William Wolfe and Pastor Joel Webbin dissect the growing rift in evangelicalism over Christian nationalism, contrasting classical liberalism with theonomy. They critique leaders compromising on abortion for political gain while advocating that civil rulers should legislate the first table of the Ten Commandments to re-establish a Christian ethic. Citing King Darius, they argue against viewing citizenship as temporary, urging believers to actively cultivate nations bowing to Christ rather than merely critiquing culture. Ultimately, this theological shift demands a Protestant renewal focused on constructing alternative visions of public life amidst rising social justice movements and perceived civil tyranny. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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A Ferocious Christian in Politics00:05:29
Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
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All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries, and I am very privileged to invite to this particular episode William Wolf.
William Wolf, some of you guys, you might recognize him from the Twitterverse, the Twitter streets, going and owning the libs on a 24 7 basis.
That's how I first kind of came across him, but also I'm on a thread with him and John Harris and AD and some other guys.
And just it's just been great to just converse with like minded guys.
He's notable for a few things.
He's writing for the Freedom Foundation, he's doing multiple different things.
He's working on his MDiv right now.
But prior to all these kind of ministry endeavors, one of the things that he was doing that's unique is he worked in the Trump Administration for all four years of Trump's presidency.
And so he's been in D.C. and has tried his hand in politics and found a lot of success in that arena.
And so, as we're trying to really live out this mantra of all of Christ for all of life and reclaiming institutions, and want to see Christian men not just be pastors, some of you may be called to be pastors, but we need Christian men starting businesses.
We need Christian men being doctors.
We need a parallel economy.
We need parallel medical practices because right now we can't.
Trust the CDC or anybody else, but we also need Christian men in politics.
And William is one of those guys.
And so we talk about a bunch of stuff on this episode, but one of the things that I have him do is share his testimony and practically kind of just his story step by step, how he got involved in politics at a very high level as a strong, convicted Christian.
And so for any of you guys who may be interested, I think you might find this conversation particularly helpful, especially for those of you who feel called to the realm of being a ferocious, courageous Christian in politics.
Tune in now.
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Here it is the glorious vision of Right Response Ministries for the first half of next year, 2023.
We have not one, not two, but three massive endeavors that we will accomplish by the grace of God.
The first you already know about it's our Theonomy and Post Millennialism Conference, May 5th, 6th, and 7th, with James White, Joe Boot, Gary DeMar, Dale Partridge, and yours truly, Pastor Joel Webbin.
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All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
False Assurance and Apostasy00:15:16
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin, with Right Response Ministries.
And in this episode, I'm very Privilege to invite on to the show William Wolf.
William, thank you for joining us.
Thanks for having me, Joel.
It's a pleasure to be here with you.
All right.
So tell some of our listeners a little bit about yourself because I think most people, or at least me, maybe I'm an outlier, but most people, I think if they're familiar with you and some of your work, it would be your trolling work on Twitter.
You know, that might be their only exposure to you.
That was my first exposure, and I'm starting to get to know you offline and, you know, in a chat that you and I are part of, some other faithful guys.
But beyond that, I just saw you on Twitter and I was like, you know, I guess he's just a professional Christian nationalist Twitter guy, you know, just owning the libs.
But obviously, there's more to you than that.
So give us a little bit of your story, your testimony, you know, and who are you?
What do you do?
Yeah.
Well, thanks for helping me set that, I guess, straight a little bit.
But sure, that's fun too.
Let's see.
Man, I'm a father.
I've been married for eight years.
I'm a father, I'm a husband.
Husband and father have been married for eight years.
I got three boys.
The third is due any day now.
Awesome.
So we're on high alert here at the Wolf household.
My oldest son, Evan, is four and a half.
My middle son, Jack, is two and a half.
And we're about to add another one into the mix.
So really thankful.
God's blessed me with a wonderful family.
I live currently in Louisville, Kentucky as I'm finishing my master's of divinity here at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
But obviously, I'm here in my personal capacity.
I was an online student for a while as I was working in Washington, D.C., but after I finished my Time working in the Trump administration, which capped off about a 10 year run of working in politics in DC.
And then I did a pastoral internship at my home church there.
And then I thought, you know what, now is a good time to come to seminary and get some focused training.
This was after, you know, 10 years spent in the real world working, you know, raising a family, working multiple jobs.
I was, along with working in politics, I was like a resident manager for my apartment building, you know, things like that.
So I thought this was a good time to get some concentrated training before the kids got older.
And to explore doing things like a PhD.
So, hopefully, Lord willing, if all goes according to plan, I will finish my MDiv here this December.
And I also write regularly.
So, the Twitter really, Joel, was I got on Twitter as a way to get my writing out there, right?
Like you write something for a website and it just sits on the website.
You've got to get on social media and promote it.
So, I write regularly for the Freedom Center out of Liberty University and do some other writing as well, do some work with the Center for Renewing America, et cetera.
Awesome.
And so, going to seminary and then maybe working on a PhD.
First, so.
You're Baptist.
Are you a Baptist who is a Baptist Baptist or are you a pre Presbyterian Baptist?
I'm a post Presbyterian Baptist.
Oh, really?
Tell me.
Tell me.
Yeah, yeah.
I was raised Presbyterian.
Okay.
All right.
I'm never going back, man.
I'm never going back.
Man, I love my folks.
So thankful to them.
Every time I get a chance to do anything like this, I just love to honor my father and mother by thanking them for how they raised me.
My mom and my dad both did not grow up in Christian households, but by God's grace, they came to saving faith later in life.
And so they didn't come from a rooted Christian tradition.
When they moved to North Carolina when I was young, they ended up joining primarily a Presbyterian church, a PCA church.
They were there.
That's where I grew up, was at a PCA church.
I went to a PCA college, Covenant College.
And during all that time, I never was really serious.
I wasn't a Christian, actually.
I wasn't serious about my faith because I didn't have any.
I became a Christian after college.
And as I became a Christian in a setting of a local Baptist church, they wanted me to be baptized as a believer for membership.
And of course, I didn't have any.
Hesitancy with that.
I think that's pretty clear in scripture.
You know, baptize, be baptized upon your profession of faith if you've never made one before.
And then just over time, I've definitely become convictionally Credo Baptist.
Gotcha.
All right.
Well, just so you know where I'm at, I am 1689, so I am Credo Baptist.
Cheers.
But cheers.
But I usually upset my Baptist brothers and sisters.
That's something you should probably know about me because.
Hey, me too.
Because I know, well, I just.
I preach very, very strongly that, you know, I think the new covenant is not just wider, but it's better.
It's not just, you know, larger in its scope, but deeper in its promises.
And one of the best things about the new covenant is it has a 100% retention rate.
And so I believe that the door into the new covenant is faith.
I do believe I see the continuity between circumcision under the old covenant and baptism, but I would say just as circumcision followed physical birth, baptism follows new birth.
And so I'm Baptist in all the ways that you would be Baptist, 100% taking no exception to the 1689.
Confessionally reformed Baptist.
But I also would hold to covenant succession.
And that's where I upset my Baptist brothers in the sense that, you know, the definition of covenant succession is the eager expectation, not presumption, not viewing it as a guarantee, but an eager expectation for the salvation of our households, our children, by virtue of not covenant nature, but covenant nurture.
And so for me, what I always tell people is I'm, you know, I'm a Calvinist.
I hold to the tulip and the doctrines of grace, but unconditional election in a lot of Baptist circles is.
