The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Can A Baptist Be A Christian Nationalist？ w William Wolfe

00:00:00.000 All right, listen, guys, I get it.

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00:00:40.800 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries, and you are listening to another

00:00:44.820 episode of Theology Applied. In this particular episode, I was very privileged to welcome back

00:00:50.260 on the show for the second time now, William Wolfe. William Wolfe is, well, he worked for Trump.

00:00:58.080 That's all you got to need.

00:00:59.040 That's really all you need to know.

00:01:00.480 So everybody hates him.

00:01:01.680 I don't hate him.

00:01:02.500 I think he's great.

00:01:03.480 He is committed to the Lord Jesus Christ, and he's committed to not losing.

00:01:08.860 He and I are both Baptists, but we are both Baptists who believe that Baptists need to

00:01:13.340 get their act together, that we need to have a Christian nation, a distinctly Christian

00:01:18.840 nation.

00:01:19.320 We're both Baptists.

00:01:20.440 We're both Christian nationalists.

00:01:22.260 And in this episode, we want to speak to our Baptist brothers and say, hey, we need to

00:01:26.180 cut out this loser theology. And so I bring some theology to the table and so does William,

00:01:32.340 but he also brings some real good political theory. That's not my strong point, but he's been,

00:01:38.120 he worked in DC for 10 years and he worked in the Trump administration. He's worked at some

00:01:43.340 very high levels. He's knowledgeable and he's courageous. If you follow him on Twitter,

00:01:49.920 He is regularly gaining followers and also losing some here and there because he says

00:01:56.780 what he thinks and what he thinks is strongly biblically informed.

00:02:01.420 So William Wolfe is a good guy to tune into.

00:02:04.480 If he's talking, it's usually worth you and I listening.

00:02:08.260 So enjoy this episode with myself, Pastor Joel Webin, and William Wolfe.

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00:04:34.280 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:04:43.380 Hi, this is Pastor Joel with Right Response Ministries, and this is Theology Applied.

00:04:48.580 In this particular episode, I'm privileged to have as a special guest returning now for the

00:04:52.860 second time, William Wolfe. William, would you introduce yourself to our listeners?

00:04:58.500 Joel, thanks for having me back. It's good to know that I'm welcome back with Right Response

00:05:04.160 Ministries. I had no doubt about that. Great to be with you last time. Wonderful to be with you

00:05:09.300 again. Joel, I'm so encouraged by the content that you're producing with Right Response Ministries.

00:05:14.140 I think it's absolutely appealing to Christians everywhere, to Christian men, and particularly to

00:05:20.460 Baptists who are looking for a better political perspective, a better biblical perspective on

00:05:26.700 the issues that are facing us. So thank you for your work, and it's a pleasure to be back here.

00:05:31.520 Like you said, my name is William Wolfe. I am a former senior official in the Trump administration.

00:05:37.460 I served in the State Department and the Department of Defense. I spent over a decade

00:05:42.480 working in politics in Washington, D.C., and now I'm in Louisville, Kentucky. I finished up my

00:05:48.060 Masters of Divinity. I'm working on a Masters of Theology at THM in Philosophy and Theological

00:05:54.460 Studies as I'm examining the role, scope, and authorization of civil government across the

00:06:00.080 covenants, as this is a hot topic right now because we want to know what it is that God has

00:06:05.660 said the government should and shouldn't do. So I'm trying to sort of pivot in some ways from being

00:06:13.700 in the purely political world to helping Christians in particular and conservatives and men think

00:06:22.000 better about life in this fallen world and how to, in many ways, honor God as we strive to build

00:06:28.460 good things until Christ returns for ourselves and for our families.

00:06:33.840 Amen. That's great. Let me just maybe, as you were talking, I thought maybe we should start

00:06:39.760 this way. Let me throw out my theology and then you throw out yours. I want to see where we differ

00:06:44.820 because I think, you know, we've talked offline a little bit and I got a feel for who you are and

00:06:50.740 I'm excited about what you're doing, but I think there are some differences between us. I think

00:06:53.940 there's more commonality, but some differences, but I just want to confirm my suspicions, all right?

00:06:59.180 So I kind of would take my doctrine and put it in seven different categories in terms of, you know,

00:07:04.060 obviously there's other, I'm a head covering guy. I just, uh, forwarded Dale, uh, Dale Partridge's

00:07:08.460 book, um, a glory or a cover for glory, uh, which is coming out really soon with relearn.org. And

00:07:14.460 so, you know, so there's plenty of things. I mentioned head coverings just to say, there's

00:07:17.960 plenty of other doctrines that I hold. And I'm sure you do as well that don't make my top seven

00:07:22.140 haven't head covering. Isn't the top seven, about 20% of the women in my church actually cover,

00:07:27.940 you know, it's not something that we enforce. I teach on it maybe once every five years from

00:07:33.160 the pulpit you know um that 20 primarily is my wife and my three daughters so anyway so all that

00:07:38.680 being said you know that i'm not saying that that's one of my big things i'm just saying that

00:07:41.760 you know some guys will listen to this and they'll say that's all you believe and i'll be like no i

00:07:45.260 believe a lot more but here are the big seven number one um reformed confessionalism um so

00:07:51.660 not a la carte theology not calvinistic baptist right i did a video a while back where i said

00:07:56.820 And what's the difference between Votie, Bauckham, and John MacArthur?

00:08:02.500 They got like a quarter million views because people are like,

00:08:05.500 I thought they were the same.

00:08:06.520 I didn't know there was a difference.

00:08:07.520 And so I explained, being 1689 confessionally reformed,

00:08:11.220 reformed Baptist versus Calvinistic Baptist,

00:08:13.920 leaky dispensational, pre-mill versus all-mill, covenantal.

00:08:17.960 So when I say reformed confessionalism,

00:08:20.320 I mean that I am actually holding to a historically reformed confession of faith,

00:08:24.840 namely the second London Baptist 1689.

00:08:26.820 that's number one number two would be uh covenant theology and for me right now it would be um

00:08:32.300 probably most in line with like uh pascal uh denault like a 1689 you know or a particular

00:08:38.840 covenant you know reform baptist covenantalism 1689 federalism is probably where i would

00:08:43.380 hang my hat for now so uh reform confessionalism covenant theology and then i would say uh biblical

00:08:50.040 patriarchy not just complementarian but biblical patriarchy presuppositionalism rather than

00:08:55.300 Thomism. I'm not a Thomist. I'm fine with divine simplicity to a certain point. I'm fine with

00:09:00.960 impassibility, all those kinds of things. The divine cannot suffer. That's great. But I am

00:09:07.080 presuppositional, much more in line with Van Til. And then next would be Kuyperian. When I say

00:09:12.720 Kuyperian, I mean it the same way most people do when they say Calvinist, right? Not necessarily

00:09:17.040 every jot and tittle of Calvin's Institutes for the Christian Religion, but rather, you know,

00:09:21.720 if someone says I'm a Calvinist, they mean the five points, soteriology, reformed soteriology.

00:09:26.340 Kuyperian, I mean every square inch. So multiple spheres, sphere sovereignty, but Christ is Lord

00:09:32.500 over all of it. Not one square inch of all of earth that Christ doesn't cry out, mine. So Christ

00:09:38.000 is king over everything. And we want Christian arts. We want Christian schools. We want Christian

00:09:42.660 medicine. We want Christian government, the whole nine yards. So Kuyperian in that sense,

00:09:47.260 not agreeing with everything that Kuyper ever said. And then next would be general equity.

00:09:51.720 theonomist um and then last would be eschatology post-millennial so reformed confessionalism

00:09:57.800 covenant theology uh reformed confessionalism covenant theology biblical patriarchy

00:10:04.420 presuppositional rather than thomas kyperian rather than uh two kingdom including classic

00:10:09.760 two kingdom uh general equity uh theonomy and then uh post-millennialism so in the in those

00:10:16.280 kinds of categories where, where are me and you, uh, different, you know, or, or where are we the

00:10:21.400 same? What, what's your, what is your theology? We're both Baptist. What else? Yeah, it's right.

00:10:26.680 So, I mean, we're definitely both Baptist and that's, you know, my theology is very Baptistic

00:10:32.560 and, you know, a lot of, uh, the way I view a lot of my theology is, is through the, um,

00:10:39.860 is through the church, right? And so one of the things that really is a big point for me is

00:10:48.460 congregationalism, independent local churches who then willingly cooperate with some sort of

00:10:57.240 association, you know, to pool the resources for the spread in advance of the gospel in order to

00:11:02.020 help keep their doctrine in check, their doctrine in practice, et cetera. But it's interesting,

00:11:07.220 joel and i'll say up front i'm still i'm still we would agree on that just so you know so i'm

00:11:11.220 congregational also elder-led congregationalism which is elder-led congregationalism yeah

00:11:15.840 you know and and that is that's a 1689 by the common suffrage right you know and so that that's

00:11:21.400 how uh elders are ordained deacons are ordained so yeah um yeah and then church discipline certainly

00:11:26.600 i was chatting with a brother i ran into a pastor and he's um he's a baptist and he is a

00:11:32.860 elder ruled congregational. And I just, I just immediately threw a rocking issue on that. I was

00:11:38.540 like, yeah, like you are going to get an incredibly difficult church discipline case.

00:11:42.280 And then your elders are going to be on the hook for that decision. And there's no backstop of the

00:11:47.960 congregation. You know, you guys are going to make the call and it's going to rest on you without

00:11:52.060 having congregational buy-in. And so, uh, and so I was like, you know, that's one of the reasons

00:11:56.020 I think congregational is so important. It's like everybody votes on the front door membership,

00:12:00.360 everybody votes on the back door either moving on in good standing to another local church

00:12:04.820 or excommunication anyway so you and i are definitely on board with that so i i hear

00:12:09.740 one one difference so front door deacons so receiving removing congregational vote for

00:12:14.840 deacons and elders holding to a plurality of both deacons and elders and a male deaconate

00:12:20.080 as well as a male um eldership so i think that's 1689 westminster both of them um you can't have

00:12:26.460 female deacons. So, um, so I'm on the front door and back door on, on both ordained officers of

00:12:31.880 the church, the diaconate and eldership, not on the front door with membership. I was, and I got

00:12:37.000 tired of having that many members meetings. It created a lot of drama, um, in the church. And

00:12:42.340 I understand you tag it on to, you know, your Sunday night, you know, Sunday evening prayer

00:12:46.060 meeting and all those kinds of things. And you do it once every six weeks. And you know, the whole

00:12:49.400 nine marks kind of thing. I, you know, I drank the Kool-Aid. I know you did too, you know, and,

00:12:53.640 and you swam in the Kool-Aid, you know, and I drank it, and they've got some really good stuff

00:12:57.220 on polity, and so we would disagree on some other things, but they've got some really good church

00:13:00.900 polity stuff. I get all of it. This is where I landed with that. If it's in and out on deacon,

00:13:06.320 in and out on elder, only out on member, and the in is if you don't like the members that the elders

00:13:12.360 are letting into membership, we're the elected officers, and you have a vote on the elders,

00:13:17.480 and so in that sense, the congregation still has authority over the membership of the church

00:13:20.940 because, not directly with a choice of each member,

00:13:23.960 but they do, they have firing power of the elders.

00:13:26.560 So they can say to the elders,

00:13:28.000 you're our elected officers

00:13:29.100 and you're letting in some unregenerate people

00:13:31.720 into the church.

00:13:32.740 Sorry, buddo, you're out.

00:13:34.260 We're going to elect better elders

00:13:35.400 who will let regenerate members in.

00:13:37.080 And so that's the way I ease my conscience on that.

00:13:38.980 And that's not specified in the 1689,

00:13:41.100 the in on the membership level.

00:13:43.440 The out certainly is with Matthew 18,

00:13:46.200 tell it to the church.

00:13:47.040 Everybody's like, tell it to the church.

00:13:48.400 You know, you just tell the church the decision.

00:13:50.460 No, no, no.

00:13:50.940 It's not tell the decision that the elders already made about kicking someone out to

00:13:54.420 the church.

00:13:54.940 It's tell the matter to the church.

00:13:56.720 And if he does not listen to the church, then the church hands him over.

00:14:00.440 And so I think we're 100% on, on, on the same page when it comes to polity.

00:14:05.420 What else?

00:14:06.420 Very close.

00:14:06.880 So, so I spent, I became, so I grew a Presbyterian.

00:14:10.480 Um, and then I became a Christian and became a Baptist at the same time and got baptized

00:14:16.120 as a believer.

00:14:17.360 And I, and I'm fully bought into that.

