NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Gospel Coalition & Westminster Seminary CA: Two Ways To Get Politics Wrong
Aired: 2022-02-01
Duration: 01:23:48


=== Debunking Christian Nationalism (05:46) ===

[00:00:00]  Hi, this is Pastor Joel with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:00:05]  And this episode, I was privileged to have as a special guest, Dr. Joseph Boot.
[00:00:10]  He is the founder and president of the Ezra Institute in Toronto, just outside of Toronto, Canada.
[00:00:16]  And our conversation was incredibly helpful.
[00:00:18]  We talked about the kingdom of God, the distinction between the kingdom of God and the church, the distinction between the mission of the church and the mission of individual Christians.
[00:00:28]  We talked about all of Christ for all of life, the inerrancy of scripture versus The sufficiency of scripture, and we got into two primary ways that the church can err today that we can be embraced this two kingdom theology that we would see with Escondido, Westminster, guys like Michael Horton.
[00:00:45]  But also, on the other hand, we can embrace a statism, this neo Kyperian kind of idea that is not what the scripture advocates for, that we've seen expressed by the gospel coalition and guys like Tim Keller.
[00:00:59]  So, how do we avoid Michael Horton on the one hand and Tim Keller on the other is kind of what the conversation was about, and so I think you'll find it very helpful.
[00:01:07]  Real quick, before we get started, I've got some exciting news to announce.
[00:01:11]  I've got AD Robles and John Harris from Conversations That Matter coming out for a whole weekend in the month of March to join up on a Friday.
[00:01:21]  We're going to come in our studio right here, and all three of us are going to record a multiple part series on some of the subject matter that you guys have requested that the three of us address through our YouTube comments.
[00:01:34]  Some of you have emailed, we're taking that into consideration as well.
[00:01:37]  But we're definitely looking at the YouTube comments.
[00:01:39]  We've asked you guys, hey, what are topics you want us to address?
[00:01:43]  And so the three of us are going to record for several hours a multiple part series in our studio right here in the great state of Texas in March.
[00:01:51]  And we're going to be releasing that content over the coming weeks.
[00:01:54]  Now, here's the other thing that's on the Friday that they're going to be in town.
[00:01:58]  But on the Saturday, we're going to hold a one day conference.
[00:02:01]  Now, that's going to be March 12th, Saturday, March 12th.
[00:02:05]  It's going to be a one day conference where AD is going to do a session.
[00:02:09]  On practical obedient defiance, how to resist civil tyranny, how to resist medical tyranny, and how to do this in practical on the ground ways as households, as head of households, husbands, fathers.
[00:02:22]  How do we resist as a family against the cancel culture and the tyranny and persecution that's coming to America?
[00:02:30]  That's going to be AD's session.
[00:02:31]  I'm going to do a session called Debunking the Boogeyman of Christian Nationalism.
[00:02:37]  I'm going to kind of reveal the fallacies of the Gospel Coalition and all these kind of things.
[00:02:41]  Oh, Christian nationalists, the greatest threat to America.
[00:02:44]  I'm going to show why that's not biblical and how that's not actually happening.
[00:02:47]  And the irony that, if anything, Russell Moore, he's the type who is actually the Christian nationalist in a negative sense.
[00:02:54]  And then John Harris is going to do a session on social justice versus biblical justice.
[00:02:59]  Again, that's social justice and how it's completely opposed, completely opposite to biblical justice.
[00:03:07]  And then lastly, the three of us are going to come up all together and spend a whole hour doing QA.
[00:03:12]  We're going to take live questions from the audience and address those questions.
[00:03:17]  It's going to be a great time.
[00:03:18]  You'll get to meet John Harris, you'll get to meet AD Robles, you'll get to meet myself.
[00:03:21]  So, if you're anywhere in the area in Williamson County, or if you're in Austin, Texas, or you're north of Williamson County, or to the west, or to the east, and you want to come out and join us for that one day conference Saturday, March 12th, come on out.
[00:03:35]  It's free registration.
[00:03:37]  We're going to have some refreshments free.
[00:03:39]  Everything's free.
[00:03:40]  So, we're paying out of pocket as a ministry to make this happen.
[00:03:43]  We're covering the cost to fly out John and AD to put them up in a hotel.
[00:03:47]  So, you don't have to pay a dime to show up and attend this.
[00:03:51]  However, for anybody who wants to be generous and help us offset these costs, you can do so donating towards this conference by simply going to rightresponseministries.comslash donate.
[00:04:03]  Again, that's rightresponseministries.comslash donate.
[00:04:07]  Now, to find the address, physical location for the conference, and exact times for each of the sessions for that Saturday, March 12th, again, go to our website, rightresponseministries.com.
[00:04:18]  Click on the menu button at the top and scroll down, and you'll find Conference.
[00:04:22]  Click on conference.
[00:04:23]  You'll find all the details that you need.
[00:04:26]  And one of the details there that we need is although registration is free, there's a form at the bottom that says RSVP.
[00:04:33]  We would really appreciate if you could let us know whether or not you're coming and how many people you plan on bringing with you, right?
[00:04:41]  If you've got 10 kids, God bless you for having 10 kids, but we would like to know that you're bringing yourself, your wife, and your 10 kids.
[00:04:48]  Please come, but please let us know so that we can adequately prepare for this.
[00:04:52]  The last thing that I'll say.
[00:04:54]  Is that that Sunday, which would be March 13th, for anybody who wants to join our church, Covenant Bible Church, John Harris will stay in town.
[00:05:03]  He's going to linger and he's going to preach that Sunday morning at our Lord's Day worship service.
[00:05:07]  That's 9 30 a.m. on Sunday, March 13th at my church that I pastor.
[00:05:13]  Again, that's Covenant Bible Church.
[00:05:15]  We're in Georgetown, Texas.
[00:05:17]  That's the Williamson County area.
[00:05:18]  So if you're in Williamson County or you're in North Austin or you're somewhere nearby and you don't have a church home, If you've got a church home, go there.
[00:05:26]  But if you don't have a church home, you're looking for a church that has courage, that has biblical fidelity, and you want to hear John Harris preach a dynamite sermon from the Word of God, then come and join us again Sunday, March 13th.
[00:05:39]  You can find details or directions to join our church that Sunday morning at covenantbible.org.

=== Ezra Institute Teaching Fellows (03:10) ===

[00:05:46]  Our website for Covenant Bible Church is covenantbible.org.
[00:05:51]  Without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into our episode.
[00:05:55]  Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
[00:05:58]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:06:05]  Hi, this is Pastor Joel with Right Response.
[00:06:07]  We're diving into another episode of Theology Applied, and I am very privileged to have as a special guest Dr. Joseph Boot.
[00:06:14]  He is in Canada, I believe Toronto.
[00:06:16]  Is that correct, Dr. Boot?
[00:06:18]  Just outside of Toronto, yeah.
[00:06:19]  Just outside of Toronto.
[00:06:21]  You are the, I believe, both founder and president of the Ezra Institute.
[00:06:25]  Is that correct?
[00:06:25]  That's correct.
[00:06:26]  So, founder and president of the Ezra Institute.
[00:06:29]  And you've got teaching fellows with the Ezra Institute that some of our listeners would probably recognize, guys like Dr. James White.
[00:06:36]  Is Jeff Durbin one of the teaching fellows?
[00:06:38]  He is, yeah.
[00:06:40]  I think Jeff was added last year.
[00:06:43]  Great.
[00:06:43]  What about Doug Wilson in Moscow, Idaho?
[00:06:47]  We don't have Doug yet.
[00:06:50]  We haven't actually approached Doug about that, but it's certainly on our minds to do so.
[00:06:57]  A lot of our listeners and myself personally have benefited greatly from.
[00:07:01]  From him, from Apollo to you guys.
[00:07:03]  Yeah.
[00:07:04]  Go ahead, Sarah.
[00:07:05]  We actually did have him lecturing at a couple of recent programs here in Canada.
[00:07:09]  We've had him up actually before.
[00:07:12]  And last year we had Doug, we were blessed to have Doug remotely lecturing to our students.
[00:07:16]  So great.
[00:07:19]  It's a great connection.
[00:07:20]  So go ahead.
[00:07:20]  Yeah, I totally agree.
[00:07:21]  So go ahead and explain for our listeners just a little bit of the mission of the Ezra Institute.
[00:07:27]  So the Ezra Institute was founded in 2009, so 13 years ago now.
[00:07:34]  And our purpose fundamentally, well, we are a Christian world and life view think tank.
[00:07:41]  And our concern is with Christian philosophy and cultural apologetics and how we apply the biblical world and life view to every aspect of society and culture.
[00:07:52]  So, our aim is to be able to resort, not just speak hopefully, prophetically, really, to culture.
[00:08:00]  I think that's what cultural apologetics actually is.
[00:08:03]  It's about bringing the fullness of the word of God to bear on the challenges that face Christians in the context of creation.
[00:08:12]  So, we seek to.
[00:08:14]  Speak to the issues of our time from a distinctly Christian perspective.
[00:08:20]  And then we try and resource Christians as well through print and digital resources, as well as in person short term residential training programs in biblical worldview and cultural apologetics.
[00:08:34]  So that's what the Ezra Institute is about.
[00:08:37]  And we have a journal called Jubilee that's published triannually.
[00:08:42]  We have a podcast for cultural reformation, and our fellows, you just mentioned some of them.
[00:08:48]  Are located in Europe, the United States, and Canada.
[00:08:52]  We have 18 teaching fellows who are engaged with our programming.