Essentially, it gets interpreted as unconditional election is arbitrary election.
And I want to hold that not severing the means of grace from the ends of grace, that God, when He predestines the end of salvation of an individual, He brings it about by certain means.
And so, if our homes are gospel saturated, if we are leading family worship in our homes, taking our children, and I'm a family integrated guy, taking our children to the Lord's Day, gathering of the saints, all these kinds of things, then there's no way that we can work the God of the universe into our back.
Pocket into our debt.
But I do believe that we should expect that God is working in our parenting, administering all these means of grace because He actually is doing this predestinated work because He actually has determined His predestinated ends of saving our children.
And then I would add, you know, the second piece to my argument would be the post millennial piece that, you know, Jesus says, you know, from now on, in one household, two will be against three and three against two.
I'm going to separate Father from Son.
And I would say, yeah, that is absolutely what happened in the first century Jewish context.
But With 11 working through the batch of dough for 2,000 years now, and the mustard seed growing into a tree, and the stone cut by no human hands, you know, crushing the kingdoms of this world and growing into a mountain that fills the whole earth, I think we should be a little bit more expectant.
So I believe that it's normative, not guaranteed, and certainly not the product of our parenting to where we could earn God's grace for our children, but that God works through means.
Means of grace, ends of grace are not severed.
And with the post millennial hope, I think that, you know, Baptist parents, when they're faithful, should expect that God will not merely save some, but That he would save all of their children.
And this is not guaranteed, but it's God's ordinary practice.
And I think a lot of Baptists don't like that because they need something to assuage their guilty consciences for the fact that all their kids grew up and became apostate, which I think has something to do not with unconditional election, but with the public school system that they put their kids in and blah, blah, blah.
So other than that, I'm as Baptist as they come.
So, yeah.
Well, I mean, I mean, yes, and amen to everything you said.
You know, I put it like this, and this also upsets some people, but I say that I don't believe my kids are Christians, but my kids are in a Christian family.
My kids are certainly growing up in a Christian household.
And I think we can use the term Christian to define things and describe things that are not themselves regenerate, right?
So that's a live conversation within our Baptist circles.
Can we use the denominator Christian to refer to something, a nation, a family that's not regenerate?
I will not concede for a second that I am not leading a Christian family.
I certainly intend to lead a Christian family.
I read the Bible with my children every day.
We pray, we ask the Lord for salvation and grace and for wisdom.
My boys are going to know that they grow up in a Christian family, and I'm going to show them, hopefully, Lord willing, the way to salvation in the scriptures through Jesus Christ.
So, now where I make Baptists particularly upset is, and where I think what you're describing has gone wrong, is Baptists in the 20th century have drifted away from, I think, a serious investigation of saving faith in the life of children before just dunking them and calling them good and then just letting them go.
And I think that has been irresponsible.
It's given a lot of youth who have grown up in Baptistic homes a false assurance of salvation.
And so we don't necessarily have to have a debate about the age of baptism, but there is a massive irresponsibility in the way that many Baptist churches administer baptism and things like fill the tank Sundays where they're running after numbers.
I think that plays into the problem that you're addressing.
Yeah.
No, you're absolutely right.
And I think it's, it's, You can fall off of either side of the horse.
So, one is the false assurance where you're baptizing a child that has a profession of faith, but there's not actually fruit of faith in their life.
But the other side is I think you can build a culture of doubt within your church, even for the adults, but especially the children, where you're constantly discipling them up into faith, but you're actually reassuring them that they don't belong.
You know, and so, like, even the fact that, like, in a lot of Baptist churches, you know, children don't go to church.
They literally go to a separate building or at least a separate room, which is Christian childcare.
But it's not the church has certain criteria for it.
Church isn't just a place, it's the Lord's Day gathering of the saints for the administration of the ordinary means of grace, publicly preaching the words, praying the words, singing the word, and seeing the word in the sacraments of the Lord's Supper and baptism.
And there's a lot of kids that they've never even seen the Lord's Supper.
And there's something profound about the plate passing them by when they're four years old or something, you know.
But they've never even seen the plate.
They've never even seen a baptism.
They've never sat through a sermon, any of these things.
So children don't even go to church with their parents.
They don't go to Christian school and they're not homeschooled.
They go to a state school that teaches public atheism.
And there's all these different metrics that I think that lends towards apostasy.
False assurance can lend towards apostasy.
Discipline, a culture of doubt in our children where, you know, you don't belong.
Those kinds of things.
But I think the language that you just put your finger on is so helpful that, like, my girls, I've got three girls and now one son, but it's always, you know, we do family worship in the morning and every evening.
And it's always, we are a Christian family.
And when I'm leading family worship, you know, I say, Christian, what do you believe?
You know, and my four year old and my three year old know the Apostles' Creed by heart.
And we believe in God, the Father, Almighty, you know, creator of heaven and earth.
And then I pronounce, you know, an assurance of pardon.
And I say, insofar as you believe.
You have been forgiven of all your sin.
And because I don't know when God's going to regenerate their heart or particularly where that happens.
And so, anyway, he has already.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And so, but yeah, we are a Christian family.
I like what Chuck Knox, one of my friends with Cross Politic, he says, one of the ways that you know that you're a Christian family is he said, you may not believe that, but Muslims do.
If they're going to, if a terrorist extreme Muslim came into your home, they wouldn't spare your children's lives, they'd kill the whole family.
They kill the kids too.
These are Christian kids.
Well, I mean, I love that even there, you're talking about serious church practices, regulative, sensible, passed down from the Reformation see, hear, sing, pray, the word.
And it just had me thinking that for so many decades, so many churches and Christian families have assumed that sort of like playing red light, green light, and having a pizza party is what's going to help inoculate their children.
Against secular indoctrination, and that's just not going to cut it.
You have got to get at a certain age, you know, you've got to get your kids in church with you to hear God's word expounded and the Holy Spirit apply it to their lives and their hearts, Lord willing.
Amen.
I think also, uh, with that, and this kind of can lead into some more conversation, and particularly the things that I wanted to have you on the show for.
But, um, I think also making it clear for your kids for at a young age, what side are we on, right?
So, like, when you're just uh, Mr. Winsome, Winsome, um, about every single issue, right?
When Roe gets overturned.
And you go to a church that is biblically conservative and has been preaching against abortion for 49 years.
And then Rowe is overturned in the providence and mercy of God.
And your pastor doesn't say a single word, right?
And it's just like, let's just be quiet.
And some guys in the church actually are outspoken, but you hear through the grapevine that they've actually been corrected by the elders, that they need to tone it down.
Now's not the time for beating our chest, you know.
And then BLM happens, you know, and your parents are at a BLM rally, and COVID happens, and your regular principal guys, right?
Your church.
Men, but you shut down for four months, you know, and MacArthur opens up his church and you actually criticize him publicly, you know, for it and those kinds of things.
Your kids, I think if you're too winsome and you're too friendly in the name of evangelism with the world, and I think that's another thing kids, they grew up in state schools, they grew up with a youth group that's just a pizza party and there's no preaching.
But then also, their parents and their pastors and their church members, what they modeled for them, if anything, is friendship with the world.
What do you think?
That's a good way to put it.
No, I mean, that's a good way to sum it up.
What are we as parents modeling in terms of?
Which side are we on, right?
Are we at friends?
Are we friends with the world or are we at odds with the world?
Because the world is certainly at odds with us.
That's right.
We want to, and we want to love the world.
