The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The New Fault Lines ｜ Which Side Are They On？

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, real quick, before we get started, I have a small request.

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00:00:18.020 All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:00:20.560 I am your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries.

00:00:23.780 And in this episode, I am privileged to have, once again, for the second time now,

00:00:27.380 Megan Basham from The Daily Wire. All right, let me frame up the episode because this is a doozy.

00:00:33.620 In my opinion, it's one of the most favorite things that I've done with a guest on this show,

00:00:38.520 Theology Applied. Here's what I wrote. The old fault lines of Calvinism versus Arminianism,

00:00:43.700 or cessationism versus continuationism, or Baptists versus Presbyterians, these things still

00:00:49.440 matter. But the new fault lines, using the language of Vodibacham, the new fault lines

00:00:55.400 have quickly moved to the center of debate. What are these new fault lines? You know,

00:01:01.620 things like woke versus not woke, COVID tyranny versus personal liberty, socialism versus

00:01:08.160 capitalism, globalism versus nationalism. Now, what we're starting to see in my assessment,

00:01:15.020 when it comes to these new fault lines, we're starting to see that there are basically only

00:01:19.460 three camps. There are pietists who don't want to be involved in the culture at all. 0.95

00:01:24.800 There are progressives who are very involved in these cultural and political matters, 0.98

00:01:31.240 but they mirror the Democrat platform. They're neo-Marxist, they're leftist.

00:01:37.600 And there are lastly, trying to have three Ps for alliteration here, there are pietists,

00:01:43.980 progressives and those who persevere those who are faithful they're involved in the culture

00:01:50.660 but not as neo-marxist but those who are biblically conservative and faithful so what we do in this

00:01:58.400 episode is we take a list of 10 names 10 names and i give the ball to megan and she from her

00:02:06.240 reporting the things that she knows for a fact that she sought out she begins to help me categorize

00:02:12.340 each of these 10 major leaders in evangelicalism?

00:02:16.120 Are they pietist?

00:02:17.380 Are they progressive?

00:02:19.360 Or are they persevering?

00:02:20.900 Are they faithful?

00:02:22.220 Here are the 10 names.

00:02:23.520 Tim Keller, John Piper, Gavin Ortlin, Votie Bauckham,

00:02:28.140 Matt Chandler, Michael Horton, Russell Moore,

00:02:31.720 John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, and Doug Wilson.

00:02:34.800 If you wanna hear what Megan Basham thinks

00:02:36.780 about these 10 guys, whether they're a pietist,

00:02:39.840 a progressive, or persevering,

00:02:42.280 This is the episode for you.

00:02:44.060 Tune in now.

00:02:45.380 Applying God's word to every aspect of life.

00:02:48.580 This is Theology Applied.

00:02:55.060 All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:02:57.780 I am your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries.

00:03:00.920 And in this episode, I am fortunate to be joined once again by Megan Basham of The Daily Wire.

00:03:06.020 Megan, can you tell our guest a little bit about who you are and what you do?

00:03:09.500 hi i'm megan basham i am a cultural reporter with the daily wire i also work on the morning

00:03:16.120 wire podcast over there um i just got to do the red carpet with gina carano for our latest film

00:03:23.200 so i got to moonlight as um an entertainment tonight correspondent sort of as well so that

00:03:28.340 was fun and uh and if you may also know me from uh world magazine i worked there for a long time

00:03:34.160 which is an evangelical news outlet that puts out podcasts and I worked on the podcast and

00:03:39.720 the magazine and online and, um, great organization over there. So I spent a long

00:03:44.440 time there as well. Great. Well, thanks for coming on the show.

00:03:47.320 Thanks for having me. All right. So this is my idea. We've been corresponding a little bit back

00:03:51.680 and forth, uh, preparing for this episode. This is the idea. So I'll frame it up for us and then

00:03:56.200 I'll, I'll send it back to you. Um, I wrote the following the old fault lines of Calvinism

00:04:02.000 versus Arminianism or cessationism versus continuationism having to do with the gifts

00:04:07.480 of the spirit, the sign gifts or Baptist credo baptism versus pedo baptism and Presbyterians.

00:04:15.020 These things are theological and they are still important, but the new fault lines have quickly

00:04:21.220 moved to center stage, the middle front and center of the debate. What are these new fault lines?

00:04:27.260 you know, things like woke versus not woke, COVID tyranny versus personal liberty,

00:04:34.080 socialism versus capitalism, globalism versus nationalism, and the list goes on.

00:04:40.260 Now, what we're starting to see in my assessment in evangelicalism is that when it comes to these

00:04:46.800 new fault lines, I think that we're starting to see that there are basically three camps,

00:04:51.580 and I've kind of titled them or labeled them as such.

00:04:55.440 One is pietism. 0.77

00:04:57.400 These can be guys who are biblically

00:04:59.040 and theologically very conservative.

00:05:01.200 They would check all the right boxes.

00:05:03.460 But when it comes to cultural and political issues

00:05:06.860 in our nation and in the world at large,

00:05:09.980 they're uninvolved.

00:05:11.600 They think just, you know,

00:05:12.620 that they apply these conservative principles

00:05:15.520 from the scripture,

00:05:16.560 but exclusively to the home and the church.

00:05:19.540 So they'll do the conferences

00:05:20.520 on marriage and family, and they would, you know, sing hymns about how Jesus is Lord of their sweet

00:05:26.120 little heart. But the Lordship of Christ doesn't seem to be a public Lordship that actually applies

00:05:33.280 and has tangible implications in the civil or cultural realm. So the pietist. The second is 0.95

00:05:41.400 the progressive, the person who is really, you know, that every time there's a new leftist

00:05:50.200 agenda, they're the person who forms a study committee and tries to find some kind of biblical

00:05:55.380 exegesis by doing gymnastics to support this new liberal progressive virtue. So this is the person

00:06:05.840 who just tries to make the Bible echo, whatever the culture happens to be saying in that moment.

00:06:12.200 And the third being perseverance. I try to have three Ps. So pietists, the progressives,

00:06:18.280 and those who persevere, those who are faithful, meaning that they have the conservative biblical

00:06:23.260 true doctrine, but they're also faithfully applying it, right? So it's not just the

00:06:27.780 inerrancy of scripture, that it's authoritative, but the sufficiency of scripture, all of Christ

00:06:33.120 for all of life, that the Bible actually speaks not just to our marriages and not just our

00:06:37.800 churches, but it speaks to rulers and kings and princes. It speaks to the civil realm and it

00:06:44.180 speaks to culture and art and medicine and all these different things. And so I have a list of

00:06:49.920 10 individuals and I want to pick your brain, Megan, because you've written a lot on these

00:06:54.780 individuals and you've investigated their articles and their lectures and things that they've said,

00:06:59.540 and you've done a lot of great reporting.

00:07:01.260 I want to get your sense.

00:07:02.780 These are 10 guys that I think just five, six, seven, eight years ago,

00:07:07.580 a lot of people in my camp, the Reformed Evangelical camp,

00:07:11.200 would have said, all 10 of these guys are great.

00:07:13.880 And I don't feel that way anymore.

00:07:16.060 I think that there are some new fault lines, right?

00:07:18.680 Like Votie Bauckham wrote the book Fault Lines.

00:07:20.340 There are some new fault lines and people, it's like nationally,

00:07:24.060 at a national level within evangelicalism,

00:07:26.320 there's this big providential game of musical chairs.

00:07:30.000 Like I have tons of people who are coming to my church that are Arminian.

