THEOLOGY APPLIED - Honoring Fathers & Mothers, Even When They’re Boomers with Eric Conn
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 13 minutes
Harmful content
Misogyny
3
sentences flagged
Toxicity
25
sentences flagged
Hate speech
65
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode of Theology Applied, Pastor Joel Webin is joined by Eric Kahn, host of the Hardman Podcast, to discuss the challenges young people today face in honoring their fathers and mothers. The 5th commandment, "To honor our Fathers and Mothers," is one of the most difficult commandments for our generation to live up to.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
In less than a year, our podcast has gone from an average of 10,000 downloads a month to 50,000
00:00:05.320
downloads. What made the difference? You leaving us a five-star review. The more positive reviews,
00:00:11.660
the more the algorithm picks us up, and more people are confronted by the law and gospel
00:00:17.060
of Jesus Christ. Help us press forward the crown rights of King Jesus by leaving us a five-star
00:00:24.060
review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks. Honor thy father and mother. The fifth
00:00:30.580
commandment. I believe one of the most difficult commandments for young people today to seek to
00:00:36.600
obey. Why? Well, because young people in every generation have struggled with some kind of
00:00:42.680
streak of rebellion, but also because our fathers and mothers in the immediate sense, namely the
00:00:49.140
boomer generation has failed immensely. They have, in many ways, sold Gen X and millennials
0.59
00:00:57.040
down the river. So, in today's episode of Theology Applied, I'll be joined with Eric Kahn,
00:01:03.700
the host of the Hard Man podcast, to discuss the Fifth Commandment, the particular ways that
0.87
00:01:08.660
boomers have failed, and the challenges that we face to change the fabric of our nation,
00:01:14.180
to get things on track, and to honor our father and mother as we seek to also recognize the
1.00
00:01:20.360
mistakes they've made along the way. I'm Pastor Joel Webin. This is Theology Applied with Right
00:01:26.080
Response Ministries. Tune in now. Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology
00:01:33.240
Applied. Eric, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me once again, Joel. It's a pleasure to be
00:01:41.940
here. Absolutely. Well, today you and I, we were talking offline, preparing a little bit. And what
00:01:46.880
we want to talk about is the fifth commandment, the biblical imperative that we should honor our
00:01:51.920
fathers and our mothers, which seems to be a bit difficult in our generation. I have no doubt that
00:01:57.880
it has always been difficult. There's always an inclination, a temptation because of sin to
00:02:03.420
dishonor those who come before us. But I've talked to a lot of young men and a lot of young men today
00:02:09.880
are angry. And you can make an argument that that's just the nature of young men. Young men
00:02:14.120
of every generation have been angry and frustrated and zealous about something, you know, zeal without
00:02:18.700
wisdom. But it seems as though the anger that a lot of young men have today is a justifiable anger.
00:02:25.180
It seems as though they're frustrated because in some ways they really have been ripped off.
00:02:31.180
They've been robbed by the prior generation. They've been robbed of opportunity. They've been,
00:02:36.740
there's some real difficulties. And so you and I were talking about this. I've got a lot of
00:02:41.240
thoughts, but before I go any further, what do you think about this idea of young people today,
00:02:46.940
especially young men being frustrated and struggling to honor their father?
00:02:51.660
Yeah. I mean, I completely agree with it. I think what's interesting, a lot of times it gets painted
1.00
00:02:56.080
as like these young men are like 15 or 18 year olds. But a lot of times it's guys like you and
00:03:01.880
me, close to 40, somewhere in that ballpark, even right below the boomers. So some of the guys who
00:03:08.080
will have the complaints are in their 50s. But I think generally what you're seeing is there's
00:03:12.880
been a whole century controlled by boomers. It was a huge segment of the population because of
1.00
00:03:18.840
being fruitful after World War II. But they held power for the longest amount of time.
00:03:24.460
Many of them are still in power. And so I think what's happened is a lot of people are starting
00:03:29.040
to recognize and say, okay, here's the world they built. It really sucks. And we're getting
0.98
00:03:35.560
the shaft on a number of things, including inflation, the economy's bad. A lot of the
00:03:41.580
decisions that were made in the 70s and 80s and 90s, it was functionally to pass the debt burden
00:03:48.320
on to us. And so we're getting to realize those things right now. 2008 was another example of
00:03:54.100
that, you know, these companies are too great to fail. And so we're going to, you know, we're going
00:03:58.500
to give the shaft again to future generations. And so in 2030 and afterwards is when people are
0.98
00:04:04.180
going to start really having to pay for those financial decisions. I also think a big part of
00:04:10.080
it is a book I read recently, but R.R. Reno's book, Return of the Strong Gods, really helping
00:04:16.800
people understand what is the post-World War II consensus? What's this world that we live in
00:04:39.820
that this is not the world that we signed up for
00:04:46.400
And so now I think you're seeing a lot of the rift
00:05:17.220
their land, their business, their this, their that. I mean, that's my goal is to not just
00:05:24.460
multiply my name in terms of my offspring and having multiple children, but I want my children
00:05:30.840
to have multiple things. And not because I'm a materialist, not because the world is just stuff,
00:05:35.900
not because Darwin was right, not because of the prosperity gospel, but because I want to honor
00:05:41.420
God. I want to live a glorious life and I want my children to live a more glorious life than I did
00:05:47.240
And that includes in terms of what they have, their influence, their wealth, what they're
00:05:51.500
able to steward for the kingdom of God, not just their own personal comfort.
00:05:54.860
I want to leave lots of children, but I want to leave my lots of children with lots of
00:06:02.120
Proverbs says explicitly that a good man leaves an inheritance not only for his children,
00:06:09.720
So a wise and good man is thinking about the financial well-being of his grandchildren,
00:06:15.260
not just his children but his grandchildren and some people would you know be you know pietistic
00:06:20.760
and they would kind of try to to you know take that square peg and put it in the gospel-centered
00:06:25.820
circle hole you know and like well it's a spiritual inheritance and i would say it can
00:06:29.980
never be anything less a christian man a good man can leave nothing less than a spiritual inheritance
00:06:34.880
a gospel inheritance but i would eat my hat if god is speaking of of not something that that
00:06:41.560
doesn't include more. I think God is speaking of, yeah, give them the gospel, give them Jesus,
00:06:46.060
catechize them, raise them in the fear and nurture of the Lord and leave them stuff.
00:06:54.800
If a man who, I mean, the Bible talks about this. You're worse than an unbeliever. You've denied
1.00
00:07:00.540
the faith if you don't offer gospel-centered platitudes to your household. No, if you don't
00:07:06.880
clothe them and feed them and provide, physically provide. And I think this inheritance, sure,
00:07:12.140
it's a spiritual inheritance, but it's also a physical inheritance. It's monetary. And so you
00:07:17.780
look at generations and it's like, you want to be fruitful. The greatest generation was a fruitful
00:07:22.120
generation, but they didn't just create lots of boomers, lots of children, but they gave their
00:07:26.880
children the world on a silver platter. Boomers, it's not just that there were a lot of boomers.
00:07:31.460
If it was just a lot of boomers, but they came into a world that didn't have anything,
0.98
00:07:34.640
then you know that maybe i'd have some sympathy but it seems like and you correct me if i'm wrong
00:07:39.660
but it seems like the boomers is a large numerically large generation but also had
00:07:45.120
unparalleled resources and opportunity and instead of multiplying it even more um it seems like like
00:07:55.500
a like a swarm of locusts ate it up and and they just fit us the bill and we're all going to have
00:08:04.000
to pay for it is i i feel like some people are upset for some reasons i think in many ways you
00:08:09.840
could say it's something like the prodigal generation um you you took a lot of wealth
00:08:14.300
you took the inheritance you were given and you went and you squandered it um helen andrews in
00:08:19.260
her book on the boomers we were talking about this uh before but yeah one of the things that's
00:08:23.980
really interesting about that is she she does some biopics on on people uh like steve jobs
00:08:29.080
And they talk about, oh, the boomers were all about bringing work to America.
00:08:33.880
Steve Jobs pushed all the globalist work over to China for the iPhone.
00:08:39.400
It was about outsourcing and sort of like an old-style British colonialism where we're not impacted by tariffs.
