The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Church In Australia After Covid w Evelyn Rae from Caldron Pool

00:00:00.000 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:00:03.000 I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.

00:00:05.940 And in this episode, I'm pleased to have as a special guest, Evelyn Ray from Cauldron

00:00:10.740 Pool.

00:00:11.660 She does podcasts and articles and is all over social media in Australia.

00:00:18.200 And she recently, on her podcast with Cauldron Pool, interviewed Douglas Wilson in regards

00:00:24.160 to his Meet the Press segment on Christian nationalism.

00:00:27.700 And I see her from time to time, whether it be with Jeff Durbin or Doug Wilson.

00:00:31.680 She's in our camp, that post-millennial reformed theology camp.

00:00:35.840 And what I wanted to do in this episode was have her join me on the show and give us kind of a state of the union in regards to the church in Australia.

00:00:43.760 Things have been hard in the United States these past two and a half years for those who love Christ.

00:00:49.360 But in many ways, we've had it easy, especially in comparison to places like Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

00:00:57.700 So tune in for this episode.

00:00:59.520 You're in for a treat.

00:01:01.700 Oh, hi.

00:01:02.540 I didn't see you there.

00:01:03.560 Thanks for sticking around.

00:01:04.600 I've got an important announcement to make.

00:01:06.380 That's the Theonomy and Post-Millennialism Conference, 2023, May 5th, 6th, and 7th,

00:01:13.140 Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Theonomy and Post-Millennialism.

00:01:17.380 We've got the speakers that we've already had lined up.

00:01:19.540 That's Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar, non-doctor, Pastor Joel Webin.

00:01:24.560 but we also have a bonus speaker, and that is Dale Partridge from Real Christianity.

00:01:30.080 Perhaps you've heard of him.

00:01:31.020 If not, you should start listening to his podcast.

00:01:33.360 It's fantastic.

00:01:34.860 Dale Partridge is going to be joining our team.

00:01:37.500 We're going to have live panels on Friday night and Saturday night

00:01:41.000 where you'll be able to write in questions and get them answered.

00:01:43.720 We're also going to have a catered barbecue, Texas-style barbecue meal on Friday

00:01:48.420 that's a part of your registration fee.

00:01:50.580 All that is covered, so you need to get there.

00:01:52.960 This is how you do it.

00:01:53.800 Go and register right now at rightresponseconference.com.

00:01:58.640 Again, that's rightresponseconference.com.

00:02:02.320 God bless.

00:02:03.600 Applying God's word to every aspect of life.

00:02:06.960 This is Theology Applied.

00:02:12.260 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:02:15.200 I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries, and I am pleased in this

00:02:19.120 episode to have Evelyn Ray, who is a part of Cauldron Pool.

00:02:22.980 Evelyn, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm truly honored to be

00:02:27.340 here. Did I pronounce the last name correctly? Yes, you did. Ray like the sun. Great. And tell

00:02:34.040 us a little bit about yourself, Cauldron Pool, and anything else that you do for a living or

00:02:40.560 any of those things, just so our audience can get to know you a little bit. Sure. So I am a

00:02:46.480 Christian first and foremost. I have grown up with a family who were believers but I would say

00:02:55.240 I sort of came to my own journey in my early 20s where I took it on for myself as opposed to just

00:03:02.380 being a seasonal Christmas day, Easter day service Christian. So that was very transformative for me

00:03:08.680 but I sort of came to reform theology in my mid-20s and that's where everything sort of

00:03:14.140 changed. At the time I was serving in the police force as a detective over here in Australia. I did

00:03:20.380 12 years service and in 2020 I resigned from that and became a farmer. So now I farm cattle. It was

00:03:28.680 a bit of a difference in occupation but I'm much happier for it now I must say. And sort of around

00:03:36.760 the same-sex marriage debate over here in Australia where we all got to vote whether we

00:03:42.260 agreed or disagreed with it. That's sort of when I put my toe in the water and sort of started to

00:03:47.500 commentate a little bit from a Christian conservative perspective in Australia. We have

00:03:52.520 conservatives, well, somewhat conservatives, more, you know, I guess libertarian in nature,

00:03:58.220 and there's a big void over here for Christian conservatives. So Cauldron Pool was started

00:04:03.540 by Ben Davis, and he very gratefully allowed me to sort of have a bit of a voice and sort of

00:04:10.260 get in the ring and be a woman over here sort of talking about cultural

00:04:14.820 issues. And it's sort of gone, I'd say uphill since then.

00:04:20.000 And it's been a privilege to be able to talk to some amazing people on the

00:04:23.960 Cauldron Pool show that where I podcast as well and write.

00:04:27.580 Great. Well, I recently watched, I've told you already,

00:04:30.680 I watched the episode that you recently did with Doug Wilson in regards to

00:04:34.620 Christian nationalism. And I thought the interview was fantastic.

00:04:38.080 Doug, as usual, did a great job.

00:04:40.120 But you did a great job asking all the kinds of questions that I feel like a listener would

00:04:44.460 want to ask if they were able to get in the room with Doug themselves.

00:04:48.740 They would want to ask those kinds of questions about, well, what about federal vision?

00:04:52.960 What is federal vision?

00:04:54.040 Do you still hold to this?

00:04:55.500 All those kinds of things.

00:04:56.780 And so anyway, so I've watched some of your stuff.

00:04:59.320 Certainly that episode, I thought you did a great job.

00:05:01.400 So keep up the good work.

00:05:02.980 So all that being said, I want to go ahead and just jump in with somebody who is actually a native Australian.

00:05:09.520 I've gotten bits and pieces of information from people who email me from Australia, who are residents there.

00:05:15.640 And it sounds like America lost its mind over the last two years.

00:05:19.440 But it seems like America was somewhat sane by comparison to Australia.

00:05:25.240 So what has Australia's response as a whole been to things like COVID, things like Black Lives Matter?

00:05:32.520 what's it like on the ground now are churches gathering can you find a conservative biblical

00:05:37.240 faithful church in australia what what is what's the temperature like yeah well the thing is it's

00:05:43.860 all over the place the temperature that's probably the best way to just sort of describe it but it's

00:05:48.480 interesting you mentioned that australia seemed to fall a lot further than say america for example

00:05:53.460 and we certainly did but it's interesting now in 2022 we have dropped our mandates um coming in

00:06:01.360 out of our country but i think america has still got them or they've just dropped them so that was

00:06:06.320 a real surprise that we sort of fell so far but then dropped everything i think that goes to

00:06:12.400 testament that australia kind of responded in a way that was massively overreached and maybe

00:06:18.720 they're backtracking and just like we just drop it all maybe they'll forget what we've done to them

00:06:24.240 for the last two and a half years but it was a real shocking time for me personally um not just

00:06:30.960 with i guess civilian response and the civil government response but also with the church

00:06:35.920 response and i'm not sure how in-depth you want to go with that but um we had churches who i thought

00:06:43.280 wouldn't cave to caesar i would say did so and almost handed the keys to the pulpit to the civil

00:06:49.360 government because we had many churches including reformed churches over here that closed their

00:06:56.000 doors and segregated based on vaccination status and unfortunately i was in that category because

00:07:02.320 i chose to not get the vaccine so my own church locked me out of the building so to say um and

00:07:11.920 so real quick just to interject so not segregation in terms of uh vaccinated people sit on one side

00:07:17.760 of the room and the unclean, unvaccinated people on the other side, but you're saying

00:07:23.240 that if you weren't vaccinated, you were not allowed to attend church at all.