00:07:34.540 And I haven't pastored Arminians in a while because I've been so blatantly Calvinistic

00:07:38.860 in my soteriology, my view of salvation that Arminians wouldn't give me the time of day.

00:07:43.000 But now they're like, yeah, well, you didn't close down during COVID and you don't force

00:07:48.000 us to wear a mask.

00:07:49.080 So yeah, we'll tolerate your Calvinism because you have a spine.

00:07:53.600 And I think that's significant.

00:07:54.920 It's not just as I talked about, this is a global phenomenon right now.

00:07:59.540 um, that, that things are shifting. So, um, I want to get, we've got this list of 10 names and

00:08:05.140 I want to get your input on each of them. But before we start, I know I just said a lot. Do

00:08:09.220 you have any thoughts? No, I mean, other than I really see what you're talking about really

00:08:14.520 clearly. Um, it's been interesting to sort of watch the deck shuffle. And as someone who kind

00:08:21.060 of became a Christian in my early twenties, a lot of these are guys I came up with that I,

00:08:25.500 you know, grew in my faith with. So it's been a little alarming and jarring to see that happen.

00:08:32.420 And yeah, for a variety of reasons. And we'll get into that in a minute. I don't want to, you know,

00:08:38.060 spoil it, but, but yeah, it's just been really surprising. And I always come back to that

00:08:43.820 Lord of the Rings scene where, you know, Aragorn's trying to convince,

00:08:49.720 I forget which king it was, but it was the king who didn't want to go to war.

00:08:53.380 thank you he goes i don't want to risk open war and aragorn's response is well open war is upon

00:09:01.560 you whether you would risk it or not and i feel like that's the moment we're in and so this to

00:09:05.560 me is really a response to how are these guys responding to the fact that open war is upon us

00:09:11.060 right right that's that's well said all right so here's our list uh number one

00:09:16.060 Timothy Keller. Again, here are the three kind of categories, the pietist, the progressive,

00:09:23.320 or the persevering, the faithful. What do you think? Now, some of these guys, I'll be honest,

00:09:28.840 because I'm going to give some of my thoughts too. I would say, well, 30% over here. So you're,

00:09:32.580 you are allowed to, you know, you don't have to put them all in one category, but Tim Keller,

00:09:37.940 pietist, progressive, or persevering. What are your thoughts?

00:09:41.160 so if you had asked me a year ago on tim kelly by the way i love this it's like a game show it's

00:09:46.780 really fun i want a prize at the end um well he i i would have said even maybe a year ago that i

00:09:54.900 maybe two years let's say that i viewed him more as pietist but he to me has been sort of actively

00:10:02.040 moving into progressive in part uh by saying that's uh abortion he has moved into using that

00:10:10.220 language of the Bible tells us abortion is wrong, but it doesn't tell us the best way to lower the

00:10:17.580 rate of abortion. Again, I don't remember exactly what he said, but how to get rid of it. Yeah,

00:10:21.800 no, you're absolutely right. And his implication was kind of, I felt like what that was, was saying

00:10:27.380 it seemed very politically calculated. You don't have to vote for pro-life candidates.

00:10:34.120 Maybe you vote for someone who is not pro-life, but if you believe they're going to put in a

00:10:38.960 social safety net that's going to um alleviate the need for an abortion now i i would say that

00:10:46.100 he just doesn't know the statistics on abortion that he's saying that but maybe he does i think

00:10:50.680 he does yes and uh and it's interesting to now connect that to the fact that the erlc of the

00:10:56.800 southern baptist just said something very similar that they want to eliminate the need for abortion

00:11:02.860 well there's never a need for abortion i i hate that language um and it's really deceptive language

00:11:08.200 And so the deception is where I go, that's progressive. That's not pietist. So, yeah, I would say for me, he's probably now more in the 60-ish percent progressive because I also did a lot of reporting on how he has used his influence and his platform to push government mandates for things like vaccinations during the height of COVID to keep churches closed, which that one, you know, that one really put someone

00:11:38.200 in the progressive camp for me. If you're arguing, let's keep people away from the church in a time

00:11:43.100 of a lot of fear and turmoil. I put you in progressive camp. Amen. I agree. Yeah. Tim

00:11:48.840 Keller, I think you're being incredibly generous, probably because you're a woman and maybe just

00:11:53.640 naturally more nurturing towards Tim Keller. If only, you know, maybe you can write a poem. If

00:11:58.060 only I could have been Tim Keller's mom, you know, or something like that. But I, man, I feel

00:12:03.880 like I put them at like almost 90, 90% that, you know, so, so theologically, and you may be

00:12:09.720 familiar with these categories, but there's the, the kind of the two kingdom position,

00:12:13.340 um, a strong, stark two kingdom position that, you know, a lot of that comes out of, uh,

00:12:18.340 Westminster Escondido. Uh, you got guys like Van Druden, guys like Michael Horton, who would kind

00:12:23.260 of be the gold standard of, of what I would call radical two kingdom, uh, theological position.

00:12:28.320 And then on the flip side, there's different ways to, you know, different labels for this,

00:12:34.400 but I would call it a Kuyperian mindset coming from Abraham Kuyper.

00:12:38.520 One of his most famous sayings was there's not one single square inch of this world that

00:12:43.100 Jesus doesn't cry out, that Christ doesn't cry out, mine.

00:12:46.120 So the idea that basically is this idea of, are there two kingdoms, as Luther kind of

00:12:50.860 argued, between the state and the church?

00:12:52.980 And I would deny that.

00:12:54.260 I would say those are two sovereign spheres.

00:12:56.080 but there's a difference between kingdoms and spheres. Three spheres, family, church, and state,

00:13:02.280 but not three kingdoms and not two kingdoms with the dividing line being between the church and

00:13:06.740 the state. Also, likewise, there are people who say, well, the two kingdoms, it's not church and

00:13:10.860 state. It's the two kingdoms of sacred and secular. And perhaps you're familiar with that kind of

00:13:14.960 language. And I would push back on that also because I'm of that Kuyperian framework. And so

00:13:21.400 it's not secular or sacred. I would say there are two kingdoms. I think the Bible says that,

00:13:24.880 but it's not the kingdom of church and state. That's not where the line is drawn and it's not

00:13:29.200 secular and sacred. It's light and dark, the kingdom of light and dark. And there is light

00:13:35.660 even within the civil realm of the state. There are Christians in politics that are advancing

00:13:43.100 the kingdom of Christ and his light and his truth in that realm. There are good civil magistrates

00:13:48.660 that bear the sword rightly and wherever we see that, and that is the kingdom of light marching

00:13:52.980 forward. And there is certainly, sadly, but there is certainly the kingdom of darkness within the

00:13:58.160 church. That's what an apostate is. That's what a false teacher is. And so, I don't think it's

00:14:04.180 two kingdoms, church and state. I don't think it's two kingdoms, secular and sacred. I think

00:14:08.380 it's two kingdoms of light and dark. But Christ, I believe that it is his earnest desire and his

00:14:14.940 commandment in the Great Commission that his kingdom of light, that it would advance and spread

00:14:19.240 in every realm of human society, in the arts and in medicine and in politics and culture. And of

00:14:27.620 course, our families and our churches and Tim Keller, my position is that Tim Keller is not

00:14:33.660 a strong two kingdom guy. He is a Kuyperian guy. The problem is what he's trying to advance in 0.94

00:14:40.360 culture and in arts and certainly in politics is not biblical principles, but Democrat platform

00:14:48.180 virtues you can look at so it's not that he's like christians shouldn't be involved he thinks

00:14:53.860 christians should be radically involved in all these different spheres um but but involved doing

