NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Church In Australia After Covid w Evelyn Rae from Caldron Pool
Aired: 2022-10-25
Duration: 59:50


=== Introducing Evelyn Ray (04:55) ===

[00:00:00]  All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:00:03]  I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
[00:00:05]  And in this episode, I'm pleased to have as a special guest Evelyn Ray from Cauldron Pool.
[00:00:11]  She does podcasts and articles and is all over social media in Australia.
[00:00:18]  And she recently, on her podcast with Cauldron Pool, interviewed Douglas Wilson in regards to his Meet the Press segment on Christian nationalism.
[00:00:27]  And I see her from time to time, whether it be with Jeff Durbin or Doug Wilson.
[00:00:31]  She's in our camp that.
[00:00:33]  Post millennial reformed theology camp.
[00:00:35]  And what I wanted to do in this episode was have her join me on the show and give us kind of a state of the union in regards to the church in Australia.
[00:00:44]  Things have been hard in the United States these past two and a half years for those who love Christ, but in many ways we've had it easy, especially in comparison to places like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
[00:00:57]  So tune in for this episode.
[00:00:59]  You're in for a treat.
[00:01:02]  Oh, hi.
[00:01:02]  I didn't see you there.
[00:01:03]  Thanks for sticking around.
[00:01:04]  I've got an important announcement to make.
[00:01:06]  That's the Theonomy and Postmillennialism Conference 2023, May 5th, 6th, and 7th, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
[00:01:15]  Theonomy and Postmillennialism.
[00:01:17]  We've got the speakers that we've already had lined up.
[00:01:19]  That's Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar, non doctor Pastor Joel Webbin.
[00:01:24]  But we also have a bonus speaker, and that is Dale Partridge from Real Christianity.
[00:01:30]  Perhaps you've heard of him.
[00:01:31]  If not, you should start listening to his podcast.
[00:01:33]  It's fantastic.
[00:01:34]  Dale Partridge is going to be joining our team.
[00:01:37]  We're going to have live panels on Friday night and Saturday night where you'll be able to write in questions and get them answered.
[00:01:43]  We're also going to have a catered barbecue, Texas style barbecue meal on Friday that's a part of your registration fee.
[00:01:50]  All that is covered.
[00:01:51]  So you need to get that.
[00:01:53]  This is how you do it.
[00:01:54]  Go and register right now at RightResponseConference.com.
[00:01:58]  Again, that's RightResponseConference.com.
[00:02:02]  God bless.
[00:02:04]  To every aspect of life.
[00:02:07]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:02:12]  All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:02:15]  I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries, and I am pleased in this episode to have Evelyn Ray, who is a part of Cauldron Pool.
[00:02:23]  Evelyn, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:02:24]  Thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:25]  I'm truly honored to be here.
[00:02:27]  Did I pronounce the last name correctly?
[00:02:30]  Yes, you did.
[00:02:31]  Ray like the sun.
[00:02:33]  Great.
[00:02:33]  And tell us a little bit about yourself, Cauldron Pool, and anything else that you.
[00:02:38]  I don't know that you do for a living or any of those things, just so our audience can get to know you a little bit.
[00:02:45]  Sure.
[00:02:45]  So, I am a Christian first and foremost.
[00:02:49]  I have grown up with a family who were believers, but I would say I sort of came to my own journey in my early 20s where I took it on for myself as opposed to just being a seasonal Christmas Day, Easter Day service Christian.
[00:03:06]  So, that was very transformative for me.
[00:03:09]  But I sort of came to reform theology in my mid 20s, and that's where everything sort of changed.
[00:03:15]  At the time, I was serving in the police force as a detective over here in Australia.
[00:03:20]  I did 12 years service, and in 2020, I resigned from that and became a farmer.
[00:03:27]  So now I farm cattle.
[00:03:28]  It was a bit of a difference in occupation, but I'm much happier for it now, I must say.
[00:03:35]  And sort of around the same sex marriage debate over here in Australia, where we all got to vote whether we agreed or disagreed with it.
[00:03:44]  That's sort of when I put my toe in the water and sort of started to commentate a little bit from a Christian conservative perspective in Australia.
[00:03:52]  We have conservatives, well, somewhat conservatives, more, you know, I guess libertarian in nature.
[00:03:58]  And there's a big void over here for Christian conservatives.
[00:04:01]  So Cauldron Pool was started by Ben Davis, and he very gratefully allowed me to sort of have a bit of a voice and sort of get in the ring and be a woman over here, sort of talking about cultural issues.
[00:04:15]  And it's sort of gone, I'd say, uphill since then.
[00:04:20]  And it's been a privilege to be able to talk to some amazing people on the Cauldron Pool show where I. Podcast as well and write.
[00:04:27]  Great.
[00:04:28]  Well, I recently watched, I've told you already, I watched the episode that you recently did with Doug Wilson in regards to Christian nationalism, and I thought the interview was fantastic.
[00:04:38]  Doug, as usual, did a great job, but you did a great job asking all the kinds of questions that I feel like a listener would want to ask if they were able to get in the room with Doug themselves.
[00:04:48]  They would want to ask those kinds of questions about, well, what about federal vision?
[00:04:52]  What is federal vision?
[00:04:54]  Do you still hold to this?

=== Churches Caving to Caesar (09:17) ===

[00:04:55]  All those kinds of things.
[00:04:57]  Anyway, so I've watched some of your stuff, certainly that episode.
[00:05:00]  I thought you did a great job.
[00:05:01]  So keep up the good work.
[00:05:03]  So, all that being said, I want to go ahead and just jump in with somebody who is actually a native Australian.
[00:05:09]  I've gotten bits and pieces of information from people who email me from Australia, who are residents there.
[00:05:15]  And it sounds like America lost its mind over the last two years, but it seems like America was somewhat sane by comparison to Australia.
[00:05:25]  So, what has Australia's response as a whole been to?
[00:05:29]  Things like COVID, things like Black Lives Matter.
[00:05:32]  What's it like on the ground now?
[00:05:34]  Are churches gathering?
[00:05:35]  Can you find a conservative, biblical, faithful church in Australia?
[00:05:40]  What's the temperature like?
[00:05:42]  Yeah, well, the thing is, it's all over the place, the temperature.
[00:05:45]  That's probably the best way to sort of describe it.
[00:05:48]  But it's interesting you mentioned that Australia seemed to fall a lot further than, say, America, for example.
[00:05:53]  And we certainly did.
[00:05:55]  But it's interesting now in 2022, we have dropped our mandates coming in and out of our country.
[00:06:02]  But I think America, Has still got them, or they've just dropped them.
[00:06:05]  So that was a real surprise that we sort of fell so far, but then dropped everything.
[00:06:11]  I think that goes to testament that Australia kind of responded in a way that was massively overreached.
[00:06:18]  And maybe they're backtracking and just like, if we just drop it all, maybe they'll forget what we've done to them for the last two and a half years.
[00:06:26]  But it was a real shocking time for me personally, not just with, I guess, civilian response and the civil government response, but also with the church response.
