The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - DO NOT COMPLY! - Democrats’ Playbook For Persecuting Christians

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

00:00:04 episode of Theology Applied.

00:00:07 Now in this episode, we're doing a blast from the past.

00:00:10 This is one of my all-time favorite episodes of Theology Applied that we've ever aired.

00:00:15 Many of you have not seen it before.

00:00:17 You need to see it.

00:00:18 It's not just as relevant, it's more relevant, by far more relevant today than the day that

00:00:25 we previously aired it.

00:00:26 If you've watched it before, it's probably been a while.

00:00:28 it probably wouldn't hurt if you watched it again. The special guest is Glenn Sunshine. He's

00:00:33 the author of Slaying Leviathan. He's a professor, a speaker, a preacher. He is chocked filled with

00:00:39 so much biblical wisdom. Now, the title of the episode is this, Do Not Comply, The Democrats

00:00:47 Playbook for Persecuting Christians. Do Not Comply, The Democrats Playbook for Persecuting

00:00:54 Christians. Persecution is not coming to America. Persecution is already here. Tyranny is running

00:01:01 rampant. And Glenn Sunshine and what he says in this episode is so timely for where we're at as

00:01:07 a nation and where we're at as the church today for equipping Christians to have courage and

00:01:13 boldness in the face of persecution, in the face of tyranny, in the face of the authoritarian,

00:01:19 authoritarian tyrannical government that we currently face. You're in for a treat. Enjoy.

00:01:24 Real quick, before we get started, if you would prayerfully consider supporting Right Response

00:01:29 Ministries, we would be incredibly grateful. You can do so by giving a gift of any amount

00:01:34 at rightresponseministries.com slash donate. If you're not able to support this ministry

00:01:41 financially at this time, you can still support us in a great regard by simply subscribing to

00:01:47 our YouTube channel, clicking the bell, and of course, sharing our content with all your friends

00:01:52 and family. We need your help, and we pray that you would consider supporting us in this endeavor.

00:01:59 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:02:10 Hi, this is Pastor Joel with Right Response Ministries. This is our show slash podcast

00:02:15 called Theology Applied. And today, with this particular episode, I am honored to have as a

00:02:21 special guest, Glenn Sunshine. He's the author of a book called Slaying Leviathan. And we're going

00:02:27 to be talking about the topic, the subject matter that his book addresses at great length,

00:02:31 the idea of civil tyranny, the idea of big government, of government overreach throughout

00:02:39 human history in different nations and cultures, and the tradition of Christian resistance in the

00:02:45 midst of civil tyranny. And so I'm pleased and honored to have you. Glenn Sunshine, would you

00:02:50 take a moment and just introduce yourself to our guest? Tell us a little bit about yourself,

00:02:54 your ministry, and particularly your book, Slaying Leviathan. Well, thank you for having me.

00:03:01 I am a college professor. I'm a professor of early modern European history, specialist in

00:03:07 the Reformation. And along with that, I am involved in a podcast called The Theology Podcast,

00:03:15 which we do weekly. And I also have a ministry called Every Square Inch Ministries. And anyone

00:03:23 who is familiar with Kuyper will know the quote, there's not a single square inch in the whole

00:03:27 domain of human experience over which Christ, who is Lord of all, does not cry mine. And that is

00:03:33 the origin of the name for the ministry. The book Slang Leviathan came out of a combination

00:03:43 of things. Some of it was my studies in grad school, but a lot of it really was a response

00:03:51 to trends that I saw going on a few administrations ago. I started really working on this issue of

00:03:59 Christian Ideas of Liberty, Tyranny, and Resistance. Well, like I said, a few administrations 0.92

00:04:06 ago, and it seemed time to pull it together into a book, and that's what Slang Leviathan is about.

00:04:13 The book traces a couple of different kinds of ideas. One of them is where Christian ideas of

00:04:19 liberty came from, where the ideas of unalienable rights came from. The answer, by the way, is

00:04:25 medieval theologians, medieval Catholic theologians, interestingly enough. And then from there, we move

00:04:32 into the Reformation era with resistance theory, Luther's idea of two kingdoms, Calvin's idea of

00:04:38 covenantal basis of government. And then along with that, the fundamental question of when is

00:04:45 it legitimate for Christians to resist a properly constituted government? When does a legitimate 0.92

00:04:52 king turn into an illegitimate tyrant. And that thought begins with Luther. It passes through

00:04:59 the Huguenots to the Puritans and ultimately reaches its probably best expression with John

00:05:05 Locke. And then from there, it shapes the founding of the United States. Great. Well, I think we're

00:05:13 in for a treat. So let me just go ahead and hop in with some questions. And I really, I think for

00:05:19 the benefit of our listeners, it's important that we understand the history. And I know for you and

00:05:23 your context of being a professor, you're probably like, hey, we can't just talk about the present

00:05:27 because we'll continue to make mistakes in the present if we don't know our history. So I

00:05:32 definitely want to give you an opportunity to talk about the history that you go into great

00:05:35 length in your book addressing. That said, could you, just in simple terms, could you give us

00:05:41 a brief definition of what is civil tyranny and maybe some of the, you know,

00:05:48 you know kind of i think it like you know you're redneck if you know like you know you're you know

00:05:53 you're tyrannical if blank like what constitutes what what is where's the line and what is 0.64

00:05:58 breaching that line so what what constitutes civil tyranny and and then maybe you know speaking to

00:06:03 some present moments um is is there anything that you see in our current political climate that

00:06:09 would be an example of that civil tyranny okay yeah there are a couple of different ways we can

00:06:15 get to this. The first of them is going back to Jesus's words, always a good idea. He says in 0.89

00:06:24 answer to the question about paying taxes to Caesar, he says, render to Caesar the things

00:06:28 that are Caesar's and render to God the things that are God's. Okay, so that was in the context

00:06:34 of paying taxes, but I think it's a much broader principle than that. What it says is that the

00:06:39 government has legitimate authority, but that legitimate authority is limited. There are things

00:06:46 that properly do belong to Caesar, and there are things that properly belong to God. On a theological

00:06:52 level, oh, and by the way, God is the one who determines what belongs to Caesar. Let's add that

00:06:58 one in as well. So on a theological level, civil tyranny occurs when Caesar begins usurping

00:07:05 authority that he doesn't legitimately have. When Caesar starts extending his power into areas

00:07:13 that are not properly his. In the early church, this really, the first place where you see this

00:07:21 argued has to do with freedom of religion, interestingly enough. Religious liberty was

00:07:27 something that early Christians argued strenuously for, typically on the grounds that worship that

00:07:34 is compelled is not pleasing to God. So you have to allow people religious liberty, otherwise you're

00:07:42 compelling worship and that won't please God at all. So basically where that leads is freedom of

00:07:48 conscience. The only one who has authority over our consciences is God. When the government claims

00:07:55 authority over your conscious conscience excuse me that is a clear breach of government's

00:08:04 authority and it's usurping something that properly only belongs to god

00:08:07 then through the middle ages oh excuse me go on no i was just gonna say what would be what would

00:08:15 be a practical example of the government um attempting to lay claim on the consciences of

00:08:20 men? Could you think of something like a tangible example? When the government tells you what you

00:08:28 must believe about anything, that would be an example of it. In the modern context, now,

00:08:38 what's interesting here, what's important to note is that even if the government is telling you you 0.52

00:08:43 must believe something that we as Christians know is true, that is still a usurpation of its

00:08:49 authority. So if the government mandates certain kinds of language, which is really fundamentally

00:08:59 about thought control, and the government mandates you must, there are certain things that you can

00:09:04 and cannot say, that is a usurpation of authority that belongs to God, because what it is doing is

00:09:12 it's saying that you aren't allowed to think these things. Yep, yep. We see some of that going on.