00:15:00.240 what and i think that's the difference between the pietist says let's not get involved the

00:15:04.640 progressive says let's get involved but but when you look at and do what it basically just mirrors

00:15:10.200 um what what a leftist would say and then the persevering guy and the way that i'm defining it

00:15:16.600 would say let's get involved and let's do it conservatively according to biblical standards

00:15:21.540 so i think you're right on the money with tim keller and i would maybe go a little stronger

00:15:24.440 here's the next one john piper what do you think about john piper so you know john piper is

00:15:30.220 interesting to me i i i'll confess freely that i love john piper i really came up in the faith he

00:15:36.260 was one of the guys i listened to a lot i've talked about i mean john macarthur was probably

00:15:39.500 the most formational for me when i became a christian um but john piper i know that he sort

00:15:46.440 of put out that essay last year about i'm trying to remember it had some really sort of tortured

00:15:51.200 logic about it's also murder i can't i can't even remember i should have reread that essay but

00:15:58.960 it was something very sort of tortured logic about yes some candidate political candidates

00:16:05.520 are pro-murder as far as killing babies but there's also a kind of murderer that is whatever

00:16:11.640 he felt trump was that he was it was right before the election it was basically it basically it was

00:16:16.860 a false dichotomy but it was basically saying like trump has a monopoly on pride that's what it was

00:16:22.300 it was some kind of pride as a kind of exactly so pride you know because that incites people and it

00:16:27.020 leads towards you know uh murderous thoughts and a murderous culture and these kind of things and

00:16:31.200 then there's explicit murder and so um so it's really not that clear of a choice and he didn't

00:16:35.860 tell anybody to go out and vote for biden but i think he has waged the consciences of weak

00:16:40.380 uninformed undiscerning christians to vote for biden go ahead and so i would not put him in

00:16:47.360 the progressive camp i would put him in the pietist camp i feel like he um i think every

00:16:53.620 pastor that i love is not always you know 100 all the time and i i feel that he's been a little

00:16:59.900 naive about things and i i particularly look at what happened at his seminary that i know from

00:17:08.340 talking to people, from doing some reporting, that you had an influx of people trying to move

00:17:14.220 that seminary, trying to do a lot of what we talked about happening in the SBC towards

00:17:18.900 complementarianism, towards introducing this very suspicious spirit of being concerned about all 0.89

00:17:26.180 your other fellow Christians are racist if they are not adopting this, empowering a particular

00:17:31.520 ethnic group or a particular skin color group. And I don't think he saw that stuff coming. I think

00:17:37.620 for me he seemed naive to it i think he welcomed these people with good intentions and with good

00:17:44.260 faith and um talking to some other people at that seminary i think he just really wasn't aware of

00:17:51.140 what he was dealing with and when i look at that trump essay it felt to me like everybody was sort

00:17:55.980 of looking at john piper going you have to say something you have to say something and so he said

00:18:00.040 something and i it was to me it was cowardly more than anything else so i would put it in

00:18:05.100 the pietist cowardly camp, but I don't think he's actively progressive.

00:18:09.220 Okay. Yeah, I think you're right. I think Tim Keller had a play, has a play. Whereas John 0.94

00:18:14.820 Piper, I really do think is naive and it's unfortunate. I think he still has culpability,

00:18:19.640 but it's unfortunate that just the way that our world is with social media and just,

00:18:24.280 you know, the immediacy of a public figure to respond to anything and everything that's

00:18:29.360 happening that, um, we're just, we're expected to know, um, everything about anything. And, um,

00:18:35.860 and we don't, none of us do. And, and pastors are no exception. I do believe that pastors do need to

00:18:41.000 be, um, generalists. We have too many experts, um, in our world today. And I think pastors do

00:18:46.580 need to be kind of a jack of all trades. They need to be generalist. They need to be able to,

00:18:50.380 uh, counsel people with grief and the loss of a loved one and exegete scripture, and then also

00:18:55.000 apply it to the civil realm. Like pastors, you know, with COVID it's like, I felt like there

00:18:59.000 was three things that I was trying to simultaneously learn. I was trying to learn the

00:19:02.000 constitution. I was, you know, I had to make sure that I also knew the Bible. And then I was also

00:19:08.120 having to read the data about the virus. So it was like, I was trying to be a medical expert on

00:19:14.580 viruses and a constitutional law expert, and then also a theologian all the same time, because if

00:19:21.620 you knew the Bible really, really well, but you didn't know these other two things, you weren't

00:19:25.060 going to have necessarily the right answer you know and so so there's a lot of weight on pastors

00:19:29.880 um to be faithful if we're going to be involved and we're going to apply all of christ to all

00:19:34.280 of life and i think that john piper who who i i have admired greatly in the past and still

00:19:39.980 appreciate in some regard i think john piper has been radically informed and knowledgeable about

00:19:44.900 a breadth of topics um but i think he sucks when it comes to politics i you know what i mean i

00:19:50.560 i don't think he's got this yeah go ahead to be a little more pietist about to just i think it's

00:19:56.720 okay to sometimes go i really can't tell you what to do here here's the principles go apply them

00:20:01.560 you know it wasn't that it was saying you're okay if you decide to go vote for that other guy

00:20:10.140 which did not age well now that we've had 49 out of 50 democrats voting not just to codify row but

00:20:17.620 beyond that, right, that for any reason in any state, all the way up until a baby breathes its

00:20:23.060 first breath of air, that it could be murdered. When one political party comes out so unanimously

00:20:30.680 on such a clear biblical issue like that, then it really erodes any kind of argumentation that

00:20:39.720 would say, well, maybe, you know, politically you can go either way because there are problems on

00:20:43.380 both sides republic the republican party is not synonymous with the bible but that's the problem

00:20:48.240 with tim keller this third way ism it's like well there's republicans and there's democrats and then

00:20:53.100 there's jesus but what that implies is that that both are wrong but they're equally wrong and that's

00:20:59.640 the problem a lot of young people i've realized young christians who are just now becoming

00:21:03.560 politically minded because you know it's kind of hard not to over the last two years with the

00:21:08.060 events that have been going on but um a lot of people young people they they feel like to by

00:21:12.620 some of our evangelical gatekeepers because they're like i i thought that both republicans

00:21:18.060 and democrats were wrong and and i would respond by saying they are but not equally and they're

00:21:23.300 like yeah but that's the thing i thought equally wrong i thought you could go either way because

00:21:27.040 both are a complete you know train wreck and and but you know but but i'm looking at it's like yeah

00:21:32.580 there's some serious problems with republicans but then there's this other party that 49 out of

00:21:37.880 You know what I mean? It's just, it's not even a contest. And I think guys like Tim Keller and

00:21:43.120 his third way-ism and then guys like John Piper, I think in some of the ignorance and particularly

00:21:48.080 that one article have paved the way for evangelical Christians to think, oh, you really, you can go

00:21:55.440 either way. You can be involved on either side or you can be a pietist and just not get involved at

00:22:00.380 all because it really doesn't matter because they're both equally evil. And we live in this 0.96

00:22:04.400 two-party system and both of them are equally wrong and so it just and and i think a lot of

00:22:08.840 christians are coming out of that and realize we were lied to and it's because of people like you

00:22:12.520 with the daily wire and now it's like people are listening to ben shapiro instead of tim keller

00:22:17.340 you know and and they're frustrated you know they're frustrated they're like why am i having

00:22:21.940 to to learn biblical application from an orthodox jew as a protestant christian because all my

00:22:28.280 guys have failed me you know it's just any thoughts on that real quick and we'll move on

00:22:34.240 No, I agree with all of that. And I just go that so much of this, I just keep thinking about courage. So much of it just seems to me to come down to courage that I don't believe it's what I'm looking at.