[00:06:37]  And I'm not sure how in depth you want to go with that, but we had churches who I thought wouldn't cave to Caesar, I would say did so and almost handed the keys to the pulpit to the civil government because we had many churches, including reformed churches over here, that closed their doors and segregated based on vaccination status.
[00:06:59]  And unfortunately, I was in that category because I chose to not get the vaccine.
[00:07:05]  So my own church.
[00:07:07]  Locked me out of the building, so to say.
[00:07:11]  And so, real quick, just to interject so, not segregation in terms of vaccinated people sit on one side of the room and the unclean, unvaccinated people on the other side.
[00:07:22]  But you're saying that if you weren't vaccinated, you were not allowed to attend church at all.
[00:07:27]  Is that right?
[00:07:28]  Correct.
[00:07:29]  Yeah.
[00:07:29]  And the way that they sort of dealt with that was they said that the Zoom church was sufficient.
[00:07:38]  So you could sit at home.
[00:07:40]  Watching it on the computer, and you could be somewhat part of the attending church still.
[00:07:46]  But it's funny, they literally were administering the sacraments via Zoom and telling you to run to your kitchen and grab a piece of bread or go to your fridge, grab some juice.
[00:07:57]  This was happening in Australia.
[00:07:59]  And for those of us who obviously disagreed with this approach, we expected better from the leaders of our churches to sort of step up.
[00:08:08]  And yeah.
[00:08:09]  I was just going to say, but you say like our churches, like I'm picturing saying we're going to take the Lord's Supper through Zoom.
[00:08:16]  I'm picturing Brian Houston would maybe say that, you know, like Hillsong, which is pretty much the only picture I have of Australian churches, you know, which I should have a lot of quotations around the word church in that instance.
[00:08:28]  But are you talking about Reformed churches, like a 1689 Reformed Baptist or like a Presbyterian church doing the sacrament of the Lord's Supper through Zoom?
[00:08:40]  Correct, yes.
[00:08:41]  So I was part of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and I handed in my membership after this, obviously.
[00:08:49]  Now, The church that I specifically went to, my little Presbyterian church, my minister obviously disagreed with this.
[00:08:56]  So, him as an individual, he decided not to segregate.
[00:09:00]  He decided not to shut the doors for one and open it for the others.
[00:09:03]  But his answer to it was to just shut the church altogether until the government changed their mandates.
[00:09:10]  So, he was one of the few that went that far.
[00:09:15]  But there was only, out of the state that I live in, there was probably only.
[00:09:21]  Two or three reformed churches out of millions of people that live in this state that actually said all together no to Caesar and said, We're opening the church, we're not shutting our doors, we're not administering the sacraments via Zoom, and we're not going to segregate based on vaccination status.
[00:09:40]  And what was really almost even more shocking was there were a group of reformed ministers who sort of threw it out there in a group of other reformed ministers more senior to them.
[00:09:53]  Let's do something.
[00:09:54]  As a church, we have to step up against the civil government in this regard.
[00:10:00]  And they got really ostracized for it.
[00:10:03]  They got really heavily criticized and said, you're out of line, that you're breaching in civil government.
[00:10:09]  And the whole church and state debate came up in all of this and the whole misconstrued interpretation of what that actually means.
[00:10:18]  Because you and I know the whole church and state argument stemmed from getting the government out of the church.
[00:10:23]  Not the church out of the government, but they sort of used that and misinterpreted that argument to sort of keep ministers out of this debate.
[00:10:32]  But four ministers, sorry, three ministers decided to say, I'm going to go above the head and just do it on our own.
[00:10:40]  And they released something called the Ezekiel Declaration, which was basically a declaration from them writing it to the Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, who himself professes to be a Christian man, and said, This is what we're seeing is happening.
[00:10:56]  We can see that they're going to be segregating based on vaccines.
[00:11:00]  We can see that the church has a position now to take a stand against Caesar in this regard.
[00:11:06]  And we can also see that the church is an essential service.
[00:11:09]  So it should be exempt from these mandates and it should be exempt from being locked in your home, et cetera.
[00:11:15]  Now, it got a lot of attention, that Ezekiel declaration.
[00:11:19]  It got thousands of signatures agreeing with them.
[00:11:22]  But something that we noticed it was the first time in Australia that the ministers all came together.
[00:11:29]  But they came together against that Ezekiel declaration.
[00:11:33]  And we had ministers criticizing these three brave men who stood up against it.
[00:11:38]  And it was just assault after assault, sniper hit after sniper hit.
[00:11:42]  And it was so confronting seeing Christians sit on their hands for so many months and then finally get off their hands and do something, but against the three men who actually put their name to a piece of paper and sent a declaration to the prime minister.
[00:11:58]  So that was quite shocking.
[00:11:59]  I actually interviewed those men on my podcast and I sort of put it to them like, how far were you willing to go?
[00:12:07]  Because we saw ministers in Canada being arrested.
[00:12:10]  For not closing their doors.
[00:12:11]  And they said, we had to sit down with their wives and their children and say, this could potentially happen.
[00:12:16]  So it was a bit scary time for them, but that's how far they were willing to go.
[00:12:21]  So that was encouraging, but it was really strange and sad times seeing the church come after these godly men who were trying to do the right thing.
[00:12:33]  Right.
[00:12:34]  Yeah.
[00:12:34]  Well, we've seen certainly the same thing over here in the United States of America, but probably not by God's grace.
[00:12:42]  That same ratio.
[00:12:44]  We've had, by God's grace, more than three ministers take a biblically faithful stand.
[00:12:50]  But those who have taken a stand and said, no, we're not going to close our doors, and no, we're not going to segregate based off of vaccination status, and no, we're not going to wrongfully bind people's consciences in order to get vaccinated in the first place, and no, we're not going to require mass.
[00:13:07]  And yes, we are going to administer the Lord's Supper, and yes, we're still going to sing.
[00:13:13]  On the Lord's Day, as we're commanded, addressing God, but also one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
[00:13:19]  Those ministers, I would say, well, I mean, it's growing day by day, but in the early days of COVID, I would say that they made up probably the first few weeks, it would have been less than 10%, but within a few months, it was probably 30%.
[00:13:36]  But to think that there were only three, it makes me think of like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, only three that don't bow down to the statue.
[00:13:45]  But that's one of the difficult things, I think, when it comes to being faithful and obedience to Christ and his word, is that you don't only experience opposition from those outside of the church, but there are many who profess the name of Christ that often become your sharpest critics, your most ferocious opponents.
[00:14:07]  So, with all that being said, what are pastors saying now?
[00:14:11]  Like, have a lot of them opened their doors?

=== The Need for Public Repentance (15:20) ===

[00:14:13]  And has there been repentance?
[00:14:15]  Has anybody verbally repented?
[00:14:16]  Actually, walked it back.
[00:14:18]  I'm thinking even today, you know, it's blowing up on Twitter, you know, and by the time this episode releases, it'll have been a little while.
[00:14:26]  But today, as we're recording, it's been announced that basically one of the higher ups employees with Pfizer was interrogated by an individual in a court hearing.
