The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Responding To Right Wing Watch ｜ “American Caesar” & The Constitution

00:00:00.000 Welcome. We have lost the ability as Christians to think categorically. Christian discourse 0.97

00:00:09.160 around the family and politics endlessly conflate personal versus public, necessary versus possible,

00:00:16.800 and descriptive versus prescriptive categories. This renders us unable to think historically,

00:00:24.560 consider what the future might hold and properly discern what course of action we should take

00:00:31.800 tune in now as we discuss thinking shrewdly and what america's political future might hold

00:00:39.460 all right good to be back for another wednesday live stream we'll be discussing

00:00:54.140 the possibility of an American Caesar and the U.S. Constitution, how they all come together.

00:00:59.760 We'll get into some history, especially at the end, so stay tuned for that for sure.

00:01:03.360 But to set the introduction, to get down to the root of what's causing some confusion,

00:01:07.640 a lot of confusion, this would be not just among unbelievers or maybe Christless conservatives,

00:01:12.980 but among believers themselves. What's causing a lot of division and rivalry

00:01:16.060 would be the ability to think in different categories. So to give an example of this,

00:01:21.420 In the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, Jesus says a number of things.

00:01:25.140 But one of the things he says, for example, is blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

00:01:29.460 And I've heard this cited when it comes to things like immigration and helping the homeless and this, that, or the other.

00:01:35.080 But we have to think about it for a second.

00:01:36.820 So blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

00:01:39.480 Certainly personal ethics.

00:01:40.640 So a neighbor that I may have some strife with, a family member.

00:01:43.880 There should be a degree and measure of mercy that we should show that will be returned to us.

00:01:48.920 But if a cop, for example, was arresting someone who committed a crime, would that be the verse

00:01:53.500 that we jump out, stop, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

00:01:57.240 Would you say to a judge who's about to sentence someone that did something terrible to your

00:02:00.080 family, judge, I know he did this.

00:02:02.380 I know he said he'll go back on the streets and do it again.

00:02:04.880 But after all, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

00:02:07.840 And the answer would be, of course not.

00:02:09.320 We have to have specific categories of thought for different things that the Bible says.

00:02:13.160 The Bible is a long book.

00:02:14.360 There's many different strains of thought, of examples, of stories that are contained

00:02:17.840 within it. And so something that's really been lost and needs to be regained is thinking

00:02:22.720 categorically politics, family, church, what belongs to what, what is most proper here,

00:02:29.060 and then certain things in the political arena, for example. So this week, Joel, a clip of yours

00:02:34.820 was posted one or two times on the internet of you discussing the possibility that a people like

00:02:39.660 America who have become degenerate may eventually lose our right to self-governance, as in someone

00:02:45.460 else could come in and say, no, you will be ruled, be that someone external or someone even coming up

00:02:50.760 through America itself. And there were people saying, by even suggesting, not that this should

00:02:55.980 happen, but that this could happen, this is a denial of the gospel. I saw someone else saying,

00:03:00.780 where was the gospel in this? There was no hope. We're not talking about the gospel. We're talking

00:03:06.620 about politics. We're talking about the political sphere, what would be not even required. You're

00:03:11.000 not even saying it should be like this uh but what may be possible for the future so i've said a lot

00:03:16.020 uh welcome thoughts thinking categorically what is possible what is permissible what is maybe

00:03:22.440 descriptive prescriptive etc right no that's good um i want to play the clip yeah michael is there

00:03:28.100 anything that you want to say no let's jump in let's jump okay this is the clip that a right

00:03:31.880 wing boost uh also known as right wing watch basically it's a lib you know uh account on

00:03:38.720 Twitter and YouTube and things like that, that clips out. They're one of my biggest fans. And so

00:03:44.580 they watch a lot of our content and clip out different sections of a podcast or sermon. They

00:03:51.160 also kind of double down with, oh, and here's one of his recent sermons. And so another clip from

00:03:56.540 that. But they clip out different guys who are conservative and Christian and put it out there

00:04:02.060 for everybody to see. Sometimes it's out of context and sometimes it's not. And the clip

00:04:07.300 that i'm about to show you um you know there was more context uh but it's not terrible it's fairly

00:04:13.740 accurate to what i was saying um even though it's just a snippet of the conversation that i was

00:04:17.760 having with oran mcintyre on the uh topic and so they put that stuff out to kind of say you know

00:04:23.300 look at this scary right wing far alt-right you know terrible whatever and um so this is the clip

00:04:31.200 that uh obviously liberals leftists marxists don't like right wing watch is doing what right

00:04:37.780 right wing watch does um but there were plenty of christians that picked it up as well and uh had 0.72

00:04:43.480 the same uh pearl clutching oh my goodness response as um as a leftist baby killer like

00:04:52.040 in terms of their response i'm not saying they hold the same position of course not but um in

00:04:55.760 terms of their response they both responded pretty much the same oh my goodness i can't believe this

00:05:00.600 he's denying the gospel i mean constitution so here's a clip check it out we're degenerates

00:05:06.820 we're not even close to we're degenerates the constitution is not um it's not suited

00:05:14.720 for governing degenerates uh for governing governing degenerates and i'm curious your

00:05:21.820 thoughts on this if you agree disagree um but i i think for our population that is degraded

00:05:29.940 uh, morally and culturally, uh, as far as religiously, as far as we have, um, you need

00:05:37.260 power. Um, men must be governed. You need, you need a Caesar type, you know, now, if you're 0.60

00:05:44.920 asking me my preference, that, that would probably be my preference would be a constitutional

00:05:48.400 republic. Um, but I think the, um, the, the conditions for that is a moral people. So I

00:05:55.300 think you can you can work towards that in the future uh but i don't think um constitutioning

00:06:01.760 even harder is going to get us out of our our current uh mess uh i i don't see us getting out

00:06:09.060 of this apart from things getting worse and worse and then eventually um like a caesar type rising

00:06:17.480 through the ranks of populist you know figure and the people you know the political will the people

00:06:24.200 the people are desperate and they're like yes do it so and so and and then so and so constitution

00:06:31.360 be damned just rules with an iron fist and uh and you know like a cromwell type and then and then

00:06:38.240 you you know hopefully don't get his son maybe then you're able and then you you maybe it's just 0.97

00:06:42.740 a one generation one guy kind of thing and then you you have to move back to you know aristocracy

00:06:49.000 or some other form. All right, that's the clip. So, like Wes is saying, we need to be able to

00:06:59.760 think categorically. There's a difference between descriptive and prescriptive language. So, there

00:07:04.800 is a difference in saying, this is what Christians should be working towards versus saying, I think

00:07:10.120 this is probably what's going to happen. And basically, in that clip, some of you who are

00:07:15.200 astute and historically knowledgeable. You'll probably recognize that I'm really just channeling

00:07:19.520 my inner atoms, that the constitution is only fit for a moral and religious people and wholly fit for

00:07:26.560 any other. And so what I'm saying in that is we don't have that populace any longer. We are not

00:07:32.240 a moral and religious people. I mean, you can just look at the statistics. They come out annually

00:07:37.340 every single year that say, you know, the rise of the nuns, nuns being N-O-N-E, in terms of

00:07:43.000 religious affiliation, that more and more people every single year are saying, yeah, I'm not

00:07:46.500 Catholic, I'm not Protestant, I'm not, you know, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. So as we become

00:07:52.040 more and more pagan as a society, and we continue in the general public to apostatize from our 0.78

00:07:59.320 Christian heritage, we have found that we are spiraling into more and more degeneracy. And in 0.68

00:08:07.600 that kind of populace with those kinds of people, then yes, men must be governed. The whole idea of

00:08:16.220 a constitutional republic and a democratic republic is that there would be some measure,

00:08:23.140 in fact, I would argue a great measure of self-governance. And that's what America was

00:08:28.760 all about. That is our founding. That's true. No one's denying that. And no one's even denying

00:08:33.440 that as even the ideal in terms of forms of government. But you can't just do that whenever

00:08:40.620 and with whoever you want to do it, right? We've tried that. America has tried exporting democracy,

00:08:46.420 our sacred democracy, again and again and again. The cost of billions of dollars.