00:14:19.280 And then I was at a church for a decade that used the New Hampshire Confession, which is a broader confession than the 1689.

00:14:28.400 And so I have not I'd not have to wrestle with can I subscribe to the 1689 to be a part of this church because I definitely could subscribe to the New Hampshire.

00:14:37.260 No problem. And so I subscribed to that and then moved here to Louisville.

00:14:41.820 And the church that I'm at in Louisville has been a bit of a revitalization project.

00:14:45.440 and their church covenant confession is an interesting amalgamation and it's neither

00:14:51.820 new hampshire it's new hampshire ish it's not 1689 so i have to say i've not reached a point

00:14:57.140 in my life where i have had to subscribe for the sake of a local church body to 1689 but i

00:15:02.560 i believe i'm moving in that direction and i actually just got uh to the judicious and

00:15:08.240 impartial reader uh as i and i plan to work my way through that the exposition of the 1689

00:15:14.180 And so in that sense, I am I'm trending in that direction.

00:15:19.200 And I think that's ultimately where I'm going to land for the long term.

00:15:21.880 I just haven't I haven't had to in a specific sign my name to it sort of way land on that.

00:15:27.900 But there's so much good there. I mean, there's so much good in the Westminster, too.

00:15:32.220 And, you know, obviously we're not Presbyterian, but the 1689 draws from that in many ways.

00:15:36.940 And that's one of the issues that our Baptist brothers are having right now is they're failing to account in some of the ways that as Baptists develop.

00:15:44.180 their own ecclesiology and baptismal theology they were still very happy to work alongside of

00:15:49.720 their reformed brethren in terms of pulling language particularly on the relationship of

00:15:53.960 the church and the state and other things so right so you can say uh you can say i'm trending uh you

00:15:59.700 know reformed baptist and i'm sure that's where i'll be here shortly i am i'm on board with biblical

00:16:06.520 patriarchy so i've been i've been growing joel it's been very helpful for me people say you know

00:16:10.700 like well have you ever been wrong or do you change your mind i'm like yeah i've been getting

00:16:14.820 more conservative as the last few years have gone along and realize i had bought into sort of these

00:16:19.880 these um halfway houses and these are sort of like negotiated compromises with the world of

00:16:26.420 evangelicalism that that that sound nice but when you get in there and you dig around you realize

00:16:32.220 like this is kind of structurally unstable you know like is this house really going to stand

00:16:36.780 when the winds come blowing. And so I've moved from complementarianism to biblical patriarchy.

00:16:42.880 That is something I certainly would express. I still I still from time to time use the word

00:16:49.260 complementarianism. But I mean something different by it. That's a little bit of a Marxist move. I

00:16:54.260 probably shouldn't do that. And, you know, so I, I, I believe that complementarianism is too much

00:17:01.100 of a negotiated settlement with egalitarianism and feminism. So I would sign on to biblical

00:17:07.840 patriarchy. And as it stands right now, my eschatology is optimistic amillennial. So

00:17:13.500 I have not fully come over to the post mill side, but I'm still exploring that. Again,

00:17:20.380 I'm in a period of time in my life where I'm finally digging into a lot of this in a way I

00:17:25.120 hadn't for the last 10 years because i was digging into you know the constitution and you know the

00:17:31.000 federal register and legislative process and things like that and so yeah if we were talking

00:17:36.940 about that i kind of put you on the spot what's your theology like if you were like what's your

00:17:40.940 political theory with like i would look i would look real dumb right now like wait like you have

00:17:46.400 a theology you have a good theology we differ on a couple things and you're still you know dotting

00:17:50.540 some i's and crossing some t's but like like that what what you know in theology if we were to move

00:17:57.700 over to the political realm and what joel knows in that you know what i mean like i it's it's far

00:18:02.360 less you know so part of the you know you're a highly i can tell just a little bit that we've

00:18:07.200 interacted like highly intelligent decorated you know successful individual which is and with a

00:18:13.340 spine and with you know some testosterone and wants to actually do something and wants to win

00:18:18.540 and a lot of baptists right now that's what we talked about you know before we started recording

00:18:22.020 but it's it just seems like some of our brothers which i mean in in their defense i want to say

00:18:28.360 i don't want to say it carefully because i'm trying to be effeminate or because i'm trying

00:18:32.220 to you know some of our baptist brothers don't seem like they want to win and and to steal man

00:18:36.860 the argument instead of just you know like straw manning um everybody every christian believes we

00:18:42.180 win the question i've posed it like this several times the question is um are we going is christ

00:18:48.040 progressively, how does Christ win? It's not if he wins. He wins and the church by virtue of having

00:18:55.960 union with Christ also wins. So the church wins because Christ wins. The question is, how does

00:19:00.840 Christ win? Does Christ win progressively throughout human history through the church?

00:19:06.240 Does Christ win through the church or does Christ win despite a losing church? I think that's part

00:19:12.820 of the question. Does Christ win? Does the church, does he just sustain his bride? But she's on the

00:19:19.000 ropes and she goes, you know, all 12 rounds and she's saved by the bell and then Christ, you know,

00:19:24.380 tags her out and comes in and decimates the enemy. Or is the church actually, the church

00:19:30.800 militant on earth? Is it progressively expanding and increasing and growing and sharpening its

00:19:36.880 doctrine, right? It took us 400 years just to figure out the God man because it's not easy,

00:19:41.080 right the hypostatic union and all this guy so like yes we want to hold to old truths we don't

00:19:46.660 want to be heretics the creeds are good confessions are good um but our our doctrine is getting better

00:19:53.140 it is it is getting better it's sharpening and and so progressing in our doctrine progressing in

00:19:58.240 our numerically like our numbers all these kinds of things the church is getting better and i know

00:20:03.600 that right now the church is is in some sense like we're in a weak point but you know it's not a

00:20:09.120 steady, constant, you know, trajectory up without any dips along the way. There's some dips and I

00:20:14.180 would argue we're in a dip right now, but I mean, you look 2000, would you rather be born today or

00:20:18.580 2000 years ago? Would you rather be like, there's, I mean, just so, and that's Christ. That's, that's,

00:20:23.660 we're drinking Christendom. It's all, it's Christ blessings. He's the source. Every good and perfect

00:20:29.060 gift comes down from the father of lights, lifespans, global hunger, poverty, all these

00:20:34.700 things, it's like, this is Christianity. And the only reason, I know you agree, the only reason

00:20:39.300 classical liberalism and principled pluralism had the luxury of even the appearance of viability is

00:20:45.440 because they were living off the fumes of a prior Christ of them. And when that arose, when the

00:20:52.900 foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? And so you and I, we both, we get there in

00:20:58.680 different, you know, we get there in different ways. Like I read Stephen Wolf's book, you know,

00:21:02.060 And it's like, I like what he's going for.

00:21:05.300 I get there a different way, right?

00:21:06.820 I'm not a Thomas.

00:21:07.860 So as a presuppositional guy, I'm a big fan of telling people, whether they're Christian

00:21:11.760 or not, hey, you know, I can argue from nature and I can argue from, you know, reason.

00:21:15.580 I can argue from this and I can argue.

00:21:16.940 But God also wrote a book and I'm kind of fond of using the book, you know, like that's,

00:21:23.000 you know, that in a nutshell, that's the presuppositionalist versus, yeah, God wrote

00:21:25.960 a book.

00:21:26.300 I like the book.

00:21:27.020 I use the book and I don't think it's circular logic.

00:21:29.600 God bless Sproul, you know, but, and so anyways.

00:21:32.060 All that being said, like we get there different ways, but you and I, what I like about you

00:21:35.500 is you're actually trying to find solutions.

00:21:39.120 You're not just like the infallible Oracle I tweeted today, you know, like the infallible

00:21:44.660 Oracle who always knows the problem for the last 12 years, I told you this was coming,

00:21:50.520 you know, but you're like saying, okay, like I saw this coming.

00:21:53.440 You saw it for 12 years and praise God for his grace through you.

00:21:56.640 You've been a blessing.

00:21:57.920 I've seen the last five years.

00:21:59.660 So you got me beat.

00:22:01.140 But you know what I'm doing right now that's really unique?

00:22:03.560 You should try it.

00:22:04.940 Solutions, trying to find solutions, you know?

00:22:07.660 And so what are some of those?

00:22:09.000 What are some of the things you're working on right now?

00:22:10.920 What do Baptists need to do?

00:22:12.380 Yeah, well, I mean, I think the idea of winning is so important.

00:22:18.300 And knowing that Christ has won and that it's changed the world now, today.

00:22:23.660 You know, I heard this anecdote recently.

00:22:26.040 It's pretty funny.

00:22:26.500 kid comes to his dad and says, hey, dad, how does the world hang in space? And the dad's like,

00:22:33.180 it's on the back of a turtle. And the kid goes, well, what's underneath that turtle?

00:22:38.840 His dad's like, another turtle. And the kid's like, well, what's under that turtle? And he's

00:22:42.960 like, kid, it's turtles all the way down. And when you look at modernity, Joel, when you look at the

00:22:49.000 modern world, when you look at the way that the world has changed since the cross and the

00:22:55.840 resurrection. It is Christendom all the way down. It is the grace of Christ in the gospel that is

00:23:05.000 spreading across the globe in a way that we didn't see. I mean, we have an Old New Testament,

00:23:10.680 they're cohesive, but what has happened post the cross has changed the world. It has brought a

00:23:17.500 revolution of understanding, of living, of knowing the creator God and exploring his creation

00:23:24.900 and advancements i mean and secularists and atheists can see this and i just want to ask

00:23:32.360 my baptist brothers in the 21st century why can't you like why can't you see what the atheists see

00:23:39.360 when they write when tom holland i'm not actually sure if he's still considering himself an atheist

00:23:43.860 but when he writes dominion and he can see that christianity changed the world you know that it

00:23:50.200 brought about freedom and prosperity and so so there are those are physical effects right that's

00:23:55.660 not the point of the gospel but that's an effect of the gospel and and to reduce the gospel to

00:24:01.720 um you know the gospel is a message it's a message of a king who has conquered repent bend the knee

00:24:08.540 bow and accept the forgiveness of sins and put your hope and faith and trust in jesus christ

00:24:13.780 you know who who was and is and is to come and now go live in this world that your creator god

00:24:20.140 has given you to shape and to take dominion over and to fulfill the mandates that have been renewed

00:24:25.940 in christ and so actually on stephen wolf that's something to be interested in getting your take

00:24:30.360 on this and this is where we start to at least i start to come against other theologians like

00:24:35.720 van drunen and others like i think stephen's very good on the continuation of the dominion mandate

00:24:40.740 and the fact that grace does not vitiate nature but it helps restore it and so even now here in

00:24:46.480 the 21st century i want to embrace the grace of the gospel and the forgiveness of sins and to know

00:24:52.140 the spiritual blessings in christ but then i also want to go out into nature and work you know with

00:24:57.820 my family with my community with my church with my country you know to to bring about what god

00:25:03.620 has promised us for as long as i have breath you know so i think that's where our baptist brethren

00:25:09.340 have have sunk into anabaptist escapism or spiritual pietism and even if they're interested

00:25:17.660 in trying to do good things in the culture really they've reduced all of the cultural mandate to

00:25:23.880 evangelism and evangelism is awesome but it is not the cultural or dominion mandate yep well said

00:25:30.740 um on the stephen wolf thing you know and for the record i've actually uh recently have some

00:25:36.800 friends of mine um that that uh they were convinced that you and steven wolf were brothers

00:25:42.920 that's not true right you guys are not brothers i'm not here to i'm not here to confirm or deny

00:25:50.000 such no come on come on you're not brothers you look nothing alike brothers in christ

00:25:54.860 right brothers in christ but i mean there's some people who legitimately thought yeah the wolf

00:25:58.760 brothers you know and like uh like like you guys were like this team troll you know like like that

00:26:05.340 you planned it. Like one's a Presbyterian, one's a Baptist. And this is just all just a big joke

00:26:09.860 or something. I was like, no, man, this is like, these guys are not related. They're serious. This

00:26:14.220 is legit. Um, yeah. So, but, but with Wolf on the, you know, um, you know, opposing Van Drude

00:26:20.220 and Michael Horton, you know, um, the gold standard of radical two kingdom that comes out

00:26:24.660 of Westminster Escondido, which I was in San Diego. So I'm, you know, was, was a part of that,

00:26:29.360 you know and and um or around that i should say and and have some guys who you know that i would

00:26:35.940 still be friends with we would just we but we would strongly strongly disagree um on a lot and

00:26:42.320 yeah van juden essentially one of the things that he argued is that basically nothing will actually

00:26:48.820 nothing of the physical world whatsoever will actually transfer over into the life to come

00:26:54.180 into the new heavens um except for our physical body which you know you kind of have to include

00:26:59.040 that one without being a heretic, you know, not denying, you know, the physical resurrection.