[00:14:37]  And he specifically asked, you know, was the vaccine successful and not just successful, but had it even been tested at all?
[00:14:49]  In its ability to stop transmission of the virus before it actually was unrolled, you know, rolled out before it was released.
[00:15:00]  And the individual who's being interviewed, you know, chuckled in a kind of a nervous posture and said, No, no, it wasn't even tested.
[00:15:10]  So I'm thinking back, I'm thinking about Russell Moore, I'm thinking about Tim Keller, I'm thinking about individuals who bound the consciences of followers of Jesus saying, You must.
[00:15:20]  Get vaccinated, or you should get vaccinated, or it'd be good to get vaccinated out of love for neighbor, right?
[00:15:28]  So, it's one thing to say, well, you should get vaccinated in self preservation, or maybe using an argument of our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, you know, and so we want to, you know, we want to be, take precautions.
[00:15:41]  And, you know, and I could use 1 Corinthians 6 and the body being the temple of the Holy Spirit to make the counter argument, you know, that I shouldn't be injecting mystery poison into my body that, you know, that hasn't any long term testing because it hasn't existed long enough to be able to see what side effects and things might result from it.
[00:16:00]  But still, the point is, you know, they could have said, hey, to protect yourself, to be a good steward of your own body.
[00:16:05]  But that wasn't the rhetoric.
[00:16:07]  The rhetoric was not just merely about personal stewardship of your health, it was love for neighbor, love for neighbor, love.
[00:16:15]  You must get this vaccine in order to love your neighbor.
[00:16:19]  Now, Pfizer has officially said that this vaccine was not tested at all in its ability to love your neighbor.
[00:16:30]  It, it, It wasn't even tested.
[00:16:33]  So, what I want to see is I want to see Russell Moore and I want to see these guys.
[00:16:36]  I want to see them verbally repent.
[00:16:38]  And then, personally, I also want to see them step down because if they verbally repent, not just shifting in action like opportunists, you know, all of a sudden because there's a conservative resurgence, they run out in front of the parade and pretend that they engineered it.
[00:16:53]  I don't want to just see repentance in action.
[00:16:55]  Repentance should be word and deed.
[00:16:57]  And so, I want verbal acknowledgement that they were wrong, that they wrongfully bound.
[00:17:01]  The consciences of Christians that they must get the vaccine in order to obey Christ's commandment to love their neighbor.
[00:17:09]  And now, in hindsight, we realize that there was no love for neighbor factor in that particular vaccine.
[00:17:16]  So, I want to hear verbal repentance, but I also think that many of these ministers should step down because repentance grants us grace and forgiveness.
[00:17:25]  There's plentiful grace and forgiveness in the gospel of Jesus Christ for those who are willing to acknowledge their sin and repent.
[00:17:33]  But when it comes to leadership, leadership is not a charity.
[00:17:37]  And in my opinion, if somebody is 900 days late to the game, then what they have effectively proven is that they simply do not possess any level of discernment that would be required in order to lead, right?
[00:17:55]  So it's not that you're a horrible person, it's not that you can't be a Christian, it's not that you can't be forgiven, but you're just not qualified to lead.
[00:18:02]  If it takes you 900 days, To figure something out when, when, and it's not like everything was under wraps to where there was no way of discerning the truth.
[00:18:10]  Like we're talking, there were millions of people around the world, you know, blowing trumpets on the wall, you know, sounding the alarm, you know, begging and pleading.
[00:18:21]  And not only were we ignored, but we were slandered, we were maligned.
[00:18:26]  There were ad hominem attacks against our character by ministers of the gospel, precisely what you're describing in Australia, just a much more stark ratio of.
[00:18:37]  Pretty much everyone versus three faithful ministers.
[00:18:41]  And so, yeah, I think that that certainly merits an apology and repentance, but I think it also really does call into serious question a person's qualifications to lead.
[00:18:51]  If I can't see what the enemy is doing, if I can't discern the spirit of the age until every parishioner in my church is also able to discern it because it's been publicly and emphatically and undoubtedly announced, then I just, what use am I?
[00:19:10]  Right?
[00:19:11]  Like, if you know what I mean?
[00:19:12]  If I'm not one step ahead, if everyone is 900 days behind and I'm right there with them, then I'm just not a leader.
[00:19:21]  Again, it doesn't mean I'm a horribly wicked person.
[00:19:24]  I'm just, I just, you know, my two year old daughter isn't an elder in our church.
[00:19:30]  And likewise, Russell Moore shouldn't be an elder in a church.
[00:19:33]  And I would put him in that category.
[00:19:35]  And so, all that being said, what are pastors in Australia, the 99.9% that came against these three faithful men, are they backtracking?
[00:19:46]  Are they owning it?
[00:19:47]  Or are they just memory holding everything?
[00:19:49]  Have they changed in actions?
[00:19:51]  Or has there actually been repentance in deed and word?
[00:19:57]  What's their response to realizing, wow, we were dumb?
[00:20:03]  Yeah, so I will just make a note here.
[00:20:07]  The declaration that was initiated by those three men, I think there was somewhere around 2,000 actual ministers who signed it and kept their signatures on with those three men.
[00:20:18]  Oh, good.
[00:20:19]  That's helpful.
[00:20:20]  Yeah, that was good.
[00:20:22]  But again, there were some ministers who did sign it, and then once they felt pressured by that, External voice that was critiquing that declaration, they would contact the writers of the Ezekiel Declaration and ask them to remove their name.
[00:20:37]  So, again, it was really strange.
[00:20:40]  It was a really odd time for the church over here in Australia.
[00:20:44]  But, in answer to your question about the response, we currently have a lot of refugee Christians over here who just don't quite know where to go because a lot of us feel there hasn't been that repentance indeed that you speak of.
[00:21:00]  I know many.
[00:21:02]  Men who were at a church, who were ministering at a church, who said, We can't do this.
[00:21:08]  And they've actually started new independent churches who are free from, say, the big corporate, big EVA sort of church organizations over here.
[00:21:17]  So, as I mentioned to you, I was a member of the Presbyterian Church of Australia.
[00:21:21]  I rescinded that membership once the response came out because that was the church's official response, even though there might have been individual Presbyterian ministers who.
[00:21:33]  Responded differently, the church as a whole, collective, and the official church.
[00:21:37]  So I stepped back, and many ministers did the same sort of thing and said, Well, I'm not going to minister under that headship or that sort of corporation.
[00:21:46]  And so they've started individual churches.
[00:21:48]  And immediately, like I know of a church that began as a result of that.
[00:21:53]  This particular minister wasn't even allowed to preach at his own pulpit, his wife and his children were not even allowed to attend the church because of the vaccination status.
[00:22:02]  So he pulled them out and he begun his own church.
[00:22:05]  The first week that he opened his doors, there was over 30 people sitting on the chairs in the church.
[00:22:11]  And, you know, for Australia, we're a small little country, those are big numbers for the first week of an opening church.