00:08:46.800
Extremely bad for American workers, but great for the company.
00:08:51.380
I think somebody even said if the iPhone had been made in America, it would have cost Apple an extra $100.
00:08:56.620
dollars. Um, instead they chose to outsource it to China. And again, it was part of this
00:09:02.360
globalist push. You look at what they did to their employees. They were terrible to Apple
00:09:05.640
employees. You know, we need you to work 90 hours a week and not have a life. And Steve
00:09:09.660
jobs himself was a terrible father, a terrible husband, and, uh, kind of a terrible person
00:09:15.160
in many ways. And then, you know, Helen says that's kind of the quintessential, um, you
00:09:20.100
know, picture of what the boomers were. They got a lot. Um, sometimes they did a lot. Sometimes
00:09:24.880
it wasn't all that good uh back to your original kind of analogy though i think what's happening
00:09:30.360
for a lot of people this is kind of a parallel with the church we're looking at the church like
00:09:34.540
young restless and reformed is what you and i grew up with right and we're looking back and
00:09:39.120
we're saying wait a minute you know my dad taught me that this is metaphorical but my dad taught me
00:09:43.780
my dad's taught me uh you know acts 29 but then you it was a gateway drug into the confessional
00:09:49.680
historic faith and you go, wait a minute. Maybe grandpa was actually smarter. Maybe grandpa was
00:09:54.880
actually the one with a head on his shoulders. And I think that's what's happened with Stephen
00:09:58.380
Wolfe and Christian nationalism. Listen, I read that book too. And I said, well, this is kind of
00:10:02.320
some edgy stuff. And then you start reading it and you're like, well, that's what Aquinas said.
00:10:06.040
Yeah. That's what Augustine said. That's what Calvin said. Definitely what Calvin said. And
00:10:11.040
you go, okay, wait a minute. Maybe I'm wrong. But I think what's happened in our culture is
00:10:16.580
boomerism has infiltrated the church. It's infiltrated politics. We think that democratic
00:10:22.680
pluralism is the answer to everything. And when people are challenging that, which I think a lot
00:10:29.420
of people in the younger generation are starting to do, I think that's where you're seeing such
00:10:34.540
a rift and a split. Sort of like this idea of a Christian prince is one example. Well,
00:10:47.080
the strong gods of religion to culture and to society.
00:10:50.820
And we've learned all our lives that that's fascist.
00:10:57.040
Anytime somebody says, we want to love our country.
0.87
00:11:05.940
thinking of democratic pluralism as the answer.
00:11:10.160
uh he says democratic pluralism is going to be the savior of society one group doesn't have power
00:11:16.180
everybody it's distributed and uh we're not dominant christian we're not dominant anything
00:11:21.340
um and again so here along comes this generation saying christian nationalism and um of course
00:11:27.540
they're going to hate that that that is as antithetical to george w bush obama clintonism
00:11:33.560
as you could possibly get yep yeah you're absolutely right uh reno's book was helpful
00:11:38.620
you know my synopsis takeaway from his book was kind of like I think of you know Saul has killed
00:11:46.920
his thousands and David his tens of thousands so it's like the strong gods have killed their
00:11:51.300
thousands and the weak gods have killed their tens of thousands the weak gods in the final
00:11:57.820
analysis it seems as though they might actually bear the potential of killing more not less doing
0.63
00:12:04.240
more harm that's the crazy thing yeah right the whole fear was that fascists uh like mussolini
00:12:10.740
and hitler right um they were the real danger and so we we functionally exterminated these guys we
00:12:17.720
got rid of them from the world stage at least and then on the scene comes totalitarian bureaucratic
00:12:23.540
filth world statism and so you get you know the ussr killing hundreds of millions right how many
00:12:30.720
millions have been killed in america since you know 1970 because of abortion right um yeah the
00:12:36.580
this is the crazy thing right the the atrocities done under bureaucratic filth world are far greater
00:12:42.980
uh than what christendom did exactly what these supposed you know christian nations uh had had
00:12:49.180
had done on their right and and i think that you know what i'm getting at and i think what you know
00:12:53.660
what what reno's getting at is just that um well it's the old rush duty adage you know not whether
00:12:58.840
but witch. The strong gods are coming back. So I think that that's baked into the equation. I don't
00:13:04.040
think we have much to say about that because the weak gods have reigned. Their divine reign has
00:13:12.000
been long enough now to where the people are ready to throw them off. We've had it. We've
00:13:20.340
seen that, oh man, the weak gods are worse than the strong gods. So the strong gods are going to
00:13:24.680
return. Um, so then the question is which ones? Uh, so, so this idea, globalism, that's a weak
00:13:31.580
God. So the way that Reno, you know, he says, uh, you know, the weak gods are, it's like in
00:13:35.060
pluralism, inclusivism. Um, it's, you know, it's the, uh, it's anti-fascism, anti-racism and all
00:13:43.200
the phobias, right. Homophobia, transphobia, you know, uh, yeah. So all these kinds of things
00:13:48.140
that that's, that's the weak gods. The weak gods are don't you ever, ever, ever make a strong
00:13:53.380
dogmatic statement. There is no dogmatism, no transcendent truth, no real authority, right?
00:14:01.600
It's just, it's egalitarianism across the board. Everybody's an equal. But then, you know, that
00:14:06.240
sounds great in theory, but in practice, the way that plays out is, okay, well, Hitler's an
0.74
00:14:12.200
authoritarian, 6 million Jews, right? Okay, well, you got 60 million babies murdered under the weak
0.64
00:14:19.020
gods with abortion just in this nation. So my point is, it's just like, I think we've realized
00:14:26.020
the weak gods, that's unsustainable. We can't do that. The strong gods have problems. There are
00:14:30.660
problems with the strong gods if they're not Christian gods. So we're using lowercase g
00:14:34.700
gods. Just let the listener understand. What I'm trying to say is that I think the strong gods are
00:14:39.900
coming back. So instead of globalism, it's going to be nationalism. Instead of this egalitarianism,
00:14:46.580
it's going to be patriarchy, right? Instead of feminism, it's going to be patriarchy. Instead of
1.00
00:14:50.400
Darwinism, it's going to be religion and tradition and family. So then the question is,
00:14:56.420
which one? If nationalism is going to replace globalism, because we realize globalism kills
00:15:00.880
100 million and nationalism at its worst, on its worst day, only kills 10 million and 10 million
00:15:06.240
dead is better than 100 million. If there's going to be a return to the strong gods, then the
00:15:09.900
question is, is not whether, but which. So which nationalism do you want? Do you want Christian
00:15:13.940
nationalism or islamic nationalism because you're probably gonna get one of those two right do you
00:15:18.880
want uh christian patriarchy or do you want uh joe rogan and andrew tate patriarchy right do you want
00:15:24.320
see that's that's what i'm i think a lot of young guys are sensing right now and boomers don't get
00:15:28.840
it they don't um all of them except for doug wilson you know doug wilson gets it but pretty
00:15:33.640
much you know an entire generation and and so they think we're being contentious and overzealous and
00:15:39.020
that we're just being divisive and we're being argument argumentative for for no reason just
00:15:43.040
you know, or platform building or trying to, you know, just to take influence away from guys who
00:15:49.880
have just been so faithful for so many years. That's not it. What we're realizing is that
00:15:56.440
something is profoundly and deeply broken. And the solution cannot merely be to wind back the clock
00:16:04.420
to the 1990s, because the 1990s got us here. And so we're saying, well, wait a second,
00:16:14.660
A separation of church and state is not the same thing as a separation of Christ and state.
0.90
00:16:22.420
And those kind of questions are starting to be raised.
00:16:25.040
Now, if the state does honor Christ, well, then what does that mean?
00:16:30.080
Is it just privately that Caesar privately worships Christ?
00:16:33.640
Or does Christ have something to say about our vocation?
00:16:36.900
Does he have something to say about all of our vocations?
00:16:39.100
Is it just the pulpit, the minister that Christ has orders for?
00:16:42.580
Does he have orders for the cobbler, the one who makes shoes?
00:16:47.540
And not just how Caesar privately worships Christ, but how he lives Christianly in his
00:16:54.220
These are the questions that we're starting to ask.
