00:08:33.960Yeah, yeah. I was raised Presbyterian. So I'm never going back, man.
00:08:37.860And my man, I love my folks, so thankful to them.
00:08:42.560Every time I get a chance to do anything like this, I just love to honor my father and mother by thanking them for how they raised me.
00:08:49.260My mom and my dad both did not grow up in Christian households, but by God's grace, they came to saving faith later in life.
00:08:55.000And so they didn't come from a rooted Christian tradition.
00:08:58.460When they moved to North Carolina, when I was young, they ended up joining primarily a Presbyterian church, a PCA church.
00:09:05.160They were there. That's where I grew up was at a PCA church. I went to a PCA college, covenant
00:09:09.860college. And during all that time, I, you know, I never was really serious. I wasn't a Christian,
00:09:14.880actually. I wasn't serious about my faith because I didn't have any. I became a Christian after
00:09:18.380college. And as I became a Christian in a setting of a local Baptist church, they wanted me to be
00:09:25.720baptized as a believer for membership. And of course I didn't have any hesitancy with that.
00:09:30.060I think that's pretty clear in scripture, you know, baptize, be baptized upon your profession
00:09:34.640of faith if you've never made one before. And then just over time, I've definitely become
00:09:40.240convictionally Credo Baptist. Gotcha. All right. Well, just so you know where I'm at, I am 1689,
00:09:47.280so I am Credo Baptist. Cheers. Cheers. It's coffee. But I usually upset my Baptist brothers
00:09:53.220and sisters. That's something you should probably know about me because- Hey, me too.
00:09:56.380Because I know, well, I just, I preach very, very strongly that, you know, I think the new covenant
00:10:03.280is, um, it's not just wider, but it's better. It's not just, uh, uh, you know, larger in its
00:10:08.720scope, but deeper in its promises. And one of the best things about the new covenant is it has a
00:10:12.820100% retention rate. And so I believe that the door into the new covenant is faith. Um, I do
00:10:18.880believe I see the continuity between circumcision under the old covenant and baptism, but I would
00:10:23.980say just as circumcision followed physical birth, baptism follows new birth. And so I'm, I'm Baptist
00:10:29.240and all the ways that you would be Baptist, 100% taking no exception to the 1689,
00:10:33.880so I'm confessionally Reformed Baptist, but I also would hold to covenant succession.
00:10:40.240And that's where I upset my Baptist brothers in the sense that, you know,
00:10:43.120the definition of covenant succession is the eager expectation, not presumption,
00:10:47.900not viewing it as a guarantee, but an eager expectation for the salvation of our households,
00:10:52.980our children, by virtue of not covenant nature, but covenant nurture.
00:10:57.180And so for me, what I always tell people is I'm a Calvinist, I hold to the tulip and the doctrines of grace, but unconditional election in a lot of Baptist circles essentially gets interpreted as unconditional election is arbitrary election.
00:11:11.680And I want to hold it not severing the means of grace from the ends of grace that God, when he predestines the end of salvation of an individual, he brings it about by certain means.
00:11:23.200And so if our homes are gospel saturated, if we are leading family worship in our homes, taking our children, and I'm a family integrated guy, taking our children to the Lord's Day, gathering of the saints, all these kinds of things, then there's no way that we can work the God of the universe into our back pocket, into our debt.
00:11:40.160But I do believe that we should expect that God is working in our parenting, administering all these means of grace because he actually he's he's doing this predestinated work because he actually has determined his predestinated ends of saving our children.
00:11:56.100And then I would add, you know, the second piece to my argument would be the post-millennial piece that, you know, Jesus says, you know, from now on in one household, two will be against three and three against two.
00:12:05.420I'm going to separate father from son.
00:12:07.380And I would say, yeah, that is absolutely what happened in the first century Jewish context.
00:12:12.140But with 11 working through the batch of dough for 2000 years now and the mustard seed growing into a tree and the stone cut by no human hands, you know, crushing the kingdoms of this world and growing into a mountain that fills the whole earth.
00:12:25.500I think we should be a little bit more expectant.