=== Defining the Called Congregation (06:10) ===

[00:08:57]  Praise God.
[00:08:58]  Yeah, we're trying to do something similar.
[00:09:01]  I would never say that we're doing as robust of a job as you guys are, but that's kind of the vision for this podcast Theology Applied.
[00:09:10]  That we don't want to just salute the inerrancy of Scripture, we want to hold to the sufficiency of Scripture, and we want to hold for the sufficiency of Scripture for every realm.
[00:09:19]  Of life from all spheres.
[00:09:22]  And so we want to teach people to actually apply their theology and not just have that privatized lordship.
[00:09:28]  At some point, it seems like in Western culture, Jesus went from being Lord of all to being Lord of our sweet little heart.
[00:09:36]  And we want Christ to be Lord of all.
[00:09:38]  And he is Lord of all, whether we want it or not.
[00:09:40]  But we want people to embrace that as a wonderful thing and to practically begin to actually apply theology to all of life, wield the sword, not just look at it and admire the sword from the mantle.
[00:09:52]  Actually, wield the sword.
[00:09:53]  So, with that being said, one of the questions that I had for you, I was telling you as we were getting started and right before we started recording, I just listened twice.
[00:10:01]  It was so good.
[00:10:02]  And I wanted to make sure, you know, when you're listening to something, you don't always retain quite as much as you do when you read.
[00:10:07]  So, I listened twice to your short little book called Four Mission.
[00:10:11]  It seems like that's probably where a lot of those principles are fleshed out further in your mission for God, is what I'm assuming.
[00:10:19]  And so, I would listen to that.
[00:10:21]  It was fantastic.
[00:10:21]  So, one of the first questions that I had that you addressed in that book, Sounds simple enough, but I think a lot of Christians, including myself, would have difficulty answering this question.
[00:10:31]  What is the kingdom of God?
[00:10:33]  And to flesh that question out just a little bit more, what's the difference between the kingdom of God and the church, the church growing and the kingdom of God growing?
[00:10:42]  Or another way to put it, what's also the distinction between the mission of the church and the mission of individual Christians?
[00:10:50]  Your thoughts on that from four mission was just so insightful.
[00:10:55]  So could you explain that to our listeners?
[00:10:56]  Yeah, well, you've just drawn a very interesting.
[00:11:00]  Point there, just to begin with, when you talk about the difference between just affirming the infallibility of Scripture and the sufficiency of Scripture, or what we might call the material authority of Scripture.
[00:11:16]  So, evangelicals historically have been pretty good at talking about the infallibility of Scripture or its inerrancy and arguing, in a certain sense, in the abstract, for that.
[00:11:29]  Where we've, I think, fallen down is in the area of the sufficiency or the material authority of Scripture.
[00:11:34]  And so, for mission, what I'm trying to do in there is identify the biblical understanding of the kingdom of God and the role of the Christian and Christian in the context of the family and their workplace, and the specific calling and role of the church.
[00:11:54]  And I think this is where one of the key problems, one of the critical issues actually, is found now of confusion in the modern church.
[00:12:04]  The biblical word for church in the Bible is ecclesia.
[00:12:09]  And it literally means, as you know, called out, a called out people, a called out congregation.
[00:12:16]  And of course, that calling is for a purpose.
[00:12:20]  And I think you mentioned there, you know, how sometimes it's as though we've reduced the Christian life to what's going on in our sweet little heart.
[00:12:29]  But actually, just the very word ecclesia, a called out people, is a church that is a people, a gathered people that are on mission.
[00:12:39]  So, Ecclesia literally means a called out congregation.
[00:12:44]  But what are they called out in terms of?
[00:12:48]  What's the purpose of their calling?
[00:12:50]  How does their calling fit?
[00:12:51]  Is the church an end in itself?
[00:12:53]  And that's where we encounter the other word, basileia, which is the word for kingdom, which is so critically important, which, by the way, Jesus uses many, many more times than he ever does the word church.
[00:13:09]  And so perhaps.
[00:13:11]  A place to start would be to draw the important distinction between the kingdom of God and the church, or even the body of Christ.
[00:13:23]  So, first of all, let's just mention that even when we talk about church, church is used in a multiplicity of different ways.
[00:13:33]  Are we talking about the universal, invisible church of Christ?
[00:13:40]  Are we talking about the visible church of Christ in all of history?
[00:13:45]  Are we talking about The church as it exists today across the world in this moment in time?
[00:13:53]  Are we talking about the church as a local gathered congregation, or are we talking about the church in Texas or the church in Ontario?
[00:14:03]  So, the way we use the word church, even, and certainly we're not simply talking about, are we talking about church as a building, that structure down the end of the street?
[00:14:11]  So, the way in which the word church is used is often equivocal or ambiguous.
[00:14:19]  And that often doesn't help us because it's important that we define church properly, or at least qualify the way in which we're talking about it.
[00:14:27]  But from certainly within the evangelical reform tradition, the church is an institute, it's a gathered people under certain offices or authorities.
[00:14:42]  So the church is a form of government, and it has a particular role, it has a particular calling, which Historically, it has been understood, certainly by the Reformed churches following the Reformation, as the preaching of God's word, the administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of church discipline.
[00:15:02]  And some would add a certain amount of diaconal care responsibility.