00:27:03.660 But that's, you know, that that's it. And, and, you know, and it gets into, you know, like Peter's

00:27:09.420 epistles and, you know, like, or even like Amazing Grace, right? Like, so I use the Cantus Christi

00:27:14.500 in our church, you know, that comes out of Christchurch in Moscow, their hymnal slash

00:27:19.780 Psalter. And, and it's back to like a different rendering of Amazing Grace. One of the stanzas,

00:27:25.580 you know the earth will soon dissolve like snow the sun forbear to shine and uh and it changes

00:27:31.840 that you know and saying like okay like we we think that this age um is going to be rolled up

00:27:36.800 like a garment it's good but that um that it's not going to be a new earth in the sense of another

00:27:41.480 earth but it's actually going to be this earth made new the the new heavens coming to this new

00:27:46.300 earth is glorified alps glorified himalayas glorified mississippi delta whatever that's

00:27:51.660 going to be, and glorified, resurrected, you know, physical bodies. I'm not going to get another

00:27:55.280 body. It's going to be this body. And you don't have to hold that view to be within the realm of

00:27:59.940 orthodoxy. But it does make a difference in the way that you view the world, the way that you

00:28:04.440 view the Christian life, and the way that you live. And so anyways, all that being said, Stephen

00:28:08.740 Wolfe is not a radical, you know, two kingdom guy. He's very much, I think, in keeping with

00:28:14.680 most of the reformers, not necessarily all, but most of the reformers. Calvin, I'm pretty convinced

00:28:19.640 that Stephen Wolf is, is channeling, I think a lot of inner Calvin. And so, and yet people lost

00:28:27.160 their minds and have a huge, they think that he's like, that he's arguably not even Orthodox. And

00:28:32.420 you read his book and it's like, and it's a beast to get through. It's 400 pages. And I had to really

00:28:37.340 power through at certain points. I felt like the Good Burger, you know, the old Nickelodeon movie

00:28:44.480 where like uh it's keenan and kell and like one of them's like reading and he's like i know some

00:28:49.800 of these words you know it's kind of how i felt yeah but uh but yeah man it's i like steven gets

00:28:55.900 there one way somebody gets there another way but it's it's fun it's just funny to me that um

00:29:00.560 that i'm noticing it's like the the big presbyterian baptist divide and yet ironically

00:29:06.600 um some of these baptists and then some of these westminster escondido radical you know radical 2k

00:29:13.100 guys actually like they almost sound like echoes of one another they're like on the on the same page

00:29:19.260 very very similar yeah well let me talk about that for a second well particularly in our baptist

00:29:24.860 world this is part of what i want to do again it's like um i want to help purge baptists from

00:29:29.700 adopting loser theology right like and and this is where it's like you have to think about people's

00:29:35.700 roles and functions right like the vast majority of faithful baptist pastors they look they can

00:29:41.760 focus on preaching the gospel week in and week out, shepherding their flock. And if they aren't

00:29:47.080 really interested in political theory, that's fine, but they still need to help their people

00:29:51.980 live their lives. We go to church, and even if you have, by God's grace, a glorious full Lord's

00:29:57.720 day, not just a Lord's morning, where you do Sunday school, regular service, and an evening

00:30:03.420 service, a Wednesday night Bible study, even that, overall, comparatively, that's a drop in the

00:30:08.480 bucket of of the rest of our weeks that of this world that god has given us to live in and to

00:30:14.000 pursue and i would argue to to fill with his image bearers and to take dominion of so you need to

00:30:19.580 quit people but van drunen and his thought and the radical two kingdom thought has been translated

00:30:24.780 into baptist life by jonathan lehman and and also frankly by andrew walker um with lehman in his

00:30:31.800 book political church and then andrew walker and liberty for all they they very much adopt a van

00:30:37.460 Drunin framework of sort of reducing everything down to this mere conception of the continuation

00:30:43.440 of the Noahic covenant, but sort of vitiates the dominion mandate. And it really, it sort of

00:30:50.780 parses out, you know, the spiritual and the physical world in a way that I don't think that

00:30:56.780 is keeping with the reformed tradition or is actually biblical. So I think we have work to do

00:31:01.720 in uh baptist circles in particular to get van drunen out because some of our quote unquote

00:31:07.720 like some of our leading baptist public theologians and political commentators you know think of

00:31:13.540 russell moore as well who you know who was very influential in baptist circles kind of have have

00:31:20.160 laundered radical to kingdom theology into baptist circles which is why and i would make this

00:31:27.420 counterpoint we can get into it with i see some of our our good brothers in the g3 world who think

00:31:34.080 christian nationalism is sort of political presbyterianism and i i just i do not think

00:31:41.160 that that is that an accurate way to describe what we're talking about uh because we're we're not and

00:31:47.600 i think again they're getting that because they are adopting sort of some political this is a

00:31:52.860 funny move here, right? Track with me. They're adopting some bad Presbyterian political theology

00:31:57.980 that then makes them think that a better, more robust political theology is sort of like

00:32:03.540 Presbyterian theology applied to politics. And it's not that. So I don't know if you have anything

00:32:10.040 you want to say on that, but we've got work to do in Baptist circles. And that's where I think

00:32:14.500 you're leading the way. And I hope to contribute significantly to a robust Baptist political

00:32:20.780 theology and public theology that does not consign us to the role of sideline losers and i mean when

00:32:28.420 you look at what russell moore has said that man thinks that everybody but christians should have

00:32:33.680 power and they talk as if the people you should trust the least with power in this country are

00:32:41.940 those who have been born again and indwelt with the holy spirit and actually joel the people have

00:32:47.320 born again and indwelt with the holy spirit are the people who i want helping lead that's right

00:32:52.420 this country so i mean that was a lot of thoughts there but you know no that's super trusted with

00:32:56.920 power and if we can't we have bad theology right amen um yeah it's you know rush duny said it's

00:33:04.480 not weather but which and that little quip um will go a long way with a lot of you know so it's like

00:33:11.300 well chrysidum was bad you know and like uh the spanish crusades were better right exactly so it's

00:33:19.160 like the spanish crusades or you know or they were um they were picking on baptists you know

00:33:23.740 and and you know baptists were you know and to be fair it was more than just picking on baptists

00:33:27.820 it was like picking out their tongue and cutting off their fingers and putting them in prison and

00:33:31.200 like yeah there were problems there were problems but 60 million dead babies is kind of a problem

00:33:36.960 you know what i mean and cutting off the penis of little boys is is kind of a problem you know

00:33:42.620 like i it's not whether but which right secularism has not been an upgrade right like and and and

00:33:49.380 here's the problem though is is ever since the enlightenment you know i would track a lot of

00:33:54.460 stuff back back to the enlightenment you know but like uh the victors get to write the history books

00:33:59.500 you know and and so as you know culture and society began to move away from from god and and

00:34:05.820 begin to you know be engulfed in materialism and then and they had to have a way to answer these

00:34:10.900 questions like one you know if you're if you're going to do away with theism you know one of the

00:34:14.540 things you have to account for is how does the world even exist you know so in comes darwin and

00:34:18.560 so you have like the you know the the the horsemen that kind of usher in the secular age you know

00:34:23.520 you've got on the the psychology side you've got freud and you've got darwin you know on the

00:34:28.160 materialistic side you know and then you've got uh freud darwin you've got marx you know when it

00:34:33.780 comes to economics and political theory and all these kinds of things which marks i mean his like

00:34:37.700 his daughter you know killed herself uh he wouldn't work a single day in his life when his

00:34:42.320 when his family was starving like he a man wouldn't bathe i keep the man the man went to baths

00:34:47.340 because he thought it was bourgeoisie to take a bath right he was a he was a horrible he was a

00:34:52.880 horrible man he said i have no higher aim um than to uh than to disprove god yeah you know and like

00:34:58.500 he hated god he said the only way to destroy the heavenly father is to destroy the earthly father

00:35:03.180 black lives matter picked up that you know and ran with it um which is you know it is always a

00:35:08.420 little bit funny that you know there's plenty of useful idiots you know like the three women you

00:35:12.660 know so-called founders of black lives matter there's always useful idiots useful black idiots

00:35:16.980 useful white idiots you all kinds of different colors of idiots be careful sociological descriptions

00:35:22.440 nobody has a monopoly no ethnicity has a monopoly on wisdom or idiocy i've come to find out

00:35:30.200 but the point is um but there are always people behind useful idiots it's not just like when it

00:35:36.580 comes to protesting that some of these things even tracking back to the civil rights movement

00:35:40.340 like we're gonna have to rewrite history on the 1960s we're gonna have to do some of that work

00:35:45.220 and and i know it's not fun and i know it's icky you know and like whoa there slow down um but i

00:35:51.480 know you read we talked about this but like i i read in uh early 2021 and i think you read it like

00:35:56.380 a year ago or so but age of entitlement was like that was that was a red pill for me you know that

00:36:01.540 book and think oh my goodness like did we get some of this wrong but all the way back to the

00:36:05.140 enlightenment my point is the victors get to write the history books and one of the things that they

00:36:08.660 did was um they get to title time periods the dark ages the enlightenment so what what's what's

00:36:15.560 enlightening um rebellion against god casting off the bonds bursting them apart right that's

00:36:22.440 enlightenment? That's liberation. That's freedom. What is oppression? What is primitive, Neanderthals,

00:36:31.860 dark ages, when people believed in God? Now, again, that's not to say there aren't abuses

00:36:38.640 in Christendom. You got the Roman Catholic Church involved in Christendom for Pete's sake,

00:36:43.420 so of course there's going to be some abuses, but my goodness, again, not whether, but which.

00:36:49.700 And I think that's the part that people keep forgetting.

00:36:51.680 They think that neutrality is a myth.

00:36:54.840 That's the whole problem.

00:36:55.780 It comes down, and I think that there's a lot of people, they were raised in this very

00:37:00.140 unique time period in 6,000 years of human history, because yes, I'm a young earth guy.

00:37:08.280 6,000 years of human history.

00:37:10.600 Think about this.

00:37:11.860 So Christ didn't even come until 2,000 years ago.

00:37:14.580 Christ, he's the seed.

00:37:15.920 I tell you the truth, unless a seed goes into the ground and dies, it remains alone.

00:37:19.700 but if it dies it bears much fruit he was buried in the tomb he died he rose again that's this

00:37:25.140 mustard seed and it's growing it's filling the earth a stone cut by and i know we would just

00:37:29.200 you know you're you're optimistic all mill i'm post mill but daniel two passages and isaiah

00:37:33.820 chapter two passages flocking to mount zion isaiah 65 passages um that the youth will die at a

00:37:40.480 hundred that's not a dispensational pre-mill uh literal thousand year millennium it can't be

00:37:45.660 because death, there is no death then. But the youth will die at 100. Meaning right now, we say

00:37:50.880 today, somebody dies at 65, and we say they were so young. Dude, if somebody lived to be 65 150

00:37:55.840 years ago, we'd say, whoa, he was ancient. But that's the thing, is Christendom continues to

00:38:01.360 grow. Lifespans increase to where if somebody dies at 100, one day we'd say, that guy's young.

00:38:06.900 And it says that no more death in infancy, that babies aren't being murdered, and they're not

00:38:13.220 dying and we see that already women died in childbirth babies i mean if you read the puritans

00:38:18.620 if their children made it to adulthood like like two out of ten kids that was a win that was like

00:38:24.500 that was pretty good you know statistics and so my point is like all these things are happening

00:38:28.960 um but but that's what we see is you know four thousand years in the old covenant um and then

00:38:35.780 you see two thousand years of christendom from christ he dies um but this is really and correct

00:38:40.420 to be if I'm wrong, but I feel like this is one of the first major points in history that you have

00:38:45.140 Christendom receding. Christendom receding. You had times without it. Sure. But, but have you had

00:38:52.240 times post it where you had it, but now it's receding that creates a real, nobody does theology

00:38:59.020 in a vacuum. We all in providentially and God's providence are placed in a particular time and

00:39:03.900 place. And, and right now for our lives. And I think me, some of the younger guys get it more

00:39:09.140 because we've been in this pot for 30 years, 35 years,

00:39:14.520 instead of other guys who have been in this pot for 65 years.

00:39:16.820 They're more shaped by it.