00:16:59.380
But right now we're seeing a massive amount in the Reformed world of division because
0.95
00:17:04.620
the moment that younger guys, and again, like you said, not 15 year olds, but 35 year olds
0.95
00:17:09.340
start asking very, very reasonable questions. We're being maligned. We're being slandered.
00:17:14.780
We're being misrepresented. Oh, you want a Protestant Pope? Oh, you want this? You want
00:17:18.140
that? And it's getting bad. It is getting bad. I think a big part of it, Joel, like why is that
00:17:24.380
happening? You know, it really comes down to really a Machiavellian power structure at the
00:17:30.040
base this is what's happening i think that people are cognizant that there is a transfer a
00:17:35.780
generational transfer underway and i think what you're seeing in in the boomer camp and in the
00:17:41.360
older guys this is very indicative of conservatism going back to like william f buckley as he as he
00:17:48.160
approaches his sunset he wants to guard and guarantee who gets his inheritance culturally
00:17:54.900
And so what he spent the end of his years doing was vilifying guys like Pat Buchanan. He did not want Pat to take his reins and then push it in that direction. So he essentially ousted him.
00:18:10.000
um and so this is this is what i think you're seeing a lot of the older generation doing right
00:18:14.260
now um you know they're they're trying to guard who the the future leadership will be i think
00:18:21.240
what's really interesting is if you you look at the younger leadership you'll see something else
00:18:27.080
in ministries and stuff like this different groups uh people are all jockeying to to win
00:18:32.560
that approval so the younger generation that is like yeah we're going to be boomers to democratic
00:18:37.540
pluralism right they think that they're going to get the inheritance from dad that's what it is
00:18:42.720
yeah they're the old they're the older brother they're not dad himself the boomers are that's
00:18:46.480
dad but then there's the older brother like i i've always worked for you i always you know like
0.77
00:18:50.680
you said um you said that um that you know we we shouldn't you know the politics is a separate
00:18:57.860
thing and blah blah you know and principled pluralism and so i said principled pluralism
00:19:02.160
and and then they're seeing other guys who's not saying what the boomer said we're disagreeing
00:19:06.880
with dad and rising to prominence. And so the older brother is like, wait a second,
00:19:13.840
I've been slaving away. And he's over here, you know, preaching a different message. And now
00:19:18.560
people are following him. They're listening to his podcast and not mine. And they're getting upset.
00:19:23.940
Finally, a coffee company that doesn't hate you and your beliefs. Today's sponsor,
00:19:29.600
Squirrely Joe's Coffee is a thoroughly Christian company that ships seriously good coffee
00:19:34.500
straight to your front door owned and operated by joe morris and his family out of olney illinois
00:19:41.340
they believe that christians should be building a thoroughly christian economy by doing business
00:19:47.160
with other like-minded christians they also donate a portion of their proceeds to operation
00:19:53.340
underground railroad to help in child trafficking just go to squirrelyjoes.com and use promo code
00:20:01.340
rrm for 20% off your purchase squirrely joe's coffee share coffee serve humbly live faithfully
00:20:10.820
join douglas wilson dr joseph boot brian sauvet eric khan and myself on march 1st
00:20:22.920
2nd and 3rd for our 2024 conference it's called blueprints for chrysidom 2.0
00:20:29.200
So go and visit rightresponseconference.com to register today.
00:20:43.120
The big part of this, right, is that because of the way the world and technology has changed,
00:20:48.880
it used to be that you had to have certain things to control institutional power.
00:20:52.660
So you got to have a TV station or a radio station and a lot of money to publish books and do stuff like that.
00:20:58.080
the name of the game has changed though because of things like twitter now x um so when you think
00:21:03.220
about it some of the even groups that we've kind of gone head to head with in the last year the
00:21:09.160
irony is that we're basically nobodies with no institutional power or little who are a threat
00:21:15.540
to people who've been doing this for a long time who have long-standing preaching and teaching in
00:21:20.460
conference ministries and whatever and i i think what they're recognizing both the older generation
00:21:26.380
And then that younger generation, as I described them, trying to grapple over who gets this inheritance, cultural, institutional, or otherwise.
00:21:34.740
What's really interesting about that is there is a group of guys who have basically come in, swooped in, and stolen the hearts of a lot of these young people without anybody's permission.
00:21:45.660
And I think that's why you're seeing so many people be so upset about it.
00:21:49.160
Because, you know, we just got on Twitter and we're like telling the truth.
00:21:52.460
And, you know, I don't know about you, but for me, I wasn't like trying to build an audience.
00:21:58.480
And I'm going to point to them and say, that's true.
00:22:00.600
And I'm going to, you know, lean into the plow wherever I can.
00:22:07.320
And you look behind you and you have a whole following.
00:22:12.600
And then the older people are like, well, I didn't, I didn't assign that to you.
00:22:18.340
So I think, and I can certainly understand that, you know, why these guys would be frustrated.
00:22:22.460
So I think the problem is, though, because the game changed institutionally.
00:22:28.180
Like, those older guys, I don't think that they realize,
00:22:31.520
and a lot of younger guys trying to get their favor,
00:22:34.100
I don't think they realize that the mass of people
00:22:45.000
And, you know, as David and Saul, it's always going to create jealousy.
00:22:48.360
And Saul's probably going to try and kill David.
00:22:50.300
And, you know, if you're the David out there, then you just say, okay, well, him trying to kill me elevates me to his position and his level and keep fighting the good fight.
00:23:01.120
I've been reliably informed that you're not David.
00:23:13.840
So, you know, that's all sorts of things from Matt Chandler.
00:23:17.200
But yeah, and that's a good example, too, is like, you know, why was J.D. Greer preaching
00:23:22.420
on this, you know, lambasting his people for, you know, you've lost your soul because you
00:23:26.660
voted for Trump and people are leaving his church.
00:23:29.840
And, you know, look at what's happening in Acts 29.
00:23:32.460
You look at all these things, it's like the institutional power is changing because you
00:23:36.360
And when you fail as a leader, people don't trust you.
00:23:40.400
And I think, you know, tying it back to the generational divide, I think what's probably
00:24:04.120
And then, you know, you're going to see a real shift.
00:24:06.160
I mean, I don't mean to be crass, but it's like
00:24:16.340
They're exiting stage right, and so that's going to cause change.
00:24:20.380
Stuff is going to happen, and we'll see kind of where the power shakes out at that point.
00:24:25.120
Yeah, I think there's frustration because you have company men.
00:24:44.260
dad is exiting you know uh he's exiting the stage and and you know we we were there we we were there
00:24:51.480
for dad and um and so right now as dad's now exiting the stage and about to hand over the
00:24:57.020
inheritance um they're discovering it's like you know like we're kind of you know we're using a lot
00:25:03.180
of analogies here david versus saul but another one would be like jacob versus esau you know that
00:25:07.380
jacob you know slips in there and it's actually a righteous thing to do jacob i don't believe that
00:25:12.340
he's actually being deceitful. In fact, he's honoring his mother. His mother is the one who
00:25:16.540
kind of puts him up to it. And she is obeying the word of the Lord, spoken in Malachi, a prophetic
00:25:23.520
word that the older should serve the younger. She knows that Isaiah is the center in the equation.
00:25:28.060
Esau certainly is fleshly and sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. He's immoral, as Hebrew says.
0.91
00:25:34.620
But Isaac is the one who, Isaac's physical blindness, James B. Jordan talks about this,
00:25:39.540
Like his physical blindness is indicative of, at this point of his life, his spiritual blindness.
00:25:44.600
Like he knows that Jacob's supposed to get the inheritance.
00:25:47.560
He knows that Jacob is the one that God has chosen.
00:25:52.800
And so Rebecca is being righteous and saying, okay, like my husband is about to terribly sin against the Lord by going directly in disobedience against what God has said.
00:26:04.260
Giving the blessing to Esau when he, God has told him to give it to Jacob.
00:26:14.240
And if God has determined that Jacob will get the blessing, guess who's going to get
00:26:19.860
One way or another, his mom's going to slip him in.
0.94
00:26:22.160
He's going to put on goat skin, whatever he's got to do.
0.85
00:26:24.340
But if God has ordained that Jacob should get the blessing rather than Esau, even though
0.68
00:26:29.420
Esau was the favored son of his father, Isaac, then it doesn't matter.
