.960 ride away from each other, so that if one got attacked, there was a garrison or a contingent

00:11:37.780 of troops in another fortified city that could be there within a day. 0.73

00:11:42.100 Now, one of the things that the Burrs did that was really interesting, because you think 0.98

00:11:48.340 if we're getting attacked by Vikings, they're threatening us militarily. But what he insisted

00:11:54.180 on, in order for a burr to be called a burr, it had to have economic potential, like it had to

00:12:00.640 have production of goods, and it had to have a religious center for worship and even some

00:12:06.860 education. Now, if my people are being raided by Vikings, I'm thinking only military. But he set up

00:12:15.460 these burrs all over the nation that reinforced economic production and worship and learning. 0.98

00:12:24.420 He continued to insist that that was going to be necessary if the English people were going to beat

00:12:29.240 back the Viking invaders. And so here were some of the things that had to be in place for a town

00:12:35.540 not to be a town, but to be a burr, which is a central cog in the defense of England. They had 0.74

00:12:42.780 to have fortifications, which makes sense, walls or ditches or ramparts. They had to have a military

00:12:47.440 garrison, and they had to be able to feed the military garrison with their own production.

00:12:52.220 They had to have economic activity. So they had to have centers for trade, markets, craftsmen,

00:12:57.640 blacksmiths, industries, things like that. They had to have a church or religious center.

00:13:04.820 And then the population side, it had to be large enough to support a stable population. It could

00:13:10.040 not just be something that they would only run there for the winter. They had to be able to

00:13:13.900 raise families there. It had to be a multi-generate, it had to be able to support

00:13:18.260 multi-generational families, okay? Two other things, it had to be a strategic location,

00:13:24.980 so either along key roads or near important resources like a quarry or a fishing harbor

00:13:31.920 or something like that. And then last, it had to be connected into the Burgle system. It had to be

00:13:37.040 integrated into Alfred's network, which was, like I said before, no more than a day's ride

00:13:42.040 from each other. And so the question is, why was this effective? Why was this so effective? Well,

00:13:48.260 the reason it was so effective was the Vikings were used to raiding isolated villages. And they

00:13:53.780 could come in, they could raid, and then before any help could come, they were gone. They had

00:13:59.060 looted all the stuff, they had taken advantage of all the women, they killed everyone they wanted

00:14:03.220 to, and then they were gone. And so if they went to a small village like this, they faced very

00:14:08.320 little resistance, right? So it was effective because the Burrs, they were built up all around 1.00

00:14:13.680 the nation in order to defend those smaller villages. And this is so important. It made 1.00

00:14:21.040 the Vikings have to fight the English on the English, the terms of the English people. In other 0.80

00:14:27.740 words, England stopped reacting, right? What would happen is they would hear of a town that was

00:14:33.380 raided by the Vikings and they would run there. And the Vikings would have sailed around and

00:14:37.660 they're running up there, right? Or the Vikings are marching there and then they're trying to

00:14:41.640 get there and fast. The Burrs allowed them to stop reacting and to say to the Vikings, look,

00:14:46.920 if you want to conquer us, you're going to have to come where we are ready. And it was incredibly 0.95

00:14:53.300 effective it was incredibly effective so nate could you show that first chart about how christian

00:14:59.040 burr uh burr strategies can be based on external pressure so this is oh yeah this is this is not

00:15:05.440 that's more lines than i've put on any of my charts not a west quality chart okay i appreciate

00:15:12.180 a good chart game i think it looks good to me the black line is the key that represents pressure

00:15:18.460 external pressure on the church, okay? The rest of the lines all represent the things that burrs

00:15:26.460 are supposed to do, provide defense, church influence, some sort of self-sufficiency,

00:15:33.600 things like that. And so what I want you to see is that as the black line of external pressure

00:15:40.320 has changed over time in the history of the church, so we have our time periods there,

00:15:45.580 We have the early church, we have Alfred there in red.

00:15:49.260 That was when external pressure was at a very peak point, right? 0.70

00:15:53.640 The Vikings were literally taking over, burning down churches. 0.80

00:15:57.280 And then we have what, it's expanded. 0.80

00:15:59.660 Positive world in the U.S. is the blue one there, kind of towards the right side, up

00:16:05.260 till the 1950s.

00:16:06.320 Then we have neutral world, and now the red, the pink on the right is we live in negative

00:16:10.360 world. 0.98

00:16:10.660 The point of this whole graph is to show that the Christian community has always adjusted

00:16:16.940 its strategy based on the conditions that it was living in. 0.68

00:16:21.500 When external pressure was low, you see that red line down where there's isolated monastic

00:16:27.140 communities.

00:16:27.920 They did not have much defense, and in fact, they didn't have to have huge contingents

00:16:32.300 of knights and armies.

00:16:34.100 And my point in showing this graph is God is the one working through history.

00:16:40.660 and what falls to us is to say what time of history do we live in we live in a time of a lot

00:16:45.800 of external pressure and so we need to increase certain things we need to increase our self

00:16:52.860 sufficiency we need to increase our ability to defend ourselves both legally and culturally not

00:16:59.060 just with armies we need to increase our interconnectedness and this is something that 0.96

00:17:04.960 you know makes me sad a lot because the burrs were designed so that they could immediately 0.57

00:17:10.900 respond to aid and we seem to still be living in the time where um our attack is as likely

00:17:17.380 to come from someone that we thought was a fellow burr as maybe some secular um leftist who hates

00:17:25.460 god and the the burrs were such a beautiful thing this is the last thing i'll say before i kind of

00:17:31.440 pass it off to you guys for some thoughts one of the things and i don't know what to do about this

00:17:35.440 in a global world and in a big nation but one of the things that england had that we do not have

00:17:41.140 was a leader who could organize this now trump is leading some cultural fronts but he's not

00:17:48.380 strategically thinking through the the role of the christian community right and i you know i don't 1.00

00:17:54.380 I don't know, I think some of our progress as Christian warriors in a depraved culture 1.00

00:18:01.740 will be stunted when compared to Alfred's because we don't have some people or a guy 1.00

00:18:10.380 to rally around, to kind of direct the flow.

00:18:13.480 I mean, we're Americans, we inherently resist that sort of idea.

00:18:17.160 Yeah. So anyway, that's really interesting about what Alfred did. And the big takeaway,

00:18:25.400 again, is not just that he built towns, but that he responded to the threat. He understood the

00:18:30.700 threat. And then he built in a way that would rebuff the threat and provide for the Christian

00:18:36.220 people of England to not only barely survive, but to come out on the other side defended and with

00:18:43.180 many kids and still with industry so comments or thoughts from you guys uh something alfred does

00:18:49.320 really well when he does that is and this will be the trait of every good leader is he has maximal

00:18:54.480 autonomy for those underneath him got two good family members and they're trying to grow businesses

00:18:59.200 and they have kind of this streak and i have it too of like it's very difficult for them to give

00:19:03.920 off and hand off some portion of the business so scale that up you you have a whole island you have

00:19:09.440 whole nation to defend well how do you do that unless you take someone and you say here's the

00:19:13.700 end here's the deal the end of the day you probably wouldn't do it the way that i would do it you

00:19:17.260 wouldn't have arranged defenses the same way you wouldn't do economics etc the other but i just

00:19:21.660 don't have the bandwidth to be involved how many burrs were there mike would you say did they oh

00:19:27.040 we're saying dozens and dozens exactly i got 50 60 of these yeah i just can't be involved in all of

00:19:33.140 them i can't oversee construction of walls i can't dig into the economics you have to do it and you

00:19:38.580 have to do a good job yep so we talk about leaders and there's certainly right now there's not a

00:19:43.060 singular leader we don't have a pope or anything like that but as different men maybe lead

00:19:46.680 organizations and groups and publishing companies their success their ability to scale is going to

00:19:52.700 be directly related in some capacity to their ability to tell other men you go do this i don't

00:19:58.260 have the bandwidth for it and you're going to do a great job so alfred did it well and even here for

00:20:02.480 now practically on the ground business you got to give autonomy to people yep right and what that

00:20:07.980 requires is trust and humility. So for the singular, you know, primary leader, he has to be

00:20:15.060 able to trust others in order to delegate. But also, you have to have guys who are high caliber

00:20:23.300 men that could do, right, they're gifted and skilled enough that they could actually be

00:20:30.400 reasonably successful doing their own thing. And yet they've opted not to, because they are willing

00:20:37.300 to not take the primary lead role they're willing to be a right-hand guy um but be a part of

00:20:44.240 something significant and i you know i've talked about this in the past but i think that's the

00:20:49.340 opposite of what you know evangelicalism has done and uh protestants and catholics and eastern

00:20:57.800 orthodox for that matter but just christendom in the west i think what we've done in recent

00:21:03.140 decades over the last you know 50 to 80 years or so um is we have spread our forces too thin

00:21:11.940 and instead of winning somewhere we've opted for losing everywhere instead of winning on something

00:21:20.420 we've opted for losing everything um and that's the church growth movement that's the church

00:21:28.580 planting movement for sure um that's um a lot of our uh our international and global evangelism

00:21:36.720 strategies um at every level we we determined that we had a certain level of opulence and success

00:21:46.320 and i think we we got lackadaisical and we took that for granted and we said we've you know we've

00:21:52.100 arrived nothing you know look at this great uh babylon which i have built you know like look at

00:21:57.660 like, look at this great kingdom that I built with my own hands. And we got overly confident

00:22:03.780 and thought, you know what, we're doing fine. And so we can afford to divide our resources,

00:22:13.760 our efforts, our team, and our focus. America's doing fine. So we'll do a lot of work in Uganda.

00:22:20.540 you know america is doing fine so we'll um you know like this this to take it to a local level

00:22:26.900 um this church is doing great and so um we're going to take you know half of our elder and

00:22:33.060 deacon team and we're going to send them out to be missionaries or to be church planters you know

00:22:37.480 and and that i'm not saying that that's always wrong but there are certain principles that are

00:22:42.160 timeless and there are certain principles that are timely and i think a lot of what we're missing

00:22:47.700 And as of late in our moment is the timely principles.

00:22:52.820 I say it all the time, but it bears saying once more, the sons of Issachar, they knew

00:22:58.940 the times.

00:22:59.560 There are timeless principles that we find in the Word of God that apply in season and

00:23:04.980 out of season, right?

00:23:06.020 That just like certain virtues that we should embody regardless of what culture you're living

00:23:11.320 in or what time period you're living in or what's going on in the newspaper headlines.

00:23:15.860 It doesn't matter.

00:23:16.440 the economy's good pursue this virtue economy's bad pursue this virtue this political issue is

00:23:22.480 going on pursue this virtue so there are some things that really are timeless but there are

00:23:28.220 other things that really do fall into the category of strategy timely strategies and i think that

00:23:34.740 one of the you know since we're of the reform tradition i think you know we can speak to our

00:23:41.460 own tribe one of the big mistakes that i think we made was um i think we developed um an unhealthy

00:23:49.300 over-the-top aversion towards pragmatism yeah like like really like i feel like the average

00:23:56.120 reformed guy now most of our followers at this point have probably wised up to that whether they

00:24:01.140 could express it and put it into words or not they've wised up to what i'm about to espouse

00:24:05.420 and so they're not particularly bothered by uh subject matter like what we're covering today and

00:24:10.360 they see michael's chart and they're like yeah like let's go um but but you know even just a

00:24:17.180 few years ago five years ago uh if you were in in any reform tribe whatsoever presbyterian reform

00:24:24.520 baptist and you talk about you know practical strategies in the culture um you like immediately

00:24:33.500 you know that would be frowned upon and and i think it's it was an overreaction and a conflation

00:24:39.460 of categories here we go again talking about categories but they're so vitally important

00:24:43.860 um so when you think of the lord's day right like a lot of people over the last i would say 10 years

00:24:49.940 or so kind of you know with the with the new reformed resurgence in the last 20 years um

00:24:56.060 bunch of people you know overnight by the thousands becoming calvinist at least in in terms of

00:25:02.260 soteriology their view of salvation and everybody all of a sudden is you know listening to john

00:25:06.960 Piper sermons, you know, and then, you know, and then they get into R.C. Sproul and Martin Lloyd

00:25:13.480 Jones or whatever. And they're going down that theological path, right? That happened over the

00:25:19.120 last 20, 30 years. Well, a lot of it, you know, adopted Reformed soteriology, but not Reformed

00:25:28.780 practices, especially when it comes to Lord's Day worship. And then over the last 10 years or so,

00:25:34.800 10, 15 years, people had, I think, a generally correct instinct in realizing, you know what,

00:25:41.520 we don't just need to be five-point Calvinist in terms of God's sovereignty over salvation, but

00:25:46.960 we can't have reform soteriology but still be using smoke machines and laser lights

00:25:53.040 on Sunday and TED Talk sermons and, you know, the garage band worship. We, you know,

00:26:01.580 like there was, there was kind of a, a, a natural aversion as, as, as our generation that all became

00:26:08.080 Calvinist in their, you know, in their teenage years and early twenties started getting a little

00:26:12.640 older. And then there started to be some kind of pushback towards the Driscolls of the world, which 0.95

00:26:18.100 I'm, I'm not a Driscoll hater, but just, I'm thinking of that time and Mars Hill. And it's

00:26:23.640 kind of, you know, it's Calvinism, but, you know, dressed up with modern, very modern

00:26:29.920 um you know laser light garage band kind of you know set designs on the stage and all that kind

00:26:36.660 of stuff and you know jesus is my homeboy um hoodie you know or whatever whatever um and and

00:26:43.240 so you know 20 year olds when i was in my 20s i i liked you know listening to driscoll as as many

00:26:51.020 other people at that time did but then you started to grow up and and my point is um over the last

00:26:57.140 20-30 years, reformed resurgence with soteriology.