00:07:27.700 Is that right?

00:07:28.040 Correct.

00:07:28.960 Yeah.

00:07:29.660 The way that they sort of dealt with that was they said that the Zoom church was sufficient.

00:07:38.080 So, you could sit at home watching it on the computer and you could be somewhat part of

00:07:44.000 the attending church still.

00:07:46.540 But it's funny, they literally were administering the sacraments via Zoom and telling you to

00:07:52.340 run to your kitchen and grab a piece of bread or go to your fridge, grab some juice.

00:07:57.220 This was happening in Australia.

00:07:58.920 And for those of us who obviously disagreed with this approach, we expected better from

00:08:05.220 the leaders of our churches to sort of step up.

00:08:08.300 And yeah.

00:08:09.140 I was just going to say, but you say like our churches, like I'm picturing saying we're

00:08:14.000 going to take the Lord's Supper through Zoom, I'm picturing Brian Houston would maybe say that,

00:08:19.640 you know, like Hillsong, which is pretty much the only picture I have of Australian churches,

00:08:23.760 you know, which I should quote quotations, you know, around the word church in that instance.

00:08:28.480 But are you talking about Reformed churches, like a 1689 Reformed Baptist or like a Presbyterian

00:08:36.020 church doing the sacrament of the Lord's Supper through Zoom?

00:08:39.300 Correct yes so I was part of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and I handed in my membership

00:08:47.200 after this obviously now the church that I specifically went to my little Presbyterian

00:08:53.760 church my minister obviously disagreed with this so him as an individual he decided not to segregate

00:09:00.160 he decided not to shut the doors for one and open it for the others but his answer to it was to just

00:09:05.540 shut the church altogether until the government changed their mandates. So he, I, he was one of

00:09:12.720 the few that went that far, but there was only out of the state that I live in, there was probably

00:09:19.680 only two or three reformed churches out of millions of people that live in this state

00:09:26.740 that actually said altogether, no to Caesar and said, we're opening the church. We're not shutting

00:09:33.440 our doors we're not administering the sacraments via zoom and we're not going to segregate based

00:09:38.540 on vaccination status and what was really uh almost um even more shocking was there were a

00:09:46.020 group of reformed ministers who sort of threw it out there in a group of other reformed ministers

00:09:51.680 more senior to them let's do something as a church we have to step up against the civil

00:09:58.320 government in this regard. And they got, they got really ostracized for it. They got really

00:10:04.360 heavily criticized and said, you're out of line that, you know, you're breaching in civil government

00:10:09.320 and the whole, you know, church and state debate came up in all of this and the whole misconstrued

00:10:15.840 interpretation of what that actually means, because you and I know the whole church and

00:10:20.600 state argument stemmed from getting the government out of the church, not the church out of the

00:10:24.640 government. But they sort of used that and misinterpreted that argument to sort of keep

00:10:30.080 ministers out of this debate. But four ministers, sorry, three ministers decided to say,

00:10:37.240 I'm going to go above the head and just do it on our own. And they released something called

00:10:42.560 the Ezekiel Declaration, which was basically a declaration from them writing it to the Prime

00:10:48.900 Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, who himself professes to be a Christian man and said,

00:10:54.160 this is what we're seeing is happening, we can see that they're going to be segregating based

00:10:59.900 on vaccines. We can see that the church has a position now to take a stand against Caesar in

00:11:05.200 this regard. And we can also see that the church is an essential service. So it should be exempt

00:11:10.920 from these mandates and it should be exempt from being locked in your home, etc. Now,

00:11:16.980 it got a lot of attention, that Ezekiel declaration. It got thousands of signatures

00:11:21.300 agreeing with them. But something that we noticed, it was the first time in Australia that the

00:11:26.820 ministers all came together. But they came together against that Ezekiel declaration.

00:11:32.920 And we had ministers criticizing these three brave men who stood up against it.

00:11:38.000 And it was just assault after assault, sniper hit after sniper hit. And it was so confronting

00:11:44.000 seeing Christians sit on their hands for so many months and then finally get off their hands and

00:11:50.080 do something but against the three men who actually put their name to a piece of paper and

00:11:55.280 sent a declaration to the Prime Minister. So that was quite shocking. I actually interviewed those

00:12:00.980 men on my podcast and I sort of put it to them like how far were you willing to go because we

00:12:08.060 saw ministers in Canada being arrested for not closing their doors and they said we had to sit

00:12:13.000 down with their wives and their children and say this could potentially happen. So it was a bit

00:12:17.280 scary time for them but that's how far they were willing to go um so that that was encouraging but

00:12:23.040 it was really strange and sad time seeing the church come after these godly men who were trying

00:12:31.600 to do the right thing right yeah well we've seen certainly the same thing over here in the united

00:12:37.840 states of america but probably not by god's grace that same ratio we've had by god's grace more than

00:12:45.760 three ministers take a biblically faithful stand. But those who have taken a stand and said, no,

00:12:53.220 we're not going to close our doors. And no, we're not going to segregate based off of

00:12:57.020 vaccination status. And no, we're not going to wrongfully bind people's consciences in order

00:13:02.820 to get vaccinated in the first place. And no, we're not going to require mass. And yes, we are

00:13:08.200 going to administer the Lord's Supper. And yes, we're still going to sing on the Lord's Day as

00:13:14.340 were commanded addressing God, but also one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

00:13:19.760 Those ministers, I would say, well, I mean, it's growing day by day. But in the early days of COVID,

00:13:28.420 I would say that they made up probably, the first few weeks, it would have been less than 10%. But

00:13:33.440 within a few months, it was probably 30%. But to think that there were only three, it makes me

00:13:39.660 think of like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, only three that don't bow down to the statue.

00:13:45.160 But that's one of the difficult things, I think, when it comes to being faithful and obedience to

00:13:49.600 Christ and his word, is that you don't only experience opposition from those outside of

00:13:56.380 the church, but there are many who profess the name of Christ that often become your sharpest

00:14:02.580 critics, your most ferocious opponents. So with all that being said, what are pastors saying now?