00:22:48.140 I don't see a real conviction that even that I believe that Republicans are also wrong and Democrats are wrong.

00:22:53.820 I just see a real fear to sort of be boldly, this is what's biblical. This is what we believe. And we want at least some political organization to represent what we believe is biblical for the good of our nation, for the good of our neighbor, for the good of our families.

00:23:10.600 So if you completely cede all political organization, all political grassroots efforts to the left, well, I mean, we're seeing what the wages of that are.

00:23:23.100 You will be made to care.

00:23:25.000 I like the Roderick quote that they will show up on your doorstep.

00:23:28.520 You don't get the option to just completely withdraw.

00:23:31.080 Now, the Lord will allow what he will allow. 0.64

00:23:33.860 And however pagan this nation becomes, however much we're living in Babylon, we'll continue to serve faithfully. 0.82

00:23:39.260 but I don't like this idea that let's just let Babylon happen. 0.77

00:23:43.460 Right. Amen. Okay. Votie Bauckham. What do you think? 0.94

00:23:46.980 Oh, well, he's obviously faithful for me. I love Votie Bauckham.

00:23:50.540 I love him too. 0.97

00:23:51.760 And, you know, he was the one who really, that ethnic Gnosticism. 1.00

00:23:55.340 That was so good. 1.00

00:23:56.200 Yeah, that really just turned my thinking around. I can tell you that I've been through some

00:24:02.680 experiences in Christian organizations. When the CRT stuff first started happening,

00:24:07.760 I didn't recognize it for what it was. And I will tell you that there was a period of time

00:24:11.040 that I probably used some of that terminology without knowing what I was doing.

00:24:18.460 Yeah, because I really didn't know. And then when the ask kept getting bigger, you were like,

00:24:25.100 I will concede this. And then it was like, well, now we need to promote people based on skin color.

00:24:30.140 Now we need to concede that this is a systemic problem and that we need to reorganize the justice system around it. 0.89

00:24:39.800 Some really big asks. And then that was when I started paying attention.

00:24:43.020 And when I saw Votie Bauckham's ethnic Gnosticism message, I realized how much that logic applies to so much as a way of silencing public debate.

00:24:52.040 saying and we just saw it with this abuse issue that if you are not yourself a victim of abuse

00:24:59.200 then you do not have the information to speak if you are not black if you are not a woman you don't 0.52

00:25:04.460 have the information to speak and so it's really a very crafty way of silencing the the public 0.58

00:25:12.540 debate that is our legacy that is our right as americans and it's it's what we see biblically

00:25:18.240 that when one person speaks he may seem right another person gets you come along and interrogate

00:25:23.680 that and that's part of how we get at the truth so um yeah i was i love him me too i love vodhi

00:25:29.780 bacham also and you're absolutely right and it's it's not just a tactic this this gnosticism ethnic

00:25:34.700 gnosticism the idea of of um it was it's just basically it elevates experience above all other

00:25:40.540 things so instead of sola scriptura it's you know it's solo experience you know it's this experience

00:25:46.820 trumps everything. So, it's not just to silence public debate, but ultimately, it's to silence

00:25:57.400 the Bible, because it says that the Bible is not, in and of itself, sufficient. It may be

00:26:04.500 authoritative. It may be inerrant, but it's not sufficient. So, me with an open Bible, I cannot

00:26:10.040 speak credibly or authoritatively to, you know, this or that unless I also have, in addition to

00:26:17.720 the Bible, some kind of unique personal experience and specifically an experience of being oppressed,

00:26:25.860 an experience of victimhood. I must have that standpoint epistemology, that ethnic Gnosticism, 0.95

00:26:33.160 that victim experience in order to be credible, to see the Bible rightly, to interpret the Bible 0.95

00:26:40.860 clearly. And, and Voti did a great job pointing that out. So you're absolutely right. I accidentally

00:26:46.220 skipped one. So let's go back real quick. But Gavin Ortlund, are you familiar with him?

00:26:50.820 I am.

00:26:52.260 How do you feel about old Gavin?

00:26:53.940 I feel Gavin.

00:26:54.820 Gavin Newsom. I mean, Ortlund.

00:26:56.400 Ortlund, yeah. Gavin is, I put him in definitely the progressive camp. And I'll tell you why.

00:27:02.280 I won't pretend to know everything that he's written, but Gavin and I had a few debates on social media.

00:27:10.500 I didn't really know who he was.

00:27:12.400 I was familiar with his brother's book, a little bit familiar with his dad, but he was putting forward these arguments about climate change.

00:27:22.180 Well, I'm married to a meteorologist, so I know a little something about that.

00:27:25.400 And he was arguing that this is an issue Christians really need to care about.

00:27:31.100 And for me, knowing what I know about that particular issue, that just set off alarm bells.

00:27:37.800 And he mentioned I have this podcast about why Christians should care about climate change.

00:27:43.060 So I went and watched this podcast.

00:27:45.760 And much like some reporting I did on Francis Collins, and if you're not familiar, the former National Institute of Health director,

00:27:53.640 and how he used evangelical leaders to push the government's message regarding vaccinations, masks, shutdowns.

00:28:00.180 Well, in this case, Portland was using the U.N. and the arm that studies climate change to argue this is great evidence.

00:28:11.420 You should go look at this and it will tell you why there is a scientific consensus, which, by the way, anytime you hear scientific consensus as an argument these days, big alarm bells should go off.

00:28:22.140 They don't really want you asking questions about it.

00:28:24.820 So what I happen to know about this arm of the U.N. is that it's extremely corrupt.

00:28:29.380 and that it got into a lot of trouble a few years ago for suppressing some the results of some

00:28:36.680 studies for faking results in studies to get the answer that they wanted for climate change and of

00:28:42.480 course what we know is that is being used to inform policy it's being it's why your gas prices

00:28:47.960 are so high it's why your grocery prices are getting higher and it's a way to implement what

00:28:54.200 I would call some really authoritarian policies. So when you are using your platform as a pastor

00:29:00.440 to say Christians should care about this issue that the government is particularly pushing,

00:29:06.240 pushing and using government sources, that to me is you're an activist now.

00:29:12.260 Yeah, I agree. No, I think that Gavin Orland, I always say he's one of my favorite race hustlers 0.60

00:29:18.480 right, right there with Al Sharpton. He just, he's a, he's a progressive. He's a liberal. He,

00:29:23.440 you know, the shooting in Texas, you know, you know, or, or particularly the one in Buffalo,

00:29:28.980 but it's, it's immediately racialized. And, and he just, he will speak, he's not a pietist. So

00:29:35.980 he's not even close. He's not, let's stay out of politics. No, like Tim Keller, and I would say

00:29:40.840 even more so um tim keller probably is just just wiser and older about you know how to say but he

00:29:48.760 just without any shame at all he's just immediately getting involved in every political cultural issue

00:29:54.340 but always on on the side of uh the political left um you can immediately ascertain what gavin

00:30:02.740 is going to think about anything based off of uh what's the recent report that came out of the

00:30:07.740 white house all right gavin will will mirror that um but wrapped in some theological language

00:30:14.220 i have a half-written essay about that and i really got to get it done oh okay

00:30:18.320 all right issues in particular cool we look forward to looking at that um okay so here's

00:30:24.460 the next one matt chandler what are your thoughts on matt he's interesting right so i will there's

00:30:29.820 a couple people on this list that i did not know much about until they popped up in my reporting

00:30:33.880 And he was one of them. And I really didn't know much about Matt Chandler until I, and this was a couple of years ago. It was pre-COVID. So you always try to remember, okay, what, when was that? Well, I know it was before COVID hit. So it was at least a couple of years ago.