00:09:18 Oh, absolutely. Then from there, when you move to the Middle Ages, this isn't exactly the argumentation that they use, but the best way to understand it, so this is a later formulation, but the best way to understand it is to ask what rights, what liberties did people have prior to the development of human government?

00:09:41 because if you have institutions or rights that predate government government cannot claim

00:09:49 authority over those things because they pre-exist government yeah so the institution of the family

00:09:56 was established by god in the garden of eden government has no authority to define what it

00:10:01 means what a family is what marriage is any of those kinds of things it can introduce certain

00:10:08 regulations, but it cannot change the basic structure of marriage established in Genesis.

00:10:15 We have the, well, we have liberty itself as an example. Now, liberty needs to be defined here.

00:10:23 When I was in school, they told me that liberty was just an old-fashioned word for freedom.

00:10:27 That's actually not true. The concept of liberty in the 18th century was really tied into ideas of

00:10:37 virtue, ideas of purpose, ideas of living the best, the fullest life possible now,

00:10:45 which was always a life that was aimed toward, well, virtue. It is freedom that exists within

00:10:54 boundaries. So in the Garden of Eden, you see liberty in the sense that Adam and Eve are told

00:11:01 you can eat whatever tree you want to, except that one. There was a boundary they weren't

00:11:06 supposed to cross. The alternative to liberty is what's known as license in the 18th century.

00:11:12 It's the root of our word licentious. And license means freedom from restraint.

00:11:19 Okay. We are not going to accept any boundaries. You can't tell me what to do.

00:11:26 In the modern world, we have completely lost the concept of liberty because we've lost the

00:11:31 concept of virtue. And without virtue, you can't have liberty. So all that's left for freedom is

00:11:37 license. It's freedom from authority. I can do whatever I want to. You can't stop me. You have

00:11:43 no right to do that. Rather than living within the boundary set by divine and natural law,

00:11:50 which is what liberty would point to. But that's super helpful. Isn't that what Chesterton said?

00:11:57 didn't he say like true freedom is found within the bounds or true liberty is found within the

00:12:01 bounds? I think it sounds like a Chestertonian kind of thing. It sounds like a Chestertonian

00:12:05 quote. I don't know that one, but it's quite possible. So we can look at liberty as being

00:12:11 something that is pre-political. The government cannot take that away from us. It cannot take

00:12:17 away from us our right to pursue a good life, good in the fullest and richest meaning of the word.

00:12:24 We see the right to property in the garden.

00:12:29 Where?

00:12:30 Well, first of all, there is the command to tend the garden and eat the fruit.

00:12:38 So, yeah, you know, tend and keep the garden, protect the garden, whatever word there, but also you have the right to eat the fruit.

00:12:45 So Adam and Eve were literally entitled to the fruit of their labor.

00:12:50 This is known as the labor theory of property.

00:12:53 If you work for something, you have a right to it.

00:12:58 So property rights actually predate government.

00:13:03 So there are a number of things of this sort that we can point to.

00:13:10 Life.

00:13:11 God gave Adam and Eve life in the garden.

00:13:13 Now, if you've been paying attention, you will have heard life, liberty, and property here,

00:13:17 which are the three unalienable rights that John Locke mentioned.

00:13:20 All of them are pre-political.

00:13:22 All of them precede human government in the garden, and therefore government cannot arbitrarily deprive us of any of them.

00:13:31 Is it true, just for a moment to interrupt, is it true that we actually had that language of life, liberty, and property, and then it was changed later on to the pursuit of happiness?

00:13:44 I've heard that somewhere.

00:13:46 Yes.

00:13:47 Locke said that our unalienable rights are life, liberty, and property.

00:13:51 Jefferson changed property to pursuit of happiness, but we have to know what happiness means.

00:13:56 Happiness to Jefferson is, it goes back to a Greek word, eudaimonia. He knows his Aristotle.

00:14:06 And eudaimonia in Greek philosophy is the highest purpose of life. We have the right to pursue

00:14:16 our highest ends. That's really what the pursuit of happiness means. And that involves virtue.

00:14:23 Again, in Aristotle, very clear, it's Arete in Greek, virtus in Latin. The word points to

00:14:33 excellence, pursuit of excellence in every area of life, again, as a necessary element of

00:14:41 fulfilling your highest purposes. So the pursuit of happiness really refers to the pursuit of

00:14:47 your highest good. It's very closely tied to the concept of virtue. And with that,

00:14:55 we should add that Jefferson firmly believed that property rights were included in there

00:15:00 because you could not do this without property rights. But he jumped over Locke and went back

00:15:06 to aristotle for that one got you i appreciate what you're saying in terms of property rights

00:15:11 the way you were broadening it and your definition because i think typically we just think of property

00:15:17 rights as the right to own you know physical land but but you were saying it's it's the right to

00:15:22 to um to the fruit of our labor and um correct me if i'm wrong here but there's an important

00:15:28 distinction between passive and active rights and there's just there's a lot of things that

00:15:33 people have begun well it's like the age of entitlement there's a lot of things that people

00:15:37 feel entitled to they think they have rights to that biblically speaking um and just logically

00:15:42 speaking they don't and um so if there's a right to free health care then wouldn't that infringe

00:15:48 on what would technically be described as property rights that if property rights is i have the right

00:15:52 to my own labor then a doctor who worked hard to gain those skills and knowledge and all that and

00:15:57 it and he's a human being he it's he only has 24 hours in the day like the rest of us it's his time

00:16:01 it's his his work his knowledge expertise we're saying his property rights over his labor

00:16:09 supersedes any pseudo right to health care um and and that would be a passive right correct me if

00:16:16 i'm wrong i might be getting them backwards but a passive right on the part of the doctor that

00:16:20 right to the fruit of his labor versus an active right is could you explain that am i am i on to

00:16:26 something there? Yeah, I think you are. I don't typically use the language of passive versus

00:16:32 active rights myself, but I know that that's out there. But the key thing here is that if we

00:16:39 believe in liberty, number one, and property rights defined as the labor theory of property,

00:16:47 then what's happening with the doctor in that case violates both of them because functionally

00:16:53 ends up being slave labor. The doctor, if I have an unalienable right to health care,

00:17:01 then a doctor who refuses to treat me because I won't or can't pay him is violating my rights.

