The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The True History Of Thanksgiving & The Gay GOP Senators Who Dishonor It

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00:00:18.000 Hi, and welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host,

00:00:21.840 Pastor Joel Webman with Right Response Ministries. In this episode, I'm very

00:00:25.320 privileged to have Steve Days from the Steve Days Show on the Blaze Network.

00:00:30.360 He's joining us now for the second time.

00:00:32.540 We're talking about his Thanksgiving children's book that's coming out.

00:00:35.880 And then we also talk about midterm elections.

00:00:37.760 We talk about the revival that's desperately needed in America.

00:00:41.540 We talk about a little bit about Trump, all the whole nine yards.

00:00:44.360 So you guys are going to really be in for a treat.

00:00:47.020 Tune in now.

00:00:47.700 Houston, we have a problem.

00:00:49.020 I repeat, we have a problem.

00:00:50.540 Our conference is about to sell out.

00:00:52.800 I mean, about to sell out.

00:00:54.580 We probably have about 75 to 100 seats left.

00:00:58.600 Our venue holds about 525 to 550 seats, and we currently have 450 people who are registered

00:01:05.980 for this conference.

00:01:06.900 The excitement is tangible.

00:01:09.160 A lot of people registered because they wanted to hit the early bird rate.

00:01:12.180 We're now at our normal rate, $130 for an adult, $50 for a kid who's 11 to 17 years

00:01:18.320 old, and kids 10 and under get in free.

00:01:20.920 You can bring the whole family, but the problem is not that we're going to raise the rate

00:01:24.560 again.

00:01:24.860 the problem is we're going to run out of tickets and we're going to run out pretty fast. Again,

00:01:29.360 we've got about a hundred seats or less, 450 people, six months out are already registered

00:01:35.540 for this conference. We don't want you to miss it. So to ensure that you get to make it to this

00:01:40.560 conference, you need to register not a month from now, not a week from now, not tomorrow,

00:01:45.900 but today you want to be there for the theonomy and post-millennialism conference, May 5th,

00:01:51.620 6th and 7th, with James White, Joe Boot, Gary DeMar, Dale Partridge, and yours truly, Joel

00:01:58.260 Webin. Go to RightResponseConference.com. Again, that's RightResponseConference.com.

00:02:04.580 It will sell out very soon.

00:02:08.060 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:02:17.520 All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host,

00:02:20.680 Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries, and I'm privileged to be joined once more by

00:02:25.160 Steve Dace from the Steve Dace Show on the Blaze Network. Steve, thanks for joining me on the show.

00:02:31.720 You bet, man. Good to see you. How are you?

00:02:33.520 I'm doing well. How are you?

00:02:35.660 I could be a little better and a lot worse. I know this in the Midwest, it decided to be

00:02:39.520 January 16th and not ready for it. My winner at least needs to take me out on a date before

00:02:45.420 Yeah. Yeah. So I'm in Texas and it's a 50 something. And that's usually about as cold 0.99

00:02:52.980 as it gets. If it gets any colder than a Ted Cruz goes to the Bahamas or where was it?

00:03:00.560 I'm fogging up here. Right. Yeah. So anyways, hopefully we don't have a, you know, big snow

00:03:05.440 apocalypse again, but I, yeah, I wanted to have you on the show. I wanted to talk about your

00:03:09.120 children's book. Can you tell our listeners the name of the children's book and why you wrote it?

00:03:13.080 Sure. I wrote it for money. Just kidding. It's called Why Thanksgiving? The Pilgrims started

00:03:22.300 Thanksgiving for the same reason they came to America, because they love God. And two weeks

00:03:28.160 ago, Publishers Weekly said the first week that we were out, we were the number one bestselling

00:03:32.240 nonfiction children's book in the country. Wow. So that was pretty cool. And the idea for it

00:03:39.560 came from my publisher, Post Hill Press, came to me about a year, well over a year ago,

00:03:45.180 and asked me about the idea. And I'm like, hasn't this been done like a million times,

00:03:52.060 like Rush had his Rush Revere books that were so successful? And I'm like, I mean,

00:03:56.720 this seems like a market that's kind of been tread, right? That, you know, sort of conservative or,

00:04:01.900 you know Judeo-Christian you know views of history for children and and so I said I'll tell you what 0.69

00:04:10.120 I'll think about it if we can do America's Christian heritage instead yeah and I was 0.75

00:04:16.840 surprised that they instantly said yes so now they called my bluff and I got to come up with you know

00:04:21.300 okay then what will the book be about and you know to me I guess I just decided that it's sort of like

00:04:26.560 sort of like when people ask you when does life begin when everything else begins at the beginning

00:04:30.300 Things can only begin at the beginning.

00:04:32.420 That's when everything begins is at the beginning, right?

00:04:34.420 So what's the beginning of America's Christian heritage?

00:04:37.800 It's the pilgrims in Plymouth Rock and that story.

00:04:41.260 And of course, we connect the gospel into this because that was the driving force of their story.

00:04:46.860 And a lot of this is history that if you're, you know, I'm 49 now.

00:04:50.100 If you're my age or older, you remember growing up and watching the Snoopy, the Peanuts Thanksgiving special.

00:04:56.700 And they still play that today.

00:04:58.340 But when we were growing up, it was an hour long. And the second half hour was Charles Schultz telling the history of the pilgrims, which, you know, is the Puritans.

00:05:08.020 And we don't tell that history anymore on network TV. And so I wanted to bring that history back.

00:05:13.900 You know, the providential nature of their journey. I mean, they travel thousands of miles across the channel.

00:05:21.520 They make one stop that they don't think is inhabitable. They go to another place.