00:08:50.720 Billions of dollars and lots of lives, lots of blood of our own sons in order to export something

00:08:57.300 that people don't want. And even if they did, well, it's like, well, the people do want it

00:09:02.180 over there in the Middle East in this, you know, random place. But it's the warlords who don't

00:09:06.380 want it. Well, even the people who do want it, there's enough people with power who don't want

00:09:11.040 it that it doesn't work. For a constitutional democratic republic to work, you have to have

00:09:17.320 a certain type of people. So I'm channeling in that clip, my inner Adams, the constitution was

00:09:22.220 for religious and moral people. And then also, you know, kind of, you know, the famous Franklin

00:09:28.620 end quote, where he comes out of session and, you know, somebody asked him, you know, what did you

00:09:33.300 give us? What did you secure for us? What did you accomplish? And he says, a republic, if you can

00:09:38.740 keep it. And we didn't. We're not keeping that republic. And I think just constitutioning even

00:09:45.120 harder, that would be great. And just the last thing I'll say real quick, and I'll turn to you,

00:09:48.580 Michael, is I love the constitution. Absolutely love it. If there was anything that I would do

00:09:53.740 to the Constitution at all. If revival swept through the land or we got an American Caesar

00:09:59.340 and he was Christian and through him and the law of God and its second or third use functioning as 0.99

00:10:05.360 first and third use, revealing the wickedness of the people and then gospel preachers and churches

00:10:11.300 doing their ministry and a bunch of people get saved. And we say, hey, you know what? We want

00:10:14.800 to set things straight because there was a lot that was good in our founding, but a little bit

00:10:18.860 was missing. One of the first things that I would advocate for is not even changing the Constitution

00:10:23.440 but simply adopting to the constitution a preamble of like the apostles creed right

00:10:29.280 to actually say that this god is the triune god and giving more specificity other than that my

00:10:35.740 point is other than that i love the constitution people that well you don't love the first

00:10:39.040 amendment uh yes i do congress congress can make no law at the federal level that the united states

00:10:45.440 as a country as a whole would be episcopalian right but as we all know nine it's either nine

00:10:50.900 or 10 out of the first original 13 colonies had declared churches. And so there's a difference

00:10:56.340 between an ecclesiocracy and a theocracy. I don't want a church-run state. I don't want the pope or

00:11:02.400 bishops or pastors or whatever, the SBC convention in charge. I don't want J.D. Greer in charge of

00:11:08.540 the United States government at a state level, at a federal level, none of that. So that's an

00:11:13.860 ecclesiocracy, a church-run state. But a theocracy is simply saying that it should be a God-run state.

00:11:20.300 We do believe in a separation of church and state, and that gets back to the categories

00:11:25.080 that we're talking about.

00:11:26.040 What we reject entirely is a separation of Christ and state.

00:11:29.980 Every state is going to be inherently religious. 0.89

00:11:33.340 It's going to be the religion of drag queen story hour and mutilating kids and abortion 0.95

00:11:39.060 as the sacrament to Molech, or it's going to be the Christian religion. 0.99

00:11:44.720 And so I want a separation of church and state. 0.92

00:11:47.560 I do not want a separation of Christ in state.

00:11:50.000 I want our civil magistrates at the state level, at the federal level, to acknowledge

00:11:54.300 not just God in an ethereal, vague sense, but the Lord Jesus Christ, the triune God.

00:12:00.100 Other than that, though, the Constitution is wonderful.

00:12:02.520 And one day, I would love to have a population of fellow citizens, my neighbors, who could

00:12:08.380 actually exercise self-governments in such a way that we could live up to it again.

00:12:14.020 But to pretend as though that's where we are right now is to be so clueless about what time it is that it's hard to even help.

00:12:25.320 I don't even know what to do for you.

00:12:27.060 So, Mike.

00:12:27.720 Well, so talking about Adam's quote, and it's famous, but it really only presents us with two options.

00:12:34.940 So, Constitution was made for a moral and religious people.

00:12:38.340 It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. 0.95

00:12:41.000 So, we only have two options here.

00:12:42.260 If our people is not moral and religious anymore, which it's not, the only two options are somehow pull the people back towards morality and religion or be left with the conclusion that the Constitution as it stands is not sufficient to govern that people.

00:12:58.800 and it's not for lack of trying in a lot of ways a lot of us would love if the american population

00:13:06.640 citizenry moved radically in a christian truly christian god-honoring virtuous direction

00:13:13.520 but barring that happening the logical the only other logical option is that we are living in a

00:13:21.680 society that actually can no longer be governed by that constitution that the founding fathers

00:13:27.440 gave to us right and when we think about categories um one of the one of the analogies that that helps

00:13:34.480 me is uh freedom which is in a lot of ways our new civic um paradigm not paradigm what's the apex

00:13:44.160 freedom is is the thing that we want the most but that is the wrong thing to want what we ought to

00:13:50.460 want is virtue right and and i think what's happened in america and i don't know where it

00:13:55.320 would be an interesting historical question, is the goal that the Puritans had of piety

00:13:59.640 and virtue in everything that they did, which led to people who were self-governed and self-disciplined

00:14:08.340 and righteous switched somehow where the fruit of their piety and virtue, which was freedom,

00:14:17.600 became the thing that we pursue at all costs. And you cannot get freedom by pursuing freedom.

00:14:23.600 if you pursue freedom then you're left with human autonomy exclusively if you pursue piety

00:14:30.860 and anarchy and anarchy eventually if you pursue piety and virtue the fruit can be freedom but

00:14:38.540 that can never actually be and that's why exported democracy to other countries doesn't work

00:14:43.320 is because when you give people freedom who are unregulated in their passions

00:14:47.360 all you get is anarchy and wanton pleasure-seeking and chaos right no said yeah that was insightful

00:14:55.000 arvin mcintyre he had a great tweet this week i'll i'll be vague in the way i describe it but

00:14:59.560 somewhere in belgium there's new restrictions on uh brothels and and basically the state getting

00:15:05.780 really involved and saying no you have to do this if you're a worker here and it's so funny how the

00:15:09.700 french revolution which which posited this idea exactly that of freedom emancipation from all

00:15:14.960 bonds not continuously chosen that if you don't want to be responsible and bonded to your family

00:15:20.020 you don't have to you don't want to be bound to this ideal you don't have to you should be able

00:15:23.640 to be emancipated from all these different things we've gone from that ideal and where it actually

00:15:28.300 has ended up is the state telling you this in the most private in the most terrible way possible

00:15:34.640 we think like you just said we can pursue freedom we will be free well what that's actually gotten

00:15:40.020 us i think of the video this week of a transgender man uh being given the infant that was born

00:15:47.520 through surrogacy yeah how do you to someone who would disagree with us how do you intend to fix 0.98

00:15:52.920 that what remediation steps are there that that evil pure abject evil doesn't happen how are you

00:15:59.980 going to fix it how are you going to enforce it you need power to enforce it you can't just say

00:16:04.440 don't do it there needs to be a bite behind it there needs to be a law that actually is enforced 0.99

00:16:08.460 how do you propose to fix a people that are so evil that gay men would purchase a child rent out 0.77

00:16:15.020 a woman's womb and then strip that child away the minutes that is born that's where the question 0.89

00:16:19.320 becomes practical and rapidly our list of options as our own lawmakers that we vote in continue to 0.96

00:16:26.340 do nothing about it or lag behind or drag their feet your list of options grows thin i think

00:16:31.860 gandolph said that lord of the rings right especially you know it's like with uh with

00:16:36.100 friends like this who needs enemies you know so like like what are you going to do about it when

00:16:39.520 even on the conservative side of the aisle right um they're condemning this video of you know this 0.99

00:16:44.960 gay man and his you know sodomite you know let's use the term a sodomite man with his you know 0.99

00:16:50.300 sodomite partner who um are buying you know it's human trafficking they're buying a baby 1.00

00:16:55.200 and depriving that baby of a mother um and then your conservatives um are condemning it

00:17:02.000 when just a few months back about a year i guess at this point yeah um those same conservatives

00:17:07.420 prager you dennis prager looking at you yeah um a lot of guys from the blaze looking at you

00:17:13.020 chris rufo looking at you like those those guys came out when uh when dave rubin did the exact

00:17:18.620 same thing with two babies two babies so they they purchased they human trafficked two kids

00:17:24.080 and everyone was like this is great congratulations and that's the conservatives

00:17:28.580 right so the point is just to say that we've got a problem on our hand and the only solution that

00:17:34.000 i hear a lot of um a lot of guys from you know the reformed world uh offering is i you know if i had

00:17:42.160 a dollar every time i heard this phrase um a mass move of the spirit of god great mass move praise

00:17:47.320 the lord that would be awesome all all about mass moves of the spirit of god but here's a fun thing

00:17:51.260 since we're speaking in categories um it's kind of like the cessation is charismatic argument you

00:17:55.760 know, the charismatic always says, so you're going to limit what God can do. God can do whatever he

00:18:00.200 wants. And it's like, yeah, I know I'm a Calvinist. You're the one who's typically Arminian.

00:18:04.920 So I'm down with God doing whatever he wants. I understand the sovereignty of God, but the

00:18:10.440 category that is always operated in is what God can do. Here's a helpful question that I think

00:18:16.140 we should ask more often as Christians, not just what can God do in a hypothetical speculation,

00:18:23.920 but what if we asked what has God done and what does God do instead of what can God do what does

00:18:31.140 God do ordinarily and what has he historically in this New Testament era this you know this gospel

00:18:37.180 era the church age that we currently live in what has God done for the last you know

00:18:43.280 2,000 years again and again and again are there any patterns right is it random is it arbitrary

00:18:49.500 Is it a little bit of this, a little bit of that?

00:18:51.700 Or are there certain patterns that seem to reoccur throughout history again and again

00:18:57.020 and again?

00:18:57.600 And here's one of the ones that I've noticed.

00:19:00.020 I'm preaching through the book of Ezra, and before that, we were in the book of Joshua.

00:19:03.160 Looking at the Old Testament, and then also just looking at history, there are far more

00:19:09.400 cases.