00:39:18.120 But even 65 years, if you pan out 6,000 years,

00:39:21.560 it's a microcosm and it's a very, very unique microcosm.

00:39:25.560 And what's unique about it?

00:39:26.660 It's one of the first times in human history

00:39:28.500 that you, not that you have no Christendom

00:39:30.540 because we had dark times before,

00:39:32.180 but that you have post-Christendom

00:39:33.660 where Christendom is receding

00:39:35.200 and something is taking its place.

00:39:37.380 And as those two ships of Christendom on its way out and secularism, you know, secular humanism on its way in, as those two ships kind of come and they pass each other, right, that Christendom is partially receded and secularism is partially, then you have the optic of neutrality.

00:39:54.620 and you might say that's not an optic. It's been going on for 50 years. Classical liberalism has

00:40:01.180 worked. For 130 years, classical liberalism. It's like, yeah, yeah, but pan out 6,000 years. 130

00:40:06.200 years is still these two massive ships. We're tracking back to King Alfred. That's 1,000 years

00:40:11.780 of Christendom. You could track back to Constantine. That's 1,500 years of Christendom.

00:40:15.700 So your 130 years of this experiment working is a drop in the bucket. What I'm talking about

00:40:21.160 is a 1500 year old ship moving out to sea and and this other ship that my gosh i hope it's not 1500

00:40:29.100 years long moving in and those two for 130 years give or take overlapping and giving the appearance

00:40:36.740 a thin veil of of there's this this principled pluralistic idea that actually what it doesn't

00:40:44.580 it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't and i think the guys who have only been in this overlapping moment

00:40:50.940 for 30 years can more easily see the lack of viability than the guys who have built careers

00:40:57.680 and ministries and whole worldviews and ways of the systems of thinking and political thought

00:41:04.020 for 60 years. And I'm sympathetic to those guys because that is hard. Like if I had been

00:41:10.240 operating and building and teaching lectures about this thing working for 60 years, I'd be

00:41:15.700 really convinced that it actually works but i don't think it does right one i think joel that

00:41:21.340 this is the inescapable starting point of christian nationalism and this is where i i wish that all of

00:41:28.480 our baptist brothers wherever they're located you know whatever their organizations whatever

00:41:33.740 their affiliations would ask themselves is there such a thing as a secular state

00:41:39.780 can can there ever be a truly secular state a neutral state a state that doesn't have any

00:41:48.460 metaphysical commitments to a to a religion to the christian religion uh and then what is it going to

00:41:56.180 look like for christians to operate inside of that and the answer is a resounding no and and so

00:42:02.100 you know what whether they say what we see things like you know even if we could baptize

00:42:07.620 baptized America would be a Christian nation

00:42:10.500 because there's non-Christians in it.

00:42:12.100 Like, okay, that's not really the point here, brother.

00:42:15.520 Real quick, that's so funny

00:42:17.500 because that's never stopped Baptists before.

00:42:19.660 We say, well, we believe in regenerate church membership.

00:42:22.340 Yeah, we do.

00:42:22.760 But we also understand that man looks at the outward appearance,

00:42:26.640 God alone sees the heart.

00:42:27.500 We don't have, why do we have church discipline?

00:42:30.060 Right.

00:42:30.440 If we only baptize regenerate people.

00:42:32.920 Um, we don't baptize upon, um, uh, definitive knowledge of regeneration.

00:42:37.740 We baptize upon what a profession can a nation profess God in its founding documents, in

00:42:45.480 its rhetoric, in its public, if, if we baptize professors, nations can profess.

00:42:52.020 Well, right.

00:42:52.780 And, and this is, there is, there's such a great categorical confusion in regards to

00:42:57.340 again, what is the, what is the role and authorization of the civil government of

00:43:02.240 the magistrate and the role and the authorization of the ecclesial government, the pastor,

00:43:08.240 the church body, whatever, what have you, a denomination.

00:43:12.180 And the fact that you would have a ruler, a leader, a governing body, the United States

00:43:18.700 Congress and our president recognize that, you know, the Lord is the one true God and

00:43:25.240 that it is critical that all of our laws are adopted with standards of biblical righteousness

00:43:31.800 and justice and fairness as applied to our current situation in the United States of

00:43:37.400 America, that can make us a Christian nation with literally hundreds, well, let's hope

00:43:44.120 not hundreds, with tens of millions of non-Christians within us.

00:43:47.720 And the fact that our government is doing what it should do in terms of recognizing

00:43:53.840 where its authority is derived from, what the only sustainable principles of justice

00:43:59.140 and morality are for the keeping of the peace, for the passing of good laws, for doing right,

00:44:05.640 for commending what is right, and for punishing what is wrong, that's not a salvific statement

00:44:11.180 about every single soul that is within their jurisdiction. It is a general statement about

00:44:16.940 the disposition of that government, of that ruler, of that collective magistrate. And if they do that,

00:44:23.880 they are christian and and yet at the same time that does not mean that in any way that they

00:44:29.540 should be sort of they shouldn't be in the church and church shouldn't be in the state and they

00:44:34.380 shouldn't be telling people that that they're christians that aren't the government has no

00:44:38.360 and the government has no business making a salvific pronunciation upon what's happening

00:44:43.320 within your heart and your soul nobody is arguing that nobody's arguing that in fact that is what

00:44:48.520 was wrong with with roman the holy roman empire that you know the catholicism was the pope is

00:44:55.780 over here saying you're actually you're going to hell because you don't you know because you're

00:44:59.600 not towing the line with my political program nobody is advocating for that today and yet then

00:45:04.860 we have also forgotten you talk about this too is that it is good and just and right for governments

00:45:10.400 to recognize that god is king and ruler christ is king and to have you know good and just laws

00:45:16.000 that teach the populace what morality is and points them to orients them to heavenly truth

00:45:23.320 without being the ones responsible for the living the delivering the packet of the gospel and saving

00:45:30.300 grace you know i would hope that if we lived in a just society a christian nation that you know

00:45:36.100 that all of a sudden you know close down all the strip clubs and you know close things on sundays

00:45:42.260 and band drag shows and you know that somebody would wonder like well wait a minute what is

00:45:47.900 right or wrong here well what's the right thing to do and where can i go get guidance on that from

00:45:53.740 and would find themselves in a church and that is not the government usurping the role of the

00:45:58.860 church or taking the keys of the kingdom in any way amen um even with like the sabbath like so

00:46:04.740 you said so many good things i want to comment on a couple but like um you said closing things

00:46:08.720 down on sunday uh yes and amen right there you know like in terms i think one of the things that

00:46:12.920 our baptist brothers are concerned about is wrongful binding of the conscience um and one

00:46:17.360 of my friends i just said the other day that i thought i thought it was so insightful and really

00:46:21.060 helpful that um the state right so first we're not talking we we 100 both of us agree that there

00:46:27.320 must be a separation in terms of spheres a separation of church and state we're not asking

00:46:32.420 right well okay yeah so that's where we would differ so i would say spheres so for me kingdoms

00:46:38.640 so you can say kingdom church and state luther had some of that idea and then you can go back

00:46:42.180 augustine city of god city of man and you know the classic two kingdom kind of calvin you know

00:46:46.240 picked up on some of that and it's you know it would be you know sacred and common so kingdoms

00:46:50.360 sacred and common you know or church and state uh whereas i would refer to those as spheres more

00:46:55.260 in the kyperian framework um and for me i i do believe in two kingdoms but i would be very much

00:47:00.600 align with uh joe boot in that regard i would say that the two kingdoms are light and dark

00:47:05.280 um so it's not common and sacred um that that it's it's it's all sacred um but but there is

00:47:12.200 a kingdom of light and dark and wherever you find so now moving to sphere so i i often say

00:47:17.200 let me let me make just go ahead and i think this is important though is part of the kingdom

00:47:21.980 distinction is also spiritual and natural right like spiritual natural conscience the internal

00:47:28.820 and external, where we would recognize that the government has a right to direct your external

00:47:35.240 actions, but they do not have the right or the ability. They don't even have the ability to do

00:47:41.680 it, to judge what's going on in your conscience and in your spirit. But that doesn't mean that

00:47:47.460 they don't have the right to enforce certain external actions upon you. Again, not a matter

00:47:53.600 of profession or not a matter of saying things you don't believe but so that's another important

00:47:59.500 distinction in the classical kingdom is spiritual natural yep yeah yeah yeah um and and i would have

00:48:06.480 some disagreements with that but uh but i i know what you're saying and i do agree in terms of the

00:48:11.340 um forcing in terms as it as it regards to the conscience um but i but i yeah so with with the

00:48:17.240 sabbath i'll make that point real quick but um the government can a christian government can

00:48:21.040 enforce a day of rest, but they are, not that they're not allowed to, they are incapable

00:48:26.320 because they're not Christ of enforcing a day of worship. That's the difference. So when we talk

00:48:32.720 about Sabbatarian laws, they can shut down institutions and say, you will get a fine.

00:48:37.280 There will be a penalty. You cannot be open on the Lord's day. There's six days to work.

00:48:40.820 So they can issue with their civil authority, an official day of rest, but only the Lord Jesus

00:48:47.580 Christ can make the heart of an individual man, make that a day of worship.

00:48:52.280 Amen.

00:48:53.000 Right?

00:48:53.280 So that's a wonderful way of saying it.

00:48:55.640 So we're not talking about, we're not saying that we're going to force conversions.

00:48:59.500 And we're not talking about a Protestant Pope.

00:49:02.180 I love Doug Wills.

00:49:03.480 Somebody said about Doug Wills.

00:49:04.720 Drink.

00:49:05.560 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:06.260 Well, I love like Doug.

00:49:07.680 You have a sparkling water.

00:49:08.840 I don't know.

00:49:10.500 John MacArthur approved.

00:49:12.700 Yeah, so Doug Wills, somebody said about him on Twitter.

00:49:16.140 I thought it was so funny because he doesn't comment very much, but he surfaced a little

00:49:19.780 bit with, uh, with Michael O'Fallon recently.

00:49:21.500 Cause Michael, you know, kept asking, you know, like, who's going to be this Protestant

00:49:24.480 magisteria, you know, this, uh, yeah, well, so Doug actually chimed in and he normally

00:49:30.860 doesn't, you know, but he like chimed in and he said the same guy who's in charge of the

00:49:34.820 free market.

00:49:37.020 And, uh, and Michael, that's because it's Doug Wilson.

00:49:41.240 and yeah and so and so michael didn't like that and uh somebody one of my followers commented on

00:49:48.100 and said um he said majestic isn't he it's like a great white shark it's elusive and secret but

00:49:53.940 every now and then it breaches you know like and you know and it was just so funny like um and then

00:49:58.860 michael you know kind of like went back and then dug again just like in two tweets just dismantled

00:50:03.380 the entire argument and say that like it's um that's the beauty of of sphere sovereignty um

00:50:09.700 that's the beauty of separation. So I just think it would be really helpful because I'm, you know,

00:50:13.920 I did a video, a live video on Monday and Josh Bice, God bless him. He, uh, he tuned in and he

00:50:19.120 got in the chat and, you know, and he was talking to me a little bit and I tried to address his

00:50:21.920 questions and I was being as charitable as possible and saying this and saying that.

00:50:25.100 And he's been a good sport, you know, like we've been picking on him. He's been picking on us,

00:50:29.100 you know, like, and we're a lot, like we're men, right? So like Scott's, you know, had a couple

00:50:32.640 tweets and I'm like, Oh, that's a dumb tweet, you know? And, um, and that's, that's not, that's not

00:50:38.400 harsh. You're allowed to say that. And Scott, in his defense, he also can take it because I don't

00:50:44.160 think he's effeminate. And I don't think Josh is effeminate. I think they're actually men and God

00:50:47.840 bless them. I'm grateful for them. But all that being said, Josh, you know, might listen to this

00:50:51.740 and I hope he does. And I want to listen to it, some of the stuff that they put out. But if he

00:50:56.120 does listen to this, one of the things that I'm sure he would be pleading for is could you define

00:51:00.920 some terms? Could you please get particular? So let me, can I just ask you some things and then

00:51:07.020 And then maybe you could ask, because not every Christian nationalist is equal.

00:51:12.140 We're not all the same, but we do have some specifics.

00:51:16.820 And I think that's where we're passing each other in the night, you know, with some of

00:51:19.700 the G3 guys or Michael O'Fallon, you know, or us.

00:51:23.000 So you're a Christian nationalist, yes or no?

00:51:26.640 Yes.

00:51:27.700 Yes.