Obviously, we want to model faithful evangelism.
We want to show into our children how we love sinners, just like how Christ loved us.
But yeah, I mean, it's like, which side are we on here?
You know, it's, I've gotten pretty radicalized on the COVID stuff.
And in many ways, it's driven by a retrospective assessment of even some of my.
I think failings as a parent in terms of when I let a mask be put on my son, you know, in certain situations at like three years old.
And I look back at that, I'm like, that was a mistake.
I should not have done that.
Teaching Kids About Hate00:02:53
And I will never do that again.
And I will never allow my family to be in a situation where somebody is telling me to put a mask on my children when they're not at risk for anything because it teaches them something about what's going on in the world.
So, yeah, I agree with that entirely.
Yeah, which side are we on and how do we fly those flags?
Right.
Amen.
And letting kids know, even at a young age, I mean, there are certain things that are age appropriate.
So I'm not saying that there's every single detail that we're aware of, our children should be aware of, but our children should be aware that we're at war.
I don't think that you wait till a child is 18 years old to tell them, oh, by the way, we're in a war and the world hates us because they hated Jesus.
And so, very early on, my four year old and my three year old are very aware that.
That there are people that hate us and people that hate daddy.
And we have to be careful with church and things like that.
I've had with just getting in trouble online and going viral for all the right reasons, but the optics look like all the wrong reasons and people wanting to protest and those kinds of things.
And so the kids are very aware of that.
And we'll go and we'll preach at the courthouse and things like that.
When Roe dropped, we knew that night that there would be a bunch of liberals showing up at the courthouse protesting.
And so we gathered everybody in our church.
We had twice the number that they had.
We sang, you know, hymns and psalms.
And, um, I preached and told them that they're murderers and that they need to repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ for their murder and advocation for murder.
And my kids hear that and they know that.
And I explained to them on our way there, you know, that we're going because we love Jesus and because we love babies.
But there are people that hate Jesus and hate babies and they love to murder babies.
They love the blood of babies.
And they're going to be there.
Those people who love killing babies are going to be there.
And, um, And we love those people.
We want those people to repent.
But dad is going to preach against them because they are not on our side.
But our hope is that they would be.
And my little four year old and three year old understand that.
And that's something that I guess what I'm saying is it's not something that I even, even if I wanted to choose the option, I couldn't shelter them from it, even if I wanted, because daddy's going to be involved.
I think a lot of parents are able to shelter their kids from certain culture war issues because they themselves, as the parents, are involved in the culture war.
You have to explain to your Four year old and three year old, if you and mom are driving the minivan to the courthouse to preach against abortion, you've got it.
You know what I mean?
Like the kids are now a part of this, but a lot of Christians have, they don't even have a living memory of that kind of thing, they've never done it, right?
So, when they're like, you told your three year old that, yeah, that's because the family was involved in this.
You don't have to tell your three year old that because you're a coward and you don't do these things.
You know, so I don't know.
What do you think about that?
Any further thoughts on this issue?
Hustling on Capitol Hill00:05:18
No, I think that's great.
I think it's a good example, brother.
Cool.
All right.
So, give our listeners some of your, I just want to hear a little bit, and I think our listeners would too, working with the Trump administration in DC on the ground, like you're, from what I can tell, like you're pretty successful.
And decorated within the realm of politics for a 34 year old, you know, young man.
And I just think that's awesome.
We need Christians involved.
Every dude wants to be a pastor.
And I'm telling him, why don't you start a million dollar business?
Why don't you be an artist?
Why don't you get involved in politics?
And you've done it.
And I'd love just to hear about it.
Yeah.
Well, God's grace and favor was certainly upon me in my efforts.
And it was a team effort.
Everything I did in DC, I was lost and.
Hopeless and helpless in the world about six months after one of my younger brothers had passed away.
And when he was 15 and I was 22, and I wasn't a Christian at the time, and it really sent me into a spiral.
And by God's grace, I met Mark Dever, the pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, and through his witness, became a Christian.
The Lord just threw open doors for me to move to DC.
So again, I can't take any credit.
I wouldn't have gone there on my own.
But then I ended up moving to DC and joining that church.
I needed to work right.
I had student loans that needed to be repaid and bills to be paid.
And so, what I did first was I just got whatever job I could, which was waiting tables at PF Chang's.
And so, that was the first thing I did when I got to DC, which is not a bad job.
PF Chang's waiters can pull some cash.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a life sustainability job.
So, what that enabled me to do, and we were talking before we started recording about maybe even some tips for young men who are looking to do similar things.
So, if you want to work in politics in DC, You move to the Hill.
I mean, these days things are a little different.
I think they do pay interns now, but back then we were unpaid, right?
So I got what was called a life sustainability job that put money in my bank account and allowed me to outlast the other people who had like a fixed income and were trying to score a job in like six weeks.
And so I took an unpaid internship.
You know, I did something that I don't think you typically do around Capitol Hill, but I put on a suit and tie and printed off my resume and just walked into the Capitol buildings and went to the offices of.
Members of Congress from North Carolina, which is where I grew up, literally just walked in their office and dropped off my resume and said, Hey, I'm William Wolf.
I'm from North Carolina.
Now I'm here in DC and I would like a job.
And I don't think that's what you normally do, but it worked.
And I ended up getting an unpaid internship with a member of Congress from North Carolina and then hustled during that.
I can definitely remember there being, obviously, we all can struggle with pride.
I certainly struggle with pride.
I can remember nights when I'm at PF Chang's, like wiping rice off the table.
I'm like, I have a history degree.
I'm a college grad.
Like, I'm an unpaid intern and I'm waiting tables.
Like, what am I doing?
When I approached my work in DC, it was really with a mentality of nothing is beneath me.
And if I act like it is, then I'm not going to have a chance of success here.
So I was an intern.
I busted my tail.
I helped where I could.
I delivered potted plants around the Capitol for the members of Congress.
And by making connections, by God's grace, you get to compete for full time positions when you see them posted.
And I got a job as a legislative correspondent in a congressional office for a guy from North Dakota.
And the job of a legislative correspondent is to answer constituent mail.
Do you know what type of people are the ones who ride into members of Congress?
It's not the happy ones.
Right.
And so, yeah.
So, I got a chance to really see, quite frankly, and I really appreciate this the frustrations of Americans and the way that the issues that really were plaguing the people who would take the time to speak to the members of Congress.
So, I worked for that guy.
Then I went back and worked for that first member I interned for for a couple of years.
And it really just impressed upon me that some of the biggest issues facing our country were issues pertaining to our immigration system, issues pertaining to economic opportunities, particularly in areas that have been hit the hardest by globalization, by global trade deals.
I grew up in North Carolina, obviously.
The textile industry has been completely wiped out with the rise of China, imports from China, NAFTA, et cetera.
So those were really impressed upon me.
And so when Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2015, at that point in time, I was working for a guy named Representative Dave Bratt, who ran in Virginia and beat the number two Republican in a surprise upset primary, then Eric Cantor.
And David Bratt was a college professor of economics, and he ran on a campaign essentially of we need.
We need immigration restriction that respects who we are as a people here in the United States.
And we need trade deals that benefit us.
It was kind of like a mini pre Trump campaign in the 7th district of Virginia that was successful for him.
So when I was working for him, is when Trump announced his run.
And I was like, oh man, I think this guy might go all the way.
And I was one of the very few people in DC during that whole time who was pretty confident Trump would win.