00:19:10.540 I'm not saying that there's never a ground-up change within a people, but there are far

00:19:16.640 more cases of what i would call top-down revival than there are bottom-up revival and what i mean

00:19:22.220 by that top-down revival is uh the people are degenerate and then all of a sudden josiah becomes

00:19:27.500 king and he says uh you know what the idolatry will stop yep yeah by penalty like there will

00:19:34.000 be a penalty if you continue to dug up the he dug up the bodies of the false priest and burn

00:19:38.280 them publicly i mean it was yep so you've got josiah and then you know even like jehu you know

00:19:43.160 who is not, he's not quite Josiah status, but you've got multiple kings varying degrees. You

00:19:48.400 know, you got bad kings in Israel, you know, it's like a three to one ratio of bad kings,

00:19:51.860 but among the good ones, some are better, some are not quite as good, but, you know,

00:19:55.480 still in this general good category. In virtually every single case, it is a civil magistrate. It

00:20:02.560 is a king, a ruler who comes in with real political power and he begins to legislate

00:20:10.740 the law of god and as the law of god becomes uh legislated not just preached in pulpits a

00:20:17.100 different category the church but it becomes actually the law of the land legislated from

00:20:22.060 um from the the palace uh in in the sphere of of the civic uh sphere then what that does is it one

00:20:30.320 it immediately begins to curb outward manifestations of evil so that at the level of the

00:20:35.100 heart there's still plenty of evil to go around right total depravity is a thing people are still

00:20:39.240 totally depraved. But did you know there's a lot of people who are totally depraved that don't

00:20:44.320 murder because there's a penalty and would otherwise, right? That's one of the things

00:20:48.980 that the law does. That's the second use of the law, that it functions as a shield, that it

00:20:53.320 actually, it curbs and holds back, restrains, not evil at a spiritual level, not evil of the heart,

00:21:01.140 not total depravity, but it does restrain outward manifestations of evil.

00:21:05.920 And it needs to be said that that is objectively good.

00:21:09.860 That is good.

00:21:10.200 That is not the eternal righteousness of God.

00:21:13.060 That's the whole purpose of the civil magistrate.

00:21:13.520 But that is objectively good.

00:21:15.040 Yes.

00:21:15.540 That is what the civil magistrate does.

00:21:18.180 That's why they're given the sword.

00:21:20.460 That is their job.

00:21:21.540 To do anything less than that is wicked on the civil magistrate's part.

00:21:26.280 And so the second use of the law, a shield, legislating God's law in such a way that it

00:21:30.900 The immediate effect is it begins to restrain outward manifestations of evil.

00:21:36.960 We've seen this in some South American countries.

00:21:40.000 I was literally about to give the story of El Salvador.

00:21:42.100 So if you're five years old, this has happened in your lifetime.

00:21:45.520 2019, Naid Bukele was, I probably didn't pronounce that perfectly, was elected. 0.51

00:21:51.240 We get it. 1.00

00:21:51.880 They had the highest murder rate, I believe it was, in the world.

00:21:55.280 It was a violent place to live.

00:21:56.860 he came in through the army so through control of a centralized army locked down gangs uh he's a

00:22:02.860 christian he supports not a single exception for abortion for example and in the space now this

00:22:08.120 was about i think it was last year that his re-election was held he went to the highest

00:22:12.460 approval rating of all known leaders in the world he rewrote the constitution to get term limits to

00:22:17.720 kick out old politicians that were standing in the way to also allow himself to serve i think

00:22:21.820 is either a second or a third term they're melting down statutes of communists propaganda and making

00:22:27.820 them sewer hubcaps he says this is what we're going to do with communism it is the safest it

00:22:32.620 has ever been yeah he put millions of the dollars millions of dollars worth into bitcoin and the

00:22:37.000 country is flourishing they're flourishing economically they're safe the people love it

00:22:42.240 there's been i know someone went down i think 90 something like that it's like 90 there's someone

00:22:47.800 there's a massive christian movement there as people are able to be safe to have jobs to provide

00:22:53.780 for their families this is objectively good right and this is not 200 years no and this was recently

00:22:59.880 right not in bible times when he was inaugurated if you go and watch his speech he gives a william

00:23:06.820 wallace you know war speech to the troops before they basically unleash them on the gangs and the

00:23:13.160 and the criminals in the country and he says to them you are doing god's work yes we are going to

00:23:19.000 kill the gangs and we are going to imprison them and this is god's work right and it was incredible

00:23:24.900 right it is god's work because it's uh christians work and christians work is different than saying 0.98

00:23:30.480 the church's work yes again we have to put on our big boy pants we need to grow up and learn how to

00:23:36.220 speak like adults. There are categories. The church is word and sacrament. The church is not

00:23:43.360 locking people up. It's not exercising the sword. But to say that's not the church's work is not to

00:23:50.620 say that it's not Christian's work. We, if we are working towards this mass move of the Spirit,

00:23:56.400 where a whole bunch of people get saved, and ideally, if God would be so kind, a majority

00:24:01.920 of the population, then guess what? A lot of your Christians, they're not all going to be pastors.

00:24:06.100 I hope, by God's grace, maybe we could stop taking people. 0.96

00:24:10.440 Every single time, Votie Bauckham said this once upon a time.

00:24:12.640 He said, every time you find a young man in the church who loves Jesus and has some sort

00:24:17.580 of gifting and intellect and is theologically, you know, has a bent, he's astute theologically,

00:24:24.000 everyone in the church immediately says, you should go to seminary.

00:24:26.640 You should be a pastor.

00:24:27.420 You should be a pastor.

00:24:28.400 And you know what they're doing?

00:24:29.380 And Votie Bauckham is super insightful on this.

00:24:31.400 He said what they're recognizing is they immediately have to elevate him to some kind of special category in order to absolve themselves of the fact that they all have been Christians for 40 years and still don't know anything about the Bible. 0.94

00:24:44.820 They're lazy. 0.96

00:24:45.920 They've been theologically apathetic and lazy. 0.86

00:24:49.680 And so what they have to do, instead of admitting, hey, you've been a Christian for eight months and you're studying systematic theology by Bovink, you know, and so what I have to do is I have to say, well, you must be just a different strain of DNA. 0.85

00:25:00.900 You know, you're just like a, a super sane elect, you know, you know, exactly. 0.60

00:25:06.080 You're, you know, and so you must be supernaturally called to the pastorate.

00:25:09.800 That's good.

00:25:10.220 Or here's an alternative.

00:25:11.580 Maybe they are.

00:25:12.340 I'm not ruling that out, but to assume that necessarily is, I think it's presumption.

00:25:17.800 Here's another possibility.

00:25:19.100 It's a young man who's a Christian who loves the Lord, is ferocious in his hunger and appetite

00:25:24.200 for the things of God, wants to love the Lord, his God, not just with all his heart and all

00:25:28.200 soul, but also as we're commanded with all his mind. And that guy could be a great pastor if

00:25:33.460 that is the Lord's calling. He could also be a great governor. He could be a great city council

00:25:38.580 member. He could be a great doctor. We need Christians in every single realm. So the church,

00:25:43.340 the work of the church is word and sacrament, but the work of Christians is whatever that work looks

00:25:49.040 like in that vocation, wherever it's found. So the work of Christians in the church is word

00:25:56.300 in sacrament. The work of Christians in the civil magistrate, if it's El Salvador the last five

00:26:01.000 years, it's chopping heads to the glory of God. Praise be. And that is a blessing. That is loving 1.00

00:26:07.820 your neighbor when you're chopping off the heads of wolves in order to spare the sheep. That is a

00:26:13.860 good thing. So we have to be able to speak in categories. We have to understand the times. We

00:26:18.920 have to understand separation of church and state, that we don't want the president ruling the Pope

00:26:24.140 And we don't want the Pope ruling the president.

00:26:26.400 And from our persuasion, we'd like to not have much stuff going on with the Pope, period.

00:26:31.860 But you get the expression.

00:26:34.000 My point, we don't want the church over the state.

00:26:36.160 We don't want the state over the church.

00:26:38.020 Separation of church and state. 0.94

00:26:39.400 Yes and amen. 0.67

00:26:40.520 But there is no separation.

00:26:42.260 There should be no separation between God and state.

00:26:45.220 Every single country is going to have a governance.

00:26:48.260 It's going to have a civil governance.

00:26:49.940 and that civil governance is going to pay credence to some form of orthodoxy, some form of God.

00:26:55.940 We would like it to be the triune God, the God who actually exists. And if the state bows the

00:27:02.820 knee to King Jesus, and just like the Roman soldiers that came to Jesus and said, we're

00:27:08.880 saved now, we're your disciples, how should we live? And he says, well, you have to immediately

00:27:13.420 quit being soldiers in the Roman army because Christians can't do that, said Jesus never. 0.83

00:27:18.220 that's not his response he says no you need to act righteously you can stay in this role and

00:27:23.700 that's with rome in the first century right and jesus still says you know what this for christians

00:27:28.880 is a viable option crazy crazy uh paul writes to i think it's either philippians right servants in

00:27:35.540 caesar's house was it nero's household servants in his letter hey greet those that are servants

00:27:40.040 in nero's home yeah right perfectly and so what jesus says is um you can do this uh but you have

00:27:46.240 to do it righteously you can't rip people off anymore you need to be content with your wages

00:27:49.860 don't uh don't practice extortion and bribes and all these things those are the kinds of things

00:27:54.700 that underline all the crime and murder in places like el salvador and you get in you say no more

00:28:00.180 and that's one of the things that um that you know the the new um you know the new caesar of

00:28:05.940 el salvador uh has said is he didn't just crack down on crime he cracked down on his own fellow

00:28:12.020 civil magistrates that's one of the first things that he did was he looked around the room i've

00:28:16.020 listen to some of the hearings and he says um i will i will find you out if anyone is lying or

00:28:23.120 cheating or stealing he he did one recently where he called them all in and he said we're announcing

00:28:28.860 announcing a new anti-corruption campaign no one no one in the room knew that this was coming right

00:28:33.580 is this the one you're talking about he says we're announcing a new anti-corruption campaign

00:28:37.320 it's going to be across the entire country and by the way it's starting in this room all of you are

00:28:42.620 going to be investigated with a fine-tooth comb. And then he leans into the mic and he said,

00:28:46.540 that shouldn't be a problem with any of you, right?