00:12:27.480So I believe that it's normative, not guaranteed, and certainly not the product of our parenting
00:12:32.660to where we could earn God's grace for our children.
00:12:35.560But that God works through means, means of grace, ends of grace are not severed.
00:12:39.280And with the post-millennial hope, I think that, you know, Baptist parents, when they're
00:12:43.700faithful, should expect that God will not merely save some, but that he would save all
00:12:49.100And this is not guaranteed, but it's God's ordinary practice.
00:12:51.980And I think a lot of Baptists don't like that because they need something to assuage their
00:12:56.700guilty consciences for the fact that all their kids grew up and became apostate, which I think
00:13:01.000has something to do not with unconditional election, but with the public school system
00:13:04.820that they put their kids in and blah, blah, blah. So other than that, I'm as Baptist as they come.
00:13:10.300Yeah. Well, I mean, yes and amen to everything you said. I put it like this, and this also
00:13:16.700upsets some people, but I say that I don't believe my kids are Christians, but my kids
00:13:20.620are in a Christian family. My kids are certainly growing up in a Christian household. And I think
00:13:24.900we can use the term Christian to define things and describe things that are not themselves
00:13:30.160regenerate. So that's a live conversation within our Baptist circles. Can we use the denominator
00:13:37.580Christian to refer to something, a nation, a family that's not regenerate? I will not concede
00:13:42.940for a second that I am not leading a Christian family. I certainly intend to lead a Christian
00:13:46.960family. I read the Bible with my children every day. We pray, we ask the Lord for salvation and
00:13:52.360grace and for wisdom. Uh, this, my, my boys are going to know that they grow up in a Christian
00:13:56.480family and I'm going to show them hopefully Lord willing the way to salvation in the scriptures
00:14:01.120through Jesus Christ. So now where I make Baptists particularly upset is, and where I think
00:14:06.580what you're describing has gone wrong is Baptists in the 20th century have drifted away from,
00:14:14.060I think a serious investigation of saving faith in the life of children before just dunking them
00:14:20.880and calling them good and then just letting them go. And I think that has been irresponsible. It's
00:14:28.180given a lot of youth who have grown up in Baptistic homes, a false assurance of salvation.
00:14:33.700And so we don't necessarily have to have a debate about the age of baptism, but there is a massive
00:14:40.320irresponsibility in the way that many Baptist churches administer baptism and things like
00:14:45.300fill the tank Sundays where they're running after numbers. I think that plays into the problem that
00:14:51.320you're addressing. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And I think it's, you can fail on,
00:14:56.040you can fall off of either side of the horse. So one is the false assurance where you're baptizing
00:15:00.880a child that has a, you know, a profession of faith, but there's not actually fruit of faith
00:15:05.900in their life. Um, but the other side is, I think you can, uh, you can build, um, a culture of doubt,
00:15:12.120um, within your church, uh, even for the adults. Um, but, but, you know, especially the children
00:15:18.080where you're constantly, you're not, you're not discipling, um, them up into faith, but you're
00:15:24.180actually, um, reassuring them that they don't belong. Um, you know, and so, so like, even the
00:15:29.680fact that like in a lot of Baptist churches, you know, uh, children don't go to church. They
00:15:33.840literally go to a separate building or at least a separate room which is christian child care but
00:15:38.280it's not the church uh has certain criteria for it is a church isn't just a place or it's it's
00:15:44.760the lord's day gathering of the saints uh for the the administration of the ordinary means of grace
00:15:50.300publicly preaching the words uh praying the words singing the word and seeing the word in the
00:15:54.540sacraments of the lord's supper and baptism and there's a lot of kids they've never even seen the
00:15:59.340Lord's Supper. And then there's something profound about the plate passing them by when they're four
00:16:04.500years old or something, you know. But they've never even seen the plate. They've never even
00:16:08.600seen a baptism. They've never sat through a sermon, any of these things. So children don't
00:16:13.660even go to church with their parents. They don't go to Christian school and they're not homeschooled.