And so after working for Congressman Bratt, then I had a chance to work at the Heritage Action, which is the Sort of political arm of the Heritage Foundation, big think tank there in DC.
David Bratt's Economic Campaign00:15:13
Right.
And then had a chance to volunteer on the presidential transition organization.
Again, just sort of hustling, taking an opportunity to kind of volunteer to get a chance to get my foot in the door.
Because at that point in time, you know, this is now early, end of 2016, early 2017, I was like, this is my shot to work in an administration.
And I believed in what Trump said he was going to do.
You know, so many people got so twisted up in knots about Donald Trump.
You know, I put the fact that I work for Trump in my Twitter bio because I want people to know I'm not ashamed of it for a second.
I served on behalf of the American people and I served the duly elected American president who ran on a platform of, I would argue, caring for your average American.
And I believed in that and I believed him.
Well, he ran on that platform, but then he actually governed even more conservatively than he ran.
You typically expect a guy like George Bush, maybe ran at an eight and governed at a six, if 10 is true blue conservative.
And so, ran at an eight, governed as a six.
And Trump, I feel like, ran at like a 6.57 and governed at like a nine.
And it was like, whoa, this guy, he became a hero.
It's like, okay, there's some mean tweets, but William Wolf has some mean tweets too.
Maybe.
But this guy, in terms of his policy and all these kinds of things, he was one of the most conservative presidents we've had in a very long time.
Yeah, no doubt.
And this is really the Trump run in 2016 really awakened my interest in Christian ethics.
Because I just was really struggling to see how so many people that I otherwise respected were engaging what I thought was pretty horrific moral reasoning as they were justifying things like voting for Hillary Clinton.
Right.
Look, I could understand if you sat the 2016 election out because you had concerns about Trump.
And look, you know, I'm not sure if Trump was personally pro life, but Trump said he was going to govern as if he was pro life.
And he did exactly what he said he was going to do.
And now Roe v. Wade is overturned.
And so watching.
Watching figures that I would have respected or characters that I would have thought represented my interests doing things like arguing for voting for Hillary Clinton.
Wait a minute.
Something is not right in the world of evangelical Christian ethics and how we're doing moral reasoning here.
And this is important.
So, that was really a rock that was put in my shoe as I got into the Trump administration and something that I watched through all my time in the Trump administration.
And as I got out of it, I thought, you know what?
I'd like to study this a little bit more closely and sort of hopefully potentially credential myself to speak to these issues, help teach and train and help other pastors and Christians, you know, folks in the pews think about the trickiest political issues facing us as Christians in this country.
Amen.
Yeah, man, it's funny, you know, like, so you're sitting there watching that as you're, you know, working in DC, working in the political sphere.
And for me, like, at the time, I was pastoring in Southern California, but I was an Acts 29 pastor.
So we had entered into, I started actually as a vineyard pastor.
So it was quite the evolution theologically, but started as a vineyard pastor.
Were you in Anglo 7 in the Acts 29 world?
You would have to explain that.
No.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
It's a Matt Chandler joke about.
Oh, Anglo, never mind.
Basically, if it's a Matt Chandler joke about anything Anglo, I can only imagine it's something about hating yourself for being white.
A little bit.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's what I would expect from Chandler.
So we left in the end of 2018.
I pulled the church out and I had been pretty outspoken against Eric Mason and his woke church book.
And just, you know, every single conference was social justice, social justice, you know, feel bad for being white.
But my point is like during the election, what you're describing, you know, your experience watching people, you know, who you respected and people that, you know, you, Deemed as being mature brothers, you know, sisters in Christ, making actually an argument, trying to make a theological argument for assuaging the conscience to vote for Hillary.
I was watching that with Acts 29 pastors, you know, guys who I thought were solid in many ways, and then, you know, them making arguments.
And Thabidi was one of them.
Thabidi and Aboil, he was in Acts 29, but he was one of our plenary speakers at our large, you know, national conferences and things like that.
And I remember him, you know, with Matt Chandler.
It was a podcast with Matt Chandler and talking about like, Well, yeah, she's for abortion.
And then, you know, he made the crappy argument of just, well, you know, the sanctity of human life is certainly near and dear to the heart of God, but God's got a really big heart, you know, and there are other issues.
And then, you know, he proceeds to list issues.
But the problem is that none of these issues, God didn't institute the state to deal with these issues.
So he starts talking about welfare and poverty and immigrants and stuff.
And it's just like affordable health care.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's like, but that's not what God.
Institute the state to do.
And so, and number one, it's a false dichotomy because that's not the state's job.
It is the state's job to protect life and to punish murderers.
It's not the state's job to be a welfare state.
Then, secondly, you're also assuming this is the state's job.
It's not.
And you're also assuming that these measures actually work, which they don't.
So you're saying this is their job.
It's not.
These things work.
They don't.
So it's just this horrible argument.
And even if you were right on both those two accounts, it still isn't equal.
To a million babies murdered a year.
You know what I mean?
So it's just, you're wrong.
Three strikes, you're out, Fabidi, which I believe his actual name is Ron.
But, anyways, you're out.
That doesn't work.
And so I was in Acts 29 watching the same thing, horrified.
What is going on?
I just didn't understand.
And I kept thinking, well, I'm a young pastor.
Maybe I'm just arrogant or just maybe I'm oblivious.
And maybe it's one of those things where you just got to get older in the faith to have some more maturity to understand.
And now, by God's grace, I am older in the faith, and I do understand.
And what I understand is that those guys were hypocrites and liars and cowards.
And so, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, historically, if I were to sketch just a brief, you know, survey, I think there are a lot of guys in our age bracket and then the guys sort of in the next age bracket up.
Those guys came of age sort of in the like the in the heyday of the original moral majority.
And, you know, also they some of those guys saw in America that like we didn't see growing up.
You know, like for example, like I never really saw any, you know, real hardcore racism.
Growing up.
I'm sure some of the guys in the previous generation, you know, they actually saw some of that.
Instead, what I saw growing up was a rising tide of anti white sentiment.
Right.
You know, so there's this like, I think there are a lot of those leaders who are stuck in sort of like a 2000 mindset.
They don't realize how much the world has changed.
And as they're trying to sort of articulate Christianity to a next generation, they kind of want to shed this like icky sense of the moral majority, you know, God and country, church and Republicans.
And quite frankly, Joel, I just think that the vast majority of the social justice movement was just a large cover to assuage the consciences of Christians to vote for Democrats.
Because it's kind of, because it was, and I kid you not, at the bottom line, it was more cool than voting for Republicans.
And that's just a terrible way to think about voting in government.
Right.
No, I completely agree.
And I know you mentioned earlier in this episode, so I'll say it so you don't have to.
I know you want to do your best to honor spiritual fathers and mothers, but Tim Keller is a registered Democrat, and so is Mark Dever.
You know, and so I think that, like, sadly, like that just, I think, you know, I'll use Ligon Duncan as an example in writing the Ford for Woke Church, which it's like, why would he do that?
But then when you look in a little bit to, you know, his upbringing and his past and those kinds of things, I can't impute motives.
I wasn't there.
I don't know.
So I'm not making a definitive claim.
This is speculation and I'll call it as such.
But there's a good chance with his age bracket, like you're talking about, that generation raised in the South, you know, white man, there's a sense in which he, If he himself personally did not engage in racism or racist attitudes towards people of color, he probably had some close relationships with people who did, you know, at least when he was younger and when those things were more common when he was a child.