=== Kingdom Growth Through Creation (14:55) ===

[00:15:07]  And those are the sort of three, four core marks of the church institute.
[00:15:15]  Now, the fact that we can make a distinction between the church institute.
[00:15:21]  And the body of Christ is actually important in the sense that not every church institute, because we have all kinds of apostate churches, can be called parts of the body of Christ.
[00:15:37]  So the body of Christ cannot be identified simplistically with the church institute, and neither can the church institute be identified simplistically with the kingdom of God.
[00:15:50]  And I think the big challenge we're facing is that what the Bible understands by the kingdom of God.
[00:15:56]  Is the rule and reign in particular of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is king.
[00:16:02]  And he is the king of a kingdom.
[00:16:04]  He's sovereign over that kingdom.
[00:16:06]  He gives law within the context of his kingdom.
[00:16:10]  And that kingdom is, biblically speaking, cosmic.
[00:16:16]  It's overall of creation.
[00:16:18]  Everything is being brought into subjection.
[00:16:20]  That's what Paul makes clear in Ephesians 1, in Colossians 1.
[00:16:23]  The book of Hebrews makes crystal clear that all things are being brought into subjection to King Jesus, 1 Corinthians 15.
[00:16:31]  And so, in fact, Revelation 1 5 tells us that Christ is the ruler of the kings of the earth, present tense.
[00:16:40]  So, the kingdom of God is wherever Christ is ruling and reigning.
[00:16:44]  And so, we might say that oftentimes, if you compared, say, a faithful family, a faithful Christian family, to a rebellious and apostate church, well, that faithful Christian family is a more real and better expression of the kingdom of God.
[00:17:04]  Than that disobedient or apostate church.
[00:17:07]  So the kingdom of God is wherever Christ is ruling and reigning, first in the individual, of course, in our families, in our workplaces, dare I say, even in the state, where Christ is ruling and reigning in the hearts of magistrates or politicians.
[00:17:22]  There you see, however imperfect, an expression of the kingdom of God.
[00:17:26]  And of course, we see the kingdom of God expressed also in the church, but it's there equally, an imperfect expression.
[00:17:35]  Expression of the fullness of the meaning of the kingdom of God.
[00:17:38]  Now, we would acknowledge, and we must acknowledge biblically, that the church has a peculiar and unique role in the unfolding of the kingdom of God, insofar as it's the place where Christians are gathered to hear the word and where authority is exercised, a particular kind of ecclesiastical authority is exercised around the Lord's table.
[00:17:59]  And so there is a specific calling and function that the church has.
[00:18:06]  But could we say the church is more important than the family, or more important than the individual, or more important than the magistrate in the kingdom of God?
[00:18:18]  I would say no, we can't say that because the kingdom of God is wherever Christ reigns and rules.
[00:18:26]  And so that's maybe the best place to start.
[00:18:30]  Maybe I can come on in a moment to talk about the difference between the individual calling and the church's calling.
[00:18:35]  But drawing that distinction between ecclesia and basileia and not.
[00:18:39]  Conflating them and collapsing them into one idea.
[00:18:43]  And I think what I talk about in four mission is the way in which, whether unwittingly or by theological design, many leaders want to collapse the kingdom of God and the church as though they're identical.
[00:18:57]  And of course, the implication of that, Joel, is that if the kingdom of God, which is where Christ is reigning and ruling, is limited to the church institute, then there is only one place in all of culture and creation where Christ can actually reign the church.
[00:19:13]  Right.
[00:19:14]  I usually use as an illustration if you ever watch The Lion King, when Simba, he's up on Pride Rock early in the morning with his father, the king Mufasa, and he's looking at the lay of the land and all the different areas where he will one day rule when he inherits the kingship.
[00:19:29]  And everything the light touches is the iconic line that comes from his father, Mufasa.
[00:19:34]  That's your territory, that's what you will rule.
[00:19:37]  And he's a, what about that dark shadow he placed over there?
[00:19:39]  And I feel like many evangelicals would say, well, that's politics or that's culture or, you know, and there is no, for the Christian, With a biblical worldview, there is no dark, shadowy place where Christ does not reign.
[00:19:52]  He is reigning and ruling in all places.
[00:19:54]  And so I love that distinction that I've learned from a few individuals, but you uniquely, I think, have fleshed that out the distinction between the church and the kingdom of God.
[00:20:03]  The church, it seems, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as though the church only grows in one way, which is through conversion.
[00:20:10]  And to the church has been given, in terms of tools, each of these spheres of government.
[00:20:14]  The family is also a government, the familial government.
[00:20:18]  This civil government, the ecclesiastical government of the church, and each have been given tools.
[00:20:22]  To the Father has been given a rod.
[00:20:25]  To the churches have been given a sword, but a sword of the Spirit.
[00:20:29]  It's persuasion, not coercion.
[00:20:30]  The state has been given a sword.
[00:20:32]  Everything the state does, the reason why we want minimal state involvement, and for me, a smaller government, is because everything they do is at gunpoint.
[00:20:40]  Eventually, if I resist, eventually I'm going to find myself at the end of a gun.
[00:20:44]  They've been given a ministry of coercion, and that's not wrong so long as they coerce in.
[00:20:50]  The jurisdiction that God has actually assigned to them and don't get outside of that.
[00:20:54]  And so the church only seems to grow in one way, which is through persuasion, the sword of the Spirit, preaching the sacraments, conversion, converting hearts.
[00:21:01]  But the kingdom of God seems to expand every time a just law is legislated, every time Christian art is made.
[00:21:13]  And kind of in the likeness of Luther, Christian art isn't because it has John 3 16 on the back of the painting, but the first imperative for the cobbler is that he makes good shoes, not Christian.
[00:21:24]  Shoes and so it's hopeful, and so in all these different ways, the kingdom of God is expanding.
[00:21:29]  Um, even if the numerical growth of the church is not occurring at that exact moment, but if individual Christians in the church, in their various fields and stations where the Lord has sovereignly appointed them outside of the church, whether it be in the state, in the marketplace, in homes, in schools, if they are living out and actually the sufficiency of scripture, applying their theology in these various fields.
[00:21:55]  Then, even without numerical growth through conversion in the church, the kingdom of God can still be expanding.
[00:22:02]  Would that be a fair assessment?
[00:22:04]  Yes, that's actually a really good summary.
[00:22:08]  We're talking about fundamentally the fact that the kingdom of God, I mean, the images that Jesus uses for it are mustard seed, leaven in a loaf, starts seemingly imperceptibly small.
[00:22:21]  And that's actually the image also that we get in Daniel, where the uncut stone.
[00:22:28]  Smashes the idol of pagan state power and then grows to become a mountain filling the earth.
[00:22:35]  That is the image of the rule and reign of Christ.
[00:22:37]  And we see in that great hymn of Philippians 2, the celebration of the time when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
[00:22:47]  So, yes, the body of Christ, and that's the individual believers, families, and so forth, applying the reality of the truth of the gospel of the kingdom in every aspect of their lives is what brings about.
[00:23:00]  Through the work of the Holy Spirit.
[00:23:02]  It's the way Christ brings about the growth of his kingdom.
[00:23:05]  And that's why we're taught to pray.
[00:23:08]  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
[00:23:11]  The location is interesting.
[00:23:12]  Where?
[00:23:13]  On earth as it is in heaven.
[00:23:16]  And that, you're right, that doesn't just happen through conversion.
[00:23:22]  Now, of course, the body of Christ is growing through regeneration.
[00:23:25]  And it's as those regenerate believers apply the fullness of the word of God that the kingdom of God is growing.
[00:23:32]  And I think the error that's made in part is that you mentioned these dark places.
[00:23:40]  You know, we think, oh, that's a dark place over there.
[00:23:42]  There's a dark place over there.
[00:23:44]  That's culture.
[00:23:44]  That's politics.
[00:23:45]  That's law.
[00:23:46]  These are dark places.
[00:23:47]  Come to the light of.
[00:23:47]  The church.
[00:23:50]  And of course, you're probably familiar with Abraham Kuiper's very, very famous statement you know, there's not a square inch of the universe over which Christ does not say, This is mine.
[00:23:58]  What that really means, though, is that there is no creation, we're told in Genesis, is good.
[00:24:06]  It was made good.
[00:24:07]  It's very good.
[00:24:08]  And even though it's fallen, Paul says that actually the redemptive work of Christ in Romans 8 is bringing about the liberation, actually, of creation from its fall.
[00:24:18]  Bondage to corruption from his being, and the destiny of creation itself is tied to us and the resurrection of our bodies.
[00:24:25]  That's how central our role is.
[00:24:27]  The sons of God being revealed.
[00:24:29]  The creation is so, even that is an interesting point.
[00:24:32]  So, for several years, I pastored in San Diego, California, and then I moved to Texas, fleeing really from the state of California.
[00:24:41]  And as my wife and I were having more children and wanting to have a large family and coming into some of these convictions, we decided it was best for us to relocate.
[00:24:50]  But while I was in San Diego, I'm sure you're familiar with Westminster Escondido.
[00:24:56]  And one of the theological distinctions of that particular strain of Presbyterianism is just this very staunch two kingdom theology.
[00:25:05]  And so you have Druden, who's kind of held as the gold standard for two kingdom theology.
[00:25:11]  And so as you were parsing out the different ways in which the Bible uses the word church, I think it's also helpful to parse out for Christians to be aware that the Bible also uses another word in multiple ways, that word being world.
[00:25:24]  When you think of Christians being called out, what are they called out from?
[00:25:27]  Well, they're called out from the world, but the world in what way?
[00:25:31]  In what sense are we using the word world?
[00:25:33]  Because you're precisely correct that the world, as it pertains to the cosmos, the creation, is not a curse.
[00:25:40]  And I think some Christians think the creation is a curse.
[00:25:42]  No, it's under a curse.
[00:25:44]  It's under a curse, which is why, in the expanse of the kingdom of God, as Christians push back against the curse that is on creation, we can have success.
[00:25:54]  And we can.
[00:25:55]  We can cure cancer by God's grace.
[00:25:57]  We can do certain things.
[00:25:59]  But when societies and people created in the image of God push back, not on the curse upon creation, but they push back against creation itself, they start to fight nature, right?
[00:26:10]  Well, that's like every horror sci fi movie that's ever been created, right?
[00:26:13]  Jurassic Park, nature finds a way.
[00:26:15]  Like, you're not going to win that battle, no matter how much technology, no matter how many human advances there might be.
[00:26:21]  When you push back against the curse on nature, by God's grace, He can grant success.
[00:26:25]  When you push back against nature itself, it's going to fail.
[00:26:28]  And so Christians have been called out of the world, but I think Christians sometimes demonize the world as it pertains to the cosmos, as it pertains to creation itself.
[00:26:37]  And so, Druden and some of these guys, I mean, the only thing that they think will transfer into the new creation is our physical bodies, which they have to affirm that without going into full blown heresy, the physical bodily resurrection.
[00:26:51]  But everything else, they would look at that verse, you know, that creation itself, you know, with eager, Groans and expectations awaiting the sons of God being revealed, precisely what you're getting to.
[00:27:01]  They would say that the creation is what it's really waiting for with the revelation of the sons of God is a mercy killing from the Lord.
[00:27:08]  The creation wants to give way, die, disintegrate, the earth dissolving like snow, taking a very literal interpretation of that.
[00:27:17]  And so, in some sense, they would never outright say this, but in some sense, it seems as though they've demonized the world as it pertains to the cosmos, rather than saying, no, Christians have been called out, ecclesia called out of the world as it pertains to the world being defined as this demonic system underneath Satan's rule, where he actually takes, right?
[00:27:39]  Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but there is a sense in which Satan.
[00:27:42]  1 Timothy says he takes people captive to do his will.
[00:27:46]  And we've been called out of that.
[00:27:48]  We've been called out of this system, but not called out of this creation, this cosmos, which I believe is not giving way to the sons of God, but it's being restored right alongside the sons of God.
[00:28:01]  Do you have, is that, am I on the right track with that?
[00:28:04]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:28:06]  Scripture does recognize two kingdoms the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light.
[00:28:12]  That's it.
[00:28:14]  And they are operative, that's the way of grace and the way of rebellion, and they are operative in every domain of creation.
[00:28:21]  So you cannot flee from one domain of creation into another for safety.
[00:28:27]  This is what you were talking about with these dark corners.
[00:28:30]  The thought that, well, if I, you know, politics is, you know, or culture, education, these areas are part of a broken natural world.
[00:28:42]  And therefore, we need to, you know, flee the arts, flee politics, flee law.
[00:28:48]  Leave that to nature, leave that to natural law, to the way of decay.
[00:28:53]  We belong in the realm of grace, an upper story of reality.
[00:28:56]  And so you've got a notion there that you can flee one domain of creation into another in order to have freedom or salvation or liberation.
[00:29:07]  And of course, that ends up, as you've described it, demonizing the world.
[00:29:12]  And the world becomes used in the sense that you used it.
[00:29:16]  That's why when I talked about creation, What these theologies do, and I think it's a serious mistake, is they're fundamentally dualistic.
[00:29:27]  So, what they do is they drive a wedge between creation and redemption.
[00:29:32]  There's a radical duality drawn between creation and redemption.
[00:29:36]  Now, I think from a biblical perspective, I talked about the creation being good, though marred, and that touches every aspect of our lives, far as the curse is found.
[00:29:48]  You know, the great Carol.
[00:29:51]  Right.
[00:29:52]  Redemption is directed to wherever the curse is found.
[00:29:54]  That's every domain of creation.
[00:29:56]  Those post mill Christmas hymns, huh?
[00:29:58]  Perhaps they're a thorn in the flesh of some.