00:17:11 That's where this goes. And while no one will say that, no one who advocates for the idea of

00:17:17 health care is the right will say that, that's fundamentally where the use of the language in

00:17:25 that way leads you automatically to that. You're violating my rights. You don't treat me.

00:17:32 You're right. You're right. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, that's a logical conclusion. It's a train

00:17:39 that we don't want to be on because the end is dire. Well, you've already kind of been

00:17:44 dancing around it a little bit and addressing it at some length. But can we go just a little

00:17:49 bit deeper into John Locke? Who's John Locke? And what's so significant about his contributions?

00:17:55 And what do you wish Christians knew about John Locke and would fight for with his contributions? 0.87

00:18:03 Okay, before we get to Locke, I want to give you one more definition of civil tyranny.

00:18:08 Because like I said, there are several different ways you can get here. The other one, I'm going

00:18:13 going to go with a Kuyperian definition. Kuyper believed that there were a number of spheres of

00:18:19 life that were, well, autonomous. They were established by God and intended to have autonomy.

00:18:25 Once again, you can trace a lot of these right back to the garden. Family, labor and business,

00:18:32 things like that. There are, well, religion, worship. There are a variety of these things

00:18:38 that predate government, that are therefore autonomous from government, largely independent

00:18:45 of it. Government has its legitimate sphere, but so does the church, so does the family,

00:18:50 so does education, so does business and labor, and so on. He called this sphere sovereignty.

00:18:58 The idea is that each sphere has its own area in which it can govern itself.

00:19:05 The problem comes up when one sphere, and it is almost inevitably the government, begins to take on roles that properly belong to another sphere.

00:19:18 And when that happens, we are moving towards civil tyranny.

00:19:23 The government is once again expanding out of its legitimate zone, which is fundamental definition of tyranny.

00:19:29 Now, this most often happens when one of the spheres stops functioning properly, when Wall Street is corrupt and you get derivatives trading and things like that, and bubbles like we saw happen a few years ago with the housing crisis.

00:19:46 um that sphere that we describe that as the sphere collapsing it ceases to function the

00:19:53 way it's supposed to and then when that happens another sphere has to step in to try to pick up

00:19:58 the slack or try to get it working again that will most often be the government but the problem is

00:20:03 the government is incompetent outside of its areas of authority and therefore and sometimes

00:20:09 sometimes within its area of authority well yeah i mean yeah even within its area of authority it

00:20:15 can be, but when it steps out of that zone of authority, it is really ill-equipped to do that

00:20:21 kind of work and frequently makes the problem worse, and it turns into, well, Leviathan. It

00:20:28 turns into this monster that engulfs everything. And would you agree that even the welfare state

00:20:36 would be a breach of government stepping into the sphere of the family, that if indeed it's true

00:20:41 that certain fathers, you know, or even at a epidemic proportion that fathers have failed in

00:20:48 their responsibility of protection and provision, it still belongs to fathers, it belongs to this

00:20:54 autonomous sphere, and the government steps in and ends up often doing more harm than good?

00:20:59 Would that be another example? Well, let's take a look at this in terms of chickens and eggs.

00:21:06 okay where did the problem start when i was growing up my mother taught in inner city newark

00:21:13 okay in new jersey um when the riots occurred in 68 my mom and dad put my brothers who were still

00:21:20 at home and me in a car and drove us through the area during the day where the riots were

00:21:26 taking place to explain to us why those riots were happening so i had sort of a front well

00:21:33 backseat view of this literally in this case but she would occasionally she taught special ed and

00:21:43 she would occasionally go to visit her students at their homes and you know to talk to the parents

00:21:50 and so on and she came home one day and mentioned that the student that she had gone to visit

00:21:56 that lived with his mother, but not his father. And, you know, I was 10 years old, something like

00:22:05 that. I said, well, why doesn't his dad live with him? And she said, well, it's because of welfare.

00:22:12 And I said, well, what's that? It's, well, the government gives people who are poor money so

00:22:17 that they can live. But she said, the way the welfare program is set up, they get less money

00:22:26 if the father is at home with them. 0.99

00:22:28 Right. 1.00

00:22:29 Because they incentivize women not to marry the fathers of their children. 1.00

00:22:34 Well, because you see now they're trying to do it right 0.84

00:22:36 because they assume that if the father is there, the father has a job.

00:22:40 But the problem was there were no jobs.

00:22:41 And so in order to get enough money to keep the family going,

00:22:46 the fathers had to leave the house.

00:22:48 Even when they were married and didn't want it, they had to leave the house.

00:22:52 And so what this ended up doing is destroying the African-American family in the inner cities, so that now we have this massive epidemic of unwed mothers, single-parent households, and things like that.

00:23:06 The family collapsed, but the family collapsed because the government stepped into a sphere that isn't its responsibility.

00:23:14 The government is not responsible for welfare, especially not at a federal level.

00:23:20 That's the responsibility of the church. It's the responsibility of local charitable organizations, those kinds of things, because they understand the issues on the ground better and can do a better job than the one-size-fits-none policies of the federal government.

00:23:34 right right so they created the crisis in family by that that policy which i said like i said it

00:23:42 was well-intentioned and they were trying to do the right thing and they were trying to be

00:23:45 responsible and all that sort of thing but the law of unintended consequences which is the only

00:23:50 universal law of history kicked in destroyed the family and now the government is even more

00:23:57 in loco parentis than they were before yep i get it all right so now with it with that final

00:24:06 definition of civil civil tyranny uh do you feel like we're ready to discuss john lock yeah uh let

00:24:12 let's go to lock lock lock is an interesting guy he's he is really important um in terms of

00:24:21 political thought. He was a Puritan. Due to a debate over the authorship of the Pentateuch

00:24:30 that occurred in the intellectual, the key intellectual journal of the day, he moved

00:24:36 into a more liberal version of Christianity, but he never really lost, you know, his Christian

00:24:41 roots. And he, you know, he might have been more liberal than we would be comfortable with

00:24:47 leaning deist and things like that, but I think he's still within the broad Christian tradition.