00:27:01.500 Over the last 10-15 years, a reformed resurgence in terms of

00:27:05.260 confessional reform theology. And a lot of that

00:27:09.140 dealing with the regulative principle of worship. What should the Lord's Day look like?

00:27:13.460 How should we worship? And so that's where all of a sudden

00:27:17.160 you got into guys saying, okay,

00:27:19.920 we want to embrace

00:27:23.360 Sabbatarianism. We want to practice the Lord's Supper weekly. We want to use wine and not

00:27:31.220 Welch's grape juice. We want to worship the Lord in spirit, but also in truth, according to what

00:27:38.940 he's prescribed. Spiritual songs and hymns and psalms, there was an increase in psalm singing

00:27:45.200 and more traditional hymns, and less of a rock band type of style, family integrated worship.

00:27:53.360 the kids staying with the adults and instead of sending them off to another room for childcare,

00:27:58.360 all these things started kind of emerging in the reformed world. So it wasn't just reformed

00:28:03.360 soteriology over the last 20, 30 years, but over the last 10, 15 years, it was reformed worship,

00:28:10.900 the regular principle of worship. And in that, one of the big things that was pushed back against

00:28:15.780 was pragmatism and saying, you know, it is not permitted to us. This isn't a blank page

00:28:24.900 for your own creative freedom and license. These are things that God has explicitly told us in His

00:28:29.900 Word. The pastor or the deacons or the congregation for that matter do not have the luxury, God has

00:28:36.320 not afforded in His Word the luxury to us to be creative and strategic in the design of our Lord's

00:28:42.860 a worship service in order to try to attract people, namely the lost. But rather, church

00:28:49.960 is first and foremost, it's for God to bless and honor Him. Second, for the sheep, for God's people

00:28:56.440 that we would be nourished and fed. And lastly, for the unbeliever as an evangelistic context.

00:29:04.100 But we can't reverse it and put it on its head to where we're thinking of what does God want

00:29:07.900 in our worship last um and we're thinking about what do unbelievers want and doing church surveys

00:29:13.600 you know like willow creek did you know with bill hybels or rick warren and uh what what would the

00:29:19.300 the pagan who hates god how would he like us to worship and then we'll gear things around it so

00:29:23.520 so i think you know again to sum it up um the last 20-30 years reformed resurgence with

00:29:29.640 soteriology salvation how does god save and and sermons became more reformed and exegetical and

00:29:36.460 those kinds of things. And the sovereignty of God became central in many ways in the preaching.

00:29:41.300 But the order of service was not liturgical. It was very modern. Not our theology, but our

00:29:50.320 methodology was very pragmatic and seeker-sensitive. That's what it was. It was seeker-sensitive

00:29:56.120 Calvinistic churches like Mars Hill. And then over the last, that's 20, 30 years, the last 10,

00:30:01.760 15 years, then we decide, let's really embrace the Reformed tradition a little deeper, not just

00:30:08.320 in preaching the sovereignty of God, but even how, not just what we embody when we do church,

00:30:14.500 but how we do church. The problem now, you know, fast forwarding to today, the problem is I think

00:30:20.460 there was an overreaction towards pragmatism. Being against mere humanistic pragmatism when it

00:30:29.340 comes to how we worship on the Lord's Day is right and good, a good instinct, because God

00:30:36.720 actually prescribes clearly how to worship him when the church gathers together on the first

00:30:42.940 day of the week, the day that Christ Jesus rose from the dead. And so that aversion towards that

00:30:48.560 particular kind of pragmatism, pragmatism in worship, Lord's Day worship, was a good instinct.

00:30:54.920 The problem is that reformed guys, a lot of us, we became averse to all forms of pragmatism, all of it.

00:31:04.220 So then, you know, you're doing a conference on how to win back the culture.

00:31:09.320 And guys are saying, they're applying the regular principle of worship to the political sphere or to business, you know, or the arts or this.

00:31:19.580 And what I mean by that, by applying it, is they're just poo-pooing on anybody who makes any attempt whatsoever to be successful.

00:31:29.240 And you get the Jesus juke, right?

00:31:31.560 And that's where the Jesus juke arrives of just preach the gospel, man.

00:31:35.280 You know, if you have an intruder in your home, just preach the gospel.

00:31:38.000 You know, like, you know, if somebody's saying that you should be healthy and work out, nah, just be fat and preach the gospel.

00:31:44.820 You know, somebody's saying you should start a business, nah, be poor and preach the gospel.

00:31:47.780 Somebody saying that in politics, that we should actually wield the sword and we should legislate, right?

00:31:53.160 No, just preach the gospel.

00:31:54.840 So that aversion towards pragmatism on the Lord's Day in worship, which was right, became a general aversion towards all forms of pragmatism Monday through Saturday as well.

00:32:07.240 And I think that kind of sums up, that leads us to where we are today.

00:32:11.040 and uh and i think that's one of the things that we're trying to do in this ministry is push back

00:32:15.680 on that and say um no there's things that we can learn pragmatic things not just not just theology

00:32:22.300 um but there are strategic pragmatic things practical things that we can glean from guys

00:32:30.540 like king alfred or from this over here or that over there um that we can employ um not as the

00:32:37.360 church institute, but as the church, meaning Christians, people, Monday through Saturday

00:32:42.860 in our weekly lives outside of the Lord's Day worship that are perfectly permissible

00:32:47.940 in that sense that God does afford a measure of creativity and strategy to us.

00:32:55.300 And there are some things that would be better than other things.

00:32:57.600 And one of those things that I'm advocating for is I think that we are currently in a

00:33:01.960 moment in the West where we need consolidation, not spreading our forces too thin. Right now is

00:33:08.840 not the time to be thinking about how can our local church plant 10 new churches in the next

00:33:15.720 10 years. Now is the time to be thinking, how can we bolster, re-fortify? How can our one local

00:33:23.800 church be as strong as it possibly can be? How can we start a school in addition to our church?

00:33:29.800 how can we see to it in the next 10 years that 10% of the men in our church are seated in public

00:33:36.760 office locally in town? And how can we disciple and encourage the men of our church to start

00:33:44.820 businesses, to pursue wealth in ethical Christian ways so that our church is a force to be reckoned

00:33:52.240 with? Instead of having 10 weak churches, what if we had one significant church? And I think

00:33:59.460 that's and so all that being said it requires all the way back to where i started two things

00:34:03.940 it does require some lead men and those guys have to be they have to have a certain measure of

00:34:11.200 humility but more particularly a willingness to trust to delegate but for everybody else for all

00:34:16.520 the other men who don't end up being the primary lead guy it requires an immense amount of humility

00:34:21.780 because if it was the 1990s like just to be frank you know or especially the early 2000s with the

00:34:28.220 explosion of church planting movements. Um, if it was the early two thousands, if you got a guy

00:34:33.140 who would be, you know, your typical right-hand guy in, in one local church setting, um, if it's

00:34:40.560 2007, um, that you're sending that guy out. And every, every conference was geared that way

00:34:48.080 about, um, it was all about, um, exponential, um, multiplication, not just addition,

00:34:55.320 multiplication like i mean the number of talks that i heard at conferences about that it's about

00:35:00.860 multiplication are you um are you multiplying and replicating uh yourself and everyone you need to

00:35:06.720 do that as an individual you need to do that as a church you need to do like at every single level

00:35:10.700 of human society it's all about multiplying but then what happened was all these cells um split

00:35:18.320 and multiplied really quickly and um and what you get when that happens is cancer that's how

00:35:24.840 it's like anything that grows is healthy yeah well tumors grow um you know and and that's so

00:35:30.540 growth is not always healthy if it's a mile wide but an inch deep and then something like covid

00:35:35.720 happens and like they've done studies on this the whole keller project um in manhattan i think it

00:35:42.680 was literally nathan you might remember this but i think it was like 80 or 90 percent of all the

00:35:48.220 churches planted out of the you know uh from from keller's redeemer city to city i think the

00:35:53.020 Redeemer City to City?

00:35:54.140 It was a podcast with Aaron Wren you could reference.

00:35:56.440 There's a podcast that we did with Aaron Wren that you could go back and listen to.

00:36:00.360 Or somebody else did.

00:36:01.400 I'm sorry.

00:36:02.600 But anyway, I don't think I'm way off base here.

00:36:06.040 I think it was legitimately 80 to 90.

00:36:08.340 90 sounds right.

00:36:09.580 But like 90% of the churches planted over this multiple year time period through City to City, Impact,

00:36:16.800 one of the big ministry urban church planning ministry that keller did was all wiped out

00:36:23.100 in a year in 2020 with covet none of them had the fortitude none of them had the spine none of them

00:36:29.560 had virtue none of them had courage and at the practical level aside from the moral level none

00:36:34.660 of them had the resources to be able to weather that kind of storm with those kinds of challenges

00:36:38.860 so it's like you you multiplied sure but then you actually lost everything that you multiplied

00:36:46.460 And the mothership, the initial church that planted all these churches, she was also weakened because she had given birth 10 times all in a row.

00:36:59.360 And so then she wasn't able to weather the storm either.

00:37:03.040 And so it's kind of like the four soils, the parable of Christ, the rocky soil, it's shallow.

00:37:08.640 What that causes is because the roots can't go, there's no depth.

00:37:11.700 The roots can't go down, so the stem springs up.

00:37:15.040 but it springs up so quickly without the stability and without the rootedness so that when the sun

00:37:21.760 comes out, the thorns that choke a different plant, that represents the cares of this life.

00:37:26.160 But the sun, in this context, it represents suffering and challenge, difficulty. So then

00:37:32.040 the sun comes out and the plant quickly withers and dies. And I think the church planting movement

00:37:38.420 was in many ways, there was good that came out of it, but in many ways, overall, it was a shallow

00:37:44.780 rocky soil that gave um quick growth to lots of churches to where it's like oh my goodness the

00:37:51.360 whole lots of elementary schools yeah but then the sun came out some kind of providential

00:37:57.040 challenge suffering difficulty like 2020 uh whether it's social justice or blm or covid

00:38:04.500 and civil tyranny these kind of things and 90 of it was just evaporated like that so you got to

00:38:12.460 of the times. There are timeless truths. We're Christians. There are plenty of timeless truths.

00:38:16.900 One of the things that we try to focus on with this ministry is looking at some of the timely

00:38:20.800 truths. And I think one of the timely truths right now is consolidation. I think the name of the game

00:38:25.940 is consolidation. Finding where God is moving and finding a person that the Lord's hand is really

00:38:32.860 upon, just in His mercy and kindness and providence, and saying, I could do my own thing, and I'm gifted

00:38:38.300 and talented enough. I'm a high caliber man to where I could do my own thing. I could plant my

00:38:42.320 own church. I could start my own ministry. I could do this. I could do that. And it would be reasonably

00:38:46.640 successful. It would be, I could manage it. But I think that the day of the manager is done.

00:38:54.840 It's not just managerial, but it's now looking where are some of the guys who are taking the

00:39:02.960 next hill. They're not just managing and sustaining, but they're actually gaining ground.

00:39:08.080 And how can I multiply their efforts by going and joining them? That's my thought.

00:39:14.240 All right, we'll hit our first commercial break. When we come back, we're going to briefly talk

00:39:17.880 about the Spanish Reconquista, and then we'll branch out from there.

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00:41:03.020 All right, welcome back.

00:41:04.400 You know, Joel, just as you were talking about that, I thought, I'm the child of a missionary.

00:41:11.720 I did mission work myself.

00:41:13.760 I don't think now is the time for America to be thinking, reach the world with every

00:41:19.200 last dollar.

00:41:19.720 I'm not saying mission programs are bad, but even growing up as, as the child of a missionary,

00:41:25.800 like my dad, whenever possible, made it a priority to get to know and to be in the good

00:41:32.920 graces of the mayor of the town that we lived in, or of the president of the association of

00:41:39.320 the neighborhood or that sort of thing. And like, why? Because one time when we needed special

00:41:45.220 approval to use a park for an event we were doing that most people didn't get we got because my dad

00:41:50.840 had a relationship with him i just like even the things that we instinctively do when we think

00:41:58.280 well we're we're in another country like get to know the political power and be in their good

00:42:03.780 graces like has just faded so far from the kind of the perspective or the the the the thinking of

00:42:13.660 the modern Christian leader? Like, why would I need to know the mayor? Like, or why would we

00:42:17.860 need to have any sort of political clout? I don't know. So part of what's so weird about where we

00:42:26.680 are now is it's not even how we necessarily think about this if we just separate ourselves from the

00:42:34.400 situation, right? If we think, well, how would you reach a nation? Well, you would establish

00:42:38.820 communities. You would, you know, you do all the things that we're talking about. And then we say,

00:42:43.660 Well, let's do that here in the U.S.

00:42:44.900 It's like, no, that's not what we, this is all theory or it's all for out there.

00:42:50.280 None of it is for here.

00:42:52.160 Something about that, like gospel only or gospel first, five solas movement.

00:42:56.520 I swear it just, it damaged people's brains.

00:42:59.080 They became unable to think in just different, different categories, different thoughts,

00:43:05.080 different ideas than just church and gospel.

00:43:07.160 Like I remember very early on, but I would have like, what would be the best week of

00:43:11.100 effectiveness for Jesus?

00:43:12.480 and have been like, well, Monday, missional community,

00:43:15.160 Tuesday night, guys' night, Wednesday night, prayer meeting,

00:43:17.200 Thursday, evangelism, Friday, home group,

00:43:19.600 Saturday, something or the other, church, three times a week.

00:43:23.180 And my mind is like, I'm most pleasing to Jesus

00:43:25.060 when it's gospel, Bible study, theology,

00:43:27.320 all just on a continuous cycle.

00:43:29.840 And thank God for expanding a field of view

00:43:32.040 that it's like, wait, wait, there's faithfulness

00:43:33.640 in so many different domains.