00:28:48.300 Right. No, it was based. It was awesome. So that, yeah. So we want separation of church and state,

00:28:54.400 not a separation of Christ and state. We're going to have Christians. Not every young man who loves

00:28:59.160 the Lord is called to be a pastor. The only reason it's looked like that for so long is because

00:29:03.300 the church has been in such disarray and we've had such a low bar for zeal for the Lord and

00:29:07.940 especially knowledge of the scripture. But as things continue to change, and I hope by God's

00:29:13.820 grace that they do, then we should have Christians in the pastorate, but we're also going to have

00:29:19.280 competent, gifted, zealous Christians in business and markets and all these different arenas and

00:29:25.640 in the civil magistrate. And in that category of the civil magistrate, they have been given power

00:29:31.100 and they need to wield that power. And so here's the whole thing, top down. Okay, so bottom up,

00:29:36.180 mass move of the Holy Spirit where, you know, God just saves 51%, you know, and then we vote in,

00:29:42.360 you know, better rulers. Maybe, I hope, I really hope, I'm not against that. I'm doing, you know,

00:29:49.080 I'm doing my part, right? As a local pastor, preaching the gospel, going through books of

00:29:53.380 the Bible, expositional preaching, and encouraging men in our church to run for office, and many have.

00:29:59.620 So we're doing that. And maybe God will do that. Maybe God will sin revival, bottom up,

00:30:05.120 mass move the spirit in such a way that a simple majority of the population of our country

00:30:10.420 loves Jesus and understands the scripture and how to apply it to every realm of life

00:30:15.400 and therefore begins to elect righteous rulers and the country starts to change. That would be

00:30:20.700 great. But what I was saying earlier is you read the Bible and you look at history, Bible and

00:30:26.520 history. Those are two books, very important. If you look at that more often than not, it's not

00:30:31.960 bottom up. It's top down. It's somebody, God gets a hold of somebody's heart in power. And whether

00:30:41.000 it's Nebuchadnezzar, and that doesn't even mean Nebuchadnezzar was regenerate. I'm not even making

00:30:44.860 that argument. Or Cyrus, or whether it's somebody who is truly righteous, David, Josiah, and then

00:30:52.900 in history, whether it's King Alfred or Richard the Lionheart or this guy or that guy. And it's

00:30:58.080 history is is filled with all these examples where things are not great and and the people's

00:31:04.340 appetite for god and for righteousness as at fairly low levels and then someone comes in with

00:31:11.120 power and god gets a hold of that heart he guides the heart of the king like many waters in whatever

00:31:16.580 direction he he wills and then that person says um as for me and my extended house aka this whole

00:31:24.400 nation we will serve the lord whether you like it or not well that's forced conversions no

00:31:30.300 no he's saying outwardly we will serve the lord your own heart you can't force conversion you

00:31:38.340 can't even if you tried you can't only the holy spirit sovereignly can regenerate a heart but what

00:31:44.280 you can do is you can say outwardly um we are going to behave as a christian people and what

00:31:51.160 does that mean? It means we're going to ban pornography. It means we are going to ban

00:31:56.380 no-fault divorce. It means we are going to absolute, utterly abolish abortion, including

00:32:03.540 in vitro, including the hormonal birth control pill, every single one of its forms, not just

00:32:09.200 the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Texas, but we're going to go down to the local CVS and we're going

00:32:14.720 to start knocking those pills off the shelf no more human sacrifice so a civil magistrate can do

00:32:22.440 that yeah he can and should do that and um and here's the thing that i was saying earlier and

00:32:28.400 i'll leave it here and get to you guys one that's the second use of the law of god curbing outward

00:32:32.940 manifestations of evil the evil could still be there at the heart the person has to get saved

00:32:36.800 for that to change and even then you still have you know within the members of my being you know

00:32:41.080 sin still resides within the members of my being. So I find this law at work with, you know, when I

00:32:44.520 want to do good, evil is right there present with me. I think Romans 7, this is post-conversion.

00:32:48.200 I don't think this is Paul speaking as a Jew before he saved. I love the law of God because

00:32:52.160 I was a Pharisee. No, I think he's saying as a Christian after conversion, I delight in my inner

00:32:56.820 being. I delight in the law of God, but I still have this ongoing lifelong battle in sanctification

00:33:01.300 where I continue to wrestle with sin. So the Christian has the flesh. The non-Christian has

00:33:05.040 not only the flesh, but it also, the non-Christian has a heart of stone, an unregenerate heart, 0.99

00:33:10.460 a sin nature. But even for the non-Christian with the flesh and its various temptations and 0.97

00:33:16.680 an unregenerate heart, a Christian magistrate legislating God's law in such a way that it 0.98

00:33:22.160 becomes the law of the land, what it does is it says, you may still be totally depraved internally, 0.97

00:33:27.860 but externally, you are no longer going to behave in that way. Not all sins are crimes. So coveting

00:33:34.540 is not going to get a civil penalty, but a lot of stuff is. Abortion is. Peddling pornography is. 0.99

00:33:40.900 These kinds of things. There are going to be penalties, and lo and behold, you do that in

00:33:44.600 El Salvador, and people change. People respond to carrots and sticks. They do. They do. And so you

00:33:50.840 do that, and then the last thing is the first use of God's law. Here's the other thing, and here's

00:33:54.800 the irony. The beautiful, I think, divine irony is it's not just the second law of God when it's

00:33:59.880 legislated rightly, curbing outward manifestations of evil. But the first use of God's law is that

00:34:04.820 the law functions as a mirror. It reveals to us because the law is holy, it shows us that God is

00:34:09.140 holy. And by way of contrast and seeing, staring into the thrice holy God, his holy nature, his

00:34:15.580 holy character, by seeing his holy law, we see by contrast our lack of holiness, our sinfulness.

00:34:21.440 And what that does, as Charles Spurgeon said, a man cannot appreciate the beauty of Christ lest he

00:34:26.240 first come to see the necessity for Christ. A lot of people are not. Part of the reason we're not

00:34:31.740 having this mass revival and a mass move of the Spirit of God is because a bunch of people are 0.60

00:34:37.080 degenerates, and here's the worst part about it, they don't think they are. They don't know

00:34:41.020 they're degenerates. But one thing that happens when you get a strong civil magistrate who

00:34:46.100 legislates God's law righteously, like a Josiah, is not only does it keep people from outwardly

00:34:51.820 doing these heinous, wicked sins and crimes, but it also begins, the law begins to function as a

00:34:58.440 tutor. So the law, not only does it function as a shield restraining my outward manifestation of

00:35:03.680 evil, but it also then functions as a tutor. It begins to inform me, disciple me, teach me about

00:35:09.560 righteousness and wickedness. So then when I walk into church and hear that gospel preaching,

00:35:15.580 That gospel preaching is now like a baseball-sized diamond that properly is contrasting with the

00:35:23.000 conducive backdrop of the black velvet to where the diamond actually shines and it sparkles now.

00:35:30.320 I can appreciate and I run to Christ because I see myself as a sinner and I recognize my need

00:35:35.920 for him. That's top-down revival, historically and biblically. If we're talking statistics,

00:35:41.480 It happens far more often than bottom-up revival.

00:35:44.920 And if you're going to say everything I just said then, that that's somehow antithetical

00:35:50.780 to the gospel and to revival and to the Bible, then brother, you need to just sit the bench

00:35:57.620 for a little while and let us take it from here.

00:35:59.560 Let the big boys play.

00:36:01.080 You sit the bench. 0.93

00:36:01.980 I know you're a good company man, but your Jesus jukes and your little pietistic quips, 0.78

00:36:08.260 we don't have time for those anymore. 0.95

00:36:09.940 i know that it plays well with the fan base and your female audience but it's time to sit down

00:36:15.140 and uh and let some christian men talk so all right go to our first commercial break here on

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00:37:41.660 by emailing banking at privatefamilybanking.com. You'll receive a free ebook and a link to schedule

00:37:48.880 your free 30-minute consultation today. All right. Well, welcome back. Joel, I think those last few

00:37:56.220 things you said, those probably added 15% to my bench right there. I can go through a wall right

00:37:59.860 now and just, we're getting rid of this evil. We're getting rid of it. I'm going to hit just

00:38:04.940 quick two comments. We read the comments. Appreciate everyone who has questions, genuine

00:38:09.420 questions, shows out to support. One of the comments was, well, there's no king but Christ,

00:38:13.720 and so Christians should have no allegiance to other kings. Paul explicitly says, 1 Timothy 2,

00:38:17.940 I command then that men have public prayers for kings and rulers. Christ is king of kings. There

00:38:24.320 has to be other kings for him to be king over them. There is no king but Christ, but there are real

00:38:28.480 rulers, presidents, kings in this earth that Christians acknowledge. Grace does not restore 0.95

00:38:32.680 nature. Your argument is dumb. Second one, someone mentioned, well, a top-down government. Sorry, 1.00

00:38:37.740 grace does restore nature. Grace does restore nature. Exactly, it doesn't subvert nature.