00:24:56 What he did is he took a lot of elements of Christian thought that were already in place

00:25:04 in terms of political theology. So he took the idea of unalienable rights, which was developed,

00:25:11 like I said, by medieval Catholic theologians. He took resistance theory with its roots in

00:25:17 Luther, but going through the Huguenots and the Puritans, he took Calvin's idea of covenantal

00:25:23 government. The idea here is that when God established a government with Israel on Mount

00:25:28 Sinai in Exodus, he did it in the form of a covenant. And further, he asked them three

00:25:33 separate times, do you agree to abide by the terms of this covenant? And they didn't ratify

00:25:39 the covenant until you got the consent of the governed three separate times. So Calvin then

00:25:46 argued that government must be based on consent of the government. This was not a new idea,

00:25:51 but he adds to it that the covenantal nature of government. And then this idea is going to pass

00:25:57 very strongly into the Puritans. They'll develop it further. But all of these different things, 0.79

00:26:02 the idea of unalienable rights, the idea of resistance theory, the idea of covenantal

00:26:07 government, all of these different things operated sort of in their own lanes. What Locke did is he

00:26:15 synthesized them. He brought them together into a coherent system that really unified all of these

00:26:23 different branches of Christian political theology for the first time. And so you get Locke's idea

00:26:29 that government exists. Now, he secularizes it a bit. He is not as theologically oriented as I

00:26:36 would like. He changes the language of covenant to the language of contract. Contract is a

00:26:42 secularization of covenant here. But he argues that government consists of a proper government

00:26:49 is established as a contract between the government and the people. That that contract

00:26:56 is based on the idea that it is going to be protecting the people's unalienable rights,

00:27:04 life, liberty, and property coming out of medieval theologians. And that if the government

00:27:09 government violates that contract, violates the rights of the people, the people have a right to

00:27:14 resist. They have a right to stand up, overthrow the government, and replace it with one more to

00:27:19 their liking. Now, they do need to replace it with another government. We're not talking about

00:27:24 anarchy. And that other government then is subject to the same contractual obligations

00:27:29 to the people to protect their unalienable rights as the previous government had been.

00:27:34 Now, like I said, this is a brilliant synthesis of a lot of elements that already existed within Christian political theology.

00:27:44 It then crosses the Atlantic and becomes the foundation for Jefferson's thinking with the modification of pursuit of happiness that we talked about before.

00:27:55 And then this becomes a critical element in the establishment of government, of the United States government.

00:28:03 Now, there's another element that runs through this that doesn't go through Locke that's worth noting. That comes from St. Augustine. Augustine is the guy, he's probably best remembered today for predestination, but he's also the guy who really codified in a lot of ways the doctrine of original sin.

00:28:19 and original sin is an important again critically important concept for western political thought

00:28:27 because what it means is that there is no one that can be trusted with absolute power because

00:28:33 everyone is corrupt and corruptible therefore government must be limited and must have systems

00:28:40 of checks and balances in place this again is some part and parcel of the medieval political

00:28:46 tradition coming out of Augustine. We think of checks and balances as being American, but it

00:28:51 really dates all the way back into the Middle Ages with roots in Augustine's thought. That became

00:28:57 really strong with Calvin, who's heavily influenced by Augustine. It goes to the Puritans, the Puritans

00:29:04 to New England, and thus this fundamental mistrust of government is worked directly

00:29:12 into the U.S. Constitution through its system of checks and balances, as well, by the way,

00:29:19 as its utter fear of political parties. One of the things most people don't realize is that in

00:29:26 the original Constitution, the president was the one who got the most electoral votes. The vice

00:29:32 president was the guy who got the second highest amount of electoral college votes.

00:29:36 and the reason they did that is they knew from the experience of republics in italy during the

00:29:45 middle ages and renaissance that if you get factions in the government um and a faction

00:29:51 manages to take control it's the death of the republic and so they absolutely feared factions

00:29:57 and parties now they discovered pretty quickly how are we doing on that glenn yeah well where

00:30:04 Where does this lead? Think about the checks and balance system. The idea is that you've got three

00:30:11 major branches of government. I'm going to use that word, even though it's probably not exactly

00:30:17 correct. You have the executive, the presidency, you have the Senate, and you have the House.

00:30:26 The judiciary is non-political in principle. Basically, its job is to play referee.

00:30:32 but between those three branches each of them represents one of aristotle's ideal forms of

00:30:39 government you've got the monarchial principle in the president you have the aristocratic principle

00:30:45 in the senate you have the republican principle in the house the idea so it's it's technically

00:30:50 what's referred to as a mixed state okay an aristotelian mixed state the idea is

00:30:56 that if any branch of government oversteps its legitimate bounds, the other two will rein it in. 0.68

00:31:06 Okay, because they were trying to use actually original sin to their advantage. The idea is

00:31:15 that each institution will be so interested in guarding its prerogatives that it won't

00:31:22 let any other institution overstep its bounds and it'll team up with the other side.

00:31:26 with the with one of the other institutions to stop presidency gets too big for its britches

00:31:32 the house and the senate will work against it the senate and the president will work against

00:31:36 the house and so on that only works if you don't have political parties because once you have a

00:31:44 political party loyalties are no longer to the institution they're to the party and that crosses

00:31:52 institutional lines and therefore the system of checks and balances can't work correctly.

00:31:57 So instead of three united branches of government institutions that you have three different that

00:32:02 are there but all three of them are fractured with different it's it makes me think kind of

00:32:07 a silly example but it makes me think of what fantasy football has done to watching football

00:32:12 no longer do you have an actual team that you're rooting for because you're rooting for all these

00:32:16 individual players who are spread out on all these different teams and in some way it kind of you

00:32:21 know ruins the traditional way of watching football i don't know just throwing that out there well

00:32:27 again the idea is that the different branches of government should be in competition with each

00:32:31 other and instead what happens that that's how the system of checks and balances it's the only way it

00:32:37 works but when you get parties and you get the president and the senate and the house or one

00:32:45 faction you know versus another faction it you the system of checks and balances breaks down

00:32:52 wow and that's really interesting i did not know even what you said about the you know the guy who

00:32:57 got the most electoral votes being the the president and then the guy who got the second

00:33:02 most it's not that just he you know he and his administration you know lose but he's actually

00:33:07 the vice president i was not aware of that yeah it's it's uh it's a great idea in theory

00:33:14 in practice, could you imagine President Biden and Vice President Trump or President Trump

00:33:20 and Vice President Clinton? Right. Yeah. But even that, man, I'd rather that than Biden and Kamala.

00:33:27 But yeah, I get it. Yeah. So anyway, what you're seeing here in America is a combination of things.

00:33:37 Locke synthesizes, like I said, brilliantly a lot of elements of Christian political theology.