00:43:35.380 And it's not just all truncated to John Owen

00:43:38.300 and to theology and to small missional evangelism.

00:43:42.480 or small group together it's not just the church right like like the church christians perhaps

00:43:47.840 christians majority right but there's a distinction between the church institute

00:43:51.600 yeah versus the church meaning the collective people of god yeah like there's the church like

00:43:56.400 ecclesia the gathering like the as a verb like the church churching together on the lord's day

00:44:01.920 ecclesia gathering together uh but then there's also the church um you know monday through saturday

00:44:08.480 meaning the people themselves. And I think we in America put so much stock in the church

00:44:14.220 institute that we just thought like, yeah, the doors to the church, the church building

00:44:20.680 should be open every day of the week. And if they're not, we should still be doing some kind

00:44:26.180 of ecclesiastical gathering, small groups, this, that, the other. And then people didn't really

00:44:31.720 have any time for anything else. That's pretty much your week. Sunday is the Lord's day and

00:44:37.680 that's good and right but then it's you know like what you said wes wednesday is another church

00:44:42.100 meeting and then there's a friday prayer meeting and then there's a small group meeting and there's

00:44:45.780 a men's breakfast on saturday you know and so that's all of your time and then what you ultimately

00:44:51.860 had is that in every other sphere of human society and life the political sphere um economic you know 0.68

00:44:59.020 the marketplace and business and these um and every other sphere you had christians became subpar

00:45:05.180 because everybody else um right the pagan is just um obsessively throwing himself

00:45:12.400 at these other endeavors so it's like so you're going to small group and you're going to this and

00:45:16.500 you're going to that and he's just clocking in 80 hours at his job and so he's getting ahead and

00:45:22.540 he's making more money than you and he's becoming more skilled in his labor um and so the young man

00:45:27.500 studying to be a pastor he's trying to catch up without seminary get all his reading in practice 0.85

00:45:32.060 preaching and teaching which if you're going into the pastorate is fine right but you're not all men

00:45:37.640 in a church should be going into the pastorate right but the problem is that we basically acted

00:45:41.940 as though they were yeah and treated every young man as though he was going to be a pastor and i

00:45:47.580 did that i like because i felt called to be a pastor because i wanted to be a pastor i couldn't

00:45:52.340 imagine anybody not wanting that to be a pastor yeah i couldn't i just i couldn't i couldn't

00:45:56.960 imagine any any young man not wanting to be a pastor and um and so then i elevated that as the

00:46:04.160 end all be all just assuming that that's what every guy wanted to be and and for me at the time

00:46:10.580 i was in san diego and and this was you know i so you're talking san diego with uh predominantly a

00:46:18.080 young church young people because i was young you tend to attract people who are like you so

00:46:22.000 you've got all these young men living in a place where there's not there wasn't a whole lot of

00:46:27.160 opportunity right they're all a little bit discouraged um outside of the church everybody

00:46:32.740 was excited wages in the nation are in san diego especially for cost of living san diego has been

00:46:37.440 rated at least twice in the last five to ten years as the number one worst city in america

00:46:43.780 for building wealth in terms of like there are other places that are a higher cost of living

00:46:49.020 like san francisco or dc um but um but in terms of the ratio between wages and cost of living

00:46:56.080 san diego was rated number one so if you're in that context um with you know predominantly um

00:47:02.740 younger demographic and so all the men are in their you know mid and late 20s you know early

00:47:08.800 mid and late 20s and um and they're all like clockwork experiencing certain discouragement

00:47:16.240 outside of church life in their vocation. None of them are making that much money. All of them

00:47:23.060 are paying an exorbitant amount on rent. All of them have student debt. And then you're holding

00:47:28.940 out to them the hope of, but what really matters in life is the church, which is true. And the

00:47:37.420 best thing to do in the church is to be a pastor. And so then you start doing eldership training

00:47:43.440 you know um programs you know and you've got half of the men in the church training to be elders

00:47:49.020 you know and meanwhile um and and it's working as kind of like an assuaging of their conscience

00:47:55.520 like it's it's just a consolation like it's just helping them to sleep at night right so like i

00:48:00.560 just um i'm not making money i'm building somebody else's wealth by renting a two-bedroom apartment

00:48:06.780 for twenty five hundred dollars a month um i have student loan debt but i'm training to be

00:48:13.340 a pastor whereas like what really needed to happen is um they all needed to leave

00:48:20.400 get get out of san diego go move um to some place that has jobs and a lower cost of living

00:48:28.560 um and be successful like obviously be a christian so find a good biblical church attend

00:48:35.060 that church on the Lord's day, be a member in good standing. But Monday through Saturday,

00:48:39.360 you don't need to go to three different eldership training classes. Not that we ever did that many,

00:48:44.580 but instead what you should be doing is you should be working, you're in your 20s,

00:48:49.720 you should be working 50, 60 hours a week. You should, and be the very best in your vocation

00:48:54.920 so that later in life, when you're in your 40s and 50s, you're the guy who has accrued capital,

00:49:01.780 not just financially but um you have you have a you know your rolodex your metaphorical proverbial

00:49:08.340 rolodex of networks and relationships and all these kinds of things you're the guy um who would

00:49:14.240 stand the best chance of um of winning uh city council or like you have power you have power

00:49:22.200 so i want to interrupt you real quick there because i just want to speak directly to any

00:49:25.940 young men who were listening i wish i had been given that advice when i was 18 19 20 i worked

00:49:32.740 hard right but i had no idea what working strategically meant like whatever i did i

00:49:37.360 would work hard at i would work as hard or harder than anybody else but that idea of like why are

00:49:41.660 you doing this like if you're a young man heed what joel just said yep yeah okay back to you

00:49:48.920 michael all right so believe it or not um alfred was not the worst that had happened in history

00:49:54.920 They were able to beat back the Viking invasion and through various other providential circumstances, you know, Alfred in England won, and they went on to establish a great dynasty and nation.

00:50:09.160 But one interesting example to look at where things actually were quite, quite dire is in Spain in the 700s.

00:50:17.620 and so what had happened was the moors were coming across if you know the geography actually matt

00:50:22.880 nathan you can put up the image of of spain i think it's image one it's the fourth one that

00:50:27.700 i sent you um so if you see the geography there um that little tip down at the bottom where the

00:50:33.900 green is i mean the gray part down there is africa and the moors controlled northern africa

00:50:38.200 and it was not hard to send little ships across and they were raiding spain and and it was this

00:50:44.940 was the Muslim invasion of Spain. And by the 7, 8, well, by the 900s, most of all of that had been

00:50:54.200 totally taken over. So if you look at the image, by 914, all that Christian Spain owned of the

00:51:00.380 Iberian Peninsula was that bright yellow spot in the very north, right? And so the Muslim invaders 1.00

00:51:07.720 had made great inroads. They'd basically taken over the entire peninsula, which now is two 1.00

00:51:13.460 countries, Spain and Portugal. But this was a time that Christian leaders, and it took a long 0.94

00:51:21.660 time, it took like 800 years to beat this back. God willing, we're not going to be in struggle

00:51:28.220 that long here in the United States. But this is a sobering perspective because the Muslim 1.00

00:51:33.960 Moors took control of that country and had it for a really long time. There's a couple 1.00

00:51:40.160 interesting things, though, and this is the point. Spanish Christians may have lost the majority of 1.00

00:51:48.340 control to Islamic invaders, but they did not disappear. What they did was they fortified.

00:51:53.620 They rebuilt Christian civilization locally, and they slowly overtook and retook territory 0.63

00:52:00.340 over the centuries. And one of the things that I think we all know intuitively, but 0.97

00:52:06.240 But when we talk about Christian boroughs and capturing back the nation, one of the things that is happening organically, but that we need to, yes, and let's do it intentionally, is the Christians in Spain, they had to zealously guard their cultural and religious identity and heritage. 0.84

00:52:26.500 because as the Moors were pushing north and north and north, 0.74

00:52:31.660 those who remained Christian and were moving north

00:52:34.520 and were left in the north,

00:52:35.720 it would have been fairly easy for them to just say,

00:52:38.020 look, it would be easier if we just became Moors.

00:52:40.540 We started speaking their language. 1.00

00:52:42.100 We started worshiping like they do.

00:52:44.140 And one of the things, when we think about boroughs,

00:52:47.920 several people, as they've talked about boroughs,

00:52:51.260 they've actually talked about, well, there's a time for fortresses

00:52:55.500 and then there's a time for boroughs.

00:52:56.820 And in Spain, they had to have fortresses.

00:52:58.880 And they had to zealously protect.

00:53:01.020 And my point here would be,

00:53:04.080 Christians need to be okay

00:53:07.140 zealously defending their heritage and their culture 0.77

00:53:10.820 and preserving it and passing it on to their children.

00:53:13.380 Like, our children should know patriotic songs.

00:53:15.580 Our children should know patriotic stories.

00:53:17.580 Our children should value our heritage.

00:53:19.560 And we need to, until that's the milieu

00:53:22.740 that we're all swimming in,

00:53:23.980 we need to almost overcompensate because they're being told now at every turn that um that heritage

00:53:32.460 is evil wrong or it's just being erased and washed away monuments are getting destroyed like go out

00:53:37.780 of your way we took our kids to a civil war battle a couple years ago and my goodness they still talk

00:53:43.220 about it right like it it was fantastic um it was at vicksburg um which has a really great if you're

00:53:49.560 in the area. You drive in your car, and you pull up, and you observe the battlefield, and then they

00:53:54.200 have a new radio station, and they have a fantastically well-produced kind of narrator

00:54:00.500 and reenactment explaining what happened at the time. Really good. But my point is, before they

00:54:06.080 were able to beat back the Moors, and it took hundreds of years, those who remained had to 0.95

00:54:11.720 fortify themselves, they had to cleave to each other, and they had to really preserve their

00:54:16.720 heritage their religion and their culture um and to some degree we're not there yet but um if trump

00:54:23.360 hadn't been elected we definitely would have been right but our culture matters and we we have to

00:54:27.880 preserve it before before we move on i want to just hit chart three nate um so this is

00:54:37.020 taking albert king albert's um or king alfred's alfred's principles and making a modern spit on

00:54:46.060 them, because what I'd like to spend the rest of the episode actually talking about is, okay, 0.55

00:54:49.320 what does this mean for Christians around America who are thinking in this way? So King Alfred had

00:54:56.200 the priority of a borough had to be self-sufficient, okay? Now, Joel, last week, and you've been saying

00:55:01.980 for a little while now, this might not mean we're homesteading anymore, right? But it might, but it

00:55:07.860 does mean at least what it says at the end there. We do have to take over existing systems and turn

00:55:12.720 them to good like we can't we can't continue to just even as a nation we can't continue to have 0.98

00:55:17.820 70 of our antibiotics made in china that is just folly and locally we have to burrows are 0.89

00:55:26.080 eventually whether taking over or building their own sort of systems they have to be self-sufficient 0.90

00:55:32.960 we have to own like we absolutely have to own and um timon klein and another guy i forget who it was

00:55:40.120 had a really great article in American Reformer

00:55:42.220 and they had a whole section on ownership

00:55:44.120 and it was so good.

00:55:45.160 You guys should go check that out.

00:55:47.040 But we have to acquire land, businesses.

00:55:48.540 This is not new.

00:55:50.140 Defense and security,

00:55:51.920 developing legal, economic, and physical defenses

00:55:54.580 against external pressures and disruptions.

00:55:56.660 And part of what has been so great

00:55:58.760 about Trump being in office

00:56:00.260 is that he has engaged with the kind of political tools

00:56:04.160 that have been available to conservatives the whole time.

00:56:07.180 And he just said,

00:56:08.120 oh, look what I found in the back cellar in a dusty box.

00:56:13.680 I found we can sue, or we can counter-sue, or we can just do things.

00:56:20.360 And so defense, church and worship, that's pretty self-explanatory.

00:56:24.020 Education and formation has been talked about.

00:56:25.940 It needs to happen.

00:56:27.360 Economic networks, though.

00:56:28.520 And this is where I don't know if I agree with this analysis anymore,

00:56:32.780 building parallel Christian economies through businesses,

00:56:34.720 but people need to be connected with other people in their field and if you're the only person at

00:56:40.840 your church who is into it or if you're the only man at your church who's into you know you're

00:56:47.040 trying to figure out what is how do i practice law as a christian you've got to find some other

00:56:51.600 christians that you can network with to bring a good perspective to you and then last political

00:56:58.140 and legal strategy um we got to have political power yeah and with so many of those uh one of

00:57:04.860 the key the key terms that christians have to embody is discrimination yeah like christians

00:57:11.840 should unapologetically fiercely discriminate um against non-christians so like uh like the

00:57:19.880 parallel christian economy like i i get it and i appreciate that um but it doesn't actually have

00:57:25.180 to be parallel um it doesn't we don't have to just build a christian economy next to you know

00:57:30.900 the secular economy you can um you can also just win you can just you can just win you can just

00:57:37.760 just in group preference yeah in group preference so it's like you start a business um you have

00:57:43.780 unbelievers that are patrons of that business but you hire christians and uh people who are

00:57:49.280 not christians you don't hire them you prefer your people um and you do so um not with animus

00:57:57.300 towards those who are not your people but you also don't do it with guilt okay but you know i really

00:58:02.540 should probably this guy's down on his luck or whatever you know and like yeah sure he's a pagan

00:58:07.320 it doesn't share any of the virtues that i have and all this like um but i should probably just

00:58:11.880 you know we already have you know 20 employees and 19 of them are christians and you know so

00:58:16.700 We should hire a guy who's not, or no, just don't.