00:05:27.200 So what are the odds that you stopped one time and would run into an indigenous person who knows your language and knows about Christianity and the Bible because Christians freed him from slavery and his name was Squanto? 0.74

00:05:41.180 Those odds are astronomical, let alone that you would run into that person after you went to a place you never even intended to go to originally.

00:05:48.860 That was the second stop you made. I mean, you can just see the divine hand of providence on this journey.

00:05:55.960 You know, we're talking barely 100 people made this journey.

00:05:58.380 Almost half of them died the first couple of years that they were here.

00:06:02.280 One of them because of the harshness of winter and they experimented with socialism.

00:06:05.600 I left that part out of the book for five-year-olds.

00:06:08.080 Okay.

00:06:09.080 But I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

00:06:12.260 It's one of the hardest things I've ever written.

00:06:14.380 You know, when I normally write a book, we have like a round maybe of edits, two at the

00:06:18.320 most.

00:06:19.120 We did about eight rounds of edits on this for a book that might be 3,000 words total.

00:06:23.760 it was just so hard for me to wrap my mind around distilling it down, you know, to four and five

00:06:29.420 year olds. But I'm very, very pleased with how it turned out. I've gotten a ton of great reaction.

00:06:34.560 And people have sent me pictures of their kids reading it, them reading it to their kids.

00:06:39.540 And then I didn't know this was going to happen, but there's been a subversive nature to this.

00:06:43.720 People are telling me about their kids are reading it and taking it to school because

00:06:46.860 the kids haven't been worked over yet. They don't know. They earnestly just think,

00:06:51.400 hey, it's a great book about American history and it's really, the artwork is pretty and the story

00:06:55.940 is good. So let me take it to my government school and show my classmates. And so I had no idea that

00:07:01.800 I was going to create contraband for America's government school system, but very, very pleased

00:07:08.320 and honored with how the project has turned out. And now my publisher's like, well, when are we

00:07:12.000 doing the next one? So I got to come up with what that is. We have a successful pilot. This might

00:07:16.500 now be a series so that's again it's called why thanksgiving the pilgrims started thanksgiving for

00:07:22.060 the same reason they came to america because they loved god that's cool so that's that's actually the

00:07:26.660 full title that's the full title yes that's cool that's a very puritan title by the way when the

00:07:31.780 title is almost like a whole chapter you know then you know that you're in that puritan stream

00:07:36.880 so very puritanical i left no debates i preemptively answered all follow-up questions

00:07:42.560 as calvin would in his sermons right yeah and then no one no one left with any dangling participles

00:07:47.600 if you were wondering if it was about you it's about you yes yeah that's great um yeah i think

00:07:53.120 that's so important i think about you know it seems like there's been such for and this isn't

00:07:57.060 new but for decades there's been such um such an organized you know effort to rewrite america's

00:08:04.320 history um because it's it's i mean i get discouraged as a christian i know you get

00:08:09.040 discouraged. We just had the midterms and the wave didn't materialize. It wasn't as bad as it

00:08:13.940 could have been. There's still some things to be hopeful about. But there was a bit of a trickle

00:08:18.820 and there's a million reasons why. Maybe it's, for one, we've made voting too easy. Maybe rigging

00:08:23.560 or something in Arizona, I don't know. But part of it is because people, I keep thinking about

00:08:28.180 John chapter three, right? That Jesus, he's the light of the world. He came into the world,

00:08:31.860 but men love the darkness. And that's not to say the Republican party is rainbows and just

00:08:37.920 christ-exalting oh it's rainbows biblical well yeah yeah you're right you're right yeah you're

00:08:44.340 right it's rainbows today i mean we had a slew of republican senators essentially go do the full

00:08:51.040 sodom right shake their fist at god and help the democrats use the federal government to declare

00:08:57.360 open lawfare upon the church so right it is it is rainbows my friend you were describing you're

00:09:05.380 Yeah, that's not what I meant, but you're absolutely right. But my point is to say that the Republican Party is by no means, and what you just pointed out just proves the point even more, it's by no means synonymous with the scripture. But as you and I have talked before, I think it's important for people to see that our two parties are wicked, but they're not equally wicked.

00:09:22.620 And when you have one party that their platform essentially is you can have your sin, you know, and the other part party is you can have some of your sin, you know, and so but like you can have your sin.

00:09:34.780 So Jesus came into the world as light, but men love the darkness, right?

00:09:37.900 Like cockroaches, you turn on the light, they scatter under.

00:09:40.400 And I feel like there's just so much of what we've seen and been, you know, just disappointed by in this last week with the midterm election, all these kinds of things.

00:09:48.360 Sometimes it feels impossible that our nation would actually exalt Christ again.

00:09:52.620 But the key word is that last word that I said, knowing our history, to know that what

00:09:58.460 we're striving towards is something that actually has occurred in this land before, that it

00:10:03.940 wasn't just a bunch of deists, that there were actually, George Washington, I believe,

00:10:07.800 by looking at first sources that he would qualify as an evangelical Christian and knowing

00:10:13.680 that these things have happened before gives you a sense of hope that they can happen again. 0.62

00:10:17.860 Any thoughts on that?

00:10:19.420 I agree.

00:10:19.780 But we also have to remember that sometimes when they happen again, they don't happen the way that we think.

00:10:24.820 Yeah, that's true.

00:10:26.220 And when you tie this into the story of the pilgrims, and Joel, just to show you just how Romans one of a nation we are, how much of, we're not even rebellious now.

00:10:36.880 We're ingrates, okay?

00:10:39.160 We're deniers of our heritage, deniers of our legacy.

00:10:42.480 We reject it.

00:10:43.500 We're not like rebelling against it.

00:10:45.340 Let's test the boundaries here and go through an extended pubescence and have the season of sowing our wild oats before we have a family and come back to reality.

00:10:57.040 You're dealing with a country right now where the average 25-year-old male is more likely to be living at home with a parent than in another home with a woman and a child. 0.75

00:11:03.960 Right.