00:14:11.220 Like, have a lot of them opened their doors? And has there been repentance? Has anybody verbally

00:14:16.200 actually walked it back? I'm thinking even today, you know, it's blowing up on Twitter,

00:14:22.680 you know, and by the time this episode releases, it'll have been a little while. But today,

00:14:26.920 as we're recording, it's been announced that basically one of the higher ups, employees with

00:14:34.240 Pfizer was interrogated by an individual in a court hearing. And he specifically asked,

00:14:39.340 you know, did, was the vaccine successful and not just successful, but had it even been tested at

00:14:47.580 all in its ability to stop transmission of the virus before it actually was rolled out,

00:14:58.900 before it was released. And the individual who's being interviewed chuckled in a kind of a nervous

00:15:05.100 posture and said, no, no, it wasn't even tested. So I'm thinking back, I'm thinking about Russell

00:15:12.440 Moore. I'm thinking about Tim Keller. I'm thinking about individuals who bound the conscience

00:15:17.400 instances of followers of Jesus saying you must get vaccinated or you should get vaccinated or

00:15:23.220 it'd be good to get vaccinated out of love for neighbor, right? So it's one thing to say, well,

00:15:29.160 you should get vaccinated in self-preservation or maybe using an argument of our body is a temple

00:15:36.080 of the Holy Spirit, you know, and so we want to, you know, we want to be, take precautions and,

00:15:41.360 you know, and I could use 1 Corinthians 6 and the body being the temple of the Holy Spirit to make

00:15:45.600 counter argument, you know, that I shouldn't be injecting mystery poison into my body that,

00:15:51.820 you know, that hasn't any long-term testing because it hasn't existed long enough to be

00:15:56.700 able to see what side effects and things might result from it. But still, the point is, you know,

00:16:01.860 they could have said, hey, to protect yourself, to be a good steward of your own body. But that

00:16:06.140 wasn't the rhetoric. The rhetoric was not just merely about personal stewardship of your health.

00:16:12.120 It was love for neighbor, love for neighbor, love, you must get this vaccine in order to

00:16:18.880 love your neighbor.

00:16:19.580 Now, Pfizer has officially said that this vaccine was not tested at all in its ability

00:16:28.420 to love your neighbor.

00:16:30.380 It wasn't even tested.

00:16:33.380 So what I want to see is I want to see Russell Moore and I want to see these guys.

00:16:36.680 I want to see them verbally repent.

00:16:38.400 And then personally, I also want to see them step down because if they verbally repent, not just shifting in action like opportunist, you know, all of a sudden, because there's a conservative resurgence, they run out in front of the parade and pretend that they engineered it.

00:16:52.980 I don't want to just see repentance in action.

00:16:55.460 Repentance should be word and deed.

00:16:56.940 And so I want verbal acknowledgement that they were wrong, that they wrongfully bound the consciences of Christians, that they must get the vaccine in order to obey Christ's commandment to love their neighbor.

00:17:08.780 And now in hindsight, we realize that there was no love for neighbor factor in that particular vaccine.

00:17:16.140 So I want to hear verbal repentance, but I also think that many of these ministers should step down because repentance grants us grace and forgiveness.

00:17:25.840 There's plentiful grace and forgiveness in the gospel of Jesus Christ for those who are

00:17:30.380 willing to acknowledge their sin and repent.

00:17:32.780 But when it comes to leadership, leadership is not a charity.

00:17:37.380 And in my opinion, if somebody is 900 days late to the game, then what they have effectively

00:17:45.480 proven is that they simply do not possess any level of discernment that would be required

00:17:52.600 in order to lead, right?

00:17:54.980 So it's not that you're a horrible person, it's not that you can't be a Christian, it's not that you can't be forgiven, but you're just not qualified to lead.

00:18:02.920 If it takes you 900 days to figure something out, and it's not like everything was under wraps to where there was no way of discerning the truth.

00:18:10.600 There were millions of people around the world blowing trumpets on the wall, sounding the alarm, begging and pleading.

00:18:21.320 And not only were we ignored, but we were slandered.

00:18:25.840 We were maligned.

00:18:26.980 There were ad hominem attacks against our character by ministers of the gospel, precisely

00:18:32.960 what you're describing in Australia, just a much more stark ratio of pretty much everyone

00:18:38.960 versus three faithful ministers.

00:18:41.320 And so, yeah, I think that that certainly merits an apology and repentance, but I think it

00:18:47.260 also really does call into serious question a person's qualifications to lead. If I can't see

00:18:53.180 what the enemy is doing, if I can't discern the spirit of the age until every parishioner in my

00:19:01.760 church is also able to discern it because it's been publicly and emphatically and undoubtedly

00:19:06.760 announced, then I just, what use am I? Right? Like if, you know what I mean? If I'm not one

00:19:13.360 step ahead, if everyone is 900 days behind and I'm right there with them, then I'm just not

00:19:20.500 a leader. Again, it doesn't mean I'm a horribly wicked person. I'm just, you know, my two-year-old

00:19:27.220 daughter isn't an elder in our church. And likewise, Russell Moore shouldn't be an elder

00:19:32.640 in a church. And I would put him in that category. And so, all that being said, what are pastors in

00:19:39.060 Australia, the 99.9% that came against these three faithful men, are they backtracking? Are

00:19:46.780 they owning it? Or are they just memory holding everything? Have they changed in actions? Or has

00:19:51.920 there actually been repentance in deed and word? What's their response to realizing, wow, we were

00:20:00.800 dumb. Hmm. Yeah. So, I will just make a note here. The declaration that was initiated by those

00:20:10.560 three men, I think there was somewhere around 2,000 actual ministers who signed it and kept

00:20:16.500 their signatures on it with those three men. So, yeah, that was good. But again, there were some

00:20:24.140 ministers who did sign it. And then once they felt pressured by that external voice that was

00:20:29.420 critiquing that declaration, they would contact the writers of the Ezekiel Declaration and ask

00:20:35.660 them to remove their name. So again, it was really strange. It was a really odd time for the church

00:20:43.520 over here in Australia. But in answer to your question about the response, we currently have a

00:20:49.440 lot of refugee Christians over here who just don't quite know where to go because a lot of us feel

00:20:56.420 there hasn't been that repentance indeed that you speak of.

00:21:00.500 I know many men who were at a church, who are ministering at a church,

00:21:06.060 who said, we can't do this.

00:21:07.860 And they've actually started new independent churches who are free from,

00:21:12.380 say, the big corporate, big EVA sort of church organizations over here.

00:21:17.200 So as I mentioned to you, I was a member of the Presbyterian Church of Australia.

00:21:21.340 I rescinded that membership once the response came out because that was

00:21:25.480 the church's official response, even though there might have been individual Presbyterian ministers

00:21:31.780 who responded differently, the church as a whole, collective and the official church. So I stepped

00:21:38.380 back and many ministers did the same sort of thing and said, well, I'm not going to minister under

00:21:43.720 that headship or that sort of corporation. And so they've started individual churches and

00:21:48.560 immediately, like I know of a church that began as a result of that, this particular minister

00:21:54.880 wasn't even allowed to preach at his own pulpit.

00:21:57.680 His wife and his children were not even allowed to attend the church

00:22:01.000 because of the vaccination status.

00:22:02.880 So he pulled them out and he begun his own church.

00:22:05.360 The first week that he opened his doors,

00:22:08.200 there was over 30 people sitting on the chairs in the church.

00:22:11.740 And, you know, for Australia, we're a small little country.

