The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Growing Divide Amongst Reformed Evangelicals ｜ with William Wolfe

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00:01:00.000 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:01:23.320 I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries, and in this episode,

00:01:27.020 I am very privileged to welcome back to the show, William Wolfe.

00:01:31.260 William, thanks for coming on.

00:01:32.780 Joel, glad to be back.

00:01:34.180 I think this is my third time, so three times a charm.

00:01:38.020 Well, let's go ahead and hop right into it.

00:01:39.400 We want to talk about controversy, handling controversy, why there is controversy among

00:01:43.680 the Reformed Christian camp.

00:01:45.340 But before we get to that, I think there's some intertwining between these two topics.

00:01:49.280 Let's start with Aaron Wren and the recent article that he wrote addressing fundamentalists.

00:01:55.820 You had some great thoughts on that, but go ahead first for our listeners, anybody who

00:02:00.280 may have not read the article, give us a synopsis.

00:02:03.760 Yeah, thanks.

00:02:04.380 Aaron Wren is, you know, he's a commentator on the evangelical world.

00:02:08.280 He's from a consulting background, which is interesting, sort of like how I bring a particular

00:02:13.540 political background to my assessment of evangelical issues.

00:02:17.860 Aaron Wren brings a consulting class background.

00:02:19.920 So he's analyzing systems, the way that they function.

00:02:23.020 And a lot of times without necessarily weighing in too much on like the pros and cons of those systems, but pretty much looking at who the actors are and what they're doing.

00:02:32.340 And he recently had a piece in his newsletter on his blog entitled, Who is a Fundamentalist?

00:02:38.460 And he touches briefly on the history of fundamentalism, doesn't get into it too much, and I could cover that more.

00:02:44.240 But just if people aren't paying attention, you know, who is a fundamentalist?

00:02:48.500 The term fundamentalist really arose in the early 1900s as you get past the J. Gresham Machen and Henry Fosdick battle over the inerrancy of Scripture.

00:03:00.060 And there's this sermon preached by the liberal Fosdick, you know, shall the fundamentalists win?

00:03:04.980 And at that point, the battle was over, you know, believing in things like the virgin birth, the inerrancy of scripture, the validity of Jesus's miracles, the total comprehensive authority of God's word for our lives.

00:03:17.820 And the liberals at that time, the modernists, really, it was fundamentalism versus modernism.

00:03:22.520 They were trying to update the Bible for the modern era.

00:03:26.040 We see in each era that the church is confronted with new theories from the world.

00:03:30.540 We have to choose how to respond to them.

00:03:32.380 Well, unfortunately, we've seen what we call liberals often respond by sort of changing the Bible to appeal to the modern era.

00:03:39.640 And the fundamentalist at that time said, no, we have to stick to the scriptures that continues to grow.

00:03:44.860 Then you get Carl F.H. Henry. He has the uneasy conscience of a modern fundamentalist in 1947.

00:03:51.560 So this is a conversation that's been going on for decades.

00:03:54.780 And really now in American evangelicalism, we have pretty much everybody's a fundamentalist,

00:04:00.140 quite frankly, according to the commitments of broad swath evangelicalism.

00:04:03.880 But what Aaron Wren has done, he's come in and he's given us a great insight that now

00:04:07.940 fundamentalism is much less about a commitment to core theological beliefs, and it's more

00:04:13.480 about an overall posture towards adjudicating how those in power in evangelical circles

00:04:20.960 should approach the world.

00:04:22.780 And he has sort of this really pithy, you know, one sentence summary, and I'll read it for you guys here because I have the article up where he says, in his perspective, a fundamentalist now, practically speaking, will be anybody who challenges the incumbent power structures from the right.

00:04:40.500 and so that's a really key insight so if we think about incumbent power structures and

00:04:45.780 evangelicalism over the last decade plus we can think of what the young restless reformed

00:04:50.740 resurgence has built the gospel coalition you know the the last dying ebbs of christianity today

00:04:56.920 other major conferences now there are many brothers yourself included myself included

00:05:01.760 acts 29 would be a good example of a power structure of sort of modern evangelicalism

00:05:06.520 that those of us on the right are now critiquing because we think that they're overly compromising

00:05:10.960 with the world. And so that gives us a new paradigm to understand how this label is going

00:05:16.000 to be used. They're going to label people as fundamentalists, not necessarily because of the

00:05:20.280 things they believe, and not necessarily because as the historic fundamentalists did, they retreated

00:05:25.340 from the culture, drew hard lines of separation and said, we won't work with anybody who disagrees

00:05:30.200 with us on anything. But really, it's going to be people like you and me. And then he uses

00:05:34.120 An individual, James Wood, as an example of somebody who's actually pretty, dare you say it, winsome and soft-spoken and gives a fair treatment to people like Keller and yet still critiques them, even someone like that is going to be labeled a fundamentalist.

00:05:49.060 And so here we are now, and thank you for giving me this long opening monologue here, but my political insight on this is as such. As we look at how the establishment operates in the evangelical Christian world, the overlap with how the establishment operates in the political world is essentially that Venn diagram is essentially a circle.

00:06:08.540 And in the same way in the political world, you get people labeled deplorables or far-right extremists. Now, fundamentalists in evangelicalism are going to be those same people.

00:06:19.600 They're going to be the people that the moderates, even though they say they believe everything we believe, will refuse to work with to codify the beliefs of evangelicalism.

00:06:29.180 And thereby, ultimately, they'll let the liberals win unless we are able to convince them or have enough turnout at things like the SBC to maintain control of conservative evangelical institutions.

00:06:41.920 Well said.

00:06:42.580 Man, that was a great synopsis.

00:06:45.100 I didn't want to say a heck of a synopsis because you might think that I was joking about the length, but I will never give anybody a hard time about length because that would be the pot calling the kettle black.

00:06:57.260 The whole time you were talking, though, I kept thinking, you know, you could just take the same premise and apply it to Christian nationalism, right?

00:07:04.680 Like part of the reason why you and I were willing to wear that badge and to wear it proudly to say, hey, you know what, maybe not my first choice.

00:07:11.640 But yeah, I am a Christian nationalist. I'm going to roll with it and I'm not going to be embarrassed about it. Part of the reason why we were willing to do this is because we realized that all the guys who, many of them are good brothers. We're not saying they're not Christians or anything like that. We're saying they're good brothers. A lot of them are not just good brothers, but they're biblically qualified men. They're qualified to be good brothers and good pastors.

00:07:31.520 And yet we just felt like at the end of the day, these guys, they're making all these efforts in their language and their blogs and their articles and podcasts and sermons to bifurcate themselves, distinguish themselves from Christian nationalism.

00:07:49.220 And yet, if the libs win, you and me and G3 are going to be sharing a cell together in the gulag.

00:07:59.200 Like they're not going to say, you know what, Josh Bice, he's not a Christian nationalist.

00:08:04.380 He's okay.

00:08:05.140 And here's the funny thing.

00:08:06.480 And Josh knows that, and I'm not picking on him.

00:08:08.440 But my point is, my point is that not only will you get called, will you get treated

00:08:14.400 as though you're the enemy, you're a Christian nationalist, but you'll get called a Christian

00:08:17.800 nationalist.

00:08:18.280 I found this interesting recently, and you may be able to cite the example more specifically

00:08:23.160 because I'm just, I don't have the specifics of it.

00:08:25.680 But I know that there was some organization that listed sovereign nations with Michael O'Fallon, who is a brother in Christ, but listed him and his organization as Christian nationalists, which I just, I looked at it and I couldn't help but laugh and not picking on anybody or anything like that.

00:08:43.420 But I couldn't help but laugh because I just thought, oh, man, I feel I feel bad for the guy because he's gone to such great lengths to insist and to distinguish and to caveat, you know, that he is not a Christian nationalist.

00:08:55.360 But in the view of the world, in the view of, you know, the moderns, they're not going to look at Michael O'Fallon and then look at me and say, you know what, one of these are these are good guys and the other one's not.