00:11:04.280 We have the lowest marriage rates and birth rates since we started keeping these stats in the 19th century.

00:11:09.120 We are a nation of ingrates to the point that we have taken the term puritanical, and it is a pejorative. 0.94

00:11:16.580 Right.

00:11:16.900 We use this to slam things now.

00:11:19.020 And this even, forget the left, I hear this constantly on the right.

00:11:22.400 Oh, yeah.

00:11:22.940 We take the people, our forefathers, without which this thing called America would never have existed.

00:11:30.680 We take their lineage and legacy, and we essentially use it as a put down.

00:11:36.280 We are ingrates.

00:11:36.960 And if you look at the history of the Puritans, remember what they were rebelling against. They weren't fleeing Islamic hordes in Asia Minor, future modern day Turkey, you know, invading the seven churches of that area.

00:11:53.360 They weren't fading, they weren't evading the Islamic hordes in Lebanon, one of the original Christian colonies in the first couple of centuries. 0.87

00:12:05.180 This wasn't, let's get it, you know, the Druids have come over the wall. 0.93

00:12:09.040 The Visigoths have come over the wall. 1.00

00:12:10.640 The barbarians are at the gate. 0.99

00:12:12.600 They were fleeing their own countrymen. 0.89

00:12:15.860 They were fleeing their own church.

00:12:17.880 You said, no, you could not teach and preach the Bible.

00:12:20.080 You could not teach it without a license.

00:12:21.320 You could not teach and preach it.

00:12:23.360 That's what put John Bunyan in prison when he wrote Pilgrim's Progress.

00:12:27.020 They refused to abide by the laws that said you needed state permission on what you could and could not preach.

00:12:33.140 These were people who spoke their language.

00:12:35.420 They shared customs.

00:12:36.820 They shared communities, right?

00:12:39.040 I mean, that's what they had to flee.

00:12:42.020 And I think that maybe what we have been blessed to be able to forget in America.

00:12:47.560 When Jesus said, I do not think I came to bring peace, but a sword.

00:12:50.960 mother against daughter, father against son, brother against brother, the truth of who I am

00:12:56.460 and what I represent and the kingdom that I'm establishing will divide humanity to a molecular,

00:13:04.360 granular level. We are the first kingdom in Christendom that's not really had to

00:13:10.580 truly understand or experience that. And we are a kingdom that was founded or at least inspired

00:13:20.960 by christian teaching christian orthodoxy and so we can all debate the ink like you mentioned

00:13:30.380 george washington you know and and you know thomas jefferson famously cut all the miracles

00:13:35.440 out of his bible now why did he do that did he do that as a statement of heterodoxy did he do that

00:13:40.800 to make i mean there's we can debate the individual links and extent of each one of

00:13:45.880 these men's faith and adherence to it. What you cannot debate is that the founding of this country

00:13:53.380 was at least marinated in the scriptures, at least marinated in it. And so we're the first

00:14:00.520 people in the history of Christianity. From the time the religion was founded, originally this

00:14:06.500 was a uniquely Jewish argument. Jewish families divided. Is this Yeshua of Nazareth? Is he Messiah

00:14:12.900 or not right go into the pagan the gentile uncircumcised countries you're you're on the 1.00

00:14:20.780 you're on you're in the outskirts of a civilization in in all of those places you're the outsider 0.84

00:14:26.640 this is the first time that we're the epicenter this is the this is the first time that culture

00:14:33.420 emanates from the inside out of our belief system on a on a mass scale right and and so this is

00:14:40.920 going to be very new to us. And I go to Hebrews when the writer talks about the large cloud of

00:14:46.400 witnesses that are cheering us on, rooting us on for us to finish our race. For the saints that

00:14:53.180 have come before us, this is nothing new. They're probably wondering, how did you guys let this get

00:14:59.580 away with this for so long? Because they constantly lived on the defensive, constantly. And so we're

00:15:07.880 going to be the first generation of Christians in 2,000 years that have seen a cultural birthright

00:15:14.200 hijacked and taken away from them. No previous era of Christianity prior to the founding of this

00:15:20.420 republic knew what a Christian heritage or birthright was. Such a thing was just foreign 1.00

00:15:28.940 to their thinking. And so it's going to be, it's not new for Christianity what's going down in a

00:15:34.560 post-Christian America, but it's going to be new for us. Right. I completely agree. New for this 0.51

00:15:39.540 generation, not new for, you know, the full gamut of church history. And you're absolutely right.

00:15:43.160 I mean, whether it be King Alfred, you know, in England's legacy that the Lord used in

00:15:47.640 extraordinary ways, it still wasn't, it wasn't the origin. It wasn't from the beginning. This

00:15:52.340 is one of the only places where from the beginning, there was a covenant between the nation

00:15:56.180 and God. And, you know, people always, people have such a problem, right? So people are okay

00:16:00.980 with saying Christian individuals. And then some guys will go a little further and say, okay,

00:16:05.300 we could call this a Christian church, but you can't have a Christian family unless all your

00:16:10.360 kids are regenerate and baptized. You can't have a Christian nation, right? You can't have a 0.99

00:16:15.420 Christian this, you can't. And it's like, okay, when we say a Christian nation, we say a Christian 1.00

00:16:19.580 this or that, we're not saying each and every individual person in it is born again. I can't 0.92

00:16:24.780 even say that about my church as a pastor, you know, and that's not just, that's not because

00:16:28.240 i'm a paedo baptist which i'm most of my friends are um i do you know i'm credo baptist 1689 you

00:16:34.780 know particular baptist reformed baptist so i believe in in regenerate church membership i do

00:16:39.520 the best of my ability but i have no doubt i've baptized plenty of people that um that weren't

00:16:44.580 actually saved you know that that are you know are going to wind up in hell hell and so i can't

00:16:48.640 even you know if that's the standard each person who belongs to this organization must be regenerate

00:16:52.720 in order for it to be a christian thing and and people are having problems with this but the

00:16:56.160 bottom line is that God is a covenantal God. He works in the framework, in the context of

00:17:01.580 covenants. And I do believe, of course, there's nothing else like the old covenant that God

00:17:07.680 established with Israel. And for me, I'm a covenant theologian guy, not a dispensationalist.