00:22:14.800 Those are big numbers for the first week of an opening church.

00:22:18.400 And I think it was testament that a lot of people are searching

00:22:21.120 and looking and hungry for a place to call home

00:22:24.520 because they haven't felt that there's been any reconciliation

00:22:27.500 and repentance and repair between the relationship

00:22:31.220 of the congregation and the church, so to speak.

00:22:35.260 So, I mean, I personally can't think of any off the top

00:22:38.480 of my head who have apologised or have repented

00:22:41.020 and come out publicly and said that they're sorry

00:22:44.340 for how they responded.

00:22:45.380 And somebody asked me the other day, Evelyn,

00:22:48.660 what's going to happen if monkeypox, it's Australia,

00:22:52.620 is it going to be COVID 2.0?

00:22:55.800 And I said, yes.

00:22:56.920 And they said, why do you not think that it's going to be different?

00:22:59.800 I said, because nothing has changed.

00:23:01.540 We have not changed our position.

00:23:03.900 We have not done anything.

00:23:05.520 We've sat straight back on our hands.

00:23:07.740 As soon as the government gave us permission to do church,

00:23:11.900 we did church and that's been the end of it.

00:23:14.400 And so it's been, I'm still in a bit of a place of limbo where I don't,

00:23:21.420 Like, I'm going to a church that is good.

00:23:24.760 I mean, no church is perfect, but I'm going to one that would probably lean

00:23:29.380 to more Arminian theology as opposed to Calvinist reform theology,

00:23:34.200 which is very difficult for me.

00:23:35.960 But where I live now, which is out in the country on a farm,

00:23:39.420 there's nothing for me.

00:23:41.580 And I feel so convicted to the call to gather and to not do the sacraments

00:23:46.840 in my basement via Zoom and to not get my church from tuning

00:23:51.540 into Canon Press and to your ministry and listening to sermons

00:23:55.140 because, you know, I do feel really convicted to fellowship

00:24:00.340 in person and to be part of a church.

00:24:02.460 I mean, how can you fall under the authority of the eldership

00:24:05.940 or the discipline of a church if you're not going

00:24:08.300 and they don't know you like that?

00:24:10.240 And I don't agree with doing the sacraments at home.

00:24:13.400 i believe you know biblically they broke from the same bread they drank from the same cup and for

00:24:18.440 me just to go to my fridge and to not have an elder be involved with that process someone ordained

00:24:23.800 like it just sits wrong with me so i'm going to a church that theologically is probably very

00:24:28.360 different to where i sit i there's nowhere else for me and that's the current state for people

00:24:34.200 who think like myself probably with theology in australia it's it's encouraging that there

00:24:40.920 are ministers who are stepping up into the spot. And I do think there's a new era of shepherds

00:24:46.840 that is being born as a result of what's happening. But we're in the really early days

00:24:52.200 where there's a lot of work to do. And you mentioned before that the leaders of certain

00:24:56.880 churches you feel should step down. And it's interesting you say that because Calvin once

00:25:02.340 wrote that if God wants to judge a nation, he's going to give them bad leaders. And I think that

00:25:08.520 goes for the church and i think we're seeing the fruits of bad leaders and i think that's why the

00:25:13.560 church has swayed from sola scriptura and and sort of started to you know write their own way of of

00:25:21.480 god and interpret their own view of god and i think the last few years has shown that people

00:25:27.160 don't know how to read the bible like the literal word of god and they there's too many interpretations

00:25:33.000 Romans 13 was abused and misused and mistreated so much

00:25:38.160 by the church the last few years.

00:25:40.160 And I think that we're sort of seeing, unfortunately,

00:25:43.840 bad leaders not only civilly with our governments

00:25:47.000 but also in our churches.

00:25:49.020 And I think Australia, whilst there are incredible men over here

00:25:54.120 that are doing their best in the situation that they have

00:25:57.140 and there were some amazing men.

00:25:59.000 There was also a Moses statement that was written similarly

00:26:01.600 to the Ezekiel Declaration with some ministers after the Ezekiel one

00:26:05.540 was released, and they were trying so hard to encourage Australians

00:26:09.700 to do the same thing, but we're a really long way off, I think,

00:26:15.260 really getting some traction.

00:26:17.040 Right.

00:26:17.960 Yeah, I'm with you, though.

00:26:19.400 I think your decision to be a part of a church that, you know,

00:26:23.200 if push comes to shove would, you know, lean a little bit more

00:26:27.160 on the Arminian side than the Reformed side in terms of theirs.

00:26:31.240 soteriology um i think that's right i think that that's a right instinct um is serious as i am

00:26:37.940 about reform theology which is quite quite serious um i just i would rather be led by men

00:26:45.760 who sincerely believe 60 of my doctrine than led by men who who insincerely believe 90 of my

00:26:56.480 doctrine yeah i you know it's just you it's just it's just going through the motions at that point

00:27:03.220 um it's it's hard to follow someone when when you don't when you don't have a sense of confidence

00:27:10.660 that that person actually is leading from conviction um when when you feel like i don't

00:27:17.860 believe you like you preach these things you say these things and i think that's how a lot of

00:27:22.440 Christians have felt over the last two and a half years is, you know, um, even in very conservative

00:27:28.860 and biblically faithful, uh, reformed churches with expositional preaching, where the preaching

00:27:35.320 is an hour long and, and guys are taking, you know, their cues from, you know, preachers like

00:27:41.060 Paul Washer and preaching on sin and all that, you know, um, but then it's like, we were all put to

00:27:47.920 the test. And those who bowed the knee and, you know, and then slowly came out just like everyone

00:27:56.380 else, right? It's like, well, you know, I'm not doing that anymore. You know, like our church is

00:28:01.440 gathering, but what's different about you? Like, sure, you finally came to your senses,

00:28:07.780 but you came to your senses in the same exact timeline as leftists and progressives and liberals

00:28:17.380 came to their senses like what what what's different about like all of your doctrine

00:28:23.280 and all of your convictions and all of your faith when tested by fire um how is this any pure how is

00:28:32.340 this any of any more value than than we could just find in the the status quo like how are you

00:28:40.160 I guess my question simply put is, how are you, sir, a leader? Like in what way do you lead? In what way are you ahead of others? In what way do you carry more courage than others? Which is not, you know, many have said courage isn't even a virtue, but it's the prerequisite for all virtue.

00:29:02.860 um so for me it's it's like people get it wrong i've gotten it wrong as a minister and i've had

00:29:09.500 to if i got it wrong privately i had to repent privately if i got it wrong publicly i had to

00:29:14.740 repent publicly and there's a sliding scale of you know got it wrong in what category and then

00:29:20.500 the question also is got it wrong to what degree and what frequency and there are objective

00:29:26.080 benchmarks where if you get it too wrong even if you repent you have to step down because you're

00:29:30.420 no longer meeting those qualifications of an elder.

00:29:33.540 And again, salvation is free, but eldership is not free.

00:29:37.040 Eldership is not a charity.