00:16:16.900They go to a state school that teaches public atheism. And there's all these different metrics
00:16:22.300that I think that lends towards apostasy. False assurance can lend towards apostasy,
00:16:28.260discipling a culture of doubt in our children where, you know, you don't belong, those kinds
00:16:33.260of things. But I think the language that you just put your finger on is so helpful that like
00:16:37.260my girls, I've got three girls and now one son, but it's always, you know, we do family worship
00:16:43.000in the morning and every evening. And it's always, we are a Christian family. And when I'm leading
00:16:48.240family worship, you know, I say, Christian, what do you believe? You know, and my four-year-old
00:16:52.940and my my three-year-old know the apostles creed by heart and we believe in god the father almighty
00:16:58.020you know creative heaven and earth um and then and then i i pronounce you know an assurance of
00:17:02.680pardon and i say insofar as you believe um you have been forgiven of all your sin and because
00:17:08.540i don't know when god's going to regenerate their heart or particularly where that happens and so
00:17:12.680anyways has already exactly exactly and so but yeah we are a christian family i like what chuck
00:17:18.700knocks one of my friends with cross politic he says uh one of the ways that you know that you're
00:17:22.700Christian families. He said, you may not believe that, but Muslims do. If a terrorist, extreme
00:17:30.260Muslim came into your home, they wouldn't spare your children's lives. They'd kill the whole
00:17:35.840family. They'd kill the kids too. These are Christian kids. Well, I mean, I love that even
00:17:41.380there, you're talking about serious church practices, regulative principle passed down
00:17:46.440the Reformation, see, hear, sing, pray, the word. And it just had me thinking that for so many
00:17:55.120decades, so many churches and Christian families have assumed that playing red light, green light
00:18:02.740and having a pizza party is what's going to help inoculate their children against secular
00:18:08.780indoctrination. And that's just not going to cut it. At a certain age, you've got to get your kids
00:18:15.460in church with you to hear God's word expounded and the Holy Spirit apply it to their lives and
00:18:20.280their hearts, Lord willing. Amen. I think also with that, and this kind of can lead into some
00:18:24.900more conversation and particularly the things that I wanted to have you on the show for, but
00:18:28.980I think also making it clear for your kids at a young age, what side are we on, right? So like
00:18:34.460when you're just Mr. Winsomey about every single issue, right? When Roe gets overturned and you go
00:18:41.720to a church that is biblically conservative and has been preaching against abortion for 49 years
00:18:46.600and then rose overturned in the providence and mercy of god and your pastor doesn't say a single
00:18:51.920word right and it's just like let's just be quiet and and some guys in the church actually are
00:18:57.440outspoken but you hear through the grapevine that they've actually been corrected by the elders
00:19:01.360uh that they need to tone it down now it's not the time for beating our chest you know and
00:19:05.220And then BLM happens, you know, and, and, and your parents are at a BLM rally and COVID happens and, and you're, you're regular principal guys, right? You're, you're church men. But you shut down for four months, you know, and, and, and MacArthur opens up his church and you actually criticize him publicly, you know, for it.
00:19:24.860And those kinds of things, your kids, I think if you're too winsome and you're too friendly in the name of evangelism with the world, then I think that's another thing is like kids, they grew up in state schools.
00:19:36.860They grew up with youth group, you know, that's just a pizza party and there's no preaching.
00:19:41.380But then also their parents and their pastors and their church members, what they modeled for them, if anything, is friendship with the world.
00:20:12.740We want to show into our children how we love sinners, just like how Christ loved us.
00:20:18.980But yeah, I mean, it's like, which side are we on here?
00:20:22.320You know, it's I've gotten pretty radicalized on the COVID stuff.
00:20:26.180And in many ways, it's driven by a retrospective assessment of even some of my, I think, failings as a parent in terms of when I let a mask be put on my son, you know, in certain situations at like three years old.
00:20:45.820And I will never do that again. And I will never allow my family to be in a situation where somebody is telling me to put a mask on my children when they're not at risk for anything because it teaches them something about what's going on in the world. So yeah, I agree with that entirely. Which side are we on and how do we fly those flags?