00:58:20.840 One of the things I was reading just yesterday, working through the Old Testament again,

00:58:27.780 it just stood out to me how many times Israel's armies would secure a victory in some kind

00:58:39.140 of battle, but then if there was a righteous king, immediately they would follow it up

00:58:44.980 by running down the enemy they would um they would pursue so they wouldn't just win the battle but

00:58:52.000 the enemy would then begin to flee but they wouldn't allow them to flee and regroup and

00:58:57.400 fortify and then come back against them it's basically the reverse of of everything you just

00:59:02.360 showed with that chart with spain um the christians you know they they would have to retreat but

00:59:06.700 eventually they would fortify they would rebuild and then eventually advance um one of the you know

00:59:12.860 there was the most peace and prosperity in Israel in the Old Testament when they wouldn't just win

00:59:19.700 a battle, but they would run down the enemy. So, they would secure a victory, and the enemy would

00:59:27.360 then retreat and flee, but they would run them down. They would actually enshrine the victory

00:59:35.680 and not give the enemies of God the opportunity.

00:59:41.120 Christians in America are just, we're soft.

00:59:43.640 We're too nice.

00:59:45.540 It's this misguided, over-realized sense of altruism.

00:59:51.900 And I think part of what helps, honestly,

00:59:55.600 because you can just, like the rise and fall of empires,

00:59:58.740 you can pretty much trace this through Rome

01:00:01.940 and pretty much every empire, British empire,

01:00:05.680 ottoman empire even like pretty much every empire in human history what happens is that eventually

01:00:11.320 they they achieve um a level of strength that makes them invulnerable to any outside threat

01:00:16.840 and then eventually it's it's um it's only overthrown by the inside threat and and one of

01:00:24.160 the key um mechanisms to their ultimate you know demise is being overly altruistic uh they spread

01:00:33.420 their forces too far um they allow too many people that don't actually have they're not

01:00:38.820 they're not actually their people right so they conquer too many lands and then and then they

01:00:44.320 allow eventually allow uh standing and citizenship and all these kinds of things to people who aren't

01:00:49.800 really romans right and just say like oh well you know but rome has conquered them they're flying a

01:00:54.780 roman flag you know and they said the magical words and this is now roman land there so they're

01:00:59.460 on the magical dirt and so that makes them romans just like us you know like sure me and my family

01:01:04.360 we've been romans for you know this many centuries it's in our bloodline it's in our it's in our dna 0.96

01:01:10.020 but these people we conquered them 15 minutes ago and they're just as roman as anybody else you know 0.98

01:01:15.600 and you begin to overextend yourself and then you begin to ultimately have divisions and factions

01:01:22.960 different peoples, that ultimately their allegiance goes to something older and tried

01:01:30.080 and true, something ancient and not just a set of propositions that they adopted last week.

01:01:38.120 And so then eventually the empire crumbles from within. It divides against itself. It begins to

01:01:44.760 eat itself. And a lot of it because of not necessarily, you would think it was because

01:01:50.220 of greed or being overly ambitious or in some sense being too tyrannical, that they just had

01:01:57.060 to conquer everyone. No, it's actually not that. It's actually too much charity, too much altruism

01:02:02.300 because it's not like, oh, well, we have to seize those lands over there because they have this

01:02:09.900 certain type of resource that we don't have. Early on, there may be some of that, but eventually it

01:02:14.840 becomes, no, we're actually self-sufficient and not just to survive, but to thrive. We have every

01:02:19.360 resource we could possibly imagine. We've conquered everything. Extending the empire at this

01:02:25.560 point in the game is not to accrue more resources. It's not that we need to.

01:02:34.080 It's literally a blessing to those that we would go and conquer because they live in abject poverty.

01:02:41.340 They don't have virtue. They have a demonic religion. And so, we're going to go and civilize

01:02:46.880 you know, this people and that people and this people and that people. But you do it too quickly,

01:02:53.760 not giving time for people to really truly assimilate. And then eventually it becomes a

01:03:00.460 civil war and it collapses. And I think America in many ways, sadly, I'd like it to be a nation,

01:03:05.880 but in many ways it has become an empire and it's become a bloated empire that has spread too far,

01:03:13.020 too quickly and taken a ton of people into its orbit without them truly assimilating,

01:03:20.700 without them really being Americans. They don't have our values. They don't have our virtue.

01:03:24.840 They don't have our heritage, our history. And then it starts to fracture and it starts to

01:03:31.460 decay. And that allows for what you think is democracy ends up really being an oligarchy.

01:03:37.140 A few individuals with power, prestige, and money, and these kinds of things are able to just

01:03:41.940 manipulate the masses, and there's all these severed factions within the whole, and so they

01:03:47.520 can play off of, you know, well, this voting block over here because they want welfare, or this

01:03:53.200 voting block over here because they want, you know, X, Y, and Z, and you turn the factions against

01:03:58.180 each other, and it all begins to implode. And so, that's, I think, what I'm saying is not just

01:04:03.760 with, you know, the church planting movement, not just in the ecclesiastical sphere, but

01:04:08.100 ecclesiastically, politically, nationally, um, economically through free trade with no limits

01:04:14.120 whatsoever at every single level, economically, spiritually, you know, ecclesiastically,

01:04:19.480 politically, um, ethnically at every single level, um, we have spread so thin and so fast,

01:04:29.020 so wide, and yet only an inch deep. And, and now we are paying the piper. We're paying the piper.

01:04:35.960 Um, and I think, um, a lot of what we need to do, um, if we want to survive, if we want to win

01:04:43.620 is you have to, uh, not just win a particular battle, but having won a battle, a battle going 0.90

01:04:51.260 back to, you know, the Israelites, you run them down, you secure the victory. Um, you banish 0.91

01:04:57.480 all the enemies of God from your land. Um, you don't give them any standing. You don't like right

01:05:03.880 now, Americans, and particularly Christians in America, we need to have, I've said it before,

01:05:13.100 but we don't just need the hearts for revival. We need stomachs for revival. You need to become

01:05:18.920 impervious to propaganda. Oh, but this family, you know, like they immigrated here and yeah,

01:05:26.500 sure, they're not natural citizens, but they have, you know, young children. And I just saw

01:05:31.320 a picture on the internet that probably was AI and not even real, but I just saw a picture of

01:05:35.940 this little girl crying as she's being separated from her mother. And you need to be able to see

01:05:41.560 that and feel nothing and say, no. And it's not because I hate others, but it's because I love

01:05:50.440 Christ and I love my people and my people are suffering. My people have become a tax farm.

01:05:57.020 my people have been exploited my people like that's every hero in history that's the origin

01:06:03.020 story is um their people are oppressed they rise up in a moment of oppression seeing the suffering

01:06:09.620 of their people and they say that's enough whether it's a samson or a gideon or this you know um

01:06:14.780 that's the midians you know when gideon he's threshing wheat it's not because he's a coward 0.76

01:06:18.540 he's doing it because they've been so exploited by the midians and so overly taxed he's threshing 0.74

01:06:23.540 wheat and a wine press hidden underneath the ground so that he can feed his people, so 0.96

01:06:29.460 that it doesn't all get taken by the foreigners who invaded their lands. 0.91

01:06:33.160 Like at some point, this is why the order of Morris matters.

01:06:35.740 It's not hatred for others, it's love for your own.

01:06:39.020 The problem with Americans is not that we're racist.

01:06:42.340 The problem with Americans is that we actually have no love.

01:06:46.740 There is no in-group.

01:06:47.820 If you are a Christian, there's no…Mormons, they do commerce with Mormons.

01:06:53.100 Mormons work with Mormons. 0.77

01:06:54.960 Muslims work with Muslims. 0.98

01:06:56.160 Jews, by golly, they work with Jews. 1.00

01:06:59.020 But Christians won't work with... 0.99

01:07:00.540 Christians, Americans, and white people. 0.97

01:07:04.600 So, whether it's race, white. 0.53

01:07:06.040 If it's nationality, American. 0.68

01:07:07.780 If it's Christian or spirituality, religion, Christian. 0.75

01:07:11.240 Those three groups, Christian, American, and white, have been brainwashed over decades, 0.73

01:07:18.640 propagandized to believe that every single other religion, ethnicity, and nationality on the planet 0.66

01:07:26.600 is allowed to have their people, and we're not. And so, what happens is that we don't ever fight,

01:07:35.180 we never win a victory, and my concern now is that we just have. We just have won a victory,

01:07:40.360 but we won't secure the victory by running, by solidifying it, by following through,

01:07:46.440 running them down we need to um this next four years is not a moment to say hey we won and now

01:07:51.580 we have some of our freedoms back and maybe we'll get a little bit better economy you know and maybe

01:07:56.260 i can get a job now you know because di won't you know uh tell me that you know that that it's

01:08:01.740 oppressive to hire me because i'm white and you know so we'll have 40 no these four years are not

01:08:07.000 four years of of reprieve they're four years for us to um to push the victory out to the margins

01:08:15.200 and say, there has to be Charles Haywood's good on this, but there has to be, it's not enough to

01:08:21.880 just make the woke go away. It's not enough even just to free all the J6 protesters. Praise God

01:08:29.060 for that. I'm glad Trump did that. That's wonderful. But you haven't won until everybody

01:08:34.160 who was prosecuting the J6 protesters is in jail. It's actually the full reverse. So it's not just, 0.62

01:08:41.860 well, let's go back to neutrality. No, neutrality is what got us here. So, it's not just, hey,

01:08:46.740 you know what? No more oppressing people who peacefully were invited by guards into the

01:08:53.500 Capitol building and have been, you know, without trial, rotting in jail for four years. It's not

01:08:59.660 just that you release them. No, you have to reward friends and punish enemies. It's not enough just

01:09:08.140 to release the good guys. You then have to terrorize, absolutely terrorize. Your enemies

01:09:16.560 should be having nightmares every night thinking about what the Christians are going to do to them. 1.00

01:09:22.520 And it's like, that's not Christian. That sounds terrible. Jesus said to love your enemies and 0.98

01:09:26.920 pray for those who persecute you. I'm talking about doing it all through categories, through

01:09:31.780 proper avenues. That's what the civil magistrate is. Romans 13, he is a terror, terrorized, I use

01:09:39.300 that word intentionally, it's a biblical word, he is a terror to those who do evil. The Christian 0.95

01:09:43.840 prince, Christians should be in government, and those Christians who pursue political office and 1.00

01:09:50.740 attain it by the grace of God should absolutely be a terror to anybody who is a threat to Christians 0.97

01:09:59.740 here in America. So, anybody who took 70-something-year-old women with cancer and put them

01:10:04.920 in jail for two years for praying outside of an abortion clinic, that person should not be able

01:10:09.400 to sleep at night. That person should be looking over their shoulder every day thinking,

01:10:13.720 today is probably the day I'm going to be arrested. Yes and amen. Praise God. When the wicked

01:10:20.460 are crushed, the righteous, there's so many verses like, the righteous rejoice. It's a blessing to

01:10:27.880 the right and that's good that's a good thing that's nothing to be ashamed of we need to not

01:10:33.760 just win a battle but having won a battle secure the victory push the victory out to the margins

01:10:39.880 run them down okay wes i'm gonna take take it back to michael that was great okay i thought

01:10:45.660 it looked like you were on the laptop and i thought oh man he's cooking over there he's

01:10:49.920 cooking over there all right michael well we want to get into a couple of practicals for sure i've

01:10:54.460 even seen a couple comments like is this theory is this hypothetical how does it look in real life

01:10:59.140 because that really is where um the day-to-day decisions that you make for you for yourself and

01:11:04.600 your family your church your your business um really come into play so uh we want to come back

01:11:10.480 from our second commercial break and talk about um some of the practicals and then there have been

01:11:15.860 some good questions too we want to take some questions when we come back as well so we'll go

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01:13:35.020 All right, welcome back. Well, we definitely want to get into a couple of practical questions and

01:13:41.460 what does this mean? And admittedly, this is a little bit difficult because situations are

01:13:47.120 different, but one of the things that it definitely does mean is thinking about building a borough,

01:13:56.640 thinking about attaining cultural dominance as Christians. That needs to be part of the

01:14:04.060 way that you approach your priorities and your um your plans and just the fact that more and more

01:14:11.380 men families and churches are actually they they might say i don't necessarily have a great answer

01:14:17.080 yet but that a lot of them are starting to think about this and and whereas 10 15 years ago this

01:14:23.160 would not have even been a thought entertained by any of us at any point for you know years

01:14:28.660 now it's something that we spend a lot of time thinking about and to be honest some of this like

01:14:33.100 Like King Alfred's solution was somewhat novel.

01:14:35.800 Like the concept wasn't novel,

01:14:37.360 but the way they implemented it was timely.

01:14:40.720 And we do, we need timely, wise ideas.

01:14:44.440 Some of them will be played out across many churches.

01:14:48.260 Like one church gets an idea

01:14:50.360 and it could work in a lot of places and so it'll spread.

01:14:52.820 And some of them are just gonna be you and your family.

01:14:55.580 Just as an example of this,

01:14:58.060 I'm not even sure,

01:14:59.500 I haven't done a lot of research into it,

01:15:00.960 but Trump's sovereign wealth fund

01:15:03.220 that he's trying to do

01:15:04.780 in order to pay down the deficit,

01:15:07.620 like no one has been talking about

01:15:08.900 how to pay down the deficit.

01:15:10.220 He's like, well, we could try this.

01:15:12.320 Then we wouldn't have to cut,

01:15:13.460 you know, social security or whatever.

01:15:15.060 Like my point is we need novel ideas.

01:15:18.900 We need biblical principles

01:15:20.440 rolled out with novel ideas

01:15:23.040 that tackle the particular needs.