00:17:12.300 So I would say that the only equivalent of that and even greater eschaton than that is the church.

00:17:18.520 So the church is the new Israel, not America. But I do believe that other nations outside of

00:17:23.820 ethnic israel even under this new covenant dispensation to use that word um can be christian

00:17:30.000 and make covenants with god i believe that the founders made a covenant with the triune god

00:17:35.420 and that's why this nation was blessed and that doesn't mean that everyone was a christian but

00:17:40.320 but it was a christian nation and i i would say that covenant still stands that we're actually

00:17:44.980 still in covenant with god but we're currently an apostatizing christian nation under god's

00:17:50.560 judgment. What do you think about that? The language that is used in the Declaration of

00:17:55.280 Independence, for example, where they openly ask and invoke for God to judge the rectitude of their

00:18:02.800 actions. In other words, judge our motivations. If we have not rightly divided the teaching of

00:18:12.460 your word, that if this is in violation of Romans 13, if it is wrong in all circumstances to revolt

00:18:19.500 against a government, regardless of how godless, oppressive, and tyrannical it is. Don't let us be

00:18:26.660 successful. Don't judge the rectitude of our actions. Judge our motivations. That's what that

00:18:30.620 word means. Don't let us set a terrible precedent. And even if we are right, even if we are right,

00:18:36.620 Joel, they said we couldn't possibly succeed against the most powerful empire in the world

00:18:40.940 without a, quote, firm reliance on divine providence. So there is, at the very least,

00:18:48.200 indirect invoking of covenantal language there. At the very least, they were attempting in a

00:18:55.160 civic sense to emulate what they had seen exist between the Mosaic covenant and God in the past. 0.65

00:19:02.840 Right. Follow my laws and decrees and you can live in the land. If you don't, then you cannot.

00:19:07.980 In other words, we curry God's favor and protection as a people through collective

00:19:13.440 obedience, not in the, not in perfect individual, you know, uh, autonomous salvation. Um, but they

00:19:21.380 were at least trying to emulate that in some civic way. We can debate whether it went to the extent

00:19:27.100 of covenant, covenant explicitly, but at the very least they were implicitly invoking that language

00:19:34.900 on purpose. They were at least trying to emulate that sort of conversation or, or paradigm in a

00:19:40.640 sense right yep no i completely agree and and if you don't keep all these laws which they absolutely

00:19:47.220 invoke they they use that kind of covenantal language and say we will do it reminds me of

00:19:51.200 deuteronomy we'll do all the things that you know the lord has told us to do more citations you know

00:19:54.900 quoting uh deuteronomy and leviticus than than john locke you know and some of these early you know

00:20:00.900 documents and so you know that explicit christian language but one of the things the scripture says

00:20:04.620 is that is is that if you know if god's people did not live properly in obedience and holiness

00:20:09.760 in the land the land itself it wasn't just that god would turn against them but the land itself

00:20:14.620 uh would would swallow them and spew them out you know that they're actually the land would be

00:20:20.900 cursed this land that was meant to be a land of milk and honey and prosperity and all these

00:20:25.000 because there's so many reasons for the success of america and what i want to advocate is saying

00:20:29.140 that this is not the only reason but i think the chief reason is a covenant with god i think that

00:20:33.240 god has blessed america question um but i do also think like america has more navigable

00:20:38.660 the reason we cracked the code on self-government is we came up with

00:20:42.080 our our founders initiated the concept of rights that come from god and not from government that's

00:20:47.900 that's the difference between a constitution and the magna carta that there's not liberty by law

00:20:52.900 there is liberty by the laws of nature and nature's god it is the intention of god for for man to live

00:21:00.140 this way. And so therefore, government is every bit as accountable to God as the individual is.

00:21:07.980 God is not a respecter of persons, your station, your socioeconomic status. There are kings and

00:21:13.220 queens in hell. There are rich people in hell. There are philanthropists and vagrants in hell

00:21:17.680 alike. He does not judge and separate the way that we do as human beings. That language is

00:21:26.240 what sustained us as the longest running concurrent experiment in self-government in all of human

00:21:32.820 history, which you're talking about. Yep, absolutely. Lex Rex, like the law is king.

00:21:36.320 There's something about the statement. And that something is not just an idea. It's not just

00:21:40.560 some ethereal mystical, it's a person. His name is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what, you know,

00:21:45.960 I remember when MacArthur came out with his article, which I really appreciated his stance

00:21:49.360 and those things that he did. But one difference, one, you know, for me, theologically from MacArthur

00:21:54.100 and being more covenantal and those kinds of things.

00:21:56.520 MacArthur said, Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church.

00:21:59.280 And I want to say a thousand times yes and amen.

00:22:01.140 And then I want to also say, and Christ, not Caesar, is also head of the state.

00:22:05.400 So render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but to God what is God's. 0.63

00:22:08.460 The question, though, that Christians should ask is, okay, 0.82

00:22:10.420 and who gets to decide what is Caesar's? 0.62

00:22:12.580 Does Caesar get to say what is Caesar's?

00:22:14.460 Because what if Caesar says everything is Caesar's?

00:22:16.200 Because that's what Caesar's do, you know what I mean?

00:22:18.160 And so it's just like, so render unto Caesar.

00:22:20.360 But the question is, of course Christ is head of the church.