00:38:42.100 Top-down government. So you said it could be bottom-up revival, but it also could be top-down.

00:38:45.980 Someone mentioned, well, that could come with its excesses. And typically in the past when there's

00:38:49.460 been some type of Christian government, oftentimes it's really it's church and government that are 0.79

00:38:53.300 combined, they persecute other Christians. So they'll persecute the Baptists or they persecute 0.91

00:38:57.360 this other group. And so we should be, we can't do that because of the excesses. But going back 0.71

00:39:02.720 to El Salvador for a minute, they had the highest murder rate in the world from gangs. Do you know

00:39:08.700 how violent gangs are to torture, to take people from their family and say, if you don't give us 0.99

00:39:13.580 $2 million, we're going to just chop their head off. They do not care. There's not an ounce of 0.99

00:39:18.200 empathy so probably of the tens of thousands of gang members that the president imprisoned some

00:39:24.180 of them might not have been that really is possibly true uh but you know what that is

00:39:28.580 much better it's not like you get to have a perfect world when none of those things happen

00:39:32.400 that you don't accidentally maybe jail an innocent person or you have terrible gang violence you have

00:39:37.860 to pick one or the other and you could talk to any single citizen in el salvador and they would

00:39:42.560 laugh in your face if not be offended that you would suggest that the excesses that are real

00:39:46.640 that really would happen even a christian prince would come with excesses we'll probably get to

00:39:50.500 that in the third section to suggest that those excesses that men buying infants for example that

00:39:56.400 we can't have a christian nation that might not look well in baptist because well of this no it's

00:40:02.780 which excess will you have and i would much rather christians doing their best sinning in the right

00:40:06.580 direction the excesses that would come with that than the blessings of classical liberalism

00:40:12.300 blessings. They are not blessings. They're evil and degeneracy. All right. Self-governance. So

00:40:18.160 we talked about we are a nation of degenerates. And if we are a nation of degenerates that cannot 0.98

00:40:23.480 rule ourselves, we will be ruled. I think of a toddler. Toddlers do not get to choose their meal. 0.91

00:40:28.460 They don't get to choose their bedtime. They don't get to choose a lot of things at all

00:40:31.540 because they're not capable. They're impulsive. They're governed by the emotion, the heat of the

00:40:36.680 moment. Writer Mark Horn, he's a Christian. He wrote a commentary, short one, on Proverbs for

00:40:41.840 young men. He said this, if you do not learn to govern yourself, you will be governed by others

00:40:46.380 and your impulses will be the reins they use to lead you. I had a pastor years ago, it wasn't you,

00:40:52.500 he said, the unbeliever will go to the Christian and will say, oh, you're so constrained because

00:40:56.980 you can't do this and you won't do that, but I'm free. And so, well, hang on, wait a second.

00:41:01.680 You're enslaved to pornography. You're enslaved to the approval of man. You would never talk back

00:41:06.500 to your boss or push back because you're afraid of their approval. You love money. You spend your

00:41:11.900 day and night thinking about money, how to get more, scheming. So it's not as though the Christian 1.00

00:41:16.340 is bound, the Christian is constrained, and they just have all these things, don't look, don't 0.98

00:41:21.000 taste, don't see, don't touch. But the unbeliever is just out there living their best life. No, 1.00

00:41:25.580 the unbeliever is absolutely enslaved. Jesus says whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.

00:41:31.620 So we have a people right now that are absolutely in bondage and enslaved.

00:41:35.940 And a people that are in bondage like that, the same way a toddler is bound by his emotions,

00:41:40.220 they're not capable of self-governance.

00:41:42.420 Self-governance is the privilege of those that have learned to control their passions,

00:41:46.540 control their impulses, and to govern themselves and say,

00:41:49.640 I'm going to do this thing, for example, that is in the long term more beneficial.

00:41:53.360 I'm going to deny myself here.

00:41:55.180 I'm going to deny myself there.

00:41:57.060 I love what you said, Michael.

00:41:58.540 Freedom is the fruit of virtue.

00:41:59.840 it's you can't pursue freedom is not an end in itself it's not that um we pursue freedom

00:42:06.740 you know hell or high water at all costs right no you pursue virtue and righteousness to be

00:42:13.840 pleasing to god and the fruit of that is as we grow and mature um freedom is one of the blessings

00:42:21.240 that we receive it's the same as children in a home 100 as my children pursue virtue and obedience

00:42:28.580 to god first and then to me and their mother um as the first human authorities designated by god

00:42:35.700 in their lives for their instruction and their blessing and their good as our children get older

00:42:40.620 um and have proven time and time again uh improving by god's grace their track record

00:42:47.460 of obedience to our human authority then they naturally everything i don't even have to think

00:42:53.000 about it it's just like hey you know what let's um let's have some more privileges you know you

00:42:57.440 can do this now i think you can do it way to go um well what happens with right that's in a home

00:43:03.480 now just take that yep and apply it with a country what happens if you got america is like uh

00:43:09.880 america is like uh like watching benjamin button right you know it's like you know like we started

00:43:16.060 off you know like all these like wise sages and christian you know and then you just get younger 0.99

00:43:21.600 and dumber and stupider um and that's that's these united states of america um and and so 0.99

00:43:29.300 what do you do like what would you do as a parent if your children were actually devolving rather 1.00

00:43:35.220 than developing they were actually at the level of both virtue and intellect and competence they

00:43:40.660 were becoming more and more and that's what's happening with our population like and i mean

00:43:45.760 both degrees not just the moral uh category but also in terms of iq iq has been going down for

00:43:51.940 quite a while health iq because it's yeah fertility at every single level you see like like the you

00:43:58.020 know the wally movie you know that like like that's that's what's happening um you know and 0.93

00:44:03.080 and so uh we're getting uh dumber literally i mean statistically dumber fatter and more wicked 0.54

00:44:09.680 so so then what do you you you at some point you have to reign it like oh well then you you don't 0.95

00:44:16.320 get as much freedom yeah you you can't have it now i understand one of the pushbacks that i

00:44:21.280 thought was fair it was saying well but if you have this degenerate populace that you're so

00:44:24.700 convinced of joel and yes i am convinced i mean that's the easiest thing to prove in the world

00:44:28.120 the sky is blue jesus is lord and america is filled with degenerates right like i mean that's

00:44:33.500 not a hard argument to make but um a good pushback that i received was well then um where do you

00:44:39.500 think this you know this caesar would come from and again categories prescriptive versus descriptive

00:44:45.360 right we're using descriptive language and saying i think this might be what happens

00:44:49.200 um not saying hey let's work for it tomorrow and form the secret alliance or whatever

00:44:54.200 right right wing watch would love that they'll probably clip what i just said out of context

00:44:58.080 and make it sound like we're doing but my point is um it's descriptive language predicting what

00:45:02.020 we think may happen uh what god not what god can do but looking at what god has done so and and

00:45:08.200 then with that if that happens sure out of a degenerate population you could get a really bad

00:45:14.000 caesar right no one's saying that that may not happen we would we would be just would god would

00:45:18.920 be just that would be the judgment option which would be justice there's the justice option where

00:45:24.140 we get that kind of of tyrant um and but then the mercy option um all i'm trying to to espouse

00:45:31.980 is it in the judgment option you get a tyrant caesar and he persecutes just the heck out of

00:45:37.720 the country but he probably enforces a basic morality probably that aligns with some sort of

00:45:44.600 god in his sovereignty that would be his justice and simultaneously in his sovereignty could be

00:45:48.840 used to get us on the right track uh but then in the mercy category if god gives us the mercy

00:45:53.260 option all i'm saying is that that mercy option can come about not just in one way but two

00:45:58.040 it's not as though the only merciful option is um grassroots bottom up mass move of the spirit

00:46:05.360 revival individual hearts being regenerate by the preaching of the gospel till you get 50 plus one

00:46:10.940 and then electing better leaders that could happen but historically that has not been god's mo um

00:46:17.880 another act that would be merciful is you get the strong authoritarian leader um but he's a christian

00:46:26.160 right and he loves the lord jesus christ and he's imperfect and like wes was saying uh earlier

00:46:31.300 there will be sins. He will sin. There will be excesses, but he vastly improves the situation,

00:46:39.660 just like El Salvador. He works to outlaw abortion. He works to esteem the church again, 1.00

00:46:47.160 all these things. And that becomes the backdrop of not just curbing outward manifestations of

00:46:52.800 wickedness, second use of the law, but in the first use of the law, it teaches the people

00:46:57.200 that we actually are sinners and we need christ and then it leads towards a bunch of regenerate

00:47:02.840 hearts and then maybe you can get back to more freedom and more self-governance and for the

00:47:08.100 last thing that i should probably say is um and none of that actually requires necessarily

00:47:13.740 that you do away with the constitution yep so that's not a constitutionalist option

00:47:19.380 or ron mcintyre on your show i thought it was so insightful he said we've had points in american

00:47:26.660 history where presidents have temporarily taken almost dictatorial power right he cited fdr he

00:47:33.800 cited lincoln right lincoln yeah um and that was a time this this was this was the pattern from the

00:47:40.360 roman um republic as well where in time of crisis they would appoint someone that was called a

00:47:46.740 dictator who would give dictates that was the whole point he could just give dictates that had

00:47:51.300 to be followed they didn't have to be laws passed by the two houses really three of the roman system

00:47:56.640 he could just give dictates and then when the crisis was gone he was required to step down now

00:48:01.480 caesar never stepped down he was executed but um he was required to step down so this this this

00:48:07.080 precedent hits true this precedent in the western republican capital r tradition has already been

00:48:14.900 laid there's already historical president going back millennia and going back in our own

00:48:20.420 constitutional framework where that sort of thing has happened yeah i wanted to say one other thing

00:48:26.540 to, Joel, when you said earlier the question of what God has done, and then connecting

00:48:31.960 that to Wes's comment about the privilege of self-governance.