00:21:07.380Right. Amen. And letting kids know, even at a young age, I mean, there are certain things that are age appropriate. So I'm not saying that there's every, you know, every single detail that we're aware of our children should be aware of, but, but our children should be aware that we're at war. I don't think that you wait till a child is 18 years old to tell them, oh, by the way, we're in a war and, and the world hates us because they hated, they hated Jesus. And like, so like very early on, you know, my four year old and my three year old are very aware that, that there are people that hate us.
00:21:37.380and people that hate daddy um and you know and we have to be careful with church and things like
00:21:42.000that you know i've had you know with just getting in trouble online and going viral for you know for
00:21:47.300all the right reasons but but you know the optics look like all the wrong reasons and you know and
00:21:52.400people wanting to protest and those kinds of things and so you know the kids are very aware
00:21:56.420of that and you know and we'll go and we'll preach you know at the courthouse and things like that
00:22:00.320you know when row dropped we knew like that that night you know um that there would be a bunch of
00:22:05.120liberals showing up at the courthouse protesting. And so we gathered everybody in our church. We
00:22:09.340had twice the number that they had. We sang, you know, hymns and Psalms. And I preached and told
00:22:15.160them that they're murderers and that they need to repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ for
00:22:19.140their murder and advocation for murder. And my kids hear that and they know that. And I explained
00:22:23.680to them on our way there, you know, that we're going because we love Jesus and because we love
00:22:27.780babies. But there are people that hate Jesus and hate babies and they love to murder babies. They
00:22:32.840love the blood of babies. And they're going to be there. Those people who love killing babies
00:22:36.960are going to be there. And, and we love those people. We want those people to repent. But dad
00:22:41.980is going to preach against them because they are not on our side. But our hope is that they would
00:22:46.500be, you know, like, and my little four-year-old and three-year-old understand that. And that's
00:22:50.660something that I guess what I'm saying is it's not something that I even, even if I wanted to
00:22:54.440choose the option, I couldn't shelter them from it, even if I wanted, because daddy's going to
00:22:58.440be involved. I think a lot of parents are able to shelter their kids from, from certain culture war
00:23:03.760issues because they themselves as the parents are involved in the culture war. You have to explain
00:23:08.960to your four-year-old and three-year-old, if you and mom are driving the minivan to the courthouse
00:23:12.740to preach against abortion, you've got it. You know what I mean? Like the kids are now a part
00:23:16.540of this. Um, but, but a lot of Christians have, they don't even have, uh, they don't even, they
00:23:22.060don't even have a living memory of that kind of, they've never done it. Right. So, so when they're
00:23:26.560like you told your three-year-old that yeah that's because the family was involved in this
00:23:30.060you don't have to tell your three-year-old that because you're a coward and you don't do these
00:23:33.620things you know so i don't know what do you think about that any further thoughts on this issue
00:23:38.520no i think that's great i think it's a good example brother cool all right so give our
00:23:43.080listeners some of your um i i just want to hear a little bit and i think our listeners would too
00:23:47.540working with the trump administration in dc on the ground uh like you're from what i can tell
00:23:54.780like you're pretty successful and decorated within the realm of politics for a 34 year old,
00:24:01.280you know, young man. And I just think that's awesome. We need Christians involved. Every,
00:24:04.900every dude wants to be a pastor and I'm telling him, why don't you start a million dollar business?
00:24:09.200Why don't you be an artist? Why don't you get involved in politics? And you've done it.