=== Beyond Two Kingdom Theory (16:02) ===

[00:30:03]  But the reality is that God's creational laws and norms still hold.
[00:30:14]  And He has not abandoned His creation and He's not abandoned His law for creation.
[00:30:19]  And basically, there are many structures.
[00:30:22]  Structures within creation, but there are only two possible directions.
[00:30:25]  So there's the structure of family and church and state and culture and business and economics and aesthetics and all these different structures that God has given within the goodness of his creation law word.
[00:30:40]  And they are all being misdirected because of sin.
[00:30:44]  So all the good things that God has created, these laws and norms are misdirected.
[00:30:48]  Now, you can, what we might call what some scientists have tried to call natural laws, which is just God's ordinary way of working.
[00:30:57]  Cannot be violated.
[00:30:59]  You know, you try and violate the law of gravity, you're going to hit the ground, and that's that.
[00:31:05]  The norms that God has established for creation are juridical and moral and cultural norms and so forth.
[00:31:14]  These can be violated, and that's what misdirects our lives.
[00:31:18]  And so, what is going on with redemption is the redirection and the reconciliation.
[00:31:23]  If you think about all of the different words that the Bible uses for the meaning of salvation and redemption, it's redemption, regeneration, restoration, renewal, and so on.
[00:31:39]  It all presupposes that something is lost, something's broken, and it's being recovered and restored, not abandoned.
[00:31:47]  Right.
[00:31:47]  And that's, I think, the critical difference.
[00:31:49]  You're right in saying that some of the two kingdoms advocates, they really do.
[00:31:54]  You just about escape creation with your physical body because Jesus did.
[00:31:59]  Right.
[00:32:00]  And if you denied that, then you're into full blown Gnosticism or some kind of doceticism or whatever.
[00:32:07]  But it's a failure to recognize the unity of creation.
[00:32:11]  And the fact that creation and redemption stand in historical continuity.
[00:32:15]  And it's the result of the importation, actually, of Greek philosophical categories into the Christian faith and a nature grace dualism, a scholastic dualism.
[00:32:26]  It's like a double decker bus, is the way I often describe it.
[00:32:29]  You know, a two story bus, like the famous London Red Bus, you know, you have an upper story and a lower story.
[00:32:36]  And on the lower story, you've got, you know, law, politics, culture, education, all the aspects of culture, if you will.
[00:32:44]  That's the lower story.
[00:32:45]  That's the realm of nature.
[00:32:47]  That runs just in terms of basically natural law, common grace.
[00:32:55]  And then you have an upper story, which is the really important stuff, and that's your personal salvation, your personal devotional life, your personal piety, and the life of the church.
[00:33:06]  That's the realm of grace.
[00:33:07]  And the best that the church can do, as the kingdom, really, is to sprinkle the pixie dust of the church on the lower story a bit.
[00:33:16]  To make life a bit better.
[00:33:19]  But actually, in this life, it's very Aristotelian.
[00:33:23]  It's the state, it's that realm of nature that brings you to the highest degree of moral perfection.
[00:33:28]  But in order to reach salvation and to escape this world and to get out of it, you need redemption in Jesus Christ.
[00:33:37]  And that's why you'll find among some of those thinkers tremendous opposition to Christian education, a Christian view of politics.
[00:33:43]  There'll be jokes like, there's no such thing as a Christian stir fry or Christian.
[00:33:50]  Those sorts of jibes.
[00:33:53]  You know, because for them, Christianity is about this spiritual, private, upper story of existence.
[00:34:01]  And all this other stuff, that's just common to everyone.
[00:34:06]  So instead of seeing a basic unity of creation and redemption and seeing the issue of structure and direction, there are all these created structures that believers and non believers operate in together, but there are two directions.
[00:34:21]  Redemption and apostasy, belief and unbelief.
[00:34:27]  And that motive force is put into action in every single area of life.
[00:34:34]  There is no neutral sphere.
[00:34:36]  The realm of nature is not some neutral area where reason, as far as it goes, is all you need.
[00:34:43]  That's right at the beginning.
[00:34:45]  You talked about the sufficiency of scripture.
[00:34:47]  The problem is that there's an attempt here to synthesize.
[00:34:51]  Greek philosophy with biblical Christianity, and it leads to a dualistic worldview.
[00:34:59]  And that's where all of the, I mean, there are varieties of two kingdoms views.
[00:35:03]  You've mentioned Van Droonen, there's other nuanced ones.
[00:35:06]  I debated Matthew Tuninger a few years ago, and there's Michael Horton as well.
[00:35:12]  There's nuances.
[00:35:13]  And then, of course, you've got the Anabaptists.
[00:35:14]  So you've got different forms of radical two kingdoms views.
[00:35:19]  So it's important sometimes in that discussion to say, well, which one are they actually, which exponent, which version are we actually dealing with?
[00:35:27]  But they all share that in common, that they want to break up reality and creation.
[00:35:33]  Into parts, one part for the world and nature and reason, and one part for God.
[00:35:38]  Right, that's so helpful.
[00:35:39]  And it sounds like part of what you're getting at, and you mentioned this earlier, is we do believe there are two kingdoms.
[00:35:45]  But the question is, what is the distinction between the two kingdoms?
[00:35:48]  What do they represent?
[00:35:50]  And then also, I love, you know, Doug famously said years ago when someone was asking him about two kingdom theology, he said, Well, I'm not really concerned at how many kingdoms there are as much as I'm concerned at how many kings there are.
[00:36:01]  You know, there's one king.
[00:36:03]  But it sounds like what you're saying is, The two kingdom advocate is going to draw the line between these two kingdoms in regards to the natural and the spiritual, the common and the sacred, whereas scripture draws the line between simply light and dark.
[00:36:20]  So it's two kingdoms, light and dark.
[00:36:24]  So scripture draws the line, the distinction between what is good and what is bad, what is moral and immoral, light and dark, true and false.
[00:36:35]  Whereas over here with the two kingdom advocate, They want to draw it between parts.
[00:36:42]  They want to divide up human society and life, human life.
[00:36:47]  They want to divide up sections rather than goodness, inherent goodness, God's truth and falsehoods.
[00:36:55]  They want to draw the distinction between common things and sacred things, natural things and spiritual things.
[00:37:03]  What they would say are temporal things versus eternal things.
[00:37:07]  And even there, we would push back as well and say some of the things that you are saying are temporal.
[00:37:13]  I don't believe the scripture actually would be in your corner.
[00:37:17]  So, would you agree with that?
[00:37:19]  It's not two kingdoms, and then our position is that there aren't two kingdoms, but it's how are we defining these two kingdoms?
[00:37:26]  Yes.
[00:37:27]  Yes.
[00:37:28]  The light and the darkness represent the two directions that we talked about.
[00:37:33]  The distinction between the structure, they conflate structure and direction.
[00:37:37]  They want to say that these structures themselves are done with, they are temporal, they're creation itself.
[00:37:47]  As we know it, belongs to a lesser or a lower realm than the realm of grace and redemption.
[00:37:54]  And so instead of seeing a unity to the plan of redemption, reconciliation for all of life, in all of creation, that Christ is reconciling to himself, yes, creation is broken up one way or another into parts, and history is broken up into a multiplicity of parts oftentimes as well.
[00:38:11]  So some would say there's sort of the redemptive kingdom and there's the common kingdom.
[00:38:17]  Um, and so various divisions are brought, but you're right.
[00:38:21]  Instead of recognizing there is structure, creational structure, and there is direction light and darkness for Christ, against Christ, faithful, unfaithful.
[00:38:32]  Um, true, false, true, false, right?
[00:38:36]  And and that leads to other dichotomies as well, Joel.
[00:38:39]  So it leads to your your matter spirit, uh, or you know, the duality, uh, a radical law gospel duality, um.
[00:38:50]  A radical church state confusion and joke.
[00:38:55]  So rather than recognizing that the totalizing principle in scripture is the kingdom of God rooted in the Lord Jesus Christ, there are attempts to find a part of creation that is the.
[00:39:10]  It's a kind of reductionistic process, really.
[00:39:12]  You find the bit of creation that's most important and then you invest your energies there, rather than recognizing that all of creation is subject to Christ, is being reconciled.
[00:39:23]  To God.
[00:39:24]  That's really good.
[00:39:25]  So that kind of leads into a second question if we could, not really even shifting gears, but just further fleshing this out.
[00:39:31]  So I'll just be frank.
[00:39:34]  The Gospel Coalition.
[00:39:35]  So I'm not a big fan.
[00:39:37]  But the Gospel Coalition, some of our listeners will be hearing what you're saying, and I think they're going to have certain alarms going off.
[00:39:43]  And I know that because if I was having this conversation with you, even just a couple years ago, I would be a little bit wary.
[00:39:50]  Because I was in Acts 29 for about four and a half years as a pastor with Acts 29.
[00:39:56]  I left with some of the woke.
[00:39:58]  Church being written by Eric Mason and the direction that things were going, it just felt like, man, these guys, it just seems like they're just water carriers for the political left.
[00:40:07]  And I don't really want to be about that.
[00:40:10]  But what I initially did, this was maybe three, four years ago, is I put the blame on Kyperianism.
[00:40:17]  So I was like, the problem here is just too much involvement in the culture.
[00:40:22]  The problem here is, and so my point is, there are listeners who might be following right now, and what they've done to try to avoid.
[00:40:33]  Involvement with some of these very, well, just Marxist, bearing the name of Christ.
[00:40:45]  And some of them may be true brothers in Christ and they're just off in left field, and Christ will grant repentance.
[00:40:51]  And then others may we find on the final day we're actually false brothers, and that's for the Lord to decide.
[00:40:57]  But I think there's so much concern right now in the church.
[00:41:00]  And I think of John MacArthur, thank God for him and his ministry and his faithfulness over the years.
[00:41:05]  But I think a lot of guys are going that direction and just saying, you know what, the easiest way to divide and make things clear, clear categories, is just Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church.
[00:41:15]  Whereas I know you and I would both say, Amen.
[00:41:17]  And also, Christ, not Caesar, is head of the state.
[00:41:20]  And Christ, not the father, is head of the family.
[00:41:23]  Christ is the head of all things.
[00:41:25]  Ephesians, I believe, 1 22.
[00:41:27]  Christ has been appointed by God as head of all things to the benefit of the church.
[00:41:31]  And that's not to say Christ is the head of all institutions in the same way that he's head of the church.
[00:41:36]  He's uniquely the head of the church in the sense that he only has given his life up for his bride for the church, but he is head insofar as that is a governmental rule and reign over all things to uniquely benefit his church.
[00:41:52]  And so, anyway, my point is that there's a bad taste in my mouth with the Gospel Coalition, there's a bad taste in my mouth with Acts 29, and some of these Christian groups that have been involved in political matters, involved in cultural matters, but always.
[00:42:07]  Always with a left bent, a democratic, a bent towards neo Marxism and critical race theory and intersectionality and socialism, you know, and all these things.
[00:42:21]  And so I think a lot of people, the remedy, the solution has been embracing a two kingdom kind of doctrine.
[00:42:28]  And so one of the things that you've mentioned that was really helpful for me is saying that there are basically two ditches on either side of the road that the Christian can fall into.
[00:42:38]  One is the social justice ditch, which is seemingly Kyperian, but it puts all its hope and faith in the state, one sphere to solve the problems, and it's just substituted social justice for biblical justice.
[00:42:52]  So it's not even trying to apply in terms of the sufficiency of Scripture.
[00:42:56]  They're all about sufficiency, but it's sufficiency of something else.
[00:42:59]  It's not the sufficiency of Scripture.
[00:43:01]  I don't know what Bible they're reading, but it doesn't have the biblical principles that the Bible actually contains.
[00:43:08]  But then on the other side, If we're not careful in trying to avoid that gospel coalition, Acts 29, these kinds of things, there's the other ditch on the other side of the road, which is this pietism of, you know, that Jesus is only Lord of my heart.
[00:43:28]  It's a privatized lordship of Christ.
[00:43:30]  And so I guess what I'm asking is because I have even close friends who would put Kuiper in a very negative category.
[00:43:39]  But I'm looking and I'm saying, They got Kuiper wrong.
[00:43:42]  These guys are not a good representation of Kuiper.
[00:43:44]  So, could you help us?
[00:43:46]  We want to avoid, we've talked about the two kingdom thing, but we don't want to, you know, the Ezra Institute to just be the Gospel Coalition 2.0.
[00:43:55]  So, what is this, you know, safe path in between the privatized lordship, two kingdom kind of idea versus this neo Kuiperianism, putting all of our hope in the state with social justice and intersectionality and very leftist Marxist.
[00:44:15]  Socialistic principles.
[00:44:18]  Can you speak to that for a moment?
[00:44:19]  Yeah.
[00:44:20]  So, yes.
[00:44:24]  First of all, and I think you have rightly identified it that's to get Kuiper wrong, to assume that he would be somehow, or Kuiper, as he understood his project in identifying a biblical principle of sphere sovereignty, was actually identifying the very opposite of the two kingdoms.
[00:44:47]  Mentality.
[00:44:49]  The principle of sphere sovereignty is that Christ is Lord and King over all things, over everything, and that He has established various spheres of authority within creation and within human institutions, various spheres and jurisdictions, which need to function in terms of God's word for them.
[00:45:11]  And of course, our primary reference there is to scripture itself.
[00:45:17]  So we can all see that we wouldn't govern our family.
[00:45:20]  As we would govern the state, uh, it's not the guiding um principle in the life of the family is the love relationship, and of course, that does involve discipline and so forth.
[00:45:31]  But it's not the kind of uh, you know, if fathers were executing their rebellious children um in the home, uh, and that became known to the church, that would be a problem.
[00:45:44]  In the same way, the government of the family isn't identical to the government of the church, there are similarities.
[00:45:51]  But, you know, I can't excommunicate my wife from the Lord's table.
[00:45:57]  These are distinct spheres of authority.
[00:46:00]  And we intuitively know as Christians who are subject to the word of God when one is overreaching the other.