00:09:11.480 they're going to just say yep they're both christian nationalists and so i'm just saying

00:09:14.920 hey i'm a christian nationalist somebody else is saying i'm not a christian nationalist the world's

00:09:18.720 going to look and say they're both christian nationalists and so it just seems it seems silly

00:09:22.540 and i think part of it is still coming off the heels where we you know going back to aaron rin

00:09:26.860 again you know his his negative and and neutral world and and then um and positive negative and

00:09:33.400 positive neutral and negative world well in the in the neutral world that we're now leaving in

00:09:38.620 terms of the world's, is there hostility? Is the general disposition a hostile disposition towards

00:09:44.840 Christians, or is it a positive disposition, or is it more indifference and neutral position?

00:09:50.420 And these categories are not theological categories. If somebody's lost, then the

00:09:54.640 mind of the sinful man is hostile towards God. It does not submit to his law, nor can it.

00:09:58.420 But we're talking about Christian culture, which you and I both see as a net positive good.

00:10:02.660 But the point is, in a world that was leaving Christianity but hadn't quite left in the West, we were kind of on our way from being Christian culture to pagan culture, and on the way, there was this optic for a moment, a long moment, multiple decades, but a moment in the big scheme of things, of this neutral world effect.

00:10:22.920 And in a neutral world, a guy like Russell Moore could actually have some benefits by making 17 caveats and a million different disclaimers and saying, well, I'm not like them.

00:10:34.780 I actually, you know what I mean?

00:10:36.000 In a neutral world, they might actually see the distinction being made by someone like a Russell Moore and say, okay, well, he's not as bad as that guy or, you know, whatever. 0.82

00:10:46.360 But in the world we're entering now, in a hostile world where the remnants and the effects of Christian culture are waning and there's very little fumes left in the tank and we're moving from neutral to hostile world, people are going to look at G3 and they're going to look at Right Response Ministries and they're going to look at William Wolff and they're going to say, like Pam from The Office, that meme is the same picture. 0.87

00:11:13.560 You don't gain a whole lot. 0.82

00:11:15.320 Do you agree with that assessment?

00:11:16.360 Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. And, you know, let me let me propose a brand new paradigm. Here we go. I've been kind of noodling on this and just kind of popped into clarity when it comes to labels like these, whether it's Christian nationalism or whether it's fundamentalist, what I think the dividing line you could consider sort of three buckets in terms of the evangelical world.

00:11:35.860 Are people allergic to that label? Are they apologetic to that label? Are they accepting of that label? And I think this really ties in to the fundamentalist bent that Aaron's getting at here, because you'll notice that that many of these men who are, we'll say, allergic at best or allergic at worst or apologetic at best of the labels, fundamentalist Christian nationalists.

00:12:01.460 they're ones in institutional positions maybe professors at seminary maybe they're guys who

00:12:06.200 have sort of more respectable platforms in the world and you'll notice that these leaders

00:12:11.060 posture themselves the crowd over here the unwashed masses are accepting of the label

00:12:17.400 and then they are lumped in with those people by the world so then they either have to be entirely

00:12:22.260 allergic to it and deny it and denounce it and try to defeat it or they'll be very apologetic

00:12:27.380 about it. And what they do is they have their eye on the New York Times and secular sociologists

00:12:32.060 and try to defend the unwashed masses who accept the label, but try to tweak the term a little bit 0.69

00:12:37.800 with it. And so I think that posturing is very important in evangelicalism today. I think many

00:12:43.300 people are looking for leaders who are accepting of the labels, who are willing to stand with the

00:12:48.100 masses contra the world. And so instead of sort of trying to stand between the masses in the world,

00:12:55.760 apologizing for these labels that are getting applied to them. Fundamentalists, Christian 0.64

00:13:00.920 nationalists, etc. So you and I are definitely in the accepting camp of many of these. Some of our

00:13:06.180 brothers are in the apologetic camp. And then many others are completely allergic. They don't want

00:13:10.920 anything to do with them. That's good. Accepting, apologetic, allergic. I like it. AAA. Finally,

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00:16:15.600 and support Christians serving Christians. All right, that's really helpful. Anything else you

00:16:21.000 want to talk about with Aaron Wren and that particular article on fundamentalism, or do you

00:16:25.060 want to go ahead and shift gears now and talk about controversy? Well, I think that another

00:16:29.840 important insight that Aaron draws out and that I myself have noticed too, which is that

00:16:34.420 it really comes down to, are you willing to critique the existing crop of leadership in

00:16:40.400 any way, shape, or form? And Keller, again, is a very good test case with his recent passing.

00:16:45.940 You see that essentially the leaders of the young, restless, and resurgent movement

00:16:51.600 are completely opposed to anybody who would question Keller's legacy,

00:16:56.640 provide any critiques of it, you know,

00:16:58.920 say that maybe he did some good things but not other things.

00:17:02.180 As soon as you do that, whether it's with Keller,

00:17:04.200 whether it's with Russell Moore, whether it's with David French,

00:17:06.820 as soon as you have critiques to provide for them

00:17:08.820 or even maybe more center-right figures, you know,

00:17:12.000 who maybe are strong on other issues, who drop the ball on others,

00:17:15.820 as soon as you critique from the right, you become a fundamentalist.

00:17:19.500 And so that's something that people need to be aware of

00:17:21.480 when they see this being thrown around, it's not because they believe in the inerrancy of

00:17:24.780 scripture. It's not because they believe in biblical gender roles. It's because they're

00:17:28.460 on the right side of things critiquing, you know, issues and postures of the day. Whereas on the

00:17:32.720 left side of things, if you critique from the left, you'll be welcome. You'll be given a seat

00:17:37.000 at the table. They'll try to win you over. And so heads up, the false dichotomy will exist as

00:17:45.360 people try to paint the two extremes as ex-evangelicals and fundamentalists or

00:17:51.400 ex-evangelicals and Christian nationalists. And really, it's just a posture game.

00:17:56.600 With that, I just had a thought, and I'm curious to get your take. But I think part of it might be

00:18:01.400 because of just where institutions, because of the fact of where institutions actually exist.

00:18:07.260 So what I'm trying to say is, if you critique from the left, you said like, you'll be, you know,

00:18:11.180 you'll be accepted. You critique from the right and you'll, you'll be deemed an extremist. You

00:18:16.220 know, the words that I'll often get, you know, is dangerous. And this is from Christians, you know, 1.00

00:18:22.100 and again, I'm not, I'm saying they're brothers. I'm not questioning. I'm not saying these are

00:18:26.360 professing Christians. No, I really believe they're genuine Christians. Many of them, I think,

00:18:31.020 not just good Christians, but qualified to be pastors. Some of them may be qualified to be

00:18:36.060 pastors, but maybe should, you know, maybe just get off of Twitter for a little while, just for

00:18:39.540 the good of their soul, you know, those kinds of things. But, um, so I, I'm not disparaging any of

00:18:43.420 these brothers. My point is, um, the pushback that I'll get is, uh, the, the, the key terms

00:18:50.400 will be, um, dangerous. They, they, so they won't say he's a heretic or he's a wolf. It'll be like

00:18:56.300 wolf-like or, um, or dangerous or, um, scary, uh, scary. Uh, oh, oh, here, here it is. Here it is.

00:19:05.880 i'm concerned right i'm concerned right exactly and so i call them the concerned bros you know

00:19:12.760 because you and i would get labeled as theo bros and i thought you know what okay theo bro fine i

00:19:16.800 could just like christian nationalism i can work with it um i don't appreciate it i know it's a

00:19:20.360 pejorative you're making fun of me you know but um but theo bro yeah there are theo bros out there

00:19:25.020 and um and i'm happy to be one of them and and there are some that you know that okay man reign

00:19:30.280 it in you know like let's you know and i'll and maybe try to talk to them offline or something

00:19:33.700 like that. Hey, I don't think we, I think that's too far or whatever. So I'm not saying that,

00:19:37.240 you know, everybody in that camp is, is, uh, perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But

00:19:41.280 again, I'm not going to disparage them. I'm, I'm, I'm, I, that doesn't mean I'm not going to

00:19:45.400 correct them. That doesn't mean I'm not going to, um, to hold them accountable, but I'm not going

00:19:49.800 to publicly embarrass and publicly disparage those kinds of things with the Theobos. That's it. If

00:19:54.440 there is such a thing as Theobos, um, there is very much such a thing as concerned bros. I'm

00:20:00.320 concerned, very serious, very somber, very concerned. They're very concerned about you,