00:24:13.820And I'd love just to hear about it. Yeah. Well, God's, God's grace and favor was
00:24:19.440certainly upon me and my efforts. And it was a team effort, everything I did in DC. I was lost
00:24:29.140and hopeless and helpless in the world about six months after one of my younger brothers had passed
00:24:36.520away. And when he was 15 and I was 22, and I wasn't a Christian at the time, and it really
00:24:42.280sent me into a spiral. And by God's grace, I met Mark Dever, the pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist
00:24:47.500church and through his witness became a Christian. The Lord just threw open doors for me to move to
00:24:52.660D.C. So again, I can't take any credit. I wouldn't have gone there on my own. But then I ended up
00:24:58.580moving to D.C. and joining that church and I needed to work, right? I had student loans that
00:25:02.840needed to be repaid and bills to be paid. And so what I did first was I just got whatever job I
00:25:11.300could, which was waiting tables at P.F. Chang's. And so that was the first thing I did when I got
00:25:15.420to D.C. Which is not a bad job. P.F. Chang's waiters, you can pull some cash. Yeah, it's a
00:25:21.680life sustainability job. So what that enabled me to do, and we were talking before we started
00:25:26.520recording about maybe even some tips for young men who are looking to do similar things. So
00:25:30.040if you want to work in politics in D.C., you move to the Hill. I mean, these days,
00:25:34.220things are a little different. I think they do pay interns now, but back then we were unpaid,
00:25:38.520right? So I got what was called the life sustainability job that put money in my bank
00:25:42.860account and allowed me to outlast the other people who had like a fixed income and were
00:25:47.400trying to score a job in like six weeks.
00:27:29.960Then I went back and worked for that first member I interned for for a couple of years.
00:27:33.920And it really just impressed upon me that some of the biggest issues facing our country
00:27:37.460were issues pertaining to our immigration system.
00:27:40.060issue pertaining to economic opportunities, particularly in areas that have been hit the
00:27:45.160hardest by globalization, by global trade deals. I grew up in North Carolina. Obviously,
00:27:49.520the textile industry has been completely wiped out with the rise of China, imports from China,
00:27:56.220NAFTA, et cetera. So those were really impressed upon me. And so when Donald Trump came down that
00:28:02.920escalator in 2015, at that point in time, I was working for a guy named Representative Dave Bratt,
00:28:08.820who ran in Virginia and beat the number two Republican in a surprise upset primary than
00:28:16.240Eric Cantor. And David Bratt, he was a college professor of economics and he ran on a campaign
00:28:22.500essentially of we need immigration restriction that respects who we are as a people here in
00:28:27.780the United States and we need trade deals that benefit us. It was kind of like a mini pre-Trump
00:28:32.940campaign in the 7th District of Virginia that was successful for him. So when I was working for him
00:28:38.440is when Trump announced his run. And I was like, oh man, I think this guy might go all the way.
00:28:42.700And I was one of the very few people in DC during that whole time who was pretty confident Trump
00:28:47.300would win. And so after working for Congressman Bratt, then I had a chance to work at the Heritage
00:28:52.520Action, which is the sort of political arm of the Heritage Foundation, big think tank there in DC.
00:28:58.640And then had a chance to volunteer on the presidential transition organization,
00:29:03.160again, just sort of hustling, taking an opportunity to kind of volunteer to get a
00:29:06.760chance to get my foot in the door because at that point in time, you know, this is now early end of
00:29:11.2602016, early 2017. I was like, this is my shot to work in an administration. And I believed in what
00:29:17.000Trump said he was going to do. You know, so many people got so twisted up in knots about Donald
00:29:21.600Trump. You know, I put that fact that I work for Trump in my Twitter bio because I want people to
00:29:26.800know I'm not ashamed of it for a second. I served on behalf of the American people and I served the
00:29:31.820duly elected American president who ran on a platform of, I would argue, caring for your
00:29:38.840average American. And I believed in that and I believed him. Well, he ran on that platform,
00:29:45.080but then he actually governed even more conservatively than he ran. You typically
00:29:49.840expect a guy like George Bush, maybe ran at an eight and governed at a six, if 10 is true blue
00:29:59.100conservative, you know? And so like ran at an eight, governed as a six. And Trump, I feel like
00:30:03.460ran at like a 6.57 and governed at like a nine, you know? And it was like, whoa, this guy, like
00:30:09.020he became a hero, you know? It's like, okay, there's some mean tweets, you know, but William
00:30:13.260Wolf has some mean tweets too. So, you know, but like, you know, but like, but this guy in terms
00:30:18.280of his policy and all these kinds of things, I mean, he was one of the most conservative presidents
00:30:22.520we've had in a very long time. So. Yeah, no doubt. And, you know, this isn't, this is really
00:30:27.200The Trump run in 2016 really awakened my interest in Christian ethics because I just was really struggling to see how so many people that I otherwise respected were engaging what I thought was pretty horrific moral reasoning as they were justifying things like voting for Hillary Clinton.