00:29:38.560 There's a difference between forgiveness,

00:29:40.420 which belongs to a category of love on the one hand,

00:29:43.920 and then discernment and leadership

00:29:47.700 that belongs to a category of trust.

00:29:51.460 Love is free, trust is earned.

00:29:53.500 All these kinds of things have to be taken into account.

00:29:56.560 So pastors get it wrong, leaders get it wrong,

00:29:59.120 but this was different.

00:30:00.420 in my assessment. And I don't think it's just because I was on the winning team, so to speak.

00:30:07.520 I don't think it's just because by God's grace, I was one of the few guys who was able to wise up

00:30:13.820 to what was going on at an early date. But I really feel like this was different than a minister just

00:30:20.920 getting something wrong, right? Like maybe he taught something doctrinally wrong and then he

00:30:26.960 you know, further reformed in his theology and was able to go back and say, so I've taught this

00:30:32.340 in the past, but I don't think that this is biblically faithful. And it's a secondary,

00:30:37.340 it's not like heresy, it's not like he maligned the gospel, but a secondary issue, you know,

00:30:42.660 or something like that. That happens in ministry because nobody comes out of the womb with perfect

00:30:47.220 theology. And sadly, nobody enters the pulpit with perfect theology. Nobody's ordained, you know,

00:30:53.940 already having, because perfect theology is not one of the qualifications for an elder. He must

00:30:58.920 be able to teach, but he doesn't have perfect theology. So, elders should be growing, right?

00:31:06.240 They should have a certain benchmark, a bare minimum of sound doctrine, but hopefully an

00:31:13.380 elder who has been in the pulpit and been in pastoral ministry for 40 years, I don't know

00:31:20.200 if there's any guy who's been in ministry that long, that if you asked him, do you have better

00:31:25.400 theology today than when you were first ordained? All of them are going to say yes, which implies

00:31:30.200 what? It implies that from the moment they began pastoral ministry to the moment they now are at,

00:31:36.580 there has been improvement. And so, I'm not saying that if anyone ever changes on anything,

00:31:42.040 aka improves, assuming that changes for the better, then that proves that previously they

00:31:47.860 weren't actually qualified and they should have stepped down. That's not my position. But this

00:31:52.280 last two and a half years, I think is unique. I think, I just think it's different. I think that

00:31:57.700 this was something that was so obvious, that was so clear. And that it wasn't, it wasn't,

00:32:05.080 I guess what I'm saying, it wasn't a test of the intellect. It was a test of the will. It wasn't a

00:32:11.700 test of someone, because the guys who, this, I guess what I'm getting at is, and I'm processing

00:32:18.280 this, but one of the ways I know it wasn't a test of mere intellectual prowess or theological

00:32:25.460 aptitude, one of the reasons I know that it wasn't merely that is because when you look at the guys

00:32:32.180 who passed the test, they're all over the board theologically. Like you yourself said, you're

00:32:38.700 going to a church that's less reformed than you are, but you're going there because your pastor,

00:32:43.780 even though he has a different theological disposition from you, he had courage. And I

00:32:51.220 really think that this was not a test of who is a master of the constitution, although that helps

00:32:56.980 those who knew history, or this is a test of who's an epidemiologist, although it would help

00:33:03.540 to know something about viruses. Or this is a test of who has a perfect understanding of

00:33:09.660 Protestant resistance theory and theology, although that certainly would have helped.

00:33:14.160 But really, I feel like this was a test of character. It was a test of the will. It was

00:33:18.780 simply a test of who has a spine. And although it sounds a bit abrasive, I would say one of

00:33:27.420 the qualifications for an elder is that he be male. Eldership is for men. And I feel like that's

00:33:35.240 what was tested. And a lot of guys prove that they're not male. They don't have spines. They

00:33:42.940 don't have masculinity. They don't have courage. And women can't be pastors. And I think a lot of

00:33:50.960 guys in the pulpit prove that when push comes to shove, when they're actually tested, they are

00:33:56.380 women. And I don't mean that to be demeaning because I know I'm talking to a woman right now

00:34:00.560 who had courage and praise God for it. But men go into the fray. They don't cower and kowtow and

00:34:08.700 say, please, sir, you know, yes, government. Yes, what can I? And so, yeah, I think it's a good sense

00:34:15.500 that you're saying, you know what? Yeah, in an ideal world, I'd like to have my cake and eat it

00:34:20.960 too. I would like to have a guy with character and reformed theology, but if I have to choose,

00:34:27.000 I want to have a man leading me pastorally who not, you know, now there's a drop-off point,

00:34:35.840 not a heretic who has courage, but a man who I think he's wrong on some theological issues,

00:34:41.340 but they're secondary or tertiary, but he is orthodox, but he is also very masculine.

00:34:47.840 And I'd rather have that than a guy who's spineless and effeminate, but, you know, went to Westminster, you know, whatever, and has some of the theological credentials.

00:35:00.520 Do you have any pushback on that or thoughts on that or anything to flesh out further?

00:35:06.020 No, I think it's exactly right.

00:35:07.580 I think that, you know, God designed the world to be a patriarchy.

00:35:12.520 It's how it was, you know, he made man first.

00:35:15.740 And, you know, and Eve was to be a helper.

00:35:18.320 And that's just how it is.

00:35:19.460 And I think when we try to reject Genesis, you know, the ordained sort of order and the inherited nature and purposes that Christ created pre-sin, pre-curse, pre-fall, that's when chaos happens.

00:35:32.640 And, you know, Genesis 2.15 is basically how I understand the definition of masculinity, which is men are to protect and to provide.

00:35:42.200 That's the role of a man.

00:35:43.660 And that's the biblical role of masculinity.

00:35:45.260 And I think the church and these men in the pulpit,

00:35:48.640 they failed to protect us from the civil government.

00:35:52.400 They failed to provide us with spiritual nourishment during that time

00:35:56.620 and failed to provide us with the correct biblical answers

00:36:00.100 to the dilemmas that we were facing.

00:36:02.500 And I think you said that, you know, the last few years has been unique.

00:36:05.760 And I would agree and I would almost be happy to sort of say,

00:36:09.480 I think there's been a spiritual blindness to many people.

00:36:13.260 And you see God use that at all different times throughout the Bible where you're reading

00:36:18.380 it going, how can these people not see what is going on?

00:36:21.820 Like he just, you know, during the Exodus, for example, you know, he's just taken his

00:36:27.040 people from Egypt.

00:36:28.060 And then they're like, you know, I'm just going to make a golden calf now.

00:36:31.020 And you're like, why?

00:36:32.380 Why would you do this?

00:36:33.580 Did you not see how powerful and did you not see his majesty?

00:36:37.300 Did you not see he's the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end?

00:36:40.060 And then here you are in the desert building a calf.

00:36:42.800 And it's spiritual blindness. And I think that's part of what we've witnessed the last few years. And, you know, whether God does it to benefit them by spiritually blinding them so that similar, I guess, you know, it was physical blindness with Saul, a.k.a. Paul.