01:15:24.620 And Wes, you mentioned how

01:15:26.160 one of the novel things

01:15:27.340 that we have going for us now

01:15:28.580 is the idea of the internet

01:15:30.200 and interstate commerce and maybe we don't need every borough to have a blacksmith and an armor

01:15:36.020 in it um so expand on that idea well you'd mentioned different areas like defense ownership

01:15:41.600 and economics but like defense like right now so david reese has a great company a big company

01:15:46.580 this is not just like mom and pop you know in the back like hand stitching together uh armor

01:15:51.300 armor plating no a great company uh armored republic david reese and his children and wife

01:15:57.080 are in a back for yours personally they are for the handmade for you for the patrons but um but

01:16:02.900 no it's a big company and but the point is he's not just outfitting armoring guys there in phoenix

01:16:08.120 arizona where he lives all across the country non-christian some but most certainly mostly

01:16:13.620 christians christians are getting his armor uh they're using it they're training with it so he

01:16:18.480 is this outfitter but not at all constrained to a geographic location i think of also like

01:16:23.160 economics like well we got to win at economics we got to build businesses well newfounding

01:16:26.920 they're not just funding businesses in dallas they're funding businesses all across america

01:16:31.640 right some things have to be local you have to touch grass you have to see people face to face

01:16:36.140 so don't think every single category i have my group chat that's my kind of like whatever it's

01:16:40.340 just i own property in the metaverse some things you have to physically own then supplemented

01:16:45.280 with what you're importing nfts or whatever etfs yep yep i got my my rare painting i got my

01:16:51.560 collectible it's worth money some things have to be in person but you are just you are behind the

01:16:56.080 curve if you think and i've got to do all of this in person all of my funding all of my research all

01:17:00.600 of my armor all my protection all my legal aid i got to try to grow them up in-house no you don't

01:17:05.840 you have to form formal informal networks friendships networking all these things and

01:17:10.780 that is how you actually get things done well said so let's take you know this this question

01:17:18.920 came up in that in that group that we had a couple weeks ago um let's take a guy who uh is

01:17:26.260 at a good church maybe not a church that's thinking boroughs though um what what should

01:17:32.560 a young man with young kids um working a job that that supports his family but maybe not making a

01:17:38.360 lot of extra money um like let's let's let's try and give some practical what should what should

01:17:43.840 christians be doing right now and i'm even rethinking a little bit like like i my my oldest

01:17:51.300 son is uh the plan he graduates this year the plan is for him to go get a technical degree

01:17:56.880 in aircraft aviation um mechanics and so he would be able to be an aircraft mechanic

01:18:03.120 now i'm thinking well like that'll support a wife and a kid but is that going to build

01:18:10.160 any sort of empire most likely not okay so i mean what are what are the what are the things that we

01:18:15.820 should be thinking about um as far as building and not everybody can build um i think one of

01:18:22.220 the principles that we've been talking about is you need to attach yourself attach attach yourself

01:18:27.520 to someone who is building and um people who are building they they can't do everything on their

01:18:35.260 they need help they need people who will realize the mission they will uh willingly and gladly work

01:18:42.900 like obviously getting paid for it um but we we live to your point west we live in a point in a

01:18:50.360 time where we can be very isolated and still be connecting on some levels economic or production

01:18:55.360 or things like that but also um how important is it i don't i don't want to go down to the move

01:19:02.560 place again we've talked about that a lot on this show but how important is it to be like like like

01:19:09.200 what size of here's the question what size of united men or families trying to build a borough

01:19:17.620 would you think is a bare minimum too small cut your losses go find somewhere else join two

01:19:24.300 together i mean like what are what are some practical thoughts you guys have on this i'll

01:19:29.420 i'll give a practical example uh there's about three or four families at church so i got this

01:19:34.980 five of us total in a group chat none of you are in it for the record so it's not this little right

01:19:38.500 response click but i got about four four or five families and we just get along really well and

01:19:43.440 that's really who we're really close with so especially the guys these are the guys i work

01:19:47.760 out with we you know go to sports games and stuff hang out in the back porch so that's about the

01:19:52.800 size that it is our families will get together if it's some type of bigger event you know sometimes

01:19:56.900 two or three families do one thing or another and that's about the size we can maintain it i can't

01:20:01.060 be great friends with 10 families and constantly host them and they host us and everything like

01:20:04.940 that and if it was just one family it would that would be all you do like well i go to their house

01:20:09.420 this week they come to my house so at about two to three families and let's say maybe you're not

01:20:13.800 married or maybe you don't have families that you click with like that could it be two to three men

01:20:17.260 and let me say this about men men are very much so like you challenge them and say come do this

01:20:22.780 come like a lot of these guys that I got together with we started doing jujitsu together so that's

01:20:27.320 why we're good friends we said guys let's I want to take this up I want to try it some of us had

01:20:31.360 done it before some of us hadn't but they were down for it they were they weren't signing up

01:20:35.260 for a lifetime like absolutely for the rest of my life I'm going to commit to this hobby commit to

01:20:38.960 this thing but they said I'd be down to try that and then someone suggested what about you try this

01:20:43.420 and do that that's how the friendship grew and so even if you're somewhere you're like man I don't

01:20:47.320 have close friends I don't have a brotherhood I'm not moving we've we've crossed that option out

01:20:51.000 already man for other men just come try to do this with me let's let's go shooting let's go

01:20:57.380 hiking let's do this there's something and a lot of men i just they really love to do it you're

01:21:02.760 telling me i get to get out of the house i get to break out you know break out of my cycle get to

01:21:06.780 challenge myself some type of competition men really love that so practically speaking you're

01:21:11.440 a man you want to build a brotherhood have a burrow you got to start somewhere one of the

01:21:15.780 biggest things let's just do things together it doesn't have to be christian doesn't have to be

01:21:19.740 theological doesn't have to be political doesn't have to be running for city council but can you

01:21:23.420 do something together that's not just sitting in the same aisle in church on sunday so start there

01:21:28.960 add one thing add two things add a couple guys if that's where you're at build from there i would

01:21:33.280 say that's good all right another question let's say you are thinking of buying a house and for

01:21:40.300 the last five or so years it's been homestead have property be outside of the reach be able to

01:21:48.940 support your garden and generally if you buy something in town it's going to be a much smaller

01:21:54.460 plot but it's going to be close to people that you can have relationships with maybe the same

01:22:00.300 money would buy a larger piece of land outside of the town but you're going to be pretty removed

01:22:06.920 what are you guys uh in general i know there's a lot of specifics there but like given the time

01:22:11.820 that we live in and given that buying a house is not a four-year thing i think it's like seven

01:22:17.140 years if you're if you're going to buy it's good to own it for seven years is the number maybe i'm

01:22:20.640 off on that um so this could extend you know if jd vance runs and doesn't win um buying a house

01:22:27.680 is something that's more than the four-year window but what are you guys thinking in light

01:22:31.880 of building christian boroughs what do you think the needs of the time are i'll let joel go but i

01:22:36.700 will say those families we're friends with we all live with the exception of one within 10 minutes

01:22:40.940 of each other yeah that's why we can't hang out as frequently as we do yep yeah um i mean i i still

01:22:49.280 think it's um it's helpful to be um you know if you can afford to not have to live you know in

01:22:58.700 like i i would strongly advise no one to live um in an urban setting right right right um i don't

01:23:05.800 think anybody needs to be living in a big city that said you don't want to just abandon all the

01:23:11.460 big cities where that continues to be the center of commerce and influence and all these things

01:23:16.560 and so it's just entirely now shaped by pagans because every ounce of christian influence has

01:23:21.140 been removed from it but you can still influence big cities and things like that without living

01:23:26.000 there so part of the reason why you know the um you know the strategic context you know like that

01:23:33.700 concept. Part of the reason why we chose Williamson County is because Williamson County

01:23:38.980 has big city access. We're adjacent to Travis County. That's where Austin is. That's the

01:23:45.480 capital of Texas. So you're next to a big city that has lots of economic activity and opportunity,

01:23:52.080 but it also has a lot of political opportunity, right? Because that's the capital of our state.

01:23:57.120 so williamson county is strategic because it's close enough to where guys can um they can live

01:24:03.820 in williamson county have a lower cost of living they can find some acreage and and some land and

01:24:08.480 they can still uh within 40 minutes you know by hopping on one of the tolls they can go and they

01:24:14.060 could work for elon musk if they wanted to they could work for oracle tesla apple dell is uh is

01:24:21.740 headquartered in um in round rock which is in williamson county so there's a lot of different

01:24:26.680 industries um where they can they can work and uh and simply commute to work and so they can still

01:24:33.380 influence you know um the city politically um economically all those kinds of things and take

01:24:38.980 advantage of those opportunities while still having um a a more secured quiet life um living

01:24:45.860 a little bit out of the hustle and bustle um so i think i think part of it you know all that back

01:24:52.180 to your question of like, you know, is it, is it, uh, urban? I would say no, in terms of where you

01:24:56.380 live. Um, you can work there, but, uh, in terms of where you live, uh, suburban, I think it's,

01:25:02.080 it's fine. Um, or is it rural? Um, I think I like, uh, the rural lifestyle and I would advocate for

01:25:08.680 that. Um, but if you do make that decision, you have to, you and your spouse, I think have to

01:25:15.740 make, um, a very intentional commitment that you're going to drive. Like you're not, um,

01:25:20.740 Because for a lot of people, like honestly, there's a lot of people, predominantly Christians, who are very conservative, but have just basically resolved to be content that the entirety of their social network would just be their family.

01:25:36.300 Like their family is an isolated unit.

01:25:38.720 Like it's just, it's me and my family.

01:25:40.700 And they tend to have large families.

01:25:42.440 So it's, you know, it's a husband, wife, and there are eight kids.

01:25:45.700 And that's it.

01:25:46.580 This is our community.

01:25:47.960 and um and we want strong families um but we don't want families to the exclusion of uh communal

01:25:55.540 life in in the church uh with other believers outside of your immediate family and i do think

01:26:01.880 that you know like we're we're all you know we'd all prescribe to patriarchy we hate feminism we

01:26:06.800 hate egalitarianism i hate feminism with a perfect hatred uh that david would say you know do i not

01:26:12.520 hate those who hate you with a perfect hatred, you know, and, uh, I feel that deep in my bones,

01:26:17.660 a, a perfect, complete, some translations say complete hatred for feminism and egalitarianism

01:26:23.240 because they run completely, you know, contrary to God's natural order. So, um, so we, we are

01:26:30.680 patriarchal, but what I've noticed within the patriarchal types that, you know, movement for

01:26:35.540 a lack of a better word is, um, a lot of them are family centered, which is wonderful, but sometimes

01:26:41.800 are family myopic. They're family, not just centered, but family obsessive to the point

01:26:47.460 where there are a lot of patriarchal Christian families that love Jesus. They're absolutely

01:26:51.680 Christian, but they haven't idolized the church, which is good, but they've gone so far to where

01:27:00.780 the church doesn't really mean anything. I know there are a lot of families probably who listen

01:27:06.020 to this podcast um that are probably like i'll just i'll say this as a pastoral admonition um

01:27:12.820 some of you guys who listen to this podcast um i get it finding a good church is hard and and i

01:27:19.060 understand that you might be uh geographically in a context where there's not a single faithful

01:27:23.840 church within a 50 mile radius um and it's not hyperbole like that's actually true um but you

01:27:29.720 need to hear from from me probably because you you follow me and you've followed me and been

01:27:35.400 content to do that as a substitute to church life. You need to hear from me. You are too content

01:27:43.480 with not having a church. You're doing family worship in the home. You're catechizing the

01:27:49.660 children. You're washing your wife in the Word, and you're listening to Stephen Wolfe and Brian

01:27:55.660 Sauve and Joel and Andrew Isker. All those things are great, but opting out of church

01:28:03.540 is not an option for christians it's not um and it's like yeah but we we've lived here for 10

01:28:11.600 years and we have you know we have 40 acres you know and and we've and we've worked hard you know

01:28:17.580 for for the last 10 years that we've been here and you know we bought it you know um cheap and

01:28:23.780 and we've made it more valuable not just because it's appreciated over time but like we've worked

01:28:28.800 the ground and we built you know uh this structure over here on this portion of the property

01:28:33.440 and we've got horses over here and we've done this and we've done that and we've tilled the

01:28:37.040 soil and we've planted gardens and we like um yeah but all that's incredible i don't want to

01:28:44.880 disparage that but if you have done that at the expense of like to where now it's um well there's

01:28:51.700 no good church nearby um but but we have our family and our homestead and and we built this

01:28:59.380 house with our bare hands, you give it up. You give it up if it means that without a church.

01:29:07.220 Seriously, it's the people of God. It's the church of Jesus Christ. It's non-negotiable.

01:29:14.240 It's non-negotiable. There is no Christian category for being churchless. You can't do it.

01:29:22.800 You can't do it. I don't care. I have no doubt. Your children, it's like, well, who are their

01:29:27.260 friends. Their friends are each other. They're brothers. And I love that. Like, I understand

01:29:32.060 that. And in early American days, pioneering days, you had deeply Christian families. And the next

01:29:37.620 person, you know, like you had a ton of land. The next person, you know, there wasn't another human

01:29:42.220 soul outside of your immediate family for, you know, the next neighbor was two miles down the

01:29:47.040 street and you didn't have cars. But here's the thing. Even in those early days, they would get

01:29:52.400 up and they would pack the wagon and they'd pack a lunch and a dinner for that matter and all these

01:29:56.700 things and maybe, you know, and they would get the dog and the cat and the eight children and

01:30:02.360 they would go to church on the Lord's Day and they would spend all day there. All day. They

01:30:09.220 would ride into town and they would only do it once a week. And the rest of the time they were

01:30:13.620 self-sufficient, right? They ate their own food. They made their own clothes. They did all these

01:30:17.200 things. They worked the land. Their kids' best friends were not out of school, you know, and

01:30:22.600 And it was their brothers and sisters, their siblings, and that was their community.