00:48:37.300 For those who think that God would care more about liberty and personal liberty than about

00:48:44.400 virtue and worship, consider the example of Israel when they came out of Egypt.

00:48:52.640 God cannot lie, and so when he said through Moses to Pharaoh,

00:48:57.860 let my people go that they may go out and worship me rightly.

00:49:02.040 There was a sense where in Egypt they could not worship God

00:49:07.320 the way God deserved to be worshiped by his people.

00:49:10.340 And partly that was because God's definition of worship

00:49:13.080 was not just offering a sacrifice on a particular day.

00:49:15.740 It was a whole lifestyle.

00:49:18.220 James White, when he preached through the Holiness Code in Leviticus,

00:49:21.640 he just pounded in so much.

00:49:24.520 There's almost no distinction in that section

00:49:27.220 between worship and service.

00:49:29.720 It is the same idea.

00:49:31.380 And so when God says,

00:49:33.060 my people are not free to worship me

00:49:34.820 under your rule, Pharaoh,

00:49:37.680 let them go so that they may be free to worship me.

00:49:41.800 They go out and the first thing that God does

00:49:44.500 is he gives them a law.

00:49:46.340 Why does he give them a law?

00:49:47.520 A law to govern themselves.

00:49:49.300 They had no law under Pharaoh.

00:49:51.200 He gives them a law to regulate their self-governance and their right worship to God.

00:49:56.160 And yet, though that was good and the ideal, as soon as Joshua faded off the scene, Israel

00:50:04.680 used their self-governance, their freedom for living the way that they wanted to, to 0.61

00:50:10.320 worship pagan gods.

00:50:12.000 And boom, God removed that freedom of self-governance from them almost immediately, right? 0.97

00:50:18.360 He brought in time and again oppressors and the Philistines, and then the people would 0.95

00:50:23.260 kind of learn their lesson. 1.00

00:50:24.860 They'd say, okay, God, you're right.

00:50:25.760 We should worship you, and he'd send a judge.

00:50:27.680 But this idea that self-government and self-governance and freedom is tantamount in God's mind

00:50:34.280 is not a biblical idea.

00:50:38.140 God's greatest virtue for a person, for a society, for a nation, for his church, is

00:50:45.000 right and proper worship.

00:50:46.360 And if they will not achieve it through their own self-governance, then he's going to take matters into his own hands.

00:50:53.280 Well said.

00:50:54.920 We should talk a little bit about representative government.

00:50:59.680 Just briefly, this could just be a small point, but just that the idea that in a monarchy, like there was just some thoughts, you know, as we were preparing for this episode.

00:51:09.280 And even the whole monarchy idea, like one point that I would want to make is, you know, people, you know, they have this idea like, you know, the constitutional, you know, representative, democratic, you know, republic, America's, you know, original system of governance, that that's the best.

00:51:30.180 um i think that that is debatable although i i like it and i think it's really really good

00:51:36.120 i think it's the ideal um but it you know it it assumes um a certain kind of people we've

00:51:42.040 already talked about that we don't have that kind of people so i don't think it's working

00:51:45.280 uh right now um the constitution uh didn't stop all the uh covet abuses right i did you know like

00:51:52.720 i like the constitution i wish that my civil magistrates did right that's the whole thing

00:51:57.400 People are like, Joel's against the Constitution.

00:51:59.780 No, I'm just pointing out the fact that we have not been a constitutional republic for a very, very long time.

00:52:05.100 Let me read a quote that backs that up because I meant to read it earlier.

00:52:07.600 And before we move on, it goes exactly what you're saying.

00:52:10.220 Benjamin Franklin said, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.

00:52:14.140 And then he said this, as nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

00:52:19.640 And that really is where we are.

00:52:21.360 We need more need of masters because we are more corrupt and more vicious.

00:52:24.840 There's one of the founders.

00:52:25.760 They understood.

00:52:26.960 these things um your neo-conservative you know post-war sentiment whatever you know 2024

00:52:35.620 guy he doesn't get it um but what i was going to say is if you think of like governments

00:52:40.960 like an evolution of governments um evolution is terrible you you understand how i'm using the word

00:52:47.680 but like you know this development of governments evolving and maturing with um a populace a society

00:52:54.300 a culture as it evolves and matures um that to me seems to make sense and when you think of

00:53:00.820 america's form of government my whole point is to say it's not as though um there was just this

00:53:05.940 random group of people like i want to be kind in the way that i say this but um the native americans

00:53:13.800 did not form a constitutional republic who did uh it was westerners steeped for centuries

00:53:23.240 in the christian worldview as well in addition to the christian worldview just western civilization

00:53:30.560 and its rich tradition from plato and athens and rome and all this collective for centuries

00:53:37.520 centuries it was not a 15 minute project and and we just we start the clock with america we start

00:53:44.060 start the clock with 1776 right no no um who were those where did those guys come from right these

00:53:50.300 these guys who are larger than life you know that like george washington who's just and i mean he

00:53:56.320 really is just a god's honest hero just a mountain of a man physically but then also just i mean an

00:54:02.520 amazing man um but where what orchard did these apples come from right um it wasn't that there

00:54:10.280 was just this random plot of land you know over there in the americas and some native indigenous

00:54:16.520 people one day decided uh we're going to be self-governed right and we're going to set up

00:54:21.860 this form of government and we're going to do things really well no uh no i'll leave it there

00:54:28.400 just not even close well there was still rule it was violent rule it was that's what i was going

00:54:33.740 to say it was tribal warfare might makes right you're slaughtering each other smoking peyote

00:54:38.340 and worshiping demons that's that's what you had okay um but but guys steeped in christendom

00:54:46.160 for hundreds of years now here's my point you you get eventually over in america but we we think

00:54:52.260 that that's like it is the new world it was you know at that time um but but it wasn't new people

00:54:58.080 it's a new world that's what i'm trying to say but it wasn't new people these people were growing on

00:55:02.820 a tree that had been planted long ago and so this is this constitutional republic democratic republic

00:55:08.800 that we get with a lot of representative uh governance and self-governance um but it comes

00:55:15.060 an apple that rolls a little bit from the tree and sprouts a new tree over here that's an even

00:55:20.120 i would argue a better tree um but but the tree that it came from it didn't just grow out of the

00:55:25.460 ground magically it came from another tree that had been growing for hundreds of years and what

00:55:29.780 tree was that um it was christian first and foremost it was western anglo-saxon but it was

00:55:36.680 also here's a crazy one it was a monarchy it was not a democracy and so these guys who had

00:55:44.880 virtue intellect love for god um the kind of men who were able to start such a glorious form of

00:55:53.240 government that we have appreciated so much and i think now are unworthy of but have appreciated

00:55:58.740 so much and i hope that we can get back to it but these guys that we love and that we honor

00:56:03.220 they grew on the tree of monarchy and what i'm saying is that as as you had westerners

00:56:10.220 begin to embrace the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and begin to formulate and solidify the

00:56:19.480 Western tradition and the Christian religion, Christendom, in Europe over centuries. As that's

00:56:26.560 happening, government is evolving right there along with it. And it's a monarchy, but then

00:56:33.440 eventually there's parliament and there's different things and it's not all power control

00:56:39.040 concentrated centralized and what and it begins to as the people are maturing just like a father

00:56:44.980 raising children in his home and then it comes over to america with some of the best of the best

00:56:49.280 who are willing to sacrifice and make the trip in the first place and yeah it makes logical sense

00:56:54.580 and i think biblical but logical sense that the best of the western tradition after centuries

00:57:00.400 arguably arguably a millennium um steeped in monarchy that was becoming more constitutional

00:57:06.880 and democratic that the very best and brightest and most godly could go over somewhere else

00:57:12.180 and that they could start a constitutional republic yeah that's that makes sense but if you

00:57:18.580 think in 2024 with porn hub and just the i'm not even talking about the average man this is mean

00:57:27.780 i'm gonna say it's it's mean but i love you and you need to hear it i'm not talking about the

00:57:31.960 average american i'm talking about the average christian the average christian is not mature

00:57:36.880 enough uh for self-governance they should be they have it don't get me wrong i'm not crossing

00:57:42.500 wires here theologically they have the ability to self-govern because they have the fruit of

00:57:47.820 the spirit which is self-control but the average christian right now is so doctrinally and 0.97

00:57:54.480 theologically and and politically and outside of just the like anemic and and and uh dim-witted

00:58:03.700 that they just they can't do it i was gonna say john doyle he has a great video on why 0.95

00:58:09.980 conservatives struggle to make culture and some of the problem is that so much filth and perversion

00:58:14.720 has flowed down that it's as if you gave a toddler mcdonald's every meal for years and then you said

00:58:21.700 we're going to change your diet and we're going to set up here some grilled chicken and some apples

00:58:25.880 and some homemade organic macaroni which one would he choose they've been fed a diet we've

00:58:32.100 been fed a diet i think pornography was protected as free speech i mean since the 70s you have

00:58:38.040 hollywood you have music subversive forces that flooded them into our culture and then smartphones

00:58:43.980 gave everyone the ability to have it into their hand the damage that that has done the diet that

00:58:50.040 has given people because nobody hooked up to the Netflix, Hulu, Pornhub machine is going

00:58:55.440 to wake up without God's grace, pull the IV off, some good law preaching, pull the IV

00:59:00.720 off and say, nah, I've had enough of that.