00:33:42 and then that gets transported over here with Jefferson. When you add the Puritan component

00:33:48 heading into the constitution, you get a lot of the ideas from Locke coming in, but you're also

00:33:54 getting this emphasis on original sin, which Locke didn't have. And as a result, I would argue

00:34:02 that the American, the founding documents of America, the Declaration and the Constitution

00:34:09 are probably the ultimate culmination of a long tradition of christian political theology

00:34:18 and it's really it's really in a lot of ways its last its last expression because shortly

00:34:27 after the constitution is established you get the french revolution which is a purely secular

00:34:33 revolution. And with that, it changes the rules. Complete political theory, political thought

00:34:42 from that point on is dominated by the secular French revolution and the ideas that come out of

00:34:49 that much more than from Christian political theology, which is really at the root of America.

00:34:55 yeah yeah okay well so with all that uh well i one of the things i just i gotta play the devil's

00:35:04 advocate for a moment and i think it'll be helpful for our listeners but i think one of the things

00:35:08 that i i just constantly hear christians you know use to push back on some of the things you're

00:35:12 saying is just well what about you know what about romans 13 what about different verses in

00:35:17 the bible that talk about it seems as though the new testament would say that that there's just this

00:35:22 blind submission from citizens. Christians should submit to civil governments even when

00:35:29 they are tyrannical. How would you respond to that? Well, what they're doing is they're 1.00

00:35:36 appealing to Romans 13. What they're ignoring is what Romans 13 says about the purpose of

00:35:44 government. Romans 13 says that the magistrate exists to punish evil and reward good.

00:35:54 Right. Are we obligated to obey when the government punishes good and rewards evil?

00:36:04 When the government is not doing what God has ordained the government to do,

00:36:08 are we still obligated to obey that? Because in the context of Romans 13, it tells you what the

00:36:17 government is to be doing. Right. It assumes, yeah, that's the argument that I've always used

00:36:22 is saying that, you know, all the submission language from citizens to civil government in

00:36:27 Romans 13, but the, you know, it's all on the backdrop. It's all on the assumption that the

00:36:33 government is functioning in the way that God ordained it to function, that they're rewarding

00:36:36 good, that they're punishing evil. They're bearing the sword for just reasons. Um, and so there's

00:36:42 just, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that I think, you know, Paul is assuming in Romans

00:36:46 13, submit to civil governments. And, and, you know, the implicit kind of word is when they look

00:36:54 like this, this is civil government. This is God's design for civil government. And, and you should

00:37:00 submit to the, and I mean, he even says like, you know, that would you have no fear, you know,

00:37:05 of the government you know then then do what is good so even that like shows he's paul i think is

00:37:12 showing his hand he's showing the assumptions that are baked into the text and saying like

00:37:15 because if he was just talking about governments period whether they were good you know bad or in

00:37:20 between then i think he would offer some some clarification when he says you know would you

00:37:25 have no fear the one you know who rules over you like um then then do instead of saying do what is

00:37:32 good, he would have to say, do what they want, whether that's actually aligns with God's moral

00:37:37 law or not. And so, I'm with you. I agree. I think I just, you know, we just often hear

00:37:43 Romans 13, Romans 13, you know. Yeah. And that comes really from sort of a minimalist

00:37:49 understanding, going right back to Jesus's words, render to Caesar things that are Caesar,

00:37:54 and to God's things that are God's. That's going to sort of a minimalist view that says that

00:37:59 only the things that are explicitly related to worship of God are gods. The government has

00:38:07 everything else. It's not a Kuyperian view. Yeah. I mean, so if they tell you you've got to worship 0.96

00:38:13 a statue of the emperor, you've got to burn incense to the statue of the emperor,

00:38:17 yeah, we've got to draw the line there. But pretty much anything else the government tells

00:38:20 you to do, if it doesn't impinge on that, you need to do. No. Because there are things that

00:38:28 are not the governments. And they're a lot more than just the things that are explicitly God's,

00:38:34 the things that God expressly commands. And God owns a lot more than just the church. I mean,

00:38:40 if I had a dollar for every time, so, you know, Christ is the head of the church, you know,

00:38:44 Christ is the head of the church, not Caesar. And it's like, I always want to point them to

00:38:48 Ephesians or Colossians, amen, Christ is the head of the church. But did you know he's also the head

00:38:53 of all things? Christ is not merely the head of the church, you know. Yeah, when I'm talking about

00:38:58 the kingdom, I will usually just say, you know, a kingdom, the Greek word Vasileia, translated

00:39:05 kingdom, really doesn't necessarily refer to a geographic territory. What it refers to

00:39:11 is the exercise of royal authority. Thus, even if a Roman soldier on an errand for Caesar is not in

00:39:21 Roman territory, it doesn't matter. He is still, the kingdom is there with him, in him. Okay.

00:39:30 So if you, you then take the next step and say, okay, the most basic Christian confession

00:39:40 is Jesus is Lord. Now that was itself an inescapably political statement because the

00:39:49 de facto confession of the Roman Empire is Caesar is Lord. But let's move it to a current context.

00:39:56 What is Jesus Lord of? And I'll give you a hint. It's a three-letter word that rhymes with call.

00:40:06 Okay. Now, we say this in our hymns. We sing this in our hymns all the time. You know,

00:40:11 crown him lord of all what is not included in all right well i think you're absolutely right and i

00:40:20 think the problem is that the american evangelical modern church has has um has pushed jesus lordship

00:40:27 all the way back to to exclusively the realm of the heart jesus is lord of we've replaced all i

00:40:33 think you're right we still do have some of those those hymns and some of that language he's lord of

00:40:37 all, but you see it quickly eroding away that Jesus is Lord of all language and being replaced

00:40:43 with Jesus is the Lord of my heart. And so Jesus is like his lordship, you know, it's very, very

00:40:49 limited and it's a private, right? Lord of my heart, it's internal, it's invisible, like it's

00:40:54 a private lordship rather than a public. And it's crazy. It's scary to see that Lord of all replaced

00:41:02 with Lord of my heart. Yeah, there are two observations to make here. One of them

00:41:10 is that this is effectively secularizing the gospel. In secularization, there are a variety

00:41:19 of definitions of it, but basically it says that religion is a private matter. You're welcome to

00:41:26 have it if you want to, but keep it out of public life. If our concept of Christianity is it's just

00:41:33 about personal salvation, maybe personal morality, we have secularized the gospel. We have bought

00:41:40 into the lie of secular culture. We have ceded territory that belongs to Jesus to the secular

00:41:47 world. The second observation is that it really reflects a utterly defective view of salvation.

00:41:56 we think of salvation, and this is a problem with evangelicals across the board,

00:42:02 we think of salvation pretty much exclusively in terms of forgiveness of sins.

00:42:07 We've got a very forensic legal understanding of what salvation is. That is really, really

00:42:15 important, and I don't want to downplay the significance of that, but it's only the beginning.