And so I think for some of these guys, I think you're on to something I think that's insightful for some of these older guys.
Um, I think in some way it was being cool and in some way it was penance, you know what I mean?
Like, oh, yeah, like kind of, and but see, that's the thing is it's this is what cowardice does one, it's not understanding the gospel, it's affirmative action in the church.
That's exactly it.
Yeah.
And it's out of guilt.
It's this penance.
It's assuaging a guilty conscience.
But the cowardice piece comes in because I think sometimes what happens for all of us, if we're not careful, is we repent, but we repent once it's publicly and culturally permissible to repent.
Meaning that guys started doing some of these things this anti white sentiment, this affirmative action in the church.
But when did they start doing it?
Like 30, 40 years later.
Too late after it was needed.
Like guys now, you know, are coming, you know, it's like guys, you know, the opportunist guys who all of a sudden there's a rise of conservative players and this is happening.
The tide's turning on COVID tyranny and the tide's turning on BLM.
And then certain guys, you know who they are, they run out in front of the conservative resurgence parade and act like they engineered it.
And I think that's kind of what we saw happening.
These guys who maybe they participated or at least they were a part of that culture that was kind of racist.
And instead of actually being courageous then when it would have mattered, now that the tide is actually.
And you actually can benefit culturally and publicly by taking a stand.
We'll do our retroactive penance for the sin of 30, 40 years ago.
Whereas you and I, back to your original point, we didn't have that sin 30, 40 years ago.
We weren't even born.
And so we didn't have that since.
Kevin Young has a great closing line in his review of the book Reparations, which is a book by a guy named Greg Johnson and Duke Kwan.
And Duke Kwan is a PCA pastor in the DC area.
And I think he's unashamedly woke.
So if I call him that, I don't think he'd mind it.
Are you talking about the re voice Greg Johnson?
You know, actually, I don't know if it is the re voice Greg.
I'm pretty sure it's not the re voice.
I was going to ask.
It's a different Greg Johnson.
That was me being kind.
I wanted to say, do you mean the gay Greg Johnson?
I don't think it's a different Greg Johnson.
But Duke Kwan's is sort of the main character associated with the book.
Anyway, the closing line of De Young's review of that book is essentially like they're arguing for a system in which he says, like, the white guilt never stops and the reparations never end.
And I think that that's a good summary of the ethos of.
Of the move that you and I are critiquing here, that, you know, has, it's, you know, it's, I'm not sure where it is these days.
I've been interested in hearing your thoughts.
You know, it's sort of the wave has crashed over the YRR movement.
You know, you pull out of Acts 29.
Right.
People like John Onwa Cheka, you know, they pull out of the SBC because, you know, you say it's too woke and he says it's too racist.
You know, we're going our separate ways here.
Where do you think things stand?
Like, what's next?
I think the middle ground is evaporating.
I think Vodie Bacham nailed it with his book.
No, I'll put it.
Fault lines.
You know, and so I think like we had all these old fault lines and we knew what they were.
And the dust had long settled, decades, you could even argue in some cases centuries.
But the old fault lines were, you know, are you Reformed or are you Arminian?
And that's a, you know, centuries old fault line.
But even some of the new resurgence of, you know, the young Reformed, restless guys.
So, but still, that's a 30 year old fault line.
If you think of the rise of Calvinism, you know, in its resurgence most recently, that's still 30 years ago, 20 years ago.
And so that would be a big one Reformed and Arminian.
And then you got continuationist.
And cessationist, and then you've got, um, you know, the credo, pedo kind of thing, and and so you've got all these fault lines, um, and and that's why you're able to do like together for the gospel, and you're able to do because it's like, all right, we we've all landed, um, the dust has settled, we know what seats on on the bus we're on, right?
And then and then all of a sudden we realize there are some other fault lines we didn't even consider, uh, before, like, and and a lot of it has to do with politics, um, a lot of it has to do with like a Christian ethic, you know, and so so you've got the uh, covet, you know, 2020, you've got uh, BLM.
And civil tyranny.
And boom, all of a sudden, there's this new divide with guys that we thought were on our side because we were both Calvinists.
We were both, you know, cessationists.
We were both whatever.
And so I just think that, like, once again, it's like we've got the fresh paint of new fault lines on, you know, like fresh lines on the cement.
And people are, it's just this like national and even global game of musical chairs.
And I think the dust is still settling.
It's a great time, I think, to start a new ministry.
Like, I'm planting a new church, and we went from 20 to 120.
Since April last year to today.
And I think a lot of it is because just being out, a lot of people have left.
We're not talking about chronically dissatisfied church hoppers.
I'm talking people who were faithful members for 18 years in their local church and then realized my pastor is a liberal, my pastor's woke, my pastor's a tyrant, my pastor is a coward, or what he doesn't have a spine, you know, whatever it is.
And so I think these new fault lines are setting in.
People are rearranging on the deck.
And that's where I want to turn it back to you and ask you this.
I think, you know, one of the big fault lines is.
Civil tyranny and wokeness, and the dust was starting to settle.
I thought, where it's like, okay, so we just lost like over half of evangelicalism.
So that's a bit depressing.
But hey, we still got a decent crew over here that's against social justice and CRT and intersectionality and against civil tyranny and their four churches being opened.
And they saw through the play with masks and the jab and all these kinds of things.
And like, man, you know what?
Like, we lost like half of evangelicalism.
That's not exciting, but we still got a really good crew here, you know?
And then.
We're quickly realizing that we agree on the problems, but we radically disagree on the solution.
And so, like the rise of Christian nationalism, you know, like I've got Stephen Wolfe's book here, you know, no relation.
It is.
But I do not.
But I'm happy to take, as I've said, I'm happy to take all credit that could be accrued to my account, and yet I want none of the criticism.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, if there's anything good that could be attributed to a Wolf in that book, I'll take it.
But if there's criticism, it's all Stephen's.
From what I can tell, it's all good.
The Radical Divide in Evangelicalism00:04:13
But most people will not have that opinion.
But it is fantastic.
And I actually just interviewed him.
I recorded with him last night.
And so we'll see what order these actually air.
But I just recorded with Stephen last night.
Inside of Right Response Ministries, there are two wolves.
Yeah, exactly.
And the one you feed is the one that will win.
Yeah, it's the wolf pack.
So, anyways, but my point is there's a radical divide now.
So, I feel like Vodi Bakum, two years from now, could write another book, like Fault Lines Episode 2, with.
And so, the aftershock.
Exactly.
The aftershock.
Yeah.
And so, anyways, with that, what do you think?
What is that divide?
Like, I thought, like, there are certain guys that I thought we were on the same team, you know?
And some of these guys I won't even name because I think the verdict's still out.
Like, they may end up on our team.
But I'm talking about guys who, like, over the last two and a half years, it's like, man, thank God for that guy.
He's not woke.
He didn't bow the knee to the state.
He didn't, you know?
And then, but then it's like, we're talking about, okay, now what do we do?
What's the solution?
Where do we go?
Yeah.
And I'm presenting some things like Christian nationalism or theonomy, you know, in a tiered down general equity theonomy.
And it's not just the guy saying, well, I don't think that's the best course of action.
No, the responses I'm getting on Twitter is like announcing our conference, like theonomy and post millennial conference, and people, you know, like coming out of the woodworks and saying, so disappointed to see, you know, James White speaking at this, you know, or so like.
And these are guys who aren't woke, but they're also like, I'm saying, I think this is, we should do something.