=== Rejecting Totalitarian Statism (02:28) ===

[00:46:05]  So Kuiper's concern was to say Christ is king over all.
[00:46:10]  God's word must govern everything.
[00:46:12]  And God has established his law word for these different areas of life.
[00:46:16]  And they delimit one another.
[00:46:19]  And that prevents there being any kind of totalitarian.
[00:46:22]  Absolutizing of any sphere of life.
[00:46:25]  If you absolutize the family, what do you get?
[00:46:28]  You get a mafia where blood is everything, where it's more important than the state, and it's not the rule of law, and it's actually just about a mafia.
[00:46:36]  You said you're a mafia, and I was like, What's a mafia?
[00:46:40]  Mafia is at least the Texan version.
[00:46:43]  That's how we say it.
[00:46:44]  Go ahead.
[00:46:44]  Sorry.
[00:46:46]  If you absolutize the church, what have you got?
[00:46:48]  Well, you've got an ecclesiocracy.
[00:46:50]  You have the situation that held for much of the medieval period, where the church is trying to rule and regulate through its own clergy and churchmen every area of life.
[00:47:00]  If you absolutize the state, what do you get?
[00:47:02]  Well, you get statism, you get collectivism, totalitarianism.
[00:47:07]  Totalitarianism fundamentally is one institution trying to treat the others in parts to whole fashion.
[00:47:16]  So the church, the medieval church, was trying to say, look, the church is the all encompassing institution, and we're going to anoint various princes and kings, and we're in charge.
[00:47:26]  And the state, which has been the primary offender historically, especially within, you look throughout pagan history, You look at the Bible, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, the Roman world, look at the emperor cult, you see that the state is the one that has wanted to treat before the actual birth of the first truly free institution in the Western world, the church.
[00:47:47]  The pagan state was everything.
[00:47:48]  That was the view of Socrates, of Plato, of Aristotle.
[00:47:54]  The state is the ultimate organizing, overarching institution.
[00:47:59]  And wouldn't you say that's where, if anything, that's the category that we're in currently?
[00:48:03]  That's where we are now.
[00:48:04]  In our abandonment of the Christian faith and the principle of sphere sovereignty, we've reached this point where mediating institutions are weakened or disappear, and they leave us naked before an all powerful state, which treats all of these things as lesser parts of itself, whereas the real parts of the state are actually provinces and municipalities, and families and churches are on state, a given territory, but they're not parts of the state.
[00:48:32]  So that's what sphere sovereignty is about.