00:51:28.060 Do you believe that we should have a state-run church or a church-run state?

00:51:34.480 No.

00:51:35.740 To either of those.

00:51:37.020 Right. So then who do you believe? Let me ask another question. Do you believe that at the federal level, should there be an official national church, Presbyterian or Baptist or something like that?

00:51:51.060 i don't think so no um but but this is really interesting joel is that so much of this

00:51:57.960 conversation is a matter of questions of prudence right like and this is why i'm trying to dig into

00:52:05.340 what the bible you know what does the bible say what does you know what you know do the exegesis

00:52:09.640 what does the bible say like so like if you know and people have a really hard time with theory

00:52:15.280 people who have struggled with critical thinking always want to latch on to concretes and to

00:52:22.340 exceptions and they struggle with abstracts and it's kind of like it's a question we used to call

00:52:27.560 it like sort of like blue sky thinking like just imagine try to come up with something so you know

00:52:33.600 we should all ask ourselves if um if nine we'll use nine because it's an odd number and a vote

00:52:40.200 could be one uh and it's the fellowship the ring so that's great too but if nine christians washed

00:52:45.320 up on a desert island and not nine christians washed up on an island and they had their bibles

00:52:51.100 and they were trying to come up with a system of government what what is in bounds and what's out

00:52:57.400 of bounds and honestly i think you'd have a pretty hard time you're again like the question of like a

00:53:02.640 national church which i reject i do not agree with and i think is imprudent um and and arguably

00:53:08.660 could be unbiblical but also i think you would have a hard time if if depending on what the

00:53:14.740 relationship of that church was to the government you would have a hard time saying that's completely

00:53:20.140 inadmissible but as soon as you start saying that the government can tell that church who counts as

00:53:25.400 a christian or not well now we're out of bounds we're out of bounds red flag red flag red flag

00:53:29.500 but um anyway no i don't support that i wouldn't want to see it in the american setting where they

00:53:34.200 have it in the english setting right they have it in you know that that's our heritage in many ways

00:53:38.860 we came out of those who were part of a national church um and i and that's part of the reason why

00:53:44.380 we fled that's right yeah because so no i don't want that uh so what i would say is at the federal

00:53:50.500 level it should be creedal you know and there's some of this is wilson language also but uh it

00:53:55.180 should be creedal not confessional so it's not the 1689 it's not the westminster it's not the

00:53:59.340 new hampshire um it's you know it's not the heidelberg well yeah but heidelberg is a little

00:54:04.820 bit looser but um but even i would i would advocate for even looser than the heidelberg

00:54:09.020 um that it would be creedal not confessional yeah i think that the united states of america

00:54:14.220 as a republic at the federal level should affirm um publicly and swear its allegiance to the

00:54:20.300 apostles creed i think that that would be wonderful um in terms of individual states

00:54:26.120 within the republic uh being able to have a state church um i think that if there's not a national

00:54:32.600 church right if the national church is presbyterian and then texas is reformed baptist then you know

00:54:38.120 you you might have some squabbles right you might fight a war over that whereas you know if it's

00:54:42.400 bald eagle at the federal level and mockingbird for texas right if we're talking about birds

00:54:46.600 nobody's going to pick up arms over over well your your federal bird is is um casting a shadow

00:54:53.000 over our state bird but religion right that people fight wars over that and so but if it's creedal

00:54:58.520 and and the creed by design these you know nicene and and athanasius and uh you know apostles creed

00:55:06.020 is is so narrow that it that you cannot affirm it as a muslim you cannot affirm it as an atheist

00:55:12.360 you cannot affirm it as a buddhist um but also intentionally so broad baptist presbyterian

00:55:17.860 anglican like you're good right it's this pan protestant by design if that was at the federal

00:55:23.700 so it's separation of church and state and and um but no separation of christ and state well what

00:55:29.860 does it mean for the the state to be in allegiance to christ doctrinally i would say a creed a creed

00:55:35.340 would be a really good way to go would you have any pushback with that or would you agree with

00:55:38.900 that or yeah look i'm not going to sign on to that just right here right now in this in this

00:55:42.900 I do think that that that does raise some that certainly raises some First Amendment questions right at the federal level.

00:55:50.140 I mean, again, we also have to recognize our own American history like we we've walked on soil in these United States where they had state level religious establishments.

00:55:58.580 And they did, you know, through into the mid 1800s.

00:56:01.140 1800s, and the First Amendment actually was not understood to be applied to states until it got

00:56:06.720 progressively applied to states through a variety of Supreme Court rulings, which some people would

00:56:12.160 argue was sort of an overreach, an overreach of the federal government's power, because the purpose

00:56:17.560 of the First Amendment primarily is to restrain the federal government. So actually, in the American

00:56:21.960 federal system, Joel, I would be more comfortable with the idea that the federal government

00:56:29.140 It maintains maybe even a non-credal, you know, recognition of God.

00:56:35.540 So, like, I think initially I would be more comfortable with sort of like a preamble, like a, you know, a theistic preamble to our Constitution, something like that.

00:56:47.400 Or a recognition.

00:56:48.200 Theistic?

00:56:49.460 Yeah.

00:56:49.880 Or triune?

00:56:51.360 Well, I'd be happy with either.

00:56:53.620 Okay.

00:56:54.140 But I'm thinking of lowest common denominator here.

00:56:56.320 I've got my political hat on.

00:56:57.620 and um i can tell then also i've got my theonomist hat yeah yeah right and then also um you know

00:57:05.480 sort of like you know zambia has it right so this is very interesting when i had a chance to

00:57:09.520 moderate that panel at founders with right with um with voti and uh tom you know it's this

00:57:16.080 interesting you're talking about ships passing in the night you know voti is over there in zambia

00:57:20.620 where they have a christian preamble to their constitution and the zambians are looking at

00:57:24.640 the united states this is this is essentially his words i'm paraphrasing you could go listen and

00:57:28.620 check where's like the zambians are looking at the united states wishing we had they had our

00:57:32.320 heritage our christian heritage whereas right now i'm kind of looking at zambia and wishing we had

00:57:37.420 their preamble and so why can't we put the preamble on top of the heritage here in the united states

00:57:44.460 of america um i have i'd have to think more about the idea of a but is zambia's christian or is it

00:57:51.820 Theistic, I guess would be my question.

00:57:53.540 Is it distinctly Christian?

00:57:54.800 Is it the Lord Jesus Christ?

00:57:56.400 Yeah, I'd have to double check on that.

00:57:58.400 Yeah.

00:57:58.620 But I think that I will say, Joel, I will say theologically when I consider what a civil government can do and perhaps even should do.

00:58:08.680 And so then if I say should, then yes, I'm signing on in a certain extent.

00:58:13.820 But I do believe that the government should recognize, is obligated before God to recognize that they derived their ruling authority from God, from the Christian God.

00:58:24.420 And so when they ask that question, who is that God and how has he revealed himself?

00:58:29.900 Well, I believe he's revealed himself in creation, but he's also in these last days most fully revealed himself in his son.

00:58:37.220 And so I do think that is something I think that is something that government is not only able to do, but is ultimately responsible to do.

00:58:47.580 Yeah, that's good. I'll be honest. You know, so we're talking and I'm getting to know you better, getting to know your position better. And I know you're still thinking about these things. You're writing on these things. You're studying these things. So I'm not going to hold you to like this is your official position. You must keep to it until you die.

00:59:02.180 um so i know that you're you know like you and i both we're we're like everybody we're works in

00:59:06.460 progress and we're progressing and we're learning all this sounds like a big wind up to call me a

00:59:10.040 squish in someone well no no well yeah kind of kind of but but but in the most charitable way

00:59:14.640 possible what i was gonna say though is like how how are people bothered by you you know what i

00:59:20.940 mean like like i'm listening to what you're saying and you're talking about a theistic preamble

00:59:25.640 you know and i'm like how are the g3 because because you're like you're the guy that people

00:59:31.500 you know they're like people are like this is you know uh will you know william wolf is baptist

00:59:36.200 you know christian nationalist and and and it's totalitarian and draconian and and um you know

00:59:42.100 this magisterial pope and and i'm like and i'm i'm i'm watching you on twitter i'm i'm i'm you

00:59:49.800 know we're in a thread together offline we're talking you know like these kinds of things and

00:59:53.180 and i'm listening to you now in our interview and i'm like dude like like you're i mean yeah

00:59:59.780 you're pretty soft you know like it's the it's nothing to be intimidated by you know what i mean

01:00:04.660 it doesn't feel that strong what what do you what do you think guys why are these guys so bothered

01:00:09.280 why do they think that you're like like darth vader yeah well um well first of all joel according

01:00:15.640 to the rules of manliness now that you call me soft we're gonna have to find each other offline

01:00:20.900 and take care of this um and i've been training with matt reynolds at barbell logic so oh yeah

01:00:27.360 i know matt i've met him put me on a fight plan um i will call matt and ask him to fight for me

01:00:32.940 you know what you know what i think actually it's funny like what bothers you is that the

01:00:37.240 christianity or the nationalism i think i really offend a lot of people with my unapologetic american

01:00:42.160 nationalism i think that's what really trips people up and that is something man that i've

01:00:47.080 just had in my bones since i was like a kid like it just the conception of the importance of a

01:00:54.040 nation and the sovereignty of a nation and a government caring for its people. I mean,

01:01:00.700 that was something that I cared about deeply even before I was a Christian. I grew up in North

01:01:05.100 Carolina and I saw my friends' fathers and their businesses struggle due to terrible trade deals

01:01:12.500 that exported product manufacturing to China with cheap labor and lower standards,

01:01:19.680 whose fathers had construction businesses who could no longer compete with all the construction

01:01:24.280 businesses, hiring waves of illegal immigrants and paying them under the table, cash wages,

01:01:29.540 no reporting to the IRS, none of the tax obligations. So I grew up sort of like lower

01:01:37.380 middle class, like blue collar, man, shopping at Goodwill. And I went to a Southern Baptist

01:01:44.700 high school. It's interesting. I went to a Southern Baptist high school and a PCA church.

01:01:47.860 And my friends' dads were used car salesmen, upholsterers, local cops, construction workers, and it very much was sort of watching this decline of the American community, the local community outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, that really just put a fire in my bones for a system of government that cares for its people and its citizens.

01:02:12.700 And I've watched how the uniparty system here in the United States of America has has has kowtowed and served a globalist and regime oriented set of interests over and against your common American man for decades now.

01:02:27.880 And this is where a scholar like Samuel Huntington, who was one of the most renowned political scientists of the 20th century in his book, Who Are We?

01:02:38.540 It's what, you know, it's very, very important book with me here right now.

01:02:42.040 Like, who are we? And it came out 2004 and it was lambasted as being racist and xenophobic and all this stuff.

01:02:49.580 And he's tracing the roots of our American identity. And this really plays into the nationalistic conversation.

01:02:55.520 And he really pinpoints that in the post-war era after World War II in the 60s and 70s, this dovetails exactly with Age of Entitlement. I think Caldwell cites Huntington multiple times that our elites started unmaking and remaking America in sort of an unprecedented way that sort of forsook all of our national bonds of identity.