00:26:35.220
If God has spoken it, then that's what's going to happen.
00:26:37.640
And right now, I think that's what's going on, is that what we're realizing is that,
00:26:49.920
People say, well, we're not, you know, you lose down here, whatever.
00:27:02.020
The bottom line is, what does the Bible say and what has the witness of church history held to for 19 and a half centuries?
00:27:30.180
All these things, these are the inventions of men.
00:27:37.680
And so now you have a generation saying, okay, well, we want to go back to the Bible in part
00:27:41.920
because of God's mercy and electing people and regenerating hearts and opening our eyes,
00:27:46.620
but also in part because we are the prime object of the harm of trash world,
00:27:56.580
We're the ones who are inheriting the bill, us and our children.
00:27:59.680
And so we're, you know, like people complain, well, in the seventies, you know, there were 18% interest rates. Yeah. On a $50,000 house. Like I understand. It's not like, it's not like this is the first time that things have ever been economically bad. I understand. All right. I've read a little bit of history. I understand that the economy, there's been some, some bleak moments. I understand the great depression and I understand the seventies, you know, we're bad.
00:28:21.520
But it is an objective fact that our parents' generations, the boomers, in terms of income, wages, to housing costs, even regardless of what the interest rate might have been, it was way easier for them to own a home than it is for somebody trying to buy a home who's a millennial.
00:28:47.120
And so this idea of like, okay, well, I'm trying to obey God's word.
00:28:54.420
And I don't want to put them in public schools.
00:28:56.360
And I want my wife to be able to stay home and not rely on her for a second income.
00:28:59.840
And I want to own a home so I don't just build somebody else's wealth, but so that I actually
00:29:04.240
have an investment that I can give as an inheritance to my children's children.
00:29:08.080
In other words, I want to obey the scripture in tangible, practical ways.
00:29:11.640
And then you get out your calculator and you do the math and you realize that your parents
00:29:17.760
have made it all near impossible to practically obey scripture in any of those regards. And so,
00:29:25.480
yeah, you're like, yeah, we want to change things. We're not trying to be disrespectful.
00:29:29.920
We're not trying to be ornery just for the point of being ornery. We're not trying to just be
00:29:34.680
this rebellious teenage kid. Again, we're not teenagers. We're in our 30s and we're looking
00:29:42.480
at mom and dad and saying, I love you. And you're going to live with me when you're old and I'm
00:29:46.900
going to take care of you and we're going to sing hymns over your bed as you're dying. You're going
00:29:52.040
to die with dignity, but also you don't get to drive anymore. I love you, mom and dad, but you
0.97
00:29:57.120
don't get to, right? There's a certain point where you can honor your father and mother, but also you
00:30:01.380
don't let them behind the wheel of a car. You take away their keys. And that doesn't mean you're
00:30:05.160
dishonoring them. That's just, you're saying, I'm sorry, mom. I'm sorry, dad. I'm sorry, father,
00:30:11.520
but but uh you you're you're degrading and you're just you're not able to do that and and you have
0.68
00:30:17.160
a proven track record of getting behind the wheel of a car and running running people over like you
00:30:21.780
can't you can't do that anymore i love you i will always love you and i'll provide for you and i
00:30:26.560
care for you uh and i honor you i do honor you but um but no your your generation can't drive
00:30:32.980
anymore and that's that's what we have we have biden is in his 80s driving nancy pelosi driving
00:30:38.960
like we can go on and on mitch mcconnell like like literally having brain aneurysms behind the
00:30:44.040
pulpit can't can't even talk and just like going going off into nowhere like diane feinstein dude
00:30:49.160
it's a it's an indictment on our it's our country is is mockable it's it's people the world is
00:30:55.240
laughing at us it's embarrassing years ago uh i think would sometime when it first came out but
00:31:01.360
bronze age mindset you know when that when that would i was reading that it was really interesting
00:31:06.300
Cause he said, you know, the, the kind of pinnacle of the downfall of our culture will
00:31:11.960
be where we're headed, which is when sclerotic old men and the ginocracy rule.
1.00
00:31:17.900
And I was kind of like, Hmm, that's weird.
0.99
00:31:20.000
And then you look around and that's exactly what it is.
00:31:22.360
Meanwhile, who gets, um, really oppressed in that situation as young men.
00:31:27.260
I also think too, like they're going back to what you were just saying that there has
00:31:31.720
to be a category where we can say, we want to be faithful men like Josiah.
00:31:36.300
who becomes king and begins with national repentance
00:31:43.120
And no one said to Josiah, you're dishonoring your father.
00:31:47.020
You're not dishonoring your father when you repent of sin,
00:31:55.880
And I think we can too also have a category where we say like,
00:31:59.740
I'm not going to like belittle my parents.
0.67
00:32:01.660
I'm not going to say nasty things to the boomers all the time.
0.99
00:32:05.380
But I am going to be cognizant of what the problems were.
0.56
00:32:09.600
This is one of the things Helen Andrews says in her book that I find so interesting.
0.98
00:32:13.980
She says, no culture lost more in terms of Western civilization than the boomers.
00:32:19.220
And she said, consider all the things that happened under the boomers watch.
00:32:25.040
The civil rights movement passed, which was the end of the first constitutional era.
0.90
00:32:33.040
You have the 70s with banking changes and deregulation and all these things.
00:32:40.360
Sexual anarchy in the 60s and 70s, all under the boomer watch.
0.62
00:32:45.060
So, yeah, I mean, I think when you start adding it up,
00:32:48.020
and it is really hard because there's a lot of shame associated with this.
0.83
00:32:52.620
As a boomer, you have to say, like, on our watch, like, that sucked.
0.69
00:33:00.300
Now, the one thing I will say, which I found an encouragement.
00:33:04.460
So if there's older guys who listen to this and are like, yeah, but they're rubbing it in our face, whatever, you know, people who handle this really well.
00:33:13.100
I have another friend who's very similar to Chris.
0.99
00:33:24.620
and be an encouragement to the young people and pass off whatever inheritance you possibly can
00:33:30.560
to your children. But I think, you know, fundamentally, we all have to kind of own
00:33:36.980
the problem for what it is. We're not going to repent as a nation until we recognize all the
00:33:43.020
things that are wrong. And I think that is... Yeah, we're not going to repent until we realize
00:33:47.120
we messed this up. But I think that's the problem right now, Joel, is that you have boomers still
1.00
00:33:53.800
holding onto power. And they're like, no, we made the right decisions. Like the George W. Bushes of
0.99
00:33:59.060
the world are still defending Iraq and Afghanistan. Like, are you kidding me? Pretty much everybody on
0.61
00:34:04.840
both sides is like, that was a terrible decision. Financially for our country wasn't good. Shouldn't
00:34:09.460
have done it. But they still won't own those mistakes. And I think that that causes ongoing
00:34:13.780
problems. Our sponsors, Private Family Banking Partners, is on a mission to help Christians live
00:34:19.960
out the Dominion mandate by making a stealth-like move away from the mainstream banks and into
0.99
00:34:30.140
This innovative system is designed to guarantee uninterrupted compound interest and tax-free
00:34:36.620
growth without exposure to typical stock market risk.
00:34:40.800
To join this growing community that is already building wealth unto future generations and
00:34:47.540
converting post-mill talk into post-mill action, contact private family banking partner Chuck
00:34:55.620
DeLoderonte at his email chuckatprivatefamilybanking.com. That's chuckatprivatefamilybanking.com.
00:35:06.640
Set up an appointment and receive a free copy of Chuck's new book, Protect Your Money Now,
00:35:12.820
how to build multi-generational wealth outside of Wall Street and avoid the coming banking
00:35:19.640
meltdown. Go to the links in the show notes below. Are you a small business owner and desire
00:35:25.500
to defer a larger amount of your business income? Find out how to defer more income taxes, in some
00:35:31.740
cases up to 10 times more than you can with your current 401k plan or other retirement plans.
00:35:38.640
Are you trying to acquire or sell a business, but getting enough cash together for the transaction
00:35:47.240
Then please contact our sponsor, Defined Benefit Partners.
00:35:52.020
They will provide a free analysis of what may be possible for your business or the business
00:35:59.960
See their contact information in the show notes below.