00:20:07.100 William. They're very concerned about me. Uh, they're very concerned, you know? And so the

00:20:11.500 concern bros are a thing. And so my point is, uh, the concern bros, if I say something, you know,

00:20:16.840 that back to that fundamentalist kind of thing, like I'm critiquing from the right, like some of 0.93

00:20:21.380 the things that the main things that I get in trouble for is I will critique pietism, nihilism,

00:20:26.540 and Gnosticism. Now, I always say this. I'm always careful in the sense that I'm not saying

00:20:34.840 Gnosticism, capital G, to the T, Gnosticism proper, which would be a heresy, but Gnosticistic,

00:20:43.400 Gnosticism leaning, a bent, an element, a degree of Gnosticism. Same with not Pietism,

00:20:50.860 uh capital p but pietistic pietist leaning those kind of and then nihilism not nihilism to the t

00:20:57.880 not all the way not capital in nihilism proper but saying no i think but i think there is a little

00:21:03.400 bit of of fatalism nihilism here that this sense of of we you know we can't win we're we're um

00:21:11.020 we're destined to lose you know that kind of stuff so all my point is when i make those kind

00:21:15.580 of critiques and those are probably usually my three big critiques and it comes in the form of

00:21:19.560 my post-millennial eschatology or it'll come in the form of Christian nationalism or it'll come

00:21:23.320 in the form, whatever. But when I make those critiques to the right, and me being in this

00:21:27.820 instance, in a lot of instances, I'm right there with them. But in these instances, I'm about an

00:21:32.120 inch further to the right than they are. Not a mile, but a little bit further to the right than

00:21:36.240 they are. But it's still worth critiquing. It's still worth noting. When I do that, I get the

00:21:41.280 response of, oh, yeah, I'm concerned or dangerous or wolf-like or whatever it might be. All that

00:21:47.900 being said, the reason, back to the institutions, the reason why I think there's so much acceptance

00:21:53.000 when there's a critique to the left is because if you critique, for instance, just using somebody,

00:21:58.520 not just a Tim Keller or something like that, let's use John MacArthur. And the reason why I

00:22:03.020 want to use John MacArthur is because John MacArthur's great. So hear me. I'm starting with

00:22:07.200 that. He's great. I appreciate him. I respect him. John MacArthur has learned and forgotten

00:22:14.200 more things about the Lord than, than, than I've ever known. And so, you know, John MacArthur is

00:22:18.700 wonderful. Um, I do have some, some areas where I disagree, dispensationalism, premillennialism,

00:22:23.380 those kinds of things. But the headline of the story is John MacArthur is wonderful. That said,

00:22:28.320 if I, while acknowledging the headline that John McCarthy, Arthur on the holes is wonderful,

00:22:33.940 I come and say, but I'm a little bit worried about the, we lose down here clip that was

00:22:38.000 circulating around. And I did a response video to that. Boom. I'm going to, I'm going to get hit

00:22:42.060 hard. If I was on the left of John MacArthur and I critiqued him, I think the reason I would get 0.72

00:22:46.900 accepted by institutions is because there are thousands of institutions that actually exist

00:22:51.700 to the left of John MacArthur. One of the reasons you don't get institutional acceptance

00:22:57.760 when you critique from the right is because I think, William, part of the problem is there are

00:23:04.120 no institutions to the right of John MacArthur. That's as far as the institutions go. And I think

00:23:09.240 part of the difficulty that you and I and some other young guys as we're trying to move the ball

00:23:13.460 forward and we're trying to kind of get out of boomer theology and get, you know, the post-war

00:23:17.840 mentality and get back to, you know, John Gill and get back to like some old Baptist and some

00:23:22.860 old Presbyterians and some old theology and some old political, you know, political theology and

00:23:28.620 these kinds of things is there are no institutions like that currently in existence that I know of.

00:23:34.720 And so there is no institutional acceptance because there's no institution that exists.

00:23:38.780 So you critique somebody who, again, is the lion's share of the story, you know, for the most part, very faithful, like a John MacArthur, you critique him from the left, and you've got somewhere to go. You critique him from the right, and you can move to, you know, Moscow, Idaho, and other than that, that's it. That's the only institution I can even think of.

00:24:00.980 And the point is, that's what we're trying to rectify. We're trying to say John MacArthur is awesome, but I think there are some other things where we can improve, not to his left, but to his right. And it's kind of like, I think just a lot of guys have just determined that they are the bookend.

00:24:17.880 There's bookends to acceptable discourse and orthodox theology, and a lot of the concerned

00:24:24.120 bros, I think they've deemed themselves for a very long time, they viewed themselves as

00:24:28.620 the far bookend on the right, that anything past that is to fall off the edge of the earth.

00:24:34.220 There's nothing past that that could ever possibly be deemed as legitimate.

00:24:38.560 So no one's built past that, so there's no institutions past that.

00:24:42.320 So if you critique from that side of the equation, there's nowhere to be accepted because there's

00:24:47.220 nowhere to go.

00:24:47.880 what do you think? Yeah, I think that that's a pretty good analysis overall. You know, I'm not

00:24:53.760 one usually to ever say, you know, the right and left paradigm that shouldn't be applied. But I'd

00:24:59.220 say one way I'd sort of tweak that a little bit in this conversation is not so much necessarily

00:25:04.060 right as we think like political right and left, but further. What I was picturing in my mind was

00:25:10.040 just sort of, you know, like ground has been plowed, you know, advancement has gone forward.

00:25:14.860 We're so thankful for people like John MacArthur and Grace D.U. and Phil Johnson.

00:25:19.760 We're so thankful for G3 and the way that these men have held the line and pushed things forward for Apologia Ministries and James White.

00:25:28.500 And then, you know, now we're living in a day and age where there are some, I think, very important and thoughtful voices actually trying to actually draw from the past to equip Christians in the modern era to go forward even further still in the application, particularly of what we can call practical theology and political theology.

00:25:49.640 Again, on theology proper, our distinctions are going to be small. We could debate eschatology here or there. But particularly when it comes to practical theology applied to living in the United States in the 2020s, we've seen a chorus of voices trying to draw from the historical reform Protestant tradition, particularly on practical and political thought, that pushes things forward further than some of these organizations have historically done.

00:26:18.400 And that's not necessarily a critique of them either. And I think that gets into our potential subject of touching on controversy and dealing with brothers who are different from you.

00:26:28.020 Because I think you and I would would hope that these guys would cheer us on as far as they can.

00:26:34.400 And if they have any and if they have any any warnings for us, it's not it's not, hey, stop, don't go, don't build.

00:26:41.980 It's just that, like, hey, maybe maybe I wouldn't build there. But, you know, who knows? Maybe that ground is solid.

00:26:47.740 You know, let's go and see if we can build and take that area and take that solid ground. And so it's interesting, too, this crossed my mind on the fundamentalist fight, is that one of the key hallmarks of sort of your historic fundamentalist were these degrees of separation for people who disagreed on secondary and tertiary issues or even, you know, even beyond that.

00:27:06.800 So here you come along with a book, Fight by Flight, and that is a book that's open to debate. Fight by Flight is not Nicene orthodoxy. And so people can disagree on that. And yet we're seeing almost this crowd evoke the sort of old school fundamentalist response of saying, no, that's dangerous. No, that's this. No, don't do that.

00:27:30.920 Instead of maybe weighing it on its own merits, disagreeing if you want to, but continue to go shoulder to shoulder with the brother as we're all trying to push forward into the 21st century.

00:27:41.780 And I don't mean to speak in too broad of historical terms, but in the opening to R.R. Reno's book, Return of the Strong Gods, he had a really gripping point where he said he received a letter from a young guy, if I'm calling this correctly, that essentially said sort of he longs to live in the 21st century.

00:27:59.960 and yet we're still living in the 20th century in many ways in the the 20th century last grasp

00:28:06.520 of enlightenment liberalism and post-modernism continues to sort of like weigh as ankles around

00:28:12.820 our feet and then there's people like you and me and others who are saying well actually you know

00:28:16.860 what we can cut these cords we don't we don't need post-modernism we don't need enlightenment

00:28:21.200 liberalism we can recover sort of classical christian conservatism in a classical view

00:28:27.200 of the state that says there's no such thing as neutrality and drive forward towards a new and

00:28:32.160 better, more comprehensive biblical understanding that makes some people uneasy. It leads certainly

00:28:36.420 to some disagreements. I would hope that it can lead to less, you know, infighting and controversy.