And what they want to do is classical liberalism, or I don't know what they want to do.
I don't understand the divide.
What are your thoughts?
Well, I think that I think you're right.
We're in sort of a rebuilding phase, right?
We're the original Avengers are broken up and we're putting the second team together here.
So we're all trying to figure out where we fall after Captain America's Civil War.
People are probably going to jab me for using such Marvel references, but I grew up reading the comic books and I enjoy the movies.
So at least up until they went.
insufferably woke.
So yeah, but I think that I think jury's out on a lot of things right now and that's okay.
I mean, I would like to see a sort of ecumenical is not the right word, but sort of like a magnanimous working together.
If we agree on what the issues are, like can we agree that drag queen story hour is insufferable, intolerable, and a pox upon our country?
Yes.
And then what does it take to resolve that?
Has liberalism Failed, you know, that's a question that many scholars are asking and answering, and some are asking and answering in different ways.
And so I think we need to work through this together.
And I think that we shouldn't get too hung up on terminology.
We need to be careful to define our terms of what we mean.
Obviously, Stephen Wolfe has written a 400 page book explaining what he means by Christian nationalism.
I wrote a 20 page paper last year explaining what I mean by Christian nationalism, and there's a lot of similarities there.
It's been really cool.
I was writing this paper on Christian nationalism and found Stephen Wolfe online and found other people like James Wood, and I'm citing their articles and reading their research, and now sort of we're, you know, online slash somewhat in real life friends.
And yeah, so I think.
I think that we all need to have flexible minds, firm convictions, and thick skin as we all try to think through these things together.
And if we're going to call it Christian nationalism, or as Douglas Wilson likes to call it, Christendom, or whatever, what does it take to re enshrine?
Here's what it is.
If we're thinking in the American context, there were assumed preconditions, morality, civic virtue.
A large population, a large percentage of our population being Christians that were not enshrined but assumed pre liberal conditions that were able, that the American project was able to run on.
Reenshrining Christendom Today00:02:01
Well, we've run out of it.
And so, what does it look like to enshrine the necessary pre liberal conditions for our constitutional republic to continue?
And not just continue, but to change course in such a way that we're a nation that.
You know, bows the knee to King, you know, bends the knee to King Jesus, and that we have magistrates, governors, presidents who rule in such a way as to recognize the rule of Christ and they wield the sword rightly.
I don't want to just settle for, you know, rewinding the clock to 1970.
I want to go somewhere better.
I think you do too.
Amen.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so I think that's, you know, I completely agree with you.
I think classical liberalism and certainly libertarianism and certain, you know, other different ideologies that, you know, that, That are under the larger conservative banner really only worked because they were running off of the prior capital of a mere Christendom.
I think that, you know, they.
I think that's indisputable.
Yeah.
Well, and see, that's what I'm saying.
That's what I'm getting at is that, like, the second aftershock, I think that's a great way of putting it.
It's like you got the earthquake just went two and a half years, you know, 2020 was like an earthquake, and it was like a one two punch.
You know, you come in with the left and they come in with the right.
You know, it's like COVID tyranny shut down your church.
And then.
Boom in your face, George Floyd.
You can protest with thousands of people, but no, you still can't worship.
And so it was like it was civil tyranny, and then boom, CRT.
And the CRT thing had been building for a while, but really, climax in 2020.
And so, anyways, you got that, and it's like, oh my goodness, how are we going to survive?
And like, oh my goodness, we just lost half of evangelicalism.
Apparently, we're not all going to survive, but we still got a crew here.
And then we're getting hit again with this Fault Lines 2.0 and the aftershock of the 2020, you know.
Earthquake.
And that seems to be, again, not over the problem, but the solution.
Civil Tyranny and CRT00:08:27
Because I think we have a lot of commonality with guys who would say, yeah, Drag Queen Story Hour is absolutely unacceptable.
Get that out of here.
That is absolutely ridiculous.
But then they're still entertaining this idea of moral neutrality.
I'm like, as long as we have neutrality, we've got Drag Queen Story Hour, period.
You can't get rid of that and hold to this ethos.
You can't.
Right.
Well, and some of the guys who would like to say that, well, look, I recognize there's no neutrality, like a Jonathan Lehman, you know, I'm not really sure what their constructive vision is for what's better next.
Like, what's best next?
You know, what does this look like?
What actually should we be fighting for, arguing for?
You know, there's a lot of, you know, poo pooing of the efforts undertaken by people like Stephen Wolfe, right?
Or even by people like me in my, you know, meager, small, you know, 280 character fashion.
You know, I do quite a bit of writing as well.
You know, I've tried to, Flesh some of this out.
Like, I think that, you know, I'm pretty convinced that the overall renewal for America has to be a Protestant renewal.
Like, that is, it can't just be, it can't just be like a Catholic renewal.
It can't just be even sort of like a general ecumenical vague Christian renewal.
It needs to be a Protestant Christian renewal because that's who we are as a nation.
That's who we've been.
That's what a lot of the guys over at American Reformer are working towards.
But yeah, I think that I'd like to see guys, I'd like to see some voices out there do less critiquing and more constructing.
What's your alternative solution?
You know, build a widget and put it out there for us to, you know, stress test it.
Right.
And we'll see what we come up with.
Amen.
I completely agree.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, the question that keeps getting asked again and again over these past few years is by what standard?
By what standard?
By what standard?
And, you know, I think some guys.
Someone made a documentary about that.
Yeah.
Somebody.
Yeah.
And they got in trouble with the trailer.
You know, so, but yeah.
But like by what standard and proceeding, you know, the founders and by what standard you've got.
Well, you've got rush duty.
That's where that comes from.
But the question is is it just the second table of the law?
Is it just the Ten Commandments minus the first four?
It's just Commandment 5 through 10, right?
All horizontal in relation to our duty to love our neighbor.
Or do nations actually have a God given duty to actually legislate the first four of the Ten Commandments?
That idolatry is wrong.
Should there be blasphemy laws?
Should we have Sabbath laws?
Like, should there be, you know, these kinds of things?
And the crazy thing is that, like, these are not.
Well, we have blasphemy laws, right?
Just ask who you can't criticize and you know who rules over you.
And we sort of have Sabbath laws these days with our new work from home regime as well.
You're absolutely right.
It's not whether, but which.
The question is whose blasphemy laws and, you know, which day of rest will be mandated?
And, you know, Joe Rigney in a panel last night, I think, did a really good job holding out to other Baptists that.
The Bible makes it clear that civil rulers can and should know that they are ruling under God's authority.
Yes.
Even if those rulers themselves are not necessarily regenerate.
Right.
They should recognize that there is a higher authority that exists over them that has sovereignly orchestrated that they would be in this position of authority.
I mean, we see multiple examples of this in scripture.
I mean, sometimes we see those men repent and come to faith, and sometimes we see those men just recognize.
That they are under a higher hand and they rebel against it.
But, you know, Psalm 2 means something, right?
Like either Psalm 2 means something or it doesn't.
And Psalm 2 is not, you know, does not sit isolated apart from Romans 13.
Romans 13 doesn't sit isolated apart, you know, from Exodus 20.
You know, the whole Bible goes together on these issues and we need to really dig back into it and apply it to our lives.
Amen.
Yeah.
Nebuchadnezzar, you know, like I think the verdict's still out, you know, in regards to like, was.
Like, was Nebuchadnezzar a Christian?
Was he a regenerate?
Sure.