01:30:26.520 And I get it, and I'm not disparaging that, but they did not opt out of church.

01:30:31.560 They did make one exception when it came to relationships and community and those things outside of their immediate family, and it was the Lord's Day.

01:30:39.520 It was gathering with the saints, and they would do it at great cost.

01:30:43.340 It was an ordeal.

01:30:45.000 They would ride on that wagon for an hour or two hours, and you're like, well, I can't drive for 90 minutes.

01:30:52.600 yes you can you can and if you know people who do we know people who drive for uh two and a half

01:30:59.120 hours we have people who come to our church from san antonio god bless them and here's the deal if

01:31:04.080 if you really can't like one you can you can drive 90 minutes and number two if you can't then you

01:31:10.120 have to move you have to right like i'm talking like no like that joel don't make it dogmatic yes

01:31:16.400 there are some things you can be dogmatic with. Not going to church is something that I can

01:31:23.440 absolutely dogmatically say is sin. It's sin. Stop it. You have to go to church. And so that

01:31:30.680 either means a commute and being content, like we are going to drive. We're going to take time

01:31:37.440 and money to drive because we have to have community and we also don't want to give up

01:31:44.140 the the great plot of land and the homestead and this that's like so you either have to just we

01:31:50.480 are going to be a driving family we're going to spend a lot of time in the car or um you have to

01:31:55.600 give up the homestead you have to move so if you can do both all that long way of answering your

01:31:59.740 question per usual long way joel said something long you know shocker um but i would say if you

01:32:06.040 can do both great because i think the rural lifestyle is amazing there's a reason i don't

01:32:11.300 think it's just conservative people opt for living in rural context i i think it's both right so just

01:32:17.180 like the same way that's like well politics is downstream of culture yeah uh-huh we heard that

01:32:22.240 one for the last 15 years but also the law is a tutor um so it's not just that that you know

01:32:27.880 political policies are determined by the culture upstream but there's also culture is influenced

01:32:33.540 by politics um you know that that um political legislation and law functions as a tutor that

01:32:39.840 shapes the populace and ultimately shapes and dictates culture so it's it's not a one-way

01:32:44.920 stream it's a two-way street politics influences culture culture influences politics well likewise

01:32:50.160 when it comes to conservatives and opting to live in rural context i think it's both

01:32:54.660 people who are culturally and politically conservative tend to gravitate towards

01:33:00.000 rural areas they don't want to live in an urban context that's degenerate on the flip side

01:33:06.680 um conversely um there is also something to um not living on the 27th floor of a high-rise

01:33:15.740 you know structure in downtown manhattan where all you literally never see anything green

01:33:23.080 everything is just concrete um and you you're you're a bug man you're literally you are the

01:33:29.720 bug man um you know and uh and like there is something to be said for um and studies have

01:33:36.480 actually been done on this the lower i know this sounds so silly but there's real study on it um

01:33:42.660 the lower someone lives meaning not sea level but the closer to ground someone lives um their

01:33:50.560 voting patterns change their um and and it's not just like because the person who was already

01:33:55.540 conservative uh just you know self-selected and and decided that they didn't want to live on the

01:34:01.460 27th floor of some apartment building um but it's also even the guy who's not that conservative

01:34:07.140 there were a lot of people in 2020 who were liberal atheist but even they felt like covid

01:34:13.300 went a little bit too far and what wokeness went a little bit too far um when it started affecting

01:34:18.140 their bottom line it affected their business or they were being passed over for the next you know

01:34:23.500 a promotion, you know, because somebody, you know, a person of color who wasn't as qualified as them

01:34:29.200 just, you know, got the promotion by default because the company wanted to appear that they

01:34:33.620 were with the times or whatever. And so then it, like, there were a ton of guys who were not

01:34:38.100 conservative, who were liberal atheists, that 2020 was a wake-up call even for them. And they

01:34:45.280 decided to move out of the city and move to smaller towns and more rural areas and maybe

01:34:51.420 start start a garden start a homestead get some land and then here we are four years later and

01:34:57.140 they're voting republican um it literally changed their psyche like the the psyche of a person

01:35:03.120 literally that's why we say you know it's it's it's internet lingo and it's funny but there's

01:35:07.980 something very true and literal to touching grass literally going outside getting vitamin d

01:35:14.300 touching grass um grounding grounding yeah i believe in it i i think there's some truth there

01:35:20.640 And, you know, touching the dirt, planting a garden, kids playing in the backyard, and it's more than just, you know, 10 by 10 feet, you know, tiny little, and all of a sudden, like you, it's a blood memory.

01:35:35.160 The blood memories start to, you know, rise, you know, bubble to the surface.

01:35:41.460 So, yeah, so I think living in a rural area is great, but it's just, you've got to balance it.

01:35:47.940 It can't be the homestead life at the expense of the church and relationships.

01:35:54.760 But it also, I don't think, I would never make a commandment of men that says,

01:36:02.420 and therefore everyone must live in a suburban and be within a 10-minute radius of friends.

01:36:09.860 I think you can do both, but you're going to have to make a commitment

01:36:13.860 that community is valuable enough to where you're willing to drive.

01:36:17.940 All right, let's jump over to some questions and answer as many as we can briefly.

01:36:23.520 We've got a super chat.

01:36:24.600 Yep. Oh, we do have a super chat. You want to read that one, Joel?

01:36:27.860 Michael. Thank you, Michael. He said,

01:36:30.580 Is it pragmatic to rename Fort Braxton Bragg? Recently, left virtue signaled as Fort Liberty,

01:36:39.180 now called Fort Roland Bragg, as a right-wing virtue signal.

01:36:43.800 i think renaming things matters i think robert e lee that statue needs to be remade i think every

01:36:49.000 statue that the left tears down needs to be replaced with the statue that's 10 times bigger

01:36:53.600 right so like it's like if you tear if you tear down robert e lee then you are going to get um a

01:37:01.160 a hundred foot you're gonna get a hundred foot uh and if you tear it down again you're gonna get a

01:37:07.040 new uh construction it's gonna be robert e lee and we're gonna put some slaves so like you better

01:37:12.920 stop it um so yeah no i think that that's a good instinct however uh the little bit that i read on

01:37:18.300 this story was it wasn't actually returning to the original fort bragg but it was like a world

01:37:23.540 war ii because in the legislation this is what's tough michael about your question 2021 the law

01:37:29.060 was passed and it renamed it and it forbid the naming of forts united states forts after

01:37:35.560 confederate generals and so it's been renamed and of course right back to know the great confederate

01:37:40.700 civil war general well no now it's renamed to uh fort roland bragg some of that's the limitations

01:37:47.340 of the law and it's like is this literally the hill we're going to die on it is a virtue signal

01:37:51.820 it should be put back to what it was we should honor the tradition personally i think but also

01:37:56.380 so many awesome things going on just at the end of the day i think that's something p has going to

01:38:00.540 say i'm going to get to that right about four years yeah you can get you get to it when you

01:38:05.120 good to it so everything doesn't yeah you it's triage right like um you know when it comes to

01:38:10.840 like punishing your enemies like it is completely permissible to say we've got one guillotine and

01:38:17.020 there's 100 people that need to lose their head and somebody has to lose their head last and that

01:38:21.800 doesn't mean that you're tolerating the person who's last in line it means no we're not tolerating 0.99

01:38:26.060 them at all we're going to chop off their head but um but we're chopping off heads one at a time 0.82

01:38:31.020 and somebody's last in line um so we'll get there um when we get there and in the meantime to be 0.99

01:38:37.300 creative and kind of skirt around that legislation and say no we're literally going to rename it

01:38:41.840 but it's going to be a world war ii hero and say um i actually i actually appreciate that now if

01:38:48.340 that's the end goal then i would say no no no we need to chop off heads um don't don't lose sight

01:38:54.220 um the real end goal is 100 people need to be executed right then stop at 10 and that's right 0.95

01:38:59.800 So, no, it needs to go all the way back to where, no, it's Fort Bragg and it's the Confederate because tradition matters.

01:39:09.460 But in the meantime, to say, well, we can't do that yet, but there is a loophole where we can have a placeholder in the meantime and we can enrage the leftists because we're actually naming it the original name, but technically skirting around.

01:39:22.640 I actually like that kind of creativity as a placeholder temporarily, I think it's great.

01:39:27.440 Love it.

01:39:28.020 Good.

01:39:28.160 okay some questions here we either are going to pick one or two and give long answers or

01:39:33.560 going to give short answers and get through a few so that will kind of be up to Joel

01:39:36.540 a few of the questions I will uh I will exercise self-control and just not answer all right

01:39:44.480 are there too many men Neville says are there too many men entering the ministry or a lack of them

01:39:49.600 I have heard that in a few years when many of the aging pastors are gone there will be not enough 1.00

01:39:55.300 men to fill the positions i think this is just endemic of the boomer generation moving on 0.97

01:40:00.920 in many many areas there's not going to be enough of the next group of young men to take their

01:40:07.400 positions i haven't heard that specifically about pastoral ministry so this is one i'm going to have

01:40:14.300 to answer but go ahead there are too many men enter entering ministry and too few let the reader

01:40:19.160 understand yes that's right too many the wrong men that's a few of the good men yep and if i

01:40:24.220 so i completely agree with that assessment and then if overall it's too few uh so that there's

01:40:30.040 wrong guys trying to enter ministry and uh too few of the right guys uh but if overall it's too few

01:40:35.640 if that is correct and i've i've heard that also i think that that probably is correct uh this is

01:40:41.200 where you would insert uh the meme of um what's what's his name it's the uh the black guy who is

01:40:48.760 on um he was on the community college show back in the day uh donald glover or something like that

01:40:55.620 and he's uh it's him he's like good oh yeah so like that's right that would actually be i know

01:41:01.900 it sounds counterintuitive especially coming from the pastor but uh that would be my my response is

01:41:07.840 uh if that is true and i think it probably is that there's too few guys in the batting box lined up

01:41:13.560 to be the next generation of pastors, if it's true that there's too few of them, my response

01:41:19.400 would be good, because it actually plays into everything I was articulating at the first

01:41:26.720 half of this episode.

01:41:29.560 Personally, and I'm not trying to disparage, so please don't take this the wrong way.

01:41:35.560 If a man is doing faithful pastoral ministry, praise God.

01:41:39.260 and there's nothing um there's nothing in scripture that would disparage a small church

01:41:45.540 right there's nothing wrong with that um but i i think like i was saying earlier right now

01:41:52.080 the name of the game is consolidation so if we have fewer pastors you're going to have fewer

01:41:56.720 churches and if you have fewer churches what you'll have is more boroughs what you'll have

01:42:03.180 is more large churches now like this is this is again kind of what i got to earlier is i think

01:42:09.740 there was an overreaction within the reformed world towards pragmatism like um should we have

01:42:14.720 an aversion towards pragmatism when it comes to the lord's day worship and the normative principle

01:42:19.080 that allows for you know over and against the regular principle that allows for fog machines

01:42:23.580 and laser lights and you know taylor swift worship songs and ted talk sermons uh yeah we

01:42:28.740 should hate that kind of pragmatism, pragmatism in that arena with a holy hatred. But I think we

01:42:36.840 overreacted and we started disparaging all forms of pragmatism. And then it just really, let's call

01:42:41.920 it what it is, it became basically just a full court press against strategy altogether. Any kind

01:42:49.300 of strategy I despise. And well, a person who despises all forms of strategy, there's a word

01:42:54.180 for that type of person, um, stupid, you're stupid. Like if you, if you think that, um, 1.00

01:43:01.620 if you're like, I won't be strategic in anything, then you're an idiot, you know? So that that's 1.00

01:43:06.760 just, that's a purity spiraling, beautiful loser idiot. And we, we already have plenty of those. 1.00

01:43:12.760 We don't need more of those. Um, and so that said, um, I think that in the same way we overreacted

01:43:18.820 to pragmatism. Um, I think, um, you know, and, and we need to be pragmatic, um, uh, when it

01:43:25.360 comes to Monday through Saturday, not with Lord's day worship, but Monday through Saturday. Um,

01:43:29.040 I think part of that is, um, again, this is a timely principle. So I'm not saying that this

01:43:34.080 would be, um, absolutely relevant 500 years into Christendom, you know, and people should be,

01:43:38.500 no, like, like the book that I have sitting on the coffee table, fight by flight. It's not a

01:43:42.820 timeless book. It's a timely book. It's a really helpful book right now. I don't know if it'd be

01:43:48.800 really helpful in 20 years right but i didn't write it for people 20 years i wrote it for for

01:43:54.000 this moment and and we do need people doing deep theological work that's timeless right like calvin's

01:43:59.960 institutes is good now it was good then and it'll be good 500 years from now uh joel's fight by

01:44:05.600 flight i'll be the first it's not calvin's institute it's not even close um i'm really

01:44:10.640 proud of myself just for reading calvin's institutes i can never write it um so so yeah

01:44:15.760 So, I think it's okay to have timely truths, timely strategy.

01:44:22.140 And one of them, I think, is consolidation.

01:44:26.200 I think consolidation.

01:44:27.240 So, if we have fewer pastors, great.

01:44:30.340 Now, what you can't have, I think it gets to geography.

01:44:34.200 What you can't have is whole swaths of towns and counties and states that are churchless.

01:44:43.220 so we we will have to um cover the bases we will have to spread out within reason to a degree to

01:44:52.080 make sure that um that christians have a church um but we don't necessarily have to have a church

01:44:59.060 on every street corner you do that when once you've secured the victory right when christendom

01:45:04.900 is shining when christendom is adorned in all its splendor you know in in those peak moments of

01:45:11.620 Christendom. Then you have a church on every street corner and then you argue about superlapsarianism

01:45:20.140 versus infralapsarianism and all your arguments about baptism, mode of baptism. You do that

01:45:26.620 when you're winning. Then you can afford the luxury of those kinds of intramural battles.