00:28:41.900 Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. That was really well said. It's, um, yeah, I think it,

00:28:46.860 you know, it's fine to disagree, but, uh, what I've, what I've found surprising is again, it's,

00:28:53.440 it's the uh it's not i disagree you wrote this book fight by flight you know here it is you know

00:28:59.340 and uh and you're making a case for leaving you know progressive places right that's the subtitle

00:29:04.280 why leaving you know godless places is loving godless places and i expected you know that it

00:29:10.480 would be somewhat polarizing um because obviously you know there are christians that live in blue

00:29:17.180 places and not all of them are going to leave and so they're going to have some kind of argument for

00:29:20.900 why they're not going to leave. And that argument is going to be something to the tune of, you know,

00:29:25.000 I disagree with your book. Um, but again, it's, it's not disagreement, uh, that surprises me or

00:29:31.240 surprises you. It's, um, it's the claims of, of, uh, not, Hey, I disagree. I think, you know,

00:29:37.100 I think you, you're off there or, or did you, you know, you got a good point, but I think you maybe

00:29:42.760 didn't consider this element. Um, that's not what I hear. Uh, for the most part, what I hear is

00:29:49.160 this is dangerous right you're dangerous you're dangerous you're leading people astray wolf

00:29:57.920 like right and that i think that's that's what's so shocking is um it's fine to disagree i you know

00:30:06.720 there's plenty of people i disagree with um but the dangerous element i think is what's surprising

00:30:12.460 and that to me um that's what makes me think and maybe we can get into this a little bit but that's

00:30:17.640 what makes me think that it's not just that the underlining motive if we get into why is there

00:30:24.880 disagreement um if the why behind the disagreement was simply um it was purely 100 just a love for

00:30:33.880 the truth and wanting as much theological biblical accuracy as we could possibly muster

00:30:38.820 then praise god um but i have a sneaking suspicion that it's um also that it's not

00:30:48.040 none of that i think there really is genuine motives right the heart is often a mixed bag

00:30:52.640 mixed motives that there are genuine motives to defend the truth of god and people being

00:30:56.660 theologically convinced in a particular way but i think in addition to that there's covetousness

00:31:02.980 envy pride i i think there's some sin i really do i think there's some sin and i think that's why

00:31:11.820 instead of i disagree that immediately gets elevated to mark and avoid what do you think

00:31:18.980 yeah well i mean again we have to be we have to be so careful because we don't know people's

00:31:23.540 hearts right but the out of the overflow of the heart the mouth that's why i said i suspect

00:31:28.500 That's right.

00:31:29.080 No, and I, yeah, and I'm just, I'm doing my own disclaimers.

00:31:32.300 And so, but out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

00:31:36.960 And, you know, I've noticed that along with critiques of you or myself, or just sort of,

00:31:43.640 you know, sub, sub tweet critiques of, of the younger group of us, you know, however

00:31:49.520 much younger we are, it's critiques of things like, oh, they're just trying to build platform.

00:31:53.660 They're just trying to make a name for themselves.

00:31:55.680 They're just trying to drive controversy.

00:31:57.900 and you know i've seen some of those and i certainly i certainly would recognize that

00:32:02.900 those could be valid critiques but that just raises the whole question of well then what

00:32:07.800 does it look like to build anything new you know are we supposed to just is there some you know

00:32:13.220 list of totally acceptable you know secondary and tertiary positions or or points of practical

00:32:19.060 and applied theology or even you know wisdom of living in this world that we all have to sign on

00:32:24.440 to. And if we don't, and if we have different perspectives, and we try to advocate for those,

00:32:29.200 we believe in them strongly, we try to bring others along, all of a sudden,

00:32:32.660 we're platform building. I mean, I just, I think that's such a pejorative term, it's not helpful.

00:32:38.500 And then also, you know, Josh Dawes is the king of the threads of the everyone does this X,

00:32:44.560 everyone does this Y, right? And so it's like, everyone who agrees with me and is using social

00:32:49.760 media to say the things I agree with, has the purest of motives, and is just speaking the truth.

00:32:54.440 And everyone who disagrees with me is trying to build a platform.

00:32:57.680 And we just we can't we can't operate like that.

00:32:59.740 We shouldn't we shouldn't approach those who have come before us and have significant platforms, conferences, blogs, events and look at them and retrospectively just accuse them of having built a platform.

00:33:09.700 And at the same time, they shouldn't look at us trying to now join the fight because we were inspired by them.

00:33:16.100 And then, you know, say, you know, look, look at these platform builders.

00:33:20.540 So I think you're right. I think there could certainly be a part of that in there.

00:33:24.120 That's an unhealthy dynamic, but certainly is a dynamic that will continue to exist in the social media age.

00:33:29.900 And so that's why I think ultimately that's just resolved on our knees before the Lord, in our conscience before him.

00:33:35.480 If it's in there, if that pride's in our hearts, we need to confess and repent of it.

00:33:39.020 If it's in theirs, we can trust that the Holy Spirit's living and active and we'll work on them and just keep on going forward.

00:33:45.380 Amen.

00:33:46.120 Yeah, I saw a tweet the other day.

00:33:49.080 I thought it was really funny.

00:33:50.280 All that was really well said, William.

00:33:51.720 Thank you.

00:33:52.100 um, the tweet, it said, uh, those who believe that we lose down here are fighting hard, uh,

00:33:58.360 to win down here to make sure that we lose down here. So those who believe that we lose down here

00:34:04.960 are fighting to win down here to ensure that we lose down here. And, and I, you know, I thought

00:34:09.420 it was funny. Um, but there, there, there does seem to be a little bit of truth in that, that

00:34:14.780 like, you know, it, it, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Um, and I think sometimes

00:34:21.220 like, like you have a certain mindset of, I, you know, I, I, I've called it in the past in my

00:34:26.800 preaching and stuff. I called the Elijah, uh, complex, you know, I'm, I'm the only one left.

00:34:31.280 Right. And then God, you know, it's like, well, dude, I've, you know, I've got, I've got 7,000

00:34:35.240 other guys on the bench. I could replace you real easy, you know? And so like, there's, you know,

00:34:39.340 seven other thousand men who have not, you know, bowed their nail, their knees to ball or kiss the

00:34:44.620 polls. And so the point is that that's a good thing, that we're supposed to celebrate. And we

00:34:52.680 all struggle with it because we're all sinners, but we're supposed to celebrate when someone else

00:34:58.740 is doing something well. Today as we're recording, there's a guy, and I'm going to say his name

00:35:03.820 because I want to practice what I preach here, but he deserves praise. And I want people to hear

00:35:09.600 his name publicly so that they can go and follow him because, um, because he's legit. Um, his name

00:35:16.980 is Jamie Bambrick, J A M I E Bambrick B A M B R I C K. He lives in a Northern Ireland and he just

00:35:31.320 posted this little video. I'm sure you probably saw it video where, uh, you saw it William, but

00:35:36.240 where he, uh, he, he just makes a really strong case for the, for the general positive good,

00:35:43.500 even towards individual, uh, salvations and evangelism of Christian culture. That Christian

00:35:49.420 culture is a net positive. Did you watch that little video, William? I saw, I saw some of it.

00:35:53.700 Yeah. I shot him a message right away just to encourage him. Me too. Me too. I immediately

00:35:58.600 sent him a message that dude, I want to have you on my show. I retweeted him twice, um, and reworded

00:36:04.180 each time just so that i could do it twice and said you got to follow this guy and now i'm saying

00:36:08.800 it on this podcast with you so that more people hear him um but he's got a youtube channel he's

00:36:13.560 a pastor in northern ireland you can follow him on twitter he's got like 200 something followers

00:36:17.260 on twitter and on youtube i think he's got like 4 000 followers um but his videos i like i'll just

00:36:23.200 say it straight up it's better than mine he's better it's not just it's one more guy doing

00:36:27.320 good work uh it's another guy doing better work it's you know and the lord is using this ministry

00:36:32.520 to do this and do that but i'm i'm looking at him and i'm like man that was it's it's highly

00:36:38.340 produced it's strategic it's create it's concise it's clear i'm not always concise i'm pretty clear

00:36:43.920 but not always concise so anyways the point is um yeah we we should be celebrating though is my

00:36:49.640 point there's room and i think part of it it gets into our just this is theological do we believe

00:36:55.460 that the pie can grow or do we believe it's a zero-sum game right like do we believe and and

00:37:01.380 and how does it work with glory, right? Does God share his glory? Do we get to reign with the son?