00:36:03.640
I want to read a couple of quotes from Thomas Watson, his book, The Ten Commandments.
00:36:08.640
it's really helpful um but he he says this uh you know in commentating on a ton of common
00:36:15.360
commentating on exodus 2012 so exodus 2012 honor your father and mother that your days may be long
00:36:20.340
upon the land which the lord your god gives you um having done with the first table of the law i am
00:36:26.500
next to speak of the duties of the second table the ten commandments may be likened to jacob's
00:36:30.940
ladder the first table respects god and is the top of the ladder which reaches to heaven the
00:36:37.300
second respects man. It is the foot of the ladder that rests on the earth. By the first table, we
00:36:41.880
walk piously towards God. By the second, we walk religiously towards man. He cannot be good in the
00:36:48.820
first table who is bad in the second. All right. So then honor your father and mother. In this,
00:36:54.700
we have a command, honor your father and your mother. And second, a reason for it, that your
00:36:59.500
days may be long in the land. The first commandment with the promise. This is all I'm quoting Matthew
00:37:04.120
henry here um but then he gets into this he says father is of different kinds as the political the
00:37:10.680
ancient the spiritual the domestic and the natural or familial so he's saying there are different
00:37:16.520
kinds of fathers and exodus 2012 uh it addresses all of them that's it's including all of them so
00:37:22.700
a lot of again you know to go back to the boomers when they say well you need to honor your father
00:37:27.700
um well right there which one there you know exactly which one that's the question which one
00:37:37.760
So there's an obligation for me to honor my familial father,
00:37:41.820
my actual father who brought me into the world.
00:37:44.100
In my case, I was adopted, but the one who named me,
00:37:47.020
gave me his name, protected me, provided for me,
00:37:54.380
So fathers of different kinds as the political,
00:38:07.360
He says the political father or the magistrate.
00:38:12.300
He is to be an encourager of virtue, a punisher of vice, and a father to the widow and the
00:38:20.180
I was a father to the poor and the cause which I knew not I searched out, Job 29, 16.
00:38:26.500
As the magistrates are fathers, so especially the king, who is the head of magistrates,
00:38:37.140
Kings shall be your nursing fathers, Isaiah 49, 23.
00:38:40.680
They are to train up their subjects in piety by good edicts and examples.
0.88
00:38:44.420
I don't know, Joel, this sounds like Christian nationalism again.
00:38:47.240
They are to train up their subjects in piety by good edicts.
00:38:50.720
So creating laws that support biblical piety and examples and nurse them up in peace and piety.
00:39:07.980
It is well for people to have such nursing fathers
00:39:27.820
or i'm sorry thomas uh watson another late great puritan and he's saying he lists constantine as
00:39:33.540
a positive example of a nursing father yeah okay like and this is why i wanted to read this okay
00:39:39.140
because all right i'm just going to be frank i'm i'm tired of of seeing guys uh building tombs
00:39:47.880
to the prophets um but but they don't actually honor them they're not actually honoring their
00:39:56.200
father. They say, oh man, we would have been on Jeremiah's side, you know, had we lived in his
00:40:00.820
day. You would have killed him. No, you would have killed him. How do you know? Because Jesus
0.86
00:40:05.660
is straight in the line of Jeremiah and Isaiah, Ezekiel. Here's the prophet of your day and
0.82
00:40:11.480
you're trying to murder him. That's how we know. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And so much of
0.83
00:40:15.540
this, it was actually Mark Driscoll years ago who said a lot of reformed guys today are like
00:40:20.880
ancient gun collectors they collect old guns and you're like oh do you use that no i've never even
00:40:26.980
shot that gun in my life that's what we do with our theology books we don't put them into practice
00:40:32.080
and then we criticize guys who do right so this is the crazy thing uh you know say about the
00:40:37.420
christian nationalism debate again is like you can read thomas watson and there's all these
00:40:43.420
reform publishing houses that love to publish this stuff and they will do nothing on the
00:40:48.460
cultural engagement front nothing in fact a lot of the books will actually cut out parts of you
00:40:54.420
know uh that we don't like anymore you know William Gouge addresses slavery and slaves and
00:40:59.940
masters that's not in the book anymore it was cut out um because you know it was in scripture but
00:41:05.700
it's not good enough for us today to to read those portions right so you look at these guys and we
00:41:11.180
say oh man we're so proud to be Westminsterian or 1689 you know like you don't even know what
0.99
00:41:17.640
these guys wrote you it's clear that you're either willfully blind to it or you're ignorant
0.74
00:41:24.560
it's like one of the two things you don't know what they wrote and i know you don't know what
0.95
00:41:27.840
they wrote because um what they wrote is almost been plagiarized by steven wolf oh yeah you hate
00:41:35.280
it well and i mean steven that's a joke i'm being facetious but what i'm he's not a plagiarizer but
00:41:39.920
what i'm saying is i mean steven wolf has has like all but copying what they did all but copy
00:41:46.180
pasted the reformers yeah and so that's fine if you don't like because i actually would would i
00:41:51.700
would detour from the reformers on a few things i would be more in in the vein of cornelius van
00:41:57.020
till and a presuppositional idea so i would you know i'm more of in the post-millennial theonomic
00:42:02.300
camp right whereas stephen wolf is more very much in the aquinas you know till mystic and he's all
00:42:08.240
millennial and but but i'm even willing to i've read stephen wolf's book it wasn't easy it's 400
00:42:13.040
pages long, but I read it and I've read Calvin's Institutes, right? Because we all talked about how
00:42:17.560
we love Calvin. So I thought we actually meant that. I thought we loved Calvin. So I read the
00:42:21.380
Institutes and then I read Stephen and I'm able to recognize, all right, here's Calvin, here's
00:42:25.600
Stephen, and I will concede and say, I'm going to be on a platform with Stephen and Doug Wilson at
00:42:30.520
Fight, Laugh, Feast talking about Christian nationalism. And I plan to concede even there
00:42:33.540
and say, listen, guys, whatever we say about Stephen's view of Christian nationalism, we all
00:42:37.200
have to admit that he has claim on the reformers. He is more in line with their tradition than we
00:42:42.860
are as post-millennial theonomist presuppositional you know Vantillian uh general equity theonomic
00:42:49.680
guys Bonson that the reconstructionist I love him I love Rush Duny I love Bonson and I'm more
00:42:54.160
in line with them but I recognize that um that Stephen has more in common with Calvin than um
00:42:59.720
than Rush Duny does so yeah all I'm saying is if you're in the crew that loves Calvin
00:43:07.060
and claims to love the reformers, but hates Stephen.
00:43:14.880
but it seems kind of similar to loving Jeremiah
00:43:23.980
Stephen's no Jesus, but it's the same principle.
00:43:37.060
yeah i mean it's the exact same thing we do with the prophets with the puritans what i mean read
00:43:42.940
the puritans on modesty you know the the whole modesty blow up on you know twitter x is not
00:43:49.200
surprising uh what is surprising is how many like reformed christians are joining in the mob and
00:43:56.280
then you start reading like i don't know somebody who's just real warm and devotional like uh john
00:44:02.020
Bunyan. And man, did he have some sharp things to say to women who dress like whores. And we say
0.99
00:44:09.800
John Bunyan's so great. Not that John Bunyan. And it really does. I think it makes you realize
00:44:17.060
that what does this come down to? Like with the Pharisees, it's easy to celebrate things in the
00:44:23.980
past that you're not willing to fight for today. That's the coward's position. The Pharisees
0.87
00:44:30.160
didn't want their position and their power to be threatened by the roman government now actually i
00:44:35.000
think you have a very similar thing that a lot of these leaders of ministries and churches and blah
00:44:40.900
blah blah who are so opposed to this everybody realizes what a threat christian nationalism is
00:44:46.000
everybody it is a real threat right and the reason why they part of the reason you're making a really
0.55
00:44:51.040
good point that they're tamping down on christian nationalism speaking of now evangelical leaders
00:44:55.360
not political regime but evangelical leaders tamping down on christian nationalism because
00:44:59.440
they know that's a threat to the regime and it'll get us all in trouble.