00:59:02.920 No, you've been inculcated, trained, even bred now since we're several generations in

00:59:07.040 to just live off the drip of cheap dopamine and entertainment.

00:59:11.100 And that type of people, it is going to need power to bring them back and say, you are

00:59:16.580 killing yourselves. 0.62

00:59:17.520 Literally, the West here, you are committing suicide. 1.00

00:59:20.040 And if we don't radically amputate, radically detox, get you off of this cheap dopamine, of all of this stuff that is destroying your taste, you're going to kill yourself. 0.88

00:59:30.800 You're going to destroy yourself. 0.71

00:59:31.780 And because we love you, no more. 0.99

00:59:34.160 No more of this.

00:59:34.940 Like abortion, it's downstream of us thinking that every young person has a right to spend their 20s having sex with no consequences.

00:59:42.300 That's the only way you get a culture where people say, I don't want this baby right now.

00:59:45.680 So it's downstream of telling young women, especially, you should be able to do this without consequences. 0.99

00:59:52.240 We don't have to start here like, oh my goodness, we've got to get rid of abortion. 0.72

00:59:55.000 We've got to get rid of a lot more than abortion when we're going to turn that clock back.

01:00:00.780 Some of the verses that gave rise to the American system of government are verses that specifically address the inward man first.

01:00:12.180 For instance, 1 Peter 2.16 says,

01:00:16.500 And these verses, political thinkers thought through, and they said,

01:00:31.260 what does it mean to live as a free man, right, where my obligation is only and primarily to God?

01:00:37.640 They said, well, that means that you have to have a lot of autonomy in your life.

01:00:40.800 You have to have a lot of ability to offer God the sacrifices that he has due without compulsion, with goodwill, with hard work, with effort, with reverence, with fear.

01:00:51.200 But the Galatians 5 verse haunts us as a society.

01:00:54.500 It says, for you brothers were called to freedom, but do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

01:01:00.900 And that is exactly, I know it's not specifically addressed to America, right?

01:01:05.120 But that is exactly what we've done.

01:01:06.840 We've taken the freedom that we were given.

01:01:08.780 In the Trump Bible it is.

01:01:10.160 god bless and we've used that as um an opportunity for the flesh and paul knew that that was a

01:01:17.080 tendency paul knew that was a tendency yeah yeah so all that being said i i guess maybe last thing

01:01:23.780 i want to say and then west maybe you can bring us home um do we have one more commercial break

01:01:27.980 we do more we do okay well let me say this we'll go to a commercial and then we'll just round out

01:01:32.120 our final thoughts but um some of you might be thinking well i thought you guys were post-millennial

01:01:36.780 i thought you were you know you're bullish you're optimistic you know and i would say uh-huh i'm

01:01:41.000 bullish uh in in the long game and uh bearish in the short um post-millennialism does not presuppose

01:01:48.660 it doesn't insist upon this perfect trajectory going you know steadily up up up with no dips

01:01:55.080 along the way of course there are dips along the way um and i think we're in a pretty big dip and

01:02:01.180 and for the record i don't think just you know for a lot of us who've woken up you know in god's

01:02:06.260 mercy he woke us up recently you know a lot of people like woke up in 2020 and um you know so

01:02:12.000 uh but just for the record i don't think we're in a a four-year dip since 2020 i think you know

01:02:18.020 we're in like a 300 year dip and arguably even longer but i'm thinking you know enlightenment

01:02:22.880 i'm thinking you know i'm thinking it's a long dip and a lot of this is the chickens coming home

01:02:28.440 to roost a lot of these things are actually uh old ideas that are finally just coming to fruition

01:02:33.000 ideas have consequences and um and we're and we're starting to experience some of those

01:02:37.980 consequences but uh all that being said i i think we're in you know a good 300 year dip

01:02:42.740 and right now we're in you know i mean we're we're at the bottom of that dip and that said

01:02:48.080 don't you think for a second it can't go lower um i don't i don't think that we've necessarily

01:02:52.540 quite found the bottom yet so i think uh things could stay bad and even get worse in the short

01:02:57.800 term um but you look at you know the last three years and then you look at the last 300 um and

01:03:05.020 you're like ah not great um but look at the last 2000 you know i think sometimes it's just helpful

01:03:10.760 to uh to zoom out um both in terms of um geography and history so don't just look at one country

01:03:21.320 don't just look at your country in the last 50 years right that's i mean you take that away from

01:03:26.200 the dispensation list and then you know they've got nothing left so you're like don't take that

01:03:29.480 from me pastor america in the last 50 years um okay but what about every country in the whole

01:03:35.440 world over the last you know 2 000 years um no it hasn't just been worse and worse and worse and

01:03:42.340 worse and worse uh that that logically does it just not even it's not even possible it's not

01:03:47.600 possible that every country on the planet has gotten progressively worse for 2 000 years

01:03:52.500 from first century Rome. That's just, it's not possible. We would all be dead. There'd be no

01:03:58.520 more humanity. It's just not possible. But it is possible that God has done a mighty work for

01:04:04.820 centuries, but the devil came into the master's field and along with his good seed, sold bad seed.

01:04:12.480 And that some of that bad seed, those tares have been growing for 300 years and now they're getting

01:04:17.800 pretty big. And some of the wheat is getting choked, but the wheat will prevail and the Lord

01:04:24.160 in His timing will remove those tears. And in the meantime, we seek to be faithful,

01:04:32.080 whether things turn back around towards the Lord in our generation or our children's or our great,

01:04:37.820 great grandchildren's. We still want to be faithful to do our part. And a big thing that

01:04:41.800 we're trying to argue in this episode and many episodes that we do is we just want to be faithful,

01:04:45.400 but that faithfulness needs to be a faithfulness across the field. It needs to be a full-orbed

01:04:51.800 faithfulness. It is not just a Sunday morning church faithfulness. It is not just word and

01:04:57.960 sacrament faithfulness. That may be the church's job, but it is not the Christian's job. The 1.00

01:05:02.540 Christian is a church man, to be sure, all of us, church member. But then you also have a station

01:05:09.420 of life that you were in when the Lord called you. And maybe that's politics. Maybe that's

01:05:14.780 markets, maybe that's education, whatever it might be. But your faithfulness is not just at the local

01:05:21.260 church level, but all of Christ for all of life. And as we do that, things still might get worse

01:05:26.960 for a while, but we're bullish in the long run. So none of the things that we've been saying in

01:05:31.300 this episode, I guess this is my point, none of these things are necessarily a contradiction to

01:05:37.360 a hopeful eschatology. All right, let's go to a commercial. We'll come back and land the plane.

01:05:42.740 The danger of centralized power is often represented by the word king.

01:05:47.200 As Americans, we hate the word king.

01:05:50.800 Civilian ownership of body armor is about helping people to have increased power to resist tyrants and criminals.

01:05:59.340 And so Armored Republic is about helping you to preserve your God-given rights to the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ

01:06:05.780 because he is the king of kings, and he governs kings and he will judge them.