00:36:59.620 but like you know God uses things to help people to see is this a spiritual blindness is he doing

00:37:05.620 this so that they can repent and regenerate their hearts and and you know reconcile with Christ as

00:37:12.860 well as the congregation or is it spiritually blind because that's judgment and that's he's

00:37:18.660 going to make us go through that and you know when God speaks like every time in the Bible God speaks

00:37:23.720 you know, mountains shake, things move. And I think if people and ministers and Christians are

00:37:29.960 holding on to things that aren't rooted eternally and rooted through scripture, through the word of

00:37:35.660 Christ, it's going to fall off the shelf. And these ministers haven't been holding on to that.

00:37:40.400 And so God's speaking to us and they're just sort of falling off the shelf as he speaks and his

00:37:45.440 voice causes it to tremble. So I think that's what's happening. I do think we have emasculated

00:37:51.460 men severe. And I think that when it comes to ministers in the pulpit, and this is just

00:37:57.280 something I've seen, I've seen it throughout my life, not just with Christianity, but with all

00:38:02.360 kinds of like jobs and careers and occupations. It's very academic now. Everything is about,

00:38:09.740 you get that bachelor of theology, you get that, you do your time under a minister, and then you

00:38:15.300 get that piece of paper and now you're a minister. Whereas historically speaking, and I think if you

00:38:19.880 look at the Bible, God raises men up to those positions. It's a calling. It's not a, I want a

00:38:26.840 career. I want to climb the ladder. I want to have a congregation of a hundred people, bums on seats

00:38:31.260 every week, this and that. And I think the church is very academic. And I think that that's part of

00:38:36.980 why there's so much spiritual blindness, because they came into that position, possibly spiritually

00:38:42.340 blind and possibly already within themselves and their own soul, quite feminine in nature,

00:38:48.220 rejecting God's patriarchal order and until we sort of shift maybe the recruitment or how it

00:38:55.280 happens and we get men in those positions who are called into those positions uh we're going to be

00:39:02.400 sort of having to sift the you know the wheat from the from the chaff for a bit longer um but I

00:39:08.640 definitely think that this should uh be a good wake up to the church if anything else and it

00:39:16.320 should hopefully stir in the hearts of good men to go,

00:39:20.700 well, no one's filling those shoes.

00:39:23.040 Maybe I'll step up into them because that's what God does.

00:39:25.900 Like Moses couldn't even articulate.

00:39:27.920 It says in the Bible he could barely speak properly.

00:39:30.860 I don't even know what that means in literal terms

00:39:34.100 or practical terms today, but they specifically made mention

00:39:37.680 of that in the Old Testament and God used him.

00:39:41.860 I mean, every time as well in the Bible that women are used,

00:39:46.320 like Deborah and all of the other prophetesses and all these things that people like to

00:39:51.880 misunderstand. It's because the men around them are failing. Right. That's why they've,

00:39:56.640 it's a judgment. It's never a good thing that the women step up. It's a bad thing that the women

00:40:03.100 do that. And I think that we got to stop saying, oh, but Deborah was a prophetess and all these

00:40:10.260 women did this. It's like, no, that was judgment. That wasn't how it should be. That was against

00:40:15.920 the correct order and you know it's about time men step up into those positions and put an end

00:40:22.840 to this feminine pulpit ministry and be men be genesis 2 15 it's that simple yeah i agree and

00:40:31.120 by god's grace you know in terms of you're saying you know this is going to continue to happen

00:40:34.620 unless we get better stock in our pulpits and i think by god's grace and through his providence

00:40:39.680 we are we're getting better pastoral candidates and better church planters and better ministers

00:40:46.620 of the gospel because sometimes I think this is what it takes you know when things are so far

00:40:52.240 gone when institutions are so so captured and so far corrupted that that it really takes some kind

00:41:00.780 of profound providential earthquake in order to to reveal to people you know what's going you

00:41:09.620 You need some kind of cataclysmic event that would dislodge the gatekeepers and create the opportunity for those who were not given permission to be able to come in and to step into roles.

00:41:28.420 And so I'm really hopeful for the future.

00:41:30.560 And I guess one of the last things that I thought as you were talking was just, I think people just, they were not familiar with the word of God, not nearly as familiar as they should have been.

00:41:43.960 But I think we also are not nearly as familiar with wickedness that we should have been.

00:41:50.920 The Bible says that we should be innocent babes in wickedness.

00:41:55.500 So there's a sense of innocence, but there's also, there's a fine line between innocence and naivety.

00:42:02.920 We should understand how evil works in the world.

00:42:07.760 And I think one of the ways that we understand that is from scripture.

00:42:10.560 And another is just simply by being good students of history.

00:42:14.500 And I think, you know, it's, people always think like, you know, they look back and say, I would have been on the right side.

00:42:20.840 I would have never done what the Israelites did.

00:42:22.820 I would have never done what the Nazis did.

00:42:24.360 I wouldn't have ever done what the Assyrians did or that, you know, when you go down the line, all these examples and you just assume that you would be on the right side.

00:42:33.340 But you assume that because hindsight is clear, right?

00:42:37.840 Hindsight is 20-20.

00:42:39.560 And so it's very easy to detect who the bad guys are and who the good guys are after the fact.

00:42:47.260 And one of the reasons why it's easy is because the victors get to write the history books.

00:42:55.700 And so actually, sometimes it's not easy.

00:42:57.700 Sometimes we look back and we think that someone is clearly in the right, but that's simply because they won and they get to rewrite things from their perspective.

00:43:07.040 But my point is, whether it's scripture or whether it's history, when we read the stories, when we read these historical accounts, we never have any sense of, I think, just godly humility to recognize, maybe I would have missed this.

00:43:26.480 So like you brought up the Israelites and being led out of Egypt and then immediately, almost immediately, fashioning a golden calf and worshiping it.

00:43:34.940 You know, but as even that example, as I've studied it more intently, I've realized that that was actually a breach of the second commandment, which by way of implication includes a breach of the first.

00:43:46.460 But it wasn't directly, first and foremost, a breach of the first commandment, have no other gods before me.

00:43:51.580 it was predominantly a breach of the second commandment,

00:43:54.480 thou shall not make any graven images.

00:43:56.380 The Hebrews were not saying Yahweh did not lead us

00:44:01.400 and deliver us out of Egypt

00:44:02.580 and cause us to walk on dry land through the Red Sea.

00:44:06.160 No, they were saying this calf is Yahweh.

00:44:10.100 This is his image.

00:44:11.360 This is what he looks like.

00:44:13.120 Because Moses was gone on the mountain.

00:44:15.700 They didn't know if he was going to return

00:44:17.060 and they didn't.