00:22:23.140 And what I want Christians to get is Christ is not exclusively head of the church.

00:22:26.700 He's uniquely head of the church.

00:22:28.040 So the church is the only institution that Christ in his headship, he actually laid himself down and died for the church.

00:22:35.180 It's the only thing that is described not only as his body, but as his bride that he gave himself up for the church.

00:22:41.560 But Ephesians 1.22 says that God has set him as head of all things, all things.

00:22:47.740 So Christ must be head of the state as well.

00:22:50.380 So my point is, Christians have to recognize separation of church and state.

00:22:54.120 I'm for it, 100%.

00:22:55.180 I think that's one of the beauties of America and the American experiment, the government

00:22:59.560 that we've had. 0.54

00:23:00.120 So I don't want an ecclesiocracy, a church-run state.

00:23:03.880 And I sure as heck don't want we've had the last little while of a state-run church. 0.89

00:23:08.420 I don't want the three-self church in China, which we're getting dangerously close to. 0.93

00:23:11.380 So I don't want a state-run church, church-run state. 0.81

00:23:13.580 But I do want Christ as the head of the church and Christ as the head of the state.

00:23:17.080 So separation of church and state, yes.

00:23:18.960 separation of Christ and state. No, which means the state has a duty. I believe a moral obligation 0.70

00:23:24.360 before God to kiss the son, Psalm chapter two, lest he be angry and to recognize that Jesus is

00:23:30.960 Lord and that we're not just this polytheism, public atheism kind of thing. No, we believe in

00:23:35.900 the triune God. That doesn't mean that people of other religions can't live here, be equal citizens

00:23:40.140 with equal rights under the law, equal provisions. But there is something to be said for like England,

00:23:45.100 And, you know, everybody's upset about Christian nationalism. 0.61

00:23:47.000 And then Queen Elizabeth dies and they're doing the whole pomp and circumstance.

00:23:51.360 You're the defender of the faith.

00:23:54.260 That's, you know what I mean?

00:23:56.460 And I think that's our founding.

00:23:58.300 That's our heritage.

00:23:59.060 We did that better than them.

00:24:00.340 We did it better than them.

00:24:01.600 Let's keep doing it.

00:24:02.860 Any thoughts on that idea of separation of church and state? 0.87

00:24:05.840 Yes. 0.68

00:24:06.160 Separation of Christ and state? 0.63

00:24:07.800 No. 0.71

00:24:08.540 What do you think?

00:24:10.360 I could not have said it better myself, frankly.

00:24:13.020 I'll simply add this.

00:24:15.100 All throughout human history, the spirit of the age, which is one of the references that the Bible uses to the demonic manifestation of influence within a culture.

00:24:28.040 All throughout human history, there has never been a period of time that the spirit of the age did not attempt to manifest itself politically. 0.54

00:24:34.480 Whether we're talking about kings that call themselves Baal, Peor in the Old Testament.

00:24:39.180 I am the Lord. 0.98

00:24:40.660 I'm a Lord of the cult of Baal. 0.96

00:24:42.420 I rule in Baal's place. 0.96

00:24:44.380 I rule by Baal's stead, or I am God as king, as Nero declared and other Caesars did. 0.88

00:24:51.700 There has never been a time that the spirit of the age has not attempted to manifest itself 0.62

00:24:56.560 politically. And you're seeing that in our day and age as well. The other thing I would add is

00:25:01.600 every government in the history of humanity has been a theocracy. It is just a matter of who the

00:25:07.140 Theo is. That's right. And ours is Demos right now. I would say the people and behind that,

00:25:13.380 right because here's the thing people say uh you know our battle is not against flesh and blood

00:25:17.140 right how if we had a dollar every time a christian quoted that to in in some kind of

00:25:21.920 pietistic motive that's pietistically used as an excuse not to actually confront any exactly so

00:25:27.280 it's pietism you know wrapped in scripture but here's the thing it's so easy scripturally so

00:25:32.500 our battle is not against flesh and blood but first timothy i believe it's chapter one or two

00:25:36.960 says, it says, rebuke your opponents gently, not knowing if God might grant to them repentance

00:25:44.880 and that they might come to their senses after having been taken captive by Satan to do his

00:25:51.900 will, which means our battle is not against flesh and blood is against Satan. But who does Satan

00:25:55.400 enlist in his army? Flesh and blood, flesh and blood. And so, so that doesn't mean that we pick

00:26:01.440 up a literal sword, but we certainly have to, we have to engage with arguments. We have to be

00:26:05.500 involved all these kinds of things and and so i would say that the god of it's not it's not whether

00:26:10.120 but which and so you're absolutely right everything's a theocracy just which god and i would

00:26:14.420 say our god is is sadly is becoming more and more satan um but wrapped in in terms of the veneer it

00:26:20.940 would be demos the people this this raw democracy of of mob rule you know that it's just mob tyranny

00:26:27.540 and and and that's why like the voting outside last house too brother go ahead go ahead say that

00:26:33.140 They had mob rule outside Lot's house too.

00:26:37.780 They had a democracy outside Lot's house too. 0.99

00:26:39.900 They took a vote and said, yeah, we're going to rape the angels first, then we'll rape 1.00

00:26:44.180 your daughters and your family. 1.00

00:26:45.320 That's a great way to put it, Steve.

00:26:47.000 And that's the will of the people.

00:26:49.440 So what do we got to do?

00:26:50.280 I know you only have so much time.

00:26:51.360 What do we got to do?

00:26:52.960 This is what I told my church, because I preach on politics in the church, because the statement

00:26:57.040 Jesus is Lord is the most political statement ever made.

00:26:59.820 And so I preach the scripture.

00:27:01.860 So I think faithful preaching is revelation, interpretation, application, revelation being

00:27:06.000 there's only one revelation, the word of God.