00:30:50.260 And it was when I was at World, and we did a podcast on this CRT issue, right when people were really starting to become aware of it. And I saw that video about the invisible bag of privilege. And of course, you know that that I mean, that that's literally a quote from Kimberly Crenshaw, one of the founders of critical theory.

00:31:11.500 and so when I saw that I you know that one kind of that startled me and at the same time I go

00:31:19.760 I'm not you'll tell me I'm gonna be interested to hear what you have to say because I go

00:31:23.740 did he know what he was doing when he made that video or was it one of those issues I know the

00:31:31.160 MLK 50 stuff came up but I go was it an issue of I am trying to push this in the church or

00:31:38.240 I just want to be at the table with the popular kids. And that's what they're talking about.

00:31:44.040 So you tell me, what do you think? I'm not sure. So I don't think that Matt Chandler is a scholar

00:31:49.020 by any stretch of the imagination. And that's not to say that I'm a scholar. But I think Matt

00:31:53.940 Chandler, some of these guys, not all of them, right? There are guys like John Piper, guys who

00:31:57.900 it was a slow build in their ministry in terms of platform, popularity, followers, those kinds of

00:32:05.140 things. Um, but, but it's, there is a, a very unique danger when a guy like Matt Chandler or

00:32:11.300 a guy like Mark Driscoll launches into the stratosphere, um, at a very young age and,

00:32:17.120 and just blows up in popularity quickly. And Matt was one of those guys. And I think that,

00:32:22.440 uh, one of the things that happens is that you immediately become so popular and your church

00:32:26.420 grows so much and you're immediately, uh, weighted down by so many daily responsibilities that study

00:32:32.160 suffers. And so I don't think that Matt Chandler is particularly educated when it comes to doctrine

00:32:40.540 and theology and cultural issues. And so I think that guys like Matt Chandler are taking his

00:32:46.780 friend's word for it. So when you got a guy like that, okay, good. Yeah. So I agree with you. So

00:32:53.080 when you got a guy like that, you need to ask the question, who are his friends, right? And so I was,

00:32:58.080 Matt Chandler is the president of Acts 29, which was founded by Mark Driscoll until they kicked him

00:33:02.400 out. And I think there were some problems with Mark Driscoll, but just kind of like the SBC thing

00:33:06.720 that we, you know, we recently talked about. I think that with Mark Driscoll, there were other

00:33:10.600 things going on, right? That he's more patriarchal in his view of the dynamics between men and women

00:33:16.180 and the created order and what God's plan is for the home and the church and even the sphere of

00:33:23.060 society at large, you know, women in the military and all these kinds of, and, and

00:33:27.420 Mark Driscoll, again, in his youthful angst and sin, I think there was some real

00:33:32.140 sin, made some statements that, you know, I'm thinking, I would not have said it

00:33:36.420 that way, you know, and I don't think this is just semantics or subjective

00:33:39.820 because there is a lot of subjectivity to gentleness. How do you define

00:33:44.080 gentleness, right? But I think Driscoll went to the point where it's like, no,

00:33:47.300 this was crude language and it's on record. And so there were really some

00:33:52.560 things like that. But my point is Acts 29 pushed him out around the time that his church elders

00:33:58.960 were pushing him out with Mars Hill, with Driscoll. Chandler assumed, you know, had already actually

00:34:03.900 taken over as president of Acts 29. And I was an Acts 29 pastor in California at the time.

00:34:09.340 And this was right around the time when just a couple of years after Driscoll was removed,

00:34:14.160 that's when Eric Mason, who is a very close friend of Matt Chandler and was seated on the

00:34:19.120 international board for Acts 29, appointed by Chandler and the rest of the board came out with

00:34:24.820 his infamous book, Woke Church. And when that happened, I read that book and I started dialoguing

00:34:29.660 with Acts 29 pastors in my area in Southern California and heated debates at the local level

00:34:35.580 and that was happening at the national. And I pulled our church out of Acts 29. That was the

00:34:39.380 end of 2018. And we had some people leave the church and people were upset with me because I

00:34:43.100 was being divisive by making a big deal about critical race theory and saying certain things

00:34:48.460 about Eric Mason and making certain comments, even about Matt Chandler and some of those comments I

00:34:52.340 made publicly. And what I kept falling back on was the Apostle Paul has something to say about

00:34:58.120 when it comes to how we say something, our tone. The Bible does address that. Rebuke your opponents

00:35:06.280 with gentleness, not knowing if God might grant them repentance. So the Bible, it does talk about

00:35:11.340 how we say something, but the priority, the emphasis is given to what we say, not just how

00:35:17.200 we package it, not how we say it, but what we say. And the apostle Paul always indicts primarily

00:35:22.900 as the divisive, quarrelsome, argumentative party, the person not who has less than charitable tone,

00:35:33.540 but the person who introduces error into the church. I've never heard that. I'm going to use

00:35:39.520 that. And so Eric Mason, he's introducing this, what Brody Bakken would have called ethnic

00:35:46.740 Gnosticism, you know, white and black spaces at the Lord's table and this, this weird divisive,

00:35:54.120 he's the one bringing division. And, and so anyway, so with all that being said, I would say

00:35:59.180 Matt Chandler. Yeah. I don't think that he's an expert on, on critical race theory and Kimberly

00:36:04.340 Crenshaw and Ibram X. Kendi or these, no, I don't think that he's probably hasn't read a lot of the

00:36:10.080 literature, at least not deeply, not thoroughly. But he got in with the wrong crap. He's got the 0.98

00:36:16.660 wrong friends. Eric Mason has read this stuff. Leon's Trump, to name somebody else, has read

00:36:22.300 this stuff. And these guys are neo-Marxists. Absolutely. And Chandler has flanked himself.

00:36:29.400 This is one of his iconic lines he used to say about having a plurality of elders and accountability within the church for the lead pastor.

00:36:36.040 He's like, flank yourself with strong men.

00:36:38.360 And sadly, that's precisely what he did.

00:36:40.580 He flanked himself with strong Marxist men.

00:36:44.940 And Acts 29 has suffered greatly for it. 0.79

00:36:48.420 I'm glad to know that.

00:36:49.780 Yeah, because that was my impression was that it was more influence than conviction.

00:36:54.600 Yeah, I think that's what it is.

00:36:56.760 Okay, so this one you may not know.

00:36:59.400 but uh michael horton are you familiar with him i did not know him and so i'm going to be

00:37:04.420 interested to hear what you have to say so i hear a name i don't know i go to some guys i know who

00:37:08.700 are solid i i'm in kind of a signal group with some pastors and um who i know are rock solid

00:37:14.400 and i ask them hey guys i have not heard of this theologian who is this and their perception was

00:37:20.440 that we think he you know they said oh he's very influential theologian uh we think he's pretty

00:37:25.060 solid because i assume they're going why are you asking so um so i didn't know about him but i i

00:37:31.840 am here to report that they told me we think he's solid why have you heard something so gotcha now

00:37:38.740 tell me okay great so yeah so i think michael horton is solid in a lot of ways um he is you

00:37:44.960 know he's my my proximity with michael horton was that i pastored in southern california i was in

00:37:50.540 San Diego for multiple years. And he was right there with the Westminster Escondido Seminary.