00:37:06.940 There's a sense in which God will share his glory with no man. That's true. That is his divine

00:37:11.100 glory that rightly and only belongs to him. But there is a sense in which we get to share also,

00:37:18.640 we die with him that we might reign with him. And so there's a sense in which we get to reign

00:37:24.240 and share in the glory of God with him as his sons, as a priest and kings, right? There's your

00:37:31.020 hashtag king thing, you know, but as priests and kings, and we believe that the glory of God

00:37:36.420 is not a fixed pie, that the pie grows. And so when it comes to exalting other ministries

00:37:45.680 and putting eyes on other guys who are doing good work, we believe that we can do this

00:37:52.100 without necessarily losing something ourself. It's not that I've got to give up this in order

00:37:59.400 for him to have that no we we believe that the pie can grow and for me especially with my eschatology

00:38:05.380 like i i believe that we're going to have more and more progressively slowly but more and more

00:38:10.000 christians over time and so uh so even with ministry we're going to need more teachers and

00:38:14.460 we're going to need more online teachers and all this kind of stuff um but yeah it it does get

00:38:19.200 tiresome uh the disparagement of yeah well i don't know uh he's platform building it's like

00:38:25.120 but you have a platform it did it did it drop out of the sky or did someone build that platform

00:38:31.500 right so right so it's not platform building it's it's it's said as though that's that's just this

00:38:36.920 inherent evil platform building bad but but that's being said from platforms that were built

00:38:43.980 so that's right really it's no you can't build a platform that's that and that's what we're

00:38:50.340 pushing back on and saying why yeah i got it i got a tagline for you joel post-millennialism

00:38:56.860 we've got more pie there we go we've got more pie we've got more pie yeah i got a bible verse

00:39:04.800 too though that i think is incredibly applicable to this entire conversation and it's uh luke 9

00:39:09.620 uh 49 and and 50 51 and let me read it and then i think it applies directly to what we're talking

00:39:15.780 about. Uh, John answered him and said, master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name

00:39:21.440 and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow along with us. Notice he doesn't say follow

00:39:28.600 along with you. He says he does not follow along with us, but Jesus said to him, do not hinder him

00:39:34.820 for he who is not against you is for you. And I just think that that really is a verse that,

00:39:41.520 that our whole coalition should take the heart that, you know, whether we see people, you know,

00:39:47.720 approaching things in the name of John MacArthur or in the name of Josh Bice or in the name of,

00:39:53.480 you know, James White or in the name of Doug Wilson or in the name of Joel Webin, right? Like

00:39:58.000 I fundamentally believe all those four names I just said are all with each other. You guys will

00:40:02.600 all stand face to face with Jesus Christ in glory. And that puts us with Jesus. And because that puts

00:40:09.760 us with Jesus, we are not against each other. And even there, Jesus was instructing his disciples to

00:40:17.180 be more welcome and open to the fact that the ministry of the gospel was going to go forth

00:40:23.100 under other people and through other people that weren't just the 12. I mean, obviously,

00:40:28.640 that's the story of Acts in so many ways. And we see the spread of the gospel and, you know,

00:40:33.880 first century, you know, Christianity going forward with new churches and new elders and

00:40:38.020 new names you know being commended as servants of the gospel and so i think that's a that's a good

00:40:43.760 biblical um admonition for us to recognize that those who are not against us and to be there and

00:40:49.620 to be clear there those who would be against us would have to fall into the camp of people who

00:40:54.020 we think are denying the truly fundamentals of the faith that which you will not have a full gospel

00:41:00.660 um eschatology doesn't fall into that christian nationalism doesn't fall into that that means

00:41:05.460 we're together. And so, you know, we should act like it down here. I agree. And I think that's

00:41:10.960 a good word for all of us, myself included there. You know, I, I want to, I want to be more careful

00:41:16.460 when providing the critiques of solid brothers that need to be provided. I'm going to be less

00:41:24.580 careful. I'm still going to be careful in terms of accuracy, but I'll be less careful in terms of

00:41:29.820 tone uh when i am dealing with someone like russell moore sure who i believe has gone apostate

00:41:36.220 and that's why i that's why i would be i would use reserve stronger language um for david french

00:41:42.640 for russell moore for those kinds of guys um and then i want to use more careful language

00:41:48.020 when i disagree with someone who is not um apostate but somebody who is faithful and uh

00:41:55.200 and has been tried and true and you know what i think that's part of it also i think part of

00:41:59.420 is just the testing i think it's just time and and that's you know what that one i think is fair

00:42:04.820 to say okay well but i i've listened to this guy's ministry for 50 years and i've listened to your

00:42:11.500 ministry for five um and i still want to you know i want to give it some more time i think i think

00:42:18.820 that's fine so long as you don't just completely write someone off or as long as you don't make

00:42:22.940 unfair charges um i think it's fine though to say i'm i'm um it's not fine to say you're dangerous

00:42:31.000 if they're not doing something dangerous it's not it's not fine to you know publicly attack

00:42:36.260 but it is fine to say um i like your ministry i'm listening but i'm listening with uh with a

00:42:42.780 holy suspicion because um your ministry is newer and uh and there's not the decades of tried and

00:42:52.000 true faithfulness uh behind you i i'm fine with that what do you think yeah i mean i think i think

00:42:57.980 we all need to have a healthy uh skepticism christ commands us to be shrewd and that's and

00:43:03.440 to test the spirits and i think that obviously the bible provides a paradigm as we see here in

00:43:09.100 luke 9 of unknown people who are preaching the true gospel but aren't part of the tight-knit

00:43:14.780 immediate community and then we also get a paradigm of people who who claim to be a part

00:43:19.480 of the community, but then use their words and use their influence to undermine key doctrines,

00:43:25.780 right? And that's where the harsher language for false teachers and that, you know, drawing that

00:43:29.340 line on who's a false teacher when they say that they do adhere to all the tenets of Christianity,

00:43:36.000 and yet they're doing subtle things, doing underhanded things. So that's a paradigm that's

00:43:39.760 important to keep in mind. But, you know, something that came to mind when you're talking

00:43:42.980 about people's ministries, and I think this is a good, I mean, it's a good warning to me,

00:43:46.420 So I'll preach to myself. It's a good warning to all of us. And that's, you know, we don't fundamentally just want to in any way, shape or form, mint or create a new class of celebrity pastors, right? Like we, the one again, the disasters of the YRR of Acts 29, where these ministries were built around celebrity pastors.

00:44:03.860 So we want to be encouraging men and women to trust their local pastor.

00:44:08.920 And then if for whatever reason, if you can't fully trust your local pastor, then you should strive to find a church under whose pastoral authority you can trust and grow.

00:44:20.120 So I do think that maybe some of the controversies that are surrounding you and others are probably due to the fact that some members of flocks, you know, are hearing things you're teaching and then they're maybe going to their pastors with them and there's disagreement.

00:44:36.100 So that's not your fault.

00:44:37.580 I mean, quite frankly, that would be, you know, an admonition we should all give to those who hear what we have to say through, you know, media venues that's not coming from the authority of a pulpit.

00:44:48.000 You know, you shouldn't look if you find a great teacher who you love to listen to alongside your local pastor, you know, it would be unhealthy for you then to try to reshape your pastor into the mold of that teacher.

00:45:00.220 You need to recognize that God has given you a certain local pastor that you need to trust you and submit to as far as possible and expected by scripture.

00:45:08.560 And, you know, you shouldn't be trying to recast them into the mold of your favorite YouTuber at all.

00:45:13.400 And so that, you know, those out there who are listening to this know that if you can't, if you can't, then then, you know, you maybe need to spend some time with the Lord, you know, and then maybe, though, if your convictions change, if your theological convictions change, then maybe it would be good for you to find yourself in a different church that adheres more closely to your convictions.