01:03:18.400 who are we as you know as essentially like a largely christian protestant you know country

01:03:24.340 inheriting an english common law tradition respecting religion and instead you know sort

01:03:30.060 of getting all rid of all that which people from every you know nation on earth was welcome to come

01:03:35.720 to and join and commit to our creed which our creed as americans is actually situated in a

01:03:41.060 cultural context and you can't pull it out from that and so these sheer creedalists have been

01:03:46.460 remaking america and you know we've we've we've opened our borders we've you know shipped away

01:03:52.760 our jobs and so all this to say joel i think i think what really bothers people about me is i'm

01:03:57.280 a christian and i love the lord and i'm also a christian unapologetically says that when i'm

01:04:02.820 called to love my neighbor the first person i'm called to love is my flesh and blood neighbor

01:04:06.960 that's my citizen neighbor that's across the street from me and not some sort of pie in the

01:04:11.800 sky abstraction, abstraction of sort of a global citizen neighbor. And so I hardcore reject

01:04:18.920 globalism. And I do think that Christians should be appropriately bounded nationalists. And what

01:04:25.140 type of nationalist should you be? Well, you shouldn't be a white nationalist. You shouldn't

01:04:28.440 be a black nationalist. You shouldn't be an Islamic nationalist. You should be a Christian

01:04:32.360 nationalist because that rightly orders your national loves. And you sure as heck shouldn't

01:04:36.940 to be a secular nationalist oh goodness no we're an lgbt nationalist right that's where we are right

01:04:41.920 now right the global american empire is exporting lgbt nationalism all across the globe and imposing

01:04:48.220 it upon countries that want nothing to do with it i know man it's it's tough i have young men who

01:04:52.680 like will seek counsel like hey i'm thinking about going into the military and this and that and

01:04:56.400 aside from the difficulty that they would have as a young christian man in the military

01:05:00.320 with the military itself being progressive and woke and just you know a plague on christian

01:05:06.420 values. It's not even just that surviving the military with their faith intact would be a

01:05:11.020 challenge in and of itself, but it's also that even if they, you know, did well in the military,

01:05:16.660 what would their actual vocation accomplish that they, you know, that we'd be able to raise

01:05:23.280 another transgender flag in Afghanistan, you know, or like the Homo Jihad is not, that's not

01:05:30.200 appealing to young men. They don't want to work out and learn how to shoot rifles so that they

01:05:33.800 can join the homo jihad you know what i mean like we're a laughing stock on the global stage right

01:05:39.500 now people are making fun of our nation yeah nobody wants to join the military and risk their

01:05:43.880 lives and at the same time risk their career and getting you know dishonorably discharged or

01:05:49.460 court-martialed because they miss pronoun you know sergeant jenkins who's six foot two and 250 pounds

01:05:57.240 and is asking you to call him sheep right like nobody wants to do that and it is it's become

01:06:03.080 quite a bad deal for the sons of the american heartland to sign up to go wage war for like

01:06:09.580 the rain the rainbow exports nobody wants to do that and so it is i think really joel i do offend

01:06:15.020 people with my unapologetic and christian defense of of nationhood um yeah and i've been working on

01:06:23.160 that a lot like you know i i do think that i think that the principles of christianity in no way

01:06:28.480 vitiate national loyalties in fact they rightly order them and they they dampen them i was talking

01:06:34.360 with my very good friend russ vote who is the uh you know president of the center for renewing

01:06:39.020 america he recently finished reading return of the strong gods by r.r reno and i highly recommend

01:06:44.380 that and in it reno posits that as we've lived in this great era of openness and what in so the

01:06:51.460 openness era is an era of secularism, multiculturalism, principled pluralism. And as it has pressed upon us to cast off traditional loyalties to religion, to family, to nation, and sort of downplay all of them, it's left us rootless and, you know, and homeless. And we've been, you know, instead, here's come Marxism, cultural Marxism, and wokeism. And now what we're seeing as a backlash to that

01:07:21.460 will actually be a real rise of renewed ethnic nationalism and ethnic hatred there's going to be

01:07:27.320 a backlash to the way that we've been sliced and diced by race and intersectionality and i actually

01:07:34.480 think this is so funny when i say we should be christian nationalists people say you're a fascist

01:07:39.100 you're a racist and i say no you don't understand a rightly ordered christian nationalism is the

01:07:45.160 only thing that's going to stand against the renewed ethnic nationalism that's coming as a

01:07:51.760 backlash and if you doubt me just look at south africa right we need to really understand who

01:07:56.960 we are as an american people and our deep christian roots and we need to recover our our sort of place

01:08:03.400 in this world and stand on our feet on the soil under god uh and i use the word soil i don't mean

01:08:09.380 that in any sort of like vague reference or anything like that like stand on this ground

01:08:13.140 and welcome people to join us in that project, whoever you are,

01:08:17.900 as long as you'll sign up for it and not subvert it.

01:08:21.040 Amen.

01:08:22.560 Yeah, I, you know, is there any nation right now that you're aware of

01:08:27.520 that hates itself more than America?

01:08:29.740 Maybe England.

01:08:31.140 Maybe England, yeah.

01:08:32.700 It's just become this common, I don't know,

01:08:38.120 essence of just this self-loathing mentality,

01:08:42.740 like that to do you know to be america first you know or to and and then christians have it too

01:08:48.520 like so it's at the national level like americans hate themselves and christians hate themselves

01:08:52.940 evangelicals hate themselves right like it's there's theology right yes and and it's just

01:08:59.640 like we always like we dog on ourselves we like we feel like and i think some of it um

01:09:05.820 some of it really goes down to you know it how do you respond to blessing right it's like you know

01:09:14.180 like um do you do you feel guilty and ashamed like right now i've got three little girls and

01:09:22.680 and a son and uh they're uh warmly clothed their tummies are full they're in nice little uh beds

01:09:32.160 and they're sleeping and you know what i feel i don't feel an ounce of guilt and i know that

01:09:39.360 millions of children are starving um but if i count this is if i count it as privilege that i

01:09:45.680 took from someone else then guilt is the only proper response but if i count it as blessing

01:09:52.400 from god that was given then gratitude is the only proper response and i think like some of

01:09:59.700 there's so many multifaceted, you know, all these different factors, but our idea of economics from

01:10:05.140 Marx, you know, that like, but in God's economy, the pie can grow. Like, that's what capitalism

01:10:11.580 has showed us. It's God's economy. It's the way that, you know, and yes, there's crony capitalism

01:10:16.480 and there's abuses and there's all, you know, but I'm just speaking in general, in a general sense

01:10:20.940 that somebody can make a ton of money and yet the tide causes all the ships to rise. You know,

01:10:29.220 some guy makes a billion dollars because what he created actually provides that much value to

01:10:35.780 everyone else. Because now everyone, you know, has electricity, you know, or has this or has

01:10:41.460 that. And so everyone's more productive and everybody's standard of living rises. And the

01:10:46.300 guy who made everyone else this much more rich, he gets to be that much more rich. That's called

01:10:52.000 justice. That's biblical. There's nothing wrong with that. And so my point is like, if we believe

01:10:57.280 that we live in God's world. And like he told us to be fruitful and multiply. If we think it's a

01:11:03.100 zero-sum game, I just think just in economic terms and the spiritual things, you know, we could

01:11:07.640 discuss that in a second, but just in economic terms, if we think that the world that God made

01:11:12.980 is a zero-sum game in terms of material resources, then God's command to be fruitful and multiply

01:11:19.040 was actually cruel. It was God setting man up to eventually, by his obedience to God's cultural

01:11:26.280 mandate to seal his own doom. Like, what do we think the character nature of God is? Do we think

01:11:31.760 that God literally commanded us in the garden to do the very thing that he knew in his fixed

01:11:38.400 income world would destroy us? Or can the pie grow? Can humans, lowercase c creators, not x

01:11:45.140 nihilo out of nothing, but can we take and multiply not just ourselves through procreation,

01:11:52.440 But the world that God made, fruits and vegetables and technology and all these kinds of things.

01:11:59.080 And if we believe that, and we believe it all comes from the Father of lights, then we see it as blessing, not stolen privilege, but granted blessing.

01:12:08.900 Now it's not guilt, but it's gratitude and grateful people.

01:12:13.660 We live in a nation of ingrates, and ingrates are self-loathing, and they're suicidal.

01:12:20.200 I think these are a lot of the problems.

01:12:22.040 You got any thoughts on that?

01:12:23.780 Yeah, let me try to go with like three different thoughts on this.

01:12:27.260 First of all, the loser theology, the loser political theology that we're trying to critique here and help our brothers to embrace pursuing victory in Christ, right, is again a product of preemptive surrender with a culture and these negotiated compromises.

01:12:45.760 And you're touching on a very interesting point, Joel, because a lot of these negotiated surrenders with the world are on the ideological front.

01:12:54.340 So essentially, you're touching on what could be called sort of Malthusian sort of view of population.

01:13:00.020 The world is overpopulated. You know, we're having too many kids.

01:13:02.940 I mean, I just saw I mean, I saw an article today where the headline was, are you afraid of having another kid because of climate change?

01:13:10.520 You are not alone. I mean, are you kidding me?

01:13:12.900 This actually, Joel, this is a theme. So there's this very wicked satanic Malthusian ideology that the world is overpopulated, that humans are a plague on the planet, that it's not that the planet was made for us, but we're plaguing the planet, right?

01:13:30.360 And so so many evangelicals and Christians have adopted sort of a little bit of that theology.

01:13:37.760 I would argue you see some of it laundered through the gospel coalition as they sort of celebrate singleness, right?

01:13:44.260 And the way we sort of prioritize singleness and celebrated singleness that I think in a way that Scripture doesn't speak to.

01:13:50.220 Of course, Scripture does laud a single life in a certain way, right?

01:13:55.540 But that's not the creation norm.

01:13:57.500 Again, the creation norm is the Christian family that forms the Christian society.

01:14:01.420 So I want to make this point.

01:14:02.900 First of all, we have preemptive surrenders with godless ideologies that create a negotiated compromise in which we fail to fully pursue what God has called us to.

01:14:14.780 And it's fascinating.

01:14:16.220 This ties into our talk about sort of the receding nature of Christendom is as you look at where over the last 500 years the Christian influence has been most profusive and the standard of living has risen to unimaginable heights.

01:14:34.360 Now you're looking at nations in Europe, like Germany, that's closing, that's shuttering its nuclear power plants and is issuing warnings to people that they might have to ration their energy, they might be cold over the winter.

01:14:49.780 And so as we see Christendom receding, we're seeing the material blessings and benefits of what we could call sort of applied Christian wisdom to using the resources well that God has given us.

01:15:03.180 And again, we're not talking prosperity theology here.

01:15:05.740 We're not talking about guaranteed blessings from God.

01:15:09.260 You know, this isn't magic.

01:15:10.460 But what we are talking about is gratitude for the goodness that God has allowed to be developed in our lives and in our history and in the world and stewarding that well for our current and future generations.

01:15:23.040 There's this new hilarious parody account on Twitter.

01:15:27.260 It's not me, I promise.

01:15:28.640 The BoomerCon Baptist.

01:15:29.780 and um and it is hilariously lampooning uh an approach that you know we're situating

01:15:36.960 generationally with the boomers but i'd say this approach applies to so many of our christian

01:15:41.220 spheres that like life's been pretty good for us and we don't really need to worry about the future

01:15:46.840 just just preach the gospel and come what may you know and that is not that's a little bit different

01:15:52.820 from having sort of guilt over privilege that's apathy right so we don't want to have guilt and

01:15:58.080 we don't want to have apathy apathy we want to have um action oriented gratitude grateful

01:16:04.840 stewardship yeah instead of guilty instead of apathetic guilt it's you know it's um

01:16:09.980 grateful stewardship or or um or or even grateful productivity you know or like because that's what

01:16:16.520 you do when you're grateful um grateful people out give guilty people grateful people gratitude

01:16:25.040 fuels generosity far more than guilt does because guilt's always just looking for the bottom line

01:16:30.080 it's guilt only wants to um only cares about the optics it only cares um it only cares about the

01:16:36.700 appearances so it's like what what that's that's the whole idea of virtue signaling virtue signaling

01:16:42.000 people are guilty people and they're looking for what's the minimum thing i can do to prove that

01:16:47.680 I'm not guilty to regain, to publicly establish the object of innocence, right? Oh, I can do this

01:16:55.620 thing. I can do that thing. Whereas grateful people, that we're not looking to appear innocent.

01:17:00.520 We believe that we're already innocent because of Christ and his finished workforce. And so we're

01:17:04.420 looking to actually give, not virtue signal, but to act real generosity. And generosity, not just

01:17:09.900 in charitable giving. That's one way to give. Another way to give is to work and to build and

01:17:16.360 to multiply. I've said before, when it comes to giving, when you think like, well, what does

01:17:23.120 the average Christian give over the course of their life? Is it 10%, is it 5%, 3%, 20%?

01:17:31.040 Well, the answer is it's 100% because you can't take anything with you. So the question is not

01:17:35.920 how much you're going to give, it's when you're going to give it, how you're going to give it,

01:17:38.900 and who you're going to give it to. And so I even, and this seems counterintuitive,

01:17:43.400 but as a local pastor, I regularly encourage people in my church, yeah, I think 10% is something

01:17:47.700 that God commands. I do believe that, you know, because the general equity of 10% is, what's the

01:17:51.940 general equity of 10%? It's 10%. So I do believe that's a new commandment. I think under the new

01:17:58.340 covenant that the tithe continues. However, regularly I have conversation with people saying,

01:18:04.560 hey, brother, feel free to pull back to do this, to do that, because it's a guy trying to start a

01:18:09.260 business he's trying to do and and i know that he's gonna be far more generous in the long run

01:18:13.000 yeah right um if if he's able to have something to build in the short run and so having a surplus

01:18:19.060 all those kind of things so anyways all that i think is is vitally important and yeah i just

01:18:23.300 think we have a bunch of guilty people you know what virtue signalers are they're losers right

01:18:27.440 like those are losers because what they're they virtue signalers cannot comprehend you know like

01:18:35.200 a victory right like because they they want to they already feel bad for whatever it is that

01:18:39.920 they think has like you know been a been accrued to them and so that you see this in the racial

01:18:44.620 arena like you know white guilt and you know and so i think so much of like you know so much of

01:18:50.520 loser political theology and general evangelicalism has been driven by white guilt which is absurd

01:18:56.500 um and uh so that's that's silly i think you see that very much with like beth moore and russell

01:19:02.120 more like even david french i feel like strong strong notes of like white guilt pervade sort of

01:19:08.740 their approach to cultural engagement and christianity and politics um but shoot i was

01:19:14.740 going somewhere else with this uh i i forgot what it was no no worries one thing i was gonna one

01:19:20.480 thing i was gonna say earlier was just you know the prosperity gospel that you said you were like

01:19:23.880 this isn't the prosperity gospel this is working it's not just wishful thinking that's the only

01:19:27.620 That's the thing they say, man.