00:30:47.440I mean, look, I could understand if you sat the 2016 election out because you had concerns about Trump. And look, I'm not sure if Trump was personally pro-life, but Trump said he was going to govern as if he was pro-life. And he did exactly what he said he was going to do.
00:31:02.460And now Roe v. Wade is overturned. And so watching figures that I would have respected or characters that I would have thought represented my interests, doing things like arguing for voting for Hillary Clinton, I was like, wait a minute, something is not right in the world of evangelical Christian ethics and how we're doing moral reasoning here. And this is important.
00:31:22.840And so that was really a rock that was put in my shoe as I got into the Trump administration
00:31:26.620and something that I watched through all my time in the Trump administration.
00:31:30.840And as I got out of it, I thought, you know what, I'd like to study this a little bit
00:31:34.780more closely and sort of hopefully potentially credential myself to speak to these issues,
00:31:40.220help teach and train and help other pastors and Christians, you know, folks in the pews
00:31:45.260think about the trickiest political issues facing us as Christians in this country.
00:34:35.980Like, you know what I mean? So it's just, you're wrong. Three strikes, you're out, Thabiti, which I believe his actual name is Ron. You know, but anyways, you're out, you know, that doesn't work. And so I was in Acts 29 watching the same thing, horrified that like, what is going on? I just didn't understand. And I kept thinking, well, I'm a young pastor, you know, maybe, maybe I'm just arrogant or just maybe I'm oblivious. And, you know, maybe this is one of those things where you just got to get older in the faith to have some more maturity to understand.
00:35:04.140And now, by God's grace, I am older in the faith, and I do understand.
00:35:08.300And what I understand is that those guys were hypocrites and liars and cowards.
00:41:39.560And then all of a sudden we realized there are some other fault lines we didn't even consider before. And a lot of it has to do with politics. A lot of it has to do with a Christian ethic. And so you've got the COVID. 2020, you've got BLM and civil tyranny. And boom, all of a sudden there's this new divide with guys that we thought were on our side because we were both Calvinist. We were both cessationists. We were both whatever.
00:42:06.900And so I just think that like, once again, it's like we've got the fresh paint of new fault lines on, you know, like fresh lines on the cement.
00:42:17.280And people are, it's just this like national and even global game of musical chairs.
00:42:22.140And I think the dust is still settling.
00:42:23.860It's a great time, I think, to start a new ministry.
00:42:26.940Like I'm planting a new church and we went from 20 to 120 since April last year to today.
00:42:32.820And, and I think a lot of it is because just being out, a lot of people have left, we're not talking about chronically dissatisfied church hoppers. I'm talking people who were faithful members for 18 years in their local church and then realize my pastor is a liberal. My pastor's woke. My pastor's a tyrant. My pastor is a coward or what, he doesn't have a spine, you know, whatever it is. And so I think these new fault lines are setting in, people are rearranging on the deck. And that's where I want to turn it back to you and ask you this.
00:42:59.400I think, you know, one of the big fault lines is civil tyranny and wokeness. And the dust was starting to settle, I thought, where it's like, okay, so we just lost like over half of evangelicalism. So that's a bit depressing.
00:43:14.420But, hey, we still got a decent crew over here that's against social justice and CRT and intersectionality and against civil tyranny and their four churches being opened.
00:43:24.340And they saw through, you know, the play with masks and the jab and all these kinds of things.
00:45:15.260And I'm presenting some things like Christian nationalism or theonomy, you know, in a tiered down general equity theonomy.
00:45:24.880And it's not just the guy saying, well, I don't think that's the best course of action.