00:45:34.480 And this gets back to everything else we're talking about, Joel, which is in our day and age, so much of the division is going to come down to not so much convictions on paper, but disposition in real life.

00:45:44.780 How are we applying those convictions to the life we find ourselves in today?

00:45:49.220 Totally. And that's that's the show that we're doing right now.

00:45:51.180 It's called, you know, it's our flagship show with Right Response Ministries.

00:45:53.860 It's the show that I was most passionate about starting.

00:45:57.440 And Lord willing, I want to start other, you know, I eventually want to have multiple different shows, podcasts and multiple different contributors.

00:46:04.480 and have, you know, like right response be more of like a network, you know, with multiple shows

00:46:08.100 and multiple hosts. But theology applied is the flagship one, but that's just it. That's my point.

00:46:14.780 Theology applied. Such a simple concept, right? There's nothing, no novelty about it whatsoever.

00:46:22.140 But of the recent past, we've done theology in the abstract, but we have not had, like Wilson

00:46:31.300 would say theology coming out of our fingertips. And I think there's just a desperate hunger for

00:46:35.980 that. And that's why I think some people are, they are leaving their churches. And I would say to

00:46:41.320 those people, first, try to stay, do what you can to try to stay and talk to your pastor and let him

00:46:48.120 have that opportunity as your pastor to speak into your ear and listen to those things,

00:46:55.540 take it before the Lord, exercise humility. But at the end of the day, if you feel like you got

00:47:00.260 to leave because your convictions have actually grown that small, uh, that strong, but it's over

00:47:04.420 something that's, you know, it's not a primary theological issue. It's not denial of the Trinity

00:47:09.620 or this or that. Um, then you should leave, um, as much as you can, uh, peaceably, you should

00:47:15.500 leave respectfully. You should leave quietly, not meaning that you don't tell your close friends in

00:47:19.800 the church that you're leaving, but you're not making a ruckus. You're not making a fuss. Um,

00:47:23.480 but here's the deal. You are allowed to leave. And I think that's part of the reason why some

00:47:29.080 guys get upset is because people, some people are leaving. And I think some pastors think that they

00:47:35.680 have more authority than they actually do. They think that, you know, you're allowed to resign

00:47:40.140 your membership at the church, but the elders have to agree with you. No, no. Because here's

00:47:48.700 the thing about elders. Elders are very reluctant to agree with a member's reasoning for leaving

00:47:55.020 that elder's church? Come to find out. Turns out you're allowed to leave a church without it being

00:48:01.740 a primary issue. You're allowed to leave a church and say, I love this church and I love the pastor

00:48:06.020 and my first inclination was to stay and I tried to. And I feel like I've made an honest effort.

00:48:12.080 I plan to leave quietly. I plan to leave respectfully, but it's not so much a difference

00:48:17.000 in theology in the realm of theory, what we believe, but how we apply it. I think that

00:48:24.220 these things that both me and my pastor, we both believe. I think that faithfulness Monday through

00:48:31.160 Saturday in believing these things, what that looks like is X, Y, Z. I think it looks this way

00:48:37.540 politically. I think it looks this way culturally. I think it looks it, and this is where I really

00:48:42.640 feel like the Lord's leading me. Now, sometimes you can just do it without your pastor being on

00:48:47.280 board, but I've talked to several Christians where they just started doing it. The thing that they

00:48:52.220 felt convicted about a theology applied and they started to be disparaged by their pastor and even

00:48:58.720 publicly their pastor in his podcast started you know without naming them you know like but but

00:49:04.560 very clearly like talking up disparaging members of his own church for uh not because they were

00:49:10.540 being divisive not because they were but just because they were they were passionately they

00:49:14.620 were trying to build something they they were trying to start this ministry or they were trying

00:49:18.660 to start this business, or they were trying to start a school, you know, or they were trying to

00:49:22.240 do this, or they're trying to do that. And, uh, and the pastors, um, you know, started disparaging

00:49:28.180 them, you know, like, like making fun of, you know, Christian nationalism or making fun of

00:49:32.080 post-millennialism or making fun of patriarchy. That's a big one. Like the pat, your pastor starts,

00:49:36.700 you know, saying, well, the trad wives, you know, like take, take aside for a moment. This is,

00:49:42.180 it's not primary doctrine. It's not primary doctrine, but take aside for a moment, which

00:49:46.120 position is correct. If a woman starts going to your church and she's wearing a head covering, 0.94

00:49:52.080 or she's been in your church for years and she starts head covering, even if that's wrong, 0.67

00:49:56.680 there's no command. There might be, R.C. Sproul said this, there might be a command in the Bible

00:50:00.720 for a woman to cover her head in worship, but there is definitely not a command in the Bible

00:50:04.960 for her, forbidding her from covering her head in worship, which is why Vesta Sproul,

00:50:09.880 we're talking about R.C. Sproul's wife now, who's still living, who still wears a head covering

00:50:13.800 in worship following the lord and what she sees the scripture saying she could be wrong i could

00:50:19.320 be wrong and also following her late husband and the way that he led her in that particular area

00:50:23.640 so here's the question you you're a pastor and members in your church they start listening to

00:50:27.800 joel webin or they start reading this book or they start listening to that and and one day they show

00:50:31.700 up with a head covering and and you disparage them like like publicly not just you pull them

00:50:38.360 aside and their husband pull the husband aside and talk to him private but you disparage them

00:50:42.940 on a podcast and start saying well the trad wives and theo bro like then yeah like dude of course

00:50:49.160 they're gonna leave your church right and you think that's that's you think that's the youtubers

00:50:54.520 fault right brother that's your fault right right you know that's you know i was given a piece of

00:51:01.260 counsel to people in the pews but you know if i were to give a general sort of perspective on

00:51:08.400 how pastors operate along these lines. First of all, it would be that, you know, you know,

00:51:14.400 you can't have it both ways, right? You can't have it that the social media world is totally fake,

00:51:19.380 and nothing real comes through it, or, you know, all your buddies are totally killing it on social

00:51:24.840 media, and everyone needs to read their latest TGC blog post, right? The reality is, in a day

00:51:30.260 and age of digital media, people receive, you know, information through YouTube, through Twitter,

00:51:35.740 through Facebook, through other platforms that speaks to them, not just because they got it off

00:51:40.460 the internet, but because it speaks to them in their conscience and in their convictions. And

00:51:44.820 then they open the scriptures and then they go explore it. And then they look for other

00:51:47.600 faithful men who have taught these things before. And then over time that could grow into a real

00:51:53.340 conviction of theirs. And sure, maybe it began by listening to somebody on YouTube, but that in no

00:51:58.020 way, that's not an argument against the validity of that position, nor is that a justification

00:52:02.700 for a pastor or somebody in authority to treat that person in a dismissive way.

00:52:07.580 And, you know, another thing, too, is that, again, as I contend that so many of the divisions

00:52:12.220 in evangelicalism and even conservative evangelicalism are dispositionally oriented,

00:52:18.280 not so much the doctrine you hold to, but the disposition through which you adjudicate it

00:52:22.020 and you, you know, engage the world.

00:52:24.200 You know, we're not, you know, we are, I think, trying to push pastors and Christian leaders

00:52:28.660 to broaden the Overton window of what is acceptable, and then to give everybody the

00:52:33.320 chance to exercise freedom of conscience under the Lord. And that's what it's like, if you're

00:52:38.440 a pastor and all of a sudden you've got five guys in your church who are big on Christian 0.84

00:52:42.160 nationalism, you should just thank God for that, I think, essentially, as long as they're not being

00:52:47.220 divisive or stirring up controversy. And again, holding different opinions and even believing in

00:52:52.320 them is not necessarily divisive, right? You need to have space for the people to wear head

00:52:58.220 covering space for men to believe in Christian nationalism, space for people to believe in

00:53:02.360 patriarchy, et cetera. But then if you start using your position of authority to attack that or

00:53:06.560 disparage that, well, then yeah, those people aren't going to feel like they're welcome there.