01:19:28.340 They say Christian nationalism is like political prosperity gospel.

01:19:32.960 Yes, and I have no doubt that they would say that.

01:19:34.940 True.

01:19:35.400 But that's the problem is that I think that's part of the decline.

01:19:39.740 So much of this is theological, and I think that's just one of many factors.

01:19:43.140 But the prosperity gospel and, sadly, the Reformed camps, I believe, overreaction to the prosperity gospel.

01:19:51.720 So the prosperity gospel, um, is the prosperity gospel did not say that obedience brings blessing.

01:19:59.520 The Bible says that the prosperity gospel doesn't say obedience brings blessing.

01:20:03.600 The prosperity gospel is, is a way of plaguing poor people in the same way that the lottery does.

01:20:09.300 Um, Jesse DiPlantis has the same strategy as, as the, um, as the super ball, you know, um, or, um, power ball, you know, it's, um, it's telling people that you can actually avoid faithful longevity.

01:20:21.720 and hard work and obedience, and that through the power of positivity, manifesting something,

01:20:28.260 it's faith, not in Christ, that brings about fruit, right? We're saved by faith alone,

01:20:32.920 but faith that saves is never alone. It's accompanied with good fruit. So instead of

01:20:36.780 faith in Christ, which is saving faith, which is always accompanied with fruit, and one of those

01:20:40.740 fruits being hard work and obedience, it's not faith in Christ, it's faith in your faith. And so

01:20:47.080 faith in your faith, power of positivity, manifesting your destiny, those kinds of

01:20:51.500 things. Same kind of mentality as somebody who plays a lottery. And who plays a lottery?

01:20:55.520 Poor people. It's a plague on impoverished people. And that's what the prosperity,

01:21:01.060 so the prosperity gospel was not saying that it wasn't a workspace thing. It was a wishful

01:21:06.720 thinking. It was a way of actually circumventing work. It's actually trying to get, now legalism

01:21:12.540 is its own category and that's a thing but the prosperity gospel was not legalism not not in

01:21:17.060 not in the technical sense it was not if you work hard god will bless you it was you don't have to

01:21:21.680 work hard at all you can just tap your ruby red slippers three times say there's no place like

01:21:25.580 home and boom you're a millionaire and then the reaction to it um uh also circumvented hard work

01:21:32.860 and obedience bringing blessing um by by a suffering over realized poverty gospel a loser

01:21:38.660 or theology. It's like, no matter what you do, like where Job becomes the normative Christian

01:21:44.000 life. But is Job the normative? And so, you know, so now I understand there are, you know,

01:21:50.480 I've said this before, it, you know, ticks off plenty of people, but I said, all poverty is

01:21:55.380 rooted in sin. It's not always rooted in your individual sin, but you can track all poverty,

01:22:00.540 lack of blessing to sin. So North Korea, there are faithful Christians who are impoverished

01:22:06.240 despite their obedience but it's still because of sin not their sin but but a sinful wicked

01:22:10.820 oppressive regime china same kind of thing and then in america that but where you have less

01:22:15.720 oppressive leaders and we've got some pretty oppressive ones but historically we have less

01:22:19.840 oppression in terms of systems and government and those kinds of things um well there when you find

01:22:24.600 poor people it probably is individual you know moral culpability that you because you might be

01:22:30.420 lazy now there's still extenuating circumstances somebody could be a paraplegic all these different

01:22:34.240 things. But I'm just saying, so it's not a 100%, you know, all the time, but as a general rule of

01:22:39.420 thumb, do we believe that ordinarily, there's the caveat, there's the disclaimer, the adjective,

01:22:44.940 ordinarily, that ordinarily in a relatively free nation, as your context, do we believe that

01:22:51.640 ordinarily obedience brings blessing? Not just heavenly, that's guaranteed. True obedience that

01:22:57.460 stems from faith guarantees heavenly blessing. But do we believe that ordinarily obedience brings

01:23:03.000 tangible blessing in this life as well. I don't think a lot of gospel coalition,

01:23:08.460 gospel-centered, young, reformed, restless type, I don't think we believe that anymore. I think we

01:23:13.100 so opposed gospel centrality, this red letterism kind of thing that we so championed sola scriptura

01:23:20.980 to the expense of tota scriptura. We so championed fighting back against the prosperity gospel,

01:23:27.420 we embraced a poverty gospel. We so combated legalism that we embraced antinomianism. And

01:23:34.860 so in all these, we became pietists. I think that's the problem. And to be fair, you say,

01:23:41.400 oh, the covenant theology of Baptist doesn't encompass. I don't think it's a Baptist Presbyterian

01:23:46.020 because Presbyterians have their losers. R. Scott Clark is the poster child for the Presbyterian.

01:23:50.960 They've got plenty of losers on the Presbyterian side, and we've got plenty on the Baptist side.

01:23:54.980 i think it's pietism i think it's this i i don't think it's just the the covenant issue so yeah i

01:24:01.820 mean as i assume we're working towards an end here we try to encourage people to not be baptist be

01:24:08.520 you know be like pursue winning to the glory of god right um in the civil sphere which is

01:24:14.520 fundamentally different than in the ecclesial and the church sphere right there are categorical

01:24:19.760 differences and we've racked and stacked and try to take down uh sort of like some um sort of like

01:24:25.260 myth fact right so myth number one uh christian nationalism is political presbyterianism no it's

01:24:31.900 not here's the fact the presbyterians according to their covenant theology do believe that that

01:24:37.520 infant that they baptize is now a christian they would claim saving faith for that christian and

01:24:43.580 for that individual whereas we're saying that anybody who we're not in any way saying that

01:24:49.540 a christian nation is saying everybody within that nation is a christian we're talking fundamentally

01:24:56.340 about how the magistrates and the laws of that land and the social customs and the civil customs

01:25:01.600 are oriented to the one true god his revealed son jesus christ and are upholding christian morality

01:25:08.680 in in what they do right that's what we mean by christian nation we're not making a uh salvific

01:25:14.040 declaration of those inside right so it's not political real quick did you say presbyterians

01:25:18.460 it almost sounded like you said that they hold to baptismal regeneration you didn't say that did

01:25:23.080 you uh i just want to clarify well i saw i mean i i don't i don't think that they express it like

01:25:30.200 that because they wouldn't they wouldn't call them a christian just to be fair they they would

01:25:34.140 just say they would say that um we do believe that they are external members of the new covenant in

01:25:39.460 some sense have union with christ and and will become christians as they lay hold of the internal

01:25:44.880 promises of the covenant through faith right like you know i'm just trying to get i got a lot of

01:25:49.080 presbyterian friends and i you know and i so because it's not like you said they think you

01:25:53.280 know when they baptize an infant that they're a christian and and they they believe that they're

01:25:58.160 a part of this christian new covenant but they wouldn't say christian in the term of in the

01:26:02.340 sense of it being uh the infant is regenerate upon baptism right well no i i understand that

01:26:09.420 They don't say that the infant is regenerate and pumped back.

01:26:11.640 Right, okay.

01:26:12.040 But they do.

01:26:14.800 See, here's the difference.

01:26:16.340 In a Christian nation, we're not saying every citizen is a Christian.

01:26:21.340 Presbyterians do say essentially every member of their covenant community is a Christian.

01:26:29.060 So we're not political Presbyterians because we don't believe that.

01:26:31.800 And our commitment to regeneration, to personal regeneration and, you know, a profession of faith and believers baptism, that set of our theology does not vitiate what God expects from civil rulers.

01:26:47.400 And what God expects from civil rulers is not political Presbyterianism.

01:26:52.460 It is essentially Christian nationalism.

01:26:56.000 So we knock down that one myth and then there's the fact.

01:26:59.500 and then the other one uh that i was just thinking of too was oh man was uh shoot joe

01:27:06.640 we covered so many things i'm sorry the prosperity gospel thing oh on the oh the prosperity gospel

01:27:12.620 yeah the prosperity gospel right and that's it's like okay so again christian nationalism is a is

01:27:18.240 a an aspiration right it's a theory it's not a promise right so it's like like you brought up

01:27:24.640 you know you brought up believers in north korea and sometimes people talk about christian nationalism

01:27:28.680 like it's triumphalism, like it's political prosperity gospel, but there's nothing about

01:27:32.660 Christian nationalism that, you know, fails to recognize that actually many, many, many,

01:27:37.440 if not the majority of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the globe are suffering under

01:27:41.560 unjust governments. They're unjust governments. They should be just. Just because they're

01:27:47.460 suffering again, doesn't mean that that government shouldn't rule differently. And that the Christians

01:27:53.060 who are suffering under that unjust government, while they preach the gospel, pray for conversions,

01:27:57.660 seek to spread the gospel of jesus christ have house churches suffer persecution that just

01:28:04.380 because that that those are their physical circumstances that they shouldn't be calling

01:28:08.760 on the rulers to repent and change the physical circumstances that they live under right so it's

01:28:14.760 like i want i want north korea to become a christian nation and by becoming a christian

01:28:19.600 nation they would i trust experience um you know spiritual blessings and revival along with material

01:28:26.420 blessings and revival that flow from obedience not from wishful thinking and so it's not political

01:28:32.780 you know christian absolute is not the prosperity gospel applied to politics and then you know i

01:28:38.100 think that the i don't know if there are any more we need to cover but i think those i think those

01:28:41.880 are the ones those are two really good ones and the pietism thing that we've covered yes pietism

01:28:46.780 conversionism okay this is another this is important too before we wrap up so our baptist

01:28:51.560 brothers and many of our friends who have been in the anti-woke movement so stalwarts that we're

01:28:57.780 thankful for i can think of 10 people off the top of my head we went through this sort of like just

01:29:03.120 preach the gospel or is it just preach the gospel right so it's like so when people come along with

01:29:08.820 social programs and prescriptions to address societal ills that are not in line with scripture

01:29:16.520 we should reject those i mean we have to make determinations and decisions right like if they

01:29:22.500 want to say abolish the police we say well no that's that's fundamentally unchristian because

01:29:27.440 that's unjust and will cause suffering so if that's what you're saying yes please stop saying

01:29:31.560 that and just preach the gospel you know um but we i've seen brothers say that the only way

01:29:37.260 christian nationalism comes about is through essentially mass conversions so the church

01:29:42.160 has to preach the gospel and then if we if we get mass conversion spiritual outpouring then we could

01:29:48.140 have something like a christian nation to which again i'd say okay that is the job of the church

01:29:52.580 and i'm not conflating the mission of the church and the role of the state what i am saying is that

01:29:56.700 there's a both and track that's going on here and do not need to subscribe ourselves or circumvent

01:30:02.400 ourselves or have a you know a preemptive surrender and a negotiated compromise that says

01:30:06.980 we can only have a christian nation if we get 51 of our population to be christians you know and

01:30:12.960 that's what we should want i don't want that joel i want a christian nation with if only 5 of our

01:30:18.640 population is christians and somehow we're the ones who control the reins of power and we pass

01:30:24.980 good and just laws that will benefit the 95 of the population who aren't converted i still want that

01:30:31.740 that's what i want for my kids and that's what i want for the 90 95 of the population that's not

01:30:35.960 converted so i know what you're saying i completely agree the problem is though you couldn't have that

01:30:40.920 in a representative republic if it was five percent so but a christian monarch maybe that

01:30:47.700 could be episode no i'm just kidding but i hear you loud and clear and you're right that is worth

01:30:52.500 saying it's it is both and because it guys are you know because i'm the post-millennial guy so

01:30:57.140 like i believe that a majority of the world will be saved and i would take bb warfield's position