00:42:23 if you go to europe and you go in go to a gothic cathedral in france let's say charles or

00:42:32 ramps or well it can't do notre dame anymore but if you were to go there what you would find

00:42:39 is the main door to the west has got boatloads of symbolism attached to it it's to the west

00:42:48 which is where the sun sets so it's symbolic of the end of the world and when you enter from the

00:42:53 west, you're entering from the end of time, and over the main door, you will see Christ enthroned

00:42:59 in heaven, either the scene from Revelation 4 or Christ judging people, you know, the final

00:43:06 judgment. That's what's over the door, and so when you go in there, there's a lot of theology

00:43:12 right on that door, and you could spend a lot of time at the west door, at the vestibule in there,

00:43:20 looking at everything there and studying it. But if you want to get to the real jaw-dropping part

00:43:27 of a Gothic cathedral, you've got to get inside into the nave, into the main body of the church.

00:43:33 That is where you will be absolutely awestruck at what they did and how they managed to do this.

00:43:40 It's breathtakingly beautiful. It's amazing stuff. The cathedral is the kingdom.

00:43:47 getting your sins forgiven is the doorway evangelicals are stuck at the door

00:43:55 they never or very few of them go all the way in to see the real glories of the kingdom to see the

00:44:04 real glories of the church it's like being stuck at the west door like i said it's great it's

00:44:09 interesting it's fascinating lots of good theology and all of that but you're missing the best part

00:44:15 if that's where you leave it that's really good it makes me think i i love pilgrim's progress it

00:44:22 makes me think of the wicked gate and if pilgrim had just stopped there and you know goodwill thrust

00:44:27 his hand and you know you know with all my heart are you welcome you know are you willing to to

00:44:31 welcome me with all my heart and if he had just you know grabbed his hand stepped inside sat down

00:44:38 and called it done you know it'd be kind of a boring a boring book i mean still from the

00:44:43 city of destruction the slew of the spawn you know and you know all there would still be a lot

00:44:48 you're right we could fascinate ourselves and delve into a lot of good theology and

00:44:53 still plenty of beauty um but we'd be missing we'd be missing a lot we'd be missing the delectable

00:45:00 mountains we'd be missing the celestial city we'd be missing here's here's a challenge for

00:45:06 you and your listeners read through paul's epistles the guy we get our doctrine of

00:45:12 justification by faith from. And notice how often he uses the phrase in Christ or with Christ.

00:45:20 And notice all of the things that are associated with it.

00:45:25 If you really look and you see everything that is said there, it does two things. First of all,

00:45:31 it tells you that we have literally every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

00:45:37 but you know so so we have to maintain our connection to christ it's it's branches and

00:45:46 vine image it's all of those kinds of things but what it says we have in christ is a lot more than

00:45:52 just forgiveness of sins that's mentioned almost incidentally there is so much more riches that

00:45:59 are involved in our salvation that we just completely miss because we do not understand

00:46:03 the lordship of christ we've privatized it we've reduced it simply to salvation yeah i think you're

00:46:11 right i i completely agree uh let me ask you one more question uh in our episode um there's there's

00:46:19 a phrase that um the founders seem to be fond of saying and that you have quoted um that says that

00:46:27 eternal vigilance is the price that we pay for our liberty. What do the founders mean by this,

00:46:33 that eternal vigilance as the price that we pay for our liberty? And what are some specific ways

00:46:39 kind of getting as, you know, present day, you know, speaking to our culture, our society,

00:46:47 what are some ways that the church has failed in this eternal vigilance? What do you think?

00:46:53 Well, once again, at this point, we're dealing with the idea of original sin.

00:47:02 You know, the fact is, you know, as Lord Acton famously said, power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

00:47:09 You have to constantly, eternal vigilance really involves watching what your government is doing and not letting it get too big, not letting it overstep its bounds, not letting it get too big for its britches.

00:47:22 because government always tends toward tyranny okay that that's fundamentally what that needs

00:47:33 we you know i see that quote used a lot but very few people really think about its implications

00:47:40 so its implications really have to do with the fact that you can't trust people with power

00:47:44 and what we see i i would say that we have really dropped the ball on this

00:47:52 the church has been more than happy this is really um dating to the 60s but coming out of the

00:48:01 golden era of liberal christianity in america which is the 1950s

00:48:06 um the church has been very happy to subcontract at its responsibilities to the government

00:48:12 yeah and as a result the things that the church is supposed to be doing like caring for the poor

00:48:22 and the needy and so on are now in the hands of government and government is ill-equipped to do

00:48:29 them but the government is more than happy to take whatever power you're willing to cede it

00:48:33 and we have been consistently ceding power to the government let me ask you this question

00:48:38 I just actually posted this on Facebook.

00:48:44 When we talk about giving to Caesar what's Caesar's and giving to God what's God's, what belongs to Caesar?

00:48:51 Does determining the time and place where we can worship belong to Caesar?

00:48:58 No.

00:48:59 Does determining how many people can come to worship belong to Caesar?

00:49:04 No.

00:49:05 Does determining what we can do in worship, for example, you aren't allowed to sing, does that belong to Caesar?

00:49:14 That's not even the circumstances of our worship, but that's the elements of our worship. That certainly belongs to the church.

00:49:20 So, how is it that our churches have rolled over?

00:49:28 Yeah, it's a great question.

00:49:32 So, you know, you want a concrete example of government overreach. You want a concrete example of why eternal vigilance is necessary.

00:49:40 What I am abundantly concerned about is that however well-intentioned, and I'll give them

00:49:51 the benefit of the doubt, however well-intentioned these government restrictions are, they have

00:49:56 established a precedent that given the tendency of government toward corruption and tyranny

00:50:04 because of the problem of sin in the world, we can't trust them not to use this to push other

00:50:15 things on the church that are not justifiable by the pandemic, but by other things that they're

00:50:23 going to claim are national priorities. And we've already seen examples of this.

00:50:28 Right. The Equality Act is coming.

00:50:30 The Equality Act will be a great example. Yeah. And don't underestimate the impact of the Equality Act. Ministerial exemptions will get ministers off the hook, maybe, but it won't get people who work in the church who are not ministers.

00:50:48 It won't protect churches from being required to hire there.

00:50:52 And it certainly won't apply to non-church Christian institutions, para-church ministries, groups like Focus on the Family, for example, or Christian colleges and universities.

00:51:08 And even an organization like, I've got a lot of respect for Hillsdale, Grove City, these places that don't take federal funding.

00:51:15 But it's not going to stop with federal funding. It's going to go the next step to accreditation. And if you lose accreditation, you are out of business as a college.

00:51:28 And I can pretty well guarantee if the Equality Act passes, the accreditation agencies are going to say, OK, you have to abide by the terms of this for accreditation or you are unaccredited.