[00:22:18]  And I think it was testament that a lot of people are searching and looking and hungry for a place to call home because they haven't felt that there's been any reconciliation and repentance and repair between the relationship of the congregation and the church, so to speak.
[00:22:35]  So, I mean, I personally can't think of any off the top of my head who have apologized or have repented and come out publicly and said that they're sorry for how they responded.
[00:22:45]  And somebody asked me the other day, Evelyn, what's going to happen if monkeypox hits Australia?
[00:22:53]  Is it going to be COVID 2.0?
[00:22:55]  And I said, yes.
[00:22:56]  And I said, why do you not think that it's going to be different?
[00:22:59]  I said, because nothing has changed.
[00:23:01]  We have not changed our position.
[00:23:03]  We have not done anything.
[00:23:05]  We've sat straight back on our hands.
[00:23:08]  As soon as the government gave us permission to do church, we did church, and that's been the end of it.
[00:23:14]  And so it's been real.
[00:23:16]  I'm still in a bit of a place of limbo where I don't like.
[00:23:21]  I'm going to a church that is good.
[00:23:24]  I mean, no church is perfect, but I'm going to one that would probably lean to more Arminian theology as opposed to Calvinist Reformed theology, which is very difficult for me.
[00:23:36]  But where I live now, which is out in the country on a farm, there's nothing for me.
[00:23:41]  And I feel so convicted to the call to gather and to not do the sacraments in my basement via Zoom and to not get my church from.
[00:23:51]  Tuning into Canon Press and to your ministry and listening to sermons because, you know, I do feel really convicted to fellowship in person and to be part of a church.
[00:24:02]  I mean, how can you fall under the authority of the eldership or the discipline of a church if you're not going and they don't know you like that?
[00:24:10]  And I don't agree with doing the sacraments at home.
[00:24:13]  I believe, you know, biblically they broke from the same bread, they drank from the same cup.
[00:24:18]  And for me just to go to my fridge and to not have an elder, Be involved with that process, someone ordained.
[00:24:24]  It just sits wrong with me.
[00:24:25]  So I'm going to a church that theologically is probably very different to where I sit.
[00:24:30]  There's nowhere else for me.
[00:24:31]  And that's the current state for people who think like myself, probably with theology in Australia.
[00:24:39]  It's encouraging that there are ministers who are stepping up into the spot.
[00:24:44]  And I do think there's a new era of shepherds that is being born as a result of what's happening.
[00:24:50]  But we're in the really early days where there's a lot of work to do.
[00:24:53]  And you mentioned before.
[00:24:55]  That the leaders of certain churches you feel should step down, and it's interesting you say that because you know, Calvin once wrote that if God wants to judge a nation, he's gonna give them bad leaders, and I think that goes for the church.
[00:25:09]  I think we're seeing the fruits of bad leaders, and I think that's why the church has swayed from sola scriptura and sort of started to write their own way of God and interpret their own view of God.
[00:25:24]  I think the last few years has shown that.
[00:25:26]  People don't know how to read the Bible, like the literal word of God, and there's too many interpretations.
[00:25:33]  Romans 13 was abused and misused and mistreated so much by the church the last few years.
[00:25:40]  And I think that we're sort of seeing, unfortunately, bad leaders, not only civilly with our governments, but also in our churches.
[00:25:49]  And I think Australia, whilst there are incredible men over here that are doing their best in the situation that they have.
[00:25:57]  There were some amazing men.
[00:25:58]  There was also a Moses statement that was written similarly to the Ezekiel Declaration with some ministers after the Ezekiel one was released.
[00:26:06]  And they were trying so hard to encourage Australians to do the same thing.
[00:26:12]  But we're a really long way off, I think, really getting some traction.
[00:26:17]  Right.
[00:26:18]  Yeah, I'm with you, though.
[00:26:19]  I think your decision to be a part of a church that, you know, if push comes to shove, would lean a little bit more on the Arminian side than the Reformed.
[00:26:29]  Reform side in terms of their soteriology.
[00:26:33]  I think that's right.
[00:26:34]  I think that that's a right instinct.
[00:26:36]  As serious as I am about Reformed theology, which is quite, quite serious, I just would rather be led by men who sincerely believe 60% of my doctrine than led by men who insincerely believe 90% of my doctrine.
[00:26:57]  Yeah.
[00:26:58]  I, you know, it's just, it's just, It's just going through the motions at that point.
[00:27:04]  It's hard to follow someone when you don't have a sense of confidence that that person actually is leading from conviction.
[00:27:16]  When you feel like, I don't believe you.
[00:27:19]  You preach these things, you say these things.
[00:27:21]  And I think that's how a lot of Christians have felt over the last two and a half years is, you know, even in very conservative and biblically faithful, reformed churches with expositional preaching, where the preaching is.
[00:27:36]  An hour long, and guys are taking their cues from preachers like Paul Washer and preaching on sin and all that.
[00:27:45]  But then it's like we were all put to the test.
[00:27:49]  And those who bowed the knee and then slowly came out just like everyone else, right?
[00:27:57]  It's like, well, I'm not doing that anymore.
[00:28:00]  Our church is gathering.
[00:28:02]  But what's different about you?
[00:28:05]  Sure, you finally came to your senses.
[00:28:08]  But you came to your senses in the same exact timeline as leftists and progressives and liberals came to their senses.
[00:28:19]  Like, what's different about all of your doctrine and all of your convictions and all of your faith when tested by fire?
[00:28:29]  How is this any purer?
[00:28:31]  How is this any of any more value than we could just find in the status quo?
[00:28:38]  Like, how are you?
[00:28:40]  I guess my question, simply put, is.
[00:28:42]  How are you, sir, a leader?
[00:28:46]  Like, in what way do you lead?
[00:28:49]  In what way are you ahead of others?
[00:28:52]  In what way do you carry more courage than others?
[00:28:56]  Which is not, you know, many have said courage isn't even a virtue, but it's the prerequisite for all virtue.
[00:29:04]  So for me, it's like people get it wrong.
[00:29:07]  I've gotten it wrong as a minister, and I've had to, if I got it wrong privately, I had to repent privately.
[00:29:13]  If I got it wrong publicly, I had to repent.
[00:29:15]  Publicly, and there's a sliding scale of, you know, got it wrong in what category.
[00:29:20]  And then the question also is, got it wrong to what degree and what frequency.
[00:29:24]  And there are objective benchmarks where if you get it too wrong, even if you repent, you have to step down because you're no longer meeting those qualifications of an elder.

=== Recognizing Spiritual Blindness (12:34) ===

[00:29:33]  And again, you know, salvation is free, but eldership is not free.
[00:29:37]  Eldership is not a charity.
[00:29:38]  There's a difference between forgiveness, which belongs to a category of love on the one hand, and then.
[00:29:46]  Discernment and leadership, and that belongs to a category of trust.
[00:29:51]  Love is free, trust is earned.
[00:29:53]  All these kinds of things have to be taken into account.
[00:29:56]  So, pastors get it wrong, leaders get it wrong, but this was different in my assessment.