01:31:01.620 on the narrow way um that you know it's narrow it's difficult uh few ever find it um in the same

01:31:07.200 way that the 10 virgins five are wise and five are foolish that doesn't mean there's literally

01:31:10.720 going to be 50 of the human population in hell and 50 in heaven so i would agree with bb warfield i

01:31:15.320 would agree with other post-millennial guys and right now just for the record i would say that

01:31:18.360 hell far out populates um uh heaven but i think that we're still in the early church and we've

01:31:23.660 got plenty of time the church lives in the light of eternity it can afford to be patient and that

01:31:27.260 over the course of time as 11 works through the whole batch of dough that we're gonna you know

01:31:30.340 heaven will be a very very large party and that hell will be the minority report but all that

01:31:35.600 being said yeah I think it's both and I think it's we pray for revival we preach we ask that

01:31:41.700 God would pour out his spirit that there would be conversion because this would all be a lot easier

01:31:45.380 with a regenerate majority but at the same time it's not just that because because we've had

01:31:55.380 numbers before and um and it's not just numbers um but it's it's political will and and that's

01:32:04.840 not a bad thing power is not inherently evil winning is not inherently wrong like jesus died

01:32:11.160 yeah uh-huh but he also resurrected and he ascended and he holds you know a scepter like

01:32:18.340 he you know what i mean jesus is a winner he's not a loser and so um to have political will and

01:32:23.640 and to be able to say it is both in, it's a ground game of conversion, but it's also,

01:32:29.080 it's an air raid, you know, in terms of, there is a top-down sense of like, I want to stop the

01:32:34.880 murder of babies, whether 50% of the population wants it or not. Because it doesn't matter how

01:32:41.520 many people want it. We're not a raw democracy. We never have been. That's not biblical. You look

01:32:46.740 at every example of what would be the equivalent of a raw democracy in the Bible, and it's always

01:32:52.700 negative, right? It's Samuel confronting Saul. Why did you do this? Because I was afraid of the

01:32:57.160 people, you know, or because I was afraid of the people. It's always like, you know, the people

01:33:01.520 that made me do it. It's like democracy in terms of biblical case studies is always negative,

01:33:07.160 never positive. And so... And that's another myth fact right here, or I'd say an unhelpful

01:33:12.000 piece of this conversation, which is give me the exegetical case for Christian nationalism. Okay,

01:33:16.700 actually, I think that I can do that. I think the exegetical, the scriptural covenantal case

01:33:21.180 goes from you know genesis 1 and you factor in genesis 3 genesis 9

01:33:26.500 exodus 20 you know psalm psalms 2 daniel 6

01:33:31.940 you know jonah and and then into matthew 28

01:33:35.480 romans 13 first peter 2 like act 17 like i think that there's

01:33:40.940 a lot that goes into crafting a christian political theory that you can

01:33:44.980 draw from scripture and many you know much smarter men have

01:33:48.880 done that than i have throughout the reformed tradition including some fellow baptists like

01:33:53.700 john gill who recognized like there's something there's something about living in the in the

01:33:59.120 dying and rotten light of the enlightenment that has cast a pall over our ability to read scripture

01:34:05.200 that some of our our forebearers had much clearer sight on as they as they still sort of were closer

01:34:11.240 to the warmth of the reformation when when they would all say calvin john gill luther whoever

01:34:17.000 would say oh yeah a ruler a ruler can't rule rightly unless he recognizes god okay and and

01:34:23.440 somehow now we've decided that a ruler can only rule rightly if he doesn't know who god is and

01:34:29.080 that's just insane and in john gill you know it said that the role of kings and magistrates is

01:34:34.160 the enforcement of both tables that they should have a special concern to the way that those who

01:34:39.520 are their subjects spoke of the one true god you know and and we don't have to get into first table

01:34:45.200 or second table enforcement, but, you know, brethren say, give me the exegetical case for

01:34:50.200 Christian nationalism, which I want to say, give me the exegetical case for classical liberalism.

01:34:54.780 Right. And so much of this boils down to prudence and, and there are principles applied in prudence

01:35:01.400 and just sort of just, you know, just sort of write off this, this effort to fight for something

01:35:08.740 better than what we have right now for out of love for neighbor, love for posterity and love

01:35:15.040 for our people in this nation i just think is unwise you know and there are some people who

01:35:19.340 call it larping and honestly man like that that just is like okay well then i'm gonna go i'm gonna

01:35:25.800 go larp to god's glory right amen yeah it's not whether but which i think that that would be one

01:35:32.540 of the themes you know of our conversation today you know and i'll end with this you know who's

01:35:37.860 going to be the protestant pope um well uh the protestant but it's not whether but which the

01:35:44.000 protestant pope for the last three years was dr falchi every protestant closed their doors when

01:35:49.360 he said so when that pope spoke all the protestants obeyed um so you will have a protestant pope you

01:35:56.300 can have a good one or a bad one right you can have a christian one or you can have you know

01:35:59.660 some atheist you know guy putting poison in your arms but the point is like we're you're just going

01:36:05.080 to be leadership and that's not to be you know to discount what i said earlier i don't literally

01:36:09.900 think there's going to be a problem but there's going to be power it's not whether but which

01:36:13.260 there's going to be political power it's going to be wielded and that's the problem with

01:36:17.640 conservatives is always well you know we uh we can't do that because then we'd be just like

01:36:22.660 you know the liberals what makes them bad what makes leftists bad is not their utilization of

01:36:28.980 power it's that they utilize it for evil that's what makes it bad and i think you're right i think

01:36:34.300 in in you know kind of fending off against the social justice gospel and wokeism and stuff we

01:36:41.100 we um we adopted a bad strategy we said it's it's uh gospel myopticism gospel centrality

01:36:48.220 yes and amen a thousand times but most guys today when they say they're gospel center they

01:36:52.660 mean gospel my optic it's gospel only ism and and and so so in order to to fend off you know

01:36:59.500 um this you know um the the wokeness and crt and intersectionality and social justice and all that

01:37:06.080 you know in neo-marxism we said we'll just preach the gospel faithfulness is just preaching the

01:37:11.020 gospel, and I've said it like this before, and I'll end it with this, and I'll give you the final

01:37:16.280 word, but Tim Keller's problem, in my assessment, was not his embrace of wanting to change New York

01:37:24.520 City, actually having a tangible impact on the culture and the arts and all this. He did that

01:37:30.480 three-minute video years and years ago about if we reached 10% Christians in New York, we'd have

01:37:35.280 a tipping point, and art would be more hopeful. And I remember that video. I thought it was so

01:37:39.940 good, I still think it's good. I don't have a problem with that. That's Tim and his influence

01:37:44.180 from Kuyper. But at the end of the day, and that's the all of life, every square inch.

01:37:47.900 But Tim's all of life sentiment that I think he got from Kuyper, that's not the problem.

01:37:52.980 The problem is that Doug Wilson, the difference between Tim and Doug Wilson, Doug Wilson is all

01:37:58.100 of Christ for all of life. They're both Kuyperian, Doug Wilson and Tim Keller. Doug Wilson is all of

01:38:03.320 Christ for all of life. Keller is some of Christ and some of Mark's for all of life. It's not

01:38:09.660 keller's embrace of abraham kuyper it's his embrace of carl marx um and so too my point is

01:38:14.960 the all of life factor whether you like kuyper or not still call it fruit of the gospel call it

01:38:19.980 practical obedience call it whatever you want but the life part the the tangible that the

01:38:24.840 anti-pietism that the the theology coming out of your hands and feet um that part was not the

01:38:31.880 problem of the social justice woke guys their problem was that uh what they were preaching is

01:38:37.660 their problem was not that they uh that they that they didn't preach enough gospel and they

01:38:41.920 preached too many works their problem is that they preached a perverted gospel with wicked works

01:38:47.600 with wicked works you know and so it's just so power isn't inherently evil use it rightly works

01:38:54.020 aren't bad faith without works is dead but it needs to be good works and who determines good

01:38:58.620 works you've said prudence a lot you're right i love that but i just i gotta say as the theonomy

01:39:02.760 me guy i um by what standard and and prudence ultimately it's i think there's prudence in how

01:39:09.700 to apply the standard yes the standard itself is not prudence the standard is we've got a book

01:39:15.060 we've got a playbook now it takes prudence though to know how to drop this down

01:39:19.540 2 000 years later over here with uh social media like you know what i mean how do you regulate you

01:39:25.540 know facebook and things like you know so it's going to take prudence in application um but the

01:39:30.360 good works themselves praise god he wrote a book and and we can use the book and uh so it's not

01:39:36.560 anti-works because we're avoiding legalism it's not anti-prosperity because we're avoiding

01:39:41.480 heresy and it's not anti-power because we want to be me it's no man i i think we just we combated

01:39:47.500 some of these all them are are liberal ideas we combated liberalism with um with loserism

01:39:54.460 And loserism, gosh darn it, turns out, loserism loses.

01:39:59.620 And I'm tired of losing.

01:40:01.280 All right, what do you think?

01:40:02.080 Will, go ahead and close this out, whatever your last thought is.

01:40:04.200 Yeah, well, I mean, I think, like, again, it's like, you know, no doubt people are going to criticize us, you know, when we say we're tired of losing.

01:40:11.420 and you know but they they there are those who think that the christian life is just meant to be

01:40:18.940 like one series of defeats after another until you know we we we make it to glory right and

01:40:26.280 you know again there may be some senses in which that's the case but we don't know what the hand

01:40:32.940 is that god is going to deal us right like we we should not we should have some humility you know

01:40:38.080 I really do think that I think that like assessing the situation that we're in currently in the United States of America or even globally to a certain degree and having the humility to say the system isn't working that great.

01:40:50.060 And let me present to you the evidence of of Dr. Rachel Levine and Leah Thomas, you know, Richard Levine and Thomas and, you know, an emperor ice cream cone.

01:41:04.360 And, you know, like and 70 million children slaughtered and, you know, and kids being injected on cross sex hormones and having irreversible mutilation being done to their bodies.

01:41:19.940 Not not to mention just the overall degradation of our life and our culture as we have embraced the the severing of faith and reason.

01:41:30.100 As we have said that, you know, the two, you know, the two horsemen, the two horsemen of the apocalypse of the enlightenment were autonomous reason and sexual liberation. And those those are the two horsemen who rule the day here, the United States of America. And it's it's hideous what has been wrought in the name of the enlightenment and classical liberalism for whatever good it might have done for us has clearly failed in substantial ways.

01:41:57.960 Now, maybe there are ways we can shore that back up that look differently, but essentially when it comes to the case for Christian nationalism, I honestly find it, Joel, I find it to be a humble posture of saying some things aren't working, what can we do better and differently in such a way that is coherent with Scripture, that passes that test, you know, take every thought captive, right?

01:42:19.620 So there might be, there will certainly be some elements that people propose under the banner of Christian nationalism that we must reject because it does not comport with scripture. But to say that everything is fine, it's not, you know, and to say that we should just sort of like, we should just, you know, hope things get better without picking up a sword and a shovel and doing some work ourselves.

01:42:41.680 it won't you know and so my my plea to baptists everywhere is you know to to you know beat your

01:42:48.240 plowshare into a sword and you know and come join us on the front lines and bring bring thoughts

01:42:54.640 bring suggestions um but bring serious critiques and bring you know bring scripture-based arguments

01:43:00.820 for your own positions if you if you want to give me the biblical case for classical liberalism

01:43:06.680 might be very interested in hearing that and um and and let's go like let's strive let's trust the

01:43:12.700 lord and fight for a better future for for the faith for our family and for our nation and then

01:43:19.500 trust the lord as the chips fall where they may right if if you know if if we don't become a

01:43:25.140 christian nation and we we become a chinese marxist nation and i end up in jail i'm going

01:43:30.640 to preach the gospel and tell people we should be a christian nation and i trust you'll do that with

01:43:34.960 me amen well said will thanks for coming on the show really appreciate it thanks brother thanks

01:43:40.600 for having me all right thank you guys for tuning in hope you guys enjoyed this episode and we will

01:43:45.600 continue to come out with new episodes every single week every sunday that's the full-length

01:43:49.100 sermon from covenant bible church every monday i fly solo and do some q a and every tuesday that's

01:43:54.060 our flagship show theology applied where we have renowned guests from all over the map and uh will

01:43:59.540 is uh is he's one of our favorites and he'll be back i'm sure uh hopefully in the near future so

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The NXR Podcast - April 25, 2023

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Can A Baptist Be A Christian Nationalist？ w William Wolfe

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