00:44:17.900 faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of Christ, right? We do not walk by sight by what

00:44:23.680 we see, but by faith. And because they were a people who were stubborn and steeped in unbelief,

00:44:31.780 this absence of faith, the root sin of the Israelites, especially in the wilderness was

00:44:37.560 a sin of unbelief because they lacked faith. They wanted sight. They wanted to see God. And because

00:44:44.400 the man of God, the closest they could get to seeing God because he was absent. It's not that

00:44:50.280 they wanted to worship another God. They simply wanted to make God visible, but in direct

00:44:56.260 disobedience to what God had said. I am the invisible God. God is spirit. Those who worship

00:45:03.220 him must worship him in spirit and in truth. We're not to worship through images. And so my point is,

00:45:08.060 the only reason I bring that up is just that little perspective. I remember a few years back

00:45:12.680 When I came into more understanding with that, it garnished within me a greater sympathy, not empathy, but a greater sympathy for the Israelites in that day thinking, oh, man, like, I like to read the story and imagine I'm Moses, you know, but maybe I would have been Aaron.

00:45:31.560 Or maybe I just would have been Joe Blow Israelite, you know, telling Aaron what to, but at minimum, I easily could have been Aaron saying, I didn't really want to do this, but the people were pushing me to do, you know, like.

00:45:42.680 Like, you know, and especially when you bring into account, like, we weren't trying to worship another God.

00:45:47.700 We know it was Yahweh who led us out of Egypt with a mighty right arm.

00:45:51.480 We know He's, like, we're giving Him credit.

00:45:54.480 We're not worshiping another God.

00:45:56.320 We just, the people just needed to see Yahweh.

00:45:59.120 They just needed a morale boost, you know?

00:46:01.220 And they were pushing on me, Moses, and you were nowhere to be found.

00:46:05.100 And so I, like, you know what I mean?

00:46:06.660 when I read the story like that, I'm able to see like, oh man, I could have easily been Aaron,

00:46:16.600 but for the grace of God, there go I. And so my point is, I think there's so many Christians in

00:46:21.940 our day and really in every time, every place throughout the ages, that their only familiarity

00:46:29.960 with evil in the scripture and in history is always when the evil has already been sufficiently

00:46:37.840 defeated and the books have been written and the details have been drawn out to the surface

00:46:43.760 as though they were obvious, but at the time they weren't. And so when all this stuff for the last

00:46:50.200 two years came down the pipe, for us, I think a lot of Christians, we're saying, fight, hold the

00:46:58.240 line, have courage. And they're like, you're crazy. This isn't what evil looks like. Evil has,

00:47:03.960 you know, two horns on its head and a pointy tail and a pitchfork, you know, but evil's just never

00:47:10.980 that obvious. It's never that obvious. It always requires discernment. I mean, that's just the

00:47:16.980 reality of heresy and false doctrine, the false prophets, false teachers. Satan himself masquerades

00:47:22.840 as an angel of light. And I think too few Christians know the times. And one of the

00:47:30.600 reasons they're not like the sons of Issachar, discerning the times, is because when it comes

00:47:36.520 to wickedness, they're not merely innocent, but they're naive. They don't understand the craftiness

00:47:43.920 of evil and the way that it works in the world. Nobody sits on national television,

00:47:50.820 you know twiddling their fingers saying whoa maybe justin trudeau you know but like but you

00:47:56.060 know most same people don't do that like they even the evil characters in in our stories they

00:48:01.540 always think that they're the good guys they think they're the good guys and and so christians have

00:48:07.480 got to become more discerning and and and it's not just discerning but i think christians don't

00:48:14.680 think they can push back because thou shalt be nice you know christians i think some christians

00:48:19.460 did have an inkling. They had a hunch. They knew something was off. Their discernment bells were

00:48:25.500 ringing. But I think for some Christians, they were too naive. For others, it's not even that

00:48:32.620 they were naive. They actually did have a sense that something was wrong. But for them, they had

00:48:37.600 this criteria in their mind somehow that all of these things have to be so emphatically proven

00:48:45.960 before we're allowed to ever oppose something or someone because thou shalt be nice. And so I think

00:48:53.160 some Christians were like, this is good. What's wrong with you, crazy conservatives? And then

00:48:57.760 other Christians were like, yeah, maybe there's some problems, but you're being mean. And this

00:49:05.300 is not what, you know, this isn't Christ-like, you know, dissenting and stirring up division

00:49:11.820 and quarreling. Whereas no Christian would say Paul was being quarrelsome when he charged Peter

00:49:21.720 to his face before them all. If you, who live like a Gentile, I oppose him to his face where

00:49:31.340 he's clearly in the wrong. He was not keeping in step with the truth of the gospel. But notice

00:49:36.560 when Paul says he's not keeping in step with the truth of the gospel, he's not saying Peter got up

00:49:41.180 and blatantly preached a sermon that says we're not saved by grace and Jesus didn't die for our

00:49:45.520 sins. No, like Paul's saying this action over here that everyone else, like others, Barnabas even

00:49:53.100 was led astray by Peter. Certain men came down from James is what it says. And that's kind of

00:49:58.900 what got Peter acting differently. Like nobody knows, it wasn't this blatant, obvious heresy,

00:50:05.120 but Paul says he gives it just as strong of wording as though it were. He says, he's not

00:50:09.980 in step with the gospel. This is anti-gospel. This is evil. This is bad. And I'm sure a lot

00:50:17.900 of people at the time could have been tempted to say, Paul, you're being divisive. You're stirring

00:50:22.360 up controversies or you're just being, you're being, I don't know, overly emotional in your

00:50:29.860 rhetoric. But Paul was just like, no, this is black and white. And that's what we need leaders

00:50:35.220 to be able to say, to say, this is black and white when it still looks to the average person

00:50:40.820 gray. And yeah, and I think that just so many people didn't see it. And then others who did

00:50:46.380 see something, they still didn't think it was clear enough to take a strong stand because

00:50:55.000 a strong stand isn't nice. I think it's important that churches do sort of

00:51:03.880 get involved with matters like this. I think sort of what you were mentioning, how some alarm bells

00:51:09.760 were ringing, but people didn't want to seem controversial or conspiracy, you know, conspiracy

00:51:15.700 sort of fueling. I think what's really important is acknowledging the world that we live in.

00:51:22.860 I mean, you look at the laws and the legislations that were given in the Old Testament. I think we

00:51:28.160 can almost apply them, you know, those as case laws for today. There's still relevance to those

00:51:34.000 to us today. And, you know, Paul even uses, you know, the Old Testament, like the ox and the grain

00:51:40.980 and, you know, things like that to sort of show them the moral laws and the case laws we can put

00:51:46.520 today. And I think it's important to acknowledge we do live in a world different to then, but we

00:51:51.400 still have to function in it as Christians and I think it's important for me personally to I really

00:51:59.380 appreciate when ministers aren't afraid like yourself like Doug Wilson James White Jeff Durbin

00:52:06.220 those guys who are sort of battling these cultural issues to help us Christians out as we're sort of

00:52:14.120 trying to take off the blinkers and to see things so we do have better discernment I think if we'd

00:52:20.880 be too naive about it. That's how we lack discernment. And if we refuse to see the

00:52:26.460 world around us, how are we going to obey God's laws by spreading the gospel in the world around

00:52:32.240 us? I think that, yeah, I do, I am encouraged, sorry, by ministers who are stepping up now.