[00:30:02]  And I don't think it's just because I was on the winning team, so to speak.
[00:30:07]  I don't think it's just because, by God's grace, I was one of the few guys who was able to wise up to what was going on at an early date.
[00:30:16]  But I really feel like This was different than a minister just getting something wrong, right?
[00:30:22]  Like maybe he taught something doctrinally wrong and then he further reformed in his theology and was able to go back and say, So I've taught this in the past, but I don't think that this is biblically faithful.
[00:30:36]  And it's a secondary issue, it's not like heresy, it's not like he maligned the gospel, but a secondary issue, you know, or something like that.
[00:30:43]  That happens in ministry because nobody comes out of the womb with perfect theology and sadly nobody enters the pulpit.
[00:30:50]  With perfect theology.
[00:30:51]  Nobody's ordained, you know, already having, because perfect theology is not one of the qualifications for an elder.
[00:30:58]  He must be able to teach, but he doesn't have perfect theology.
[00:31:03]  So, elders should be growing, right?
[00:31:06]  They should have a certain benchmark, a bare minimum of sound doctrine.
[00:31:12]  But hopefully, an elder who's been in the pulpit and been in pastoral ministry for 40 years, I don't know if there's any guy who's been in ministry that long that if you asked him, Do you have better theology today than when you were first ordained? all of them are going to say yes, which implies what?
[00:31:31]  It implies that from the moment they began pastoral ministry to the moment they now are at, there has been.
[00:31:37]  Improvement.
[00:31:39]  And so I'm not saying that if anyone ever changes on anything, aka improves, assuming that changes for the better, then that proves that previously they weren't actually qualified and they should have stepped down.
[00:31:50]  That's not my position.
[00:31:51]  But this last two and a half years, I think, is unique.
[00:31:55]  I just think it's different.
[00:31:57]  I think that this was something that was so obvious, that was so clear, and that it wasn't, I guess what I'm saying, it wasn't a test of the intellect.
[00:32:09]  It was a test of the will.
[00:32:11]  It wasn't a test of someone, because the guys who, I guess what I'm getting at is, and I'm processing this, but one of the ways I know it wasn't a test of mere intellectual prowess or theological aptitude, one of the reasons I know that it wasn't merely that is because when you look at the guys who pass the test, they're all over the board theologically.
[00:32:37]  Like you yourself said, you're going to a church that's less reformed than you are.
[00:32:41]  But you're going there because your pastor, even though he has a different theological disposition from you, he had courage.
[00:32:51]  And I really think that this was not a test of who is a master of the Constitution, although that helps those who knew history.
[00:32:59]  Or this is a test of who's an epidemiologist, although it would help to know something about viruses.
[00:33:06]  Or this is a test of who has a perfect understanding of Protestant resistance theory and theology, although that certainly would have helped.
[00:33:14]  But really, I feel like this was a test of.
[00:33:16]  Character.
[00:33:17]  It was a test of the will.
[00:33:18]  It was simply a test of who has a spine.
[00:33:22]  And although it sounds a bit abrasive, I would say one of the qualifications for an elder is that he be male.
[00:33:32]  Eldership is for men.
[00:33:34]  And I feel like that's kind of what was tested.
[00:33:37]  And a lot of guys prove that they're not male.
[00:33:41]  They don't have spines.
[00:33:42]  They don't have masculinity.
[00:33:44]  They don't have courage.
[00:33:47]  And women can't be pastors.
[00:33:49]  And I think a lot of guys in the pulpit prove that when push comes to shove, when they're actually tested, they are women.
[00:33:57]  And I don't mean that to be demeaning because I know I'm talking to a woman right now who had courage and praise God for it.
[00:34:02]  But men go into the fray, they don't cower and kowtow and say, please, sir, yes, government, yes, what can I?
[00:34:13]  And so I think it's a good sense that you're saying, you know what?
[00:34:18]  Yeah, in an ideal world, I'd like to have my cake and eat it too.
[00:34:21]  I would like to have a guy with character.
[00:34:23]  And reformed theology.
[00:34:25]  But if I have to choose, I want to have a man leading me pastorally who, not, you know, now this, you know, there's a drop off point, not a heretic who has courage, but a man who I think he's wrong on some theological issues, but they're secondary or tertiary, but he is orthodox, but he is also very masculine.
[00:34:48]  And I'd rather have that than a guy who's spineless and effeminate, but, you know, went to, Westminster, you know, or whatever, and has some of the theological credentials.
[00:35:00]  Do you have any pushback on that or thoughts on that or anything to flesh out further?
[00:35:06]  No, I think it's exactly right.
[00:35:07]  I think that, you know, God designed the world to be a patriarchy.
[00:35:12]  It's how it was, you know, He made man first and, you know, and Eve was to be a helper.
[00:35:18]  And that's just how it is.
[00:35:19]  And I think when we try to reject Genesis, the, you know, the ordained sort of order and the inherited nature and purposes that Christ created pre sin, pre curse, pre fall, that's when chaos happens.
[00:35:32]  And, You know, Genesis 2.15 is basically my, how I understand the definition of masculinity, which is men are to protect and to provide.
[00:35:42]  That's the role of a man.
[00:35:43]  That's the biblical role of masculinity.
[00:35:45]  And I think the church and these men in the pulpit, they failed to protect us from the civil government.
[00:35:52]  They failed to provide us with spiritual nourishment during that time and failed to provide us with the correct biblical answers to the dilemmas that we were facing.
[00:36:02]  And I think you said that, you know, the last few years has been unique and I would agree and I would almost Be happy to sort of say, I think there's been a spiritual blindness to many people.
[00:36:13]  And you see God use that at all different times throughout the Bible where you're reading it going, How can these people not see what is going on?
[00:36:21]  Like he just, you know, during the Exodus, for example, you know, he's just taken his people from Egypt and then they're like, You know what?
[00:36:29]  I'm just going to make a golden calf now.
[00:36:31]  And you're like, Why?
[00:36:32]  Why would you do this?
[00:36:33]  Did you not see how powerful?
[00:36:35]  And did you not see his majesty?
[00:36:37]  Did you not see he's the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end?
[00:36:40]  And then here you are in the desert building a calf.
[00:36:43]  And it's spiritual blindness.
[00:36:44]  And I think that's part of what we've witnessed the last few years.
[00:36:48]  And, you know, whether God does it to benefit them by spiritually blinding them, so that similar, I guess, you know, it was physical blindness with Saul, aka Paul, but like, you know, God uses things to help people to see.
[00:37:03]  Is this a spiritual blindness?
[00:37:05]  Is he doing this so that they can repent and regenerate their hearts and, and, you know, reconcile with Christ as well as the congregation?
[00:37:14]  Or is it spiritually blind because that's judgment and, That's he's gonna make us go through that.
[00:37:20]  And you know, when God speaks, like every time in the Bible, God speaks, you know, mountains shake, things move.
[00:37:26]  And I think if people and ministers and Christians are holding on to things that aren't rooted eternally and rooted through scripture, through the word of Christ, it's gonna fall off the shelf.