00:27:07.620 So you don't stand before the people of God behind the pulpit and say, I have a dream.

00:27:10.860 I have an idea.

00:27:11.740 I have a strategy.

00:27:12.440 Then sit down.

00:27:13.300 If that's what you have, you say, I have a text of the word of God.

00:27:16.080 Then you interpret revelation, interpretation of a faithful exegesis of the text, but then

00:27:20.440 it's application.

00:27:21.680 And guess what?

00:27:22.140 The Bible doesn't just apply to, uh, to an hour on Sunday morning and to a marriage and

00:27:26.640 parenting.

00:27:26.920 The Bible applies to economics and to vocation and to arts and to government and all these different things.

00:27:33.280 And so I talked about the election and people were feeling the disappointment.

00:27:36.600 Texas did fairly well, you know, but feeling the disappointment, those kinds of things.

00:27:41.160 And I told them three things we need.

00:27:42.520 We need preaching, teaching and training, preaching, teaching and training.

00:27:45.180 I said preaching.

00:27:46.440 One of the things, one of the biggest problems, this is the core problem is we just don't have enough Christians and are not truly born again, regenerate Christians.

00:27:54.020 So we need preaching because the gospel is the only power of God for salvation.

00:27:58.120 So we just, we need some good old, and I'm talking old-timey preaching where people claw

00:28:02.460 into the pews in front of them, sinners in the hands of an angry God, Jonathan Edwards

00:28:05.540 preaching.

00:28:06.200 They claw into the pews out of terror of God's judgment that he's a thrice holy God and that

00:28:10.600 he will not by any means pardon the wicked except lest they believe, repent of their

00:28:15.520 sin and believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

00:28:17.220 Because the people who claw into the pews are the ones when they're offered the free

00:28:20.160 grace that's found in Christ alone, claw into Christ and they never let them go.

00:28:23.240 So we need preaching and regeneration. We need teaching. The Christians that we do have, we don't have enough, but the ones that we do have are reading the Gospel Coalition and this third wayism where it's like, well, over here we have the sanctity of life, but over here we have caring for the poor. And it's this false dichotomy, right? And then what's said is, well, both are bad. And it's implicitly said they're equally bad, aka you can either not vote at all, just not be involved, or you could really go either way. And really, if you want to be a good person, you should vote Democrat.

00:28:52.940 at. So we need some teaching. And then last training, we need Christian schools. We used

00:28:57.660 to have them. They were called the public schools. There was Bible classes in the schools, Christian

00:29:02.000 flags in the school. That's why Catholics started their schools because the American public schools 0.85

00:29:05.940 once upon a time were Protestant schools for the most part, but that's just not the case anymore.

00:29:10.200 We need to start good, strong, robust Christian schools. And so that's what I've been telling

00:29:14.360 people. This is the way forward. This is what we got to do. But you've got some great stuff. I saw

00:29:19.780 you on twitter you said you know what i'm probably going to do a little less politics and a little

00:29:23.420 bit more theology because you were feeling some of the same things that i've been feeling that we

00:29:26.740 just we need some christians in here do you have any more takeaways from this last election trump's

00:29:32.260 announcement everything that's going on in the political world what can christians do what do

00:29:36.400 we need i think we have to remember that for 1700 almost 1700 years between christ's ascension

00:29:45.840 and when the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Christendom endured and survived countless

00:29:53.280 martyrdoms, countless persecutions, countless tyrannies. It didn't have a U.S. Constitution.

00:30:00.360 It didn't have a Republican Party. It didn't have hacktastic politicians. It didn't have the right

00:30:06.440 to vote. How did it endure? And it endured in my, to me, when I look at church history,

00:30:13.080 well first of all it endured because upon this rock I will build my church and not even the

00:30:18.200 gates of hell will prevail against it because it is the bride of the ruler of gods of all creation

00:30:23.940 so that's the meta-theological answer okay but then but then how did did did how did Christ work

00:30:31.840 out his royalty within that statement what did it look like to us in an earthly realm two things

00:30:38.920 One, everything that you just said, everything you just said, but two, Christians learn the art of the word no, whether it's the monk who came out of the stands in the Colosseum and pleaded in the name of Christ, stop, and then got murdered on the floor of the Colosseum that day.

00:31:07.140 but his murder so shocked the people that that was the last, that was the end of the Gladiator

00:31:11.860 games. Whether it's Polycarp saying all these 80 years of my life, my Lord has been faithful to me.

00:31:20.560 How do I deny him now at the end? Whether it's a black Baptist seamstress who just used the word 0.98

00:31:26.860 no on a bus one day and sparked the civil rights movement on and on and goes the use of the word 0.96

00:31:33.320 no, we will not comply. When we will give Caesar the tribute he deserves for the paving of the

00:31:41.420 roads and the civil defense. When Caesar asks for my worship, when Caesar asks for my ethics,

00:31:48.720 those don't belong to you. That is not the jurisdiction of the state that Christ gave to you.

00:31:55.020 I serve God and not man. I fear God and not man. Yes, you can put me in the stockade. You can put

00:32:01.020 me on the gallows. You can draw and quarter me. You can drop me in a vat of acid. He can cast my 1.00

00:32:05.820 soul into hell. So no, my answer is no. And I think now that we're no longer in an era that

00:32:14.440 we can trust these institutions largely founded in our belief system to defend us as the default,

00:32:20.280 as the benefit of the doubt on a very individual, granular, molecular level,

00:32:26.600 We're going to have to learn how to say, no.

00:32:30.580 Right.

00:32:31.180 No, I won't wear your mask anymore.

00:32:33.420 No, I won't take your mark of the beast jab.

00:32:35.680 No, I'm not going to do that.

00:32:37.580 My answer is no.

00:32:39.200 I will not comply with this.