00:51:37 unaccredited. The consequences of this are absolutely massive. And yet, given the church's

00:51:46 track record of rolling over at every government intrusion, I don't really see them having the

00:51:53 backbone to put up a fight. Yeah, me neither. At the same time, I am hopeful and encouraged,

00:52:01 at least in respects to, I think that at least some Christians are starting to wake up 0.82

00:52:07 I think I well I'd see it as a winnowing you know the Lord sovereignly he prunes I think he's used 0.84

00:52:13 COVID I think he's used Black Lives Matter he's used multiple things especially in this last year 0.60

00:52:19 as his winnowing fork and separating the wheat from the chaff and I think what we found is that

00:52:23 a lot of the numbers are our numbers and our ranks that we boasted of weren't actually there

00:52:30 so we're working with less than perhaps we were claiming less less people than we actually thought

00:52:37 we had but the ones that we do have the remnant if you will is is waking up and and getting I

00:52:45 think I think angry and a righteous anger so I'm hopeful but we need we need voices we need guys

00:52:53 like john knox um we need we need fighters um let let me just ask one more thing because you

00:53:00 just got me thinking with you know the church caring for the poor and you know if the church

00:53:05 you know any of these spheres autonomous you know sphere sovereignty if any of these spheres fails

00:53:10 and its responsibilities its its duties then there's always going to be the temptation of

00:53:15 another sphere to to encroach and to step in and government tends to be that sphere

00:53:19 what about though i just the the thing that's difficult so like caring for the poor you know

00:53:25 the the church has so we have some pretty clear conditions that god gives us in his word you know

00:53:32 like i mean i think of just first timothy 5 you know it's like care for the poor and and the first

00:53:37 implicit question is who's the poor you know and and then what we see in first timothy 5 and i'm

00:53:42 not saying that this is you know because we can obviously look at other texts and old testament

00:53:46 text and but first timothy five you know you know uh a widow and and and to make the widow's list

00:53:53 now to be fair if paul says you know galatians do as often as you have opportunity to do good to all

00:53:57 but but prioritize the household of faith and and but then you know first timothy five it's like 0.87

00:54:02 here are the qualifications for a widow she must be you know he gives an age limit she must be this 0.98

00:54:06 old you know it doesn't count if she's the 30 year old woman uh 30 30 year old widow but she 1.00

00:54:11 needs to be this age. She also needs to be faithful. We don't just give to people who are 0.99

00:54:16 needy, but we do as often as we have opportunity, but we're not limitless. We're finite in our

00:54:24 resources, and the church is finite, just like the government and everything else. We can't just,

00:54:28 the government doesn't know it's finite, but it is, but it just prints money. And the church

00:54:33 is finite also like the government, but tends to know it maybe a little bit better than the

00:54:37 government. And so there's only so much, and so we prioritize. We have these regulations from

00:54:41 God's word. And so I just think about the masses that the population, the people, when you have

00:54:46 two entities, two spheres, and one is rightly instituted by God to care for the poor. And one

00:54:53 is not, namely the government. But this one that actually it is their right has stipulations and

00:54:59 conditions. And then this one says, no conditions, we won't give you a drug test, we won't give you

00:55:07 anything, you don't have to, you don't have to live a holy life, you don't have to do this,

00:55:10 you don't have to do that. And we'll just, you know what I mean? People, so part of it,

00:55:14 I think the church fails, but part of it is like our, our constitute all these, you know,

00:55:19 written for a moral population. And the more that morality, you know, erodes in the population as a

00:55:24 whole, it's like, even if the church steps up its game and is caring for the poor righteously,

00:55:29 according to God's word and rightly prioritizing, because it is finite. If somebody's immoral

00:55:38 and they look at government will give me money

00:55:41 and I don't have to do anything.

00:55:42 Church will give me money,

00:55:43 but I have to get my life together.

00:55:45 You know what I mean?

00:55:47 Do you have any thoughts on that?

00:55:50 Well, I'd like to point out just a couple of things.

00:55:54 One of them is that Jesus tells us

00:55:57 that we're to give to whoever asks of us

00:55:59 without expecting return.

00:56:02 You know, he talks about how God does good

00:56:04 to the righteous and the unrighteous.

00:56:06 And God expects us to do the same thing. So when you look at the history of the church, the church has taken care of the poor. It has worked at various times to distinguish between the worthy poor and the unworthy poor, and to support particularly the worthy poor, but not the others.

00:56:28 I mean, so there have been distinctions drawn there. But the other thing to keep in mind is that I don't know the current numbers, but a while ago I ran into statistics that said that charitable organizations use 70% of their income for the work that they're doing.

00:56:50 the government uses 30 percent because there's so much overhead so what that means is it is

00:57:00 economically inefficient to work through the government because the government is ill-equipped

00:57:05 to do this it's not what it's supposed to be doing christianity also along with the church

00:57:12 it's also worth noting that christianity created the first charitable institutions in world history

00:57:19 so there are people had always given alms to the poor but organized systematic hospitals

00:57:28 orphanages things like this are the invention of the christian church so it doesn't have to be the

00:57:35 church itself that is doing the work there is plate there is space for these kinds of charitable

00:57:43 institutions. And that is still often the work that we talk about. But it still is often the

00:57:50 work of the church in the sense that it is Christians who truly care about that. That's

00:57:57 helpful. That's helpful. Yeah. So, you know, we have Catholic hospitals, Catholic charities,

00:58:02 you know, things like that is one example. But there are also other denominations that do similar

00:58:06 kinds of things. Catholics get a lot of press because they're big. But there are others that

00:58:11 They'll do the same thing.

00:58:13 Yeah, that's really helpful.

00:58:14 Well, let's go ahead and conclude.

00:58:17 And as I told you before, we started recording our typical practice with Theology Applied is that we have a bonus question.

00:58:25 And so we encourage people to sign up for our club membership.

00:58:30 We call it our responders.

00:58:30 If you feel so inclined and you're one of our listeners today and you'd like to support this ministry so that we could produce and create more content like this with biblically qualified guests like Glenn Sunshine, we need your prayers and we need your support.

00:58:46 And as an incentive and our gift to you is we are creating a bonus reel of content that only our club members, our responders can access.

00:58:54 And so this is our bonus question for our responders, our club members.

00:58:58 I'm going to go ahead and say it just to whet everyone's appetite, to throw out a little

00:59:02 incentive here.

00:59:04 We already were starting to get at it a little bit.

00:59:06 So maybe we could just go a little bit deeper with the Equality Act.

00:59:10 So Glenn, our bonus question is, could you just spend a little bit of time briefly explaining

00:59:15 the Equality Act and offer your personal prediction for what you believe some of the effects might

00:59:20 be on the church, but also the society at large?

00:59:24 So that's our bonus question.

00:59:25 And let's go ahead and conclude our episode by Glenn giving you the final word.

00:59:29 How can people be praying for you, and how can they follow your ministry?