[00:37:37]  And these ministers haven't been holding on to that.
[00:37:40]  And so God's speaking and to us, and they're just sort of falling off the shelf as He speaks, and His voice causes it to tremble.
[00:37:47]  So I think that's what's happening.
[00:37:49]  I do think we have emasculated.
[00:37:52]  Men severe.
[00:37:53]  And I think that when it comes to ministers in the pulpit, and this is just something I've seen, I've seen it throughout my life, not just with Christianity, but with all kinds of like jobs and careers and occupations.
[00:38:06]  It's very academic now.
[00:38:08]  Everything is about you get that Bachelor of Theology, you get that, you do your time under a minister, and then you get that piece of paper, and now you're a minister.
[00:38:17]  Whereas historically speaking, and I think if you look at the Bible, God raises Men up to those positions.
[00:38:24]  It's a calling.
[00:38:25]  It's not a, I want a career.
[00:38:27]  I want to climb the ladder.
[00:38:28]  I want to have a congregation of 100 people, bums on seats every week, this and that.
[00:38:32]  And I think the church is very academic.
[00:38:35]  And I think that that's part of why there's so much spiritual blindness because they came into that position possibly spiritually blind and possibly already within themselves in their own soul, quite feminine in nature, rejecting God's patriarchal order.
[00:38:51]  And until we sort of shift maybe the recruitment or how it happens, and we get men in those positions who are called into those positions, we're going to be sort of having to sift the wheat from the chaff for a bit longer.
[00:39:08]  But I definitely think that this should be a good wake up to the church, if anything else.
[00:39:16]  And it should hopefully stir in the hearts of good men to go, well, no one's filling those shoes.
[00:39:23]  Maybe I'll step up into them because that's what God does.
[00:39:25]  Like Moses couldn't even articulate.
[00:39:27]  It says in the Bible, he could barely speak properly.
[00:39:30]  I don't even know what that means in literal terms or practical terms today.
[00:39:36]  But they specifically made mention of that in the Old Testament.
[00:39:40]  And God used him.
[00:39:42]  I mean, every time as well in the Bible that women are used, like Deborah and all of the other prophetesses and all these things that people like to misunderstand, it's because the men around them are failing.
[00:39:55]  That's why they've it's a judgment.
[00:39:57]  It's never a good thing that the women step up, it's a bad thing that the women do that.
[00:40:04]  And I think that we got to stop saying, Oh, but Deborah was a prophetess and all these women did this.
[00:40:11]  It's like, no, that was judgment.
[00:40:12]  That wasn't how it should be.
[00:40:15]  That was against the correct order.
[00:40:17]  And, you know, it's about time men step up into those positions and put an end to this feminine pulpit ministry and be men.
[00:40:26]  Be Genesis 2 15.
[00:40:28]  It's that simple.
[00:40:29]  Yep, I agree.
[00:40:31]  And by God's grace, you know, in terms of you're saying, you know, this is going to continue to happen unless we get better stock in our pulpits.
[00:40:37]  And I think by God's grace and through His providence, we are.
[00:40:41]  We're getting better pastoral candidates and better church planters and better ministers of the gospel because sometimes I think this is what it takes.
[00:40:51]  You know, when things are so far gone, when institutions are so captured and so far corrupted that it really takes some kind of Profound providential earthquake in order to reveal to people what's going on.
[00:41:09]  You need some kind of cataclysmic event that would dislodge the gatekeepers and create the opportunity for those who were not given permission to be able to come in and to step into roles.
[00:41:28]  And so I'm really hopeful for the future.
[00:41:30]  And I guess one of the last things that I thought as you were talking was just.
[00:41:36]  I think people just were not familiar with the Word of God, not nearly as familiar as they should have been.
[00:41:44]  But I think we also are not nearly as familiar with wickedness that we should have been.
[00:41:51]  The Bible says that we should be innocent babes in wickedness.
[00:41:55]  So there's a sense of innocence, but there's also a fine line between innocence and naivety.
[00:42:03]  We should understand how evil works in the world.

=== Faith Over Sight in the Wilderness (04:10) ===

[00:42:07]  And I think one of the ways that we understand that is from scripture.
[00:42:10]  And another is just simply by being good students of history.
[00:42:14]  And I think, you know, it's people always think like, you know, they look back and say, I would have been on the right side.
[00:42:20]  I would have never done what the Israelites did.
[00:42:22]  I would have never done what the Nazis did.
[00:42:24]  I would have never done what the Assyrians did.
[00:42:26]  Or that, you know, when you go down the line, all these examples, and you just assume that you would be on the right side.
[00:42:33]  But you assume that because hindsight is clear.
[00:42:37]  Right?
[00:42:37]  Hindsight is 20 20.
[00:42:39]  And so it's very easy to detect who the bad guys are and who the good guys are after the fact.
[00:42:47]  And one of the reasons why it's easy is because the victors get to write the history books.
[00:42:55]  And so, actually, sometimes it's not easy.
[00:42:57]  Sometimes, you know, we look back and we think that someone is clearly in the right, but that's simply because they won and they get to rewrite things, you know, from their perspective.
[00:43:07]  But my point is whether it's scripture or whether it's history, when we read the stories, when we read these historical accounts, we never have any sense of, I think, just.
[00:43:21]  Godly humility to recognize maybe I would have missed this.
[00:43:26]  So, like you brought up the Israelites and being led out of Egypt and then immediately, almost immediately, fashioning a golden calf and worshiping it.
[00:43:34]  You know, but as even that example, as I've studied it more intently, I've realized that that was actually a breach of the second commandment, which by way of implication includes a breach of the first.
[00:43:46]  But it wasn't directly, first and foremost, a breach of the first commandment have no other gods before me.
[00:43:51]  It was Predominantly a breach of the second commandment, thou shalt not make any graven images.
[00:43:57]  The Hebrews were not saying, Yahweh did not lead us and deliver us out of Egypt and cause us to walk on dry land through the Red Sea.
[00:44:06]  No, they were saying, this calf is Yahweh.
[00:44:10]  This is his image.
[00:44:11]  This is what he looks like.
[00:44:13]  Because Moses was gone on the mountain, they didn't know if he was going to return, and they didn't.
[00:44:18]  Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of Christ, right?
[00:44:21]  We do not walk by sight, by what we see, but by Faith and because they were a people who were stubborn and steeped in unbelief, this absence of faith, the root sin of the Israelites, especially in the wilderness, was a sin of unbelief.
[00:44:39]  Because they lacked faith, they wanted sight, they wanted to see God.
[00:44:44]  And because the man of God, the closest they could get to seeing God because he was absent, they wanted it's not that they wanted to worship another God, they simply wanted to make God visible, but in direct disobedience to what God.
[00:44:58]  Had said, I am the invisible God.
[00:45:00]  God is spirit.
[00:45:02]  Those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
[00:45:05]  We're not to worship through images.
[00:45:07]  And so, my point is the only reason I bring that up is just that little perspective.