00:52:41.760 And, you know, I do feel like, you know, even though I've spoken a lot about failures of the

00:52:47.320 church and of Christians. There is a new movement, I feel, of shepherds that is coming to the

00:52:54.200 forefront of ministries. And I personally, myself, like I have, I think, on Twitter,

00:53:01.080 about 70,000 followers all together with all the social medias. I've got hundreds of thousands of

00:53:06.720 people who follow me. And I can't tell you, I've lost track of the amount of time people have

00:53:11.220 reached out and said, I want to get a Bible. What one should I get? And I'm like, throw away the

00:53:16.940 message, throw away this, you know, get this. But my point is people are hungry and people are

00:53:23.080 looking. And, you know, I've even had some ministers come and say, you know, there's

00:53:28.860 something different about your theology. And I'm really curious. And I've been able to have

00:53:33.140 within, without stepping over boundaries as a woman of trying to have an authority,

00:53:38.940 I remember just trying to direct them to other men who could possibly articulate it better than

00:53:44.420 myself and have that authority. And it's been encouraging seeing the hunger for it again,

00:53:51.700 and a hunger to read the scriptures again. I've had one guy who had female elders at his church,

00:53:58.240 his wife being one of them, and she's now stepped down. And they're starting to make all of these

00:54:05.140 changes, which is super encouraging as well. And this particular minister as well is amazing.

00:54:12.000 He was one of the few that, and he was very sort of almost Pentecostally slash Reformed.

00:54:17.460 It was really strange theology.

00:54:19.580 I was so confused.

00:54:21.040 Says so many right things, but then has fever, passes, and all these things.

00:54:24.920 But again, he didn't bow to Caesar during these lockdowns, and now there's been changes.

00:54:30.440 So, I do think that the church is regenerating in some way, and individuals are more regenerate.

00:54:39.320 and you know i think the whole process if anything has been very sanctifying for a lot of people and

00:54:45.640 i'm encouraged by that and that's you know we can lead a horse to water but we can't force it to

00:54:51.880 drink and that's sort of what i think i'm trying to to do my best at within my sort of realm of

00:54:59.320 responsibilities but um i i do think that um it will get better i obviously adhere to a post-mill

00:55:07.880 eschatology as well which has been apart from going from more arminian theology in my early

00:55:14.840 20s to then reformed that was probably the best like most exciting change in my uh sort of journey

00:55:23.160 uh this has been the next one um my change of eschatology and the way that i look at the future

00:55:30.520 and so even though it sounds doom and gloom i'm i'm excited because i think that we're headed

00:55:36.120 in the right direction and i i can see the fruits being you know produced from the trees that we're

00:55:44.280 sort of planting now and the last few years um has been great for myself because i've been stuck at

00:55:51.560 home i'm in the prison island here i have plenty of time i lost my job they i i worked in a private

00:55:58.280 military company once i i left the place they said sorry you haven't had the job you're out

00:56:03.240 So, I've had a lot of time and I've been able to read a lot and listen.

00:56:07.280 I tell you what, I think I've read everything that Rush Dooney's ever put out in the history of his life.

00:56:12.660 I'm going through his law and society book at the moment, which has been really good.

00:56:17.440 But long story short, I think lots of people have had the time over the last few years because we've had no choice to really get into things and nut out theology and look into the future.

00:56:30.900 and I think the whole dispensationalist view is sort of actually getting

00:56:35.940 a lot smaller and a lot of people are at least going A-mil

00:56:39.080 and now more post-mil, which I think changes the way Christians

00:56:43.000 look at the world and how we tackle it and deal with it.

00:56:46.820 So it isn't all doom and gloom.

00:56:48.120 It is encouraging in some ways and it is exciting to think we're here now.

00:56:52.560 I can't wait to see where we are in five years.

00:56:54.900 I think it's going to be better for the church as a whole.

00:56:57.540 I really do.

00:56:58.640 Amen.

00:56:59.260 Praise God for that.

00:57:00.080 Well, is there any practical place that if somebody is in Australia and they feel like the pickings are slim when it comes to faithful churches with good doctrine, but also pastors who have spines, is there any kind of like church search tool or something like that that you could direct us to?

00:57:21.200 There is one.

00:57:22.960 I forget the exact, I think it's sheep and shepherds or shepherds and sheeps.

00:57:27.560 It's something like that.

00:57:28.720 I'll send you the link anyway if you wanted to include it

00:57:31.400 in the description.

00:57:32.640 But it does have, you can put your suburb in or your postcode

00:57:37.140 sort of area and it sort of shows you churches that did stand

00:57:40.140 up against what happened and churches that are, you know,

00:57:43.780 reformed in theology and things like that.

00:57:45.920 And it's really helpful.

00:57:47.220 If you go to cauldronpool.com and contact any of the authors

00:57:51.780 that are there, we can sort of direct you as well.

00:57:54.060 A lot of us at Cauldron Pool all kind of know each other through church circles, and we know lots of people and friends.

00:58:01.520 So, even if it's not on that website, I guarantee if you contact one of us, we'll be able to find something that's near you through word of mouth and through inquiry.

00:58:10.780 So, definitely do it.

00:58:12.300 Okay.

00:58:12.940 Great.

00:58:13.360 Well, thank you so much, Evelyn, for coming on the show.

00:58:15.400 I really appreciate it.

00:58:16.840 And is there any way that people can follow you?

00:58:19.200 yeah you can go to cauldronpool.com and you can watch the show which is the podcast i put out

00:58:25.600 every week you have made an appearance on that too so that's a good episode if anyone watching

00:58:30.500 wants to start somewhere you can start there um and also my articles are there or i'm on all

00:58:36.200 social media as well just evelyn ray um it seems like you're pretty active on twitter is that kind

00:58:41.740 of your your like the your most go-to platform it seems like you're on on twitter a lot that's

00:58:47.600 I get in all my fights. Twitter is the place to fight. It's a sewer. That's what I like to call

00:58:54.660 it. But yeah, I'd say my Instagram is, I do a lot of my farming stuff on there. So I think the ladies

00:59:01.220 will maybe enjoy Instagram a bit more because there's baby cows and baby chickens and horse

00:59:06.220 riding and motorbike riding and shooting as well as theology and as well as politics. But Twitter,

00:59:12.000 I kind of just keep to, um, you know, tweets that annoy most people. Um, and that's where

00:59:20.280 the, I sort of articulate my thoughts or something I might be reading, but yeah,

00:59:25.100 they're sort of the two main platforms, but more personalized stuff on Instagram.

00:59:28.880 Okay. Great. Well, thanks again for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

00:59:32.240 Thanks so much for having me.

00:59:33.780 Thanks so much for listening, but real quick, before you go, do us a small favor,

00:59:38.020 take a moment and leave us a five-star review. If you enjoyed the show,

00:59:42.000 This is undoubtedly the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content

00:59:47.500 to as many people as possible.

00:59:49.640 Thanks so much.

The NXR Podcast - October 25, 2022

THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Church In Australia After Covid w Evelyn Rae from Caldron Pool

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