00:32:41.940 And I'm not afraid of your retribution.

00:32:45.200 And for most Americans, retribution is a negative comment by an ant they can't stand already on a Facebook page.

00:32:51.340 Okay.

00:32:51.780 We're not talking about the stuff that the martyrs of old faced.

00:32:55.140 Right.

00:32:55.240 We're talking about, oh, no, I can't get on Instagram anymore.

00:32:59.380 Whatever will I do, okay?

00:33:01.360 I mean, it's, you know, I got so ticked off the other day. 0.98

00:33:05.760 Nothing says 21st century Christian more like jumping on Twitter to kvetch all day about your boat don't count, okay? 0.97

00:33:12.700 Right. 0.61

00:33:13.180 In your heat at home, all right, you know, while following the lower third on Fox News on your satellite dish all the get out of here, man, okay?

00:33:21.900 I don't want to hear any more talk.

00:33:23.420 Civil War is coming, dude.

00:33:25.240 You wouldn't take your princess to Costco without a mask for a year.

00:33:29.420 Yeah, right.

00:33:30.360 You ain't fighting a civil war.

00:33:32.240 Don't urinate on me and tell me it's raining. 0.99

00:33:34.320 Get out of here. 0.99

00:33:35.220 Okay, come on.

00:33:36.780 So let's start with a simple word. 0.95

00:33:40.200 No.

00:33:41.000 Right.

00:33:41.700 When a relationship, when a job, when a government, any entity, any person,

00:33:47.460 when they ask me to do something that God says I should do for them,

00:33:51.600 I will do it with all of my might.

00:33:52.920 When they ask me to do something that God largely doesn't prioritize or is silent on, as long as that doesn't violate my conscience, I'll happily take part in the community ritual.

00:34:05.900 When they ask me to do something that God says, don't do that.

00:34:10.120 My answer is no.

00:34:11.760 Yeah.

00:34:12.260 Amen.

00:34:12.560 Yeah, somebody, I can't remember who it was, but he basically said that all of life's yeses are ultimately decided by your higher no.

00:34:22.760 That a lot of people, they're saying yes to everything because they've said no to nothing, right?

00:34:27.400 And so that's where compromise happens.

00:34:29.760 So being able to have a God in heaven who judges the living and the dead, who actually, he wrote a book.

00:34:35.720 He speaks through nature.

00:34:36.780 He has two books.

00:34:37.500 But he also wrote a book that you can pick it up and you can read and seeing what God forbids and seeing what God, what is God's no for my life and being able to sketch that out and get that squared away and then being able to say, okay, so then these are the bounds, right?

00:34:53.920 The fish, you know, I need to be liberated from this prison and oppression of water, you know, and one day it swims as fast as it can and it jumps out of the water onto the land and dies, right?

00:35:03.660 The thing that it thought was imprisoning it was that that was the proper context that God determined and created.

00:35:09.700 That's where the fish was free, actually, was the water.

00:35:13.120 And so being able to say this is the no, I think that's fantastic. 0.79

00:35:17.040 The one thing I want to add to that is just I think that primarily men say no.

00:35:23.320 I think that's part of how God's designed us is to be defenders, to be protectors, to be providers.

00:35:28.740 um my wife so we've been married now um coming up on eight years and uh she was horrible at saying

00:35:35.900 no and she she would she you know she admits that she would be you know she'd be like yeah

00:35:40.520 joel's right um and i had to really disciple her in the art of knowing you know um uh telling people

00:35:47.660 know what to say no to and i mean it it it was horrible for her at first because i'm saying i'm

00:35:52.220 like i'm sorry sweetheart we're saying no to this no we're not going to go to uh 15 birthday parties

00:35:56.220 this way. No, we're not going to, you know, like we're saying, no, we're saying, no, we're saying

00:35:59.680 no. Um, and, and that was really hard for her, but, but it freed her. And, and here's the thing,

00:36:04.900 she got better at saying no, but she also doesn't have to be a master at saying no. Cause she's got 0.98

00:36:08.620 me. Um, and, and I, I just think that one of the things that, that, that progressives do that

00:36:13.480 liberals do is they've beaten conservatives at, at stealing the hearts of women at, at, and because

00:36:19.200 they've gotten really good at storytelling. I thought, why are they so much better at

00:36:21.920 storytelling? And I think it's the facts over feelings, which I get the sentiment. That's true,

00:36:25.820 But I think the facts over feeling mantra is like, we've got the pie charts, we've got the graphs, we've got like, we actually have the truth on our side. So we don't have to be elaborate and good storytellers. But good storytelling appeals to people, period, but especially women, the way that I think God has wired them and designed them.

00:36:43.920 And we just saw, you know, all the single ladies, all the single ladies really came out, you know, as a voting bloc, not an ethnic voting bloc, not poor or rich, not an economic stat, but gender, single women came out in full force for Democrats.

00:36:59.580 And I just feel like one of the things that we need and saying no and holding the line and these kinds of things is men have to win the hearts of their wives.

00:37:07.640 We have to win. Fathers have to win the hearts of their daughters.

00:37:10.180 And we need to do it by teaching them the facts over feelings.

00:37:13.040 But we also need to do it by showing them glorious stories once more, showing them like you hear a story of this person, this poor person coming up in a caravan that just wants, you know, freedom in America.

00:37:23.360 And, you know, and there's only 13,000 of them that want to cross over.

00:37:26.420 And, but there's another part of the story, but we just give the pie chart, but we need to, like, how do we tell that story that shows, that shows that this actually leads towards destruction and this actually preserves life. And I don't know, any, any thoughts on storytelling? Do you think I'm off there or is there, there a better way that you would say that?

00:37:44.240 No. I mean, I think this is the third question in a row that you've asked me that I thought you probably gave a better way than I was going to give you.