00:53:10.000 Even if your teaching is incredible and your confession of faith is spot on, you don't want

00:53:15.520 to sit and be belittled every week because of a secondary position you hold. So I think that a lot

00:53:21.340 of pastors out there need to wrap their mind around the fact that they are certainly not the

00:53:25.220 only voice that gets to their flock anymore and how they deal with that is going to matter greatly.

00:53:30.940 That's so well said. And I, and that goes back to all full circle, but it goes back to, um,

00:53:36.080 making, you know, carving out space for, for anybody and everybody to our left,

00:53:41.960 but, but very little of that same charitable spirit towards the right. And now we're just

00:53:49.140 supplying it to the pastor surely surely if anyone um you know should should be sure that

00:53:55.640 surely the pastor should be able to if the pastor can have you know people in his church um you know

00:54:02.260 let's say it's a calvinist pastor if he can have people in his church who aren't calvinist but are

00:54:07.320 arminians you know um and and he's willing to to work with them and tolerate them and make a place

00:54:13.600 then surely he he can have someone in his church you know if he's got an egalitarian in his church

00:54:20.640 surely he can have somebody who's who would hold the biblical patriarchy sure you know like and so

00:54:26.840 i think that's that's what's that's what's going on right now is i i just i think that you know

00:54:31.960 the lord and his providence is is just dusting off some it's it's not even it's not even that

00:54:38.880 we're going forward. I think we are in the big scheme of things pushing forward, but a lot of

00:54:43.460 it is just going back. We're just going back to, I mean, the head covering thing. I mean, it's just,

00:54:48.600 it's, it's silly, you know, like when, when you go back and you just, I mean, it's everybody was 0.99

00:54:53.740 wearing every, you know, every woman was wearing a head covering, the lion's share. I'm talking 1.00

00:54:57.580 the lion's share and until the 1900s. And I mean, and you had churches in America in the 1950s and

00:55:05.660 60s when when second wave feminism was really starting to kick off and some of them it was 0.72

00:55:10.700 orchestrated events on the same sunday all the women they planned it and they did it in women's

00:55:15.440 bible studies um the sewing groups is what you know they were but it was in that context of a

00:55:20.740 women's only bible study outside of the lord's day or women's study uh a sewing group or something

00:55:26.400 like that they they made hatched the plan that on a particular sunday they would go to church

00:55:31.780 And during the sermon, they would all take their hat off together at the same time and throw it on the ground to smash the patriarchy.

00:55:38.460 And so I'm just saying, when that's church history, when that's church history from 1 Corinthians 11 to 1960, head cover.

00:55:48.520 And then somebody in 2023 thinks, well, maybe I'll just try it out.

00:55:55.720 Right.

00:55:55.920 You know, and you're saying, and your reaction is not just, I think that's wrong, or I don't think that's the best reading, or, I mean, just say it. 0.76

00:56:03.520 If that's your view, if your view is that every Christian read the Bible wrong until the last 60 years, great, if that's your view.

00:56:10.480 But you need to acknowledge that. 0.58

00:56:12.360 This is not novel.

00:56:13.580 This is not crazy, and it's certainly not dangerous.

00:56:16.800 And it's one thing to go after, you know, another pastor like me, some YouTube guy.

00:56:21.460 But you start making members of your church and female members, women, on top of it.

00:56:29.120 And I get, as a pastor, I get angry.

00:56:32.020 I would like to meet with that pastor and have some words with that brother.

00:56:36.360 So I think, yeah, pastors are just, it's like, okay, this is the world that we live in now.

00:56:42.800 There was, once upon a time, it's like, okay, you're the only Baptist church in town.

00:56:46.560 You're the only Presbyterian church in town.

00:56:48.760 And there was a time where people wouldn't go five miles outside of the place where they

00:56:53.640 were born.

00:56:54.220 They would live and die within a five, you know, like 10 mile radius their entire lives.

00:56:58.640 And that's just, that's not the world that we live in anymore.

00:57:02.000 I still think church membership matters.

00:57:03.660 I'm a church membership guy.

00:57:05.180 I think that a covenant that you make with your local church, that it's significant,

00:57:10.260 that it's not a trifle, shouldn't be treated lightheartedly.

00:57:14.740 But at the end of the day, I also think that Christians, their conscience is clear to leave their church and it doesn't have to be a primary theological issue in order to merit a reason for leaving their church.

00:57:26.520 And pastors, we need to come to terms with the reality that because of the success of the Great Commission, it's a good thing.

00:57:33.760 Because the gospel has been so successful, predominantly in the West, our church members, instead of hearing one sermon from us on the Lord's Day or three, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, historically, from us, they now get to hear from a host of people.

00:57:51.620 And we had that where you'd have the pastor, but then you'd have the traveling evangelist, right?

00:57:57.140 Maybe it's a Whitfield or something, and he's kind of going up the coast and preaching.

00:58:01.480 And I'm sure there was this same principle that we're discussing, that there were members in those churches, you know, who, and maybe some of them even voiced it, and maybe that wasn't respectful or the right thing to do, but they were, I wish Whitfield was our pastor, you know, like, gosh, his sermon was so much better, you know, and now it's just that same thing.

00:58:18.140 But now it's instead of Whitefield, you know, coming on horseback, you know, maybe once or twice a year, it's our people are hearing a ton of sermons.

00:58:27.940 And yes, we do need to guard.

00:58:29.800 We need to guard as shepherds because some of those things that they're hearing actually are dangerous because they are heretical.

00:58:35.360 They are bad.

00:58:36.420 But a lot of what they're hearing, if our people are faithful, if they have discernment, if we've discipled them as pastors as well, then really what they're getting is they're just getting more Bible.

00:58:45.460 They're just getting more doctrine.

00:58:46.640 They're getting more sermons, and I think we should rejoice.

00:58:50.900 So anyways, all that being said, any final thoughts?

00:58:54.380 Well, yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, I do, I think we should continue to, you know,

00:58:59.440 modernity forces a lot of changes on the church, and we have to wrestle with and respond to them.

00:59:05.500 And so, I mean, I could certainly imagine if I were a pastor in George Whitefield today,

00:59:11.000 and he came through town, then all of a sudden I had members who were going to leave the community

00:59:15.720 and travel along with Whitfield, I would say that's not a good idea.

00:59:19.720 You know, you need to stay here and stay committed to your own local church.

00:59:23.300 I mean, it's a wonderful aspiration to plug into a local church, to grow up there, to

00:59:27.880 raise your kids there, to be there for life.

00:59:30.000 If that's, you know, I think we should aim for those things as far, you know, live in

00:59:35.020 peace as far as it depends upon you.

00:59:37.320 So we should strive for the goals of being planted, of being rooted, you know, and that

00:59:42.580 ties back even into your book of finding communities that you can plant and root in

00:59:46.940 and be there for a long time and seek to grow and ask yourself, is this somewhere that I would feel

00:59:52.460 good that my great-grandchildren grow up? And I'll be honest right now, California is not somewhere

00:59:57.100 that I have any confidence would be good for my great-grandchildren to grow up in. So we should

01:00:01.320 strive for that, but we must use wisdom. You know, Joel, I saw again sort of some dust up over what

01:00:07.780 jesus did or didn't command his followers to do about politics and as i saw this engagement it

01:00:13.620 just really it made me reflect that too many conservative christians continue to have the

01:00:17.960 red letter ethic just in a different way from the social justice folks you know and they look at

01:00:22.960 only what jesus said about what people should do and all of scripture is jesus speaking you know

01:00:29.620 go back to the proverbs go back to the old testament you know dig up the wisdom of old

01:00:34.520 from God and bring a comprehensive perspective for what it looks like to live in God's good world

01:00:39.620 and bring that to bear today. Yes, we live in the new covenant, but there's no exploration

01:00:43.760 on the biblical wisdom found under the old covenant, right? And so we need to have, I think,

01:00:49.060 a more comprehensive application of faithful Christian living that is not just tethered to

01:00:54.100 the specific commands that we have recorded in the gospels that Jesus delivered. Those are

01:00:59.240 important, but all of scripture is equally important. That's right. Yep. Red letter ethic.