00:59:33 Okay, well, first of all, following the ministry is easier.

00:59:38 I am easy to find on Facebook.

00:59:42 I accept, unless there's some obvious red flag, I accept pretty much everybody who sends a friend request.

00:59:50 Along with that, I have a ministry that I run myself.

00:59:56 It is Every Square Inch Ministries.

00:59:59 That's at esquareinch, E-S-Q-U-A-R-E-I-N-C-H dot org or dot com.

01:00:06 There's also the Theology Podcast.

01:00:08 All of those are good ways to find me.

01:00:10 In terms of prayer, I'm actually retiring from my position at the university at the end of this semester.

01:00:18 And I'm retiring specifically so that I can put more focused time in teaching, writing, and speaking to the Christian world. I want to, I really believe God is calling me into more active and direct ministry, and I can't do that with a full-time job at the university.

01:00:39 so um i'm kind of stepping out of the boat here um so uh prayer for future ministry opportunities

01:00:51 and frankly not to be too crass about it for support um maybe some ministry opportunities

01:00:59 that pay yeah yeah there you go so those would be some uh the most important prayer items for

01:01:06 me currently great okay well uh glenn thank you so much for coming on the show it's an honor to

01:01:12 get to speak to you and i've benefited you know before this evening getting to speak to you face

01:01:17 to face i've benefited from your ministry um especially the theology podcast i forgot that

01:01:22 you were on that um so before we started recording but then i you know remember that and that's that's

01:01:27 one of my favorite podcasts so thank you so much for coming on the show and everything that you do

01:01:31 Well, again, thank you for having me.

01:01:33 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries wishing you a very Merry Christmas.

01:01:39 This year of our Lord 2021, God has far exceeded all of our wildest expectations.

01:01:46 On our YouTube platform alone, we've reached this year 1.2 million views.

01:01:52 And that's aside from all of our other social media platforms.

01:01:56 And I've been wondering about this.

01:01:58 Why is it that people have found our content and our ministry to be helpful?

01:02:03 The Puritans believed that a minister of the word had not faithfully preached God's word

01:02:08 unless his sermon was composed of at least three parts.

01:02:13 Number one, exegesis of the text.

01:02:16 Number two, doctrine, drawing out and emphasizing specific theology and doctrines within the text.

01:02:25 But number three, read any of the Puritan works

01:02:28 from John Owen to Thomas Watson to Richard Baxter

01:02:31 and you will find at the end of their writings,

01:02:33 at the end of their books

01:02:34 and at the end of their sermon manuscripts, application.

01:02:38 Application.

01:02:39 It's a text with exegesis, it's doctrines fleshed out,

01:02:44 but then it's those truths applied

01:02:46 to every single realm of human life and nothing less.

01:02:51 Our nation is desperate for God's commandments, God's precepts, God's word to be applied to

01:03:00 culture, to be applied to politics, to be applied to economics, to be applied to the marketplace,

01:03:07 to be applied to all these things. And that's been our flagship show. As I'm sure you're aware,

01:03:14 with Right Response Ministries, the show that most of you tune in for is called Theology Applied.

01:03:21 When I came up with that idea,

01:03:23 I didn't feel like I was even coming up with an idea.

01:03:25 I thought this was the most basic idea you could ever have.

01:03:29 It feels inauthentic or deceitful to even call it an idea

01:03:33 that makes it sound like it was innovative

01:03:35 or it was some kind of amazing creation. 0.99

01:03:38 Theology applied, isn't that what Christians have always done? 0.98

01:03:42 Apparently not, not anymore.

01:03:46 Because when we apply the word of God

01:03:49 to areas of human society that don't want God's word,

01:03:54 all of a sudden there's conflict.

01:03:56 When you start applying God's law to the medical field,

01:04:00 when you start applying God's law to how people should vote,

01:04:04 when you start applying God's law to Roe versus Wade,

01:04:08 when you start applying God's law to economics,

01:04:11 to socialism, to all these other things,

01:04:14 then all of a sudden people are bothered.

01:04:18 You know why people are bothered?

01:04:21 They're bothered when the church becomes a threat.

01:04:24 Jesus was crucified because Jesus was a threat.

01:04:29 He was a threat to the kingdoms of this world.

01:04:32 He was a threat to the wisdom of this age.

01:04:35 He was a threat to principalities and to rulers

01:04:38 and to governing officials.

01:04:41 Jesus was a threat then.

01:04:43 And if we would only preach him,

01:04:45 If we would only preach Christ again today,

01:04:48 he will be a threat to all his enemies once more.

01:04:52 God is supreme.

01:04:54 He has something to say.

01:04:56 Will we open our mouths?

01:04:57 Will we reflect his image?

01:05:00 Will we reflect his truth?

01:05:02 Will we preach the whole counsel of God?

01:05:06 By God's grace, that's what we've done.

01:05:08 And I believe that's why we've grown.

01:05:10 That's why you like our ministry.

01:05:12 That's why you've been willing to be generous

01:05:14 and support our ministry.

01:05:15 And so we want to continue.

01:05:18 And we don't want to just continue in the way that we have.

01:05:21 We want to expand and multiply our impact,

01:05:24 our content, our reach in every single regard.

01:05:29 But we can't do it without your help.

01:05:31 You've been so encouraging in your comments, your emails.

01:05:35 You've prayed for us, you've cared for us,

01:05:38 and you've generously supported us.

01:05:41 But if it's not too much to ask,

01:05:43 I humbly request that you would prayerfully consider

01:05:46 financially supporting us at the end of the year once more

01:05:50 and that you would pray that we would remain faithful.

01:05:55 The last thing I want is for this ministry to grow,

01:05:58 but for me to shrink in cowardice. 1.00

01:06:01 I pray that God kills this ministry tomorrow 0.99

01:06:04 if I'm going to be a man who compromises. 0.98

01:06:07 So pray that the ministry grows,

01:06:10 but pray for me personally.

01:06:13 I'm asking you, pray for Joel.

01:06:15 Pray that I would be courageous.

01:06:17 The righteous are as bold as lions.

01:06:20 Pray that I would not shrink back

01:06:22 and that I would continue to apply

01:06:25 the whole counsel of God to the whole of human life.

01:06:30 Pray that this ministry would be a threat

01:06:32 and that we would faithfully equip Christians 1.00

01:06:35 all over the world to likewise be a threat, 0.98

01:06:39 a threat to every principality,

01:06:41 every evil power, every wisdom of this age,

01:06:46 every lofty opinion, every ruler who sets his face

01:06:50 against the lordship of Jesus Christ.

01:06:54 Merry Christmas.

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The NXR Podcast - December 29, 2021

THEOLOGY APPLIED - DO NOT COMPLY! - Democrats’ Playbook For Persecuting Christians

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Transcript