01:45:33.300 You cannot afford intramural skirmishes and battles when the orcs are on the front porch 0.95

01:45:40.240 breaking down the door and they're trying to chop off the genitals of your sons right that's just 1.00

01:45:47.180 that's stupid that's absolutely stupid and so right now um yeah that like we should not be 1.00

01:45:54.360 having all these intramural skirmishes um we should be fighting the there's a real enemy we 1.00

01:46:00.000 should be fighting the real enemy and for now eventually we can afford the luxury of having

01:46:06.120 the baptist church and then there's the presbyterian church literally across the street

01:46:10.140 right you see that still in america american tradition because the structures the physical

01:46:14.940 structures were built um in our our christendom heyday you know and so you can in in some places

01:46:20.720 you can drive down the street and you will see on one street 20 churches right you've got the um

01:46:27.400 the nazarene church the episcopal church the anglican church you know the catholic church

01:46:31.200 the baptist church the presbyterian church um and and what is that uh a marker of that that that's a

01:46:37.900 that's a monument of sorts and it's a monument to christendom um in its brightest shining moment

01:46:44.140 um that was when we were winning and so you could afford the luxury of um it's almost like like when

01:46:52.120 capitalism is winning right and you can have um 20 different you know uh types of peanut butter

01:46:58.260 you know but if you're a socialist country you have no peanut butter you know or maybe one

01:47:04.040 kind of peanut butter right because the you know it's slim pickings and so right now we are not in

01:47:10.920 positive world I would argue that we're not even neutral world there are signs of life praise God

01:47:16.680 he's been merciful so there's some hope on the horizon some you know some hopian that we can

01:47:22.160 be taken advantage of. But right now, I would say if there are fewer pastors 0.99

01:47:26.800 that are rising through the ranks for the next generation, so be it. So be it. God is sovereign.

01:47:35.100 His providence, I believe, is good. And what that probably will equate to is that you'll have fewer

01:47:41.000 churches. So then the churches that you do have could actually constitute as legitimate boroughs.

01:47:47.160 Churches, I'm not saying they have to be, you know, this is what I was trying to say earlier.

01:47:51.380 I lost my train of thought, but the overreaction against pragmatism, I think we've had kind of in

01:47:56.340 that same vein, but an overreaction against megachurches. There's actually nothing inherently

01:48:02.700 sinful about large churches. The reason we don't like megachurches in the Reformed world is because

01:48:09.460 all of them have sucked, but they don't have to. There's nothing about a large church that 0.96

01:48:14.200 necessitates theological mediocrity. It doesn't have to be that way. And you look at the book

01:48:20.060 of Acts. The church at Antioch, it wasn't splintered intramural battles with a hundred

01:48:27.700 different churches that all disagreed with each other. It was one church at Antioch, and it was

01:48:32.840 massive. The church at Jerusalem, we know it was at least thousands, because thousands were added

01:48:38.020 to the faith in Acts chapter 2 in Pentecost, when Peter stood up and preached the gospel.

01:48:41.900 So, you had a megachurch in Jerusalem, you had a megachurch in Antioch, there's nothing inherently

01:48:47.740 wrong with megachurches. And in fact, they became the epicenters of securing Christian victory.

01:48:54.640 And so there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it can be really good. And so if we have fewer

01:48:59.060 pastors, in my mind, that would be God providentially forcing us, right? That would be us

01:49:03.920 not taking Joel's advice of let's consolidate and God saying, well, I'm going to force you to take

01:49:09.460 Joel's advice. By virtue, I'm just going to give you less pastors and therefore less churches. And

01:49:14.800 so you're going to have to consolidate and and by having less churches what does that mean a few

01:49:19.400 things number one you're going to have to stop being divisive you're going to have to learn how

01:49:22.960 to get along you're going to have to learn the grace of humility because there's only a few

01:49:29.100 churches in town instead of a hundred like growing up i grew up in bay city texas 18 000 person

01:49:34.860 population more cows than people and um and yet there were hundreds of churches right and i don't

01:49:42.360 think that's a win i think that that's like that's literally an indicator it's an indictment it means

01:49:47.980 uh 18 000 people and um and none of the christians can get along and we all disagree about something

01:49:54.980 and that's how most of the churches were planted you go back historically and it's like where did

01:49:59.580 this church come from well uh five families of this other church eventually didn't like the

01:50:03.940 pastor disagreed and yeah that's the reason there's a second baptist church and the third

01:50:07.880 Baptist church and the fourth Baptist church. Yeah, exactly. If you get to five, you stop calling

01:50:11.360 the fifth. It's just a cowboy church. Yeah, whatever. But because of division. So if God 0.98

01:50:16.120 says, you guys suck, I gave you warnings. I gave you chances. You didn't do it. And so I, 1.00

01:50:23.520 in my mercy, am going to force your hand. I'm going to give you less pastors that ultimately

01:50:28.540 gives you less churches so that one, you stop being divisive and you learn to get along. And

01:50:33.120 two, so that you stop spreading your forces so thin. And now you have, instead of 100 churches

01:50:38.940 in your small town of 50, you have 10 churches in your small town of 500. And each of these churches

01:50:46.980 also, because it has 500 people and more resources, has a classical school. And also, that church has

01:50:56.320 enough weight and influence that whenever your mayor tries to do something that's against God's

01:51:03.400 word, that church comes out with their 500 people and says, shut it down. Hey, you know, our small

01:51:10.380 Texas town, we're going to have a gay pride parade for the first time. No, you're not. All 500 people

01:51:15.440 in our church are going to be there and we're going to be holding hands surrounding that street 0.97

01:51:20.680 that you've shut down for the sodomite parade. And we're going to be singing together. He lives 0.64

01:51:26.080 to tread the fields of hell glory hallelujah and the sodomites just have to go home sorry um but

01:51:35.980 you can't do that with a church of 50 right that doesn't mean a church of 50 can't be faithful it

01:51:40.800 doesn't mean that it's not a legitimate church it doesn't mean that that pastor is not a legitimate

01:51:44.620 pastor it doesn't mean that god won't bless them but we just we do need to embrace pragmatism at

01:51:51.180 least in the arena and to the extent that we acknowledge basic facts like churches of 500

01:51:58.460 can do things that churches of 50 can't and so if god providentially forces our hand in that direction

01:52:04.280 so be it good yeah i can knock out three at once here super quick bjj wins again asked two and

01:52:12.840 they're for me that's why i can knock out these first two do i need to bring my gi to roll brazilian

01:52:17.680 jujitsu with west at the conference i train nogi so we'll do nogi um why is west not following

01:52:23.840 michael on x we got some junior high drama uh i don't follow people that are not terminally online

01:52:28.420 so michael you just you gotta up your banger account five six seven eight a day uh no i didn't

01:52:33.740 realize i wasn't following him so i will go fix that immediately after this episode and then

01:52:38.120 someone brought up an example they said question this seems like it's a bit theoretical wondering

01:52:42.520 how this messaged with the example of the early church not seemingly taking this strategy they

01:52:46.920 spread out they mixed into culture all of that when you are massively outgunned you go to guerrilla

01:52:52.520 warfare so the vietcong for instance the u.s the u.n armies way bigger way stronger way more fire

01:52:58.260 power there was no like we're going to hold this area and we're going to hold them off for months

01:53:02.140 nope couldn't do it so they turned to guerrilla warfare infiltration deception all of those

01:53:07.880 different things so in the early church when we're talking a couple thousand people 10 20 30

01:53:13.020 000 a massive minority no land that they held that was not the time to build burrows and a wall and

01:53:19.260 fortresses and reinforced that was the time to spread out guerrilla warfare do as much damage

01:53:24.140 as possible preach the gospel cause riots get thrown in prison go on missionary journeys that 0.99

01:53:29.180 was that time muslims are invading you have a wall surround like that you set up a fortress to defend

01:53:35.740 different scenario so and there were a ton of that's well said there were a ton of places also 0.99

01:53:39.820 that had never even heard the gospel once you know so that there's all these unreached peoples

01:53:44.800 um that's that's different than america that has had a a overwhelming like all-encompassing gospel

01:53:53.200 witness for for 500 years you know like we've only even been around for 250 well i'm not counting

01:53:59.560 from 1776 i'm thinking 1500s 1600s covenanters you know puritans all the way back before even

01:54:06.220 the 13 colonies. Like, I'm thinking like, yeah, so my point is, you know, 400 years. But the point

01:54:12.140 is, for centuries, we have been immersed, a total immersion in a Christian witness. So, that's

01:54:22.080 different than the apostles and the early church, the first century church, where there's, you know,

01:54:27.660 whole swaths of the known world that they don't even know who Jesus is. They've never even heard

01:54:32.200 the gospel um so that's uh so i think that's one difference was a god providentially but but even

01:54:38.820 with that being the case even with a vision from heaven of you know this sheet by its four corners

01:54:45.700 being lowered down with all these different animals that was unlawful for peter to eat right

01:54:49.660 so acts chapter 10 cornelius even with like a holy spirit inspired um special revelation to peter

01:54:57.400 one of the core apostles and a pillar in the church um even that you could you could argue

01:55:04.820 in some sense was still not quite enough to kickstart the missionary um expansion god had

01:55:11.300 to add to special revelation um providential um right uh goading by uh persecution yep and

01:55:20.340 persecution is what pushed uh what pushed them ultimately out of jerusalem because jerusalem

01:55:25.480 was the epicenter of the first century church. Initially, the first half of the book of Acts

01:55:29.880 is Jerusalem. The second half, it then shifts from Peter to Paul and from Jerusalem to Antioch

01:55:35.540 and becomes less Jewish and more Gentile. But the reason for that was, one, because of special 0.95

01:55:42.740 revelation in that time, in that place, because the gospel had not yet gone out and the Holy

01:55:47.340 Spirit literally telling the apostles to do this. We don't have that special revelation in 2025

01:55:52.280 where God's coming and literally giving visions from heaven to some, you know, succession of the

01:55:59.320 apostles and telling them, you must go into Cambodia or to this place or to that place and do

01:56:03.920 X, Y, and Z. That's just not happening. So, we don't have the special revelation. And also,

01:56:08.920 by God's grace, we don't have the persecution. There is a degree of persecution, but not like

01:56:14.780 there was in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not just the epicenter of the church, but it was also the

01:56:19.020 epicenter of persecution because of the Jews. They hated Christ, they hated the apostles, 1.00

01:56:23.580 they hated the Christian religion, and they wanted them dead. Whereas there was actually 0.94

01:56:27.880 much more, ironically, Antioch, part of the reason why Antioch became the new epicenter is Antioch

01:56:34.200 was one of the few places where there was freedom of religion. There was actually, there was a

01:56:39.720 pantheon of gods, there were problems with that, you know, freedom of religion, because it welcomed

01:56:43.980 all kinds of idolatry. But in Antioch, there were legal provisions for the Christians to worship.

01:56:51.400 And so, when you look at that, the first church, you know, like I've heard this my whole life. I

01:56:56.380 heard, you know, in charismatic circles especially, and circles that are really big on global missions, 0.98

01:57:01.800 they always would say, well, China, you know, like America sucks, you know, and Christians in America 0.99

01:57:06.200 suck, and God's not really doing anything here. Like, you know where God's really on the move? 1.00

01:57:09.880 in China? And when you press and ask why, the answer is always the same. The church in China

01:57:15.080 looks a lot more like the first century church. Well, of course, it looks more like the first 0.99

01:57:19.360 century church because the first century church was an unchurched place. The church was just

01:57:26.240 coming into fruition in a place that previously had no Christian witness, so that would be a

01:57:32.280 one-to-one ratio to China. And two, the first century church was immensely persecuted by the

01:57:39.080 ruling authorities of the day because they hated Christianity. That's another one-to-one ratio

01:57:43.600 with China. But that shouldn't tell us that, so then China's the goal. That doesn't mean China's 0.68

01:57:49.340 the goal. That just means that throughout this church age, there will be time periods

01:57:56.780 and geographic places, cultures, nations that have more in common with what was going on

01:58:04.160 in the first century church and so in at those at those times and in those contexts those places

01:58:10.620 where it's heavily unchristianized and there's massive persecution over the christians that

01:58:16.620 there are then yes you're going to be looking at you're not going to be having mega churches you're

01:58:21.000 going to be having underground churches that are relatively small guerrilla warfare spreading your

01:58:26.220 forces thin so that everyone gets a chance to hear the gospel at least once like that that makes

01:58:31.200 perfect sense. That's fine. That's not America. That's not America in 2025. And if you think it

01:58:37.300 is, you're being silly. America, we actually have the legal provisions and even the financial 0.97

01:58:45.800 resources to where we can build a beautiful church building and have deeply conservative

01:58:53.060 biblical worship each Lord's Day with a thousand people. We can do that. And in China, if they

01:58:59.660 could do that they would right they would they're not it's not that they're neglecting that uh by

01:59:05.620 by intention or by design it's they're being here's the thing about chinese christians uh 1.00

01:59:12.880 they're pragmatic and if americans could stop being beautiful losers and idiots maybe we could 1.00

01:59:19.720 be pragmatic too and still adopt the regular principle for lord say worship it's yeah i think 0.99

01:59:26.620 the question also assumes that the gospel is not for transforming nations, and I would just say

01:59:33.940 when a Christian people begins to live according to the principles of the Bible, freed from sin

01:59:42.460 in their own particular cultural way, that is inevitably, like that is actually one of the

01:59:50.120 things the gospel is supposed to do, is it's supposed to produce Christian peoples. And for

01:59:55.460 that, I just pointed two historical examples. Within two to three centuries, Rome, the dominant

02:00:02.240 power in Rome, was the Christian church. And Rome transformed from being a pagan empire to being a 0.51

02:00:10.120 Christian empire. I mean, you think just within a couple of centuries. Second, the very first

02:00:15.260 Christian nation to ever recognize that it was a Christian nation was the nation of Ethiopia.