00:45:28.360No, the responses I'm getting on Twitter is like announcing our conference, like theonomy and post-millennial conference and people, you know, like coming out of the woodworks and saying, so disappointed to see, you know, James White speaking at this, you know, or so did like, and these are guys who aren't woke, but they're also like, I'm saying, I think this is, we should do something.
00:45:47.360And what they want to do is classical liberal liberalism, or I don't know what they want to do.
00:55:09.300So yeah, Daniel three, we've got Nebuchadnezzar with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Daniel
00:55:12.780chapter six, if you want to pull it up, but Daniel six is, you know, Daniel, the lion's
00:55:16.740den and, uh, and you got Darius, you know, and it's like, we don't, I don't know if,
00:55:21.500if Darius, um, was regenerate, but what we do know is that Darius recognized that Yahweh
00:55:27.200was the true God, that Daniel's God was God.
00:55:31.660And then what does he immediately do? He had this lousy decree that he had been influenced by worthless men who just hated Daniel. And this whole thing with COVID would preach. I remember so many people saying, well, we shouldn't resist these things because you only resist when it's persecution.
00:55:52.000And the criteria for persecution is it has to be directly targeting Christians.
00:55:58.100And I remember saying, well, Darius didn't directly target Daniel.
00:56:02.520Darius wouldn't have done this decree if he knew that it was targeting Daniel because Daniel was his guy.
00:56:09.520The way that the guys got Darius to pass the law was it was that no one, no one of no matter what religion they were, they could not petition any man.
00:56:19.260So atheists and agnostics are included.
00:56:34.200And then when God, you know, I don't know if God saved him, but when God reveals to him Daniel's God is the God who shuts the mouth of lions, Darius makes another decree.
00:56:43.920And this decree is everybody better pay homage to Daniel's God.
01:08:07.480But what I was going to say is not only is it Christian and this isn't Israel.
01:08:10.760So this is another nation outside of Israel without that unique covenant with the nation state of Israel, a king exercising legislative authority for all peoples underneath his civil rule.
01:08:23.600And it's not a second table of the law legislation that he's giving.
01:08:55.220All men under my authority, my civil authority that God has granted to me have an obligation to worship the true God.
01:09:02.640i you know and unless the argument's going to be from the old testament christian nationalist
01:09:08.880right there exactly so like so i want to like i want to talk to jonathan lehman like what are you
01:09:13.160going to do with that are you going to say like you know darius did this and when darius died
01:09:16.900one day and stood before god in judgment uh this is one of the things that god corrected him for
01:09:21.260i don't think so is that is that where you want to be lehman when jesus comes back making that
01:09:26.240argument about darius i don't think that's a good place to be so i like we got to do something you
01:09:30.380You would argue, and I got to go here and just say my wife's birthday, or that you would argue that it shouldn't be done because if it is done, it somehow sort of erodes the principles of classical liberalism or erodes the principles of multicultural pluralism.
01:09:51.060Look, all of governing is costs and tradeoffs, right?
01:09:53.720Like and I was I was thinking about this the other day in terms of like, well, I need to be honest about the costs that I think we some people should be paying. Right. So right now in the American governing construct, we're paying the cost of the proliferation of transvestite strippers and drag queens, the proliferation of abortion up to nine months in New York, California, Colorado, etc.
01:10:16.580And the benefit we get, I guess, is that nobody feels in any way coerced by the system of government we have because it has no religious flavor to it.
01:10:27.580And so everybody feels comfortable and we can have a mosque and a synagogue and a church on every corner or a satanic temple, whatever.
01:10:35.940Well, look, we need to maybe think about in a future that where we don't have the drag queens, maybe because we did that based off of explicit Christian principles and a recognition that the God of Daniel is still God, that perhaps some people feel a little less comfortable in our country.
01:10:54.560It's not that they're not citizens. They're still citizens. They can still vote. They can enjoy all the privileges of a citizenship, but they recognize that they live in a Christian country that reflects Christian values.
01:11:03.860In the same way that if I went over to the Middle East and moved into a Muslim country, I would feel uncomfortable because five times a day I would be reminded that they worship another god.