00:45:02.640
In the same way that the Pharisees were trying to suppress the Jewish zealots of their day
0.57
00:45:06.940
because they're like, hey, dude, we've got a good thing going.
00:45:11.360
Yeah, Rome, Rome kind of sucks and blah, blah, blah, you know, but this is as good as it's
0.99
00:45:15.580
going to get, you know, pipe down there, young man, because if you speak too loudly, Caesar
1.00
00:45:21.880
And that's, you know, that was the Pharisees position, you know, and it seems like that's
00:45:26.620
kind of some of our evangelical leaders position right now is look look they'll let us have our
00:45:32.700
puritan conferences they'll let us go and do our tours and visit calvin's grave you know like as
00:45:38.020
long as we don't try to implement it as long as it's not theology applied yeah so can we just
00:45:44.120
have an agreement where we just don't apply theology privately you can that's sure that's
00:45:49.360
fine. Privately, you can. But in the public square, we need you to, you know, simmer down.
00:45:59.860
And it's the same, dude, the parallel is, when you see it, it's inescapable. Building the tombs
00:46:06.640
to the prophets before you, you know, the Pharisees saying, hush, hush, because Rome,
00:46:11.920
the regime, you know, there's so many parallels, it's incredible. Let's read a little bit more
00:46:19.660
So that's the civil fathers, the political fathers.
00:46:29.960
Eric, you want to read about the ancient father real quick?
00:46:46.180
and in the furrows of whose cheeks is pictured the map of old age.
00:46:52.260
You shall rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man.
00:46:57.720
Especially those are to be honored who are fathers not only for their seniority,
00:47:01.400
but for their piety, whose souls are flourishing when their bodies are decaying.
00:47:06.280
It is a blessed sight to see springs of grace in the winter of old age,
00:47:09.640
to see men stooping towards the grave yet going up the hill of God,
00:47:13.300
to see them lose their color yet keep their savor.
00:47:16.180
Those whose silver hairs are crowned with righteousness are worthy of double honor.
00:47:20.420
They are to be honored not only as pieces of antiquity, but as patterns of virtue.
00:47:25.660
If you see an old man fearing God whose grace shines brightest when the sun of his life is setting,
00:47:30.340
oh, honor him as a father by reverencing and imitating him.
00:47:35.660
So this is actually helpful too, Joel, because a lot of people were like, I'm old, you have to respect me.
00:47:40.500
And notice the connection with, well, you might be a vintage fool.
0.99
00:47:44.120
I don't actually have to honor you in the same way
0.99
00:47:46.700
that I would a man who is actually wise and godly and virtuous.
00:48:02.580
whose grace shines brightest when the sun of his life is setting,
00:48:10.560
not just for your father, who if you're a grown man, if you're an adult child now, then your
00:48:15.780
father is going to be old, but not just your old personal father, familial father, but all older
00:48:22.920
men, that we honor your elders, plural, so those who are older. So here Watson is making, so we've
00:48:29.040
had the civil fathers, but if they're righteous, if they're godly, and Thomas Watson gives some
00:48:33.680
of the imperatives for civil fathers, and now just fathers in general, the ancient fathers,
00:48:39.560
those who are older, the generation older than you. But again, there's a condition, the caveat,
00:48:44.480
if they honor God. Let's look at spiritual fathers now. I'll read that one real quick.
00:48:50.160
There are spiritual fathers. As pastors and ministers, these are instruments of the new
00:48:54.960
birth. Though you have 10,000 instructors, yet you have not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus,
00:49:00.860
I have begotten you through the gospel, 1 Corinthians 4.15. The spiritual fathers are
00:49:05.620
to be honored in respect of their office. Whatever their persons are, their office is honorable.
00:49:11.340
They are messengers of the Lord Almighty, Malachi 2.7. They represent no less than God himself.
00:49:17.020
Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, 2 Corinthians 5.20. Jesus Christ was of this
00:49:22.920
calling. He had his mission and sanction from heaven, and this crowns the ministerial vocation
00:49:30.900
with honor. John 8, 18. These spiritual fathers are to be honored for their work's sake. They come
00:49:37.820
like the dove with an olive branch of peace in the mouth. They preach glad tidings of peace.
00:49:44.100
Their work is to save souls. Other vocations have only to do with men's bodies or estates,
00:49:49.620
but the minister's vocation is employed about the souls of men. Their work is to redeem spiritual
00:49:55.160
captives and turn men from the power of satan unto god acts 26 18 their work is to enlighten
00:50:01.880
those who sit in the region of darkness and to make them shine as stars in the kingdom of heaven
00:50:07.960
these spiritual fathers are to be honored for their work's sake and this honor is to be shown
00:50:13.460
three ways do you want to continue eric yeah definitely number one by giving them respect
00:50:19.520
know those who labor among you and are over you in the lord and esteem them very highly in love
00:50:30.160
I confess the scandalous lives of some ministers
00:50:39.860
The leper in the law was to have his lip covered,
00:50:48.300
ought to have their lips covered and to be silenced.
1.00
00:50:53.840
and make it their work to bring souls to Christ
00:50:59.160
Obadiah honored the prophet Elijah, 1 Kings 18, 7.
00:51:24.720
But because he would have these spiritual fathers reverenced.
00:51:28.240
He says, honor these spiritual fathers by becoming advocates for them and wiping off
00:51:32.680
those slanders which are unjustly cast upon them.
00:51:47.700
he would not read the envious accusations brought against them, but burnt them. Do the ministers
00:51:53.900
open their mouths to God for you in prayer? And will you not open your mouths in their behalf?
00:52:00.000
Surely if they labor to preserve you from hell, you should preserve them from slander. If they
00:52:05.880
labor to save your souls, you ought to save their credit. Good night. That would preach.
00:52:12.240
you want to say anything about that eric yeah no i mean i i think overall you know like thomas
00:52:18.800
watson going through this talking about authority um so what is interesting here is the overall
00:52:24.660
respect for authority we have people telling us you have to obey authority no matter what this
00:52:29.620
was the whole romans 13 thing but what's interesting i find is you know like how many pastors were
00:52:36.260
honored pastors who were doing the right thing particularly right how many pastors were honored
00:52:40.460
by anyone uh during covet not very many uh right like we honored james codes but like did did the
00:52:47.060
authorities did the canadian people right now and did the canadian christians though see that's that's
00:52:52.560
a sad thing i i there were so many canadian christians i remember getting tons of bashing
00:52:57.600
him they yeah they were like his church they're they're zealots and they're gonna they're getting
00:53:02.300
us all in trouble and they're making this more difficult than it has to be and you know a lot
00:53:07.060
of times i've heard older people you know browbeat their children you need to honor your father
00:53:11.200
you're like well yeah but i mean like we have to have a thomas watson's great here because we have
00:53:17.200
to have a full understanding of the whole range of what honoring authority means and this would
00:53:22.720
include right honest honoring your ministers uh he'll say for conforming to their doctrine this
00:53:28.660
is the way that you honor them so he's actually showing you how um and then i think also like
00:53:34.800
Like there's the domestic father who Thomas Watson very unpolitically
00:53:49.740
You have the centurion who calls a servant son,
00:53:54.860
The servant is to honor his master as the father of the family.
00:53:57.760
The master is not so qualified as he should be yet.
00:54:00.700
the servant must not neglect his duty but show some kind of honor to him so you have honor and
00:54:05.120
obedience um you know again the only authority we were told to obey is you know lord fauci
00:54:11.760
but outside of that like no other authority matters so you can kind of see where all the
0.91
00:54:17.920
distortions happen in our society where you have boomers who are like you have to do what i say
0.69
00:54:21.880
the government says you have to do what i say but you know you read this and you're like well wait
1.00
00:54:25.760
a minute there's a whole range of ways in which you have to obey authority like let's do them all
00:54:30.660
And then they're like, nah, we're actually not in favor of that.
00:54:39.200
And if we're going to be faithful in the Decalogue and obeying the fifth commandment, it's not just your familial father.
00:54:52.360
There are ancient fathers, spiritual fathers, natural fathers.