[00:45:11]  I remember, you know, a few years back when I came into more understanding with that, it garnished within me a greater sympathy, not empathy, but a greater sympathy for the Israelites in that day, thinking, oh man, like I like to read the story and imagine I'm Moses, you know, but maybe I would have been Aaron.
[00:45:31]  Or maybe I just would have been Joe Blow Israelite, you know, telling Aaron what to do.
[00:45:35]  But at minimum, I easily could have been Aaron saying, I didn't really want to do this, but the people were pushing me to do, you know, like, you know, and especially when you bring into account, like, we weren't trying to worship another God.
[00:45:47]  We know it was Yahweh who led us out of Egypt with a mighty right arm.
[00:45:51]  We know he's like, we're giving him credit.
[00:45:54]  We're not worshiping another God.
[00:45:56]  We just, the people just needed to see Yahweh.
[00:45:59]  They just needed a morale boost, you know, and they were pushing on me, Moses, and you were nowhere to be found.
[00:46:05]  And so I. Like, you know what I mean?
[00:46:06]  When I read the story like that, I'm able to see, like, oh man, like, you know, I could have easily been Aaron, but for the grace of God, there go I.

=== Moving Beyond Naive Christianity (10:56) ===

[00:46:18]  And so, my point is, I think there's so many Christians in our day, and really in every time, every place throughout the ages, that their only familiarity with evil in the scripture and in history is always when the evil has already been sufficiently.
[00:46:38]  Defeated.
[00:46:39]  And the books have been written and the details have been drawn out to the surface as though they were obvious, but at the time they weren't.
[00:46:47]  And so, when all this stuff over the last two years came down the pipe for us, I think a lot of Christians, you know, we're saying, fight, hold the line, have courage.
[00:46:59]  And they're like, you're crazy.
[00:47:01]  This isn't what evil looks like.
[00:47:03]  Evil has, you know, two horns on its head and a pointy tail and a pitchfork, you know, but evil's just never that obvious.
[00:47:12]  It's never that obvious.
[00:47:13]  It always requires discernment.
[00:47:16]  I mean, that's just the reality of heresy and false doctrine, the false prophets, false teachers.
[00:47:21]  Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
[00:47:25]  And I think too few Christians know the times.
[00:47:30]  And one of the reasons they're not like the sons of Issachar, discerning the times, is because when it comes to wickedness, they're not merely innocent, but they're naive.
[00:47:42]  They don't understand the craftiness.
[00:47:44]  Of evil and the way that it works in the world.
[00:47:48]  Nobody sits on national television, you know, twiddling their fingers saying, whoa, maybe Justin Trudeau, you know, but like, but you know, most sane people don't do that.
[00:47:57]  Like, they, even the evil characters in our stories, they always think that they're the good guys.
[00:48:04]  They think they're the good guys.
[00:48:06]  And so Christians have got to become more discerning.
[00:48:10]  And it's not just discerning, but I think Christians don't think they can push back because thou shalt be nice, you know.
[00:48:18]  Christians, I think some Christians did have an inkling.
[00:48:20]  They had a hunch.
[00:48:21]  They knew something was off.
[00:48:24]  Their discernment bells were ringing.
[00:48:27]  But I think for some Christians, they were too naive.
[00:48:30]  For others, it's not even that they were naive.
[00:48:33]  They actually did have a sense that something was wrong.
[00:48:36]  But for them, they had this criteria in their mind somehow that all of these things have to be so emphatically proven before we're allowed to ever oppose.
[00:48:49]  Something or someone, because thou shalt be nice.
[00:48:52]  And so I think some Christians were like, this is good.
[00:48:55]  What's wrong with you, crazy conservatives?
[00:48:57]  And then other Christians were like, yeah, maybe there's some problems, but you're being mean.
[00:49:06]  And this isn't Christ like dissenting and stirring up division and quarreling.
[00:49:13]  And whereas no Christian would say Paul was being quarrelsome when he charged Peter to his face before them all.
[00:49:23]  If you, who live like a Gentile, do these, like I oppose him to his face for he's clearly in the wrong.
[00:49:32]  He was not keeping in step with the truth of the gospel.
[00:49:35]  But notice, when Paul says he's not keeping in step with the truth of the gospel, he's not saying Peter got up and blatantly preached a sermon that says we're not saved by grace and Jesus didn't die for our sins.
[00:49:46]  No, like Paul's saying this action over here that everyone else, like others, Barnabas even, was led astray by Peter.
[00:49:54]  Certain men came down from James, is what it says, and that's kind of what got Peter acting differently.
[00:50:01]  Nobody knows.
[00:50:02]  It wasn't this blatant, obvious heresy, but Paul says he gives it just as strong of a wording as though it were.
[00:50:09]  He says he's not in step with the gospel.
[00:50:11]  This is anti gospel.
[00:50:12]  This is evil.
[00:50:15]  This is bad.
[00:50:17]  And I'm sure a lot of people at the time could have been tempted to say, Paul, you're being divisive.
[00:50:21]  You're stirring up controversies, or you're just being.
[00:50:27]  I don't know, overly emotional in your rhetoric.
[00:50:31]  But Paul was just like, no, this is black and white.
[00:50:33]  And that's what we need leaders to be able to say, to say this is black and white when it still looks to the average person gray.
[00:50:42]  And yeah, and I think that just so many people didn't see it.
[00:50:45]  And then others who did see something, they still didn't think it was clear enough to take a strong stand because a strong stand isn't nice.
[00:51:00]  I think it's important that churches do sort of.
[00:51:04]  Get involved with matters like this.
[00:51:07]  I think, sort of, what you were mentioning, how some alarm bells were ringing, but people didn't want to seem controversial or conspiracy, you know, conspiracy sort of fueling.
[00:51:19]  I think what's really important is acknowledging the world that we live in.
[00:51:23]  I mean, you look at the laws and the legislation that were given in the Old Testament.
[00:51:27]  I think we can almost apply them, you know, those as case laws for today.
[00:51:32]  There's still relevance to those to us today.
[00:51:35]  And, you know, Paul even uses, You know, the Old Testament, like the ox and the grain, and, you know, things like that to sort of show them the moral laws and the case laws we can put today.
[00:51:46]  And I think it's important to acknowledge we do live in a world different to then, but we still have to function in it as Christians.
[00:51:55]  And I think it's important for me personally to.
[00:51:58]  I really appreciate when ministers aren't afraid, like yourself, like Doug Wilson, James White, Jeff Durbin, those guys who are sort of.
[00:52:09]  Battling these cultural issues to help us Christians out as we're sort of trying to take off the blinkers and to see things so we do have better discernment.
[00:52:20]  I think if we be too naive about it, that's how we lack discernment.
[00:52:24]  And if we refuse to see the world around us, how are we going to obey God's laws by spreading the gospel in the world around us?
[00:52:33]  I think that, yeah, I am encouraged, sorry, by.
[00:52:39]  Ministers who are stepping up now.
[00:52:41]  And, you know, I do feel like, you know, even though I've spoken a lot about failures of the church and of Christians, there is a new movement, I feel, of shepherds that is coming to the forefront of ministries.