01:06:10.100 this is armored republic and in a republic there is no king but christ

01:06:16.480 we are free craftsmen and we are honored to be your armor spread of choice

01:06:22.880 all right we're aware of a little bit of an irony with that commercial

01:06:41.180 uh playing right after we say it's possible that we might need a caesar for for a time and uh and

01:06:49.120 we we agree with david reese yeah 100 100 but i think even david would say yeah but we might um

01:06:55.880 we have not uh been worthy of this republic and we might lose it yeah a republic if they can keep it

01:07:02.800 if they can keep it um that's our whole argument is not we don't like republics no i i like

01:07:07.940 republics um but we're losing ours yep yeah so as we're landing the plane i just have one last

01:07:14.280 thing i wanted to say and it's right along those lines and uh it is this if you love the american

01:07:20.360 republican system form of government the constitutional republic that we have had

01:07:25.260 your goal and your longing and what you hope happens in our nation is that we would be pushed

01:07:36.200 to become a virtuous people again amen and so if we want to live again where we can have a republic

01:07:42.900 can have no king but christ our goal is a virtuous people a moral people and sometimes when you lose

01:07:51.040 the privileges mom and dad ground you right or they spank you or they take away whatever it is

01:07:57.820 that you were abusing right and for me i think what we're saying is it seems like that's where

01:08:04.280 we are at our point in history however i want a christian nation more than a republic i want a

01:08:13.260 christian virtuous nation a people who will honor god with their customs with their laws with their

01:08:20.460 sense of morality more than i want a sense of freedom under a constitution that cannot um

01:08:26.740 govern a lawless people amen i'd rather have a christian monarchy than our current state of

01:08:33.060 affairs and so i looked up just for fun and i just compared it's almost ridiculous to do the taxes

01:08:38.900 that we pay now compared to what the founding fathers were objecting to i mean it's not it's

01:08:44.340 like comparing apples and oranges because they didn't have an income tax they didn't have

01:08:47.080 payroll but but but they were they were rioting and throwing things in the river over two dollars

01:08:54.480 a two dollar tax in our time on molasses and an eight dollar tax on a pound of tea which that's

01:09:01.080 a lot of tea a pound of tea and and if you were to ask them okay would you rather have a christian

01:09:06.820 constitutional monarchy or have what america has now i guarantee you they would have all said we've

01:09:15.180 got you you've got to get a king back in order you've got to come back you've got to get someone

01:09:19.660 to shape up those people right now right and so if you love republics if you love the idea of

01:09:26.800 men being free to pursue the fruit of their labor, then you ought to long and look for

01:09:34.660 something that will propel our people to become a virtuous people again.

01:09:38.560 Amen. And God can do that anyway. Again, in terms of the question, what can God do? God can do that

01:09:44.420 bottom up, gospel preaching, one heart at a time, eventually regenerating. And it's not just enough

01:09:51.000 to regenerate. Because I am of the persuasion that not that long ago, I think that we have

01:09:56.040 had numbers on our side of regenerate because yes because people would always say oh well but

01:09:59.980 that's just because the churches were filled with false converts and they weren't really

01:10:03.140 there were plenty plenty of that i think two things can be true at once i think we had plenty

01:10:08.220 of false converts but i think we also still legitimately had um over 50 of the country

01:10:14.540 in the big scheme of things not that long ago um but with that 50 of the country truly regenerate

01:10:21.960 not just church attending, but saved, we were not discipling them to think like what we're

01:10:28.980 trying to advocate for today in categories. 0.97

01:10:32.420 It was just, it was a lot of pietism. 0.71

01:10:35.700 It was, you know, it was coming off of World War II, I'm thinking 1950s.

01:10:40.020 It was a lot of pietism, a lot of nihilism, kind of just, you know, there was a little 0.81

01:10:45.940 bit of a YOLO mentality coming off of World War I and II, you know, you only live once

01:10:50.920 And it's just, you know, let's just comfort and freedom and safety for the kids.

01:10:55.860 Give them a better life than the one that we had.

01:10:57.800 We've seen the atrocities, you know, of the world.

01:11:00.040 And here we are.

01:11:01.140 And we go to church on Sunday.

01:11:02.500 We put on our Sunday best and we honor the Lord.

01:11:04.440 And it just kind of stays there.

01:11:05.700 That's religion.

01:11:06.240 We do religion.

01:11:07.200 We do religion.

01:11:08.280 And I'm not even saying these people weren't saved.

01:11:10.040 I think we had numbers on our side, but the numbers we had were impotent numbers.

01:11:14.920 And so my whole point is to say, what can God do?

01:11:18.180 God can give us the numbers again, and we can have more properly equipped numbers that

01:11:24.440 are suited to the task to apply all of Christ to all of life, to not just have regenerate

01:11:29.380 hearts in pews on Sunday with 50% plus one of the country, but then have those same hearts

01:11:35.680 applying the scripture to markets and economies and politics and the whole nine yards.

01:11:41.120 God can do that.

01:11:42.540 What can God do?

01:11:43.500 But I think it's helpful to also at least consider the question, what does God do?

01:11:49.140 And in terms of history, both biblically and during the last 2,000 years of this gospel age,

01:11:55.800 top-down revival is a thing.

01:11:58.660 It most certainly is a thing.

01:12:00.360 And I think you can make a fairly strong argument that it's the majority report.

01:12:06.920 God does that more often than he does just this bottom-up revival.

01:12:10.560 And if God chooses to do that, and he gives us a Caesar-type individual, and we don't

01:12:17.320 have the freedoms we've had before because we've abused those freedoms, and our hearts

01:12:20.620 have turned from the Lord, and all those kinds of things, but God in his sovereignty uses

01:12:24.500 that guy, and maybe the first Caesar's terrible, but then a new one replaces him, and God gets

01:12:28.580 a hold of his heart, and he begins to mandate righteousness, just like kings in Israel that

01:12:32.920 would go back and forth.

01:12:33.780 And then we have a few generations of that that restores this Western culture and Christendom and people are mature again.

01:12:42.680 It's like, all right, then David Reese, run that commercial back, an armored republic, no king but Christ, yes and amen.

01:12:50.620 And all of that, for the record, again, is talking descriptively of what does God do, what has God done, and what might God do in the future.

01:12:59.860 none of that is saying um so let's form a secret alliance and go and storm the white house and um

01:13:07.200 and put in a king right yeah so just for the record right wing watch wes you got two thoughts

01:13:13.040 to close um i don't think it's a coincidence that the civil war um regardless of what you think

01:13:18.100 about it we lost over 600 000 anglo-saxon protestants good men not all of them not all

01:13:24.080 of them christians but some of the best robert e lee is probably the best man as far as character

01:13:28.640 and virtue this country has ever produced we lost so many of those kinds of men it's not a coincidence 0.57

01:13:33.740 that marxism communism and zionism really begin to rear their heads there at the end of the 19th

01:13:39.960 century that you lose that there's the destruction of the south during the reconstruction economic

01:13:44.940 destruction and then you have quickly arrive on the scene those marxism zionism world war one world

01:13:50.160 war two those things happen very quickly and how would the world be different if we had the

01:13:55.060 magnitude of millions of more sons and daughters that those men could have produced instead of

01:13:59.760 fighting the war that we did and consolidating everything under the federal government that i

01:14:04.820 mean that was really pretty early in our nation i'm reading a book on him and i just good night

01:14:09.780 each page i go farther and i'm like i don't know man i like like biden's looking kind of villain

01:14:17.220 status we'll have to do we'll have to do an episode because a couple people outside of the

01:14:21.380 like in irl as the as the youths say a couple people have said wait a minute abe lincoln so

01:14:26.940 we might have to tackle that yeah yeah like you know the expression lying lying abe right isn't

01:14:31.940 that what they called him i think so honestly no yeah abraham lincoln and the the civil war

01:14:37.800 it was terrible and none of that's to justify slavery but it's just to say that um to end that

01:14:43.720 um to try to end slavery uh with a war with the blood of our sons and daughters

01:14:49.340 um half a million of them half a million over yeah 650 000 um to do all that and uh for so

01:14:57.800 much of it to be uh actually not even just about slavery but um the guise of slavery in many ways

01:15:04.120 not saying that that wasn't a sincere motive but it was also a sincere motive uh to take away rights

01:15:10.320 from the states to actually undo that was one of the big first big significant undoings of our

01:15:16.880 republic that we're talking about this republic has been crumbling for quite some time that's

01:15:21.940 the point and i but i never thought of it like that west that's insightful to draw out uh not

01:15:26.540 just the the curse of the civil war i think the civil war was god's judgment um in in many ways

01:15:31.840 but um not just to draw that out but to say hey maybe it's not a coincidence that you have that

01:15:36.760 and then you get world war one world war two zionism infiltrating marxism infiltrate yeah we

01:15:43.840 get all those and and now you know it's like you you watch the news and it's like israel

01:15:51.600 or it's like sodomites for palestine you know and it's like it's it's literally it's just 0.73

01:15:59.080 neo-marxist or crazy zionist right um our our elected officials care more about ukraine and

01:16:06.560 israel than they do us and yeah and all ideas have consequences and they're not just hanging 0.59

01:16:13.600 and midair there there's a succession there's um yeah there's a line but here's here's the white 0.68

01:16:19.540 pill when jesus rose from the dead he had 11 cowards in an upper room i mean you get in a bus

01:16:24.300 crash that's the end of the movie that's the end of it and they conquered the west in a thousand

01:16:28.020 years they conquered the violent anglo-saxons the vikings they conquered the west not in 5 000 years 0.94

01:16:34.320 but in less than a thousand years to be western was to be christian yeah so he could do that with 0.97

01:16:39.120 11 uneducated fishermen that were by and large cowards in the first century underneath the

01:16:46.220 violent strong rule of a godless uh empire like rome there's not a question with as many millions 0.92

01:16:53.780 of god-fearing christians as we have that if he so wills he could do it again it wouldn't even be

01:16:58.480 hard it's white pill wednesday west i know white pill wednesday all right let's leave it there

01:17:02.000 white pill walmart wednesday all right later

01:17:09.120 Thank you.

The NXR Podcast - May 15, 2024

THE LIVESTREAM - Responding To Right Wing Watch ｜ “American Caesar” & The Constitution

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