=== The Failure of Churchianity (17:10) ===

[00:48:34]  It's trying to recognize the authority of Christ.
[00:48:37]  And the rule of Christ's word in each of those areas.
[00:48:43]  Now, the ditch on both sides of the road is exactly what the sphere of sovereignty is trying to avoid.
[00:48:50]  And you've talked about the heart a couple of times in the way in which contemporary evangelicalism has tended to think about it in terms of pietism.
[00:48:57]  It's sort of me and Jesus, it's my emotional life, my personal spiritual life.
[00:49:01]  But biblically, the heart is a really important concept, it's the root of the human person.
[00:49:10]  In a certain sense, heart and spirit are used interchangeably.
[00:49:14]  The heart is the I, it's the center, it's the ego.
[00:49:19]  Out of the heart spring the issues of life, scripture says.
[00:49:21]  Jesus talks about the heart being the root of, of course, of sin and rebellion.
[00:49:27]  It's also where the renewal goes on with the work of the Holy Spirit.
[00:49:31]  So the heart is the root unity, it's the central, total aspect of the life of the person.
[00:49:40]  Uh, and think about it like the palm of a hand.
[00:49:41]  This is the heart, this is kind of pre functional, and these are the various functions of our hearts you know, our reasoning, our emotions, and various other aspects of the human person.
[00:49:52]  But the root unity is the heart, and when our hearts are transformed and regenerate, that is going to affect not just my church life, not just my personal spirituality, but every single aspect of my life because a total renovation has gone on in the root.
[00:50:13]  Of the human person.
[00:50:14]  So when we think about the kingdom of God again, it's transformed, the transformation of people at the root of their being.
[00:50:21]  And not the state, not the church, not the family is the totalizing reality.
[00:50:26]  It's the kingdom of God.
[00:50:28]  And so, transformed people apply at the root of their being, apply the radicality of the word of God in the totality of Christ's kingdom, which encompasses every single aspect of life.
[00:50:42]  And so, that eliminates the problem of flight into one or this area or that area.
[00:50:49]  Now, in pietism, what's going on, the one ditch, Is that the faith aspect of our lives, our personal confession, our personal devotions, which are important in our church life, are being absolutized.
[00:51:03]  That's all that matters.
[00:51:04]  Right.
[00:51:06]  And so everything else is reduced in its significance or even regarded as insignificant.
[00:51:12]  Culture, education, they just don't really matter that much because all that matters is this faith aspect of my life.
[00:51:23]  In the social justice movement, And the influence it's had on some of the church movements you've talked about.
[00:51:32]  What's going on there in its most radical form is actually the state is being absolutized and the state, not the church, is being identified with the kingdom of God.
[00:51:41]  That's right.
[00:51:42]  That's exactly what it is.
[00:51:43]  I couldn't articulate it, but you're right.
[00:51:45]  Yeah.
[00:51:45]  Yeah.
[00:51:45]  And the state is then seen as the institution that brings about the reality of the kingdom in the world.
[00:51:52]  And this, of course, is directly related to the nature, grace, Division as well.
[00:52:01]  We end up in a situation where what happens is, and with often, you mentioned faithful Christians oftentimes who are confused, instead of recognizing that the word of God and the authority of the word of God must govern the state as well, God's law word must also govern the state, just as it governs the family, the individual, the church.
[00:52:26]  Separation of church and state doesn't mean a separation of God and state.
[00:52:30]  Precisely.
[00:52:30]  There is a law.
[00:52:31]  It's either God's law or man's law.
[00:52:33]  So, like, I mean, what should civil matters?
[00:52:34]  Of course, they have to legislate God's law.
[00:52:36]  There's neutrality, it's a myth.
[00:52:38]  You're always legislating morality, imposing one set of moral principles on another.
[00:52:45]  And so, what can the Christian say other than, yeah, the state should legislate Christianly?
[00:52:53]  I don't know what other option there is, which to me, there isn't another option.
[00:52:56]  That goes back to the Great Commission, which we always forget this, but it's, you know, we go.
[00:53:00]  So, that's at least four commands to go.
[00:53:03]  To make disciples, to baptize them into the name of the triune God, but then also to teach them to obey all of Christ's commands.
[00:53:09]  And we were saying this before we started recording, but the Apostle Paul also talks about remaining in the station where the Lord has providentially assigned you before conversion.
[00:53:19]  And this could refer to being in an unequally yoked marriage with an unbeliever, which he does that explicitly.
[00:53:28]  But this also very likely can regard vocation.
[00:53:33]  And I think one of the problems that I've seen is some of the most successful.
[00:53:37]  Individuals who come to Christ, the Lord saves them because of this two kingdom, privatize, you know, only the spiritual matters.
[00:53:47]  They are men with ambition, they're men with gifts and unique talents and incredibly gifted with leadership.
[00:53:54]  They come to Christ and because they've been taught by evangelicals, what's the first thing they do, right?
[00:54:01]  They're a hedge fund manager, they quit and become a pastor.
[00:54:04]  They're, you know, they're in the arts, they quit and become.
[00:54:07]  And so it's like we forfeited all this ground.
[00:54:11]  And so, anyway, so all that being said, if we remain in each station and the Lord saves like jailers, like he did with the Apostle Paul, and he remains in that station, and he saves civil magistrates and governors, and if he saves artists,
[00:54:26]  and if he saves doctors and teachers and all these different things, and then, you know, if the Lord saves them, we actually make disciples of the nations and make disciples of individuals in different spheres and different vocations within nations.
[00:54:41]  He saves mothers and fathers and And then we fulfill the Great Commission, the last part, which is to teach them to obey all of Christ's commands.
[00:54:49]  Then I don't know what other logical conclusion we can have other than Christian schools, Christian governments, Christian art.
[00:54:56]  And so for me, the last kind of thing that I'm thinking is I think there are some guys who would be persuaded by this point in our conversation and say, okay, yeah, I get why the two kingdom thing is a problem, and I get why the privatized lordship pietism is a problem.
[00:55:12]  But they can't quite embrace a post mill.
[00:55:15]  Paradigm.
[00:55:16]  They can't quite embrace that there'll be a Christian government, not because they have a theological category against it.
[00:55:22]  We've won them over by this point.
[00:55:23]  I'm speaking to that hypothetical section of the audience, but they still don't think it's going to happen because, and I said this before we started recording, because they're committed to losing.
[00:55:33]  It seems like one of the ways that people escape the idea of a Christian government or they escape the idea of Christian education, if we persuade them that they can't do it theologically, then the way that they do it is they say, well, you're right.
[00:55:48]  People do remain in their stations.
[00:55:50]  And the sufficiency of scripture applies to every realm of life.
[00:55:53]  And the Great Commission includes teaching people to obey all of Christ's commands.
[00:55:56]  And Christ's commands have application in every sphere.
[00:55:59]  You're right about all of that.
[00:56:00]  But the reason this still won't conclude, it won't culminate in Christian government and Christian education and these kinds of things, is because we will lose.
[00:56:10]  They're so tightly committed to losing.
[00:56:14]  And so I feel like the two kingdom thing has to be opposed on the one hand.
[00:56:19]  And then the next thing that has to be opposed systematically is we win people over to the.
[00:56:24]  The rock that breaks the statue and grows into a mountain as we win them over to that position.
[00:56:30]  First, we have to attack pietism and two kingdomism and statism.
[00:56:34]  But then we have to, I feel like, as some, we have to address dispensationalism and premillennialism, this losing mindset.
[00:56:44]  It's like the moment that Christians start to experience some kind of victory, it's almost like they start, they intrinsically feel guilty.
[00:56:51]  Uh oh, we must be doing something wrong.
[00:56:54]  Let's make sure to pull some punches.
[00:56:55]  Because we've got to lose.
[00:56:59]  So, in concluding our conversation, could you speak to that a little bit, Dr. Boot?
[00:57:04]  Yeah, I think the way you've sort of summarized that is linked to what we were saying about church and state.
[00:57:16]  And you can separate the jurisdiction of church and state, but you can't separate religion and the state.
[00:57:21]  Every state is going to be governed by a given world and life view.
[00:57:26]  The irony of this situation.
[00:57:28]  Is that when we refuse to bring political life, law, education, all these things that you just mentioned under the word of God?
[00:57:38]  That's why you find these different people in these areas pursuing social justice, neo Marxist ideas, and so forth in those different spheres, because they don't actually believe the fullness of the word of God applies to those areas of life.
[00:57:52]  Therefore, the status quo or the latest idea or the thing that seems popular, justice gets redefined, love gets redefined.
[00:58:00]  For the political, for the cultural, truth is redefined in the educational sphere, doesn't need to be brought under the lordship of Jesus Christ because it's just not, that area is simply not that important.
[00:58:13]  So, and I think that is linked fundamentally to what you've just said about theologies of failure and theologies of defeat.
[00:58:27]  There is a reason why, you know, it's interesting to track the history of the development of eschatological perspectives.
[00:58:33]  Because they often track with historical trends that are confronting the church.
[00:58:40]  And, you know, in the 20th century, with two world wars, a kind of pessimism began to really take over.
[00:58:50]  And that was when that was the sort of the high point of the dispensational hermeneutic and theologies of escape and retreat.
[00:58:59]  And I think, in many respects, the two kingdoms ideas have been sort of redeployed, and some of them are quite novel.
[00:59:07]  Because Christians are casting about for a theological framework that will justify our sense of defeat and failure.
[00:59:16]  That's exactly it.
[00:59:17]  And the decline of our culture.
[00:59:19]  Well, and will actually maybe even excuse us of our accountability and responsibility.
[00:59:24]  That's right, absolve us of our guilt.
[00:59:26]  You're right, that's exactly what it is.
[00:59:29]  Rather than saying the church failed, it's one of these, well, this is Jesus's plan, right?
[00:59:35]  We have to lose because who's going to persecute us?
[00:59:38]  We've got to have someone to persecute us so that we can do something with all these texts, you know.
[00:59:41]  Yeah.
[00:59:43]  Yeah.
[00:59:43]  And I think that, and here's where I would sort of conclude the point.
[00:59:49]  Because I think there's a deeper problem at work.
[00:59:53]  And that is that we associate power with the demonic.
[01:00:00]  So we think somehow that, you know, it's fine to talk about power in the church, power and authority in the life of the church.
[01:00:14]  And Power, it's permissible to talk about justice and love and these kinds of principles in the life of the church.
[01:00:25]  But as soon as you talk about power and associate the Christian with power, well, you must have lent your ears to the devil.
[01:00:32]  You're right.
[01:00:33]  That's it.
[01:00:34]  Because you cannot equate Christ, the Christian, with power.
[01:00:40]  And yet, the Bible, God is omnipotent, He's the all powerful one.
[01:00:47]  And Christ is the one who's been given all power and authority.
[01:00:51]  Power has nothing inherently demonic in it.
[01:00:54]  That's right.
[01:00:55]  It's not power itself that's the problem, it's our use of power.
[01:00:59]  It's as the structure and direction issue comes back again.
[01:01:03]  The problem is not power.
[01:01:04]  The problem is not Christians in power, because you're right.
[01:01:06]  What will often be pointed to is you know, I'm a fan of the Puritans.
[01:01:09]  I've spent years reading the English Puritans since I was a seminarian and a reform professor introduced me to them.
[01:01:17]  And, but it's often said, well, look, you know, the Puritan experiment failed.
[01:01:21]  Look at the failure of Oliver Cromwell.
[01:01:24]  And, or, or look at even look even at the sort of parallel movement that developed with the Groen van Prinsterer and was followed by Abraham Kuyper in the Netherlands.
[01:01:33]  Look at the Netherlands today, it failed.
[01:01:36]  And so, there's a sense that because human beings in their weakness and sin, the Christians have failed in their task, or paganism has taken root, or apostasy and rebellion has taken root in the churches.
[01:01:49]  I mean, if you want to look, you don't have to look any further than.
[01:01:52]  The apostasy and rebellion of the late 19th century, early 20th century European and North American church, and the invasion of liberalism to account for the collapse of mainline churches throughout the Western world.
[01:02:07]  It was the failure and the rebellion of the church.
[01:02:12]  And so the tendency is to equate power with evil, power with the demonic, not recognize that actually power and authority is something that's actually given to us.
[01:02:24]  Jesus says, go and wait in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.
[01:02:34]  And Christ has all power and authority, and it's in his power and authority that we go.
[01:02:38]  So the problem, we all need power in life, and all of us are given a certain degree of power.
[01:02:44]  We have power in the sense of over our own bodies, we have power and authority in the family, in the church, in our vocations.
[01:02:51]  The issue is, how is power going to be used?
[01:02:54]  And it must be put into the service of Christ.
[01:02:57]  And of course, power in the service of Satan is deadly.
[01:03:01]  So, but this idea that we must retreat from power and that we must retreat from positions of authority and power actually results, ironically, Joel, in a radically politicized church.
[01:03:16]  Because we deny that Christians should exercise power and authority in education, in culture, in politics, and so on.
[01:03:23]  And then, and we say politics doesn't belong in the pulpit.
[01:03:27]  And because we don't bring culture and all these spheres of power under the authority of the Word of God, they all go their own way.
[01:03:35]  We ecclesiasticize the Bible.
[01:03:37]  We have a kind of churchianity rather than Christianity.
[01:03:41]  And then all those congregants in our churches who never have the Word of God brought to bear on their ideas about politics and culture are radically politicized.
[01:03:50]  And so they run after social justice movements and this and that and the other.
[01:03:54]  And they've got no bearings whatsoever in terms of the kingdom of God around what the Word of God says about the exercise of politics.
[01:04:02]  Power and authority in all of these other areas of life because we render it all to the world and to the devil.
[01:04:08]  You're right, that's so good because it is ironic because you would think, okay, this is the opposite of being overly political because we've ecclesiastically the Bible.
[01:04:20]  Which just to flesh that out because again, your little book for mission, some of our listeners may not know what you mean by that, but it's the difference between here's the question was the Bible written to the church or was the Bible written to man?
[01:04:31]  Was it written to mankind?
[01:04:32]  Because we would say that you know the moral law of God.
[01:04:35]  Is binding on every person in every time and every place.
[01:04:39]  The Ten Commandments are not for Christians.
[01:04:41]  They're for people.
[01:04:43]  And for Christians, it's a lamp unto our feet.
[01:04:46]  And for people, in kind of the first use of the law, it's a mirror that reflects to them the holiness of God and by way of contrast, their sin and need for a Savior.
[01:04:54]  And then it becomes a lamp unto their feet as well.
[01:04:58]  But the law of God is for everyone.
[01:05:00]  Even the Sabbath, an unbeliever, and this is controversial for a lot of the Baptists that listen to me, but.
[01:05:07]  Unbelievers will stand before God and be judged for not keeping the Sabbath and now not keeping the Christian Sabbath.
[01:05:15]  And so the law of God, the Bible, the Word of God, and all of its principles, all of its imperatives, and all of its indicatives are written to people.
[01:05:24]  And the first imperative is that they would repent of their sin and believe the gospel, which is a command.
[01:05:29]  To believe the gospel is a command, and it's a command to all people in all places and all times.
[01:05:33]  And so that ecclesiasticizing of the Bible.
[01:05:38]  Is precisely the problem because then Christians think the Bible has something to say to Christians and churches, and it doesn't have anything to say anywhere else.