00:37:58.700 And so about 40, 45 minutes south, and I was pretty close friends with one of the guys who

00:38:05.420 worked with Michael Horton with Whitehorse Inn. And I think that Michael Horton has contributed

00:38:09.740 much to the body of Christ at large. I think that he is theologically brilliant. He's opposite of

00:38:17.100 Matt Chandler. He is a scholar. He is very informed, very gifted. But Westminster Escondido,

00:38:26.120 so I don't know if you're familiar with John Frame. John Frame wrote a book on apologetic.

00:38:29.300 He's written a ton of books, but he's another Westminster guy, but he has written a critique

00:38:33.760 specifically of the Westminster in Escondido because there's the one in Philadelphia, you

00:38:39.420 know, and so John Frame coming from another neck of the woods within the Presbyterian

00:38:43.920 larger would, is critiquing the Escondido guys, Van Druden and Michael Horton, specifically

00:38:51.800 for their radical, what he would call a radical two kingdom perspective. So I would say that

00:38:57.480 Michael Horton is faithful in many ways, but he would be of the persuasion that if you talked to,

00:39:04.500 if you ever interviewed Mike Horton and talked to him about the culture war,

00:39:08.100 um you you especially um listening to you and reading you you would be frustrated you would 0.66

00:39:14.800 not like what he would have to say so i would put him you know he's one of the percentage guys like

00:39:19.880 like john piper i'd say maybe 30 33 percent in each of the three categories of progressive and

00:39:25.180 pietist and and persevering faithful uh mike horton i would put 50 50 piet yeah 50 50 i'll

00:39:32.500 give him 50 50 but pietist and persevering so i would say he's got great doctrine and you can

00:39:37.360 always expect for him not to apply it to anything that's the problem that's interesting i'll probably

00:39:46.100 look into that a little bit um and that's man that's what we for those of you who are theologians

00:39:52.980 for those of you who are pastors i guess that's what i would go is you need to know how much we're

00:39:57.100 facing this constantly in our schools in our work in our personal relationships i'm like we need to

00:40:03.660 know how to apply it amen yeah and i think it's easy for people who maybe live in this more

00:40:09.360 academic scholarly place to go this is life and death for us out here so right amen um okay here

00:40:16.260 we go russell moore what do you think about old russell moore he will definitely be the most

00:40:22.500 progressive for me on this list um i i think that he in many ways is an operative of the left i

00:40:30.840 um i just see him do things i see the places that you watch him pop up and the arguments that he

00:40:38.060 makes seemed very intended to move um you take a conservative denomination like the sbc and he

00:40:46.880 seemed very intent on moving it to the left and aligning it with a new set of convictions

00:40:52.500 yeah um yeah so and but I will say this about Russell Moore the more I he's popped up in so

00:41:00.520 many stories is I feel that he's a man driven a lot by personal grievance um so I it's almost

00:41:09.080 like there needs to be a fourth category for him that I he just seems to do a lot of things that

00:41:15.100 are aimed at sort of settling scores. I don't quite know how else to put it, but it's a lot

00:41:23.440 of intrigue. It's a lot of machinations behind the scenes that I see with him. And, you know,

00:41:31.420 obviously, like I said, his platform seems to be to move it left, but yeah, I just see a lot of

00:41:37.580 personal with him. Gotcha. So in terms of what he's doing, he wants to move evangelicalism

00:41:43.580 in a liberal direction but in terms of why part of it might be because he's an ideologue

00:41:49.100 which i think he is for the record actual conviction but also part of it seems to be

00:41:53.800 personal and emotional is what yes yes i would say that and and maybe the personal and emotional

00:41:59.240 grew out of the friction that came from trying to i think so yeah yeah that's helpful great i i

00:42:06.880 agree with your assessment all right here's the next one uh good old j mac john mccarthur

00:42:11.220 i love john mccarthur so i'm i'm no never made any secret of that and what's funny is

00:42:18.460 he seems to i and i don't know i don't want to put words in his mouth by any means but

00:42:23.060 he seems to have evolved a little bit and i would love to ask him about it and maybe i'll see if i

00:42:29.840 you know one of these days can get an interview on this topic because i remember when i first

00:42:34.900 became a Christian, um, you know, reading some sermons of his. And I, you know, whenever I had

00:42:41.640 a question, I go, I wonder what John MacArthur thinks of that. And somehow I came across

00:42:44.980 his argument that the American revolution was not biblical. And that just blew my mind,

00:42:52.620 you know, because I went, I mean, you know, that's sort of sacrosanct, the revolution as an

00:42:58.760 American. And so I didn't, even then I didn't, I never really settled on. I don't know if I agree

00:43:02.920 with him but he definitely forced me to rethink it and he's always I know that he wouldn't sign

00:43:08.140 um I forget which statement it was but it was the statement regarding marriage I think or no

00:43:13.780 was it abortion there was some political statement this was actually before I became a Christian but

00:43:18.840 I remember hearing about it that there was a statement he would not sign because it involved

00:43:22.980 Chuck Colson because it was political and he did not want to take that stand um and so it's funny

00:43:29.820 to me now to watch people sort of accuse him of being this, you know, firebrand for conservative

00:43:36.360 politics. Yeah. And I don't think that's what he is at all. So, um, uh, yeah, I, I mean,

00:43:43.800 I find him very faithful. I, I find him adjusting to the time. I see someone who is saying, okay,

00:43:50.340 we now live to use Aaron Wren's kind of famous three worlds. We are now in the negative. We

00:43:55.780 to be in sort of positive world where the culture liked christianity then it was neutral to

00:44:00.660 christianity and now it's negative to christianity and so what i feel like i see with him is someone

00:44:06.100 who is responding to living in the negative world the principles are the same but he's going you

00:44:11.620 are encroaching on the rights of the church now so because you're encroaching on the rights of

00:44:15.380 the church we now speak you do not hold dominion over this that's what i see yep i agree with your

00:44:23.060 assessment. I would put him 70, 80% in the persevering faithful category, 52, 53 years of

00:44:31.640 faithful ministry in many regards. But if you didn't say it, I was going to say it. His stance

00:44:36.800 on the revolution and just America's existence, and well, it was actually sinful and wrong because

00:44:42.760 they weren't submitting to the civil magistrate in England. I would much more adhere to guys like

00:44:47.320 John Knox, the Scottish reformer and Protestant resistant theory, the doctrine of the lesser

00:44:52.240 magistrate and actually being able to, my reading of Romans 13 would be, this doesn't tell us to

00:44:59.340 submit unconditionally to civil magistrates. The Bible is filled with examples of people who don't

00:45:04.580 obey those in positions of civil authority because what they're doing is wrong, right? The midwives 1.00

00:45:11.360 disobeyed Pharaoh because they feared God. Daniel disobeys the king, Shadrach, Meshach, 0.95

00:45:17.640 and Abednego, disobey the king. You have the apostles. You see for yourself, is it right for

00:45:23.180 us to obey men rather than obey God when it comes to preaching the gospel? And so John MacArthur,

00:45:27.540 I think he has the right position now. I don't think he did. I think that's a new development.

00:45:33.120 I think he has the right position now. But what I want to see is him broaden his application.