Um, you know, uh, but Nebuchadnezzar certainly realized, especially after seven years of being on all fours, eating, you know, the grass and the drinking the dew of the field, losing his mind.
You know, after that, the Lord humbling him, uh, Nebuchadnezzar recognized that there was a God in heaven, you know, King Darius.
Was King Darius regenerate?
Yeah, you know, that's where I was going to next.
Yeah, yeah, perfect.
So, yeah, Daniel 3, we've got Nebuchadnezzar with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Daniel chapter 6, if you want to pull it up, but Daniel 6 is what you know, Daniel of the Lion's Den, and uh, and you got Darius, you know, and it's like, We don't know if Darius was regenerate, but what we do know is that Darius recognized that Yahweh was the true God, that Daniel's God was God, and that all people.
And then what does he immediately do?
He had this lousy decree that he had been influenced by worthless men who just hated Daniel.
And this whole thing with COVID would preach because people would.
I remember so many people saying, well, we shouldn't resist these things because you only resist when it's persecution.
And the criteria.
For persecution, it has to be directly targeting Christians.
And I remember saying, well, Darius didn't directly target Daniel.
Darius wouldn't have done this decree if he knew that it was targeting Daniel, because Daniel was his guy.
He liked Daniel.
The way that the guys got Darius to pass the law was that no one, no one of no matter what religion they were, they could not petition any man.
So atheists and agnostics are included, right?
It wasn't just worship of gods, it was no other god or No other man but Darius for 30 days, 30 days to stop the spread of prayer, you know, just 30 days, you know, and Darius makes his decree.
And then when God, you know, I don't know if God saved him, but when God reveals to him Daniel's God is the God who shuts the mouth of lions, Darius makes another decree.
And this decree is everybody better pay homage to Daniel's God.
Let me read it.
I mean, yeah, yeah, read it.
If Darius can say this when we don't know whether or not Darius is regenerate, right, you know, Why can't we ask the same thing from our leaders today?
Darius says, so this is Daniel 6 25 through 28, and I'll just read 26 through 27 here.
But it says, Darius honors God, and he says, I issue a decree that in all my royal dominion, people must tremble in fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God and he endures forever.
His kingdom will never be destroyed, and his dominion has no end.
He rescues and delivers, he performs signs and wonders.
In the heavens and on the earth, for he has rescued Daniel from the power of the lion.
So, Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.
I mean, even that right there, for he is the living God and he endures forever.
Amen.
Why can't, I mean, Joe Biden, say it.
Say it.
Say Jesus is Lord.
Say it.
Say Jesus is Lord.
Say it.
But wait, but see, like, I don't know why we can't have, look, I understand.
Look, so I get this was the Old Testament, but I would not say that this falls into a pocket of covenantal theology that we would have to assume is siloed off from our lives today.
No way, because it's Persia.
Right.
Yeah.
So if this, we're not talking about Israel.
Right.
Exactly.
They're in exile here.
So this, where was I going to go with all this?
Oh, yeah.
I just wanted to go off real quickly on you said, you know, 30 days to stop the prayer, you know, 30 days to stop the spread of prayer.
Slow the spread of prayer in the Babylonian Empire.
But, you know, this COVID really, you know, also opened my eyes to how bad so much of the thinking was on the nature of the relationship between the church and the state and what are the responsibilities of the church to the state and the state to the church.
And how I heard this formulation kind of tossed at me over and over again that the Christian must obey unless the state commands disobedience or forbids obedience.
Resisting Sinful State Commands00:12:49
And those are the only two options within which you are free to exercise civil disobedience.
And I say that that just certainly cannot be the case, right?
Some of our brothers, like Todd Friel, got in trouble saying, well, he would wear the pig wheel if the state told him to.
And I'm saying, well, no, I will not wear the pig wheel if the state tells me to, right?
Laws also need to be reasonable, they need to be grounded.
In a rational expression of what is good and just for mankind.
And there are more opportunities and reasons for us to potentially politely decline to acquiesce with the state's commands than just those two sort of hard brackets.
And we need to recover that speed.
Amen.
And one of the reasons why is because of love for neighbor.
What people don't realize is that when the government tells you to wear a pink pinwheel on the side of your head, although that does not cause you to directly disobey what God commands, Or causes you, forbids you from obeying God's commands.
Exactly.
Yeah, it doesn't cause you to do anything that God forbids or not do anything that God commands.
But what it does do is it, every single person who complies with an unjust law is feeding, it's strengthening the arm of the state to eventually enact that unjust law.
And so, like, people don't think about it, but it's like, well, yeah, I just wore the mask.
I'm just going to be polite.
I'm just going to do this or I'm just going to do that.
Or, yeah, I'm going to work from home, you know, or, yeah, I'm going to.
What they're not realizing is that because of everyone's polite compliance, a bunch of other people lost their jobs.
So you're doing this and calling it love for neighbor.
But if a bunch of people said no, it would have been done.
Like, you know, when COVID ended, when the American people were done with COVID, that's when it ended.
Sure.
The moment we were done, then all of a sudden they say, oh, yeah, the pandemic's over.
Not because they even wanted it to be over, not because the science had changed, political science perhaps, but no, it's because the people were done with it.
And what I realized is, oh my goodness, we could have been done with this like a long time ago, but none of us stood up and not realizing that, okay, yeah, maybe the state's not requiring me to do anything that is definitively sinful.
But my acquiescence in this arena is fueling the state.
And it's like I'm giving the state power, empowering his arm to crush my neighbor over here.
It's not crushing me because I have the ability with my vocation to work remotely or whatever it might be.
But this guy over here just lost his job.
And I actually have a Part in that.
I actually was, you know, I have some responsibility in that.
And so, yeah, so we have to be, you know, resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.
And there are some things I think we have to be prudent with it.
So, like taxes, I would say that our tax system right now and the amount that we're taxed is unjust.
And so, I would actually be one of the guys who I would make an argument and say that a Christian could not pay taxes and it would not be a sin against God.
But what I would say is that, but you're probably going to go to jail.
And so, for my Fed handler watching this, Interview.
I just want to say that that was Joel and not me who made such a declaration of sovereign citizenship.
So, me and Toby Sumter did an episode on that, and both agreeing that that is unjust.
We would say anything that rivals the tithe is theft, that the state cannot take any more than what God demands, which is 10%.
So, the state needs to be 9% or lower.
Anything above that, which we're way beyond that, we would say that that is tyranny and that that could be resisted.
You have to resist when the state is telling you to do something sinful.
You can resist and then sometimes should resist because everything I said earlier fuels the state's arm to crush your neighbor.
But then there are other times where it's like, okay, I actually am going to submit to this, even though it would not be a sin before God to resist, but I'm going to submit to this nonetheless because we want to also, this brings in another piece of the puzzle, but we want to be strategic.
And which battles are we going to fight?
And it does us no good if every, I think of, you know, Mormons, like some of the old school Mormons who wanted to get back to the roots of Mormonism.
Who did tax evasion in America and they all wound up in jail.
Like it was a lost cause.
It didn't work out well for them.
So I don't want to lead this resurgence of Christians who evade taxes and then we don't actually accomplish anything because we're all in jail.
So I don't think that's the battle we should face.
That's not Christian nationalism.
Right, exactly.
That's not the battle that I think we should fight.
But the point is, it does need to be a piece of the conversation because we want to be consistent in our principles.
So if I can say no pinwheel, according to scripture, I think I can also say no 30% taxes.
No, no, sir.