01:01:04.220 that's a really good way of putting it that's yeah and i think that's why the game has changed

01:01:08.320 you know together for the gospel i think of that you know some of these things you know have have

01:01:12.880 pittered out in part because um because of what i would call and others have called a theological

01:01:20.400 maximalism that's part of what fundamentalism was uh there were there was some great things

01:01:25.400 about the fundamentalist but part of it was um when the enemy's at the gate when the city is

01:01:31.300 under siege um you fall back behind the wall you know if they break that you fall back to the inner

01:01:37.760 wall you know and you and then eventually everybody you're just in a small circle your backs are to

01:01:42.380 each other and and it's this is the hill to that we're going to fight live or die you know we're

01:01:46.580 going to die on this hill um to defend the virgin birth inerrancy of scripture bodily resurrection

01:01:51.760 and and at that point when when you're under such attack um you you're you know it's like if the

01:01:58.700 house is on fire, you can't move all your stuff. So you're thinking, all right, I get my wife and

01:02:03.160 kids. Maybe I get the dog. Maybe I get this precious heirloom, whatever. In some sense,

01:02:11.800 that's part of what the fundamentalism came out of. But now I think one of the reasons why we're

01:02:17.880 divided and things like together for the gospel that dog don't hunt is not because we don't want

01:02:22.920 to be united on the gospel anymore. But I think this is actually a good thing. It's because we

01:02:28.080 want to never talk about anything less than the gospel but we want to talk about now we want to

01:02:33.920 talk about more that we're pushing our theology to the margins that we're that we're saying okay

01:02:39.040 but what does the bible say about voting what does it say about immigration what does it say about

01:02:44.580 economics what does the bible say about vaccines what does it say about civil authority what does

01:02:49.220 it say about patriarchy the husband's authority in the home what does it say about children what

01:02:53.260 does it say about obligation to parents what does it say about where you live what does it say and

01:02:57.520 And so a lot of guys are starting to have those kinds of conversations.

01:03:01.960 And I think part of the charge of it's dangerous, it's divisive, your platform building, it's

01:03:07.100 the theological maximal guys who are saying all of Christ for all of life.

01:03:11.580 The Bible applies to this.

01:03:12.580 It applies to this.

01:03:13.240 It applies to that.

01:03:13.820 And I'm not even confident that I'm applying it perfectly, but I'm over here trying to.

01:03:20.440 That's the difference.

01:03:21.420 I'm over here trying to have a serious conversation about the Bible and how it applies to this.

01:03:28.040 And so it's not that you've got guys who are right and guys who are wrong.

01:03:31.660 You've got guys who are trying and guys who won't.

01:03:35.560 I think that's the dividing line.

01:03:37.980 It's the, I just wouldn't miss the good old days of the Together for the Gospel conferences,

01:03:43.020 where we talked about one thing, only one thing, and we sang, and that's it.

01:03:50.420 and i i don't miss those days i don't want to be divided i don't like division i don't how

01:03:56.500 blessed it is when brothers dwell in unity with one another i want unity um but i don't want

01:04:02.780 unity if the cost for unity is truncated theology minimalism theological if theological minimalism

01:04:10.920 is the cost for achieving unity then then i don't want that unity i want unity with theological

01:04:17.800 maximalism. And here's the crazy thing. The church has done it before, and I think she'll do it

01:04:23.320 again. I really do. Our fathers, our forefathers, you look back, they were way more robust in their

01:04:30.480 theology. The average churchgoer knew way more about the Lord. And yet, and there were divisions

01:04:35.820 over baptism, but in general, you had way more robust theology for the average churchgoer in

01:04:42.680 the pew and more unity to then then you do today where there's way less a lower bar of theological

01:04:50.720 aptitude for the average church grower and also less unity so i don't think theological minimalism

01:04:57.420 is um is the only path to uh to christian unity i just refuse to believe that yeah well that

01:05:03.420 reminds me of you know that what was known as the ecumenical movement you know that was born out of

01:05:09.500 the birth of evangelicalism, particularly Billy Graham and the spread of, you know, revival style,

01:05:16.760 you know, rallies. And, you know, that ultimately led to, you know, compromise on some fundamental

01:05:23.520 issues as they were trying to kind of scale it down to a minimalism of, you know, accept Jesus

01:05:29.520 Christ as your personal savior, not even always getting the Lord part in there. And, you know,

01:05:35.320 they're trying to work with Catholics and, you know, drifting in the wrong direction with, 0.57

01:05:39.020 and you have Martin Lloyd-Jones who stands against Graham and against John Stott and says,

01:05:44.860 no, we can't, we can't compromise here. And he's doing that because he's trying to maintain a

01:05:49.400 maximalist position primarily on the gospel and issues of salvation. But I think it applies today.

01:05:55.300 And again, something I see in the conservative political world that applies to what's happening

01:05:59.600 in the church is that, you know, the the answers to former problems that perhaps worked well or

01:06:06.560 were allotted in their times are not necessarily the ones that are going to fly for us today.

01:06:10.840 And that is not us necessarily in any way sort of discounting, you know, the good that

01:06:16.360 forerunners did. You know, you can you can praise good done by Buckley and Reagan and realize that

01:06:23.340 the Reagan economics aren't going to fly for us today. And that's not the answer. Right. We can

01:06:28.620 And we can, you know, be thankful, I guess, for a certain degree of the peace that, you know, provided the illusion of pluralism and classical liberalism and some of the ideas we got out of that.

01:06:41.240 But we recognize today that's not going to confront in a robust theological way an increasingly pagan society.

01:06:47.700 And it doesn't have to. I mean, there are areas we should and we can push forward.

01:06:51.600 So finding faithful answers to today's problems is not necessarily a disparagement of the past, but it's, again, it's fighting the battle for the faith once we're all delivered for the saints in a new generation and recognizing that nothing's ever settled.

01:07:08.060 And so we have to come up with new ways to apply theology to our lives today with the new issues facing us.

01:07:15.420 And we should give each other freedom to come up with some different answers along those fronts.

01:07:20.440 Amen.

01:07:21.600 William, great stuff, man. I'm blessed by your ministry. I'm blessed by your spicy tweets.

01:07:29.240 They're not always spicy. Sometimes they're just really, really loving. And the spicy ones I think

01:07:33.780 are loving too. But I'm just watching you from a distance, reading some of your stuff. And yeah,

01:07:39.400 man, I'm just excited with what the Lord's doing with you. And I hope that we get to partner more

01:07:42.940 someday. I wish there was some way I could get you down here to Texas, but keep on keeping on.

01:07:47.280 Well, I'd love to come down and I'm thankful for you too, Joel. I appreciate that. And if

01:07:51.580 If you don't mind me just giving a note to your audience here on Twitter, I actually

01:07:55.500 now have a subscription option.

01:07:57.020 If anybody feels like they want to chip in and support me as I'm doing that work, you

01:08:01.880 know, I'm going to provide, you know, exclusive content for people who subscribe, but really

01:08:06.660 the best way to think about it is if you appreciate the work that I'm doing, this really is a

01:08:11.040 way for you to support me in that work.

01:08:13.680 And I welcome the partnership.

01:08:15.700 Yeah, that's great.

01:08:16.820 Same, same with us with right response.

01:08:18.460 We always say, all right, yeah, there's, there's a little bit of, you know, uh, cost and value,

01:08:22.880 like we're going to do this and you'll get, you know, you're going to get some extra content.

01:08:26.340 You'll get a book, you'll get the, you know, but a lot of it is, um, what you're doing is a ministry.

01:08:31.000 What we're doing is a ministry. So, um, the, the biggest incentive is just saying, uh, it's not

01:08:36.140 just tit for tat. It's also, um, we just need your support. And, uh, and I think, yeah, you're a guy

01:08:42.180 worth supporting. So, uh, if you're not already doing that guys, check out William Wolf, at least

01:08:46.700 follow them on twitter and prayerfully consider subscribing what's what's the minimum can they

01:08:50.700 subscribe for like three bucks or something like that five yeah it's three dollars a month so just

01:08:55.160 take that take that money you're going to give to starbucks yeah thanks joel i appreciate it man

01:08:59.680 yeah that with with starbucks man that would get you a third of a coffee three bucks that wouldn't

01:09:04.820 get you a coffee all right thanks william thanks for coming on thank you joel thanks for having me

01:09:16.700 Thank you.

The NXR Podcast - August 08, 2023

THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Growing Divide Amongst Reformed Evangelicals ｜ with William Wolfe

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