00:45:38.580 So I think he has the right position of obedience to God. John Knox is one of the guys that this

00:45:44.500 is attributed to, nobody's quite sure, but the expression of obedience to God or resistance to

00:45:50.180 tyranny is obedience to God. And I think John MacArthur would now adhere to that, but in a more

00:45:56.160 narrow context. When the civil magistrate comes to the front door of the church with its tyranny,

00:46:02.760 we obey God. And I would love to see him expand that and say, even if they're not coming to shut

00:46:09.760 down my church, if they're still tyrannizing the public and tyrannizing Christians, maybe not in

00:46:16.060 the context of the church, but in the context of their families or in the context of schools or in 0.55

00:46:20.000 the context of, then we have an obligation to resist Caesar when Caesar is being insubordinate

00:46:27.180 to God. And so, yeah, I think I agree with you. I think that very, very faithful. I'm incredibly

00:46:33.460 thankful for John MacArthur, but it does seem like a recent development because even his first

00:46:37.940 response. People forget this, but his first response to COVID was they came out and they

00:46:42.360 said, we're going to meet, you know, and then the ninth, I think it was the ninth district court

00:46:46.860 ruled against it. And then he immediately put out an email that said, they're the law of the land.

00:46:53.220 And sadly, you know, we know that they're liberal and they're progressive and they're corrupt and

00:46:56.880 this and that, but they are the law of the land and God has sovereignly appointed them as the

00:47:00.680 highest civil magistrate in our land, which I would disagree. I would say the constitution is

00:47:03.740 above them, and above that is the scripture, but this is what they said, and so we're canceling

00:47:08.300 our meeting, and then it was two weeks later that he came out, Christ, not Caesar, is head of the

00:47:12.440 church, and when you put those two things, those two statements side by side, it's like a direct

00:47:17.820 contradiction, so it's like, no, he changed his mind. He did. He didn't actually, he never said

00:47:22.680 like, so I was wrong, the words that I don't think I've ever heard John MacArthur say, but he, but

00:47:27.500 the good news is, he changed his mind. Yeah, yeah, and that seems clear, and I do think,

00:47:32.500 I give, I give everybody a lot of grace for the early COVID because it was so unprecedented and

00:47:38.400 we didn't know what was happening. So I, I, and the guys who shut down, it was when I started

00:47:42.760 to string out that I'm like, if you're not resisting the shutdown now, if you don't see

00:47:47.060 which way the wind is blowing, then, you know, my, my grace is ending now for you to start.

00:47:51.280 I agree. Okay. Two more. R.C. Sproul. What do you think about R.C. Sproul?

00:47:55.840 Oh, I love R.C. Sproul. So, um, yeah, I, which is, I wish he was here so that, um,

00:48:02.500 We could talk about how he is handling these days because, you know, he was always so very faithful, so persevering, so not suffering of fools and foolish arguments that I wish he was here.

00:48:14.900 And it would be funny to go all of these people who, you know, you sort of see on the more progressive side, oh, we love R.C. 0.71

00:48:22.240 I'm like, I wonder if you would love him if he were here speaking to you about these issues right now.

00:48:27.420 Amen.

00:48:28.060 I completely agree.

00:48:29.320 And I think R.C. Sproul would have been right there with John MacArthur.

00:48:31.720 And I personally think, and I think John MacArthur, you're right, like grace in the beginning, none of us knew what was happening.

00:48:36.740 We thought we were all going to die.

00:48:37.760 The Imperial College model, 2.2 million dead by October.

00:48:40.700 And so there needs to be some grace for the beginning.

00:48:43.700 I think R.C. Sproul would have been right there with John MacArthur.

00:48:46.460 And I think that he might have beat John MacArthur to the punch.

00:48:49.560 And one of the reasons why is because MacArthur coming from more of a Baptist position, whereas Sproul coming from more of a Presbyterian.

00:48:56.780 I think Sproul has, in his DNA, had a little bit more of those Scottish reformers and that

00:49:02.720 Protestant resistance theory, and in terms of their eschatology, John MacArthur is obedient.

00:49:11.040 He is obedient, but he sees it as the will of God. He's more dispensational pre-millennial,

00:49:16.960 leaky dispensational in his defense is what he would say, but dispensational pre-millennial.

00:49:21.780 So he believes that in a nutshell, Christ is going to return rather soon.

00:49:26.780 and, uh, and things are going to get worse until he does. Whereas Sproul, um, is, you know, was,

00:49:34.300 and I would say is, but is post-millennial. And that's, that's where I would be at. And so Sproul

00:49:38.760 saw it as like, okay, there, there are, it's not, not like this perfect gradual improvement that

00:49:43.200 just like a stock chart, there are dips and spikes along the way, but the trend is upwards,

00:49:47.600 right? When you, and I think part of it is just pan out. When you look at, at one nation, America

00:49:51.580 in the last 50 years, oh, well, it feels like things are getting worse. Okay. The whole world

00:49:55.300 in the last 2,000 years? Do we have more Christians since the time of Jesus or less? Do we have,

00:50:00.360 you know, and it's like, well, the Third Reich, Doug Wilson says it like, he's like,

00:50:03.640 the Third Reich was bad, but it can be measured in a matter of months. There has never been

00:50:07.740 anything like Babylon, Assyria, the Persians, you know what I mean? It's just like, there were some, 1.00

00:50:14.220 the whole known world was just terrorized by these empires. And yes, we've had some of that

00:50:19.960 on this side of Christ in the last 2,000 years.

00:50:23.240 But I think the trend is upward

00:50:24.820 and Sproul thought that too.

00:50:26.460 And I think in that victorious, optimistic eschatology,

00:50:31.020 I think that that would have put the wind in his sails

00:50:34.240 that Sproul would have done the same things as MacArthur

00:50:36.080 and I think maybe even stronger.

00:50:38.540 So, all right, last one for you.

00:50:40.340 Are you familiar?

00:50:41.360 If you're not, you need to check him out.

00:50:42.940 He's one of my favorite guys,

00:50:43.860 but are you familiar with Doug Wilson?

00:50:45.880 I am.

00:50:46.860 And I will say that I'm fairly recently

00:50:49.060 And maybe the last year or two really familiar with Doug Wilson.

00:50:53.240 And just because, you know, the perspective I bring, again, is more reporterly and personal than logical.

00:51:01.920 I can't remember how I first came about him.

00:51:05.360 But what I know is this, is he wrote something and I went, well, that's very sensible in this.

00:51:10.480 It was some, it might have been racial, it might have been, I don't remember.

00:51:13.300 But he wrote something and I went, that is, one, it's courageous.

00:51:15.740 And two, it's extremely sensible and well said.

00:51:19.060 And I started quoting him and immediately posted on social media, my DMs lit up with, hey, Megan, you don't know who you're referencing.

00:51:29.220 You need to stop it.

00:51:30.540 Well, if you know me, you know that all I am now is more curious about, well, who is Doug Wilson?

00:51:35.720 And he's warning me off of him.

00:51:38.240 And I started reading him more and more.

00:51:40.160 I started reading the blog in May blog.

00:51:42.260 I watched an interview he did with Aaron Wren, who I mentioned a little bit ago, the masculinist, who puts out this.

00:51:47.340 right yeah and all of it very interesting to me and um i really liked what he was saying i was

00:51:52.980 really fascinated by his teaching um and so i've just continued to read him and i definitely put

00:51:59.060 him in the faithful category even because i don't know everything doug wilson has ever written i

00:52:03.900 read through the controversies and i felt like the things that people were warning me off of

00:52:07.560 he addressed to my satisfaction i agree um but the reason he's faithful to me as i go

00:52:13.280 he seems to me like someone who has literally thrown it to the wind and gone i don't care

00:52:23.240 what the response is i don't care what damage you think my reputation takes i don't care if

00:52:28.880 you're going to push me off into the fringe and say you are now a fringe figure because he

00:52:34.320 my understanding this was all kind of before my time that he used to be considered quite mainstream

00:52:38.800 right now they have fringified him and i go his his courage and saying this is what i think is

00:52:46.840 true this is what i believe is biblical his total willingness to fly in the face of what we're told

00:52:53.700 we must say and must think every time some controversy within the church comes up

00:52:58.000 makes him at the very least give him the the benefit of the doubt that he is being faithful

00:53:05.220 and consider him openly because he's sure not looking to win popularity prizes.