00:37:50.680 Okay. All right. Well then I know you're running out of time. So any final thoughts?

00:37:54.260 Well, first of all, you're talking to a guy that has a movie coming out next year about a book he wrote.

00:38:01.420 Oh, good. Well, there you go. That's what we need.

00:38:04.780 Yeah, with the intent of trying to retell good storytelling again.

00:38:09.820 Amen.

00:38:10.500 We can do this as Christians without being cheesy.

00:38:13.340 We can honestly depict the world as it is without making it look like we're glorifying it at the exact same time.

00:38:19.000 At least that's the needle we're going to try to thread.

00:38:22.520 But I completely agree with you about storytelling, Joel.

00:38:25.180 And I think it's the last place left in our culture where persuasion can take place.

00:38:30.740 When it comes to whether it's emotion or logic, those sectors are as balkanized as they could possibly be at this point.

00:38:41.900 They're bulwarks against each other, and there's no cartilage in that ligament, in that knee any longer.

00:38:46.800 The place where the gap between emotion and logic can be bridged so persuasion can take place is with storytelling.

00:38:56.140 And I do think for our side, that is just as it was 80, 70, 80 years ago when a Catholic evangelized an atheist in a college town pub.

00:39:09.920 And out of that friendship came the stories that became known as Lord of the Rings, Middle Earth, and the Chronicles of Narnia.

00:39:16.800 Um, that's, that is where we have an opportunity to persuade still in the West and is with,

00:39:23.900 is with the art of storytelling.

00:39:26.120 Uh, Christ spends much of the word, the time that he is physically on earth telling what

00:39:30.940 we call parables, but that's storytelling.

00:39:33.720 Storytelling is, I think the last outpost of persuasion left in our culture.

00:39:37.960 And I would encourage our side to learn and master it.

00:39:41.460 Amen.

00:39:42.020 Yeah.

00:39:42.240 I love it.

00:39:42.900 Tolkien, you know, he took Lewis up on a hill and he showed, you know, the wind was blowing.

00:39:47.180 It was evening, the breeze, the moon's coming out, you know, as the legend goes.

00:39:50.460 And he said, you know, and he's talking to him about Christ and God creating all things and the Christian faith is real.

00:39:56.720 And Lewis, you know, once again, for the thousandth time, it's a myth.

00:40:00.360 And Tolkien, you know, famously said, it's a myth, but it's true.

00:40:04.400 This is the one true myth.

00:40:05.960 The best myth, the best legend of all, the best story ever made is the one that's true.

00:40:11.120 we like that that is such powerful artillery that we have in you know on our side and we we need to

00:40:18.220 use it and and one other thing that i thought was just talking you know how people used to tell

00:40:22.740 stories back in the day um you knew who the bad guys were because they were orcs you know what i

00:40:27.360 mean like like they they looked like bad guys i think that's part of the part of the problem right

00:40:32.240 now is the bad guys just they they look they they use the storytelling all those kinds of things to

00:40:37.380 look altruistic to look like oh look at how empathetic this person is and and and they've

00:40:42.380 really done a good job at taking the few good guys that we have and making them look like monsters

00:40:46.920 and racist and this kind of and i i think that good storytelling one of the reasons we needed

00:40:52.100 is because again the pie chart's just not going to do it we need to be able to cut through

00:40:55.300 and and and rip off that mask and say um this dude's an orc he's an orc wearing elf skin you

00:41:02.660 know what i mean like like look at him he's literally he's got blood coming out of his mouth

00:41:05.660 You know, like from the last person's head that he ate, you know, and, and, and this person is not, um, you know, this person is beautiful.

00:41:12.420 And so to be able to take truth, it's not just truth and falsehoods, it's beauty and ugliness.

00:41:18.260 I think we need to make falsehoods ugly again and truth beautiful again.

00:41:22.880 So how can people follow you, Steve, um, and keep up with you and, and what should they be looking for?

00:41:27.620 What's, what's on the horizon?

00:41:28.600 What's your next big thing?

00:41:29.500 um in the next winter or this winter we have uh a book coming out called rise of the fourth

00:41:36.900 right confronting covid fascism with a new nuremberg trial so this never happens again

00:41:41.200 and that that is gonna that's 400 pages of rock your world when that comes out so uh look forward

00:41:47.520 to that we just finished the the movie version of my 2016 book a nefarious plot about a demonic

00:41:54.200 takeover of America. That is my homage to the screw tape letters. Um, in fact, our, my movie

00:41:59.560 makers are bringing me the film, the finished version to screen for me and my investors this

00:42:03.920 weekend. Awesome. We are looking forward to that. Then we will start having distribution

00:42:08.580 conversations after Thanksgiving and, uh, it'll be released next year. I don't know much more than

00:42:13.860 that, but I've seen the rough cut of the film. I'm very, very pleased with how it turned out

00:42:18.640 and I can't wait for people to see it. So those are two projects then, you know, you can get our

00:42:23.200 daily show. Just go on iTunes and look for me, D-E-A-C-E, Steve Day, Steve Day Show. Subscribe

00:42:28.740 to that for free on iTunes and you can tune in every single day. Great. It's a great show. I

00:42:33.840 try to listen. I can't listen daily. There's so many great podcasts, but I listen to you probably

00:42:37.800 at least once a week and it's fantastic. So thanks for coming on the show. I really do. Thank you

00:42:41.540 very much. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. But real quick, before you go, do us a small

00:42:47.040 favor, take a moment and leave us a five-star review if you enjoyed the show. This is undoubtedly

00:42:52.820 the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content

00:42:56.900 to as many people as possible. Thanks so much.

The NXR Podcast - November 22, 2022

THEOLOGY APPLIED - The True History Of Thanksgiving & The Gay GOP Senators Who Dishonor It

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