02:00:21.980 And some of the early fathers, like Irenaeus and Eusebius,

02:00:28.480 it's not in the Bible, but they credit the Ethiopian eunuch

02:00:31.700 for going back and teaching the royal court about the principles of Scripture.

02:00:37.180 And within just a couple of hundred years,

02:00:39.480 Ethiopia was the first and one of the longest-lasting Christian nations ever in history.

02:00:44.940 And so, like, actually, I would say you don't see it in the New Testament

02:00:50.820 because that covered only a couple of decades. 1.00

02:00:53.760 But the inevitable result when Christians go

02:00:55.920 and carry out God's principles among their people

02:00:58.860 is you get Christian peoples.

02:01:00.420 And sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it's faster. 1.00

02:01:02.900 But that's the inevitable result.

02:01:04.500 Exactly. 1.00

02:01:05.120 And when you do, when you do get Christian peoples,

02:01:08.500 then you build institutions.

02:01:11.180 The Bible is not against Christian institutions. 0.95

02:01:14.460 That's always what happens is you go and, 0.95

02:01:19.520 like even like crete you know like like the book of titus is why he left you in crete to put like

02:01:25.200 what the order the sequence is you know paul would go on his missionary journeys with you know

02:01:30.940 whoever with with you know barnabas or whoever it might have been and he would preach the gospel

02:01:36.060 he wouldn't plant churches he would preach the gospel and the holy spirit and his sovereignty

02:01:41.680 would appoint salvation to as many who believed or as the reverse to as many as believed he

02:01:48.300 appointed you know salvation no i had it right the first time um but basically paul would preach

02:01:53.020 the gospel the holy spirit would make converts and then that's step one step two was then with

02:01:59.100 with those converts they would then organize churches and appoint officers and these things

02:02:03.580 and then eventually you know this is where the canon closes but eventually we know from church

02:02:07.980 history that um it's it would be converts first and then it would be churches and then it would

02:02:13.420 be institutions and governments and businesses and culture and arts and and all these things

02:02:18.940 and all that is the natural work of the gospel you know the leaven working through the whole

02:02:24.760 lump of dough the mustard seed being planted and growing into an all-encompassing tree and uh

02:02:29.780 and that's that's great i think the reason why i think the reason why we have recently in america

02:02:35.500 had some of the strategies that we've had that we've reverted back to guerrilla warfare

02:02:38.680 is because um because we we we um surrendered like we we started losing you know it's like

02:02:49.760 we started losing we gave up the ground we gave up influence we gave up authority we gave up you

02:02:54.420 know all these kinds of things to secularism to pagans to atheists and you know and and and also

02:03:00.720 through multiculturalism and inviting the third world and people foreign peoples worshiping foreign

02:03:05.860 gods and said, oh, well, you know, we'll honor your religion. That's totally fine. You can,

02:03:09.600 you know, set up your shrines to idolatry in our country, you know, because we're nice and we're

02:03:15.320 kind. And so, when we did all those things, then we started losing. And when we started losing,

02:03:22.940 then, you know, we're like, well, you know, we changed the, you know, we changed the metrics.

02:03:27.560 And so, then it went from glorious cathedrals and, you know, things like that. And we're like,

02:03:31.820 well, it's just really, it's just about numbers and converts. Um, and so we're, we're just going

02:03:36.900 to have small, small churches spread all across the country, you know, and we're just going to

02:03:42.060 do interpersonal, you know, one-on-one evangelism. And we'll also, we can still win overseas, you

02:03:47.680 know, like we're, um, we're not, we're not competent or gifted or influential enough to 0.91

02:03:53.620 win here, uh, with white people, but we can still win with colored people in third world countries 0.90

02:04:00.340 that are impoverished so we'll go over there so we can still feel like we're winning you know so 0.99

02:04:04.540 we can still feel good and sleep at night and like so we we adopted loser strategies because

02:04:10.700 we're and that's one of those things again it's like two-way street you know chicken to the egg

02:04:14.300 which came first like did we lose because we adopted loser strategy or or did we adopt loser

02:04:18.940 strategy and start losing i i don't know i my instinct tells me probably a little bit of both

02:04:24.160 I think, you know, it was probably both, but, but that's, we, we have been, we have been playing, we have been playing with a, a, not divide and conquer, but divide and survive.

02:04:40.040 We have been in a survivalist mindset, you know, guerrilla warfare mentality for decades in the West when it comes to Christianity.

02:04:48.340 And if we really want to win significantly, then we need to be thinking big. 0.61

02:04:55.620 We need to be thinking, we need to be starting venture capitalist funds and think tanks and running for political office at a federal level and enshrining Christian virtues into law.

02:05:10.120 We need to be building cathedrals.

02:05:12.800 We need to be thinking big.

02:05:15.180 And that's what the gospel has always done in virtually every place where it's gone and permeated and actually been truly victorious over the course of centuries as it's left that kind of impact.

02:05:27.460 Okay.

02:05:28.360 Any other questions?

02:05:29.920 Well, they're big questions.

02:05:31.080 I don't know if you want to tackle them.

02:05:32.840 My wife's on sick with a fever, so we can maybe go cook with these.

02:05:36.120 Okay.

02:05:37.060 I didn't know that.

02:05:38.280 Sorry.

02:05:38.800 You're telling me that for the first time.

02:05:39.880 We thought we were through with it.

02:05:40.820 The kids had it, and we're like, we made it scot-free.

02:05:43.080 and last night she's like does my forehead feel warm no we just yeah we just got it was like a

02:05:49.040 two week of waves of fever throughout our whole family i was the only one who didn't get it nice

02:05:54.920 everybody else did all right um yeah we can go ahead well reform radical he said i'm in the

02:06:01.720 process of getting j-pilled um for the listener if you're not familiar with that like realizing that

02:06:06.900 judeo-christianity is a psyop and um and maybe uh maybe israel isn't our greatest ally uh so i'm

02:06:15.080 in the process of getting j-pilled what do you recommend as far as discernment when investigating

02:06:19.900 history and politics it's a good question i'm right now going through pat buchanan's uh the

02:06:25.760 unnecessary war yeah i'm reading that yeah it's been really good yeah i mean there's good info

02:06:30.320 out there that's more you could say off the beaten path i would start with a core of like

02:06:34.720 e michael jones pat buchanan like some of the more mainstream stuff that relies on

02:06:39.360 has a more established narrative that's still counter but it's corroborated and from there

02:06:44.280 branch out into the stuff you know like it's pamphlets that you can only order from like a

02:06:47.860 retailer that like you know mails them by hand don't start necessarily there start with a

02:06:53.300 foundation of um yeah just uh just guys that have had a good track record through their whole life

02:06:58.600 of academic serious scholarship their work stands on its own like david irving's great in world war

02:07:03.860 to don't agree with him on everything but like build with those the david irvings the pichanons

02:07:07.880 e michael jones start there and then as you get interested in a topic that's when you can be feel

02:07:11.840 free i think to branch out into some of the more esoteric stuff that's good advice yeah i think what

02:07:17.220 happens is some guys get j-pilled and they uh immediately start with the the most fringe

02:07:22.400 material that you can find so they they start with and some of it has good information yeah it

02:07:28.060 may be true but it's but it's hit or miss right that's that's the thing like some of it may be

02:07:32.580 true and it may be courageous and bold and true and good um but starting uh starting with with

02:07:38.840 some guys who like there's there's something to be said for the guy who has a published book

02:07:43.120 and people hate it um but they he still is he's still within he doesn't hold the mainline

02:07:51.840 consensus but he's still within um the mainline orbit uh because uh and you just have to recognize

02:07:59.820 he um he wouldn't be there if there uh if anyone could discredit him right right right if anybody

02:08:06.640 could uh legitimately historically discredit pat buchanan's book the you know hitler churchill

02:08:13.300 and the unnecessary war then that book would be out of print you'd have to you'd have to order

02:08:18.920 that off of the the black um you know the black market you know directly order it you know sign

02:08:25.180 copy from uh you know nick fuentes or something like that but the reason why that book is still

02:08:31.120 people hate it but they can't they can't discredit it and in that book he you know he doesn't make

02:08:36.400 the argument that like hitler is fantastic and you know um but he does make the argument and

02:08:40.500 says like no this was churchill right churchill like i'm reading it right now and i'm finding

02:08:45.520 myself frustrated with with churchill but churchill loved war i mean he would like people

02:08:50.640 there's all these eyewitnesses accounts and multiple of them that's what you know makes

02:08:55.820 something more credible is like how many firsthand accounts do we have not just second but like

02:09:02.160 firsthand accounts and there's just dozens of people who worked with Churchill and they all

02:09:07.800 testified he would walk in the room and he would be elated and he would like even you know quotes

02:09:13.580 from churchill where he's like um uh called the war delicious like he he loved it i mean

02:09:20.440 churchill loved it uh great britain had an empire they saw germany as a threat um and they did not

02:09:28.420 want to get they wanted to be the central power of of europe and didn't want to lose it um and so

02:09:34.340 you know when um when you know they're going through denmark you know oh sweet precious denmark

02:09:40.700 you know to get to france they had you know germany had beef with france it wasn't they

02:09:45.540 didn't have beef with with uh england it wasn't about that but they had to go through denmark to

02:09:49.780 get there and and just overnight uh england all of a sudden you know says like oh but what kind

02:09:56.460 of country would we be if we didn't uh you know defend i remember that and they make it about

02:10:00.600 morals and like virtue um you know but what what it really was was um they knew that germany would

02:10:07.800 wipe the floor with france that they would be reasonable with denmark but they would wipe the

02:10:11.760 floor with france and if they did then germany would rival them as a superpower in europe and

02:10:17.020 you know england is supposed to be you know the the empire for which the sun never sets right so

02:10:23.540 anyways i would say just two quick things on that number one just remember that as history history

02:10:29.520 exists as a discipline now largely it's um a tool of crafting narrative and so just remember that

02:10:35.980 you know whatever um history we're reading the modern tendency is to create a narrative of it

02:10:42.720 it hasn't always been how history was used but just just be aware that that's probably what's

02:10:46.960 going on narratives have been crafted in one way and probably narratives are being crafted both way

02:10:51.740 in the other way and then i would say if at all possible try and j-pill in the context of other

02:10:57.080 reasonable but also j-pilled people as well don't go to the fringe order of the internet yeah in

02:11:02.060 your church yeah do it do that yep take that journey it's it's a worthwhile journey but take

02:11:07.160 it in a church yeah uh with other believers who love the lord um yeah and don't go too far uh

02:11:14.620 somebody in the comments i appreciate it go back nate real quick because i want to give him credit

02:11:18.000 uh for helping so this is t james uh boone he said it wasn't denmark it was belgium and he's

02:11:24.420 absolutely right thank you uh for that so everything i said i think is true except um

02:11:28.940 replace denmark you were saying war was declared someone else said well war was declared over

02:11:32.740 poland which is correct you're talking about some of the posturing and the saber yes in relation to

02:11:37.100 belgium yeah yeah okay all right that's it for today thank you guys for tuning in lord willing

02:11:41.680 we will see you again uh on friday uh if you're new to the channel our schedule is monday wednesday

02:11:47.420 friday we live stream three times a week monday wednesday friday 3 p.m central time and uh we

02:11:53.380 often have guests who come on, join us for maybe the second or the third segment. But on average,

02:11:59.000 what we try to do is first segment, Michael or Wes, they've written, they've got graphs,

02:12:03.380 they've got quotes, and they try to outline a theme for that episode. Second segment,

02:12:08.380 we further explore it, or we invite a guest who's familiar with that topic. And then third segment,

02:12:13.600 we try to engage with the chat with those of you who are gracious enough to watch us live and

02:12:20.220 engage in the chat. We try to take your questions. And that's pretty much the rundown is three

02:12:24.880 segments for about an hour and a half to two hours, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 3 p.m. Central

02:12:29.760 Time. And the last thing is that we also do have a fourth piece of content. We call it the Friday

02:12:35.760 Special. And that comes out on Friday, except not at 3 p.m. when we're live streaming. It comes out

02:12:41.000 later in the evening at 8 p.m. Central Time. Right now, we're in a series on Israel, actually. And so

02:12:47.120 it's a nine-part series. It's about 45 minutes per episode. It's like seven and a half, eight

02:12:52.120 hours of content with myself and Pastor Andrew Isker, all about the modern state of Israel

02:12:58.660 and how Christians should think about it today and about Judaism. And then looking at the

02:13:04.820 scripture from Ephesians to Acts to Hebrews and looking at covenantally, what was God doing with

02:13:12.800 Israel, is there anything that's still hanging over, any future promise, whether it be land or

02:13:18.400 whether it be spiritual, or has that covenant been severed and ended? And how should that affect

02:13:25.280 the way we think politically, the way we think religiously, the way we think in all these ways

02:13:30.540 today? So if you want to do a deep dive on Israel, then go ahead and make sure that you

02:13:37.620 tune in for the Friday special. And if you want to get all the episodes, all nine episodes ahead

02:13:42.240 of time ad-free. That's actually available right now. Otherwise, you just have to wait week by week

02:13:48.520 for each episode to drop on X and YouTube and Apple and Spotify. But if you want to get it all

02:13:52.920 now ad-free, all nine episodes are actually available, but exclusively for our members

02:13:59.120 at Patreon. So you would just go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries. Again,

02:14:04.740 that's patreon.com forward slash right response ministries. Thank you guys for tuning in,

02:14:09.640 and we will see you again next time.

02:14:12.240 We'll be right back.

The NXR Podcast - February 12, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - How To Ensure The Enemies Of God Never Win Again

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