[00:52:55]  And I personally myself, like, I have, I think, on Twitter about 70,000 followers, all together with all the social medias.
[00:53:05]  I've got hundreds of thousands of people who follow me.
[00:53:07]  And I can't tell you, I've lost track of the amount of time people have reached out and said, I want to get a Bible.
[00:53:13]  What one should I get?
[00:53:14]  And I'm like, throw away the message, throw away this, you know, get this.
[00:53:20]  But my point is, people are hungry and people are looking.
[00:53:24]  And, you know, I've even had some ministers come and say, you know, there's something different about your theology.
[00:53:30]  And I'm really curious.
[00:53:32]  And I've been able to have, without stepping over boundaries as a woman of trying to have an authority over them, but just trying to direct them to other men who could possibly articulate it better than myself and have that authority.
[00:53:46]  And it's been encouraging seeing the hunger for it again and a hunger to read the scriptures again.
[00:53:53]  I've had one guy who had female elders at his church, his wife being one of them, and she's now stepped down and they're starting to make all of these changes, which is super encouraging as well.
[00:54:08]  And this particular minister, as well, is amazing.
[00:54:12]  He was one of the few that, and he was very sort of almost Pentecostallyslash reformed.
[00:54:17]  It was really strange theology.
[00:54:19]  I was so confused.
[00:54:21]  Says so many right things, but then has fever passes and all these things.
[00:54:24]  But again, he didn't bow to Caesar during these lockdowns.
[00:54:29]  And now there's been changes.
[00:54:30]  So, I do think that the church is regenerating in some way, and individuals are more regenerate.
[00:54:39]  And, you know, I think the whole process, if anything, has been very sanctifying for a lot of people.
[00:54:45]  And I'm encouraged by that.
[00:54:47]  And that's, you know, we can lead a horse to water, but we can't force it to drink.
[00:54:52]  And that's sort of what I think I'm trying to do my best at within my sort of realm of responsibilities.
[00:55:00]  But I do think that.
[00:55:04]  It will get better.
[00:55:05]  I obviously adhere to a post mill eschatology as well, which has been apart from going from more Arminian theology in my early 20s to then reformed.
[00:55:16]  That was probably the best, like most exciting change in my sort of journey.
[00:55:23]  This has been the next one my change of eschatology and the way that I look at the future.
[00:55:30]  And so, even though it sounds doom and gloom, I'm excited because I think that we're headed in the right direction.
[00:55:37]  And I can see the fruits being produced from the trees that we're sort of planting now.
[00:55:45]  And the last few years has been great for myself because I've been stuck at home.
[00:55:51]  I'm in the prison island here.
[00:55:53]  I have plenty of time.
[00:55:54]  I lost my job.
[00:55:56]  I worked in a private military company once I left the police.
[00:56:00]  They said, sorry, you haven't had the chab, you're out.
[00:56:03]  So I've had a lot of time and I've been able to read a lot and listen.
[00:56:07]  I tell you what, I think I've read everything that Rush Dooney's ever.
[00:56:10]  Put out in the history of his life.
[00:56:12]  I'm going through his law and society book at the moment, which has been really good.
[00:56:17]  But long story short, I think lots of people have had the time over the last few years because we've had no choice to really get into things and nut out theology and look into the future.
[00:56:31]  And I think the whole dispensationalist view is sort of actually getting a lot smaller.
[00:56:37]  And a lot of people are at least going a mil and now more post mil, which I think changes the way Christians look at.
[00:56:43]  The world and how we tackle it and deal with it.
[00:56:46]  So it isn't all doom and gloom.
[00:56:48]  It is encouraging in some ways.
[00:56:50]  And it is exciting to think we're here now.
[00:56:52]  I can't wait to see where we are in five years.
[00:56:55]  I think it's going to be better for the church as a whole.
[00:56:57]  I really do.
[00:56:58]  Amen.
[00:56:59]  Praise God for that.
[00:57:00]  Well, is there any practical place that if somebody is in Australia and they feel like the pickings are slim when it comes to faithful churches with good doctrine, but also pastors who have spines?

=== Exciting Future for the Church (02:35) ===

[00:57:14]  Is there any kind of like church search tool or something like that that you could direct us to?
[00:57:21]  There is one.
[00:57:23]  I forget the exact, I think it's Sheep and Shepherds or Shepherds and Sheeps.
[00:57:27]  There's something like that.
[00:57:28]  I'll send you the link anyway if you wanted to include it in the description.
[00:57:32]  But it does have, you can put your suburb in or your postcode sort of the area and it sort of shows you churches that did stand up against what happened and churches that are, you know, reformed in theology and things like that.
[00:57:45]  And it's really helpful.
[00:57:47]  If you go to cauldronpool.com and contact any of the authors that are there, we can sort of direct you as well.
[00:57:54]  A lot of us at Cauldronpool all kind of know each other through church circles, and we know lots of people and friends.
[00:58:01]  So even if it's not on that website, I guarantee if you contact one of us, we'll be able to find something that's near you through word of mouth and through inquiry.
[00:58:10]  So definitely do it.
[00:58:12]  Okay, great.
[00:58:13]  Well, thank you so much, Evelyn, for coming on the show.
[00:58:15]  I really appreciate it.
[00:58:17]  And is there any way that people can follow you?
[00:58:21]  Yeah, you can go to cauldronpool.com and you can watch the show, which is the podcast I put out every week.
[00:58:26]  You have made an appearance on that too.
[00:58:28]  So that's a good episode.
[00:58:29]  If anyone watching wants to start somewhere, you can start there.
[00:58:33]  And also, my articles are there, or I'm on all social media as well, just Evelyn Ray.
[00:58:38]  Yeah, it seems like you're pretty active on Twitter.
[00:58:41]  Is that kind of your most go to platform?
[00:58:45]  It seems like you're on Twitter a lot.
[00:58:47]  That's where I get in all my fights.
[00:58:49]  Twitter is the place to fight.
[00:58:52]  It's a sewer.
[00:58:53]  That's what I like to call it.
[00:58:54]  But yeah, I'd say my Instagram is, I do a lot of my farming stuff on there.
[00:58:59]  So I think the ladies will maybe enjoy Instagram a bit more because there's baby cows and baby chickens and horse riding and motorbike riding and shooting, as well as theology and as well as politics.
[00:59:11]  But Twitter, I kind of just keep to tweets that annoy most people.
[00:59:19]  And that's where I sort of articulate my thoughts or something I might be reading.
[00:59:24]  But yeah, they're sort of the two main platforms, but more personalized stuff on Instagram.
[00:59:28]  Okay, great.
[00:59:29]  Well, thanks again for coming on the show.
[00:59:30]  I appreciate it.
[00:59:32]  Thanks so much for having me.
[00:59:33]  Thanks so much for listening.
[00:59:35]  But, real quick, before you go, do us a small favor take a moment and leave us a five star review if you enjoyed the show.
[00:59:42]  This is undoubtedly the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content to as many people as possible.
[00:59:49]  Thanks so much.