=== Forfeiting Political Ground (09:13) ===

[01:05:45]  And so what we do is we forfeit all this ground.
[01:05:46]  So, we're at first glance, it's an abdicating of all political activity.
[01:05:52]  But then, what it quickly becomes is well, because the Bible doesn't speak to those things, then each of these spheres outside of the church get to decide what is right.
[01:06:03]  And then, any involvement that we have with these spheres, we're now involving ourselves in bad politics and in immoral policies and immoral legislation and all these things because, again, we have denied the sufficiency of Scripture.
[01:06:17]  And I think that that's precisely with the SBC, I'll just be frank.
[01:06:21]  The SBC won the battle when it came to inerrancy.
[01:06:23]  And I think this was never maybe outright said, but I think that the fine print clause that allowed for them to win against liberalism, and I think of Machen, you know, and Christianity and liberalism.
[01:06:36]  I think part of the reason why some mainline denominations and churches and seminaries won that battle against liberalism is because there was an unspoken concession.
[01:06:46]  It was give us inerrancy and we'll forfeit sufficiency.
[01:06:51]  So inerrancy will lose its teeth.
[01:06:53]  It won't bother you, it won't threaten you.
[01:06:56]  You'll be just fine because we're going to say that the Bible is absolutely infallible.
[01:07:00]  It's perfect.
[01:07:01]  Yes, Jesus was born of a virgin.
[01:07:03]  Yes, six days, the world was created.
[01:07:05]  But don't you worry, we will never take these principles.
[01:07:09]  You give us, you concede and say that we can say that these principles are true, and our concession will be that these principles will never be applied.
[01:07:19]  So you let us say they're true, and we promise not to apply them.
[01:07:23]  And the state is just fine with that.
[01:07:25]  The state is fine with, in their perspective, crazy people.
[01:07:29]  So, you believe crazy things, that's fine, so long as they're not applied.
[01:07:33]  But the moment that we start to apply them, then it becomes a threat.
[01:07:36]  And I feel like, in some ways, Herod understood Jesus, his person, his work, better than most evangelicals today.
[01:07:45]  When he was born, Herod knew that his political power was under threat because it's in the Magnificat of kingdoms.
[01:07:53]  It's right there in the Magnificat.
[01:07:55]  He will pull down rulers from their thrones.
[01:07:57]  That's right.
[01:07:59]  And I think you've hit on a key point there.
[01:08:05]  This goes back to the issue of power and authority.
[01:08:08]  Defeat is implied there in the fact that if you've restricted biblical inerrancy to the church, essentially, and you've really denied sufficiency, then your loss of the culture is guaranteed.
[01:08:21]  Defeat is fundamentally guaranteed.
[01:08:23]  The material authority of Scripture is denied.
[01:08:26]  And as you've said, the Word of God is the Word of God for all creatures.
[01:08:34]  And of course, specifically because of his unique response.
[01:08:38]  Ability because man has a unique ability to respond to the word of God in a particular way, it's given to all people.
[01:08:46]  And uh, you mentioned the first use of the law, of course.
[01:08:48]  Paul also adds in First Timothy one that the law is there to restrain wickedness, it says it's not made for the righteous but for the wicked.
[01:08:57]  So, it's crystal clear in the Bible, it's crystal clear that the word of God is for all of life, for all people, and it's a question of obedience.
[01:09:08]  You know, we are homo respondents, we are.
[01:09:11]  We are responding beings, and we either respond in obedience, and therefore we're believers and we repent and we're regenerate, or we respond in rebellion, and therefore we're at risk of reprobation.
[01:09:26]  That's right.
[01:09:27]  And that's the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light.
[01:09:31]  But if we accept an ecclesiasticization of the word, then we guarantee our cultural defeat and we will build theologies of failure and retreat.
[01:09:45]  That will also justify us in our abandonment of all the areas that Christ requires of us obedience.
[01:09:52]  And people frequently make this mistake.
[01:09:54]  I'm sometimes accused of it, Joel.
[01:09:58]  Oh, this sounds like social gospel.
[01:10:01]  Nothing could be further from the truth.
[01:10:03]  This is about the lordship of Jesus Christ, the fullness of the gospel of the kingdom, and our faithfulness in its application.
[01:10:11]  And if you don't do it biblically, people will ape it, they will bastardize it, and they'll apply some foreign principle, some foreign idea.
[01:10:21]  Because, of course, Christians have to live in the world of culture and education and politics, and they will be deceived by empty philosophy.
[01:10:29]  You're absolutely right.
[01:10:30]  I love what you said about the responsibility.
[01:10:32]  We were responsible in light of Romans 1, we're responsible because we know.
[01:10:35]  People think that, you know, they often think that ignorance, or I'm sorry, that rebellion stems from ignorance, that people are born ignorant to the truth of God, and therefore they choose to rebel.
[01:10:44]  When Paul says precisely the opposite, it's that people are born rebellious to the Lord, and so they take what is, and I love it, you said it's crystal clear.
[01:10:53]  And it's not just, to clarify just a little bit more, it's not just that God has made his principles, his truth, his word crystal clear to all people, unbelievers and believers alike, it's not just that he has clearly displayed his truth.
[01:11:07]  But Romans 1 says it's been also not just clearly displayed, but clearly perceived.
[01:11:12]  It actually uses that word.
[01:11:13]  So the message has actually been received.
[01:11:15]  So it's not just that God clearly sent out the message, but that all of creation, not just the believer, but all of creation, the unbeliever from birth, from physical birth, has perceived and received the message.
[01:11:27]  And so it's the reason.
[01:11:29]  And responds in one way or another.
[01:11:30]  You're right.
[01:11:31]  And responds one way or another.
[01:11:33]  And so rebellion doesn't come out of ignorance.
[01:11:36]  People aren't born ignorant and therefore they rebel because they don't know any better.
[01:11:39]  But people are born rebellious because of the curse of sin.
[01:11:42]  And then what they do in that rebellion is they lie and suppress the truth and deeds of unrighteousness and give way progressively to further ignorance.
[01:11:50]  But their ignorance is a culpable ignorance because it's an ignorance that they have achieved by their willful response.
[01:11:56]  Yeah.
[01:11:57]  So, Amen.
[01:11:57]  When Amen finally leaves us, that's exactly right.
[01:12:01]  And where that leaves them in the absence of the salt and light of the fullness of the kingdom of God is.
[01:12:09]  With, as Paul, you mentioned Paul there, and what he says in Romans 1 and what we see, of course, in the Psalms 2 about the creation pouring forth speech.
[01:12:20]  That's right, yeah.
[01:12:23]  It leads to a radically corrupted culture.
[01:12:26]  That's exactly what Paul says in Romans 1.
[01:12:28]  He says it starts with they exchanged the truth about God for the lie, and then they worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
[01:12:40]  And that leads, so you go from a worship exchange, a truth exchange to a worship exchange to a sexual exchange.
[01:12:47]  And then you have the kind of laws we're seeing passing in Canada now.
[01:12:50]  Right.
[01:12:50]  I just preached on that last Sunday, joined you guys in solidarity.
[01:12:54]  Where you are now a criminal to counsel people in terms of God's norms for male and female.
[01:12:59]  Right.
[01:13:00]  But it's not a neutral ban.
[01:13:02]  People need to understand it's not a neutral ban against persuasion or against encouraging or against pushing.
[01:13:06]  It's only one way.
[01:13:08]  You can encourage the cisgendered heterosexual child all day long to select another gender.
[01:13:14]  And so it's always, and I think that's key.
[01:13:16]  When I was preaching the Texas last Sunday and standing in solidarity with you guys and the Freedom Coalition Canada and James Coates, and one of the things that I said is it's very particular that Paul uses the word exchange, right?
[01:13:29]  So, it's unbelief first, and then the immediate result is idolatry.
[01:13:33]  So, first, exchanging the truth of God for a lie, and then worshiping the creature rather than the creator.
[01:13:37]  So, it's unbelief, then it's idolatry.
[01:13:40]  But even in unbelief, what people need to see is it's not that they rejected the truth of God and therefore worshiped.
[01:13:47]  No, they exchanged it.
[01:13:48]  And what people need to realize is that if you reject the truth of God, there is no neutrality.
[01:13:53]  Immediately, a new truth, pseudo truth, is believed in its place.
[01:13:57]  And so, what creatures always do, right, in the same way that we are intrinsically designed to be worshipers, If we're not worshiping God, then we're worshiping something else, namely the creation, because it's the only alternative option.
[01:14:08]  Well, in the same way, that stems from the deeper problem, which is the problem of belief.
[01:14:12]  And in the same way that a person does not have the viable option of opting out of worship, they're going to worship something, either the creator or the creature.
[01:14:21]  Well, that stems, that is true, because the person is intrinsically a believer.
[01:14:27]  They must believe in something.
[01:14:29]  And if they don't believe the truth of God, they will not just reject it or deny it, they will exchange it.
[01:14:34]  To believe some other narrative, some other truth, whether it be statism, whatever it might be, naturalism.
[01:14:42]  And that's precisely so the idolatry of exchanging, they are exchanging gods in worship because they exchange narratives, they exchange truths in the realm of belief.
[01:14:53]  And that's where it begins.
[01:14:54]  Do you have any final thoughts for us, Dr. Boot, on this subject?