00:54:56.160
and there are fathers spanning back all the way until Adam, all the way until the beginning of
00:55:04.360
the world. So it's not just the immediate fathers right before our generation, but there is a sense
00:55:11.880
in which the apostle Paul is our father. There is a sense in which Calvin is our father. Augustine
00:55:19.640
is our father. Athanasius is one of our fathers. Constantine is one of our fathers. And so there
00:55:28.500
is something, remember, and this is the rhetoric that I thought we all, I thought we already
00:55:32.560
figured this out. That's why it's so frustrating for me. I thought we figured it out when people
00:55:36.580
were tearing down statues of fathers. And then we did this whole woke thing back in 2020. Right now,
00:55:44.000
it's like right now we did a woke war one now we're doing woke war two right so this is this
00:55:50.240
is ww2 that we're in you know just three years later right but people change sides exactly so
00:55:55.700
um but but in woke war one um i remember that there was a consensus from those who you know
00:56:01.980
were on the conservative side uh that we wanted to honor our fathers and that yeah sure our fathers
00:56:07.580
had some faults. But we wanted to recognize that Stonewall Jackson, we're going to be worshiping
00:56:14.920
with him in eternity in heaven. So if we don't want to make that awkward, we probably should
00:56:20.460
just come to terms with that right now. I mean, there's going to be a lot of people shocked
00:56:24.900
by the very... Now, I won't say this dogmatically, only the Lord knows. But I will say in terms of
00:56:30.720
likelihoods, statistical likelihoods, there's a good chance that Martin Luther King Jr. is in hell
00:56:36.260
and stonewall jackson is in heaven and there's a lot of christians who i believe really are
00:56:42.280
regenerate who are going to be shocked when they die and go to heaven and find that mlk jr
00:56:47.580
very likely is in hell and stonewall jackson along with a lot of other slave owners are in
00:56:53.740
heaven around the throne of god yeah you know and so i thought we were having that conversation
00:56:58.140
three years ago and i thought that we kind of settled it right that we lost about half of
00:57:02.120
evangelicalism, Russell Moore and David Fringe. And, you know, everybody, I thought, I thought
00:57:06.120
we already, it's like Gideon with his army. That's what it feels like right now. It's like, all right,
00:57:09.960
we already got already trimmed off half of our army. Surely that's enough. And now God's like,
00:57:14.900
nah, let's whittle it down to 300. You know, let's see who laps like a dog, you know, versus those
00:57:19.800
who, you know, and so like, and, and so here we are, you know, WW2 now woke war two in 2023.
0.62
00:57:26.460
And we haven't learned the lessons, right? Cause we were saying, this was the rhetoric that you're
00:57:30.680
pulling down statues and we're saying, wait a second, a generation that dishonors its fathers
00:57:35.580
will not be honored by God. We don't need to be doing this. This is wrong. But then all of a
00:57:40.260
sudden, what happens just three years later is we say, you know what? I like that. That's really
00:57:43.980
good. We should honor our fathers. Let's dust them off. Let's see what they wrote and let's obey.
00:57:49.340
Let's put it into action. And then all of a sudden it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't you
00:57:54.240
dare honor your fathers. When we said honor fathers, we didn't mean Calvin. We meant us.
00:58:00.680
us we meant us we went boomers we meant boomer theology we meant honor the theology of your
00:58:07.040
fathers it goes back all the way to the 1960s yeah and not a second before and that's where
00:58:12.760
we are right now yeah anyway so we can land the plane eric any final thoughts yeah no i think
00:58:17.820
that's really good i think the big question as you pointed out um you think about the generational
00:58:23.360
things. It really comes down to, I think, a competition between ancient fathers who were
00:58:31.220
probably right and more modern fathers in multiple senses. Some of them are political,
00:58:36.440
some of them are religious, who are quite obviously wrong. And so what we have to do is
00:58:42.000
you have to make a decision. And what I would just encourage people with is, well, the decision
00:58:47.180
should be made, which father aligns with God's word, which father aligns with the righteousness
00:58:53.380
of scripture. And one of the things I've tended in the last 10 years, say, of my life to really
00:59:00.320
lean on is that on issues like sexuality and biblical interpretation, I put less and less
00:59:08.440
weight on what people today are saying about those things because they've been so unreliable.
00:59:14.660
And so what I am more prone to do is actually to go back to Matthew Henry.
00:59:18.480
I had a pastor tell me one time when I first started my preaching ministry, he said, you
00:59:22.440
know, I would really shy away from reading a lot of modern commentaries about the text.
00:59:29.160
And he said, I would lean on Matthew Henry and John Calvin.
00:59:32.400
And I said, well, do you think that John Calvin just didn't have errors?
00:59:42.480
his errors weren't john piper and grudem and complementarian errors you're not going to find
00:59:47.600
that error in john calvin because he didn't care about that right um so i think that's one thing
00:59:52.560
that i would say to people is having the perspective to get out of your time and to read the ancient
00:59:58.460
fathers is going to be really helpful i don't think they're right about everything um you know
01:00:03.020
you know unfortunately joel some of them take the sethite view so we know they're wrong um so
01:00:09.200
yeah for about about 1500 years of them take the sethite view but the oldest if we want to honor
01:00:15.740
our ancient fathers yes our oldest fathers they believe the bible that's exactly right so fallen
01:00:21.600
angels that exactly fallen angels all the way on a cosmos go listen yeah so but but but in all
01:00:28.380
seriousness i think it's like being aware of that and then i would just encourage people to to step
01:00:32.840
back and just think about what's happening uh in this moment and say okay is this historical
01:00:39.860
you know meaning like you know people are losing their minds i've done this before joel
01:00:44.600
i remember reading a book about abraham lincoln and it was like abraham lincoln was a tyrant
01:00:49.460
and i was like excuse me that is not what they told me in public school and for for a half second
01:00:54.620
i was upset but then you know sort of by the grace of god it's like okay well let's examine
01:00:59.260
the argument though let's just hear the guy out let's hear what he has to say and you start reading
01:01:03.200
it and you're like okay there might be a valid case here you know and and so because of those
01:01:09.300
things that they've happened in my life so many times where I was a dispensationalist forever and
01:01:14.060
then I read David Chilton and I was like wait a minute I didn't even know this other view existed
01:01:18.300
so that has caused me to be a lot slower to bash somebody like Stephen Wolfe and and I didn't I
01:01:25.040
mean I saw we probably all did you saw the quotes in the beginning and people like these are
01:01:29.100
problematic and i was like you know i'm gonna i'm gonna reserve judgment i'm gonna read the dang
01:01:33.160
book and then i read the book and i was like i don't know this seems historical so that's what
01:01:39.900
i think a lot of people especially on twitter need to do is slow down do the reading you know
01:01:44.540
how many of these people who are being hypercritical they still haven't read the book
01:01:48.040
and they don't intend to haven't a few of them i you know have at least they've said i read the
01:01:54.220
book um you know and they'll do a screenshot of a page or two i don't know if they read it
01:01:58.540
carefully but here's here's part of the problem and i'll just be honest i won't instead of calling
01:02:02.840
everyone else dumb i'll just go ahead and call myself dumb um steven wolf's book is a difficult
01:02:09.280
book yeah um and so number one yeah 95 of people who are angry on twitter have not read the book
0.97
01:02:17.060
i can just about guarantee that but even the five percent that have and of those five percent some
01:02:22.340
of them still saying, well, I did read the book and it's terrible. Um, I'll just speak for myself,
01:02:28.160
but let the listener understand the point that I'm making. I don't know if, uh, if I caught
01:02:33.940
everything in the, I feel like a little bit of it went over my, like Steven is writing at a very
01:02:38.920
academic level. And a lot of us who even did read the book, um, may not be qualified to comment
01:02:47.040
on the book yeah but we're like honestly like see that and that's the difficulty this is where we go
01:02:54.280
back and forth right so it's like me and you were doing a podcast right now and a bunch of people
01:02:57.300
are going to listen and this goes back to the whole gatekeeping and institutions the whole nine
01:03:00.720
yards but like because we don't have our institutions are corrupt and and a lot of them
01:03:07.440
are being you know broken down and destroyed right now and and and they're falling into ruins
01:03:12.420
um it's like the luther thing right so you know that it's like if you do this if luther translates
01:03:18.220
you know from the latin vulgate into you know the vulgar tongue that you know the common tongue
01:03:22.240
then you're going to have you know open up the floodgate of iniquity you know luther so be it
0.99
01:03:26.140
you know you're going to have 45 000 different denominations which is what we have today
0.91
01:03:30.120
and and what i've always told people is i i've said better to have a needle of truth in a haystack
0.82
01:03:35.960
of falsehoods than to have, instead of a haystack, you have a bushel of wheat, nice and trim and all
01:03:43.360
bound up, wrapped together, but there's no needle at all. There's no truth, right? That's what Rome
01:03:47.940
was. Well, you've got Luther, God's giving reformation, theological reformation, but also
01:03:53.280
in his providence, he's giving innovation, technological innovation teamed up with that
01:03:59.460
theological reformation. And that's what we have, again, with social media, with podcasting, with
01:04:03.500
the internet, you know, thanks to Al Gore. But, you know, like, but what we have, it's the same
01:04:09.400
kind of thing. I think there's some theological reformation happening right now, teamed up in
01:04:14.380
God's sovereignty, his providence, with a technological innovation. And what it allows for
01:04:20.000
is truth. But it also does allow for the peanut gallery. And there, you know, I'm a bit of a
01:04:27.340
peanut gallery person myself from time to time. It allows for the peanut gallery to be behind a
01:04:31.920
microphone and so my point is like everybody has an opinion and honestly i'd rather it be that i'd
01:04:37.400
rather have the mess that we have on twitter because a lot of people are bothered by it and
01:04:40.820
sure it's frustrating um but i'm glad i'm glad that that there's something outside of the status
01:04:47.660
quo being talked about i'm glad that we have an old idea that's not just more post-war you know
01:04:54.820
consensus i'm glad that we're dusting off some kind of stuff now everyone's talking about it and
01:04:59.620
not everybody's qualified to talk about it. And I would, in some sense, include myself in that.