00:53:10.200 Amen.

00:53:10.800 That's great.

00:53:11.420 I completely agree with your assessment.

00:53:12.980 Well done.

00:53:13.420 I have to give you credit for if you started listening to Doug Wilson and started quoting

00:53:17.840 him, it does not shock me at all that you were DMed probably a couple of hundred times

00:53:23.020 and for you to get that kind of feedback about Doug Wilson and to actually still investigate,

00:53:30.540 well, I guess it makes sense because you're a reporter, but to investigate it yourself

00:53:33.720 you know, and to dig in and say, no, I still like them. Good for you. Cause I think a lot of people

00:53:38.380 have been, you know, dissuaded from, from the whole Moscow, Idaho group, Doug Wilson, Christ

00:53:44.140 Church and blog and may blog and Canon press. And, and yeah, I think they just, they just bought the

00:53:50.280 negative press and you're right. So he used to, you know, Ligonier conferences, you can, you know,

00:53:54.020 you can watch old videos of him sitting on a panel with R.C. Sproul and, and eventually was

00:53:59.000 blacklisted. And there's a lot of reasons, you know, that people would cite for why federal

00:54:02.700 vision, which, you know, nobody knows what federal vision is. And so we don't have time to go into that one out. And I'm sorry, I couldn't. So I will, I will say, I don't know what happened with that controversy, because I don't understand. Right. But so there's the federal vision controversy. And then there's some in house controversies with this church and different things like that. And same as you know, with the SBC or with John MacArthur recently, you know, the different alleged scandals or cover ups or this or that. But I had the same sense as you, I feel like when you when you look at his responses to these things, they are reasonable.

00:54:32.700 and satisfactory responses. So not a perfect man with a perfect ministry. Nobody has that.

00:54:38.080 But it seems like, you know, whatever they try to throw at him, he has a reasonable and sufficient

00:54:44.760 satisfactory response, defense for. But like you said, he was fringe, but it's not that he's not

00:54:54.580 afraid of it. He's not afraid of it because it's already happened. He was blacklisted a long time

00:54:59.100 ago and has nothing to lose. And so he has just been able with an incredible fervor and boldness

00:55:08.560 to speak to certain issues because nobody's got anything on Doug. I mean, there's nothing else.

00:55:15.000 He's been blasted from every single side. The only conferences he really speaks at are his own,

00:55:20.140 and everything's his own platform. They've got their Canon Plus app and all these kind of things,

00:55:24.640 And over 40 years, I mean, they really, you talk about all of Christ for all of life,

00:55:28.700 that comes from him.

00:55:29.640 That's his little, you know, I mean, he's gotten it from obviously older theologians,

00:55:34.040 dead theologians.

00:55:35.120 I like dead guys because they can't disappoint.

00:55:36.900 But, you know, but he's really applied that in his town for 40 years.

00:55:41.520 And, you know, my wife and I got the opportunity to go and spend time with him and his family

00:55:45.600 in Moscow.

00:55:46.040 And it's just like the way that they're winning a whole town, you know, and it makes me think

00:55:50.220 of John Calvin.

00:55:50.880 And few, I said this on Twitter the other day, but few Christians can name John Calvin's church, but they can name his town, Geneva.

00:55:58.820 And same with Doug Wilson.

00:56:00.500 There are more people who know the name of the town that he's in than the name of the church that he pastors.

00:56:04.760 We need that kind of mindset and goal when it comes to applying theology to all of life.

00:56:14.460 That we're not just planting churches.

00:56:17.240 We're winning towns to Christ.

00:56:19.520 We are infiltrating every aspect of human society and the culture because neutrality is a myth.

00:56:27.340 And we have learned that the hard way, especially these last couple of years.

00:56:31.440 So I like Doug.

00:56:32.200 I'm glad to hear that you like him too.

00:56:33.720 Any final thoughts for us, Megan?

00:56:36.300 No, just, you know, maybe just that since we ended on Wilson, just that I'm realizing that that maybe is the biggest for me.

00:56:45.100 And I don't know, for other Christians working in the public space that we have to keep in

00:56:50.120 mind that that fear is there and it gets to me that, oh, did I go too far?

00:56:54.220 Oh, did I say something?

00:56:55.120 And then I have to go, you know what, what I need to do is go back to my Bible study

00:56:58.920 and go, is what I'm saying true?

00:57:00.640 And if it is, then fine, make me fringe or fine, say, you know, my views aren't respectable.

00:57:07.240 That's fine.

00:57:07.920 But I'm going to continue to pursue them in the light of scripture.

00:57:11.840 So, you know, not my own wild notions, but going, okay, Lord, because I've been praying

00:57:16.360 that prayer a lot in the last couple of years going, if I am wrong, Lord, show me, you know,

00:57:22.640 I'm going to read these messages.

00:57:23.980 I'm going to, you know, I'm going to read my Bible.

00:57:26.040 I'm going to listen to messages.

00:57:26.900 I'm going to do this study.

00:57:27.900 If I'm wrong, show me.

00:57:29.360 If he's showing you that I'm not wrong, then I'm not going to be quiet about it.

00:57:34.000 I'm not going to be ashamed of these ideas and views.

00:57:37.340 Amen.

00:57:37.460 Amen. Well, Megan Basham, I am incredible, incredibly grateful for your ministry and the way that the Lord's used you just personally, even in my life, just your reporting, the morning wire and hearing you.

00:57:48.820 I feel like you're probably one of the, it feels like you're on almost every episode, right?

00:57:53.060 They have like a team of people. Are you, you seem like the person who's called in.

00:57:56.580 I mean, several times a week. It depends on what else I've got going on. Some, some weeks. Yeah. I'm on like almost every day and other weeks.

00:58:02.460 Yeah. Like this week I wasn't on very much because of all the terror on the prairie promotion.

00:58:08.420 Right. Well, anyways, all that being said, you do a great job. And I'm just so grateful as somebody

00:58:13.860 who is more of that, like I said earlier, that Kuyperian mindset, you know, not one square inch,

00:58:18.240 you know, that Christ doesn't cry out. Mine. I want to see a God fearing, courageous Christians,

00:58:24.940 not just on staff at churches, but in the public sphere. And so to know that we've got somebody

00:58:32.580 who fears the Lord Jesus Christ and wants to see him, not just Jesus meek and mild,

00:58:37.940 but Jesus who is also triumphant and ruling and reigning King, King Jesus. And to see somebody

00:58:45.280 like that, that we've got somebody like that with the daily wire, you know, who's pushing the King

00:58:50.620 rights of Jesus. I just want to say thank you for what you're doing. So thanks for coming on the

00:58:55.120 show. Thanks for what you're doing. Absolutely. And thank you. Thank you for having me. And

00:58:59.760 I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk about all this. Thanks so much for listening. But real

00:59:05.360 quick, before you go, do us a small favor, take a moment and leave us a five-star review if you

00:59:11.080 enjoyed the show. This is undoubtedly the best way that you can help us get this biblically

00:59:16.560 faithful content to as many people as possible. Thanks so much.

00:59:20.620 You

The NXR Podcast - June 28, 2022

THEOLOGY APPLIED - The New Fault Lines ｜ Which Side Are They On？

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