=== Exchanging Truth for Lies (07:52) ===

[01:14:58]  Yes, just on the issue of the way in which our truncation of the gospel and of the kingdom and of the word of God in all of this.
[01:15:09]  Affects attitudes towards these kinds of laws that you were preaching on with us on Sunday.
[01:15:16]  When you look at Scripture, and I think I would leave this sort of encouragement to your listeners is that to make sure that when we look at Scripture, we're not just looking at Bible verses, memorizing Bible verses, and trying to do doctrine.
[01:15:30]  It's fundamentally the Scripture, I mean, theology in a sense is an outgrowth of biblical world and life view.
[01:15:38]  There's no neutral theology either.
[01:15:39]  You can have some pretty bad theologians.
[01:15:42]  You can have liberal theology.
[01:15:44]  Theology is not a safe zone.
[01:15:47]  Oh, I'm going to become a pastor.
[01:15:48]  I'm going to do theology because that's a safe place.
[01:15:50]  I'm going to leave engineering or medicine or whatever because I'm going to do theology.
[01:15:54]  Well, theology is just one science among many, and it can be done obediently and faithfully in terms of a scriptural world and life view or rebelliously.
[01:16:03]  And I would encourage us to look at these questions that we're facing culturally now in terms of that broader biblical world and life view of creation, fall, rebellion.
[01:16:14]  And the consummation of all things in Jesus Christ.
[01:16:16]  That's the lens through which we need to look at these issues.
[01:16:19]  And when you do that in the area of human sexuality, you see how it's central to the life of the gospel.
[01:16:24]  You see how it's central to the gospel of the kingdom because the Bible begins with a wedding.
[01:16:31]  God brings Eve to Adam.
[01:16:35]  And ever since, and actually it's reflected right to this day in our marriage traditions, the father of the bride brings the bride to the man.
[01:16:46]  This reflects actually what happens in redemption, where the son, and the scripture says, isn't it about marriage, that a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, while the son leaves the father.
[01:17:00]  That's right.
[01:17:01]  So that he can be given a bride by the father.
[01:17:07]  That's right.
[01:17:08]  And Israel's relationship to God is described as a marriage, it's an adulterous one on behalf of Israel.
[01:17:15]  Christ comes to us as the bridegroom through the Holy Family.
[01:17:21]  The way in which God reveals himself covenantally is in familial terms, father and son, marriage.
[01:17:28]  His first miracle, the Lord's first miracle, is at a wedding.
[01:17:31]  The relationship of Christ with his church is described as a marriage, and history ends in the marriage celebration, the marriage supper of the Lamb.
[01:17:40]  Destroy gender, destroy male, female distinction, which of course is at the root of our idea of transcendence, of holiness, distinctness, distinction.
[01:17:53]  The distinctions that God places within creation, He separates light and darkness, sea and land.
[01:17:58]  The creatures from one another.
[01:17:59]  They produce after their kind.
[01:18:01]  Distinction is basic to God's creation.
[01:18:04]  And it reflects it.
[01:18:05]  So marriage becomes one of the cosmological keys to reality, to the cosmos.
[01:18:12]  And when we lose it, when we lose a grip on it, we actually begin to lose our ability and we lose our understanding of male female distinction and marriage.
[01:18:20]  We lose our ability to understand the gospel and its meaning.
[01:18:24]  So it's all presupposed in the gospel itself.
[01:18:29]  And so.
[01:18:30]  I think as we face all these cultural challenges and confront them, we have to recognize that the gospel of the kingdom, which is what Jesus calls it, it's what the Bible calls the gospel, it's not some isolated thing about my soul going to heaven.
[01:18:44]  It's the gospel of the kingdom of God, of the rule and reign of Christ that begins in the root of my own being.
[01:18:52]  And if we understand that, the meaning of the kingdom, then we'll see that this gospel must permeate all these areas of life.
[01:19:00]  And if we don't do that, Joel, If we don't see that permeation into these most fundamental areas that speak of, you know, Karl Marx understood this well.
[01:19:09]  If you want to destroy the holy family, you must destroy the earthly family in theory and in practice.
[01:19:15]  That's right.
[01:19:15]  You want to get rid of God, get rid of the earthly family.
[01:19:18]  Get rid of marriage, destroy it.
[01:19:20]  This is an attempt to attack God by attacking his image bearer.
[01:19:24]  And it's an assault directly on the gospel.
[01:19:27]  And yet, so many of our evangelical movements don't see it.
[01:19:29]  In fact, they support bans on so called conversion therapy.
[01:19:34]  And think it's a good thing.
[01:19:36]  This is actually an anti conversion law, is what it is.
[01:19:39]  It's not an anti conversion therapy law.
[01:19:41]  It's an anti conversion law.
[01:19:43]  And so, this truncation of the gospel, this whole issue that you've dealt with on this program, the meaning of the gospel of the kingdom comes right home to roost right now for Canadian Christians, but Christians across the West increasingly.
[01:19:57]  That when you abandon the gospel of the kingdom, well, you may find yourself locked up in jail.
[01:20:04]  Yeah.
[01:20:05]  We're telling your own teaching your own children and counseling your own children that there is male and female, and God wants you to be married to a man or if you're a woman, and to a woman if you're a man, in a covenantal union that recognizes the distinction of God's being reflected in the distinction of male and female, and reflects that which reflects the distinction between creator and creature.
[01:20:30]  That's how fundamental it is.
[01:20:32]  That's why paganism, actually, that's why homosexuality has been called the sacrament of monism.
[01:20:39]  Basically, the sacrament of paganism.
[01:20:41]  It's why wherever you see Christianity decline, you see a denial of distinctions and you see a worship of creation emerge, and with it, every form of sexual perversion and deviancy.
[01:20:54]  That's why it's arising now, because we have retreated.
[01:20:57]  We've abandoned the culture in large measure, and we've justified it with theologies of abandonment, retreat, and defeat.
[01:21:05]  And we've said God's law belongs nowhere but between my ears and maybe a little bit in the church.
[01:21:10]  And until we recover the fullness of the gospel of the kingdom, we're going to still struggle with this.
[01:21:14]  But I think there's a window of opportunity and hope here to recover it for this generation so that the future looks different.
[01:21:21]  Amen.
[01:21:22]  Yeah, I think providentially, God has been merciful these last couple of years with everything that's gone on and just the massive overreach of the state, that a lot of eyes have been opened.
[01:21:32]  And I think our prayer needs to be a lot of eyes have been opened to the benefits of Christ's principles without paying homage to Christ's person.
[01:21:42]  And if you embrace the principles of Christ without the person of Christ, you'll never have the peace of Christ.
[01:21:49]  And so we have Jordan Peterson launching into the stratosphere, Ben Shapiro, all these guys that I'm grateful for in God's common grace.
[01:21:57]  And so I think there, at least in America, there seems to be a, it seems like we're going to have a red tsunami, you know, coming up this year in 2022.
[01:22:07]  But my fear is we've got, as Christians, we've got to show them that the goodness, everything that people love comes from Christ.
[01:22:16]  Every good and perfect gift comes from Christ.
[01:22:17]  So thank you so much for your time, Dr. Boot.
[01:22:20]  And we've got a great guest room here in Texas, you know, as Canada continues to lose its ever loving mind, if you ever need to, If you ever need to flee, well, we've got some runners already.
[01:22:34]  More may follow, but it's good to know that we have such good friends to the south and watch this space because the Ezra Institute has some interesting plans afoot to support our brothers and sisters stateside in the US.

=== Connect With Ezra Institute (00:57) ===

[01:22:50]  And if people do want to follow up, Joel, with the Ezra Institute, they can find us at Ezrainstitute.ca.
[01:22:58]  And there you can find our resources and books at Ezra Press.
[01:23:02]  There's a link off the button off the website there.
[01:23:05]  And if they want to follow us on Facebook and Twitter, Ezra Institute, or follow me on Twitter at Dr. Joe Boot, they can keep up with what we're doing.
[01:23:13]  Great.
[01:23:14]  Thank you so much.
[01:23:14]  That's Ezra Institute.ca.
[01:23:17]  That's right.
[01:23:17]  Okay.
[01:23:18]  Thank you so much.
[01:23:18]  God bless you.
[01:23:19]  God bless you, Joel.
[01:23:20]  Thank you.
[01:23:21]  As a special thank you for your gift of any amount, we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our store.
[01:23:27]  To access this offer, visit rightresponse ministries.comslash offer.
[01:23:32]  We highly recommend Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved?
[01:23:36]  If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God, this would be a great resource.
[01:23:41]  As a reminder, to get this offer, go to rightresponseministries.comslash offer.
[01:23:46]  And thank you for your generous support.