01:05:05.540
I don't think that I have the academic know-how, the philosophical, political, theological
01:05:12.360
understanding that Stephen Wolf does. I don't. And a lot of people who don't like his book,
01:05:17.260
they don't either. That's my point. They don't. They're not really qualified to have a credible
01:05:23.240
opinion, but I defend their right to have an opinion. And I'm glad that we've gotten out,
01:05:28.480
we've broken out of the bubble, the ivory tower where we're getting to hear multiple different
01:05:32.900
voices. But I think we just need to recognize that what we're seeing right now, it's not novel.
01:05:39.340
It's not pressing on to this new unheard of foreign thing. It's really just turning a chapter
01:05:44.240
back in the story that God's been writing these past 2000 years of church history. And we're just
01:05:49.840
now hearing it because the mold has been broken in a technological innovative sense in God's
01:05:55.460
providence to where voices that before the regime would have crushed they never would have seen the
01:06:01.220
light of day steven wolf um never would have made his way into a pulpit um you know before before
01:06:07.920
the internet and these kinds of things if it wasn't for canon that book's not getting published
01:06:11.960
crossway's not publishing the case for christian nationalism no way you know and so so it's it's a
01:06:17.320
miraculous incredible thing that's happening right now but it my point is just like the reformation
01:06:22.580
it's a messy thing yeah and and and and i think it's just going to be that for a while it's going
01:06:27.540
to be messy but it's good because better to have a mess with some truth in there than to have nice
01:06:34.940
clean tidy you know no mess but also no no truth oh big time well and you know just to put it in
1.00
01:06:44.480
historical perspective too you know um even this week on twitter you know i've got the feminists
0.92
01:06:51.040
are mad whatever a lot of christians are mad too how dare a pastor speak so harsh you already said
01:06:56.660
the feminist you don't have to repeat yourself exactly but but it was uh really interesting
01:07:01.480
because uh my oldest boy is reading uh the bondage of the will and uh reading through some other
01:07:07.540
literature of luther for uh you know third form in saint brandon's academy and uh he was telling
01:07:13.220
me he was pretty funny he goes yeah you know our teacher showed us your twitter today dad and
01:07:17.440
she said i gotta say i'm a little disappointed and i was like really what are you disappointed
01:07:22.140
about son and he said well you're a little soft let me read you some of the things luther said
01:07:26.340
and he's reading them and i'm like wait that's in the i don't remember that i have to go back
01:07:31.000
and read that and then you think about it and it's like we have just no idea where where did
01:07:36.100
all of the like pietistic language and like you know when you get in a disagreement with somebody
01:07:40.820
on twitter it's got to be like oh brother i yearn for your soul above the highest heavens
01:08:14.280
when the fighting comes, these are the men you want.
01:08:24.400
I think what you're going to see, though, is people who take up that mantle who are a little bit more brawlers and street fighters.
01:08:33.280
And I think that's a good thing for the church.
01:08:34.920
I think it's a good thing for the future of America.
01:08:38.180
I do not think that democratic pluralism is a healthy, happy future.
01:08:45.400
it's not sustainable and that's the thing people are like oh this is you know but your attitude or
01:08:49.980
this or that and like yeah we want to be godly i'm not trying to excuse sin yeah but but again
01:08:54.700
what i'm saying is all of this is an improvement big all of it's an improvement big time like
01:08:59.900
luther was an improvement to indulgences and relics and so too uh and so too disrespectful
0.86
01:09:06.500
at times disrespectful memes on twitter are an improvement to the globo homo um regime that we
0.88
01:09:14.740
current that that we currently have um so you know again that doesn't mean like oh so you have
0.90
01:09:20.500
to be mean you have to be rude you have to be disrespectful sure we should we should try uh to
01:09:25.540
have you know have our cake and eat it too we should try to be godly yeah and persuasive um
01:09:30.760
but what i'm saying is that uh talk about you know straining gnats and swallowing camels the
01:09:36.020
biggest problem in evangelicalism and in our nation and in the world right now is not a few
01:09:42.700
rough and tumble guys reformed uh guys in their 30s on twitter that i mean to think i mean i i
01:09:49.560
just i you have to have so lost the thread to think that that is the biggest problem if you
01:09:56.560
think that that um that a guy advocating for christian nationalism is your enemy and that
01:10:02.360
that's the big threat then you have but but here's the thing you just you're just gone here's the
01:10:08.460
think this is what's crazy is again because of luther everybody talks about luther and the
01:10:14.620
reformation but there was advances going on with the printing press and having people who would
01:10:19.120
publish it and all these things so the the the media or the medium was a huge part of the
01:10:24.580
reformation you could not have had that without mass producing pamphlets well and there were
01:10:29.200
memes we're going after something uh very important here and because of twitter and because of all
01:10:34.700
these things like you and i are not you know massive we're not simon and schuster you know
01:10:39.720
uh canon press is not simon and schuster but we have access to amazon now so because of the
01:10:44.020
technological medium advancements uh we're able to get our messages out there and and this is true
01:10:50.460
we are we are a threat which is why you have like why the heck is jenna ellis talking about like
01:10:56.660
the danger of christian nationalism like why does she even care so that's the the craziness of it
01:11:03.060
But I think we should also be encouraged that you can have so little resources, right?
01:11:10.640
But if you have the truth, you have so little resources, but you have the truth.
01:11:16.040
how come Russell Moore has this kind of big platform on social media
01:11:25.480
well, we had to build our accounts based on quality content.
01:11:31.500
like your content does well because people like it and people are essentially voting for it and
01:11:36.880
and many people voting you know to destroy you but you know that aside um i i think it should
01:11:43.380
be an encouragement to a lot of people that's like this sleeper movement could actually do a
01:11:47.780
great thing and i would also encourage people like it's the same thing tucker carlson did with
01:11:53.020
andrew tate he forced masculinity into the mainstream conversation and everybody was mad
01:11:58.380
like why would you interview andrew you know why would canon publish christian nationals well here
01:12:03.600
we are talking about it and here like people at the top are talking about this theory and they're
01:12:09.540
sending fbi people and all that good stuff too so it matters it is making inroads it's effective
01:12:15.380
and you know that's a good strategy to say like what does the enemy hate
01:12:19.140
well why right you know because it's effective they know it yep yep uh christ in politics
01:12:31.560
the civil magistrate actually being consciously Christian.
01:12:42.380
I think those are two of the biggest patriarchy
0.81
01:12:53.180
All right, well, thanks for coming on the show, Eric.