But I will submit in this area because I have a family to feed.
I have obligations at home.
I can't afford to go to prison.
We're going to fight this slowly.
We have time.
We're going to win.
Time is on our side.
And we're going to win.
We're going to fight it slowly.
We're going to fight it through these different avenues.
Doctrines of the lesser magistrate come into the picture.
And so, anyways, I just thought that'd be worth mentioning.
But any other thoughts, real quick on Darius?
Because I feel like, man, that'll preach.
No, I just think that I think whether it's Darius or whether it's what Paul and Peter say in the New Testament, I think what we see in Psalm 2 or Philippians 2, right?
Like every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
I mean, ultimately, confession of Christ as Lord is only a question of when, not a question of if, you know?
And I think that as Christians in a country, we want to seek the good, the earthly and the heavenly good of our country, as Stephen Wolf talks about.
It's a good frame.
And it's one that I think is a little dissonant for many evangelical Christians who have so divorced.
Their heavenly citizenship from their earthly travels.
And I was thinking about this today.
I think American Christians treat our citizenship like it's a rental car.
You know, like the phrase, like, drive it like you stole it or drive it like it's a rental.
Well, that's completely unbiblical, right?
That's not what our approach to citizenship should be.
Now, as soon as you begin to go down this road, people will begin to trot out all sorts of tropes and accusations.
Oh, you're just trying to, you know, use Jesus to get power.
Don't you know your savior was crucified by the state?
Well, yes, I do know that.
He's also currently reigning over all states in all places at all times.
And Christians should be seeking to take dominion, to be cultivating the land that God has put us in for the good of our neighbors, for the good of our community, for the good of our families.
Like you and I were talking about, we need men to pursue vigorous Christian development in the world and not just in the church.
We need men to be building.
That's what God made us to do.
So, don't treat our citizenship here in America like it's a rental car.
Amen.
Like we're just going to beat it up on our way to heaven and then turn it in and get glorified.
I mean, amen.
We will get glorified.
But heaven is our home and earth is our home.
And America and God's sovereign grace is my home.
And so, I want to see America do well.
And the first step for America to do well is to recognize that crisis came.
Amen.
And there's so many, we're going, like you said earlier, we're going to have to have this Protestant big tent.
We're going to need a big tent.
And if we're actually going to pull this off by God's grace.
But in that Big Ten, in this Protestant resurgence, renewal of getting back to our roots and really forming and shaping a Christian ethic and a Christian view of politics, there's a lot of doctrines we're going to have to go back to because everything that you just described the whole time you were talking, I just kept thinking radical two kingdom doesn't help with what you're describing.
No, radical two kingdom is the problem.
That's the problem.
Exactly.
In many ways.
Exactly.
So you've got this two kingdom theology that I think is a big problem where.
Whether the kingdoms are sacred and common, that radical dualism, I think, is a huge problem.
But, you know, I do believe in two kingdoms, but I think it's light and dark.
And when Constantine is in power, you've got light in the state.
And when you've got a false teacher in the church, you've got darkness in the church.
So you have three spheres, two kingdoms, not common and sacred, but light and dark, and one king reigning over all of it.
And there is no dark, shadowy place like the Lion King, you know, all the land, everything the light touches, you know, Simba.
What about that dark, shadowy place?
That's politics.
You must never go there.
Christ's reign has no power.
No, that doesn't exist.
That's the CDC.
Right, exactly.
That doesn't exist.
And so, one more thought, real quick, about Darius that I just thought was I will make a decree.
It's verse 26, chapter 6, Daniel.
I will make a decree that in all my royal dominion, people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel.
For he is a living God, enduring forever.
His kingdom shall never be destroyed, and of his dominion there shall be no end.
That's.
Not only is it Christian, yeah, but what I was going to say is not only is it Christian, and this isn't Israel, so this is another nation outside of Israel without that unique covenant with the nation state of Israel, a king exercising legislative authority for all peoples underneath his civil rule.
And it's not a second table of the law legislation that he's giving.
It's not, I declare, because Daniel's God is real, no man shall murder his fellow man or no man should steal from his fellow man.
No, all men shall tremble.
Before the God of Daniel shall worship.
So he gives a first table law, you know, have no other gods before me, law, worship the triune God, worship Yahweh.
And he's legend, he's decreeing it.
It's law.
All men under my authority, my civil authority that God has granted to me, have an obligation to worship the true God.
You know, and unless the argument's going to be from the Old Testament Christian nationalist right there.
Exactly.
So, like, So, I want to talk to Jonathan Lehman.
What are you going to do with that?
Are you going to say, like, you know, Darius did this, and when Darius died one day and stood before God in judgment, this is one of the things that God corrected him for?
I don't think so.
Is that where you want to be, Lehman, when Jesus comes back making that argument about Darius?
I don't think that's a good place to be.
So, we got to do something with that.
Or that you would argue, and I got to go here in just a second.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Or that you would argue that it shouldn't be done because if it is done, it's somehow.
Sort of erodes the principles of classical liberalism or erodes the principles of multicultural pluralism.
You know, look, all of governing is costs and trade offs, right?
Like, and I was thinking about this the other day in terms of like, well, I need to be honest about the costs that I think some people should be paying, right?
So, right now in the American governing construct, we're paying the cost of the proliferation of transvestite strippers and drag queens, the proliferation of abortion up to, You know, nine months in New York, California, Colorado, et cetera.
And the benefit we get, I guess, is that nobody feels in any way coerced by the system of government we have because it has no religious flavor to it.
And so everybody feels comfortable, and we can have, you know, a mosque and a synagogue and a church on every corner, you know, or a satanic temple, whatever.
Well, look, we need to maybe think about in a future that where we don't have the drag queens, maybe because we did that based off of explicit Christian principles and a recognition that, you know, The God of Daniel is still God, that perhaps some people feel a little less comfortable in our country.
It's not that they're not citizens.
They're still citizens.
They can still vote.
They can, you know, enjoy all the privileges of citizenship, but they recognize that they live in a Christian country that reflects Christian values.
In the same way that if I went over to the Middle East and moved into a Muslim country, I would feel uncomfortable because five times a day I would be reminded that they worship another God.
That's right.
Should they stop doing that?
Well, yes, they should because they should remain trusting Christ.
But I don't have an American imperialist, you know, like, I don't have privilege to tell them to stop doing that sort of America to Dubai per se.
Christian to Muslim, I say stop doing it.
So why can't we have that here in our country?
Amen.
I say that we can if that's the trade off that gets us less drag queens.
Amen.
Yeah, we can and we should.
And I believe that by God's grace that we will.
I feel very hopeful.
So, all right.
How to Follow William Wolf00:01:05
Thanks for your time.
Let our listeners know, William, how can they follow you?
Remind us of how they can follow you on Twitter, but then also some of your articles.
You mentioned a couple groups that you write for.
Sure, yeah.
So you can find me on Twitter at William underscore E underscore Wolf with an E on the end of it.
That's William Wolf, not Stephen Wolf.
Okay.
So William underscore E underscore Wolf on Twitter.
And then I write regularly for the Freedom Center out of Liberty University.
So that's standingforfreedom.com.
And I also do some writing for the Center for Renewing America.
So you can find them online at Center for Renewing America.
And I host Twitter spaces sometimes for American Reformer.
So you can find those on Twitter or you can visit them at amreformer.com.
Awesome.
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
God bless.
Yeah, thanks for having me, brother.
Thanks so much for listening.
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